Randal Rauser's Blog, page 129

An Invitation to My Edmonton Debate/Dialogue with Justin Schieber

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The Hiddenness of God: Thoughts on the Giunta-Schieber Debate

The most recent episode of “Unbelievable” features a very fruitful exchange between Justin Schieber and Christian apologist Blake Giunta on the hiddenness of God. Schieber defends the hiddenness argument from J.L. Schellenberg. (See my review of Schellenberg’s recent book here and his reply here. And just for the heck of it see his endorsement of my book Is the Atheist My Neighbor? here. It remains my favorite endorsement that I’ve ever received.) And Giunta seeks to undermine the strength of the Schellenberg-Schieber objection. It’s a very good episode with two articulate defenders of their respective positions.

Before I offer my thoughts, I’ll take a very brief moment to define the argument. The gist of Schellenberg’s argument is that if God exists there should be no non-resistant non-believers in God. But there are non-resistant non-believers in God. Therefore, God doesn’t exist. Needless to say Schieber fleshes the argument out so you should also obviously listen to the whole show. But that’s the basic idea.

Initial Thoughts on the Debate

In his opening response to Schieber, Giunta takes on the herculean task of briefly summarizing a dozen or more responses to the hiddenness argument. Giunta is clearly very familiar with the literature and provides an able tour of some of the main responses. As I listened to him, I mused on the two different strategies that a defense attorney might take in seeking to justify reasonable doubt in the guilt of their client. On the one hand, they might focus on building a case for the plausible guilt of one or two other alternative suspects. On the other hand, they might introduce the jury briefly to more than a dozen possible suspects. Giunta clearly chose the latter approach here. While his survey is very helpful, I prefer the former approach for a relative brief exchange like this. After all, the only thing Giunta needs to defeat the hiddenness argument is one plausible reason why God might allow non-resistant non-belief to exist.

As I said, Giunta does well and he is definitely an apologist to watch. However,  there is one approach that, so far as I can see, is quite different from anything Giunta says in his survey. And so I’m going to take a moment to relay this alternative approach in the remainder of this article.

Drake or Dustin: Who is better off?

Let’s begin by meeting two more individuals: Drake the Christian theist and Dustin the atheist. Dustin seems to be a non-resistant non-believer. And that gives rise to the hiddenness question: why would God allow Dustin to persist in his non-belief?

My problem is that there is something reductionistic about this way of posing the question. And I intend to illumine that point by filling out in more detail the nature of Drake’s belief and Dustin’s “non-belief” and comparing and contrasting the respective strengths and weaknesses of each position.

Let’s begin with Drake. He believes that God exists. Moreover, he believes that God is pure will, that God arbitrarily decrees which values will constitute the moral good and evil. If you ask Drake, “Is it your view that there is no objective moral Good? And thus is it your view that God could have made rape morally good?” he will bite the bullet. Indeed, Drake doesn’t even view it as a bullet to be bitten so much as a necessary consequence of the radical divine aseity and divine freedom. Drake denies that the Good exists as such. Instead he insists that God alone is the cause of all else that exists. “The Good” just is an expression of God’s arbitrary willing in spacetime. God lays down the laws of the moral sphere with the same voluntaristic will that he lays down the laws of nature.

Next, we have Dustin. While Dustin is an atheist, he does believe in an absolute, atemporal, Platonic Good. All moral value exists in spacetime as states of affairs exemplify various aspects of that Platonic Good. And consequently, Dustin seeks to live his life in accord with the Platonic Good by undertaking actions that model states of affairs which exemplify the Good: practically speaking, this means he feeds the hungry, gives drink to the thirsty, and ministers to the stranger, the naked, the sick and the imprisoned.

Finally, let’s consider for the sake of argument that those theists are correct who say something like this: the Platonic Good exists in a sense, but this “Platonic Good” which we apprehend through our moral perception is, in fact, the divine nature. To put it bluntly, God = the Good. And thus when you live in accord with the Good you are, in essence relating to and gaining knowledge of God under the title “the Good”.

To sum up, we have Drake the believer in God and disbeliever in the Good. And we have Dustin the believer in the Good and disbeliever in God. Here’s the question: should we think that they are referring to, believing in, and relating to the same entity under different descriptions?

There is a good reason to think so. To illustrate, imagine our two gentlemen in another situation. In that situation Drake says he loves the Morning Star and seeks to live his life by it. Meanwhile Dustin says he loves the Evening Star and he seeks to live his life by it. As we all know (but alas, Drake and Dustin do not) the Morning Star is the Evening Star. Thus, it follows that Drake and Dustin are relating to the same celestial body, albeit under different descriptions.

And that would likewise seem to describe our current case. Drake and Dustin are both referring to the same transcendent entity, but they do so under different descriptions: one refers to it as God, the the other refers to it as the Good. And thus it follows that each of them gets certain important beliefs about that entity correct and they get other important beliefs incorrect. For example, Drake is correct to believe that transcendent entity is a person and Dustin is right to believe it is the Good. And Drake is incorrect to believe that transcendent entity is pure will and Dustin is incorrect to believe it is an abstract universal.

But it isn’t just linguistic reference and belief that is at play here. We can also speak of some kind of relationship. It would seem plausible to say that both Drake and Dustin have an existentially meaningful relationship with the same entity, a relationship which is strengthened by their correct beliefs and weakened by their incorrect beliefs. Thus, Drake prays to that entity as God (that’s good!) but he also lives in fear and uncertainty of the arbitrariness of what he believes to be the pure will of God (that’s bad!). And Dustin seeks to conform his life to the Good (that’s good!) but he also fails to pray to the Good because he believes it is abstract and impersonal (that’s bad!).

