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Nonbelief & Evil: Two Arguments for the Nonexistence of God
Can God's nonexistence be established by good, clear, objective evidence? It all depends on what is meant by "God." This book expands the frontiers of philosophy by exploring this nest of issues in more detail than ever before, while presenting a strong case for atheism.The two major arguments in support of nonexistence, the more established Argument from Evil and the recent Argument from Nonbelief, are explored individually and in parallel development while defending both against the strongest objections.Included are examinations of the free-will problem, the possibility of an afterlife, arguments by theists, and positive atheism. Drange also discusses specific concepts of the duty e.g. of evangelical and liberal Christianity, and orthodox Judaism to demonstrate how theological and atheological arguments depend upon the conception of God one accepts.
408 pages, Hardcover
First published August 1, 1998
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About the author
Theodore Drange
3 books3 followersI have been teaching philosophy at West Virginia University since 1966 (at the rank of full professor since 1974). Prior to that I taught philosophy at Brooklyn College (1960-62), the University of Oregon (1962-65), and Idaho State University (1965-66).
My teaching specialties are Philosophy of Religion, Philosophy of Language, and Theory of Knowledge. I have also taught many other subjects, including Logic, Philosophy of Mind, and Philosophy of Science. Two courses which I invented and which I teach on occasion at WVU are Philosophy of Games and Philosophy of Fundamentalism. The latter course is a critical study of the doctrines of Christian fundamentalism and their philosophical implications.
I received my B.A. degree in 1955 from Brooklyn College (which is now part of CUNY) and my Ph.D. from Cornell University in 1963.
Among my publications are two books. One is in the philosophy of language entitled Type Crossings (The Hague: Mouton & Co., 1966). The other is in the philosophy of religion entitled Nonbelief and Evil: Two Arguments for the Nonexistence of God (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1998).
There are also several articles published in print journals, the most recent ones being the following:
"Liar Syllogisms", Analysis 50 (1990), pp. 1-7.
"The Argument from Non-belief", Religious Studies 29 (1993), pp. 417-432.
"Slater on Self-referential Arguments", Analysis 54 (1994), pp. 61-64.
"Biblical Contradictions Regarding Salvation", Free Inquiry 14 (Summer 1994), pp. 56-57.
"Nonbelief vs. Lack of Evidence: Two Atheological Arguments," Philo 1, no. 1 (Spring-Summer 1998), pp. 105-114.
"Incompatible-Properties Arguments: A Survey," Philo 1, no. 2 (Fall-Winter 1998), pp. 49-60.
Personal Data: I was born in 1934 in Brooklyn, NY and married in 1959. I have two children, both living in CA, and five grandchildren.
More: http://atheistsunited.org/article/281...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodore...
http://www.amazon.com/Theodore-M.-Dra...
My teaching specialties are Philosophy of Religion, Philosophy of Language, and Theory of Knowledge. I have also taught many other subjects, including Logic, Philosophy of Mind, and Philosophy of Science. Two courses which I invented and which I teach on occasion at WVU are Philosophy of Games and Philosophy of Fundamentalism. The latter course is a critical study of the doctrines of Christian fundamentalism and their philosophical implications.
I received my B.A. degree in 1955 from Brooklyn College (which is now part of CUNY) and my Ph.D. from Cornell University in 1963.
Among my publications are two books. One is in the philosophy of language entitled Type Crossings (The Hague: Mouton & Co., 1966). The other is in the philosophy of religion entitled Nonbelief and Evil: Two Arguments for the Nonexistence of God (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1998).
There are also several articles published in print journals, the most recent ones being the following:
"Liar Syllogisms", Analysis 50 (1990), pp. 1-7.
"The Argument from Non-belief", Religious Studies 29 (1993), pp. 417-432.
"Slater on Self-referential Arguments", Analysis 54 (1994), pp. 61-64.
"Biblical Contradictions Regarding Salvation", Free Inquiry 14 (Summer 1994), pp. 56-57.
"Nonbelief vs. Lack of Evidence: Two Atheological Arguments," Philo 1, no. 1 (Spring-Summer 1998), pp. 105-114.
"Incompatible-Properties Arguments: A Survey," Philo 1, no. 2 (Fall-Winter 1998), pp. 49-60.
Personal Data: I was born in 1934 in Brooklyn, NY and married in 1959. I have two children, both living in CA, and five grandchildren.
More: http://atheistsunited.org/article/281...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodore...
http://www.amazon.com/Theodore-M.-Dra...
