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Live Free or Die Hard: There Is No Missing Body

Tuesday, December 1st, 2009

In his forthcoming article “Resurrecting the Logical Problem of Evil,” Nathan Hanna purports to “offer a version of the Logical Argument from Evil that is immune to the Free Will Defense.” This would be significant, as most judge the FWD to have decisively solved the logical problem of evil. Hanna argues as follows (forgive the lengthy quotations. I’m after a quick and dirty reply, not necessarily an elegant one). Where “E can be all moral evil or a particular instance of or type of moral evil” and “G is free will or whatever other important goods free will might be necessary to obtain”:

(1) God exists and is omnipotent, omniscient and morally perfect

(2) E exists

(3) If God exists and E exists, God has not eliminated E while securing G (necessary truth)

(4) So, God has not eliminated E while securing G (1, 2, 3)

(5) If God has not eliminated E while securing G, God is not as morally praiseworthy as he would have been had he done so (premise)

(6) So, God is not as morally praiseworthy as he would have been had he done so (4, 5)

(7) There are possible worlds where this can be done and where God would do so

(8) So, there are possible worlds where God is more morally praiseworthy than he in fact is (6, 7)

(9) Being more morally praiseworthy than a morally perfect being is logically impossible (premise)

(10) Contradiction (8, 9)

If 5, 7 and 9 are necessarily true, 1 and 2 are inconsistent. Since 2 is obviously true, it would follow that 1 – theism – is false.

The crucial premise, it seems to me, is (5). Hanna defends (5) as follows. Imagine the moral status of a hero, H, depending on which action he performs in Thomas Nagel’s rescue scenario:

“However jewel-like the good will may be in its own right, there is a morally significant difference between rescuing someone from a burning building and dropping him from a twelfth-storey window while trying to rescue him.” Hanna further quote Nagel as saying “What has been done, and what is morally judged is partly determined by external factors.” External factors are “beyond [H]’s control, factors like the choices of others.” Hanna writes:

“If [H] manages to rescue him, [H] will arguably be more morally praiseworthy than [H] would have been [H] she failed. [H] will have accomplished something that affects one’s moral standing significantly. But [H’s] prospects depend on something beyond [H’s] complete control: the other person’s choices.”

So Hanna sets up a scenario that places God in the same situation with respect to the rescue of his free creatures from evil. He writes:

What acts God manages to perform – whether he eliminates evil, say – depends partly on his creatures’ free choices. In this respect, God bears important relations to us that we bear to one another. The acts we manage to perform depend on factors beyond our control, among them others’ free choices. Our moral standing depends partly on the acts we perform. Our moral standing therefore depends partly on what others do. This is a kind of moral luck. If moral luck is real and God stands in the appropriate relations to his free creatures, his moral standing depends partly on what those creatures freely do. But then evil’s existence threatens theism in a way that has been overlooked. How so? … God could succeed in eliminating evil and securing the relevant goods with sufficient cooperation from his free creatures. Succeeding at this endeavor would be a significant moral accomplishment. But whether God does this is not entirely within his control. It depends on his creatures’ free choices. Success at such cooperative endeavors affects the moral standing of those involved. This is an example of moral luck.

Whether … H can rescue someone from a burning building and whether God can…rescue his free creatures from evil depends on factors beyond their control. Among these factors are the choices of others. Whether H can rescue someone depends partly on whether the person helps or hinders her.

God bears relevantly similar relations to us that H bears to the person she tries to rescue. So, similar things can be said about God and H depending on their success or failure. Being morally perfect, God would want to rescue us and he would try to do so. Moreover, he must succeed. If God succeeds, he will accomplish something amazing, something that, like H’s successful rescue, bears the marks of an action that significantly affects one’s moral standing. If he fails, however, then, just like H would be if she failed at her rescue attempt, he will not be as morally praiseworthy as he would have been had he succeeded – even if he is nevertheless very morally praiseworthy. So (5) seems true. … To rescue us is to eliminate evil while securing great goods. If evil exists, God has not done this.

The crux of the matter is the middle paragraph. It seems to me that Hanna’s argument stands or falls on the notion of “control.” Unfortunately Hanna doesn’t say much about this. A free will defender might be a molinist, in which case there is a relevant sense in which the actions of free agents are within God’s complete control: God chose to create a world in which agents act freely in the circumstances God knew they would. Moreover, the actual world could be a world, perhaps the only world, where the securing of G would have optimal consequences: say, a world in which God’s divinely inspired message is freely dispersed and, as a result, as most as possible are saved and as few as possible are lost. Therefore, if molinism is true, it is false that God is not as morally praiseworthy as he would have been had he not eliminated E while securing G.