Each of our two gentlemen is better off in some ways and worse off in others. The fact is that it isn’t obvious that one of those individuals (namely Drake) is in a superior epistemic and/or relational position to that entity (God/the Good) to the other individual (namely Dustin). Granted, within some versions of Christian theology Drake may be better off than Dustin (i.e. those versions that require the belief in a specific set of propositions about God). But Schellenberg’s argument isn’t targeting some versions of Christian theology. It’s targeting theism simpliciter. And by theism simpliciter it isn’t obvious that Drake is better off than Dustin or that Dustin is worse off than Drake.

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A Christian/Atheist Dialogue in Church

Check it out. On Saturday, March 11, Justin Schieber and I will be taking over the evening church service at Sherwood Park Alliance Church in Sherwood Park, just outside of Edmonton. If you’re in the area, be sure to join us for a memorable evening.

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Today I finished the penultimate draft of my next book

Last summer I started working on a new book. Tentatively titled Do You Know Where You’d Go if You Died Tonight?, it is a sort of spiritual memoir that offers forty years of reflection on the nature of the Christian Gospel and the concept of salvation. Today I finished what is hopefully my penultimate draft of the manuscript. The book is forty (short) chapters, 300 pages (in double spaced 12 point New Times Roman font) and 85,000 words.

Phew!

My goal is to complete the book in the next couple months and have it out no later than September. (We’ll see about that.) Either way, it’s a weight off my shoulders. Now I can focus on some more pressing details … like course prep and prepping for my forthcoming debates with Mr. Schieber in Edmonton, Sherwood Park, Phoenix, and Tucson.

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On Praying for Milo

We live in an age where extreme and hateful voices like that of Milo Yiannopoulos get way more attention than they deserve. I was disgusted when Bill Maher hosted Milo on Real Time last week (and I applaud Jeremy Scahill for withdrawing from the show in protest). By the time the video surfaced of Milo advocating for pedophilia, I had no energy left for more righteous indignation. I was spent. Being outraged takes a lot of emotional energy and my reserves were exhausted.

Then I started seeing the tweets from Christians talking about how we need to pray for Milo.

And somehow I found more energy.

Let me start by emphasizing that I understand the Christian Gospel. All have sinned and fallen short of God’s glory. All are in need of mercy and forgiveness. And most of us tend to draw the line between those who are forgivable and those who are not in a way that suits our personal interests. Our sins can be forgiven. But as for the sins of the other guy, well I’m not so sure.

My issue isn’t with the principle behind the idea that one might hope and pray for Milo’s repentance and reformation just as one hopes and prays for the repentance and reformation of all people.

Rather, my concern is with a certain triteness, a flippancy, with which some Christians seem to speak of prayer, repentance, forgiveness, and restoration.

The Percys in “Dead Man Walking” as they learn that Sister Prejean agreed to be the spiritual adviser for Matthew Poncelet.

Let me start here: Dead Man Walking is one of my favorite films. Based on the memoir of Sister Prejean, it tells the story of how the Sister befriended a convicted rapist and murderer on death row. The film ends with a powerful scene of repentance from Matthew Poncelet and I hope for that same repentance from every wayward sinner.

But before we get there, we need to camp out for a bit on the offense. We need to allow those who have been victimized to be heard. The Percys, the parents of the young woman that Poncelet raped and murdered, are outraged by Sister Prejean’s relationship with the monster. Then Sister Prejean comes to see the Percys to explain to them that she has agreed to become Poncelet’s spiritual adviser. Initially they misunderstand the purpose of her visit:

Mr. Percy: So, what made you change your mind?

Sister Prejean: Change my mind?

Mrs. Percy: What made you come around to our side?

Sister Prejean:  I wanted to come and see if l could help y’all and pray with you.

Mrs. Percy: Thank you.

Sister Prejean: But he asked me to be his spiritual adviser, to be with him when he dies.

Mrs. Percy: And what did you say?

Sister Prejean: That l would.

Mrs. Percy: We thought you’d changed your mind. We thought that’s why you were here.

Sister Prejean: No.

Mr. Percy: How can you come here? How can you do that? How can you sit with that scum?

Sister Prejean: Mr. Percy, l’ve never done this before. l’m trying….  l’m trying to follow the example of Jesus…who said that every person is worth … more than their worst act.

Mr. Percy: This is not a person. This is an animal. No, l take that back. Animals don’t rape and murder their own kind!  Matthew Poncelet is God’s mistake.  And you want to hold the poor murderer’s hand? You want to comfort him when he dies? There wasn’t anybody in the woods to comfort Hope … when those two animals pushed her face into the grass!

Sister Prejean’s theology is correct. But we still need to hear the voice of the victimized. And for that I commend her: she wasn’t going to be Poncelet’s spiritual adviser without first hearing from his victims.

This brings me to the “Pray for Milo” tweets. I have no problem with folks praying for Milo. But if you’re going to do it, don’t be flippant about it. Don’t be trite. Start by reading some accounts of child rape. Read some cases where priests sodomized thirteen year old boys. Read about the kind of actions that Milo was praising. And then pray for him. Earn the right to pray for him by first heeding the voices of the victims.

