Saturday, December 29, 2012

2012 Year in Review

It’s only been about four months since I started this blog (the first entry was August 29, 2012), but a review of what’s been done so far with the Maverick Atheism Blog seemed like a good idea anyway.

The Argument from Evil

One of the best arguments for atheism is the argument from evil.

Rebutting Arguments for Theism

I’ve also attacked arguments for God this year:

I was hesitant to put the last one on the list because I also responded to the Maverick Christian article on the Leibnizian cosmological argument. Maverick Christian in turn responded to my article, and I haven’t written a counter-response to that yet; looks like that’ll happen next year.

Still, all in all hasn’t been a bad year (or rather four months) arguing for atheism and thinking independently. I look forward to continuing that tradition next year.

Sunday, December 16, 2012

The Importance of Logic

As I said in my last entry, just because an argument is unsound doesn’t mean that every objection will be a good one. Consider the following moral argument popularized by William Lane Craig:

  1. If God does not exist, then objective moral values and duties do not exist.
  2. Objective moral values and duties do exist.
  3. Therefore, God exists.

This argument doesn’t work (see my refutation of this moral argument) but on more than one occasion I’ve seen atheists who would say the conclusion (line 3) doesn’t follow from the premises (lines 1 and 2), when anybody with sufficient training in logic (a discipline of philosophy that even science-loving philosophy-haters would like) would have known better. Consider these two relevant rules of logic:

Transposition says that “If A, then B” is logically equivalent to “If not-B, then not-A.” Two statements being logically equivalent means it’s impossible for the two to have different truth-values, so that if one is true then the other must be true, and if one is false then the other must be false. Some examples of transposition in action:

  1. If A, then B
  2. If not-B, then not-A    (follows from 1 and transposition)
  3. If A, then B    (follows from 2 and transposition)

A famous rule of inference called modus ponens goes like this:

  1. If A, then B
  2. A
  3. Therefore, B

We can see the moral argument follows by using the following symbolization key:

  • G = God exists
  • O = objective moral values and duties exist

And using the rules of logic as follows:

  1. If not-G, then not-O
  2. O

  1. If O, then G    (follows from 1 and transposition)
  2. G    (follows from 2, 3, and modus ponens)

This isn’t to say that the moral argument I depicted is a good one; see my little series on the moral argument for a good refutation of it. But this does illustrate that just because the argument is unsound doesn’t mean that every atheist attack is a good one, and some critical thinking is advisable when looking at would-be objections to theistic arguments. Some objections to theistic arguments do work, but the same doesn’t necessarily go with every objection peddled on the internet.

Knowing some rules of logic would have prevented certain atheists from claiming that the conclusion doesn’t follow from the premises. I recommend that all atheists (and theists too) get some training in logic. You might think, “I’m an atheist; I already know logic!” Maybe you didn’t make the mistake of thinking the moral argument’s conclusion doesn’t follow from the premises, but consider these two examples borrowed from page 2 of Harry J. Gensler’s Introduction To Logic (2nd edition). Test yourself by trying to correctly answer the following two questions:

  1. If you overslept, you’ll be late. You aren’t late. Therefore:
    1. You did oversleep.
    2. You didn’t oversleep
    3. You’re late.
    4. None of these follows.
  2. If you overslept, then you’ll be late. You didn’t oversleep. Therefore:
    1. You’re late.
    2. You aren’t late.
    3. You did oversleep.
    4. None of these follows.

If you guessed (b) for the first one and (b) for the second one, then you made a mistake; (b) is right for the first one but wrong for the second one. Choosing (b) for the second one makes the fallacy of denying the antecedent:

  1. If A, then B
  2. Not-A
  3. Therefore, not-B
For example:
  1. If I have twelve fingers, then I have at least ten fingers.
  2. I do not have twelve fingers.
  3. Therefore, I do not have at least ten fingers.

As Gensler says in page 2 of his book, “Untrained logical intuitions are often unreliable.” Even if you didn’t make a mistake with this mini-quiz I gave, learning logic is highly recommended. There just isn’t enough logic happening among theists and even among some atheists. Gensler’s Introduction to Logic is in many ways an excellent book (e.g. in its comprehensiveness, covering inductive logic and paraconsistent logic), but has the disadvantage of giving less standard names to the rules of propositional logic when it introduces those rules; something similar could be said for quantificational logic (it calls “universal instantiation” “drop universal”). Daniel Bonevac’s Deduction: Introductory Symbolic Logic at least mentions the traditional named rules like modus ponens and includes material on counterfactual logic, but overall it is less comprehensive and less readable than Gensler’s Introduction To Logic. Given a choice I’d pick Gensler’s while looking up the traditional names of those logic rules.

If you don’t want to buy a book on logic (though I think reading books is highly recommended for both atheists and theists) there’s Stefan Waner and Steven R. Costenoble’s introduction to logic on the web. In any case, logic is important and I advise all readers to learn it. If it were up to me, logic would be part of K-12 standard education. The world could certainly use more of it.

Saturday, December 15, 2012

Mayan Doomsday

Did you know that the Mayan calendar ends at December 21, 2012 and that the Mayans predicted the world would end that day?

Of course you didn’t. Not only did the Mayans not predict doomsday on that date, but the Mayan calendar doesn’t end that day either. To introduce a bit of Mayan terminology, a b’ak’tun is a cycle of time that is about 394 years, and a piktun is a cycle of time equal to 20 b’ak’tuns (so most scholars think). What happens is that the 13th b’ak’tun (a cycle of time that is about 394 years), and we simply begin the 14th b’ak’tun. Moreover, even if 1 piktun was only 13 b’ak’tuns, there is the kalabtun, which is equal to 20 piktuns, and there are even higher orders (cycles) than that. The Mayan calendar doesn’t even come close to ending in 2012.

That we’re the end of a big cycle on the Mayan calendar is noteworthy, but if the Mayans would be a live today, they’d be celebrating it with a party, kind of like we’d celebrate the beginning of a new century or millennium. And just as the turn of the millennium didn’t end our calendar, so too does December 2012 not end the Mayan calendar.

Some lessons from this

To attack the ignorant claim that the world is going to end December 21, 2012 because of the Mayan prophecy and the Mayan calendar ending, one could have refused to do any research and just say, “That’s nonsense” or “The Mayans could not possibly know when the world would end.” Such responses may be true claims, but you’re better off doing a bit of research than speaking from your armchair. In this case, research showed that there was no such prophecy and that the Mayan calendar didn’t end anywhere near 2012.

The same “do your homework” advice applies to atheism versus theism debates. Studies show that on average atheists have higher IQs than theists, but one can have a high IQ and make foolish statements via carelessness and inadequate research. To cite a specific example, consider The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins. Atheist philosopher Michael Ruse said the book made him embarrassed to be an atheist, and rightfully so. Many examples of Dawkins doing bad philosophy could be cited, but consider this from page 108:

I’ve forgotten the details, but I once piqued a gathering of theologians and philosophers by adapting the ontological argument to prove that pigs can fly. They felt the need to resort to Modal Logic to prove that I was wrong.

