The Pessimist's Case For God

It's surprising that there's anything of value at all

What a curious life
We have found here tonight
There is music that sounds from the street
There are lights in the clouds
Anna's ghost all around
Hear her voice as it's rolling and ringing through me
Soft and sweet
How the notes all bend and reach above the trees

—In the Aeroplane Over the Sea

It’s thought that theism is the optimistic view of the world and atheism is the pessimistic view. And to be sure, if God exists, the world is very good. But I think there’s a way that one’s pessimistic dispositions should incline one in the direction of theism. One who expects the world, by default, to be rubbish should be very surprised to find a world like ours—overflowing with love and meaning and connection.

If there is no God then there are a great many ways things could go wrong. These ways of going wrong wouldn’t just introduce minor bads into the world, but instead would vaporize the possibility of all value in the world. Many of these ways seem overwhelmingly likely a priori.

First of all, there could simply have been nothing at all. No physical particles, laws, or otherwise. A barren void would have nothing of value.

Second, there could have been physical stuff but no laws. It could have been that the physical stuff had no powers to do anything—that it simply sits around indefinitely and does nothing. It could even have been that there were physical laws and physical things, but the laws didn’t line up with the things that there were. And there are strong arguments for thinking such a thing is overwhelmingly likely a priori.

(Before you respond “but we know there is stuff and laws, so this has a probability of zero,” note that what matters is how likely there being this stuff is given the mere assumption of atheism. As an analogy, if you get ten royal flushes in a row in poker, it wouldn’t do to, when accused of cheating, say, “it can’t be improbable that I got ten royal flushes because I did get ten royal flushes—the probability is 1.”)

Third, there could be physical stuff and laws but the laws might have been too simple to produce value. Perhaps every particle would simply have floated about aimlessly, never combining to form valuable structures. A world as rich, complex, and structured as ours is very surprising. A pessimist should be very surprised by the fact the laws of physics we have can give rise to chemistry, and then biology, and then us.

Fourth, there could have been constants that weren’t life-permitting. As I’ve argued, the fact that we got constants that fell in a tiny range needed for any life to form is shocking given atheism, while expected given theism.

Fifth, there could have been no stuff that could produce consciousness in principle. It’s very surprising that you can throw together certain bits of matter and get minds. Though if you couldn’t get minds, then the universe would have no value.

Sixth, it could be that the stuff that can produce consciousness never existed. It could have been, for instance, that only brains can produce consciousness but there were never any brains.

Seventh, there could be disharmonious consciousness—consciousness that doesn’t pair up with the physical, whereby the contents of the minds of the creatures that exist don’t pair up with what’s going on in physical reality. For more on this argument, see here. A fair warning: if you rush to the comments and say “but doesn’t evolution solve this,” or “LOL, doesn’t this guy know about evolution by natural selection TOTALLY DESTROYING this argument,” I will unfortunately have to kill you.

Eighth, there could be harmonious consciousness but no significant understanding of the world. We could lack moral knowledge, the ability to discover the world, understanding of math, and so on. One should, again, be pessimistic about the odds that apes evolving on a planet, whose moral beliefs are produced by unguided evolution, would have knowledge of which possible worlds are likelier than which other ones, which scientific theories are best, and which moral views are correct. See here for more on this.

Ninth, it could have been that we were all in a skeptical scenario. Perhaps we’d be randomly produced by a quantum fluctuation, and our minds would quickly dissipate after the fluctuation is over. Or we could be in a skeptical scenario in about a hundred other ways.

Tenth, it could have been that the world had a few conscious beings in universes but it didn’t have you. If 0% of possible beings exist, it’s very unlikely it would have you. Thus, from the fact that you exist, you should think that it isn’t the case that 0% of possible people exist—and this fact is vastly likelier if God exists than if he doesn’t.

And there are still more ways the world could have been rubbish. Over and over again, there are things that had to happen for the world to contain anything of value. Most of these are surprising—you wouldn’t have expected them ahead of time. And yet they all happened. We got lucky over and over again.

What could explain this extraordinary streak of luck? What could explain why surprising things kept happening that were needed for value? Well, here is one way to explain them all in one fell swoop. Perhaps there was a being concerned with value, who rigged the dice, making sure every improbable thing that was needed for value happened.

This is the core argument for theism. On atheism, by default, one would expect, with overwhelming probability, a barren void, lacking anything of value. The fact that this is not what exists is a miracle, and miracles are generally attributed to God. Or, more precisely, because the odds of there being anything of value are very near zero given atheism, and very near one given theism, the existence of all this value massively confirms theism.