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Being the Right Kind of Fool for Christ Ain’t Easy

This morning I saw the following Atonin Scalia quote (with a few missing words) in my Twitter feed:

Boom! pic.twitter.com/By4qSbD7o2

— Dr. Michael L. Brown (@DrMichaelLBrown) February 20, 2017

Before we get started, we need to confirm this quote. The practice of incorrectly attributing fanciful quotes to public figures — Mark Twain, Yogi Berra, Winston Churchill, etc. — is epidemic. Indeed, it calls to mind the old saying, “A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.” So before we say anything else, we should seek to confirm the source.

After some checking I found respected author Jeffrey Toobin attributing the quotation to Scalia in his book The Oath: The Obama White House and the Supreme Court ((New York: Anchor, 2012), 98). So that’s good enough for me to proceed.

So what’s the problem?

Here it is in brief: there are many reasons a Christian might be counted a fool. So just because a particular Christian happens to be counted a fool, they can’t assume it is for the right reasons. Let’s say, for example, that Jones is considered a fool by his office coworkers. Jones believes his low social status is a clear indication of his faithful discipleship in emulating his Lord and Savior. But is it?

A closer look reveals that his coworkers think he’s a fool because he has been predicting the imminent return of Christ since the late 1980s, with regular revisions to his predictions every time Christ fails to return. And also because he insists the earth was created in 4004 BC. And because he has confidently asserted that dinosaurs were on the ark. And because he believes an embryo has exactly the same right to life as a baby. And because he voted for Donald Trump and insists that Trump is a good Christian who “just wants to keep us safe from the terrorists.”

Bottom line: being counted a fool by your unchurched peers is easy. Being counted a fool by your unchurched peers for good reasons is hard.

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Even if theism may be rationally justified, can the same be said of a specific religion?

A couple days ago Counter Apologist published a glowing review of An Atheist and a Christian Walk into a Bar. Counter Apologist writes:

In the last debate book review I did, I asked “So who won?” which is the kind of inevitable question you get with these kinds of books.  I’m sure some theists will read it and say Randal clearly came out a head, and atheists would say Justin had the better of the exchange.  Biases going into this kind of work are going to be a major part of what makes you think there was a “winner” at the end.

However the idea that there was a winner doesn’t even feel like an appropriate question to ask after reading this book.  I feel that this is a testament to both the skill of the authors and to the very nature of the question being debated.

After that I ended up having a Twitter exchange with Counter Apologist in which he opined that even if theism can be rational, belief in a particular religious system cannot be. Counter Apologist then published his argument here. He writes:

Even if someone is a classical theist, I’m not sure that they can rationally make the jump from a mere theism to belief in a specific religion, like say Christianity. This would entail belief in a whole subset of contingent facts about god and how that god reveals themselves to humanity:

God is a Trinity
Jesus is the “Son” in that Trinity, being fully man and fully god.
While in human form, Jesus performed miracles and was resurrected from the dead.
The Christian Bible’s claims about god’s divine commands to humanity are accurate.

The question I have is “What rational basis does a Christian have for moving from theism to belief in these specific doctrines?”

Typically, the argument to go from theism to belief in a specific religion revolves around an argument to believe in certain historical miracle claims. For Christianity this is the argument for the resurrection of Jesus – the central belief of Christianity.

This description makes it seem as if folks begin with a commitment to classical theism or some other sophisticated philosophical conception of God. And then they marshal evidence for a specific miracle claim and proceed to reason via inference to the best explanation that positing a richer nexus of theological claims best explains the putative miracle event.

Unfortunately, that’s not at all how most folks adopt particular religious beliefs. Rather, they do so through testimonial acquisition and a complex process of reflective equilibrium. Interestingly, I provide a defense of the process of testimony in grounding religious belief (and belief generally) in An Atheist and a Christian Walk into a Bar. See also my discussion of epistemology in The Swedish Atheist, the Scuba Diver, and Other Apologetic Rabbit Trails. And I provide a snapshot of broader reflective equilibrium in God or Godless where I briefly outline several lines of supporting intuitive evidence and experience including the perceived link between God and meaning and the experience of sign miracles in one’s life.

Bottom line, a critique of the rationality of particular subsets of worldviews must begin by examining the way that folks actually form those worldview beliefs, whether that worldview is Christian, Muslim, naturalistic, humanistic, pluralistic, or anything else.

Beyond that I’ll hand the baton to David Marshall who offers an extensive critical engagement with Counter Apologist here.

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Gotcha! The Worst Part of Debates

A gentleman named Michael Nugent is planning to debate William Lane Craig next month. And so he’s reached out to Twitter for advice. Personally, I would not advise going to Twitter for debate advice. But there you have it. The tweets flooded in, including this one from Dan Barker:

Ask him, "If God told you to kill me, would you do it?" https://t.co/0io8IP9JBw

— Dan Barker (@DanBarkerFFRF) February 10, 2017

This tweet embodies what I like least about debates: the search for gotcha talking points. To be sure, it can be entertaining to watch an opponent turn bright red as she struggles with a gotcha point. But this approach to debating squanders any fiduciary commitment to the Golden Rule: debate with others in the way you’d like them to debate with you.

Note first that by asking a loaded question — one that calls to mind the old chestnut “How often do you beat your wife?” — Barker doesn’t commit himself to anything. Strategically, that’s wise. But that’s all it is, a matter of sophistic strategy to win over an audience.

