I have a specific issue with this claim: "This is already, even putting aside the atonement, a pretty surprising coincidence. If the greatest good really comes from a kind of deep union with God, it’s surprising that dwellers in first-century Roman Palestine would come up with the ideal afterlife state. It would be like if the Bible discussed the psychophysical harmony argument at length; it’s so specific that it’s hard to believe they’d think of it by chance."
There shouldn't be anything surprising about communities developing the belief that some sort of union with God would be the greatest possible good. If God is the greatest possible being, then that conclusion follows almost trivially (and that's why it shows up across human cultures in all sorts of religious contexts, from Gnosticism to Hinduism). No one thinks that any of these groups were just guessing about what the greatest good would be, and that they just happened to be right - but once you accept that their conclusion is the straightforward consequence of their general theistic views, then it's not even remotely weird that it would be something that theism predicts, and it doesn't provide any reason to believe the prediction is *true.* That's like someone who believes in the world's most delicious hot dog saying, "Well, if the world's most delicious hot dog does exist, it's a surprising coincidence that people think it's the best hot dog to eat; it's hard to believe they would think the best possible hot dog to eat was the world's most delicious one by chance." No it isn't! It's just a natural consequence of believing that such a thing exists.
But it doesn't look like this consideration about union with God being the greatest possible good and being enabled through the incarnation really does much to explain their beliefs.
How does it not explain their beliefs? In general, the belief that X is the greatest thing in existence is a pretty good candidate for explaining why someone also believes that engaging with X is the greatest good - don't those two things follow pretty closely?
Another way to look at it would be to assume atheism is true and consider someone who comes to believe that the greatest conceivable being exists. Then ask what a rational person would predict in that situation. I think 99% of us would predict the person holding that belief would then immediately form the belief that it was *at least* an extremely important thing to be in union with that being, right? It would be extremely odd if they *didn't* form that belief, even if atheism was true. In fact, I don't see any reason to think the truth or falsity of atheism would make it more or less likely that they'd form such a belief. It just seems like something that's explained entirely by their previous belief.
I'm not saying that holding union with God is important is surprising. I'm saying it's surprising that the incarnation, seemingly also believed for independent reasons, is a plausible route towards the ideal union.
Aiming for union with God might in fact be a kind of mystic universal. Gershom Scholem used to claim Jewish mysticism was unique relative to all other developed mystic traditions for *not* claiming some kind of union with absolute reality was desirable & achievable, but Moshe Idel convincingly established that such goals were part of jewish mystic practice. Vaishnavism of course has it's own version of God inviting us to union after displaying various virtues in human form, though in christian terms it's too "docetist" for the virtues to be real and lila has a different feel to it altogether. One possible way to frame a unique difference is through (a certain reading of) Paul's account of the crucifixion, where Christ's death has a similar result to the highest ends of chariot mysticism, but he "breaks" it such that he becomes capable of taking any person who merely has a proper disposition to his spirit into divinity, regardless of their learning/virtue/mystic discipline.
For weird contemporary analytic treatments of the trinity I rec Ward's Christ and the Cosmos
> Aiming for union with God might in fact be a kind of mystic universal.
Was going to write something just like this.
Union with God is largely the goal of Indian religions too, except possibly for Buddhism which doesn't have the concept of God, but can arguably be claimed to be doing the same thing while refusing to reify it with a name.
And within Hinduism, the entire Vaishnava strand is mostly built around the framework of the 10 avataras (= divine incarnations), and in Hinduism in general it's common to claim that avataras are more common than that (which can lead to every two-bit cult or small ashram claiming their leader as an avatara...).
Edit: which leads a cheap but basic objection to Christianity: why just once?
<<There existing, in the modern day, surprisingly well-attested Christian miracles, like Our Lady of Zeitoun>>
There is no response to this. In the previous post, you were claiming that some guy grew a limb in 1640, now I guess you found some nonsense in 1968 to make it sound more realistic. (It might be actually time to unsubscribe.) All claims of supernatural events have other explanations.
Alright, I'll take one final stab.
If there are miracles happening in random places at random times, that makes the problem of evil even more pressing. Why doesn't god just drop a banner from the sky that says "stop with the factory farming and all the evil sh*t or else..."? Where are these miracles when innocent babies die of hunger?
That the greatest undergraduate student of philosophy in the world endorses such blatant nonsense like miracles shows the ineffectiveness of philosophy. I'm sad.
I have spent some time scrutinizing your posts. I think you believe in a god for two primary psychological reasons: 1/ you are bothered by certain skeptical arguments and you just want to claim "god made it that way" in response (which was actually Descartes's own response but the dude lived 500 years ago) 2/ you desperately want to believe you'll spend an eternity with your loved ones. I'm sorry man - I recommend the Hume route (backgammon) instead:
<<Most fortunately it happens, that since Reason is incapable of dispelling these clouds, Nature herself suffices to that purpose, and cures me of this philosophical melancholy and delirium, either by relaxing this bent of mind, or by some avocation, and lively impression of my senses, which obliterate all these chimeras. I dine, I play a game of backgammon, I converse, and am merry with my friends. And when, after three or four hours' amusement, I would return to these speculations, they appear so cold, and strained, and ridiculous, that I cannot find in my heart to enter into them any farther.>>
I don't agree with your psychologizing; I think I became a theist by considering the arguments. In fact, I find myself psychologically pulled in the direction of atheism, as the atheistic arguments are more emotionally impactful than the theistic arguments.