Therefore, it remains safe to point out the tomb in which the corpse of the logical argument of evil has been finally placed—The Nature of Necessity.

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Theistic Conceptualism

Thursday, June 25th, 2009

A version of theistic conceptualism can be distilled by conjoining three independently defensible theses, where ‘objects of kind F‘ are those typically characterized as abstract (numbers, properties, propositions, etc.):

Necessary Existence Thesis: There are necessarily existent objects of kind F

One over Many Thesis: Objects of kind F are tokenable types

Conceptualism Simpliciter: Objects of kind F are mental (conceptual) particulars

The resultant thesis would be very appealing. On the one hand, it would welcome many of the strongest realist arguments in favor of the Necessary Existence Thesis. On the other hand, Conceptualism Simpliciter would accommodate many strong nominalist strategies by avoiding commitment to a bloated or tripartite ontology of abstract objects. This is to say nothing of the merit of the actual arguments for the theses themselves, which I think are a good many.

Of course, many peoples’ strongest motivation for resisting this line would be that the resultant thesis would be explicitly theistic, where objects of kind F are grounded in a necessarily existent mind. But that’s not my problem.

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Boomerang Arguments

Monday, May 11th, 2009

A boomerang argument, according to Robert Van Gulick,

reaches across to the epistemic/cognitive/conceptual domain of facts about our representation of the world, and then swings back to reach a conclusion in the metaphysical/ontological/factual domain about the nature of reality itself. It moves from the facts about how we represent or conceptualize the world to suppose results about the necessary nature of the world itself. More specifically, boomerangs often move from supposed gaps or lacks of links in our representations or concepts of the world to conclusion about objects gaps within the world itself and ontological distinctions between the real things in it.¹

Boomerang arguments have a long and detailed history. Among the more classic examples are ontological arguments for God’s existence and various arguments for dualism. More contemporary examples include Jackson’s Mary,² Nagel’s bat,³ and Chalmers’ zombie.⁴ (I want very badly to see a paper entitled “A Zombie Bat Named Mary,” or maybe just an article about a Mary with a pet zombie bat, or a zombie named Mary with a pet bat?) One might also include indispensability arguments in mathematics. According to Mitchell O. Stokes,⁵ two of the most influential indispensability arguments, Quine and Putnam’s⁶ and van Inwagen’s,⁷ incorporate something like the following normative principle (NP):

(NP) We shouldn’t use a sentence to express one of our beliefs if we knowingly reject any of its apparent implications, at least not without having an idea of how we can adequately replace it with another sentence, even if only in principle

The crucial thing to be worked out in (NP) is the idea of adequate replacement. Reductive paraphrases are a dime a dozen and can be offered for almost anything. However, this fact should not be taken to mean that they are at all adequate or preferable to the original expression. To show a paraphrase is inadequate, you could either (1) provide a counterexample to it that demonstrates the reduction or elimination is not successful, or (2) argue that it is counterintuitive, or at least more counterintuitive than the original. (2) is at odds with (IP). If (2) is true, then even if a paraphrase is coherent or available in principle, it still might be that one shouldn’t accept the paraphrase. (2) would not likely sway reductionists, but I think it’s a strategy that could, if employed correctly, permit rational assent to the original expression and possibly even give a burden of proof to the reductionist.

That said, here is another possible boomerang argument that utilizes (IP). Call it an indispensability argument for objective morality:

(1) Many of the nonphilosophical propositions we believe can be expressed – or imply propositions that can be expressed – by there being moral facts (that is, the proposition that there are moral facts, or equivalently, that moral facts exist)

(2) We cannot reasonably give up all of the nonphilosophical beliefs which are expressed in ways that imply the existence of moral facts

(3) We shouldn’t use a sentence to express one of our beliefs if we knowingly reject any of its apparent implications, at least not without having an idea of how we can adequately replace it with another sentence

(4) Of those nonphilosophical beliefs that are expressed by sentences which refer to moral facts, we cannot plausibly argue that all of them can be adequately expressed by sentences that do not refer to moral facts; reference to moral facts is indispensable.