Next, note that the question implicitly conflates at least three different scenarios:

God told x to kill y.
X believes God told him to kill y.
God told x to kill y with the intent of communicating to x the desire that x kill y, and x has excellent reasons to believe (i.e. is justified in believing that) God told him to kill y.

Let’s keep in mind that any debate about God’s existence must have a definition of God at play, and by any standard definition God includes the attributes omniscience, omnipotence, and perfect goodness.

So now consider 3 again: if an omniscient, omnipotent, and perfectly good being tells you to perform an action with the desire that you perform the action, then you ought to perform the action. Sorry to be deflationary, but this is trivially true. So the answer to the scenario under interpretation 3 is “yes”.

Now let’s consider the scenario under interpretation 2 for a moment. In this case, x could be wrong. For example, he could be delusional. So if you have reason to believe you are delusional when God asks you to perform an extreme action, should you perform the action? That’s clear enough: the answer to the scenario under interpretation 2 is “no”.

Here the atheist might counter, however, that theism provides a more hospitable climate for mental illness because delusional requests can always be attributed to God.

Sure, they can be attributed to God, but an atheist has an endless supply of non-theistic candidates to represent delusional requests too including pink elephants, green aliens, and Elvis.

Ahh, the atheist replies, but the idea that a request to kill would come from a pink elephant, green alien, or Elvis is unlikely under the typical atheist’s worldview. Fine, I reply, but the schizophrenic atheist does not represent the typical atheist’s worldview. My only point is that being an atheist does not protect the atheist against receiving delusional requests.

Finally, the atheist could leave behind the specter of mental illness and return again to 3. “So it is the case that you’d kill that person and it’d be right to kill that person if God said to do it!” After all, if God commands you to do x, and your obligation is constituted by God’s command, then it becomes your obligation to perform x. And that’s true even if x is something prima facie horrible like killing another person.

Sure, but here’s the thing: that point is trivial and applies to secular ethical systems too: the same hypotheticals can be run through a range of secular ethical positions. For example, consider utilitarianism: if the greatest good is to kill the person, and your obligation is constituted by the greatest good, then it becomes your obligation to kill the person.

To sum up, Dan Barker’s advice accomplishes nothing more than cheap gotcha point scoring. And if debating is about nothing more than making your opponent blush then I’d rather not debate.

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Would God Necessarily Create Perfect Creatures? The Rauser/Schieber Debate

In January Justin Schieber and I engaged in a written debate featured at Strange Notions on the topic of whether we should expect God to create only perfect creatures. Schieber argued that we should, and thus the fact that something other than perfect creatures (e.g. us) exists provides evidence against God. I objected that we have no reason to expect that God would necessarily create only perfect creatures. And thus, the fact that we exist does not provide evidence against the existence of God.

After we finished the debate we both decided that there was still more to say and so we kept arguing. That written conversation was eventually recorded and is now featured as the latest installment (episode 3) at Schieber’s Real Atheology Podcast. You can listen to it here complete with the background ambient noise of an actual bar. (How cool is that?) Think of it as a bonus chapter to our book An Atheist and a Christian Walk into a Bar. This exchange very much catches the tone of the book.

If you prefer reading to listening, I’ve included the full transcript below as Parts 1 and 2. And if you’ve already read the Part 1 exchange at Strange Notions, feel free to skip down to the continuance of the exchange at Part 2.

Part 1

Justin: Well, Randal, we’ve officially made it out alive.

It’s been an interesting year. 2016 saw the somber losses of some of the most beloved names in popular culture as well as the death of sensible political discourse culminating with the election of a buffoon to the White House.

Randal: At least we bucked the trend toward polarization that increasingly characterizes the public square by actually talking to each other.

Justin: And yet, even after all our conversations and the publication of an entire conversational book, your theism and my atheism are still alive and kicking.

Randal: Yeah, but it should hardly be surprising. People don’t change their perspectives overnight, especially about such weighty matters as religion … or politics.  

Justin: Very true. Thankfully, we didn’t approach this book with the sole purpose of changing each other’s mind. We made a point to step out of the trenches of the atheist/theist battlefield for a chance to engage in some… doxastic diplomacy.

Randal: Hard to believe that after a couple hundred pages we were only getting started. So how about we pursue the conversation a bit further now? Any ideas?

Justin: I’ve got one. So, theists believe that God is the terminus of all explanation – that God is seated causally and logically prior to everything we know and everything we don’t (with the possible exception of abstracta like universals or numbers). I think most would also agree that God didn’t need to create any of this. In other words, if he exists, any act of creation that followed was a free choice rather than an act of necessity.

Randal: Sure.

Justin: Moreover, God is, in every way, perfect. In that light, we can be confident that, if God exists, then prior to creating anything, all that existed was pure perfection. But at present, there exists a universe made up of finite constituents.

That fact is more surprising on theism than it is on a view which states that the natural world is an uncreated, causally-closed system. Why? Well, because nearly every reason that we might appeal to in order to explain why God has created such a universe would far better motivate God to either refrain from creation acts altogether or create something entirely different.

Randal: So you think that we should expect God to create an infinite universe? I’m not sure I follow your reasoning here.

Justin: Not quite. See, I think that if God is to have reasons to create at all, those reasons would lead him to create one or more of what philosopher Evan Fales calls perfect creatures. A perfect creature is a person just like God in every way but whereas God is uncreated, a perfect creature is created. A perfect creature is maximal in his power, his knowledge, and most importantly, his moral perfection.