It is puzzling why there's evil if there are small miracles. Brian Cutter and Philip Swenson have a theodicy that nicely explains this, but I don't have time to lay it out in depth. The explanations for evil often give a reason why God must allow the world to have significant evil--to achieve significant goods--but might still carry out little miracles https://benthams.substack.com/p/a-new-preexistence-theodicy
If everyone were buried in sh*t to the neck, you would have a theodicy for that, too. “God wants us to exercise our rational faculties, thus we are all buried in sh*t with only the head available for bullsh*tting.”
I think the historical evidence for the resurrection is terrible and even if you raise to 100% the prior probability of theism, and even in particular the probability of a benevolent God who wants to communicate himself to us, the evidence for the resurrection is so poor it comes nowhere near justifying Christian belief.
I also think it’s quite strange to suggest the incarnation is not the kind of story humans would be expected to invent. History and religion are flush with stories of gods becoming men and vice versa.
I mean, there are a few examples, but they're historically rare. In particular, becoming human and then suffering and dying, as a display of virtues rather than power, is a bit surprising.
This is often forgotten by Christians and nonbelievers alike but the central theme of the New Testament is not a divine display of virtue for the betterment of mankind. It is the impending judgment. This was a belief (THE belief) that Jesus and his followers held prior to his crucifixion, and which his followers maintained afterwards. The narrative had to be reworked to accommodate the humiliating death of their messiah, but the NT is all about power. The nations and their gods will be crushed. Through Jesus, YHWH will reign supreme. Every knee shall bow.
Maybe the story is a historical insight into the changing view people had about the way they should view and treat their fellow countrymen. It isn't beyond the pale to imagine that centuries of a certain kind of old and stogy Roman rule would spark a new and radical type of thinking among its citizens, especially among those who viewed the Romans as occupiers and their religions as foreign.
My point isn't to say that this is how the traditions of early Christianity developed, but rather to highlight that there are very plausible non-divine explanations for origins of Christianity. I recommend reading Bart Erhman for very interesting analysis of how early Christian traditions developed into what we have now. He doesn't try to convince you of the existence or non-existence of a god, but his books are excellent history and textual analysis.
The best book to read for understanding the period is New Testament and the People of God by NT Wright, which gaves me good historical and cultural information for getting the context of different genres of the period - even better than Simon Shama's book.
If the trinity is a big issue for you, James Dolezal has a good chapter on his Academia.edu on divine simplicity and the trinity. He also points to a couple articles by Thomas Joseph White in that chapter which are also great. I believe the only way to make sense of it is if you affirm divine simplicity. But, that in itself is controversial. A fuller treatment would be The Triune God: Systematics by Bernard Lonergan.
Initially was going to ask if this was different from Descartes' ontological argument, but then realized that this assumes that there is a God, and is just arguing for Christianity, haha.
My question is, why would a God need to be 'perfect', or morally sound? He'd be omnipotent, sure, but I don't see how omnibenevolence has anything to do with it.
This is a classic skeptic situation of "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence". Seriously, why do you think it's implausible that there couldn't be some exaggeration in the recounting? And then that it's a significant proof of a supernatural entity? As in, what's unreasonable about the conjecture that, e.g. someone rigged up a dummy as publicity stunt? We just had a big amount of media noise over people seeing lights in the sky, with some making all sort of wild claims. I presume you wouldn't consider it evidence of angelic visitations, therefore God (Christian version, of course) exists.
I counted 3 given. Were there Had it gone on much longer there would probably have been more..All seemed more plausible than that it was the virgin Mary. To see the virgin Mary in the the phenomenon doesn't seem justified by what was happening as reported. Had it persisted a bit longer some physicists or electrical engineers or meteorologists might have had a go at it had the mob not been in the way
3 and 4 are not compelling. Why does God have to do this specific thing? How much danger does God have to undergo in order to have the courage virtue? Is it enough that he gives free will, taking risk that man won’t choose well? And let’s say he becomes human - isn’t he not actually taking on as much risk as a human? When he dies he is still God, for example. And it will matter how you slice and define virtues.
Overall requiring god to be a human seems like an extremely specific requirement on how to achieve a certain goal.
It depends on your theology. For example in certain strains of Jewish thought, God experiences the pain of people. So the mistakes of people lead to his own pain and regret.
It just doesn’t make sense that there is only one way to best achieve the goal here. It’s also not clear that this goal should be achieved at the expense of all others. For example maybe there is value to people to God being separate and lofty, somewhat beyond humans, and that value is tainted by a God that becomes human.
I don't have an objection to the incarnation theory laid out in this article, but I do have an objection to belief in Christianity that I believe is very strong and convincing. The premises are that 1. Christ is said to have performed miracles to prove his divinity, meaning he was willing to perform miracles to advance his ends 2. Christ sent the disciples out to minister among all nations, meaning he wanted everyone to know of his life and death, therefore 3. we should expect there is no reason to not have Christ spread the news of his passion and resurrection by miraculous means throughout the whole world, and yet we don't observe that having happened. Christians think the Good News is meant to be spread among all the nations of the world, and yet being spread by human means meant it took generations to reach various peoples, meaning those peoples had whole generations who lived and died without knowledge of Christ. In the most extreme cases, you have the New World, who didn't receive news of Christ for almost 1500 years, and modern uncontacted tribes, who still haven't received the Good News. If Christ was willing to perform miracles during his life, why couldn't God have just appeared in the sky after the crucifixion and announced what had just transpired in every people's native tongue? This might seem like a silly thing to demand of God, but God could have done it, and doing it would mean instant transmission of the Good News, rather than millions of people living and dying without ever receiving it. Absent a satisfactory response to this objection, I simply cannot bring myself to believe in Christianity.
