Courtesy of Google Analytics, I found a link to my post on the Moral Argument on Paul Wright's blog.
Paul paraphrased part of my argument as: “a God whose morality was similar to ours wouldn't allow there to be so much suffering in the world.” In response, one commenter wrote “Why not? We do...” This was probably tongue in cheek, but a valid point is raised. Our morality says we should care about a poor person in a third world country even at a small cost to us, but this small cost is sufficient to prevent us from helping them nearly as much as our morality says we should. And yet I talk about what a God who shares our morality would do. This shows there is something is wrong with at least the presentation of my argument – I will show that only the presentation is at fault.
My second rebuttal depends on the dichotomy “God's morality is/isn't similar to ours.” While these two cases cover Christianity, they do not cover all of theism. The implicit assumption in both cases is that God is living in a manner consistent with his own morality. Because this assumption is being made about God but not about people, it makes sense to say God necessarily would help if he could, despite the fact that we quite often don't help even in cases where mortals could solve the problem. I'm perfectly happy with the content of my arguments, I just need to specify that there are three cases: “God's morality isn't similar to ours,” “God's morality is similar to ours and God is moral by his own standards,” and a new case, “God's morality is similar to ours but God isn't moral by his own standards.”
This third option leads to perhaps the easiest of the rebuttals. If God is condemned by a set of standards, these standards must be above God. But now God is in a position directly analogous to the position people are in within the moral argument. So how can there be standards above God without a Higher God who wrote them? This rebuttal cannot be answered without undermining the moral argument. So the moral argument fails in all cases.
In case you are confused by how I can make this argument consistently, I'll put it in symbolic terms.
A: The moral argument is valid.
B: A God exists of the third kind, that is, God's morality is similar to ours but God isn't moral by his own standards.
I'm showing that A implies ~B. This is sufficient to refute the position A & B, and I can consistently evaluate the implications of A, even though I don't actually accept A. This doesn't specify which of A or B is false, but this is not needed to refute “I accept B because of A.”
This is perhaps a trivial point – I'm refuting a position that pretty much no one holds. But I expect my explanation of why it matters to actually be more important than the argument itself.
The outline of most cases for Christianity are: common knowledge implies God exists, given that God exists Jesus' Resurrection is plausible, given the Resurrection Christianity is plausible. But within this argument, games get played with the definition of “God.” The sort of God you get at the end is one who must resort to “who are you, O man, who answers back to God?” to “explain” how he is other than a cruel and unjust tyrant. This is very different from the sort of God imagined when the Moral Argument is being made.
So while the logical content of refuting the case for the God no one believes in is low, it blocks a common apologetic tactic – get any God you can in the door, even if its nature is directly opposite that of the Christian God, and then start turning it into the Christian God. While I object primarily to the use of the bait and switch, I will also argue against the bait itself. A God who is implicitly assumed to think about morality in much the same way that people think about morality is such common bait that it deserves a direct response.
Showing posts with label Atheism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Atheism. Show all posts
Saturday, August 29, 2009
Monday, May 4, 2009
Divine Hiddenness: The Other Fine-Tuning Argument
“... God our Savior ... desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.” – I Timothy 2:3-4
Why is God hidden? While theists disagree with both me and each other on the level of clarity in the evidence, surely they would agree that if God did something like performing miracles on national TV, he would be obvious in a way that his is not right now. Why must apologetics consist of ancient history, philosophical arguments, and subjective feelings? But before I rebut apologists' explanations for why we even need apologists, I wish to further explain a few of the many ways that God hides himself.
The Bible could have had very specific prophecies about Jesus that he very specifically fulfilled. Pesher may be an acceptable excuse for why the prophetic evidence for Jesus cited in the Bible is nonexistent, but it is no excuse for God choosing to reveal Jesus in a culture that would lead to “fulfillments” like this. Micah could have said “One day, the Messiah will be born of a virgin in the town of Bethlehem, and yet still manage to come out of both Egypt and Nazareth.” Jonah could have said “just like me, the Messiah will be in the belly of the earth. Unlike me, it will be for one and a half days and two nights.” Isaiah could have told us plainly that the suffering servant of chapter 53 was the Messiah. He could have told us plainly that the Messiah would be literally “pierced” for our transgressions, but not literally “crushed” for our iniquities. He could have told us that “not opening his mouth” would be limited to the trial before Herod and the walk to the cross; this would not exclude a quite lengthy prayer the night before, this would not exclude dialogue with Pilate, and this would not exclude dialogue and a yell while on the cross. He could have told us that “like a lamb that is led to slaughter” is fairly close to the literal truth, while “like a sheep that is silent before its shearers” is not even close to the literal truth. But instead, God fined-tuned the prophecies in the Bible to make it look precisely like God played no role in inspiring the Bible.
The Bible could have had scientific information that was useful immediately. Starting whenever God decided to start inspiring books, we could have known:
“Diseases are caused by tiny things that you can't see. They live inside of you and pretty much everywhere else too, but they stop growing where it's really cold and they die where it's really hot. Cook meat well to kill them – when you don't, these tiny things go inside you and make you sick. With some of them, you can protect yourself by teaching your body how to fight them in advance. It's kind of complicated, but how it works is you need to grow a lot of these tiny things. Then heat up those tiny things to kill them. The shells of their bodies will be left behind – you won't be able to see them, but they're there. Inject these shells into your body and your body will automatically learn how to kill them. Now, if you come in contact with those tiny things in the future, your body will be prepared ahead of time. You might have to experiment a bit to get this to work, but knowing the general idea of what's going on should make it quite a bit easier than it would be if I uncaringly left you to figure all of it out yourself.”
The efficiency with which I have communicated should be contrasted with the wisdom of not eating pork or shellfish. I'd bet with more work and more knowledge of medicine, I could write something shorter, clearer, and more helpful, and that an omniscient deity could do better still. With this is mind, I have difficulty understanding why Jesus wasted his time with trifles like healing blind men one at a time or feeding people thousands at a time. He could have saved so many more people so much more easily, and in a way that authenticated his message for both his audience and for scientists who one day discovered just why his suggestions worked so well. It didn't have to be the case that science and the Bible were set on a collision course. Just think of how much stuff God could have packed into the Bible or Jesus could have shared. Thousands of paragraphs like the one above could have all been packed into a book of the Bible's size. But the ancient Jews were not given any of this information. He fine-tuned the scientific data in the Bible so we couldn't see that he had anything at all to do with it.