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June 2, 2024
A PRESENTATION OF TWO ARGUMENTS SUGGESTING THE NONEXISTENCE OF GOD
Author (and professor of philosophy at West Virginia University) Theodore M. Drange wrote in the Preface to this 1998 book, “We will be discussing, among other things, the problem of evil… in the philosophy of religion [this is]… the question, ‘Does the evil in the world provide good reason to deny the existence of God?’… There are two basic arguments for God’s nonexistence discussed throughout the book, called the Argument from Evil [AE] and the Argument from Nonbelief [ANB]. Then there are defenses of God’s existence against these two… The basic subject matter of this book is a close consideration and assessment and all those many objections.. My overall aim is to show that each of the twelve defenses is refuted by at least one good objection. Thus, I regard both the Argument from Evil and the Argument from Nonbelief to be forceful and cogent attacks on the popular belief that God exists.” (Pg. 15)
He explains, “In the title of this book, the terms ‘nonbelief’ and ‘evil’ are being used in a somewhat different way from each other… Whereas ‘evil’ means the same thing throughout the book, the term ‘nonbelief’ means different things depending on context… in chapters 2-11 ‘nonbelief’ is taken to mean an absence of belief in the basic message of evangelical Christianity… but in chapters 12-14 other meanings… are considered… the term ‘evil’ … is to refer just to suffering and premature death… I shall take ‘doing evil’ to mean ‘causing suffering or premature death’ and I shall take ‘experiencing evil’ to mean simply ‘suffering or dying prematurely.” (Pg. 26-27)
He notes, “one main thesis of this book is that AE [the Argument from Evil] is not the only important atheological argument around. Even when the incompatible-properties arguments are disregarded and only God-vs.-world arguments are considered, there is another contender to take on God’s existence that is ANB [Argument from Nonbelief]. But I shall try to show … that both arguments are very strong, especially in the context of evangelical Christianity… the problems of nonbelief and the problem of evil are PARALLEL problems in the philosophy of religion and should receive parallel treatment within it. Another main thesis is that the problem of nonbelief is an even greater difficulty for evangelical Christianity than is the problem of evil… The reason why it is more forceful is … There is biblical evidence that if the God of evangelical Christianity were to exist then he would have a great concern about humanity’s widespread lack of belief in the gospel message… Hence, the widespread absence of such belief among humans is a better reason to deny the existence of THAT god than is the widespread earthly suffering among humans.” (Pg. 72)
He argues, “The Natural-evils Objection is even more devastating than may at first seem. It contains a secondary objection to FWD [Free-Will Defense]… [that] could be called ‘the Impediment Objection.’ Many of the natural evils in our world not only cause enormous suffering but are also an impediment to free will. This is especially obvious in the case of premature death. When children die, they lose all opportunity to exercise free will. It also applies to other forms of suffering, especially injuries and diseases that are greatly incapacitating. People who are incapacitated have less opportunity to exercise free will than those who lead relatively normal lives. Thus, if God really has human free will as a higher priority than the prevention of suffering… then it would have behooved him to create a world in which considerably more people come to exercise it in their lives.” (Pg. 107-108)
He suggests, “God could further aid missionaries in their evangelistic enterprises, as he did in the first century according to the Book of Acts, by giving them the power to perform healings and resurrections that cannot be explained naturalistically… Further, God could have influenced the preservation and dissemination of knowledge about the Bible in the schools, which would have made the truth of Scripture a part of history and general knowledge… The claim that for God to perform such actions would interfere with people’s free will is obviously misguided… The very fact that there are people who very firmly believe the gospel message and yet retain their free will shows that non-Christians could be made to be like those people without having their free will compromised. How do most people become Christians? Probably it is simply through social conditioning or indoctrination from childhood. It would be counter-intuitive to suggest that THAT way of acquiring beliefs (force of authority) preserves free will whereas belief acquisition through the presentation of good evidence interferes with it.” (Pg. 128-129)
He asserts, “most evangelical Christians believe that not everyone will get to heaven, and that if people were to fail God’s test then they would end up being eternally tormented to hell. Such a view not only reintroduces the Unfairness Objection, but is morally repugnant in itself. Even if everyone on earth were tested equitably and even if there were a significant gap between all those who pass and all those who fail, it would still seem immoral for God to let people endure eternal torment. We are inclined to ask, ‘What could they possibly had done to deserve THAT?’” (Pg. 160)
He states, “Another objection to ADE [Afterlife Defense] is that there sometimes occur forms of suffering that are too extreme it is impossible that they should ever be rectified, i.e., rendered negligible or fully compensated by rewards… An example often appealed to is the Holocaust … Suppose it were suggested that the victims of the Holocaust have gone (or will go) to heaven and will enjoy eternal bliss … Maybe the memory of their earthly suffering will be erased… Even with all that, a good case could be made … that their extreme suffering could not be rectified. No matter how much bliss they come to enjoy, it would have been better, overall, if the Holocaust had never happened. Hence, the claim made in ADE that ALL forms of suffering (at least among the saved) will be rectified in the afterlife is an incorrect claim, which makes ADE an unsound argument… The objection … is that personal identity could no longer be preserved if one’s most significant earthly memories were to become ‘dimmed to the point of extinction.’ To be coherent, ADE needs to allow that people’s memories are retained in the afterlife, but then is confronted by the problem of memories that are exceedingly painful.” (Pg. 185)