Then why is he said to have performed miracles during Christ's life, and supposedly afterwards with things like Our Lady of Zeitoun? It seems like he should either avoid miracles altogether if he truly wishes to remain hidden, or he doesn't wish to remain hidden, in which case my original objection stands.
The skeptical theist defense - God or God's reasons are unknowable - is a genuinely good argument for the theist against the atheist in the case of divine hiddenness.
Unfortunately while it's a good argument for the generic theist, it's devastating to the *Christian theist*.
God's nature is unknowable.
BUT
God's nature is composed of three distinct persons...
Oh an also God was a specific human named Jesus and he had many opinions that are knowable (on divorce, charity, money changers at the temple etc.).
Not logically impossible this is all true, but strikingly odd.
Thought-provoking post! You asked us non-Christians where we think it goes wrong, so as a former-Christian-present-agnostic, I'll try to honor that.
First, I more-or-less agree with the points #1–5 (where we might expect God to become incarnate). But I'll point out that, of course, I *would* agree with them! Theologians have poured millennia of hard work into building a belief system making analytical and poetic sense; it's no wonder that what they've come up with has deep intuitive appeal. (If it could be shown that those points could be analytically derived, I'd withdraw this objection.)
Second, you write (regarding the Incarnation): "Because it’s such a specific view, the odds that humans would come up with such a scheme without divine inspiration are quite low." I find your confidence here puzzling for a few reasons.
The first reason is that it's not clear we see a quick jump to Jesus's divinity (different than his messiahship): neither Mark or Q show this, and while Paul's letters definitely show that Paul had a high Christology (that is, he thought Jesus was a REALLY impressive ontological specimen, the firstborn of all creation and such), it's much less clear that he thought Jesus was God. If he did, why did the Arian heresy rile the early Church so much? (If you think that your argument still works if Jesus was only the "demiurge" or Philo's "Logos", then that'd be an out.) Rather, what we see is an evolution in the New Testament documents to the belief that Jesus was God, full stop.
Second (and this is speculative, tell me if I'm wrong), my hunch is that you're thinking it'd be odd for humans to come up with the idea of Jesus being God analytically. I'm not sure if that's right or not (and I'd be interested to hear why you're confident of it). But from a narrative perspective, it feels much easier to come up with the idea that Jesus is God — you just keep saying he's cooler and cooler until there's no room left to go! As Robin says, it can lay claim that it's the BEST story... and we know that groups of people are fantastic at coming up with good stories! (In fact, the same move gets re-used in Jewish history by some of the followers of messianic claimant Sabbatai Zevi in the 1700s, who began to believe that he might be divine after he converted to Islam — the notion was that God was descending into darkness to redeem the world. Of course, this was presumably influenced by 17 centuries of Christian theology; I bring it up to show that it can apparently make a certain narrative sense to pump up the ontological status of a seemingly-failed messiah.)
Third, the idea of YHWH incarnating was "already in the water": think of the mysterious man that Jacob wrestles with in Genesis 32 (who renames him "Israel", meaning "he who struggles with God"... and of whom Israel reported "I saw God face to face, and yet my life was spared). Of course, this isn't the same thing as Jesus (or Sabbatai Zevi), but some of the ingredients in the story were already present.
These, at least, are some reasons that I don't find this argument convincing.
I think one issue with the interaction between the argument for the incarnation and the preexistence theodicy is that it makes the argument from divine hiddenness stronger. If God entered the world because it was necessary that he form a relationship with us in this life rather than just in heaven by suffering and dying for us to show us how much he loves us, then it becomes really hard to understand why only a minority of the world's population actually believes in his incarnation and sacrifice and why his existence isn't obvious. That means that everyone who isn't a Christian won't get the benefit of the relationship that is apparently so important that it justifies all the world's evils. He could have gotten a better relationship with these people by just making the truth of Christianity more obvious. And to make things even worse, the objectionable content in the Bible, as well as objectionable claims made by Christians, cause many people to have an aversion to Cheistianity. If the line of reasoning that combines the incarnation with the preexistence theodicy is correct, then these people's relationships with God will be eternally soured by this.
Also, I don't think all the supposed facts you mention at the end are actually things non-Christians need to explain. They grant too many assumptions to Christians with the only evidence being that they were claimed to be true in the Bible. For instance, we don't need to explain why there appeared to be an empty tomb - we just need to explain why the Gospels claimed there was one decades after the fact. This could be the case even if no one ever checked to see if the tomb was empty, or if the tomb never existed at all, or even if it was known by most at the time that the tomb *wasn't* empty (so long as a few people refused to believe it). We also don't need to explain why Jesus's skeptical brother converted - the idea that James was a skeptic until he finally was convinced sounds more like an apologetic gloss rather than genuine history. And we really only need one of Jesus's direct disciples (plus Paul) to have had experiences that convinced them that Jesus rose from the dead - the others could have been convinced by their testimony if they were even convinced at all (we don't know for sure how many of the original apostles really even became Christians).