What Dawkins doesn’t seem to realize here (but would have if he had done the necessary research) is that the ontological argument for God is a use of modal logic. Saying that these theists resorted to modal logic to defend the ontological argument is akin to saying astronomers resort to looking through telescopes. I’m not saying that there isn’t a good refutation of the ontological argument (see my own refutation of the ontological argument), but if you’re going to attack it, at least have the intellectual decency to do the research so that you don’t make a fool of yourself.

The God Delusion makes a lot of bad arguments for the correct position. What’s notable about this is that Dawkins is obviously extremely intelligent; the man earned doctorate from Oxford. Yet a lack of adequate research made him an embarrassment to many philosophically sophisticated atheists. Unfortunately, a lot of atheists aren’t philosophically sophisticated, and don’t realize the blunders that Dawkins has made.

As the Dawkins case illustrates, even atheists make mistakes in regards to the atheism/theism debate; maybe not as often as theists, but they do make them. So it’s also worth noting that just because someone’s argument for theism is unsound, doesn’t mean that every objection against it will be a good one. In my next blog entry I’ll use an example to illustrate this, as well as illustrate the value and importance of learning logic.

Sunday, December 9, 2012

The Moral Argument and William Lane Craig (part 3)

This entry is part 3 on a series of the moral argument and William Lane Craig. The entries in the series:

  1. The Moral Argument and William Lane Craig (part 1)
  2. —Addressing the first premise of the moral argument.
  3. The Moral Argument and William Lane Craig (part 3)—Addressing the second premise of the moral argument

The Moral Argument

William Lane Craig’s moral argument:

  1. If God does not exist, then objective moral values and duties do not exist.
  2. Objective moral values and duties do exist.
  3. Therefore, God exists.

In this entry I’ll address premise 2 of the above moral argument.

Justifying Premise 2

Recall from part 1 of this series what the group #1 atheist believes: that objective moral values and duties do not exist seems to be true given that God does not exist and the rest of the information we have. The “God does not exist” part seems important here, because the sort of God that William Lane Craig seems to have in mind (e.g. Craig doubtlessly believes his God is perfectly good independently of human opinion) entails the existence of objective moral values and duties, such that if God exists then so do objective moral values and duties. Yet with that, Craig will have a difficult time arguing his case for premise 2 before group #1 atheists in a way that doesn’t beg the question in favor of theism. Since group #1 atheists accept the first premise but deny the second, how does Craig argue for the second premise?

The short answer is that he doesn’t, not really. In his oral debates, where he sometimes modifies the first premise to “If God does not exist, then objective moral values do not exist,” he usually appeals to a “deep down we all know it” sort of approach (see 16:48 William Lane Craig’s 2009 debate with Ronald DeSousa where Craig argues for the second premise). In page 179 of Reasonable Faith (3rd Edition) Craig says:

Premise (2) of the moral argument asserts that, in fact, objective moral values and duties do exist. The way in which moral theorists test competing ethical theories is by assessing how well they cohere with our moral experience. I take it that in moral experience we do apprehend a realm of objective moral values and duties, just as in sensory experience we apprehend a realm of objectively existing physical objects.

William Lane Craig appeals to the intuitive moral experience of objective morality that people already have. The problem is, atheists who reject objective morality don’t have this kind of experience. It’s a bit like arguing that God exists because people personally experience God; you won’t believe you’ve personally experienced God unless you already believe that God exists.

The Evolution Objection

So much for an argument for the second premise. What about objections to it? One objection William Lane Craig deals with is that sociobiological evolution undermines our warrant for the second premise. In philosophy, warrant is something that makes true belief knowledge, e.g. one’s warrant for her belief might be some kind of evidence for it. Belief in objective morality, e.g. that it is objectively morally wrong to steal and murder, has survival value for our species even if objective morality is illusory. Sociobiological evolution selects for survival value, not necessarily for truth. If a false belief has survival value, it might well be selected. With sociobiological evolution being what it is, we have a plausible account of why people “experience” the alleged objective reality of moral values and duties, and this account doesn’t require moral objectivism. In responding to the evolution objection, here’s William Lane Craig on page 180 of Reasonable Faith:

If there is no God, then our moral experience is, plausibly, illusory. I said as much in my defense of premise (1). But why think that naturalism is true? To undermine the warrant which our moral experience gives to our moral beliefs, much more must be done than hold out possibility that naturalism may be true. For if theism is true, then our moral experience, even conditioned by biology and society, is probably not wholly illusory but is reliable to some degree.

One problem here: it’s the theist’s job to convince the atheist that premise 2 is true. Naturalism and evolution are (for many atheists) a plausible worldview. An atheist can effectively say, “I don’t have any reason to believe in objective morality; your appeal to intuitions won’t cut it because in my view moral intuitions aren’t to be trusted due to my view of evolution.” Even if evolution won’t be enough to rationally convince the theist as Craig seems to think, that’s somewhat beside the point. When convincing someone you want to appeal to agreed upon facts. When the theist appeals to intuitions as an allegedly reliable source of information on objective morality’s existence, this appeal is a bad one because the atheist believes intuitions are an unreliable guide to objective morality’s existence. And with sociobiological evolution, we have a plausible account of why people would have moral intuitions whereby such moral intuitions would have survival value whether objective morality existed or not. So why not choose the simpler worldview in which objective morality doesn’t exist?

William Lane Craig’s second response to the evolution objection:

Second, the objection is self-defeating because on naturalism, all our beliefs, not just our moral beliefs, have been selected for survival value, not truth, and are therefore unwarranted.

This is apples and oranges. Belief in objective morality, e.g. that it is objectively morally wrong to steal and murder, has survival value completely independently of whether objective morality exists. In contrast, forming true beliefs about the physical world is much more likely to have superior survival value. If you think falling from a great height will injure you, you are less likely to be injured; if you think falling from a great height will not injure you, you are more likely to be injured. Believing that certain plants are good to eat will help you survive if that belief is true; believing that a poisonous plant is good to eat will hurt your chances of survival. Even when denying the existence of the supernatural, it’s quite plausible for evolution to give us sense organs and brains that are fairly reliable at giving us true beliefs about the physical world. That sort of thing does help us survive, after all.

Another thing to point out here is that Craig’s rebuttal to the evolution objection makes the mistake of conjoining naturalism with evolution. While many atheists are naturalists, not all of them are.

The Moral Argument and William Lane Craig (part 2)

This entry is part 2 on a series of the moral argument and William Lane Craig. The entries in the series:

  1. The Moral Argument and William Lane Craig (part 2)—Addressing the first premise of the moral argument.
  2. —Addressing the second premise of the moral argument

The Moral Argument

William Lane Craig’s moral argument:

  1. If God does not exist, then objective moral values and duties do not exist.
  2. Objective moral values and duties do exist.
  3. Therefore, God exists.