While I understand the position that God just worked through the historical process in writing the Bible, I'm not willing to just take it for granted that this is the only option he had. Making the Bible be a book that God literally dictated was one of God's options. There are all sorts of ways in which God could have inspired the Bible. And yet he chose an inspiration technique that is indistinguishable from doing nothing at all.
Not only was modern scientific information left out, but even after receiving the law, the Israelites didn't even have enough contemporary scientific knowledge to beat their rivals. Judges 1:19 “The LORD was with the men of Judah. They took possession of the hill country, but they were unable to drive the people from the plains, because they had iron chariots.” Science, it seems, has been Yahweh's Kryptonite for a long time.
This also leads to God's hiddenness in war. God could favor the strongest army to end the war quickly and minimize deaths, he could favor the underdog, or he could favor whoever is more moral. But instead, God favors big armies, iron chariots, and technologically advanced weapons. Atheism forces people to this conclusion ahead of time. Theism says that pretty much anything could be the result, but for some reason, God chose the one result that would be consistent with atheism. He fine-tunes his control of battles to make it look like he doesn't do anything.
Similarly with birth defects. If God exists, it could go in many ways. Maybe God gives all the defects to the children of people who aren't Christians. Maybe they are simply more likely to go to non-Christians. Or maybe it's the other way around, and God gives more birth defects to Christians than everyone else. In fact, any outcome is perfectly consistent with the possibility that God set it up that way. But with atheism, one is forced to make a very specific prediction. Faith will not matter, except to the extent that faith is correlated with circumstantial differences, as with missionaries who bring medicine. This very specific prediction is what we actually see in the real world. While any outcome could in principle be explicable in the context of theism, this is a surprising outcome. God fine-tunes the distribution of birth defects to make it look like he doesn't do anything at all.
Christianity has a number of answers to this. The weaknesses of these answers help illustrate the unanswerability of the problem of an invisible God when he's omnipresent, omnipotent, and wants to be known.
“God isn't hidden.”
In my opinion, this is the only chance. But a desire to give this answer is where the most easily disproven Christian positions come from. This gives us faith healers, extremes of Pentecostalism, and creationism (not merely that evolution is false, but also that the evidence overwhelmingly supports creation.) Except for maybe faith healers who think they can raise people from the dead, all of these, even if true, seem quite pathetic compared to the options available to an omnipotent deity.
“God's ways are not our ways.”
Translation: “Yes, I admit it makes absolutely no sense.” That's exactly what I'm saying. God's plans contradict human concepts of reason, which are in fact, the only concepts of reason that humans have. “Human reasoning” is not a term that describes a particular kind of thinking, it is a term that describes whether or not you are thinking. To realize something doesn't make sense and to continue to believe it is like looking at one's face in a mirror, observing it is unwashed, and then doing nothing about it. And yet Christians continue to disparage reason and then whine whenever insultingly described as opposing reason.
“It's so we can have faith.”
There are quite a few problems with this. First off, there are options other than all aspects of Christianity being proven and the dismal evidence apologists think we have. God could prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that he's powerful and intervenes in the world while making us believe purely by faith that he's good. God could prove that he's powerful while providing only a little bit of evidence that he's good. He could prove that he's powerful and good while making us believe by faith that salvation actually works. So even if God wants us to have faith, that is no excuse for his absence.
The next problem is that it supposes that something is good about having faith. Without this assumption, to say God is hidden so we can have faith is not an explanation, but merely a description of the particular sort of irrationality behind the plan. There is no basis for claiming that belief in God must necessarily involve faith – it's only necessary because God set it up this way, and he didn't have to set it up this way. While faith can have other meanings, in this context, faith is nothing more than an excuse for being illogical and an emotional shield that makes pointing out the obviousness of this cruel and offensive. But for some reason, God likes it when we don't try to be rational. One of the few systems that I can imagine where justice would be more arbitrary than this would be if God just chose some people and didn't choose others.
In fact, I have proof that the God of the Bible didn't have to set up the system to require faith because he doesn't always set it up that way. In the garden of Eden, Adam was provided with absolute proof that God exists, is powerful, and cares. And this didn't seem to interfere with his ability to have free will or a relationship with God. Furthermore, in heaven, the perfect existence will again not require people to have faith.
The final and most severe problem with this explanation is that even Christians don't believe it. If they did, Christians would doubt the crossing of the Red Sea because that would be too clear of evidence for God's existence and would take away the Israelites' ability to have faith. Christians would doubt that Jesus walked on water because that would take away the disciples' ability to have faith. Christians would conclude that a personal relationship with God couldn't be a valid reason for belief, because that would destroy the ability to have faith. But that's not how Christians think about miracles or proofs of his existence. When God gives proof, well did you see that? That was proof. When God doesn't give proof, it's because it would be against his nature to give us proof.
I only take the “it's so we can have faith” line seriously when it's coming from someone who consistently applies this reasoning. For the other 100%, it's a excuse that allows people to just make stuff up and pretend it's a worldview worthy of respect.
Imagine what it would be like if atheists thought this way. We'd have motivational speakers telling us things like:
“I know sometimes you might see crazy things like someone healed right in front of you, but just try not to see God in it. Sometimes, you might find yourself in a place where it’s just obvious God has done something. It just doesn’t make sense any other way. But don’t believe it! It doesn’t have to make sense. If you need one, find a support group to help you not believe even after you’ve seen a miracle. You aren’t the only one this has happened to! Lots of atheists in the past have seen miracles and still found a way to have faith in God's non-existence! You can do it too!”
Of course, if atheists talked like this, theists would be all over us saying that our words show that we don’t really disbelieve. Yes, I did just make a not-very-subtle remark about whether or not theists are atheists in rebellion against a reality that they don't like. (My apologies for sinking to the level of functional theism.)
“It wouldn't work anyway.”
Gideon disagreed. He didn't believe, so God allowed him to perform a fleece experiment to test his power. Gideon was so impressed by the efficacy of evidence in convincing people that you could have confused him with an atheist. [Or, to be fair, with a Christian evidentialist.]
Thomas disagreed. He didn't believe before Jesus showed him his wounds, and he believed afterward.
Even Jesus disagreed. “And you, Capernaum, will not be exalted to heaven, will you? You will descend to Hades; for if the miracles had occurred in Sodom which occurred in you, it would have remained to this day.” – Matthew 11:23
The question Jesus didn't answer is why he didn't perform those miracles in Sodom, because he sure seems to think it would have worked. I'd bet millions and billions of people are alive today who are even more open to the evidence of miracles than the Bible's epitome of evil. And yet God doesn't show them miracles. By contrast, I actually want people to stop damaging their lives with faith, and so I try to provide actual arguments against it. I show you my beliefs by my works. God claims that he wants all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth. I wish God would have shown us that he really wanted Sodom to be saved by his actions. The Sodomites aren't in hell because they refused to be with God and so God told them “thy will be done” and sent them off to the one place apart from himself. Sodom could have been saved. Unfortunately for them, God was in one of his smiting moods.