He explains, “Attempts have been made to explain why God permits (and has permitted for a long time) billions of people to go through life on earth without any awareness of the truth of Christianity’s gospel message. It is a natural question why he hasn’t done something to prevent it. According to FDN, he is afraid that such divine intervention in human affairs would interfere with people’s free will, which he wants to avoid. And according to TDN [Testing Defense], he is testing people as regards their beliefs and wants to avoid upsetting the tests… It is simply not true that for God to enlighten the billions about the truth of the gospel message would necessarily interfere with their free will, and the idea of testing people has been shown to be bogus from the start.” (Pg. 219)
He points out, “Both problems, evil and nonbelief, are most serious for evangelical Christians because of their great reliance on the Bible… There is excellent reason to maintain… that if God existed, then he would have done more to prevent or reduce the enormous amount of evil and nonbelief that exist or occur on our planet. When applied to the God of evangelical Christianity, [they] are both sound arguments with premises that receive excellent support from the Bible. For example, ANB claims that if the God of evangelical Christianity were to exist, then he would want all, or almost all, people to be aware of the truth of the gospel message, and indeed that premise is very strongly supported by the Bible.” (Pg. 286)
He summarizes, “Here … [are] the four main claims of this book: 1. [The versions] of AE [and]… ANB … are all sound deductive arguments. 2. Although not all of the objections to the various defenses of AE and ANB are sound, almost all of them are. Furthermore, each defense is refuted by at least one objection. 3. When the support for the premises is included… Those expanded arguments are strong inductive (or evidential) atheological arguments… 4. … the expanded ANB is in every context a stronger atheological argument than the expanded AE… 5. It could be said that… God’s nonexistence has been established beyond a reasonable doubt, though I tend to see the matter as one involving degree and the ‘preponderance of evidence.’” (Pg. 295)
This book will be of great interest to those studying “atheological” arguments, and the Philosophy of Religion in general.
Author (and professor of philosophy at West Virginia University) Theodore M. Drange wrote in the Preface to this 1998 book, “We will be discussing, among other things, the problem of evil… in the philosophy of religion [this is]… the question, ‘Does the evil in the world provide good reason to deny the existence of God?’… There are two basic arguments for God’s nonexistence discussed throughout the book, called the Argument from Evil [AE] and the Argument from Nonbelief [ANB]. Then there are defenses of God’s existence against these two… The basic subject matter of this book is a close consideration and assessment and all those many objections.. My overall aim is to show that each of the twelve defenses is refuted by at least one good objection. Thus, I regard both the Argument from Evil and the Argument from Nonbelief to be forceful and cogent attacks on the popular belief that God exists.” (Pg. 15)
He explains, “In the title of this book, the terms ‘nonbelief’ and ‘evil’ are being used in a somewhat different way from each other… Whereas ‘evil’ means the same thing throughout the book, the term ‘nonbelief’ means different things depending on context… in chapters 2-11 ‘nonbelief’ is taken to mean an absence of belief in the basic message of evangelical Christianity… but in chapters 12-14 other meanings… are considered… the term ‘evil’ … is to refer just to suffering and premature death… I shall take ‘doing evil’ to mean ‘causing suffering or premature death’ and I shall take ‘experiencing evil’ to mean simply ‘suffering or dying prematurely.” (Pg. 26-27)
He notes, “one main thesis of this book is that AE [the Argument from Evil] is not the only important atheological argument around. Even when the incompatible-properties arguments are disregarded and only God-vs.-world arguments are considered, there is another contender to take on God’s existence that is ANB [Argument from Nonbelief]. But I shall try to show … that both arguments are very strong, especially in the context of evangelical Christianity… the problems of nonbelief and the problem of evil are PARALLEL problems in the philosophy of religion and should receive parallel treatment within it. Another main thesis is that the problem of nonbelief is an even greater difficulty for evangelical Christianity than is the problem of evil… The reason why it is more forceful is … There is biblical evidence that if the God of evangelical Christianity were to exist then he would have a great concern about humanity’s widespread lack of belief in the gospel message… Hence, the widespread absence of such belief among humans is a better reason to deny the existence of THAT god than is the widespread earthly suffering among humans.” (Pg. 72)
He argues, “The Natural-evils Objection is even more devastating than may at first seem. It contains a secondary objection to FWD [Free-Will Defense]… [that] could be called ‘the Impediment Objection.’ Many of the natural evils in our world not only cause enormous suffering but are also an impediment to free will. This is especially obvious in the case of premature death. When children die, they lose all opportunity to exercise free will. It also applies to other forms of suffering, especially injuries and diseases that are greatly incapacitating. People who are incapacitated have less opportunity to exercise free will than those who lead relatively normal lives. Thus, if God really has human free will as a higher priority than the prevention of suffering… then it would have behooved him to create a world in which considerably more people come to exercise it in their lives.” (Pg. 107-108)