In this entry I’ll address premise 1 of the above moral argument.

Justifying Premise 1

Both in his oral debates (where he sometimes modifies the first premise to be “If God does not exist, then objective moral values do not exist”) and in his writings, William Lane Craig’s defense of the first premise is very weak. To illustrate the weakness in his oral debates, see 15:07 of William Lane Craig’s 2009 debate with Ronald DeSousa where he argues for the first premise of the moral argument. He mentions that many atheists agree with theists on the first premise (true, but irrelevant; there are also many atheists who disagree with Craig on the first premise) and quotes an atheist to prove such agreement exists. At 16:42 of the DeSousa debate, he claims, without any real justification, that “on the atheistic view, there’s nothing really wrong with your raping someone.” The closest he comes to such justification is at 16:15 where he says he doesn’t see any reason to think that in the absence of God the morality evolved by humans is objective. But “I don’t see any reason to believe p, therefore p is false” is an argument from ignorance, not a real justification.

William Lane Craig often does a better job in his writings, but not by a whole lot. In page 173 of Reasonable Faith (3rd Edition), Craig says:

If theism is false, why think that human beings have objective moral value? After all, on the naturalistic view, there’s nothing special about human beings. They’re just accidental byproducts of nature which have evolved relatively recently on an infinitesimal speck of dust called the planet Earth, lost somewhere in a hostile and mindless universe, and which are doomed to perish individually and collectively in a relatively short time.

First thing to note is that Craig makes the mistake of conjoining atheism with naturalism (disbelief in the supernatural). While many atheists are naturalists, not all are. Second, why think on naturalism that there’s nothing special about human beings? Even if our existence came about by accident and even if within a few million years or so our race is destined to perish, none of that is really relevant. What’s special about human beings is that we are an intelligent, sentient, and self-aware species capable of making free choices; surely that is enough. Suppose for example we came across an alien species that like us is intelligent, sentient, etc.; perhaps something akin to the Vulcans in Star Trek. Wouldn’t we say that they have moral value too even though they aren’t human?

Moral Properties and Supervenience

The closest thing Craig gets to addressing this sort of thing (i.e. the properties of our species conferring moral value upon us) in Reasonable Faith is where he talks about moral properties supervening upon natural states of affairs. In philosophy, A-properties supervene on B-properties when B-properties determine A-properties, e.g. some philosophers believe that brain states determine mental states, and thus believe that mental states supervene on brain states. On page 177 of Reasonable Faith, he asks, “Why think that on an atheistic view of the world the curious, non-physical property of moral goodness would supervene on a human female’s nursing her infant?” The atheist can give the same reason as the theist for this and for accepting the second premise. What is that reason? On page 179 Craig has this to say in support of premise 2:

Premise (2) of the moral argument asserts that, in fact, objective moral values and duties do exist. The way in which moral theorists test competing ethical theories is by assessing how well they cohere with our moral experience. I take it that in moral experience we do apprehend a realm of objective moral values and duties, just as in sensory experience we apprehend a realm of objectively existing physical objects….As Sorely emphasized, there is no more reason to deny the objective reality of moral values than the objective reality of the physical world.

To explain why she believes in objective moral values and duties, an atheist moral objectivist, like the theist, could appeal to moral experience and the absence of any adequate reason to deny moral objectivism. The atheist, like the theist, can cite her own moral experience as why she believes humans and their infants have objective moral value and why the property of goodness supervenes on a mother caring for her baby. On page 177 Craig goes on to say:

Why, given naturalism, would the strange, non-physical property of moral badness supervene on a man’s leaving a shop carrying certain items for which he has not left the currency demanded by the shop owner? I see no reason to think that a full specification of all the natural properties of a situation would determine or fix any moral properties of that situation.

Maybe Craig doesn’t see such a reason, but it’s easy for the naturalist to think of one. The full specification of all natural properties allows us to be aware of intelligence, sentience, etc. so that all the relevant stuff for objective morality is present. Also, recall that one can be an atheist without being a naturalist.

As for why moral properties supervene on certain natural states of affairs, the naturalist can say that this is a brute fact, something that is true but has no further explanation for its truth. Unless we are to have an infinite regress of explanations for why a certain human action is morally wrong, we’ll need to come to some sort of stopping point anyway, and even the theist must come down to brute facts. For example, if the theist says that moral obligations supervene on God’s ought-to-be-obeyed commands, one can ask “Why does God have an ought-to-be-obeyed quality?” The theist would probably just answer “He just does” and leave that as his stopping point. Why not cut out the middle man and just use the state of affairs (e.g. a man stealing merchandise) as a stopping point? It’s simpler and there appears to be no reason to appeal to a deity here.

Up next: .

The Moral Argument and William Lane Craig

This entry is part 1 on a series of the moral argument and William Lane Craig. The entries in the series:

  1. The Moral Argument and William Lane Craig (part 1)
  2. —Addressing the first premise of the moral argument.
  3. The Moral Argument and William Lane Craig (part 3)—Addressing the second premise of the moral argument

The Moral Argument

William Lane Craig, perhaps the most notorious living Christian apologist in atheist circles, has a moral argument goes something like this:

  1. If God does not exist, then objective moral values and duties do not exist.
  2. Objective moral values and duties do exist.
  3. Therefore, God exists.

One thing this argument has going for it is that it is deductively valid, i.e. the conclusion follows logically and necessarily from the premises. In William Lane Craig’s moral argument, moral values have to do with what is good and bad (e.g. kindness is good), and moral duties have to do with stuff we morally ought and ought not do, i.e. right and wrong behavior.

What Does “Objective” Mean?

What does Craig mean by “objective” here? In page 173 of Reasonable Faith (3rd edition), Craig says that, “To say that there are objective moral values is to say that something is good or evil independently of whether any human being believes it to be so.” One might object saying that the correct definition of “objective” means “mind-independent” and not just independent of human opinion. With that objection, there are two things to consider.

First, in the context of the moral argument, this sort of meaning for the word “objective” isn’t unique to William Lane Craig. A glance at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy’s entry on the moral argument speaks of moral properties being “objective in the sense that they hold or not regardless of human opinion.”

Second, we need to be careful about getting sidetracked; we should keep in mind that even if William Lane Craig is using the wrong word to communicate the meaning of his premises, that really doesn’t do anything with whether we should believe the truth of the premises. Even if we insisted that using the word “objective” in the wrong way doomed the argument to failure somehow, William Lane Craig could easily adapt by changing the wording of his premises:

  1. If God does not exist, then moral values and duties that hold independently of human opinion do not exist.
  2. Moral values and duties that hold independently of human opinion do exist.
  3. Therefore, God exists.