And again, Christians are unwilling to consistently think according to this rationalization. If they have a dramatic answer to prayer or observe a miracle, you'd better believe that they are going to tell people. It could be the case that they still don't believe this will have an effect on people who don't believe. But that's not the point. The point is that they realize it makes sense to try. But God doesn't try. He has instead fine-tuned war, scientific laws, birth defects, tragedies, and the Bible to make it look like he doesn't do anything at all.
The Kicker
All of these rebuttals completely and utterly fail to provide a coherent explanation for why God hides himself. There is no excuse for God not making himself known. But it's even worse than that. Suppose for the sake of argument that Christianity provides a completely plausible explanation for God's behavior, one is completely content with the possibility that we cannot have any idea why God doesn't do what he doesn't do, or I'm wrong on every single point when I talk about things God “should” want to do. Then the argument from hiddenness is still a powerful argument. If any or all of these are the case, this would merely explains how hiddenness was one of God's options.
Atheism forces people to make very specific predictions about how things will work, namely that no actions will be performed by God that are distinguishable from no action at all. But Christianity cannot predict in advance that God will fine-tune the outcome to look like he did nothing at all.
Suppose one person predicts that the sun will rise at 5:54 am tomorrow morning, while the second person says it could rise at any time between 4 am and 10 am and there is no way of knowing precisely what the sun will do in advance. And then the sun rises at 5:54 am. Technically, the second person hasn't been shown to be wrong. But this is powerful evidence that the first person knows something that the second person doesn't know.
Every single time that God could preform a miracle, could reveal himself, or could reveal useful knowledge to us but doesn't is a case where theists merely observe this to be one of many possible outcomes. But atheists knew the sun would rise at 5:54 am. How do atheists get these things right so often and so precisely? Personally, I do not find this question to be particularly difficult to answer.
Why is God hidden? While theists disagree with both me and each other on the level of clarity in the evidence, surely they would agree that if God did something like performing miracles on national TV, he would be obvious in a way that his is not right now. Why must apologetics consist of ancient history, philosophical arguments, and subjective feelings? But before I rebut apologists' explanations for why we even need apologists, I wish to further explain a few of the many ways that God hides himself.
The Bible could have had very specific prophecies about Jesus that he very specifically fulfilled. Pesher may be an acceptable excuse for why the prophetic evidence for Jesus cited in the Bible is nonexistent, but it is no excuse for God choosing to reveal Jesus in a culture that would lead to “fulfillments” like this. Micah could have said “One day, the Messiah will be born of a virgin in the town of Bethlehem, and yet still manage to come out of both Egypt and Nazareth.” Jonah could have said “just like me, the Messiah will be in the belly of the earth. Unlike me, it will be for one and a half days and two nights.” Isaiah could have told us plainly that the suffering servant of chapter 53 was the Messiah. He could have told us plainly that the Messiah would be literally “pierced” for our transgressions, but not literally “crushed” for our iniquities. He could have told us that “not opening his mouth” would be limited to the trial before Herod and the walk to the cross; this would not exclude a quite lengthy prayer the night before, this would not exclude dialogue with Pilate, and this would not exclude dialogue and a yell while on the cross. He could have told us that “like a lamb that is led to slaughter” is fairly close to the literal truth, while “like a sheep that is silent before its shearers” is not even close to the literal truth. But instead, God fined-tuned the prophecies in the Bible to make it look precisely like God played no role in inspiring the Bible.
The Bible could have had scientific information that was useful immediately. Starting whenever God decided to start inspiring books, we could have known:
“Diseases are caused by tiny things that you can't see. They live inside of you and pretty much everywhere else too, but they stop growing where it's really cold and they die where it's really hot. Cook meat well to kill them – when you don't, these tiny things go inside you and make you sick. With some of them, you can protect yourself by teaching your body how to fight them in advance. It's kind of complicated, but how it works is you need to grow a lot of these tiny things. Then heat up those tiny things to kill them. The shells of their bodies will be left behind – you won't be able to see them, but they're there. Inject these shells into your body and your body will automatically learn how to kill them. Now, if you come in contact with those tiny things in the future, your body will be prepared ahead of time. You might have to experiment a bit to get this to work, but knowing the general idea of what's going on should make it quite a bit easier than it would be if I uncaringly left you to figure all of it out yourself.”
The efficiency with which I have communicated should be contrasted with the wisdom of not eating pork or shellfish. I'd bet with more work and more knowledge of medicine, I could write something shorter, clearer, and more helpful, and that an omniscient deity could do better still. With this is mind, I have difficulty understanding why Jesus wasted his time with trifles like healing blind men one at a time or feeding people thousands at a time. He could have saved so many more people so much more easily, and in a way that authenticated his message for both his audience and for scientists who one day discovered just why his suggestions worked so well. It didn't have to be the case that science and the Bible were set on a collision course. Just think of how much stuff God could have packed into the Bible or Jesus could have shared. Thousands of paragraphs like the one above could have all been packed into a book of the Bible's size. But the ancient Jews were not given any of this information. He fine-tuned the scientific data in the Bible so we couldn't see that he had anything at all to do with it.
While I understand the position that God just worked through the historical process in writing the Bible, I'm not willing to just take it for granted that this is the only option he had. Making the Bible be a book that God literally dictated was one of God's options. There are all sorts of ways in which God could have inspired the Bible. And yet he chose an inspiration technique that is indistinguishable from doing nothing at all.
Not only was modern scientific information left out, but even after receiving the law, the Israelites didn't even have enough contemporary scientific knowledge to beat their rivals. Judges 1:19 “The LORD was with the men of Judah. They took possession of the hill country, but they were unable to drive the people from the plains, because they had iron chariots.” Science, it seems, has been Yahweh's Kryptonite for a long time.
This also leads to God's hiddenness in war. God could favor the strongest army to end the war quickly and minimize deaths, he could favor the underdog, or he could favor whoever is more moral. But instead, God favors big armies, iron chariots, and technologically advanced weapons. Atheism forces people to this conclusion ahead of time. Theism says that pretty much anything could be the result, but for some reason, God chose the one result that would be consistent with atheism. He fine-tunes his control of battles to make it look like he doesn't do anything.
