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March 3 - April 6, 2015
there’s no evidence that a life-permitting universe is physically necessary. Quite the contrary, all the evidence indicates that life-prohibiting universes are not only possible but far, far more likely than any life-permitting universe.
Theorists have therefore come to recognize that the Anthropic Principle cannot eliminate the need of an explanation of the fine-tuning unless it’s conjoined with a many worlds hypothesis. According to that hypothesis, our universe is but one member of a world ensemble or “multiverse” of randomly ordered universes, preferably infinite in number. If all of these other universes really exist, then by chance alone life-permitting worlds will appear somewhere in the world ensemble. Since only finely tuned universes have observers in them, any observers existing in the world ensemble will naturally
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One way to respond to the many worlds hypothesis would be to show that the multiverse itself also involves fine-tuning. For in order to be scientifically credible, some plausible mechanism must be suggested for generating the many worlds. But if the many worlds hypothesis is to be successful in attributing fine-tuning to chance alone, then the mechanism that generates the many worlds had better not be fine-tuned itself!
There’s no evidence that the sort of world ensemble required by the many worlds hypothesis actually exists. By contrast, we have good, independent reasons for believing in a Designer of the cosmos, as Leibniz and al-Ghazali’s arguments show.
Roger Penrose has pressed this objection forcefully.[1] He points out that the odds of our universe’s initial low-entropy condition’s existing by chance alone are one chance out of 1010 (123). By contrast the odds of our solar system’s suddenly forming by the random collision of particles is one chance out of 1010 (60). This number, says Penrose, is “utter chicken feed” in comparison with 1010 (123). What that means is that it is far more likely that we should be observing an orderly universe no larger than our solar system, since a world of that size is unfathomably more probable than a
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In fact, we wind up with the same sort of illusionism that saddled Boltzmann’s hypothesis. A small world with the illusion of a wider, orderly universe is more probable than a fine-tuned, real universe. Carried to its logical extreme, this has led to what theorists have called “the invasion of the Boltzmann brains.” For the most probable observable universe is one that consists of a single brain that pops into existence by a random fluctuation with illusory perceptions of the orderly cosmos! So if you accept the many worlds hypothesis, you’re obligated to believe that you are all that exists
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Detractors of design sometimes object that on this hypothesis the Cosmic Designer Himself remains unexplained. This objection is what Richard Dawkins calls “the central argument of my book” The God Delusion.[2] He summarizes his argument as follows: 1. One of the greatest challenges to the human intellect has been to explain how the complex, improbable appearance of design in the universe arises. 2. The natural temptation is to attribute the appearance of design to actual design itself. 3. The temptation is a false one because the designer hypothesis immediately raises the larger problem of
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Dawkins’ argument is jarring because the atheistic conclusion, “Therefore, God almost certainly does not exist,” doesn’t follow from the six previous statements even if we concede that each of them is true. There are no rules of logic that would permit such an inference. Dawkins’ argument is plainly invalid. At most, all that follows from Dawkins’ argument is that we should not infer God’s existence on the basis of the appearance of design in the universe. But that conclusion is quite compatible with God’s existence and even with our justifiably believing in God’s existence. Maybe we should
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But does Dawkins’ argument succeed even in undermining the argument for design? Not at all, for several of the steps of Dawkins’ argument are plausibly false. Step 5 refers to the cosmic fine-tuning that has been the focus of our discussion. Dawkins has nothing by way of explanation for it,
Moreover, consider step 3. Dawkins’ claim here is that we are not justified in inferring design as the best explanation of the complex order of the universe because then a new problem arises: Who designed the designer?
This claim is flawed on at least two counts. First, in order to recognize an explanation as the best, you don’t need to have an explanation of the explanation. This is an elementary point in the philosophy of science.
So in order to recognize an explanation as the best, you don’t need to be able to explain the explanation. In fact, such a requirement would lead to an infinite regress of explanations, so that nothing could ever be explained and science would be destroyed!