So to really refute the moral argument we need a more substantive objection; we need to pick a premise and attack its truth, not its wording.

Attacking a Premise

With William Lane Craig’s moral argument being deductively valid, the conclusion being false means that one of the premises is false. So the logical thing for the atheist to do then is to pick a premise and attack it. With that we have a problem though, because when it comes to the moral argument there are at least two groups of atheists:

Group #1: Some atheists believe that given atheism and the rest of the information we have, it is unlikely that objective moral values and duties exist. These atheists would thus agree that premise 1 is probably true, i.e. that even if objective moral values and duties could have existed on atheism, it’s likely that objective moral values and duties do not exist in the real godless world. An atheist might see it this way: theism + our background knowledge about this world = objective moral values and duties probably exist (on theism, God is presumably good independently of human opinion), whereas atheism + our background knowledge about this world = objective moral values and duties probably do not exist. Thus if God does not exist, objective moral values and duties probably don’t exist either, and thus premise 1 is probably true. At any rate, group #1 atheists reject premise 2 but agree with premise 1.

Group #2: Some atheists believe objective moral values and duties do exist in the real godless world. Such atheists thus agree with premise 2 but disagree with premise 1.

There are of course other possible sorts of atheists (e.g. those who are uncertain about which premise is false) but the existence of groups #1 and #2 means I can’t just pick a premise to attack and expect to make all atheists happy. In this series on critiquing William Lane Craig’s moral argument, I’ll take group #1’s side in one blog entry, and take group #2’s side in another blog entry. After I criticize Craig’s justification for both premises I’ll let you the reader decide which if any atheist group is right.

Coming up next: .

Friday, November 23, 2012

The Free Will Theodicy Attacking Itself

Introduction

The free will theodicy is an attempt to help save theism from the problem of evil and says that the reason why God allows evil is because he’s given us humans free will and that at least some of this evil can be justifiably allowed as a cost of freedom. The free will theodicy can come it various ranges when it rebuts the argument from evil, from trying to explain all evil that occurs to only a small portion of it. However, allowing certain evils to occur on the grounds that human freedom is morally valuable has the potential to be self-stultifying.

A Good Point

I actually think the free will theodicy has some merit; people should be allowed to have some control of their own lives, and there are many things that are bad for people that we don’t outlaw (such as choosing to watch bad television over reading) because we respect people’s freedom to make bad choices, albeit to a limited extent. We tend to outlaw bad choices when they infringe upon the rights of another individual, e.g. punching people in the face without their consent.

A Major Problem

The free will theodicy fails spectacularly when one person uses their freedom to severely infringe upon the freedoms of another. We live in a world where somebody can punch me in the face even if I don’t want him too. In that situation, someone punching me in the face overrides my freedom to not get punched in the face. So consider these two conflicting freedoms: a stronger opponent wants to use his freedom to punch me in the face, whereas I the much weaker individual want to use my freedom to not get punched in the face. Only one of these two freedoms can be satisfied. A major problem with the free will theodicy is that it fails to explain why God seemingly chooses to favor the wrong freedom. Simply saying “human freedom is good” does nothing to address the problem of why God would choose to favor e.g. someone’s freedom to punch me in the face over my freedom to not be punched in the face. Why would the violent man’s freedom be more important than my own?

To illustrate further, suppose we find a man beating an innocent woman without her consent. The man is violating the woman’s freedom not to beaten, and in that situation we would stop the man’s violence, precisely because we respect the woman’s freedom not to be beaten and we realize such freedom is a good thing to have. It would be ridiculous to favor the violent man’s freedom to beat the woman over the woman’s freedom to not be beaten, and yet the free will theodicy would have us believe that this is what God often does. I think most theists deep down realize that “God allows it to happen because it’s good to value human freedom in that way” is ridiculous, because even theists would not consider the violent man’s freedom to be more important than the woman’s freedom not to get beaten, and in recognizing this theists would stop the violent man if they could. But given that this is the correct freedom to favor, why doesn’t God do so? Why on earth would God favor the violent man’s freedom over the woman’s freedom?

Conclusion

While the atheist can agree with the theist that it’s good for each individual to have at least some freedom, the free will theodicy depicting God as allowing people to have freedom to negate other people’s freedom seems to be a case of a theodicy attacking itself. In the scenario where a man beats a woman without her consent, it would be morally irrational to favor the man’s freedom to beat an innocent woman over the woman’s freedom to not be beaten. Why not consider the woman’s freedom to not be beaten more important than the man’s freedom to beat her? Clearly we recognize it’s correct to value the woman’s freedom over the man’s here, but given that, why wouldn’t God do the same? In this case it’s clearly nonsensical for a loving and compassionate God to—in the name of freedom—allow the man to oppress the freedom of the woman, because a loving and compassionate God who truly valued human freedom would value the woman’s freedom not to be beaten over the man’s freedom to beat her. A free will theodicy that says otherwise shoots itself in the foot because it fails to recognize the value of freedom it claims to champion.

Sunday, November 18, 2012

William Lane Craig's Failed Defense: Suffering Helps People Know God

One defense William Lane Crag gives against the problem of evil is that a world suffused with suffering somehow helps people come to know and love God. One might think a world suffused with suffering would have the opposite effect; after all, a popular reason why some people become atheists is the argument from evil. Still, one can find multiple places where Craig makes the aforementioned theodicy. In William Lane Craig’s second rebuttal with his debate against Stephen Law:
Particularly, when we keep in mind the Christian concept of God and the Christian purpose of suffering—it is not to produce happiness in this life—it is rather to provide a context in which people may freely respond to God and his offer of eternal life and forgiveness and come to know him. And it may be that only in a world that is suffused with suffering of a natural and moral sort that the maximum number of people would freely come to know God and his eternal life.
Another tidbit from William Lane Craig:
Much of the suffering in the world may be utterly pointless, utterly unnecessary, if you think that the goal of life is human happiness. But it may not be unnecessary if God’s goal is to build His kingdom and to draw men and women freely into an eternal relationship with Himself. In fact, we saw, when you read contemporary books on missiology, that it is precisely in those nations of the world that are suffering the greatest deprivation and war and famine and poverty that the growth in the rates of evangelical Christianity is the highest, whereas, in the indulgent Western world (Western Europe and North America), the growth rates are almost flat by comparison. I think it is not at all improbable that it is only in a world suffused with natural and moral evil that the optimal number of persons would come freely to know God and His salvation.