Similarly with birth defects. If God exists, it could go in many ways. Maybe God gives all the defects to the children of people who aren't Christians. Maybe they are simply more likely to go to non-Christians. Or maybe it's the other way around, and God gives more birth defects to Christians than everyone else. In fact, any outcome is perfectly consistent with the possibility that God set it up that way. But with atheism, one is forced to make a very specific prediction. Faith will not matter, except to the extent that faith is correlated with circumstantial differences, as with missionaries who bring medicine. This very specific prediction is what we actually see in the real world. While any outcome could in principle be explicable in the context of theism, this is a surprising outcome. God fine-tunes the distribution of birth defects to make it look like he doesn't do anything at all.
Christianity has a number of answers to this. The weaknesses of these answers help illustrate the unanswerability of the problem of an invisible God when he's omnipresent, omnipotent, and wants to be known.
“God isn't hidden.”
In my opinion, this is the only chance. But a desire to give this answer is where the most easily disproven Christian positions come from. This gives us faith healers, extremes of Pentecostalism, and creationism (not merely that evolution is false, but also that the evidence overwhelmingly supports creation.) Except for maybe faith healers who think they can raise people from the dead, all of these, even if true, seem quite pathetic compared to the options available to an omnipotent deity.
“God's ways are not our ways.”
Translation: “Yes, I admit it makes absolutely no sense.” That's exactly what I'm saying. God's plans contradict human concepts of reason, which are in fact, the only concepts of reason that humans have. “Human reasoning” is not a term that describes a particular kind of thinking, it is a term that describes whether or not you are thinking. To realize something doesn't make sense and to continue to believe it is like looking at one's face in a mirror, observing it is unwashed, and then doing nothing about it. And yet Christians continue to disparage reason and then whine whenever insultingly described as opposing reason.
“It's so we can have faith.”
There are quite a few problems with this. First off, there are options other than all aspects of Christianity being proven and the dismal evidence apologists think we have. God could prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that he's powerful and intervenes in the world while making us believe purely by faith that he's good. God could prove that he's powerful while providing only a little bit of evidence that he's good. He could prove that he's powerful and good while making us believe by faith that salvation actually works. So even if God wants us to have faith, that is no excuse for his absence.
The next problem is that it supposes that something is good about having faith. Without this assumption, to say God is hidden so we can have faith is not an explanation, but merely a description of the particular sort of irrationality behind the plan. There is no basis for claiming that belief in God must necessarily involve faith – it's only necessary because God set it up this way, and he didn't have to set it up this way. While faith can have other meanings, in this context, faith is nothing more than an excuse for being illogical and an emotional shield that makes pointing out the obviousness of this cruel and offensive. But for some reason, God likes it when we don't try to be rational. One of the few systems that I can imagine where justice would be more arbitrary than this would be if God just chose some people and didn't choose others.
In fact, I have proof that the God of the Bible didn't have to set up the system to require faith because he doesn't always set it up that way. In the garden of Eden, Adam was provided with absolute proof that God exists, is powerful, and cares. And this didn't seem to interfere with his ability to have free will or a relationship with God. Furthermore, in heaven, the perfect existence will again not require people to have faith.
The final and most severe problem with this explanation is that even Christians don't believe it. If they did, Christians would doubt the crossing of the Red Sea because that would be too clear of evidence for God's existence and would take away the Israelites' ability to have faith. Christians would doubt that Jesus walked on water because that would take away the disciples' ability to have faith. Christians would conclude that a personal relationship with God couldn't be a valid reason for belief, because that would destroy the ability to have faith. But that's not how Christians think about miracles or proofs of his existence. When God gives proof, well did you see that? That was proof. When God doesn't give proof, it's because it would be against his nature to give us proof.
I only take the “it's so we can have faith” line seriously when it's coming from someone who consistently applies this reasoning. For the other 100%, it's a excuse that allows people to just make stuff up and pretend it's a worldview worthy of respect.
Imagine what it would be like if atheists thought this way. We'd have motivational speakers telling us things like:
“I know sometimes you might see crazy things like someone healed right in front of you, but just try not to see God in it. Sometimes, you might find yourself in a place where it’s just obvious God has done something. It just doesn’t make sense any other way. But don’t believe it! It doesn’t have to make sense. If you need one, find a support group to help you not believe even after you’ve seen a miracle. You aren’t the only one this has happened to! Lots of atheists in the past have seen miracles and still found a way to have faith in God's non-existence! You can do it too!”
Of course, if atheists talked like this, theists would be all over us saying that our words show that we don’t really disbelieve. Yes, I did just make a not-very-subtle remark about whether or not theists are atheists in rebellion against a reality that they don't like. (My apologies for sinking to the level of functional theism.)
“It wouldn't work anyway.”
Gideon disagreed. He didn't believe, so God allowed him to perform a fleece experiment to test his power. Gideon was so impressed by the efficacy of evidence in convincing people that you could have confused him with an atheist. [Or, to be fair, with a Christian evidentialist.]
Thomas disagreed. He didn't believe before Jesus showed him his wounds, and he believed afterward.
Even Jesus disagreed. “And you, Capernaum, will not be exalted to heaven, will you? You will descend to Hades; for if the miracles had occurred in Sodom which occurred in you, it would have remained to this day.” – Matthew 11:23
The question Jesus didn't answer is why he didn't perform those miracles in Sodom, because he sure seems to think it would have worked. I'd bet millions and billions of people are alive today who are even more open to the evidence of miracles than the Bible's epitome of evil. And yet God doesn't show them miracles. By contrast, I actually want people to stop damaging their lives with faith, and so I try to provide actual arguments against it. I show you my beliefs by my works. God claims that he wants all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth. I wish God would have shown us that he really wanted Sodom to be saved by his actions. The Sodomites aren't in hell because they refused to be with God and so God told them “thy will be done” and sent them off to the one place apart from himself. Sodom could have been saved. Unfortunately for them, God was in one of his smiting moods.
And again, Christians are unwilling to consistently think according to this rationalization. If they have a dramatic answer to prayer or observe a miracle, you'd better believe that they are going to tell people. It could be the case that they still don't believe this will have an effect on people who don't believe. But that's not the point. The point is that they realize it makes sense to try. But God doesn't try. He has instead fine-tuned war, scientific laws, birth defects, tragedies, and the Bible to make it look like he doesn't do anything at all.