//If God entered the world because it was necessary that he form a relationship with us in this life rather than just in heaven by suffering and dying for us to show us how much he loves us//
Well the picture is mostly that he suffered and died so that he could take on voluntary suffering for the sake of helping others. For that, he need not help others. Also, with the preexistence theodicy, I suggest that the global structure of the world--and how good it is--depends on the number of volunteers. Maybe the world is better for everyone, at least in expectation, because he volunteers. Also, I think the preexistence theodicy can explain hiddenness by the good of helping people out of moral and spiritual darkness.
This is barely relevant, but shouldn't believing there is a God lower your beliefs about the chances of various animal species being morally significant? It would make it a lot easier to find a working theodicy.
More relatedly, I'm sort of a Christian, but I think there are a few problems with this argument: One, it doesn't explain why God wants you to worship God. Secondly, by endowing humans with free will (assuming you have basically typical Christian beliefs otherwise), God already showed vulnerability, courage, sacrifice, etc.
The “perfect story” argument has those 5 “premises”. But #1 (well, all of them in fact) is predicated on the foundational assumption that “god exists”.
So sure, if “god exists”….those 5 things may well follow. But you still need to establish that the basis for that foundational assumption isn’t just a leftover from last night’s burrito.
Even if atheism is just a lack of belief, insofar as the worldview where you believe in X makes more sense of various phenomena and has a higher prior that the worldview where you believe ~X, you should believe X.
Actually, there are things that are proven, and things that are unknown. “Belief” is for those who like to fool themselves into thinking they know something when they don’t.
But for him to exemplify and transmit the best virtues he must be like us in some respects. Absent incarnating he could not display courage or self-sacrifice.
Consider a relationship between a drug addict and a virtuous person who is trying to help the addict to deal with the addiction. We do not consider this relationship better if virtuous person becomes addict themselves. We consider it to be good if a drug addict becomes more like the virtuous person.
But we're not saying God takes on vices! We're saying he takes on the highest virtues. It's thus analogous to the case where the virtuous person takes on the highest virtues.
God is already, allegedly, perfectly virtuous. He doesn't need to change, there are no higher virtues he could take on, that he already doesn't have.
In becoming human, god naturally becomes less perfect, because humans are less perfect. This is not the best possible relationship. The opposite situation, where humans become more godlike is obviously much better.
One could maybe try to argue that it would be good for the non-addict to get a sense of what it's like to be the addict, in order to better help them. But if the non-addict had access to a magical button that would impart that knowledge without any risks or suffering (= omniscience), it would be crazy masochism for them to avoid pressing it and take the drugs instead.
Do you still believe in hedonism(not only in well-being but about all value)? If only experiences with good valence have non-instrumental value, both 2 and 3 seem a bit dubious and need further defence.
Setting other objections aside, I found it interesting that I have the exact opposite intuition re: (3). It seems to me that the best kind of unions are ones that are *complementary*, i.e., ones where one side exemplifies certain virtues, and the other other kinds of virtues, such that these virtues are complimentary and their “sum” or “union” is greater as a result. So, this would mean that the best union between us and God is one where God exemplifies the “divine” or “unlimited” virtues (perfection, never erring, never being contingent, dependent, etc.), whilst we exemplify the “limited” virtues (courage in the face of fear, overcoming corrupt desires/natures, etc.), and together the union is complementary. It strikes me as actually false that the best *union* would be one where God has both.
An analogy: the best union between puzzle pieces are ones where piece 1 has certain curves, and piece 2 has opposite, but complimentary, curves, such that together they fit into a more beautiful piece. I think there’s something much more beautiful/good about a story on which we all play our functional roles and together create a better community. God, qua unlimited nature, exemplifies the divine virtues, and we, qua limited natures, exemplify the imperfect virtues.
Ah, but the thought is that things are *best* if *we* have the limited virtues, and *God* the unlimited, because together these are complimentary. Just like 2 puzzle pieces are complimentary when *only* the first has a right-curve, and *only* the second has a left-curve. If the first has both curves, then the two aren’t jointly complimentary.
I have a specific issue with this claim: "This is already, even putting aside the atonement, a pretty surprising coincidence. If the greatest good really comes from a kind of deep union with God, it’s surprising that dwellers in first-century Roman Palestine would come up with the ideal afterlife state. It would be like if the Bible discussed the psychophysical harmony argument at length; it’s so specific that it’s hard to believe they’d think of it by chance."
There shouldn't be anything surprising about communities developing the belief that some sort of union with God would be the greatest possible good. If God is the greatest possible being, then that conclusion follows almost trivially (and that's why it shows up across human cultures in all sorts of religious contexts, from Gnosticism to Hinduism). No one thinks that any of these groups were just guessing about what the greatest good would be, and that they just happened to be right - but once you accept that their conclusion is the straightforward consequence of their general theistic views, then it's not even remotely weird that it would be something that theism predicts, and it doesn't provide any reason to believe the prediction is *true.* That's like someone who believes in the world's most delicious hot dog saying, "Well, if the world's most delicious hot dog does exist, it's a surprising coincidence that people think it's the best hot dog to eat; it's hard to believe they would think the best possible hot dog to eat was the world's most delicious one by chance." No it isn't! It's just a natural consequence of believing that such a thing exists.
