Showing posts with label William Lane Craig. Show all posts
Showing posts with label William Lane Craig. Show all posts

Sunday, July 7, 2013

An Atheists Reads "I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist" & "Reasonable Faith"


I came across YouTuber Steve Shives a few months back. He critiques some of the most popular apologetics books out there and does a pretty good job doing so. Check out his videos and channel on YouTube for an insightful look at the underbelly of Christian apologetics.


An Atheist Reads I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist:




An Atheist Reads Reasonable Faith:

Saturday, July 6, 2013

Possible Worlds And Divine Options: Another Look At The Problem Of Suffering



When I occasionally debate theists on the problem of suffering they will sometimes say that god had no choice but to create a world in which there is suffering. Or they will say that for every possible world that god could have created, there will always be one that is better, and so no possible world will ever be ideal. Given this constraint, god decides to create whatever world he sees fit. He's motivated, according to some theists, to create the possible world in which the maximum number of people freely enter into a loving relationship with him. Since this is often espoused by the likes of William Lane Craig, I want to add a few thoughts to this concept.

First, when I say "possible world" here I'm simply talking about a possible state of affairs or a possible reality that could exist. So one possible world could be a world where I was ever born, or it could be one where everything is exactly the same but there are no humans, or one where everything is the same but the Nazis won World War II, etc. It's just a possible alternative reality that god hypothetically could have created.

Now given god's omnipotence for all things logically possible, he could have created many other possible worlds if he so desired. So why create the one we live in? Why create man using a long multi-billion year evolutionary process, that required millions of years of conscious suffering? Surely god is not constrained by natural forces to create his objectives. He must have chosen it beforehand for some reason. What that reason is, is open to conjecture on the part of the theist, but if he entertains the notion that god takes pleasure in the evolutionary process unfolding like an artist taking pleasure in the composition, then god would have to take pleasure in watching millions of animals consciously suffer for millions of years.

Friday, July 5, 2013

Science Vs. Philosophy


Many of my fellow atheists are very quick today to discard philosophy in favor of science. Science has made philosophy irrelevant, they say, and philosophy no longer contributes anything useful to understanding reality. This is a problem in my view. Atheists hold science up in such high regard because we know it's largely been science that has cast light onto the darkness of man's ignorance, and has given us the best way of understanding reality that nothing else comes close to. But, we can not deny—we should not deny, the fact that in order to make sense of anything, you need philosophy.

Sure, science is the empirical methodology that we should all use to guide our philosophy, but science should not be used to replace philosophy altogether. To do so would be an egregious error on the part of the atheist. For example, how do you argue morality without using philosophy? It's impossible! Science is not going to give us definitive answers when it comes to ethics. Science can be used to guide our ethics when it comes to giving us empirical information about certain moral issues, but you will need philosophy to make any sense of that scientific data. And what about interpreting quantum mechanics? Science can allow us to predict quantum particles to eleven decimal places, but how do you interpret quantum weirdness properly? We have many theories, including the Copenhagen interpretation, and the many worlds interpretation. But science is not—at least not yet—going to give us definitive answers to these pressing issues. The philosophy of science is what guides these theories because the scientist who entertains such possibilities has left the realm of physics and entered the world of metaphysics.

Monday, July 1, 2013

Does Simultaneous Causality Exist?


The concept of simultaneous causality is what theists use to save themselves when making the cosmological argument from the logical problem of causes preceding their effects when the effect is the beginning of time itself. They claim that god somehow caused the universe to exist at the same time as the effect took place. But does simultaneous causality really exist?

Immanuel Kant, the famous 18th century German philosopher gave a well known example of simultaneous causality. He imagined a ball resting on a pillow. The impression of the ball on the surface of the pillow is a simultaneous cause and effect according to Kant. But we all know that the ball must be dropped onto the pillow first, and as the ball drops, the impression in the pillow deepens. So the cause does precede its effect in Kant's example.

Some theists have proposed the idea of a ball resting on a pillow existing in that state eternally, then the cause would not be said to have preceded its effect. This idea, some theists claim, saves the simultaneous causality hypothesis from the rigid manner of a temporal world where causes always precede their effects. But is this a practical scenario? And does it compare to the origin of the universe?

Monday, June 17, 2013

The Burden Of Proof


Who really bears the burden of proof when debating? Traditionally, debates are either centered around a proposition or a question, and whoever argues in the affirmative bears the burden of proof. I would essentially agree with this principle because when it comes to debating the existence of god, usually it's the theist making the affirmative argument and I've consistently noticed an abject failure by most theists to demonstrate the truth of their theological beliefs.