The Kicker
All of these rebuttals completely and utterly fail to provide a coherent explanation for why God hides himself. There is no excuse for God not making himself known. But it's even worse than that. Suppose for the sake of argument that Christianity provides a completely plausible explanation for God's behavior, one is completely content with the possibility that we cannot have any idea why God doesn't do what he doesn't do, or I'm wrong on every single point when I talk about things God “should” want to do. Then the argument from hiddenness is still a powerful argument. If any or all of these are the case, this would merely explains how hiddenness was one of God's options.
Atheism forces people to make very specific predictions about how things will work, namely that no actions will be performed by God that are distinguishable from no action at all. But Christianity cannot predict in advance that God will fine-tune the outcome to look like he did nothing at all.
Suppose one person predicts that the sun will rise at 5:54 am tomorrow morning, while the second person says it could rise at any time between 4 am and 10 am and there is no way of knowing precisely what the sun will do in advance. And then the sun rises at 5:54 am. Technically, the second person hasn't been shown to be wrong. But this is powerful evidence that the first person knows something that the second person doesn't know.
Every single time that God could preform a miracle, could reveal himself, or could reveal useful knowledge to us but doesn't is a case where theists merely observe this to be one of many possible outcomes. But atheists knew the sun would rise at 5:54 am. How do atheists get these things right so often and so precisely? Personally, I do not find this question to be particularly difficult to answer.
Thursday, April 9, 2009
Human Irrationality
The theology blog Parchment and Pen had a recent post about human irrationality. It begins with one of Paul's most quoted lines: "For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of people who suppress the truth by their unrighteousness, because what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them."
My slightly edited reply follows:
Here's what you are saying about nontheists: you know you will suffer for eternity for choosing wrong, and yet you do so anyway, because you are just that retarded. While truth and offensiveness can coincide, it shuts off chances for dialogue.
This is vastly more extreme than an atheist who responds to any anecdotal evidence with "you are superstitious and deluded" and to any rational argument with "you are simply justifying your delusions." While I think there is some merit to the truth value of these claims, it's completely patronizing and the extent to which I'm forced to fall back on argumentative tactics like these is the extent to which I don't have anything worth saying. And which is more insulting: you're so dumb that you think your imaginary friend is real, or you're so wicked that you deserve eternal torment and so dumb that you know it's coming and yet do nothing to try to stop it?
Two Hitchens don't make a right, but this perspective is needed when deciding just how fiercely the new atheists' tone should be denounced, and if at all. And this isn't even an objection to the people in the church, but only to the words in the Bible itself.
---
I find it to be strange just how often Christians make arguments that either our reason cannot be trusted, or that people aren't nearly as reasonable as we think. It's not that these claims are false. The problem is that even if true, I don't see how it helps the case for Christianity at all. This is an argument that belongs on the agnostic side of either an agnostic v. atheist or an agnostic v. theist debate. If agnostics are "right", then either God exists and has not revealed himself, or atheists hold the right position for bad reasons.
Just as it debunks the foundation under any argument against Christianity, it debunks the foundation under any reason to believe. If people are a lot dumber than we think, that makes it easier for a relationship with God to be something that's just in your head. It makes it easier for answers to prayer to simply be bad estimations of probability and selective memory of the "hits." It becomes even easier to understand the birth and growth of Christianity - if people are just that irrational, skeptics don't even need a theory to explain the sincere belief of the Gospel writers and Paul.
My slightly edited reply follows:
Here's what you are saying about nontheists: you know you will suffer for eternity for choosing wrong, and yet you do so anyway, because you are just that retarded. While truth and offensiveness can coincide, it shuts off chances for dialogue.
This is vastly more extreme than an atheist who responds to any anecdotal evidence with "you are superstitious and deluded" and to any rational argument with "you are simply justifying your delusions." While I think there is some merit to the truth value of these claims, it's completely patronizing and the extent to which I'm forced to fall back on argumentative tactics like these is the extent to which I don't have anything worth saying. And which is more insulting: you're so dumb that you think your imaginary friend is real, or you're so wicked that you deserve eternal torment and so dumb that you know it's coming and yet do nothing to try to stop it?
Two Hitchens don't make a right, but this perspective is needed when deciding just how fiercely the new atheists' tone should be denounced, and if at all. And this isn't even an objection to the people in the church, but only to the words in the Bible itself.
---
I find it to be strange just how often Christians make arguments that either our reason cannot be trusted, or that people aren't nearly as reasonable as we think. It's not that these claims are false. The problem is that even if true, I don't see how it helps the case for Christianity at all. This is an argument that belongs on the agnostic side of either an agnostic v. atheist or an agnostic v. theist debate. If agnostics are "right", then either God exists and has not revealed himself, or atheists hold the right position for bad reasons.
Just as it debunks the foundation under any argument against Christianity, it debunks the foundation under any reason to believe. If people are a lot dumber than we think, that makes it easier for a relationship with God to be something that's just in your head. It makes it easier for answers to prayer to simply be bad estimations of probability and selective memory of the "hits." It becomes even easier to understand the birth and growth of Christianity - if people are just that irrational, skeptics don't even need a theory to explain the sincere belief of the Gospel writers and Paul.
Friday, January 16, 2009
Why I am an Atheist
The biggest reason I am an atheist is that I grew up evangelical and later rejected evangelical Christianity – that is the subject of the rest of my blog and will be overlooked here. But evangelical Christianity rejected doesn't imply atheism; in my case, non-Christian theist to deist to agnostic to atheist took from April until October. Here, I will cover my reasons for being an atheist rather than an otherwise undecided non-Christian.
Atheism: What it Means
I need to first clarify what I mean by “atheist.” I don't believe in a God of any kind, or even see the existence of one as plausible, therefore I am an atheist. I don't claim to know for certain, and I can't prove God doesn't exist. I'm not an atheist in an absolute certainty sort of way, which is what some people still use it to mean.
Oftentimes, the definition of a word has a subliminal effect on how we think. Take the word “discipline,” for instance. It can be a verb meaning to punish misbehavior, or it can be an adjective describing one who behaves with great self-control. The subtle implication inside English is the idea that discipline leads to discipline. When we call someone “highly disciplined” this is a claim about their present level of self-control, not about the amount of punishment needed to become like that, but when this is said in English, this implication hides just under the surface regardless of if the implication was desired by the speaker. If this were false, this would be a problem in the English language. (Generally speaking, I agree with the idea subliminally reinforced by this homonym.)
An unfortunate misconception is caused by the word “atheist” meaning one who is absolutely certain there is no God. The problem is that it forces together the concepts of a particular position and absolute certainty. This causes a concept of unjustifiable arrogance to be automatically associated with the idea that God does not exist. A word is needed that merely describes the position and does not contain an implication of certainty. That word is atheism. The word's evolution into not carrying the implication of certainty is a needed linguistic change, but the change is only partially complete, and hence my embracing of the label is at the possible expense of misunderstanding.