But it doesn't look like this consideration about union with God being the greatest possible good and being enabled through the incarnation really does much to explain their beliefs.
How does it not explain their beliefs? In general, the belief that X is the greatest thing in existence is a pretty good candidate for explaining why someone also believes that engaging with X is the greatest good - don't those two things follow pretty closely?
Another way to look at it would be to assume atheism is true and consider someone who comes to believe that the greatest conceivable being exists. Then ask what a rational person would predict in that situation. I think 99% of us would predict the person holding that belief would then immediately form the belief that it was *at least* an extremely important thing to be in union with that being, right? It would be extremely odd if they *didn't* form that belief, even if atheism was true. In fact, I don't see any reason to think the truth or falsity of atheism would make it more or less likely that they'd form such a belief. It just seems like something that's explained entirely by their previous belief.
Actually, I think you're right, and have now deleted the passage in question.
I'm not saying that holding union with God is important is surprising. I'm saying it's surprising that the incarnation, seemingly also believed for independent reasons, is a plausible route towards the ideal union.
Aiming for union with God might in fact be a kind of mystic universal. Gershom Scholem used to claim Jewish mysticism was unique relative to all other developed mystic traditions for *not* claiming some kind of union with absolute reality was desirable & achievable, but Moshe Idel convincingly established that such goals were part of jewish mystic practice. Vaishnavism of course has it's own version of God inviting us to union after displaying various virtues in human form, though in christian terms it's too "docetist" for the virtues to be real and lila has a different feel to it altogether. One possible way to frame a unique difference is through (a certain reading of) Paul's account of the crucifixion, where Christ's death has a similar result to the highest ends of chariot mysticism, but he "breaks" it such that he becomes capable of taking any person who merely has a proper disposition to his spirit into divinity, regardless of their learning/virtue/mystic discipline.
For weird contemporary analytic treatments of the trinity I rec Ward's Christ and the Cosmos
> Aiming for union with God might in fact be a kind of mystic universal.
Was going to write something just like this.
Union with God is largely the goal of Indian religions too, except possibly for Buddhism which doesn't have the concept of God, but can arguably be claimed to be doing the same thing while refusing to reify it with a name.
And within Hinduism, the entire Vaishnava strand is mostly built around the framework of the 10 avataras (= divine incarnations), and in Hinduism in general it's common to claim that avataras are more common than that (which can lead to every two-bit cult or small ashram claiming their leader as an avatara...).
Edit: which leads a cheap but basic objection to Christianity: why just once?
<<There existing, in the modern day, surprisingly well-attested Christian miracles, like Our Lady of Zeitoun>>
There is no response to this. In the previous post, you were claiming that some guy grew a limb in 1640, now I guess you found some nonsense in 1968 to make it sound more realistic. (It might be actually time to unsubscribe.) All claims of supernatural events have other explanations.
Alright, I'll take one final stab.
If there are miracles happening in random places at random times, that makes the problem of evil even more pressing. Why doesn't god just drop a banner from the sky that says "stop with the factory farming and all the evil sh*t or else..."? Where are these miracles when innocent babies die of hunger?
That the greatest undergraduate student of philosophy in the world endorses such blatant nonsense like miracles shows the ineffectiveness of philosophy. I'm sad.
I have spent some time scrutinizing your posts. I think you believe in a god for two primary psychological reasons: 1/ you are bothered by certain skeptical arguments and you just want to claim "god made it that way" in response (which was actually Descartes's own response but the dude lived 500 years ago) 2/ you desperately want to believe you'll spend an eternity with your loved ones. I'm sorry man - I recommend the Hume route (backgammon) instead:
<<Most fortunately it happens, that since Reason is incapable of dispelling these clouds, Nature herself suffices to that purpose, and cures me of this philosophical melancholy and delirium, either by relaxing this bent of mind, or by some avocation, and lively impression of my senses, which obliterate all these chimeras. I dine, I play a game of backgammon, I converse, and am merry with my friends. And when, after three or four hours' amusement, I would return to these speculations, they appear so cold, and strained, and ridiculous, that I cannot find in my heart to enter into them any farther.>>
I don't agree with your psychologizing; I think I became a theist by considering the arguments. In fact, I find myself psychologically pulled in the direction of atheism, as the atheistic arguments are more emotionally impactful than the theistic arguments.
It is puzzling why there's evil if there are small miracles. Brian Cutter and Philip Swenson have a theodicy that nicely explains this, but I don't have time to lay it out in depth. The explanations for evil often give a reason why God must allow the world to have significant evil--to achieve significant goods--but might still carry out little miracles https://benthams.substack.com/p/a-new-preexistence-theodicy
If everyone were buried in sh*t to the neck, you would have a theodicy for that, too. “God wants us to exercise our rational faculties, thus we are all buried in sh*t with only the head available for bullsh*tting.”
You should reflect on his argument: it's nonsense, therefore it is nonsense. Quite powerful.
There's only one position of Collins' that I find entirely indefensible, which is that Rings of Power is a good tv show.
I think the historical evidence for the resurrection is terrible and even if you raise to 100% the prior probability of theism, and even in particular the probability of a benevolent God who wants to communicate himself to us, the evidence for the resurrection is so poor it comes nowhere near justifying Christian belief.