(5) If (1), (2), (3), and (4) are true then we should believe in moral facts

(6) We should believe in moral facts

And, of course, if this boomerang argument is sound, you can then throw an argument from objective morality that has a theistic spin.
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An Argument for Conceptualism

Tuesday, April 7th, 2009

Perhaps the widely accepted distinction between abstracta and concreta is fundamentally misguided and has overshadowed an illuminating fact about the nature of entities of the former kind (numbers, properties, propositions, etc.). Letting F represent such entities, (or objects, no distinction is being drawn here), a simple argument for conceptualism might run as follows:

(1) Fs are either abstract or concrete entities

(2) Fs are not abstract entities

(3) Therefore, Fs are concrete entities

(4) If Fs are concrete entities, they are either physical or conceptual particulars

(5) Fs are not physical particulars

(6) Therefore, Fs are conceptual particulars

The two important premises are (2) and (5). (4) is actually uncontroversial, because mental events, states, etc. are almost always understood as particulars (though I suppose this would need some explanation). (5) might bring some resistance from hard-core empiricists or physicalists, but nothing I don’t think can be overcome. What about (2)? Here are some strategies. First, you could argue that all accounts that have tried to offer a distinction between abstract and concrete fail. Second, (2) might offer a simpler ontology and avoid, at a single stroke, all the arguments against abstract objects (thus welcoming many anti-realist or anti-platonist strategies aimed at objects so conceived). Third, you could apply an identity criterion to certain objects, turning them into particulars. Hale notes this:

For suppose Fs to be incapable of spatial location. A fortiori it is impossible for a and b to be at the same time in different places and yet be the same F. Thus Fs are not abstract, but concrete. This particular objection could be silenced by amending the criterion to: Fs are concrete objects if and only if a is the same F as b only if a and b enjoy the same spatial location at any time. But this suffers from the opposite defect: for we shall surely wish to regard mental events, states, etc. as concrete objects, but will now only be able to do so by insisting upon the truth of physicalism (Abstract Objects [Basil Blackwell, 1987], p. 57).

Hale completely overlooks conceptualism as an option to solve this dilemma. A conceptualist needn’t conced anything to physicalism. However, this latter strategy would cause some difficulties for exemplification (how can redness, as a particular, be instantiated in multiple objects?). But this could be easily resolved by seeing Fs not as particulars, but universal concepts, which could be multiply instantiated (say, by an omniscient mind). Slightly altering the premises, then:

(4’) If Fs are concrete entities, they are either physical particulars or universal concepts

(6’) Therefore, Fs are universal concepts

And here we would have not only an argument for conceptualism, but a conceptualist argument for God.

Posted in Arguments for God's Existence, Philosophy | 6 Comments »

A Typology of Defeaters for Religious Experience

Saturday, November 8th, 2008

It seems there are three types of cases that could be presented as potential defeaters for beliefs formed on the basis of religious experience:

1. Possibly justified but not true
This is the claim that one’s experience may well justify a religious belief, but that belief is nonetheless false. Paradigm examples would be counter religious experiences—experiences other people have the content of which is incompatible with one’s own. There’s not much to this claim beyond de facto debate between worldviews. This is because one’s faulty apprehension of what’s true doesn’t negate another’s possibly genuine one, just like how a color-blind person’s perception of color doesn’t negate the perception of someone whose vision is impeccable.

2. Possibly true but not justified
Here we have something like Freud’s charge—that religious beliefs may well be true, but the nature of the experience that produces them aren’t sufficient for justification. A detailed response to this type of defeater can be found here.

3. Not true and not justified
Finally, this is the stronger claim that religious beliefs are false and not justifiable by experience. There appears to be two strategies available here. One would consist of offering equally plausible naturalistic explanations of alleged religious experiences. The chief difficulty with this is that it misidentifies the nature of religious experience. A religious experience is had when the subject believes there is no sufficient naturalistic explanation. One’s description of the experience necessarily involves what they take to be some supernatural object, so any alternative description could be discounted as not being the same.

So described, religious experience cannot be reduced to any other kind of experience; to do so is to misidentify the experience. As such, scientific accounts that dispense with the supernatural element are irrelevant to describing the experience, for whereas science attempts to explain the experience in terms of its natural causes, those who have the religious experience require the supernatural explanation as part of its description. [Peterson, Hasker, Reichenbach, Basinger, Reason & Religious Belief (Oxford, 1998), p.28]

The other strategy, championed by Michael Martin, is a sort of inversion of defeater one above. Martin argues that one’s lack of experience equally justifies disbelief (as opposed to mere lack of belief), thereby nullifying the appeal to experience to justify belief. The problem here is with Martin’s modus operandi. While it is true that experience generally justifies belief (Swinburne’s Principle of Credulity), it is not true that lack of experience justifies disbelief. In the medical field, the phrase “absence of evidence is not evidence of absence” is a sort of maxim. One article in the British Medical Journal, the title of which is the maxim itself, states:

While it is usually reasonable not to accept a new treatment unless there is positive evidence in its favour, when issues of public health are concerned we must question whether the absence of evidence is a valid enough justification for inaction…[authors list several examples]…Can we be comfortable that the absence of clear evidence in such cases means that there is no risk or only a negligible one?