He suggests, “God could further aid missionaries in their evangelistic enterprises, as he did in the first century according to the Book of Acts, by giving them the power to perform healings and resurrections that cannot be explained naturalistically… Further, God could have influenced the preservation and dissemination of knowledge about the Bible in the schools, which would have made the truth of Scripture a part of history and general knowledge… The claim that for God to perform such actions would interfere with people’s free will is obviously misguided… The very fact that there are people who very firmly believe the gospel message and yet retain their free will shows that non-Christians could be made to be like those people without having their free will compromised. How do most people become Christians? Probably it is simply through social conditioning or indoctrination from childhood. It would be counter-intuitive to suggest that THAT way of acquiring beliefs (force of authority) preserves free will whereas belief acquisition through the presentation of good evidence interferes with it.” (Pg. 128-129)
He asserts, “most evangelical Christians believe that not everyone will get to heaven, and that if people were to fail God’s test then they would end up being eternally tormented to hell. Such a view not only reintroduces the Unfairness Objection, but is morally repugnant in itself. Even if everyone on earth were tested equitably and even if there were a significant gap between all those who pass and all those who fail, it would still seem immoral for God to let people endure eternal torment. We are inclined to ask, ‘What could they possibly had done to deserve THAT?’” (Pg. 160)
He states, “Another objection to ADE [Afterlife Defense] is that there sometimes occur forms of suffering that are too extreme it is impossible that they should ever be rectified, i.e., rendered negligible or fully compensated by rewards… An example often appealed to is the Holocaust … Suppose it were suggested that the victims of the Holocaust have gone (or will go) to heaven and will enjoy eternal bliss … Maybe the memory of their earthly suffering will be erased… Even with all that, a good case could be made … that their extreme suffering could not be rectified. No matter how much bliss they come to enjoy, it would have been better, overall, if the Holocaust had never happened. Hence, the claim made in ADE that ALL forms of suffering (at least among the saved) will be rectified in the afterlife is an incorrect claim, which makes ADE an unsound argument… The objection … is that personal identity could no longer be preserved if one’s most significant earthly memories were to become ‘dimmed to the point of extinction.’ To be coherent, ADE needs to allow that people’s memories are retained in the afterlife, but then is confronted by the problem of memories that are exceedingly painful.” (Pg. 185)
He explains, “Attempts have been made to explain why God permits (and has permitted for a long time) billions of people to go through life on earth without any awareness of the truth of Christianity’s gospel message. It is a natural question why he hasn’t done something to prevent it. According to FDN, he is afraid that such divine intervention in human affairs would interfere with people’s free will, which he wants to avoid. And according to TDN [Testing Defense], he is testing people as regards their beliefs and wants to avoid upsetting the tests… It is simply not true that for God to enlighten the billions about the truth of the gospel message would necessarily interfere with their free will, and the idea of testing people has been shown to be bogus from the start.” (Pg. 219)
He points out, “Both problems, evil and nonbelief, are most serious for evangelical Christians because of their great reliance on the Bible… There is excellent reason to maintain… that if God existed, then he would have done more to prevent or reduce the enormous amount of evil and nonbelief that exist or occur on our planet. When applied to the God of evangelical Christianity, [they] are both sound arguments with premises that receive excellent support from the Bible. For example, ANB claims that if the God of evangelical Christianity were to exist, then he would want all, or almost all, people to be aware of the truth of the gospel message, and indeed that premise is very strongly supported by the Bible.” (Pg. 286)
He summarizes, “Here … [are] the four main claims of this book: 1. [The versions] of AE [and]… ANB … are all sound deductive arguments. 2. Although not all of the objections to the various defenses of AE and ANB are sound, almost all of them are. Furthermore, each defense is refuted by at least one objection. 3. When the support for the premises is included… Those expanded arguments are strong inductive (or evidential) atheological arguments… 4. … the expanded ANB is in every context a stronger atheological argument than the expanded AE… 5. It could be said that… God’s nonexistence has been established beyond a reasonable doubt, though I tend to see the matter as one involving degree and the ‘preponderance of evidence.’” (Pg. 295)
This book will be of great interest to those studying “atheological” arguments, and the Philosophy of Religion in general.
December 29, 2019
It’s a difficult, but worthwhile book to read. The first time that I heard about the Argument from Nonbelief was when I read this book many years ago. Now, I’m not a philosopher, so I’m sure that I understood even less than what I thought I understood. However, it was worth my time trying to make my way through this book.
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