One reason this defense fails is that there’s no reason to think that an omnipotent God couldn’t replace this morally questionable approach with a better way for people to come to know and love him. On Craig’s Christian worldview, God loves us deeply to the point of incarnating himself into a human (Jesus) and dying a painful death for us. So if Craig’s worldview were right, one better way for God to have us come to know and love him seems clear: flood people with knowledge of what God is, God’s love, and what he’s done for them. Christians like William Lane Craig believe God is the locus of moral value, something akin to morality incarnate (we ought to love morality above all else, hence we ought to love God). Having everyone know what God is, the depths of his love and his willingness to incarnate himself into a human being to die for us would certainly be much more effective in drawing people to him than inflicting suffering upon the population—not to mention letting people know of the happiness that they would receive from knowing and loving God (especially in heaven).

Moreover, if suffering great “deprivation and war and famine and poverty” really lead to a greater good of knowing God, we should welcome such suffering, not fight against it. Perhaps deep down Christians tend to know this is bunk, for many such Christians establish charities to fight against these very things.

Sunday, November 4, 2012

Joe Biden and Abortion

Maverick Christian’s article on abortion last month (last month as of this writing) criticized the moral coherency of Joe Biden’s position about believing human life begins at conception while favoring the legalization of abortion. We can make some sense of Joe Biden’s claim from reading a bit of Judith Jarvis Thomson’s famous article A Defense of Abortion. In the article, Thomson audaciously claims that even if abortion kills an innocent human life, abortion is still morally permissible. An excerpt:

You wake up in the morning and find yourself back to back in bed with an unconscious violinist. A famous unconscious violinist. He has been found to have a fatal kidney ailment, and the Society of Music Lovers has canvassed all the available medical records and found that you alone have the right blood type to help. They have therefore kidnapped you, and last night the violinist's circulatory system was plugged into yours, so that your kidneys can be used to extract poisons from his blood as well as your own. The director of the hospital now tells you, “Look, we're sorry the Society of Music Lovers did this to you--we would never have permitted it if we had known. But still, they did it, and the violinist is now plugged into you. To unplug you would be to kill him. But never mind, it's only for nine months. By then he will have recovered from his ailment, and can safely be unplugged from you.” Is it morally incumbent on you to accede to this situation? No doubt it would be very nice of you if you did, a great kindness. But do you have to accede to it? What if it were not nine months, but nine years? Or longer still? What if the director of the hospital says. “Tough luck. I agree. but now you've got to stay in bed, with the violinist plugged into you, for the rest of your life. Because remember this. All persons have a right to life, and violinists are persons. Granted you have a right to decide what happens in and to your body, but a person's right to life outweighs your right to decide what happens in and to your body. So you cannot ever be unplugged from him.”

Thomson argues that you are not morally obligated to remain unplugged, and so the unborn child’s right to life is insufficient reason for abortion to be unethical. In examining Thomson’s argument it becomes understandable how someone could think human life begins at conception while still being in favor of a woman’s right to choose.

Monday, October 15, 2012

The Ontological Argument

There are a variety of ontological arguments, and while none of them are any good, I’ll talk about one version that William Lane Craig (among many others) have talked about. William Lane Craig describes this curious fact of the ontological argument: if God’s existence is even possible, then it follows that God exists. In some cases he mentions it in a debate without providing much further context, which I think delivers a false impression upon many who hear it.

At reasonable faith, William Lane Craig describes the argument thusly, borrowing largely from Christian philosopher Alvin Plantinga:
  1. It is possible that a maximally great being (God) exists.
  2. If it is possible that a maximally great being exists, then a maximally great being exists in some possible world.
  3. If a maximally great being exists in some possible world, then it exists in every possible world.
  4. If a maximally great being exists in every possible world, then it exists in the actual world.
  5. Therefore, a maximally great being exists in the actual world.
  6. Therefore, a maximally great being exists.
  7. Therefore, God exists.

For those unfamiliar with the argument, let me explain. A maximally excellent being entails being omnipotent, omniscient, and perfectly good. A maximally great being is one that has maximal excellence in every possible world (where a possible world is a complete description of the way reality is or could have been like). Thus, a maximally great being by definition exists in all possible worlds, if such a being exists at all.

Here’s how it works. As an analogy, suppose you know that all the balls are in the bucket, making the bucket full, or none of the balls are in the bucket. You get a peek at the bucket and see that there is at least one ball in the bucket. In that case, you rightly deduce that all the balls are in the bucket. Similarly, God is defined as a necessary being, which means he exists in all possible worlds if he exists at all. Thus God exists either in all possible worlds (if he exists) or none of them (if he does not exist). If God is possible (as premise 1 claims), then he exists in at least one possible world, but if he exists in at least one possible world, then he exists in all of them.

The main problem with this argument is that it cuts both ways. If God’s nonexistence is possible, then we know “God does not exist” is true in at least one possible world. But since God exists in all possible worlds or none of them, it follows that if God does not exist in a possible world, then he exists in none of them. It would be like getting a peek at the bucket and finding that at least one of the balls isn’t in there (as by seeing that the bucket is at least half empty). Thus “It is possible for God to not exist” entails “God does not exist.” That is, if we switch premise 1 with “It is possible that a maximally great being (God) does not exist” we wind up with the opposite conclusion! As such, the ontological argument is hardly a convincing one for a person who isn’t already a theist.

Saturday, September 15, 2012

Bayes’ theorem and the Moral Argument

Maverick Christian put up a post on Bayes’ theorem and the moral argument for God. This is not the first time Bayes’ theorem has been used to argue for religious belief, but I’d like to use this example to illustrate a generic problem with such attempts to use Bayes’ theorem.

To define some terms, propositional evidence is evidence that consists of one or more propositions; e.g. I believe evolution, in part, on the basis of certain similarities in Earth organisms, and Maverick Christian believes “objective morality exists” is evidence for theism. For want of a better nomenclature, let’s call a piece of propositional evidence veridically evidential if and only if (1) the proposition is true; (2) the claim it is evidence for is also true. Thus, where M symbolizes “objective morality exists” and G symbolizes “God exists,” the probability that objective morality is veridically evidential for theism is Pr(M & G), since it is the probability that both M and G are true. That probability can be calculated like so:

Pr(M & G) = Pr(M) × Pr(G|M)

The generic problem in using Bayes’ theorem to argue for religious belief is that we are seldom 100% certain of the evidence, and the evidential use of propositional evidence will depend on the probability of the proposition(s) being used as evidence. Suppose, as Maverick Christian suggests for his hypothetical agnostic, that Pr(G|M) = 0.8. What if the agnostic gives “objective morality exists” a probability of only 60%, making Pr(M) = 0.6? Then the probability that objective morality is veridically evidential for theism is only 48%, and by my lights the agnostic should remain agnostic even with the “evidence” of objective morality.