Similarly, I am a capitalist. I'm not an expert at economics, I can't refute every socialistic argument ever put forward, and I might be wrong. But I'm still a capitalist, and this is not in tension with my lack of omniscience. I wouldn't want to call myself agnostic on matters of economics just because I might be wrong. I think capitalism works, I think God doesn't exist, I'm certain of neither, and I'm ashamed of neither. Therefore, I am a capitalist and an atheist. Only if the existence of God or the effectiveness of socialism starts seeming plausible to me will I call myself agnostic with regard to either.
One other misunderstanding of atheism is that it necessarily starts with the position that the cosmos is all there is. Some atheists do, but I do not. If I were to map out core presuppositions, conclusions just above those, the next level of conclusions above those, and so on, atheism would be very near the top. That is to say, very little that I believe rests on atheism – atheism rests on those other things that I believe. In particular, atheism is the conclusion that comes from the absence of reasons to believe in God. Richard Dawkins beautifully expressed this idea of atheism as a denial of others' claims, rather than as a positive position:
“We are all atheists about most of the gods that societies have ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further.”
Why God's Existence Requires Defense
The one positive statement I will make that defends my atheism is that there are no good reasons to believe in God. I use absolute language not out of arrogance, but so as to have a target for theists (and agnostics) to shoot at. Agnostics have more wiggle room because it's perfectly fine if they feel the pull of several arguments for God's existence but don't think it's quite sufficient to believe. Think of my absolute statement as denying myself wiggle room so as to have an actual position that could be falsified by a fellow mortal.
I don't start with the existence/non-existence of God as a presupposition, and you shouldn't either. If there's an elephant in the living room you shouldn't have to believe in it on faith – if the elephant isn't obvious, it's not there. If it's not there, you shouldn't have to just disbelieve in it because it's too preposterous of a possibility to be worthy of consideration – if it's not there, you should be able to look and see that it's not there. How much more should this be the case with an omnipresent God, especially if he wants us to know him?
However, plenty of Christians do think God is obvious. Paul was among them, “For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse.” If I succeed in refuting the arguments for God based on creation, I have not only rebutted positive arguments, but I will also have shown biblical reasoning to be flawed.
The Key Idea
Before I address the particulars, I wish to belabor what I think needs to be the general idea behind “how do you explain X without God” arguments. The same idea will apply to existence, design, meaning, morality, free will, and probably dozens of others. In my opinion, this one idea destroys nearly all arguments for God in a single blow. (This idea does not refute most arguments for Christianity in particular, such as evidential arguments for the Resurrection, etc.)
At face value, the argument from X rests on one claim, namely that atheists haven't figured X out, therefore they aren't looking at a big enough picture, therefore God. I can at least speak for myself in saying that for years I had this misconception. But this is wrong. For these argument to work, they also need to establish that theism doesn't suffer from the same weakness. Weaknesses in atheism are evidence for God only to the extent that theism doesn't have the same weaknesses. This point will come up over and over again, and I intend to repeat it au nausum as it is so often missed.
These arguments all rely for their rhetorical strength on the idea that it is somehow irreverent to try to understand God. I don't allow religion to impose a double standard on the discourse. Arguments for theism often consist of taking a bunch of things in the universe that we don't know, throwing them in a big box labeled “God”, and declaring inspection inside the box to be irreverent. Of course theists think the mysteries of life are not problems for their view! The problems are all hidden in a box that is not to be opened, because that would mean trying to understand God.
Pandora, be damned. I dare to peer inside the box.
Argument from Existence – Why is there something rather than nothing?
But why is there a God instead of nothing? If the existence of the universe demands a creator, why doesn’t the existence of a creator demand someone who created him? The only way to get around this conundrum is to assign to God some made-up property, like “necessary being,” “self-existent,” “not an effect, hence not needing a cause.” However, all these properties could just as easily apply to the universe as a whole. Perhaps this is a necessary universe, a self-existent universe, or the Big Bang was not an effect (there is no “before time”) and hence the Big Bang needs no cause.
Maybe God has one of these properties. But a need for one of them destroys the argument because a weakness in atheism is not evidence for God when theism contains the same weakness hidden in the God-box.
Argument from Design – Where did all this apparent design come from, if not a Designer?
So who designed the designer? A being capable of designing a world this intricate must be even more intricate than the world itself. To the degree that evolution is a good theory, atheism has a better answer than non-evolutionary theism. But even if the validity of evolution were nil, atheism would be on equal ground with theism regarding its ability to explain the existence of design. (Theistic evolution and atheistic evolution are on equal ground as well.)
A weakness in atheism is not evidence for God when theism contains the same weakness hidden in the God-box.
Argument from Meaning – How do our lives have meaning, if not in following God?
First off, the possibility that our lives have no meaning deserves serious consideration if the topic is truth, rather than what we would want to be true. The prevalence of extreme pain in the world gives a strong reason to think that some very harsh realities have to be faced. If the bitter truth is that our lives have no meaning then the argument fails.
In any case, how does God's existence have meaning? According to Christians at least, what we know of God's existence consists of seeking to be loved, seeking to love, and seeking his own glory. All of these are goals that mere mortals can seek for themselves without God. If meaning is to be found in the existence of the sort of God that Christians envision, then I too can create meaning in my life by living life.
A weakness in atheism is not evidence for God when theism contains the same weakness hidden in the God-box.
Furthermore, what is it about existence in heaven that is meaningful? The two perks are hedonistic (streets of gold, etc.) and relational (always being with the Lord/other Christians.) But this is not terribly different from seeking to create meaning in one's life through living life with other people and enjoying whatever time we have. How is being with the Lord meaningful while being with other people is not meaningful? If the problem is that a finite existence is not meaningful, then I am happy to be spared the experience of heaven, as it would then consist of an infinite sequence of meaningless existences.
Argument from Morality – How do we have a concept of “ought” (distinct from “want”) if not from God?
How does God have a concept of morality? If morality proceeds from what God wants, then from God's perspective, there is no right and wrong – only what he wants/conforms to his will. This takes away the possibility of genuine praise – he isn't any better than Satan in an objective sense, he's just on a different side. Also, if “good” equals God's whim, then if he had lied to us about his unchanging nature and ultimately decides to cast all believers into hell this would be every bit as “good” as what Christians think he's really doing. Surely, this idea of “good” has strayed so far from our intuitive concept of good, that our intuitive concept of good is not evidence for the reality of this counterintuitive concept of “good.”