I also think it’s quite strange to suggest the incarnation is not the kind of story humans would be expected to invent. History and religion are flush with stories of gods becoming men and vice versa.
I mean, there are a few examples, but they're historically rare. In particular, becoming human and then suffering and dying, as a display of virtues rather than power, is a bit surprising.
This is often forgotten by Christians and nonbelievers alike but the central theme of the New Testament is not a divine display of virtue for the betterment of mankind. It is the impending judgment. This was a belief (THE belief) that Jesus and his followers held prior to his crucifixion, and which his followers maintained afterwards. The narrative had to be reworked to accommodate the humiliating death of their messiah, but the NT is all about power. The nations and their gods will be crushed. Through Jesus, YHWH will reign supreme. Every knee shall bow.
Maybe the story is a historical insight into the changing view people had about the way they should view and treat their fellow countrymen. It isn't beyond the pale to imagine that centuries of a certain kind of old and stogy Roman rule would spark a new and radical type of thinking among its citizens, especially among those who viewed the Romans as occupiers and their religions as foreign.
My point isn't to say that this is how the traditions of early Christianity developed, but rather to highlight that there are very plausible non-divine explanations for origins of Christianity. I recommend reading Bart Erhman for very interesting analysis of how early Christian traditions developed into what we have now. He doesn't try to convince you of the existence or non-existence of a god, but his books are excellent history and textual analysis.
The best book to read for understanding the period is New Testament and the People of God by NT Wright, which gaves me good historical and cultural information for getting the context of different genres of the period - even better than Simon Shama's book.
If the trinity is a big issue for you, James Dolezal has a good chapter on his Academia.edu on divine simplicity and the trinity. He also points to a couple articles by Thomas Joseph White in that chapter which are also great. I believe the only way to make sense of it is if you affirm divine simplicity. But, that in itself is controversial. A fuller treatment would be The Triune God: Systematics by Bernard Lonergan.
Praying for you! Keep searching.
Initially was going to ask if this was different from Descartes' ontological argument, but then realized that this assumes that there is a God, and is just arguing for Christianity, haha.
My question is, why would a God need to be 'perfect', or morally sound? He'd be omnipotent, sure, but I don't see how omnibenevolence has anything to do with it.
I've discussed that here https://benthams.substack.com/p/god-best-explains-the-world
See skeptic response to Lady if Zeitoun. "Well" is maybe doing a lot of work in "well attested". Credulously attested to is more plausible.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Our_Lady_of_Zeitoun
No plausible explanation of the lights.
This is a classic skeptic situation of "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence". Seriously, why do you think it's implausible that there couldn't be some exaggeration in the recounting? And then that it's a significant proof of a supernatural entity? As in, what's unreasonable about the conjecture that, e.g. someone rigged up a dummy as publicity stunt? We just had a big amount of media noise over people seeing lights in the sky, with some making all sort of wild claims. I presume you wouldn't consider it evidence of angelic visitations, therefore God (Christian version, of course) exists.
I counted 3 given. Were there Had it gone on much longer there would probably have been more..All seemed more plausible than that it was the virgin Mary. To see the virgin Mary in the the phenomenon doesn't seem justified by what was happening as reported. Had it persisted a bit longer some physicists or electrical engineers or meteorologists might have had a go at it had the mob not been in the way
3 and 4 are not compelling. Why does God have to do this specific thing? How much danger does God have to undergo in order to have the courage virtue? Is it enough that he gives free will, taking risk that man won’t choose well? And let’s say he becomes human - isn’t he not actually taking on as much risk as a human? When he dies he is still God, for example. And it will matter how you slice and define virtues.
Overall requiring god to be a human seems like an extremely specific requirement on how to achieve a certain goal.
Free will isn't a danger to God. It makes it so that things might go badly for humans, but God isn't at risk.
It depends on your theology. For example in certain strains of Jewish thought, God experiences the pain of people. So the mistakes of people lead to his own pain and regret.
It just doesn’t make sense that there is only one way to best achieve the goal here. It’s also not clear that this goal should be achieved at the expense of all others. For example maybe there is value to people to God being separate and lofty, somewhat beyond humans, and that value is tainted by a God that becomes human.
I don't have an objection to the incarnation theory laid out in this article, but I do have an objection to belief in Christianity that I believe is very strong and convincing. The premises are that 1. Christ is said to have performed miracles to prove his divinity, meaning he was willing to perform miracles to advance his ends 2. Christ sent the disciples out to minister among all nations, meaning he wanted everyone to know of his life and death, therefore 3. we should expect there is no reason to not have Christ spread the news of his passion and resurrection by miraculous means throughout the whole world, and yet we don't observe that having happened. Christians think the Good News is meant to be spread among all the nations of the world, and yet being spread by human means meant it took generations to reach various peoples, meaning those peoples had whole generations who lived and died without knowledge of Christ. In the most extreme cases, you have the New World, who didn't receive news of Christ for almost 1500 years, and modern uncontacted tribes, who still haven't received the Good News. If Christ was willing to perform miracles during his life, why couldn't God have just appeared in the sky after the crucifixion and announced what had just transpired in every people's native tongue? This might seem like a silly thing to demand of God, but God could have done it, and doing it would mean instant transmission of the Good News, rather than millions of people living and dying without ever receiving it. Absent a satisfactory response to this objection, I simply cannot bring myself to believe in Christianity.