Friday, September 7, 2012

Rebutting the Leibnizian Cosmological Argument for God Part 2

This is part 2 in my attack on the Leibnizian cosmological argument.
  1. Rebutting the Leibnizian Cosmological Argument for God Part 1
  2. Rebutting the Leibnizian Cosmological Argument for God Part 2
Recap

To recap what we’ve got so far, the Leibnizian cosmological argument (LCA) I’ve been attacking is this one popularized by Christian apologist William Lane Craig:

  1. Everything that exists has an explanation of its existence, either in the necessity of its own nature or an external cause.
  2. The universe exists.
  3. If the universe does have an explanation for its existence, that explanation is God.
  4. Therefore, the universe has an explanation of its existence (from 1 and 2).
  5. Therefore, the explanation for the existence of the universe is God (from 3 and 4).
Premise 1 is a version of the principle of sufficient reason (PSR). Call the above version LCA 1A. Another variant on the LCA (which we’ll call LCA 1B):
  1. Everything that exists has an explanation of its existence, either in the necessity of its own nature or an external cause.
  2. The universe exists.
  3. If the universe does have an explanation for its existence, that explanation is a transcendent personal cause.
  4. Therefore, the universe has an explanation of its existence (from 1 and 2).
  5. Therefore, the explanation for the existence of the universe is a transcendent personal cause (from 3 and 4).

LCA 1B is identical to LCA 1A with premise 3 modified to be a more modest claim. I’ve argued that attacking premise 3 doesn’t work out so well if the goal is to prevent evidential support for theism. My position is that the better alternative for the atheist is to believe that the universe exists contingently, eternally without an external cause, thereby rejecting premise 1. Maverick Christian has a number of arguments to support premise 1, and in this article I’ll argue that they fail to be convincing.

Other Variants

Maverick Christian’s series on the LCA has a few other versions. Here’s LCA 2:

  1. There is an explanation for why there is something rather than nothing.
  2. If there is an explanation for why something exists, that explanation is God.
  3. Therefore, the explanation for why something exists rather than nothing is God (from 1 and 2).
And here’s LCA 3:
  1. Everything that exists has an explanation of its existence, either in the necessity of its own nature or an external cause.
  2. The contingent universe exists.
  3. If the contingent universe has an explanation for its existence, that explanation is God.
  4. Therefore, the contingent universe has an explanation of its existence (from 1 and 2).
  5. Therefore, the external cause of the contingent universe is God (from 3 and 4).

The “contingent universe” is understood as the totality of all contingent things. The strength of LCA 3 is that it can be used to argue that the external cause of the universe is a metaphysically necessary and eternal entity. How? If we’re looking for an external cause of contingent reality, the external cause can’t be contingent because then it would be a part of the contingent universe we are supposed to be explaining in the first place. As Maverick Christian argues:

But if no contingent thing can explain the existence of the contingent universe, the only hope left is to appeal to a necessarily existing entity. But then the explanation for the universe’s existence is also eternal, since at no time and in no circumstances can necessarily existing entities fail to exist. So we have an eternal, transcendent, metaphysically necessary, personal entity that is the external cause of the contingent universe. This sounds even more like God.

LCA 1B argues that the external cause is transcendent and personal, but LCA 3 argues that not only is the external cause transcendent and personal, it is also eternal and metaphysically necessary, thereby giving us an eternal, transcendent, metaphysically necessary, personal entity as the external cause of the universe. The weakness of this LCA is also premise 1.

A very similar thing holds with LCA 2. I think it’s very likely that if atheism is true, everything is contingent, so that the contingent universe comprises all of reality. If as I say the contingent universe has no explanation of its existence (it is instead eternal and uncaused) premise 1 of LCA 2 is false. Denying premise 2 of LCA 2, while perhaps tempting, should be resisted, for reasons similar to those discussed in my previous entry on the LCA. The best known explanation for the contingent universe (and indeed the only known viable one) is an entity that is eternal, transcendent, metaphysically necessary, and personal. This entity would also be the best known explanation for why there is something rather than nothing. Why? We can posit the entity existing by the necessity of its own nature (roughly, it exists because it cannot fail to exist) thereby explaining why there is something rather than nothing, while this eternal, transcendent, metaphysically necessary, personal entity also explains why the contingent universe exists and why the physical universe exists. Conceding that both the universe and “Why is there something rather than nothing” have an explanation and that the best known explanation is such a God-like entity is conceding far too much to theism than is warranted. Denying that there is an explanation is far more preferable, and the PSR is what I’ll turn to next.

The Principle of Sufficient Reason

Theists offer a number of arguments for thinking that the PSR holds true, or at least holds true with respect to the universe. For the sake of having an easily verifiable source, I’ll quote from Maverick Christian’s series on the LCA.

The Nature of Rational Inquiry

One point made in favor of the PSR is that it’s the nature of rational inquiry to look for explanations of things. From the article:

It’s the nature of rational inquiry to look for explanations for why things exist. We seek explanations for the existence of humans, of planets, of stars, and of galaxies. Avoiding all that and saying, “It all just exists inexplicably” would cripple science. And if we are rational to accept that there are explanations for the existence of planets, stars, and galaxies, why not also accept that there is an explanation for the existence of the physical universe?

A good question. If we said that there was an explanation for the existence of planets, stars, and galaxies, it would be arbitrary to exempt the universe without good reason. But there’s a criterion that all planets, stars, and galaxies meet that the universe doesn’t: they begin to exist. Consider this weakened form of the PSR (what we can call W-PSR):

    (W-PSR) Anything that begins to exist has an explanation for its existence.

This weakened form of the principle of sufficient reason also fits in with common sense. Imagine for example you find a statue of the great atheist philosopher Bertrand Russell in your room and you ask me how it got there. If I say the statue popped into being in your room uncaused and for no reason, you would rightly disbelieve me; my proposed hypothesis would be a bit too much like magic. Similarly, if I say that stars, planets, and galaxies simply appeared for no reason at all (and thus that the explanations offered by astrophysics are wrong), you should resist that view in favor of there being an explanation. In cases where the things-to-be-explained begin to exist, it’s quite sensible to ask for explanations for why they exist, because the alternatives (them coming into being uncaused for no reason) are implausible. In contrast, if I propose that the physical universe exists eternally with no external cause, there doesn’t seem to be anything implausible about that alternative, and it’s unclear why the nature of rational inquiry should say otherwise.

If the theist wants to insist that the physical universe has a transcendent personal cause behind it instead of the universe being eternal and uncaused, it seems something more is required than the assumption that everything has an explanation for why it exists, even eternal things. So we can exempt the universe from automatically requiring an explanation for a non-arbitrary reason: things that begin to exist require an explanation, but physical reality (so many atheists believe) is eternal and didn’t begin to exist. At any rate, the alternative hypothesis of the universe existing eternally without an external cause is at least plausible and requires more than bare assumption of its falsity to believe that it is in fact false.

The Translucent Ball

The second argument I’ll address is the illustration of the translucent ball, popularized by (among others) William Lane Craig.