Second, Dawkins thinks that in the case of a divine Designer of the universe, the Designer is just as complex as the thing to be explained, so that no explanatory advance is made. This objection raises all sorts of questions about the role played by simplicity in assessing competing explanations. For example, there are many other factors besides simplicity that scientists weigh in determining which explanation is the best, such as explanatory power, explanatory scope, and so forth. An explanation that has broader explanatory scope may be less simple than a rival explanation but still be
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But leave those questions aside. Dawkins’ fundamental mistake lies in his assumption that a divine Designer is just as complex as the universe. That is plainly false. As a pure mind without a body, God is a remarkably simple entity. A mind (or soul) is not a physical object composed of parts. In contrast to the contingent and variegated universe with all its inexplicable constants and quantities, a divine mind is startlingly simple. Certainly such a mind may have complex ideas—it may be thinking, for example, of the infinitesimal calculus—but the mind itself is a remarkably simple, spiritual
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Sorley argues that the best hope for a rational, unified view of reality is to postulate God as the ground of both the natural and the moral orders.
He recognizes that in one sense we can’t prove that objective moral values exist, but he points out that in this same sense we can’t prove that the natural world of physical objects exists either! (You could be a body lying in the Matrix experiencing a virtual reality.)
1. If God does not exist, objective moral values and duties do not exist. 2. Objective moral values and duties do exist. 3. Therefore, God exists. This simple little argument is easy to memorize and is logically ironclad. I had argued for the truth of the first premise and the students had insisted on the second. Together the two premises imply the existence of God.
Duty has to do with moral obligation, what you ought or ought not to do. But obviously you’re not morally obligated to do something just because it would be good for you to do it. For example, it would be good for you to become a doctor, but you’re not morally obligated to become a doctor. After all, it would also be good for you to become a homemaker or a farmer or a diplomat, but you can’t do them all.
So there’s a difference between good/bad and right/wrong. Good/bad has to do with something’s worth, while right/wrong has to do with something’s being obligatory.
to say that there are objective moral values is to say that something is good or bad no matter what people think about it. Similarly, to say that we have objective moral duties is to say that certain actions are right or wrong for us regardless of what people think.
Objective means independent of human opinion. For example, the laws of nature hold whether we acknowledge them or not, so they are objective. Subjective means dependent on human opinion. For example, matters of taste, like whether coffee tastes good, are person-relative and so are subjective.
On the atheistic view, human beings are just animals, and animals have no moral obligations to one another. When a lion kills a zebra, it kills the zebra, but it does not murder the zebra. When a great white shark forcibly copulates with a female, it forcibly copulates with her but it does not rape her—for there is no moral dimension to these actions. They are neither prohibited nor obligatory.
Certain actions such as incest and rape may not be biologically and socially advantageous and so in the course of human development have become taboo. But that does absolutely nothing to show that rape or incest is really wrong. Such behavior goes on all the time in the animal kingdom. The rapist who goes against the herd morality is doing nothing more serious than acting unfashionably, like the man who belches loudly at the dinner table. If there is no moral lawgiver, then there is no objective moral law that we must obey.
The question is not: Must we believe in God in order to live moral lives?
Again, the question is not: Can we recognize objective moral values and duties without believing in God?
Or again, the question is not: Can we formulate a system of ethics without referring to God?
Rather the question is: If God does not exist, do objective moral values and duties exist? The question is not about the necessity of belief in God for objective morality but about the necessity of the existence of God for objective morality.
Belief in God is not necessary for objective morality; God is.
the so-called Euthyphro dilemma, named after a character in one of Plato’s dialogues. It basically goes like this: Is something good because God wills it? Or does God will something because it is good?
We don’t need to refute either of the two horns of the Euthyphro dilemma, because the dilemma it presents is a false one: There’s a third alternative, namely, God wills something because He is good.
So moral values are not independent of God because God’s own character defines what is good. God is essentially compassionate, fair, kind, impartial, and so on. His nature is the moral standard defining good and bad. His commands necessarily reflect His moral nature. Therefore, they’re not arbitrary.
So the Euthyphro dilemma presents us with a false choice, and we shouldn’t be tricked by it. The morally good/bad is determined by God’s nature, and the morally right/wrong is determined by His will. God wills something because He is good, and something is right because God wills it.
The view of moral values and duties explained in the text has been eloquently defended in our day by such eminent philosophers as Robert Adams, William Alston, and Philip Quinn.
It’s far more plausible, as Sorley contended, to think that both the natural realm and the moral realm are under the authority of a God who gave us both the laws of nature and the moral law than to think that these two independent realms just happened to mesh.
Given atheism, why think that what is conducive to human flourishing is any more valuable than what is conducive to the flourishing of ants or mice?