If morality precedes what God wants, then I would like God to answer the Moral Argument: where did God get his concept of morality if not from another Higher God?
Neither side has an answer that results in the sort of transcendent morality that Christians claim to have. Either God has no morals, or the fact that God must have morals that don't come from himself shoots the argument from morality in the foot.
A weakness in atheism is not evidence for God when theism contains the same weakness hidden in the God-box.
Argument from Free Will – How do we have free will if not from God?
How do we know we have free will? As Dawkins recounted:
"'Tell me,' the great twentieth-century philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein once asked a friend, 'why do people always say it was natural for man to assume that the sun went around the Earth rather than that the Earth was rotating?' His friend replied, 'Well, obviously because it just looks as though the Sun is going around the Earth.' Wittgenstein responded, 'Well, what would it have looked like if it had looked as though the Earth was rotating?'"
Similarly, I ask what the world would look like if it looked like we had no free will. I freely admit that this wondering challenges my own thinking as much as it challenges theism.
(I'll overlook the quantum physics answer outside this comment. It proves the logical consistency of free will and atheism, but leaves the actual existence of free will unknown. While very interesting, it is not needed to refute the argument.)
I'm sure you see where my second objection is heading by now... How does God have free will? Apparently, the reason a godless universe would have no free will is because such a universe would always follow its natural laws. But God always follows his own nature – so what's the difference? If God has no free will, it makes no sense for him to have the capacity to give the gift of something he lacks. As Calvinists show, even if God has free will, there are many definitions of free will and concepts of Sovereignty where we still don't have it. I will spare you the final repetition of the key idea...
Conclusions
With all of these questions, much more can and should be said. Just because evolution and abiogenesis are not needed to answer the design argument doesn't mean they aren't worthy of study. What is the meaning of life? Is morality absolute? Do the words “free will” even mean anything? All of these are worthy of centuries of analysis by philosophers and scientists. Surely we can do better than “42.” But as arguments for God's existence, I find that little is required to refute them. If you dare to look inside the God-box, you will see that theism fails to answer the questions that justified the idea of God in the first place.
Sometimes humanity does learn things that were previously unknown. Due to evolution, we do have a pretty good idea about the origin of much of the design on the earth. Many theists are working hard to resist these answers so as to keep this treasured piece of ignorance inside the God-box. If part of the question is answered, theists will have to find a smaller box. I'm tired of downsizing my box. I've gotten rid of it entirely and placed what I don't know on a shelf in full display. I would like to think that I could have figured out Thor does not exist even if I lived in a time before scientific descriptions of thunder existed. I wish to do the same with what remains unknown. Therefore, I am an atheist.
Atheism: What it Means
I need to first clarify what I mean by “atheist.” I don't believe in a God of any kind, or even see the existence of one as plausible, therefore I am an atheist. I don't claim to know for certain, and I can't prove God doesn't exist. I'm not an atheist in an absolute certainty sort of way, which is what some people still use it to mean.
Oftentimes, the definition of a word has a subliminal effect on how we think. Take the word “discipline,” for instance. It can be a verb meaning to punish misbehavior, or it can be an adjective describing one who behaves with great self-control. The subtle implication inside English is the idea that discipline leads to discipline. When we call someone “highly disciplined” this is a claim about their present level of self-control, not about the amount of punishment needed to become like that, but when this is said in English, this implication hides just under the surface regardless of if the implication was desired by the speaker. If this were false, this would be a problem in the English language. (Generally speaking, I agree with the idea subliminally reinforced by this homonym.)
An unfortunate misconception is caused by the word “atheist” meaning one who is absolutely certain there is no God. The problem is that it forces together the concepts of a particular position and absolute certainty. This causes a concept of unjustifiable arrogance to be automatically associated with the idea that God does not exist. A word is needed that merely describes the position and does not contain an implication of certainty. That word is atheism. The word's evolution into not carrying the implication of certainty is a needed linguistic change, but the change is only partially complete, and hence my embracing of the label is at the possible expense of misunderstanding.
Similarly, I am a capitalist. I'm not an expert at economics, I can't refute every socialistic argument ever put forward, and I might be wrong. But I'm still a capitalist, and this is not in tension with my lack of omniscience. I wouldn't want to call myself agnostic on matters of economics just because I might be wrong. I think capitalism works, I think God doesn't exist, I'm certain of neither, and I'm ashamed of neither. Therefore, I am a capitalist and an atheist. Only if the existence of God or the effectiveness of socialism starts seeming plausible to me will I call myself agnostic with regard to either.
One other misunderstanding of atheism is that it necessarily starts with the position that the cosmos is all there is. Some atheists do, but I do not. If I were to map out core presuppositions, conclusions just above those, the next level of conclusions above those, and so on, atheism would be very near the top. That is to say, very little that I believe rests on atheism – atheism rests on those other things that I believe. In particular, atheism is the conclusion that comes from the absence of reasons to believe in God. Richard Dawkins beautifully expressed this idea of atheism as a denial of others' claims, rather than as a positive position:
“We are all atheists about most of the gods that societies have ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further.”
Why God's Existence Requires Defense
The one positive statement I will make that defends my atheism is that there are no good reasons to believe in God. I use absolute language not out of arrogance, but so as to have a target for theists (and agnostics) to shoot at. Agnostics have more wiggle room because it's perfectly fine if they feel the pull of several arguments for God's existence but don't think it's quite sufficient to believe. Think of my absolute statement as denying myself wiggle room so as to have an actual position that could be falsified by a fellow mortal.
I don't start with the existence/non-existence of God as a presupposition, and you shouldn't either. If there's an elephant in the living room you shouldn't have to believe in it on faith – if the elephant isn't obvious, it's not there. If it's not there, you shouldn't have to just disbelieve in it because it's too preposterous of a possibility to be worthy of consideration – if it's not there, you should be able to look and see that it's not there. How much more should this be the case with an omnipresent God, especially if he wants us to know him?
However, plenty of Christians do think God is obvious. Paul was among them, “For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse.” If I succeed in refuting the arguments for God based on creation, I have not only rebutted positive arguments, but I will also have shown biblical reasoning to be flawed.
The Key Idea
Before I address the particulars, I wish to belabor what I think needs to be the general idea behind “how do you explain X without God” arguments. The same idea will apply to existence, design, meaning, morality, free will, and probably dozens of others. In my opinion, this one idea destroys nearly all arguments for God in a single blow. (This idea does not refute most arguments for Christianity in particular, such as evidential arguments for the Resurrection, etc.)