Here I’ll borrow a bit from philosopher Richard Taylor’s illustration of finding a translucent ball in the woods. “How did it get there?” you ask. I reply, “There is no explanation for it being in the woods; the ball just exists inexplicably.” My response seems less plausible than the idea that there is some explanation for the ball’s existence. What if we enlarged the ball to the size of a car? Same problem: some explanation seems to be needed. How about a city? Same problem. A planet? Same problem. A galaxy? Same problem; increasing the size does nothing to remove the need for an explanation.

True enough, increasing the size of the translucent ball does nothing to remove the need for an explanation (let us also assume arguendo that all translucent balls are contingent). Size doesn’t matter, but what does matter is whether the translucent ball existed eternally. It is quite conceivable that there are possible worlds where a translucent orb has existed for all eternity without an external cause. If we had no evidence that the translucent ball began to exist, it would seem at least premature to simply assume it had an external cause. Of course, if we had evidence that the eternal translucent ball had an external cause that would be a different matter, but we would need evidence that eternally existing ball had an external cause rather than just assuming it had one.

The Shoe On the Other Foot

So far then, we don’t really have a good reason for thinking the PSR holds with respect to the universe, but there is one other interesting point worth considering. Maverick Christian says that

suppose some contingent thing X meets the following conditions:
  1. X is eternal but contingent (it could have failed to exist).
  2. There is an explanation for why X exists.
  3. It is the only explanation of X’s existence that is a live option.
  4. There is no reason to believe that this explanation for X’s existence is false.
I think that if we know that all four conditions are met for thing X, then we should accept that explanation for X if we have no good reason not to. In considering these conditions it might also help to envisage the shoe being on the other foot. Suppose we had an explanation for the physical universe’s existence that was devastating to theism and the explanation met conditions 1 through 4 (it explains why the universe exists, there is no other viable explanation etc.). I have a hard time believing that atheists wouldn’t use this devastating-to-theism explanation as evidence against theism. Moreover, it seems they would be right to do so if their explanation for why the universe exists rather than not is the only viable explanation, there is no evidence against the explanation etc.

I’ll grant that atheists having an explanation for the existence of the universe fitting the above description (devastating to theism, no other viable explanation etc.) would result in correctly concluding that the explanation has at least some evidential force against theism. Typically we accept a theory explaining something (when there is no better explanation) as evidence for a theory, e.g. the big bang theory explaining the cosmic microwave background radiation. But there’s a weakness to exploit here that I think is all too often overlooked with theistic arguments. One way an argument can fail to be convincing is if it provides no rational support for its conclusion, but we should not make the mistake of thinking that’s the only way an argument can fail to be convincing. Another way is if the argument provided nonzero but nonetheless too little support for its conclusion. So we can accept that ceteris paribus a worldview that explains e.g. why there is something rather than nothing is better than one that doesn’t, but given the high plausibility of physical reality existing eternally without an external cause, the degree of evidential support this provides is quite small. This, I submit, is the real weakness of the LCA and the real reason atheists should embrace for thinking the Leibnizian Cosmological Argument to be not a particularly good argument. The alternative hypothesis that the universe exists eternally and uncaused is conceivable and too plausible to ignore, with only very weak grounds for thinking it does in fact have an external cause.

Thursday, September 6, 2012

Rebutting the Leibnizian Cosmological Argument for God Part 1

This is part 1 in my attack on the Leibnizian cosmological argument.
  1. Rebutting the Leibnizian Cosmological Argument for God Part 1
  2. Rebutting the Leibnizian Cosmological Argument for God Part 2
The Argument

In this article I’ll rebut the Leibnizian cosmological argument (LCA) for the existence of God. There are many forms of the LCA, but for starters I’ll refer to this one as used by one popularized by Christian apologist William Lane Craig. I’ll also taking a bit from Maverick Christian’s blog article on the Leibnizian cosmological argument which (among other things) tries to present more defensible versions of the LCA.

  1. Everything that exists has an explanation of its existence, either in the necessity of its own nature or an external cause.
  2. The universe exists.
  3. If the universe does have an explanation for its existence, that explanation is God.
  4. Therefore, the universe has an explanation of its existence (from 1 and 2).
  5. Therefore, the explanation for the existence of the universe is God (from 3 and 4).

The principle of sufficient reason (PSR) says that everything (of a certain class) has a reason/explanation. The PSR comes in many forms, but the version this version of the LCA uses is premise 1. Premise 1 is also the weakest part of the argument, and the one I’ll attack in my series on the LCA. My alternate hypothesis is this: the universe exists eternally, with no explanation and no external cause of its existence. Still, let’s briefly discuss the other premises.

Premise 2

Pretty obviously true; no sensible atheist would deny this. By “the universe” the LCA means all of physical reality. The universe clearly exists.

Premise 3

In another version of the LCA (and in my opinion a more defensible one), Maverick Christian has “If the universe does have an explanation for its existence, that explanation is a transcendent personal cause,” and let’s call that the “weak premise 3” and let “If the universe does have an explanation for its existence, that explanation is God” be the “strong premise 3.” The weakened version of premise 3 is just in case the atheist insists on not having God as an explanation. Some terminology intro:

What does it mean to exist by the necessity of its own nature? A thing’s existence being metaphysically necessary means it is impossible for it to not exist (whereas contingent things both could exist and could have failed to exist, e.g. my own existence is contingent) and thus metaphysically necessary things exist in all possible worlds (where a possible world is a complete description of the way reality is or could have been like; thus “all bachelors are unmarried” is true in all possible worlds whereas there are possible worlds with different physical laws than ours, hence science’s need for empirical investigation). Some philosophers and mathematicians think that abstract objects like numbers exist necessarily.
Some consider “it is not the case that torturing infants just for fun is morally right” is a metaphysically necessary truth. Why can’t the universe’s existence be necessary? To quote from the blog:
There doesn’t appear to be any physical part of physical reality that is metaphysically necessary (e.g. stars and planets are contingent and indeed at one point they failed to exist; there are also no molecules that couldn’t fail to exist) and with that in mind consider the following argument from subtraction. Is a universe with only a thousand physical things possible? It seems so. How about a hundred? Sure. How about ten? How about five, four, three, two, and one? How about none? It seems like there is some possible world where no physical reality at all exists. (Notably, if nothing existed at all, this would fit in with the PSR since if literally nothing exists then there isn’t anything to explain.)
Maverick Christian argues further for the non-necessary nature of the universe’s existence, but I think this is enough to render the necessary existence of physical objects implausible. Why think “If the universe does have an explanation for its existence, that explanation is a transcendent personal cause” is true? To quote:
If we go the explanatory route of some external cause of the universe, an external cause of all physical reality would have to be nonphysical, and there are only two sorts of things we know of that could fit requirement: abstract objects (like numbers) and unembodied minds (e.g. God, if he exists). But abstract objects can’t cause anything. So the only viable candidate for a nonphysical cause seems to be a personal cause.