Randal: Okay, so your claim is that if God existed, he would create only perfect creatures. Since non-perfect creatures exist, that counts as evidence against God. But why do you think God would be restricted to creating only those perfect creatures?

Justin: It’s not so much because non-perfect creatures exist, although that’s also true. It’s because finite things exist generally. If God is to be taken as the quality standard of all things moral and ontological, then creating perfect creatures is going to best scratch any creative itch God might have given that these creatures are infinite and perfect in every way like their creator, God, the ultimate standard.

Randal: So you say. But if I can identify a possible divine “itch” which could not be scratched by creating perfect creatures, then that would constitute a defeater to your argument. So here’s one: by creating imperfect creatures who grow into moral perfection (or what Christians call being sanctified), God actualizes particular goods not available by creatures that are perfect from the beginning. These goods include the sense of moral history, of personal growth, of dynamic discovery, of learning to love and serve the creator. There are a whole range of goods God can actualize only by creating non-perfect creatures who have the capacity to grow. So what basis do you have to think God wouldn’t desire to actualize this range of goods?

Justin: Great question. So, let’s focus on your first suggestion; ‘God’s itch to create persons who can grow into moral perfection requires him to create imperfect creatures.’



First, I don’t think it’s possible for finite persons to grow into moral perfection. But, let’s assume this is possible. To see the problem with this general approach, let me ask you a simple question. What’s so good about moral growth?

Randal: In other words, what’s so good about acquiring moral virtue? That strikes me as a strange question. It’s like asking what’s the value of climbing a mountain when you can be dropped off at the top via a helicopter. There is intrinsic virtue in undertaking the journey up the mountain. And there is intrinsic value in acquiring moral virtue over time. Why would you think otherwise?

Justin: My point is simple. Reasons for valuing moral growth in imperfect creatures that already exist are not the same as reasons to create imperfect creatures in the first place. So, without imperfect creatures already existing, there is no reason to create them to be imperfect. Moreover, the introduction of imperfect creatures will bring with them failures of moral will and the various evils that result from those failures.

Randal: So you just made two points. First you said that the reasons for creating imperfect creatures would not be the same as valuing imperfect creatures that were already created. But this isn’t correct: the same valuation could be operative in both cases. If God values courage, for example, that could lead him both to create beings who acquire courage and to value creatures that presently exist who have acquired courage.

On the second point, you’re correct to observe that creating imperfect creatures who grow brings with it some degree of moral failure. But so what? You haven’t shown that the degree of moral failure outweighs the value of having creatures with a moral history who acquire virtue over time. And that’s what you need to show if you’re to sustain an objection to God’s existence based on the existence of imperfect creatures.

Justin: You’ve argued God could value courage and yet, you’ve provided no good reason to think that God antecedently does value courage. All the reasons you have provided were extracted from the fact that courage and moral growth are very good things to have if we already exist as finite, imperfect persons. Moreover, if things like courage and moral growth are such great things, then God utterly lacking in both of these abilities should be seen as a fault, rather than a feature.

I’m afraid that appealing merely to the possibility of reasons for creating such beings won’t cut it against my inference to the best explanation. Abductive inferences allow for these possibilities. At best, you’d be adding finite value to an already infinitely valuable state of affairs and at worst, as already discussed, you’d be introducing the plenitude of evils we see resulting from the choices of imperfect creatures. With the choice of worlds before an infinite God, it isn’t even close. This is a piece of evidence against theism.

Randal: No surprise, I disagree. I’d like to make three points of rebuttal. First, you said I’ve given no reason to think God values  virtues like courage. But unless and until you can defend a sweeping skepticism about our moral intuitions, I think we remain justified in thinking that God would value courage in his creatures.

You also suggested that if a virtue like courage is valuable then God ought to exemplify courage. That’s incorrect: God is by definition omniscient and omnipotent, and no being who is all-knowing and all-powerful can exhibit courage. Thus, God cannot exhibit courage.

Finally, your argument rested on the claim that if God were to create, he would create perfect creatures. I provided a reason to reject that claim, namely the goods that arise from creating imperfect creatures who grow into perfection. This very real possibility is sufficient to undermine your claim that God would only create perfect creatures.

PART 2 

Justin: You’ve made it abundantly clear that your moral intuitions point toward courage and moral growth as being profoundly valuable things such that they can serve as an excuse for God’s exiting prior purity without creating perfect creatures.

Randal: I’d prefer to say “reason” rather than “excuse.”

Justin: Fair point. I’ve argued that your moral intuitions about courage and moral growth are not only perfectly consistent with but are far better explained by the fact that we finite creatures value these things intuitively because we already exist. So, I don’t think these anthropocentric theodicies you’ve offered are capable of the weight you’ve placed upon them.

Randal: Sorry to interject again, but I never endorsed anthropocentrism.

Justin: I didn’t claim you endorsed anthropocentrism. Though, perhaps I was wrong to categorize your explanation of the value of courage (which heavily couched in the perspective of a human living in the actual world) as anthropocentric. Nevertheless, from within theistic assumptions, how do you hold that courage and moral growth are of such great value despite their not being modeled in the nature of the divine? I assume you are not defending a view wherein at least some values enjoy a kind of aseity independent of God. In other words, I must again ask, on theism, what’s so great about courage and moral growth?