How much more for matters of eternal significance?

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Oppy on the Argument from Abstract Objects

Thursday, November 6th, 2008

If I were asked to shelf three of the most formidable cases for atheism to date, the first would be J. L. Mackie’s The Miracle of Theism (Oxford, 1983). Only recently have there been worthy shelf-neighbors to Mackie. On one side of Mackie I would put J. Howard Sobel’s Logic and Theism (Cambridge, 2003). On the other I would put Graham Oppy’s recent book, Arguing About Gods (Cambridge, 2006).

In Arguing About Gods, Oppy painstakingly examines a daunting range of arguments for “othodoxly conceived monotheistic gods”, or what has been called ‘the God of the philosophers’ (as opposed to, say, the concept of God specific to only one religion). The survey and critique that initially sets the tone of Oppy’s project is commendable, both in depth and in familiarity with contemporary philosophy of religion. About two thirds of the way into the book, however, those virtues begin to wear thin. Many of the arguments he later considers become increasingly straw-man in character.

For example, take what he gathers to be the argument from mathematical knowledge (Argument 3 in subsection 6, “Arguments from Puzzling Phenomena” of Ch.7 on miscellaneous arguments):

1. There is no (agreed) naturalistic explanation of how we are able to come by knowledge of mathematics.

2. Our knowledge of mathematics is (best) explained as the result of an orthodoxly conceived monotheistic god’s so constituting us that we are able to have that knowledge.

3. (Therefore) There is an orthodoxly conceived monotheistic god.

Though he frames the argument up in terms of mathematical knowledge, he mentions how knowledge of other phenomena, such as logic, metaphysics, modality, morality, etc. could be appealed to in order to achieve the same purpose. So what he has in mind here is the argument from abstract objects. Oppy begins his critique by observing how “The (alleged) fact that there is no agreed naturalistic explanation of how hw are able to come by knowledge of mathematics is not a strong ground for drawing conclusions about the existence of orthodoxly conceived monotheistic gods…”. And, of course, most would agree with Oppy on this score. In fact, most of those prepared to defend sophisticated versions of an argument from abstract objects would probably agree, too. Therefore it is highly unlikely that (1) would be the premise of any noteworthy argument from abstract objects. So a defender of the argument from abstract objects can agree with Oppy that “the (alleged) fact that there is no agreed naturalistic explanation of how we are able to come by knowledge of mathematics is not a string ground for drawing conclusions about the existence of [God].” But Oppy proceeds to suggest what he thinks is needed for a good argument from abstract objects. He writes:

If there is to be a worthwhile argument from our knowledge of [abstract objects] to the existence of [God], then it must be the case that the hypothesis, that [God] so made us that we are able to obtain [knowledge of abstracta], is a better explanation of the fact that we are able to come by [knowledge of abstracta] than is any (naturalistic) alternative.

Oppy then says what he takes to be main problem with this strategy; namely, that such a hypothesis “does not provide us with much in the way of details about what it is in virtue of which we are able to obtain [knowledge of abstracta].” He asks, “What is it about the way in which we were (allegedly) made by [God] that makes it possible for us to obtain [knowledge of abstracta]?” Two responses are in order.

First, Oppy misidentifies the strongest strategy open to the defender of the argument from abstracta. The best argument for God from abstracta isn’t epistemological—it’s strictly ontological. Moreover, the logic behind the argument is deductive, more likely to be something like this or, at the very least,

(1) If abstracta exist, God exists
(2) Abstracta exist
(3) Therefore, God exists

rather than one that offers a theistic hypothesis as the best (inductive) explanation. Epistemological questions of how we come to have knowledge of abstracta are largely beside the point, unless you can show how the argument entails epistemological difficulties (a la the epistemological argument against Platonism). Second, we can plausibly answer Oppy’s question anyway. “What is it about the way in which we were (allegedly) made by [God] that makes it possible for us to obtain [knowledge of abstracta]?” Well, the Christian can point out that humans are created in the imago Dei, the blueprint of which is sure to include knowledge of abstracta. Why not think Robert Adams’ suggestion is implausible?:

If God of his very nature knows the necessary truths, and if he has created us, he could have constructed us in such a way that we would at least commonly recognize necessary truths as necessary. In this way there would be a causal connection between what is necessarily true about real objects and our believing it to be necessarily true about them. It would not be an incredible accident or an inexplicable mystery that our beliefs agreed with the objects in this. [Adams, The Virtue of Faith (Oxford, 1987), 218]

In the absence of a rejoinder to this hypothesis or any equally plausible (naturalistic) alternative, it seems Oppy has done little against the argument from abstract objects. If this wasn’t the best example, take a look at what Oppy outlines as the argument from “common consensus”:

1. Everyone believes that such-and-such- orthodoxly conceived monotheistic god exists.

2. Propositions that everyone believes must be true.

3. (Therefore) Such-and-such orthodoxly conceived monotheistic god exists.

Of course the criticisms he musters against the argument from consensus are good ones. But who in the world endorses this argument? Certainly not anyone spending $79.20 on a philosophy book published by Cambridge University Press. The brief treatments of the straw-man arguments that make up the whole of chapter 7 (aside from a good discussion on arguments from consciousness) seriously detract from an otherwise masterful book. If your main course is hearty enough, you won’t need junk food at the end.

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Sex and the Problem of Evil

Sunday, October 5th, 2008

My moral intuition strongly suggests the most heinous sins are sexually related. I cannot think of anything more miserably perverse and twisted than violations and abuses of that nature. This conviction is accentuated after understanding there to be proper context for sex, one that is both beautiful and righteous. So unique and unparalleled is sex in its proper context is that it alone is the only kind of relationship God himself cannot enter into with his creatures. How unimaginably wondrous a gift that God should see it good to present us! Just as the most treacherous of lies are birthed from the most profound of truths, so the most uniquely heinous pains juxtapose the most uniquely righteous pleasures. But is the juxtaposition balanced?
When I reflect on gravity of sexual sin, I can’t help but wonder if the amount of pain spared would have been worth not granting sexual pleasure righteously expressed. The thought evinces the infinite reaches of possible worlds semantics—did God create the best? If God did not create the best, why didn’t he? Is it because he couldn’t or because he wouldn’t? Either way, would that provide fertile ground for progenitors of the problem of evil? If, on the other hand, God did create the best, why did he? Must God create the best? Would that impugn God’s omnipotence or sovereignty? Of course these issues have been discussed at length in the literature. For example, in his essay “Must God Create the Best?”, Robert Adams seeks to answer these questions. He writes:

Many philosophers and theologians have accepted the following proposition:
If a perfectly good moral agent created any world at all, it would have to be the very best world that he could create. The best world that an omnipotent God could create is the best of all logically possible worlds. Accordingly, it has been supposed that if the actual world was created by an omnipotent, perfectly good God, it must be the best of all logically possible worlds.

The thesis Adams defends is that even if there is a best among possible worlds (as most philosophers don’t think so), God could create another instead of it and still remain perfectly good. He first suggests two reasons that could be given for (P):

(1) It might be claimed that a creator might necessarily wrong someone (violate someone’s rights), or be less kind to someone than a perfectly good moral agent must be, if he knowingly created a less excellent world instead of the best that he could. (2) It might be claimed that even if no one would be wronged or treated unkindly by the creation of an inferior world, the creator’s choice of an inferior world must manifest a defect of character.

Adams argues against the former by showing God could make a less excellent world than the best of all possible worlds without wronging any of his creatures or failing in kindness to any of them. He takes up the latter by arguing that God’s choice of a less excellent world could be accounted for in terms of his grace which, far be it from a character defect, is a reflection of his benevolence.
We could apply Adams’ insights to our problem. But we can also note some specific problems with the idea that a better world would be one without sexual pleasure, and hence no sexual pain. If the assumption that the most heinous sins are sexually related is accepted then there would exist in any would devoid of such another set of most heinous sins; they just wouldn’t be sexually related. Inhabitants of those worlds could ask the same questions about their most heinous category of sins that we could ask about sexual sins. This generates an infinite regress of possible worlds devoid of the most heinous sins in them, which would eventually lead to a possible world such that there are no sins.

Furthermore, given that we could inquire as to the most heinous sins of any possible world (where in some worlds the most heinous sin is less heinous than in others), we have to ask, Why not think the actual world is one such that sexual sin is a less heinous sin than one in some other possible world? This question seems to shed more light onto the wrong-headedness of the initial assumption. At any rate, on its best day the argument from the nature of sexual sin couldn’t achieve any more than the best formulation of the evidential problem of evil.