Not only am I prepared to grant that the weak premise three is probably true, I’ll even endorse the strong version. Why? Premise 3 is most charitably understood as a material conditional. In philosophy and logic, a material conditional takes the form of “If p, then q” and it is equivalent to “It is not the case that p is true and q is false.” Thus what determines the truth of a material conditional is the truth of p and q as follows:

  p    q     If p, then q
TT T
TF F
FT T
FF T

In the second line of the table where p is true (T), and q is false (F), the material conditional is false; otherwise the material conditional is true. This might sound odd, but a true material conditional is often good enough for deductive arguments like this, because when p is true, then q is true as well (since q can’t be false when p is true). Notice also from the table above that whenever p is false, the “If p, then q” material conditional is true. So by believing p is false one is accepting the material conditional, and thus when “If the universe has an explanation of its existence, that explanation is God” is a material conditional, by believing “the universe has an explanation of its existence” to be false (I’ll argue the universe has no explanation, that it is eternal and uncaused), I would be accepting premise (3) as true. Another way to look at it is this: I think it’s very likely that if atheism is true, the universe has no explanation of its existence (if atheism is true, it seems most likely that the universe is eternal and uncaused), but “If atheism is true, then the universe has no explanation of its existence” is logically equivalent to “If the universe has an explanation of its existence, then God exists” which is pretty close to the neighborhood of the strong premise 3.

So we can reject the argument’s conclusion by denying the universe has an explanation of its existence (a strategy I’ll defend more later) and while that means we must accept premise 3 as true, that’s hardly a fatal problem for atheism. So let this be a lesson: just because an argument is unsound, doesn’t mean that every premise is false. I propose that the universe has no explanation of its existence; it’s not metaphysically necessary, but neither does it have any external cause. This entails accepting the third premise, but we still avoid the conclusion.

But can’t an atheist believe the universe has an explanation? An atheist could, but at his peril. The universe does not plausibly exist necessarily, and an external cause of all physical reality will have to be something nonphysical. Once you go there (a nonphysical entity/force causing the physical universe to exist) by my lights you’ve already admitted some kind of supernatural force creating the universe, whether it be a deity or something else entirely. This would be conceding far too much to the theist than is warranted.

What’s worse, the only nonphysical entities in the metaphysical literature are unembodied minds and abstract objects (like numbers), but abstract objects can’t cause anything, leaving a transcendent (nonphysical) personal cause as the only known viable explanation. Yes, one could say maybe there’s a better explanation nobody’s ever thought of, but conceding that the universe has an explanation of its existence and that the best known explanation is a transcendent personal cause is again conceding far too much than is warranted (not to mention, as Maverick Christian points out in his LCA article, bare possibility of a better unknown alternative isn’t enough to reject an explanation; we wouldn’t reject the big bang theory because maybe there’s a better theory nobody’s ever thought of). Indeed, that the universe has an explanation of its existence and that the best known explanation is a transcendent personal cause—and that a transcendent personal cause is the only known viable explanation—would unavoidably constitute at least some degree of evidential support for a creator deity. So if the goal is to prevent the LCA from being evidence for theism, conceding an external cause of the physical universe is a terrible way to go. The atheist should avoid this if there is a better atheistic alternative, and I think there is.

What we’ve got so far

Some ill-advised moves for the atheist are:

  1. Saying that the universe’s existence is metaphysically necessary.
  2. Conceding that the physical universe has an external cause of its existence.

The first option is implausible, and the second grants too much evidential merit to theism that we don’t need to give it. Theists offer a number of arguments for their claim that the universe has an explanation of its existence, and I’ll argue that the arguments fail to present a convincing case for the third premise in my next entry, Rebutting the Leibnizian Cosmological Argument for God Part 2.

Saturday, September 1, 2012

Why William Lane Craig Wins Debates

Fort those who don’t know, Dr. William Lane Craig is a renowned Christian apologist and fairly well known philosopher of religion (among philosophers of religion at least). Dr. Craig has gained notoriety in the world of internet atheism for his debates with atheists and almost always winning those debates. So why does he win them?

Craig wins because his opponents present an inadequate case for atheism. Yes, there are some exceptions, but consider the debates between various atheists and Craig, e.g. the William Lane Craig versus Christopher Hitchens debate (it starts at around 13 minutes; and while it is an admittedly extreme example of an atheist presenting an inferior intellectual case for atheism, it illustrates the point well especially since Hitchens was such a huge influence in the New Atheist movement). Some will credit Dr. Craig’s large proportion of debate victories to some vaguely described debating skills, but the truth is that Craig usually wins because atheists fail to do atheism the intellectual justice it deserves. Indeed it happens so often I’m surprised more atheists don’t see this. And while there are exceptions, all too often I’ve seen internet atheists do a poor job arguing for atheism (there are abundant examples on YouTube). Hence this blog: I want to do my part to show how formidable an opponent atheism is to theistic belief, e.g. my blog entry introducing the argument from evil.

Wednesday, August 29, 2012

The Argument from Evil (in a nutshell)

Here’s a good and quick way argue the problem of evil against theism (i.e. the argument from evil).

The argument from moral evil
  1. If God exists, then certain moral evils like torture, genocide, rape would not exist.
  2. Evils like torture, genocide, and rape exist.
  3. Therefore, God does not exist
This is a deductively valid argument. A deductive argument being valid means that the conclusion logically and necessarily follows from the premises; it is logically impossible for the premises to be true and the conclusion to be false. Thus the only question remains then whether the premises are more plausible than their denials, and it seems they are.

Any rational, moral person would have stopped Hitler if she could because it is the moral thing to do. It seems extremely plausible then that if God were perfectly moral and had the power to stop Hitler, he would have. The truth of the above premises is thus far more plausible than their denials.

The argument from natural evil
  1. If God exists, then natural evils like babies dying of cancer and injuries of excruciating pain upon undeserving victims would not exist.
  2. Evils like babies dying of cancer and injuries of excruciating pain upon undeserving victims would not exist.
  3. Therefore, God does not exist.
Again, the argument is deductively valid, and again the premises are more plausible than their denials. Doctors battle humanity’s pain and disease through anesthesia, vaccinations, and so forth. We human beings fight against these things because any moral being would. It would be highly unethical, for instance, to withhold a cure for cancer from cancer victims. Theists would eliminate at least the worst of these natural evils if they could precisely because it would be the right thing to do. Thus it is very probable that an omniscient, sufficiently powerful and perfectly good Being would, if he existed, eliminate these natural evils from the world—just as we imperfectly moral humans would if we possessed the power to do so.

Conclusion

The problem of evil (moral and natural) can be formed in deductively valid arguments, with premises that are far more plausible than their denials. If we imperfect moral beings would eliminate the terrible evils I listed because it would be the right thing to do (e.g. to stop Hitler), how much more would a sufficiently powerful and perfectly good Being do so once this Being was aware of such evils? All things considered then, it is highly unlikely that God exists.