On the other hand, a view which states that the natural world is an uncreated, causally-closed system will, if it brings about life at all, bring about life moderated and shaped by selective pressures. There is no plausible, or more accurately, possible evolutionary story wherein perfect creatures could arise. This practical entailment of this godless view makes the absence of perfect creatures a certainty and therefore a better explanation of these facts than a view like theism that doesn’t share this entailment.

Randal: You ask, what’s so great about courage and moral growth if God himself does not undergo courage and moral growth? The question itself supposes that for a personal quality to be of value, it must be exemplified in God. But this is mistaken.

I take it to be of value, for example, that a cheetah can run with speed and grace because when it does so it is being that which it was designed to be, that is, a cheetah. The cheetah’s value is not dependent on the fact that God is the perfect model of running on the savannah. Rather, a cheetah’s value comes relative to fulfilling the purpose for which it was made, a purpose that need not be modelled in God.

And so it is for human persons. Our value is not dependent on the attributes we develop first being modelled in God. God doesn’t need to be courageous for courage to be of value for human beings.

If you don’t value courage and its acquisition, then perhaps the best I can do is point to monumental instances of courage and hope that you share my intuitive recognition of the value of those examples. Like Dietrich Bonhoeffer returning to Germany to fight the Nazis and ultimately giving his life in the concentration camps. I believe God values beings that exercise courage in the way Bohoeffer did. And that’s a good reason to create creatures like that instead of merely the perfect creatures you’ve described.

Justin: With respect to your comments about courage specifically, I’m not sure they are of much help. To be sure, your praises of Bonhoeffer’s behavior in the face of adversity go a great distance toward demonstrating the value of courage in a world pre-packed and full of evils to overcome and press against.

But I’m afraid these insights have done nothing to demonstrate the value of courage in a world where there exist no such evils to press against. For that reason, I’m suggesting it is simply an error to pose that the value of courage (or of persons being courageous) could serve plausible motivation for God to create anything other than perfect creatures in a state of affairs at which nothing but God existed.

To make use of a different cheetah illustration, we would both raise a skeptical brow to any argument from a theologian suggesting God created a physical world because he very specifically valued spotted fur – how remarkably ad hoc! We’d be liable to  raise the other brow if, when asked to justify this assumption, our good theologian rambled on about the instrumental value of these spots for the camouflage they offer in certain physical environments of the physical world.

Randal: You suggest that being a courageous person is only of value if one has occasion to exercise their courage. I think you’re quite wrong about that. Virtue is of value — and vice is of disvalue — irrespective of whether one has occasion to act on that virtue or vice.

Imagine that Jones has a character disposition such that if she were ever to see a small, furry animal, she would torture that animal for fun. This is the only significant defect in her character, but admittedly it’s a doozy. Now it could be that Jones never encounters a small, furry animal throughout her life and thus neither Jones nor the rest of us is ever aware of her disposition to torture. By your reasoning, her disposition to torture would not constitute a defect of her moral character because she never had occasion to act upon it. I disagree. I think this remains a defect of objective disvalue, whether she ever encounters a small, furry animal or not.

And so it is with courage and cowardice. It is objectively preferable to have the virtue of courage rather than the vice of cowardice irrespective of whether you ever have occasion to exercise your courage.

Justin: Interesting point. But I want to be sure I am understanding you correctly.

Are you saying that the character disposition of courage (and the goodness of it) within Jones is consistent with there never actually being a time or state of affairs in which that courageous disposition motivates an action in Jones? If, on your view, a courageous person brings value partly in virtue of their courage, “Irrespective of whether one has occasion to act on that virtue…”, then I feel compelled to point out that, on your view, perfect creatures are perfectly capable of a courageous disposition that far exceeds that of any limited, finite, and imperfect creature.



It seems then that your claim  about the goodness of courage cannot plausibly explain why God created specifically finite creatures and the universe in which they reside rather than bringing forth perfect creatures. On the other hand, a view which states that the natural world is an uncreated, causally-closed system, we’d fully expect any existing creatures to exist as limited, finite, and imperfect creatures.

Randal: I’m afraid you’re mistaken. Your definition of “perfect creature” includes the attributes of being omnipotent — all-powerful — and omniscient — all-knowing. Any being that has absolute power could not possibly face risk or threat. And any creature that knows all true propositions (and believes no false ones)  would know he/she could not possibly face any risk or threat. But in order to exemplify courage one must either be under potential threat or face potential risk, or they must believe they are under threat or face potential risk. From this it follows that your perfect creatures cannot possibly exercise courage. If God values courage, and presumably he does, he has a good reason to create beings like us who can exercise courage and experience moral growth rather than merely create perfect creatures with no ability to exercise courage or experience moral growth.

Justin: Okay, I think I can agree with you on that point.



Recall though, that when I asked you what’s so good about courage, you appealed to your moral intuition. In response, I argued that your moral intuitions about courage are not only perfectly consistent with but are also far better explained by the fact that we finite creatures intuitively value these things because we already exist and face challenges that only we finite creatures could face.



Let me try to explain. Things like courage are instrumentally good for the world-context in which we finite creatures already exist. We develop in ourselves courage as a means to overcome evil (in possible worlds where it exists) and strive toward deeper and more basic goods. What makes courage seem so good are the deeper goods toward which courage is often rightfully aimed. With this distinction between instrumental (or worldly) goods and the deeper, more basic goods toward which they are aimed in mind, it’s still far from obvious – indeed the waters are quite murky – why God would create imperfect, finite creatures in the first place rather than perfect creatures.