At face value, the argument from X rests on one claim, namely that atheists haven't figured X out, therefore they aren't looking at a big enough picture, therefore God. I can at least speak for myself in saying that for years I had this misconception. But this is wrong. For these argument to work, they also need to establish that theism doesn't suffer from the same weakness. Weaknesses in atheism are evidence for God only to the extent that theism doesn't have the same weaknesses. This point will come up over and over again, and I intend to repeat it au nausum as it is so often missed.
These arguments all rely for their rhetorical strength on the idea that it is somehow irreverent to try to understand God. I don't allow religion to impose a double standard on the discourse. Arguments for theism often consist of taking a bunch of things in the universe that we don't know, throwing them in a big box labeled “God”, and declaring inspection inside the box to be irreverent. Of course theists think the mysteries of life are not problems for their view! The problems are all hidden in a box that is not to be opened, because that would mean trying to understand God.
Pandora, be damned. I dare to peer inside the box.
Argument from Existence – Why is there something rather than nothing?
But why is there a God instead of nothing? If the existence of the universe demands a creator, why doesn’t the existence of a creator demand someone who created him? The only way to get around this conundrum is to assign to God some made-up property, like “necessary being,” “self-existent,” “not an effect, hence not needing a cause.” However, all these properties could just as easily apply to the universe as a whole. Perhaps this is a necessary universe, a self-existent universe, or the Big Bang was not an effect (there is no “before time”) and hence the Big Bang needs no cause.
Maybe God has one of these properties. But a need for one of them destroys the argument because a weakness in atheism is not evidence for God when theism contains the same weakness hidden in the God-box.
Argument from Design – Where did all this apparent design come from, if not a Designer?
So who designed the designer? A being capable of designing a world this intricate must be even more intricate than the world itself. To the degree that evolution is a good theory, atheism has a better answer than non-evolutionary theism. But even if the validity of evolution were nil, atheism would be on equal ground with theism regarding its ability to explain the existence of design. (Theistic evolution and atheistic evolution are on equal ground as well.)
A weakness in atheism is not evidence for God when theism contains the same weakness hidden in the God-box.
Argument from Meaning – How do our lives have meaning, if not in following God?
First off, the possibility that our lives have no meaning deserves serious consideration if the topic is truth, rather than what we would want to be true. The prevalence of extreme pain in the world gives a strong reason to think that some very harsh realities have to be faced. If the bitter truth is that our lives have no meaning then the argument fails.
In any case, how does God's existence have meaning? According to Christians at least, what we know of God's existence consists of seeking to be loved, seeking to love, and seeking his own glory. All of these are goals that mere mortals can seek for themselves without God. If meaning is to be found in the existence of the sort of God that Christians envision, then I too can create meaning in my life by living life.
A weakness in atheism is not evidence for God when theism contains the same weakness hidden in the God-box.
Furthermore, what is it about existence in heaven that is meaningful? The two perks are hedonistic (streets of gold, etc.) and relational (always being with the Lord/other Christians.) But this is not terribly different from seeking to create meaning in one's life through living life with other people and enjoying whatever time we have. How is being with the Lord meaningful while being with other people is not meaningful? If the problem is that a finite existence is not meaningful, then I am happy to be spared the experience of heaven, as it would then consist of an infinite sequence of meaningless existences.
Argument from Morality – How do we have a concept of “ought” (distinct from “want”) if not from God?
How does God have a concept of morality? If morality proceeds from what God wants, then from God's perspective, there is no right and wrong – only what he wants/conforms to his will. This takes away the possibility of genuine praise – he isn't any better than Satan in an objective sense, he's just on a different side. Also, if “good” equals God's whim, then if he had lied to us about his unchanging nature and ultimately decides to cast all believers into hell this would be every bit as “good” as what Christians think he's really doing. Surely, this idea of “good” has strayed so far from our intuitive concept of good, that our intuitive concept of good is not evidence for the reality of this counterintuitive concept of “good.”
If morality precedes what God wants, then I would like God to answer the Moral Argument: where did God get his concept of morality if not from another Higher God?
Neither side has an answer that results in the sort of transcendent morality that Christians claim to have. Either God has no morals, or the fact that God must have morals that don't come from himself shoots the argument from morality in the foot.
A weakness in atheism is not evidence for God when theism contains the same weakness hidden in the God-box.
Argument from Free Will – How do we have free will if not from God?
How do we know we have free will? As Dawkins recounted:
"'Tell me,' the great twentieth-century philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein once asked a friend, 'why do people always say it was natural for man to assume that the sun went around the Earth rather than that the Earth was rotating?' His friend replied, 'Well, obviously because it just looks as though the Sun is going around the Earth.' Wittgenstein responded, 'Well, what would it have looked like if it had looked as though the Earth was rotating?'"
Similarly, I ask what the world would look like if it looked like we had no free will. I freely admit that this wondering challenges my own thinking as much as it challenges theism.
(I'll overlook the quantum physics answer outside this comment. It proves the logical consistency of free will and atheism, but leaves the actual existence of free will unknown. While very interesting, it is not needed to refute the argument.)
I'm sure you see where my second objection is heading by now... How does God have free will? Apparently, the reason a godless universe would have no free will is because such a universe would always follow its natural laws. But God always follows his own nature – so what's the difference? If God has no free will, it makes no sense for him to have the capacity to give the gift of something he lacks. As Calvinists show, even if God has free will, there are many definitions of free will and concepts of Sovereignty where we still don't have it. I will spare you the final repetition of the key idea...
Conclusions
With all of these questions, much more can and should be said. Just because evolution and abiogenesis are not needed to answer the design argument doesn't mean they aren't worthy of study. What is the meaning of life? Is morality absolute? Do the words “free will” even mean anything? All of these are worthy of centuries of analysis by philosophers and scientists. Surely we can do better than “42.” But as arguments for God's existence, I find that little is required to refute them. If you dare to look inside the God-box, you will see that theism fails to answer the questions that justified the idea of God in the first place.
Sometimes humanity does learn things that were previously unknown. Due to evolution, we do have a pretty good idea about the origin of much of the design on the earth. Many theists are working hard to resist these answers so as to keep this treasured piece of ignorance inside the God-box. If part of the question is answered, theists will have to find a smaller box. I'm tired of downsizing my box. I've gotten rid of it entirely and placed what I don't know on a shelf in full display. I would like to think that I could have figured out Thor does not exist even if I lived in a time before scientific descriptions of thunder existed. I wish to do the same with what remains unknown. Therefore, I am an atheist.
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