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The Conceptualist Argument (Again)

Saturday, July 19th, 2008

Continuing to study issues related to the conceptualist argument for God’s existence, I’ve updated the argument in a few places. I added the analytic proof for the existence of numbers I posted below, as it nicely illustrates the logic behind Tennant’s argument for the necessary existence of numbers. I also added a brief argument for conceptualism from the nature of intentionality, citing Richard Davis’s recent work on this (Davis, “God and Modal Concretism”, Philosophia Christi 10/1 [2008], 57-74).

I added a few more remarks against fictionalism that parallel coherence theories of truth. I did not foresee assuming a correspondence theory of truth as being much of an issue, but some of the criticisms brought forth in the comments showed that assumption to be a little naive (indeed, argumentative strategies for fictionalism bear a close resemblance to coherence theories of truth, and an even closer resemblance to deflationary theories). An in-depth defense of the conceptualist argument would need to be more sophisticated in its treatment of the nature of truth.

The biggest obstacle to the argument is pending success of fictionalism. Jody Azzouni’s Deflating Existential Consequence: A Case for Nominalism (Oxford, 2004) is very powerful. William Lane Craig told me Brian Leftow has recently embraced fictionalism, but I am yet to see anything published by him along those lines. I am curious about where this would leave his Divine Ideas, a book he’s been working on for some time.

Interestingly enough, if something like fictionalism were true, I don’t think this would necessarily spell disaster for the conceptualist argument. Greg Welty’s theistic conceptual realism, for example, would allow the conceptualist to accept the nominalist’s reductive analyses as descriptively true sans creation but false post creation. Such a move would, however, significantly attenuate the force of the conceptualist argument, giving it a sort of fifth wheel status (very similar to how many view the ontological argument). That is to say such a move isn’t suspect on other grounds (Ad hoc? Having the proverbial philosophic cake and eating it, too?). In the mean time, be sure to check out this guy’s high-quality, devastating critique of fictionalism.

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The Suicide Argument

Monday, May 26th, 2008

In The Myth of Sisyphus, Albert Camus famously remarked that “there is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide”. Camus later reasoned that because suicide amounts to using your freedom to take away our freedom, one should rationally opt against it. Camus’ reasoning resurfaces in what Thomas V. Morris has dubbed The Suicide Argument:

(1) I should rid the world of bad things, so far as it is in my control to do so

(2) An utterly absurd and meaningless life is a bad thing

(3) My life is utterly absurd and meaningless

(4) It is within my control to rid the world of my life

(5) Thus, I should rid the world of my life

The starting premise seems true, at least as a prima facie moral principle. I think most people would find it unobjectionable. Certainly we can say that intuitively, it is more plausibly true than not. The same could be said for (2). If morality is objective, then an utterly absurd and meaningless life is either good or bad, and of course it would not be a good thing. Even if morality is subjective, I hardly see anyone ascribing a value other than bad to an utterly absurd and meaningless life. In either case, an utterly absurd and meaningless life would be bad and not value-neutral. Hence, (2) is plausibly true as well. What about (3)? First, ponder what Morris calls The Endowment Thesis:

(ET) Something has meaning iff it is endowed with meaning or significance by a purposive personal agent or group of such agents

As it stands, I think (ET) is false. For it is possible for a being to have intrinsic meaning—meaning not endowed by another. One thinks of Swinburne’s conception of an ontologically necessary being, whose sufficient reason and meaning is in itself, for example. So maybe we can tweak (ET) a bit:

(ET’) Something has meaning iff it is either ontologically necessary or endowed with meaning or significance by a purposive personal agent or group of such agents

Even if you don’t think an ontologically necessary being exists, (ET’) should be open for agreement to virtually everyone. Either something has intrinsic meaning or its meaning is derivative and extrinsic. The only thing which could have intrinsic meaning is an ontologically necessary being. It seems rather obvious that if there were no purposive personal agent(s) at all, then nothing would have meaning. Everything would just be. So (ET’) seems secure.

So what about (3)? If Christian theism is true, then (3) is false. What about naturalism? It is hard to say. Most, I imagine, would become indignant by such a remark. For certainly we can and do create meaning for our lives as we see fit. In fact, we greet life like this every day—we go to and fro, doing things for various purposes which thereby impart meaning to our lives. Apart from an ontologically necessary being’s endowments, any meaning would therefore come via our control. So the naturalist can reason that because (4) is true, as a consequence (3) must be false.