On the other hand, an uncreated causally-closed system is a system in which any creatures that come to be will always be finite and imperfect. So the finitude of the creatures that exist is not surprising on the causally-closed and uncreated world hypothesis.

Randal: What you call the instrumental goodness of courage is rooted in a deeper intrinsic goodness, the goodness of being the kind of creature who combines wisdom and selflessness when under threat. After all, that’s just what courage is: it consists of the golden mean between cowardice and foolhardiness. The kind of creatures you describe cannot exemplify this intrinsic virtue because they can never be under threat or believe they’re under threat. Since God values this intrinsic good he created creatures like us who can exemplify it.



Justin: Oh, ok. So, I think we might be reaching out in different directions with how we are using these words. But alas, I’ll wait my turn.

Randal: Your position is analogous to claiming that a perfect gardener would only include orchids in his garden. I have no beef with the presence of orchids in the garden: my only point is that roses have their own qualities too.  And thus, the gardener could have good reasons for including roses as well. So if we walk into a garden and the first thing we see is roses, that isn’t evidence that there isn’t a perfect gardener.

By the same token, I have no theological problem with God creating what you call perfect creatures. My only point here is that he’d have good reasons to create us as well. Just as roses have qualities that orchids lack, so we have qualities that perfect creatures lack. And thus the existence of imperfect creatures like human beings is not evidence against the existence of God.

Justin: So, as I said, I worry we may be talking past each other.



When I talk of deeper goods or basic goods, I have in mind those goods which are plausibly foundational rather than those which are derived from deeper goods and which apply only in certain worldly contexts which presuppose the existence of evil – like courage. For example, I agree with you that selflessness is plausibly a deeper moral good in this sense just as I agree that wisdom is as well. On theism, those goods would already exist to the greatest possible degree and purest possible forms in the person of God prior to creation. These goods would also exist in any created perfect creatures if God had felt so moved.



This is not the case with the worldly and evil-presupposing good of courage.



My point is something similar to what philosopher J.L. Schellenberg has argued. If every worldly (or derived) good that permits or presupposes evil (for example, courage) is greatly exceeded by deeper, purer good(s) of the same general type, existing prior to creation in God, then any world with good(s) that permit or presuppose evil is exceeded by a world ‘modeling’ the relevant and corresponding deeper goods in the person of God or perfect creatures.



Randal: I don’t think we’re talking past one another. I think we just disagree. Look, orange may be derived from a combination of yellow and red, but that doesn’t change the fact that orange is a color in its own right and a tableau that includes orange may well be richer than one that is limited to red and yellow.

Likewise, courage may be derivative of knowledge, power, and finitude, but that doesn’t change the fact that courage has value in its own right and a tableau that includes courage is richer than one which is limited to examples of unlimited power (omnipotence) and knowledge (omniscience).

To sum up,  I deny the claim that a tableau without courage is obviously better than one with it. There is value with including orange brushstrokes on the canvas. And thus, God may have good reason to create a world with imperfect creatures who can exemplify courage.



Justin: I guess you’re right. We just disagree. Unlike you, I think that that the goodness of courage must ultimately reduce to more fundamental ethical facts that, if theism is true, are best exemplified in the nature of God prior to creation.

It seems clear to me that, on theism, any new value that things like courage bring to the table as mere tokens of an already existing deeper type of good is relatively small. Because of this, it’s not clear to me that a perfectly good God would be likely to create them especially given the intense evils they require for their existence. I hold this is probably the case for other so-called reasons for why God might possibly create us finite beings.

At the end of the day, I think the uncreated and causally closed universe hypothesis offers a superior explanation for the fact that the creatures that exist in our world are finite creatures limited in precisely the ways in which God is infinite. Power, knowledge, and goodness.

Randal: Orange may be derivative of yellow and red, but it’s still different and it has value in its own right. Courage may likewise be derivative of power and knowledge sans perfection, but it likewise has intrinsic value all its own. And thus, God could have excellent reasons to create beings that can exemplify courage. Anyway, that’s how I see it.

The post Would God Necessarily Create Perfect Creatures? The Rauser/Schieber Debate appeared first on Randal Rauser.

How Skeptical Theism Justifies Religious Doubt: A Response to Rauser

This article is a guest post by Dr. Jason Thibodeau in which he responds to my article “Skeptical Theism and Skepticism Simpliciter: A Response to Jason Thibodeau.”

Jason teaches at Cypress College and blogs at The Secular OutPost. You can also visit him online at “Not Not a Philosopher.” 

* * *

Randal has provided a thoughtful reply to my argument for the conclusion that, if skeptical theism is true, then we must be skeptical about many religious matters, including the central claims of Christianity. I want to thank Randal for publishing my original article on his website, for replying to my arguments, and for allowing us to continue the conversation. While I am very grateful for his reply, I do not think that it is a successful one.

The heart of Randal’s response is that I have not shown that the possibility that God is deceiving us is anything other than a mere possibility akin to other skeptical possibilities, such as the possibility that you are now dreaming or are a brain-in-a-vat. Randal’s view is that such possibilities do not justify skepticism. He maintains that we can trust the deliverances of our sense organs and need not doubt the beliefs that we form on the basis of sensory experiences solely on the basis of the mere possibility that our senses are systematically deceived. Much the same, Randal claims, can be said about beliefs that we form on the basis of testimony, including divine testimony. In order to doubt the beliefs we form on the basis of our senses or on the basis of testimony, we need a special reason to think that our senses are being deceived or that the testimony is unreliable.