Given that God remains hidden, if he exists he has a reason to remain hidden. So that rules out particularly grandiose public displays.
Then why is he said to have performed miracles during Christ's life, and supposedly afterwards with things like Our Lady of Zeitoun? It seems like he should either avoid miracles altogether if he truly wishes to remain hidden, or he doesn't wish to remain hidden, in which case my original objection stands.
But even despite those miracles his present existence is non-obvious.
Perhaps not 2000 years later, but they would have made God's existence obvious to anyone witnessing those miracles at the time.
But God doesn't have to be consistently hidden all across the world.
I guess I'm just failing to understand why God would want to be hidden in some places and times but readily apparent in others.
The skeptical theist defense - God or God's reasons are unknowable - is a genuinely good argument for the theist against the atheist in the case of divine hiddenness.
Unfortunately while it's a good argument for the generic theist, it's devastating to the *Christian theist*.
God's nature is unknowable.
BUT
God's nature is composed of three distinct persons...
Oh an also God was a specific human named Jesus and he had many opinions that are knowable (on divorce, charity, money changers at the temple etc.).
Not logically impossible this is all true, but strikingly odd.
Thought-provoking post! You asked us non-Christians where we think it goes wrong, so as a former-Christian-present-agnostic, I'll try to honor that.
First, I more-or-less agree with the points #1–5 (where we might expect God to become incarnate). But I'll point out that, of course, I *would* agree with them! Theologians have poured millennia of hard work into building a belief system making analytical and poetic sense; it's no wonder that what they've come up with has deep intuitive appeal. (If it could be shown that those points could be analytically derived, I'd withdraw this objection.)
Second, you write (regarding the Incarnation): "Because it’s such a specific view, the odds that humans would come up with such a scheme without divine inspiration are quite low." I find your confidence here puzzling for a few reasons.
The first reason is that it's not clear we see a quick jump to Jesus's divinity (different than his messiahship): neither Mark or Q show this, and while Paul's letters definitely show that Paul had a high Christology (that is, he thought Jesus was a REALLY impressive ontological specimen, the firstborn of all creation and such), it's much less clear that he thought Jesus was God. If he did, why did the Arian heresy rile the early Church so much? (If you think that your argument still works if Jesus was only the "demiurge" or Philo's "Logos", then that'd be an out.) Rather, what we see is an evolution in the New Testament documents to the belief that Jesus was God, full stop.
Second (and this is speculative, tell me if I'm wrong), my hunch is that you're thinking it'd be odd for humans to come up with the idea of Jesus being God analytically. I'm not sure if that's right or not (and I'd be interested to hear why you're confident of it). But from a narrative perspective, it feels much easier to come up with the idea that Jesus is God — you just keep saying he's cooler and cooler until there's no room left to go! As Robin says, it can lay claim that it's the BEST story... and we know that groups of people are fantastic at coming up with good stories! (In fact, the same move gets re-used in Jewish history by some of the followers of messianic claimant Sabbatai Zevi in the 1700s, who began to believe that he might be divine after he converted to Islam — the notion was that God was descending into darkness to redeem the world. Of course, this was presumably influenced by 17 centuries of Christian theology; I bring it up to show that it can apparently make a certain narrative sense to pump up the ontological status of a seemingly-failed messiah.)
Third, the idea of YHWH incarnating was "already in the water": think of the mysterious man that Jacob wrestles with in Genesis 32 (who renames him "Israel", meaning "he who struggles with God"... and of whom Israel reported "I saw God face to face, and yet my life was spared). Of course, this isn't the same thing as Jesus (or Sabbatai Zevi), but some of the ingredients in the story were already present.
These, at least, are some reasons that I don't find this argument convincing.
I think one issue with the interaction between the argument for the incarnation and the preexistence theodicy is that it makes the argument from divine hiddenness stronger. If God entered the world because it was necessary that he form a relationship with us in this life rather than just in heaven by suffering and dying for us to show us how much he loves us, then it becomes really hard to understand why only a minority of the world's population actually believes in his incarnation and sacrifice and why his existence isn't obvious. That means that everyone who isn't a Christian won't get the benefit of the relationship that is apparently so important that it justifies all the world's evils. He could have gotten a better relationship with these people by just making the truth of Christianity more obvious. And to make things even worse, the objectionable content in the Bible, as well as objectionable claims made by Christians, cause many people to have an aversion to Cheistianity. If the line of reasoning that combines the incarnation with the preexistence theodicy is correct, then these people's relationships with God will be eternally soured by this.
Also, I don't think all the supposed facts you mention at the end are actually things non-Christians need to explain. They grant too many assumptions to Christians with the only evidence being that they were claimed to be true in the Bible. For instance, we don't need to explain why there appeared to be an empty tomb - we just need to explain why the Gospels claimed there was one decades after the fact. This could be the case even if no one ever checked to see if the tomb was empty, or if the tomb never existed at all, or even if it was known by most at the time that the tomb *wasn't* empty (so long as a few people refused to believe it). We also don't need to explain why Jesus's skeptical brother converted - the idea that James was a skeptic until he finally was convinced sounds more like an apologetic gloss rather than genuine history. And we really only need one of Jesus's direct disciples (plus Paul) to have had experiences that convinced them that Jesus rose from the dead - the others could have been convinced by their testimony if they were even convinced at all (we don't know for sure how many of the original apostles really even became Christians).