Philosophers who reflect on our moral experience see no more reason to distrust that experience than the experience of our five senses. I believe what my five senses tell me, namely, that there is a world of physical objects out there. My senses are not infallible, but that doesn’t lead me to think that there is no external world around me. Similarly, in the absence of some reason to distrust my moral experience, I should accept what it tells me, namely, that some things are objectively good or evil, right or wrong.
Most of us recognize that sexual abuse of another person is wrong. Actions like rape, torture, and child abuse aren’t just socially unacceptable behavior—they’re moral abominations. By the same token, love, generosity, and self-sacrifice are really good. People who fail to see this are just handicapped, the moral equivalent of someone who is physically blind, and there’s no reason to let their impairment call into question what we see clearly.
If God does not exist, then the sociobiological account is true, and our moral beliefs are illusory. But, you see, that’s no reason to think that the sociobiological account is true. Indeed, if God exists, then it’s likely that He would want us to have fundamentally correct moral beliefs and so would either guide the evolutionary process to produce such beliefs or else instill them in us (Rom. 2:15). Apart from the assumption of atheism, we have no reason to deny what our moral experience tells us.
From the two premises, it follows that God exists. The moral argument complements the cosmological and design arguments by telling us about the moral nature of the Creator of the universe. It gives us a personal, necessarily existent being, who is not only perfectly good, but whose nature is the standard of goodness and whose commands constitute our moral duties.
So, in answer to the question that opened this chapter: No, we cannot truly be good without God; but if we can in some measure be good, then it follows that God exists.
there really aren’t very many arguments against God’s existence. The atheist’s main complaint is that there isn’t any evidence for God’s existence. But if you’ve mastered the four arguments we’ve just run through, that complaint won’t apply to you.
Try to get the unbeliever to engage with your specific premises.
no proof that God does not exist. An Australian forensic scientist I met while lecturing in Sydney told me that there’s a saying beloved of criminologists: Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. A suspect might still be the murderer even if there is no evidence that he is. To rule him out, you need an alibi, that is, positive evidence that he did not commit the crime. To rule out God’s existence, the atheist needs more than just absence of evidence; he needs some positive evidence of absence.
Very often atheists themselves admit that they have no evidence of God’s absence, but they try to put a different spin on it. They’ll tell you, “No one can prove a universal negative” (like “There is no God”). They think this somehow excuses them from needing evidence against God’s existence. But not only is it false that you can’t prove a universal negative (all you have to do is show something is self-contradictory), but more importantly, this claim is really an admission that it’s impossible to prove atheism!
In the previous chapters we were considering arguments for God, and so it was the believer who had to bear the burden of proof. But now it’s the atheist’s turn. We’re considering arguments for atheism. We want to hear from the atheist some arguments against God. So now it’s the atheist who must shoulder the burden of proof. It’s up to him to give us an argument leading to the conclusion “Therefore, God does not exist.” Too often believers allow unbelievers to shift the burden of proof to the believer’s shoulders. “Give me some good explanation for why God permits suffering,” the unbeliever
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Don’t allow the atheist to shirk his intellectual responsibilities. He’s the one who claims that the coexistence of God and suffering is impossible or improbable. So it’s up to him to give us his argument and to support his premises.
Now before you begin to talk to the unbeliever about the problem of suffering, you need to find out which version he’s supporting. So just ask him, “Are you saying that it’s impossible for God and the suffering in the world to both exist, or are you saying that it’s merely improbable that God and suffering both exist?”
Some philosophers would say that the essence of libertarian freedom is the ability to choose between action A or not-A in the same circumstances. An arguably better analysis of libertarian freedom sees its essence in the absence of causal determination of a person’s choice apart from the person’s own causal activity.
This conception of freedom is very different from the voluntarist or compatibilist view, which defines freedom in terms of voluntary (or noncoerced) action, so that an action’s being causally determined is compatible with its being “free.” The notion of freedom operative in this chapter is libertarian freedom, which precludes God’s determining how we shall freely choose.
As finite persons, we’re limited in space and time, in intelligence and insight. But God sees the end of history from its beginning and providentially orders history to His ends through people’s free decisions and actions. In order to achieve His purposes God may have to allow a great deal of suffering along the way. Suffering that appears pointless within our limited framework may be seen to have been justly permitted by God within His wider framework.