While I do not agree with everything Randal says about skepticism, I will not take issue with his position here since the foray into skepticism and how best to respond to it involves a wrong turn toward an issue that is not relevant to my argument. Randal sees me as, perhaps unwittingly, playing the role of the skeptic who points out that you have to know that your belief-forming mechanisms are reliable in order to trust the beliefs that these mechanisms generate. But that is not an accurate account of the substance of my argument. In this post, I will explain how Randal gets my argument wrong and try to lay out in more detail than I did in my original article the reasoning that supports my conclusion.

Randal offers the following brief paraphrase of my argument:

Jason claims that the Christian cannot know a claim like “Jesus died for our sins” because God could be lying.

This is not a good presentation of my argument, for two reasons. The first reason is that I was careful to not say merely that, for all we know, God has reasons to lie to us about very important things. Here is what I said,

It is possible that there are morally sufficient reasons that justify God’s causing (or permitting some other being(s) to cause) many humans to falsely believe that Jesus of Nazareth died on the cross for the forgiveness of sins.

So, what I said is that it is possible (a) that God has reasons to deceive us, and that (b) God has reasons to permit us to be deceived. And I was careful to indicate that the latter possibility does not have to involve God’s deceiving us; it could involve God permitting some other being to deceive us. The reason that this is important is that I wanted to avoid the issue, which is irrelevant for present purposes, of whether God, being morally perfect, could ever lie. That is why I added clause (b). God might never engage in a lie (I say this merely as a possibility, I am not convinced that it is true), but that would not entail that he never allows us to be deceived. In the same way, God might never destroy a city populated by hundreds of thousands of people, but, according to theists, he has allowed cities populated by hundreds of thousands of people to be destroyed.

The second, and more important, reason that Randal’s paraphrase of my argument is unacceptable is that I did not say that the mere possibility that God could be lying (or that he allows us to be deceived) is sufficient to justify skepticism about God’s veracity. I said that the possibility that God has reasons to allow us to be deceived, coupled with the claim, which the skeptical theist is committed to, that God does have sufficient reason to refrain from preventing horrors such as the Holocaust, justifies skepticism about the central claims of Christianity and many other matters of importance.

The most important part of my argument, which Randal has not yet addressed, is that the existence of reasons that justify God’s refraining from preventing horrors makes it more likely that there are reasons that justify God’s permitting our being deceived about a great many very important things. Thus, when Randal says,

My contention is that mere possibilities like this are not the kind of things that should worry a person. To say they are is to stake out a position in epistemology which leads to skepticism, whether you’re a theist or not.

he is missing the point of my argument. I am not saying that there is this mere possibility (that God might be lying) and this grounds skepticism. I agree with Randal that we need some reason to take the possibility seriously before it can justify skepticism. My argument is, rather, that skeptical theism gives us reasons to be worried about the possibility that God might have reasons to permit our being deceived.

Randal takes my argument to be this:

Premise: It is possible that God has reasons to deceive us (or to permit our being deceived).

Conclusion: We cannot be sure that we are not being deceived about the central claims of Christianity or a great many other very important matters.

But this is not my argument. My argument is this:

Premise: God has reasons, some of which are probably beyond our ken, to refrain from preventing events of great horror (i.e., skeptical theism).

Conclusion: Thus, it is not unlikely that God has reasons, some of which might be beyond our ken, to permit large numbers of people to be deceived about matters of great importance.

It would be legitimate to criticize this argument by suggesting that it is too compact. It is true that I left implicit some inferential moves. With that in mind, I will expand the above argument as follows:

(1) God has reasons, some of which are probably beyond our ken, to refrain from preventing events of great horror (i.e., skeptical theism)

(2) The deception of vast numbers of people about matters of great importance would be a significantly bad state of affairs.

(3) The deception of vast numbers of people about matters of great importance would not be as bad as the total amount of other horror (such as deaths by disease, starvation, war, the Holocaust, etc.) that God has refrained from preventing.

(4) If God has reasons, some of which are probably beyond our ken, for refraining from preventing all of this great horror (disease, starvation, etc.), then it is not improbable that he has reasons to permit the occurrence of events that would not be as bad.

(5) Thus, it is not improbable that there are reasons for God to permit the deception of vast numbers of people about matters of great importance.

Let me say a bit about what I mean about “not improbable that.” I do not think that we can say with precision how probable it is that, on the assumption that there are reasons beyond our ken that justify God’s failure to prevent horrors, there are reasons beyond our ken that justify God’s allowing us to be deceived. But I do think that the existence of the former kind of reason makes the existence of the latter kind of reason much more likely. The important thing with respect to Randal’s reply to my argument is that the probability that the latter sort of reasons exist is high enough (again, on skeptical theism) that we cannot just dismiss the possibility as a mere possibility that need not worry a theist.

At the end of his reply, Randal says,

This does not mean that one is excused from needing to consider defeaters to the various beliefs we form under diverse circumstances. But it does mean that those beliefs are treated as innocent until proven guilty.

My argument is successful if it shows that, on skeptical theism, the probability that there are reasons that justify God’s allowing us to be deceived about very important things is significant enough that it overcomes this presumption of innocence. And I think that I have shown this. It is not mere idle speculation that leads to the possibility that there are such reasons. It is, rather, a conclusion reached on the basis of comparing the evil associated with vast deception with the kinds and amount of evil that we know that God, if he exists, has reasons to refrain from preventing.

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