The problem with this is its failure to take into account the prior, ontological distinction between relative and objective or ultimate meaning. To see the difference, consider the chain of events:

E₁, E₂, E₃, … E_n

Every event leading up to E_n has meaning relative to the accomplishment of the chain itself. Once E_n is reached, the chain as a whole accrues ultimate meaning. It’s like a game of chess. Only if the game has ultimate meaning does each individual move have significance. Our lives are like the chain of events. Relative meaning is within our control. Ultimate meaning is not (either life has ultimate meaning or it does not—such seems beyond our endowing capabilities). Even though we can and do endow relative meaning to our lives, our lives as a whole remain meaningless unless it is endowed ultimate meaning. I submit that the only being capable of endowing life with ultimate meaning is an ontologically necessary being. Therefore, even if (4) is true the naturalist can’t use it to say (3) is false. Indeed, it is hard to see how the naturalist could deny (3). In fact, Morris points out that any reason supporting (3) could probably support

(6) Every human’s life is utterly absurd and meaningless

just as well, which would lead to an even more dramatic conclusion:

(7) I should rid the world of every human life

Now obviously nobody should accept this argument, and I’m not at all saying anyone should (God forbid). What I’m saying is, with Camus, the only way out of this argument for the naturalist seems to be the denial of (1). The naturalist is therefore left with saying we should not rid the world of bad things, so far as they are within our control—an unwelcome conclusion if there ever was one.

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Prophecy as Evidence

Sunday, May 4th, 2008

Aware of the many alleged prophecies in the Bible, many Christians eagerly point to them as evidence for Christianity without realizing certain constraints under which prophecy needs to be placed in order to have evidential value. When such constraints are in place, however, I think fulfilled prophecy could serve as powerful evidence. The great atheist J. L. Mackie agrees:

[It] is worth noting that successful prophecy could be regarded as a form of miracle for which there could in principle be good evidence. If someone is reliably recorded as having prophesied at t₁ an event at t₂ which could not be predicted at t₁ on any natural grounds, and the event occurs at t₂, then at any later time t₃ we can assess the evidence for the claims both that the prophecy was made at t₁ and that its accuracy cannot be explained either causally (for example, on the ground that it brought about its own fulfillment) or as accidental, and hence that it was probably miraculous.¹

Mackie therefore seems to have the following three conditions in mind that must be met for prophecy to be regarded as evidence:

(1) The recording of the events must be historically reliable

(2) The events cannot be artificially forged or coerced into being fulfilled

(3) Fulfillment by coincidence or chance must be ruled out

Now that the proper restrictions are in place, the question can be asked, Does the Bible contain alleged fulfilled prophecy that meets conditions (1) through (3)? I think it does (if I can assert that without argument for the sake of brevity here). Another way alleged fulfilled prophecy could be used as evidence is by casting it into the form of a design argument. Consider prophecy in the context of Debmski’s so-called Generic Chance Elimination Argument²:

(1) Some event e has occurred at t₂

(2) The occurrence of e at t₂ was outside the control of human efforts

(3) e was reliably predicted at t₁ to occur at t₂

(4) The probability of the e occurring at t₂ by chance is very small

(5) The occurrence of e was only possible at t₂

(6) Given (5), the occurrence of e at t₂ remains highly improbable

(7) The probability of e occurring at t₂ by chance is highly improbable

(8) Contingent circumstances x are necessary for e to have occurred at t₂

(9) We can infer (3) from contingent circumstances x

(10) One is warranted in inferring that the occurrence of e at t₂ was not by chance

The main things to be worked out would be actually calculating the probability in (4) and elaborating on the contingent circumstances in (8). Regarding the former, the work of Peter Winebrenner Stoner and Robert C. Newman comes to mind, where they calculate the probability of individual and collective prophecies’ occurrence by chance.³ Regarding the latter, one would just need to spell out in detail what were the contingent states of affairs (people, places, events, etc.) necessary for the fulfillment of the prophecy.

By way of application, consider the triumphal entry of Jesus into Jerusalem. This event was allegedly prophesied in Zechariah 9.9 which, replete with Messianic language, says “Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! Shout in triumph, O daughter of Jerusalem! Behold, your king is coming to you; He is just and endowed with salvation, Humble, and mounted on a donkey, Even on a colt, the foal of a donkey.” This prophecy is taken to be fulfilled by Jesus as he triumphantly rode into Jerusalem on a donkey, evoking bystanders to rejoice greatly, shouting in triumph, “‘Hosanna! BLESSED IS HE WHO COMES IN THE NAME OF THE LORD; Blessed is the coming kingdom of our father David; Hosanna in the highest!’” (Mark 11.1-11; see also Matt 21.1-11; Luke 19.28-38; John 12.12-16). Stoner and Newman estimate the probability of this prophecy occurring by chance to be 10⁶. The contingent states of affairs necessary for the fulfillment of this prophecy would include things like a messianic figure entering Jerusalem on a donkey accompanied by the scripture-alluding shouts of the bystanders.