//If God entered the world because it was necessary that he form a relationship with us in this life rather than just in heaven by suffering and dying for us to show us how much he loves us//
Well the picture is mostly that he suffered and died so that he could take on voluntary suffering for the sake of helping others. For that, he need not help others. Also, with the preexistence theodicy, I suggest that the global structure of the world--and how good it is--depends on the number of volunteers. Maybe the world is better for everyone, at least in expectation, because he volunteers. Also, I think the preexistence theodicy can explain hiddenness by the good of helping people out of moral and spiritual darkness.
This is barely relevant, but shouldn't believing there is a God lower your beliefs about the chances of various animal species being morally significant? It would make it a lot easier to find a working theodicy.
More relatedly, I'm sort of a Christian, but I think there are a few problems with this argument: One, it doesn't explain why God wants you to worship God. Secondly, by endowing humans with free will (assuming you have basically typical Christian beliefs otherwise), God already showed vulnerability, courage, sacrifice, etc.
1)
a) not every argument for a position needs to explain everything about it.
b) that can be explained by the good of relationship with God.
2) He wasn't displaying courage and sacrifice, as he was never at genuine risk.
The “perfect story” argument has those 5 “premises”. But #1 (well, all of them in fact) is predicated on the foundational assumption that “god exists”.
So sure, if “god exists”….those 5 things may well follow. But you still need to establish that the basis for that foundational assumption isn’t just a leftover from last night’s burrito.
Right, it's an argument for why a theist should be a Christian, not for why theism is true. For arguments for theism, see, for instance, https://benthams.substack.com/p/god-best-explains-the-world
Interesting read. Thanks.
I’d say your “simple” Bayesian prior is doing A LOT (nay, infinite) work here.
Also, the version of atheism you present is a “positive assertion” one, rather than the absence-of-evidence/ null hypothesis variety.
Even if atheism is just a lack of belief, insofar as the worldview where you believe in X makes more sense of various phenomena and has a higher prior that the worldview where you believe ~X, you should believe X.
Actually, there are things that are proven, and things that are unknown. “Belief” is for those who like to fool themselves into thinking they know something when they don’t.
3rd premise is so obviously wrong, that no amount of wishful thinking can justify it.
Clearly, in a perfect union, it's us who are supposed to become more like God, not vice versa.
But for him to exemplify and transmit the best virtues he must be like us in some respects. Absent incarnating he could not display courage or self-sacrifice.
Consider a relationship between a drug addict and a virtuous person who is trying to help the addict to deal with the addiction. We do not consider this relationship better if virtuous person becomes addict themselves. We consider it to be good if a drug addict becomes more like the virtuous person.
But it's good for the non-addict to display virtues!
It's also good when a former criminal becomes reintegrated in the society. It doesn't mean that commiting crimes for this purpose is worth it.
But we're not saying God takes on vices! We're saying he takes on the highest virtues. It's thus analogous to the case where the virtuous person takes on the highest virtues.
God is already, allegedly, perfectly virtuous. He doesn't need to change, there are no higher virtues he could take on, that he already doesn't have.
In becoming human, god naturally becomes less perfect, because humans are less perfect. This is not the best possible relationship. The opposite situation, where humans become more godlike is obviously much better.
One could maybe try to argue that it would be good for the non-addict to get a sense of what it's like to be the addict, in order to better help them. But if the non-addict had access to a magical button that would impart that knowledge without any risks or suffering (= omniscience), it would be crazy masochism for them to avoid pressing it and take the drugs instead.
Do you still believe in hedonism(not only in well-being but about all value)? If only experiences with good valence have non-instrumental value, both 2 and 3 seem a bit dubious and need further defence.
No, I'm an objective list theorist.
Okay then, Moorean/Hurka's bulldog...
Setting other objections aside, I found it interesting that I have the exact opposite intuition re: (3). It seems to me that the best kind of unions are ones that are *complementary*, i.e., ones where one side exemplifies certain virtues, and the other other kinds of virtues, such that these virtues are complimentary and their “sum” or “union” is greater as a result. So, this would mean that the best union between us and God is one where God exemplifies the “divine” or “unlimited” virtues (perfection, never erring, never being contingent, dependent, etc.), whilst we exemplify the “limited” virtues (courage in the face of fear, overcoming corrupt desires/natures, etc.), and together the union is complementary. It strikes me as actually false that the best *union* would be one where God has both.
An analogy: the best union between puzzle pieces are ones where piece 1 has certain curves, and piece 2 has opposite, but complimentary, curves, such that together they fit into a more beautiful piece. I think there’s something much more beautiful/good about a story on which we all play our functional roles and together create a better community. God, qua unlimited nature, exemplifies the divine virtues, and we, qua limited natures, exemplify the imperfect virtues.
God could both have complementary virtues and the ideal virtues!
Ah, but the thought is that things are *best* if *we* have the limited virtues, and *God* the unlimited, because together these are complimentary. Just like 2 puzzle pieces are complimentary when *only* the first has a right-curve, and *only* the second has a left-curve. If the first has both curves, then the two aren’t jointly complimentary.