The triumphal entry is also a prime candidate for Mackie’s threefold criteria. (1) We have copies of the book of Zechariah predating the time of Christ by at least 100 years. Moreover, the triumphal entry recorded in Mark is very reliable, given Markan priority and the independent source of John’s account. (2) Many of the contingent states of affairs mentioned earlier were not within Jesus’ control (such as the crowd’s reaction) and so couldn’t have been forged. (3) The likelihood of this occurring by chance, as argued by Stoner and Newman, is obviously very low.
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Posted in Apologetics, Arguments for God's Existence, Christian Doctrine | 7 Comments »

(1)	God exists and is omnipotent, omniscient and morally perfect
(2)	E exists
(3)	If God exists and E exists, God has not eliminated E while securing G (necessary truth)
(4)	So, God has not eliminated E while securing G (1, 2, 3)
(5)	If God has not eliminated E while securing G, God is not as morally praiseworthy as he would have been had he done so (premise)
(6)	So, God is not as morally praiseworthy as he would have been had he done so (4, 5)
(7)	There are possible worlds where this can be done and where God would do so
(8)	So, there are possible worlds where God is more morally praiseworthy than he in fact is (6, 7)
(9)	Being more morally praiseworthy than a morally perfect being is logically impossible (premise)
(10)	Contradiction (8, 9)

(1)	Many of the nonphilosophical propositions we believe can be expressed – or imply propositions that can be expressed – by there being moral facts (that is, the proposition that there are moral facts, or equivalently, that moral facts exist)
(2)	We cannot reasonably give up all of the nonphilosophical beliefs which are expressed in ways that imply the existence of moral facts
(3)	We shouldn’t use a sentence to express one of our beliefs if we knowingly reject any of its apparent implications, at least not without having an idea of how we can adequately replace it with another sentence
(4)	Of those nonphilosophical beliefs that are expressed by sentences which refer to moral facts, we cannot plausibly argue that all of them can be adequately expressed by sentences that do not refer to moral facts; reference to moral facts is indispensable.
(5)	If (1), (2), (3), and (4) are true then we should believe in moral facts
(6)	We should believe in moral facts

(1)	Fs are either abstract or concrete entities
(2)	Fs are not abstract entities
(3)	Therefore, Fs are concrete entities
(4)	If Fs are concrete entities, they are either physical or conceptual particulars
(5)	Fs are not physical particulars
(6)	Therefore, Fs are conceptual particulars

(4’)	If Fs are concrete entities, they are either physical particulars or universal concepts
(6’)	Therefore, Fs are universal concepts

1.	There is no (agreed) naturalistic explanation of how we are able to come by knowledge of mathematics.
2.	Our knowledge of mathematics is (best) explained as the result of an orthodoxly conceived monotheistic god’s so constituting us that we are able to have that knowledge.
3.	(Therefore) There is an orthodoxly conceived monotheistic god.

1.	Everyone believes that such-and-such- orthodoxly conceived monotheistic god exists.
2.	Propositions that everyone believes must be true.
3.	(Therefore) Such-and-such orthodoxly conceived monotheistic god exists.

(1)	I should rid the world of bad things, so far as it is in my control to do so
(2)	An utterly absurd and meaningless life is a bad thing
(3)	My life is utterly absurd and meaningless
(4)	It is within my control to rid the world of my life
(5)	Thus, I should rid the world of my life

(1)	The recording of the events must be historically reliable
(2)	The events cannot be artificially forged or coerced into being fulfilled
(3)	Fulfillment by coincidence or chance must be ruled out

(1)	Some event e has occurred at t₂
(2)	The occurrence of e at t₂ was outside the control of human efforts
(3)	e was reliably predicted at t₁ to occur at t₂
(4)	The probability of the e occurring at t₂ by chance is very small
(5)	The occurrence of e was only possible at t₂
(6)	Given (5), the occurrence of e at t₂ remains highly improbable
(7)	The probability of e occurring at t₂ by chance is highly improbable
(8)	Contingent circumstances x are necessary for e to have occurred at t₂
(9)	We can infer (3) from contingent circumstances x
(10)	One is warranted in inferring that the occurrence of e at t₂ was not by chance

Archive for the 'Arguments for God's Existence' Category

Chad A. McIntosh

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