However, although the person arguing the affirmative bears the initial burden of proof, any counter argument made should be backed up with evidence as the burden of proof lies on them to make the counter argument plausible. For example, if a debate is centered around creationism, and one makes the counter argument that evolution can explain away the need for a creator, then the evolutionist has the burden of proof to explain and show the evidence for evolution, or at least be able to produce evidence when prompted.

Also, the standard for the level of evidence required to back up a counter argument should be about equal to the level of evidence that was produced for the original argument. So if the evidence produced for the affirmative argument was circular, fatuous, or illogical, then the person making the counter argument need not stress over producing exceptional evidence. As Hitchens said, "What can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence."

Friday, June 14, 2013

Much Ado About Nothing


I've been somewhat obsessed recently about nothing. In fact, I can't get nothing out of my mind. The reason why is because us atheists are accused of believing that 'nothing' somehow created everything, and this is supposed to make us all sound so absurd that we'll all somehow become Christians in order to restore our sanity. That's the dream of every Christian at least.

I'm a big fan of physicist Lawrence Krauss. I don't always like what he says about philosophy, but I admire his science cred and his antitheistic attacks on religion. When I read his book A Universe From Nothing he describes as best he can what physicists know going back as far as we can. In the early universe, as you get closer to the singularity, the laws of physics get fuzzy. General relativity breaks down and quantum mechanics takes over. But even then we cannot yet today fully describe the singularity itself because the equations that describe it contain infinities. It might for all we know be an actual infinity, but until we can describe quantum gravity, there will remain mysteries about the singularity. One thing is for sure, theology sure isn't going to offer us any help.

One of the criticisms of Krauss' book from my favorite punching bag William Lane Craig is that he says the quantum vacuum that we can describe the foam out of which the early universe sprang from is not technically 'nothing'. In response, in Krauss' lectures he tries to go back as far as he can to nothing as it might be possible. But, if indeed our universe is the beginning of all of time and space, and there is no other universe preceding it, then we'll never really be able to go back to a point where nothing truly exists, because as long as there is time, we will have something.

Sunday, May 26, 2013

Refuting The Kalam Cosmological Argument Redux


In my arrogant opinion, the cosmological argument (CA) is the best argument that theists have. Theism really stands or falls on the CA, and if theists should lose it, the foundations of theism would be on shaky grounds and theism would be in a lot of trouble. Since the CA forms the bedrock that all other arguments for god are built upon, it deserves more attention that I have duly given it.

When I first wrote on the Kalam Cosmological Argument (KCA) I primary was trying to write a detailed technical refutation of it, but I essentially granted the argument itself as being valid. So what I want to do here is spend a few moments attacking the argument itself and some of its problems.

As you’ll recall the Kalam consists of two simple premises and a conclusion. They are:


1. Everything that begins to exist has a cause
2. The universe began to exist
3. Therefore, the universe has a cause


Sounds simple enough, eh? Let’s take a look at the first premise.

Thursday, May 23, 2013

God Of The Gaps: Theistic Evolution And The Search For New Gaps


In my on going examination of theistic evolution, I've noticed that the old god of the gaps argument has continued to "evolve" (pun intended). I'm also realizing how many approaches to evolution theism offers. Here are some of the main options:


Young Earth Creationists - believe the Earth is less than 10,000 years old and that all animals species including man were created in their current forms according to how the Bible describes it.

Old Earth Creationists - believe the Earth is billions of years old, basically as old as mainstream science says it is, but that life was still created by an act of god in a linear fashion with simple organisms created first and more complex organisms created later.

Theistic Evolutionists - believe the Earth is billions of years old, basically as old as mainstream science says it is, and that life was either started by an act of god, or developed as the result of natural laws developed by god, and allowed to evolve either with or without god's direct guidance, but will unfold according to god's plan of resulting in the evolution of human beings.


Within these three main approaches there are many other subgroups. Each group contains their own god of the gaps theory. The YECs think there's a gap between every species, but they all concede that microevolution occurs (which is really just a little bit of macroevolution). Once an "alleged" transitional fossil is found linking two species, their tired old tactic is to now argue that there are two gaps instead of one - resulting in a constantly moving goal post. Many OECs however will concede that some speciation can occur but only does so within arbitrarily imposed limits. 

It's theistic evolutionists that I want to focus on here, because of the three positions listed here, they hold the most intellectually tenable one, and that makes them to most formidable to contend with.

On his website's weekly QandA segment, William Lane Craig has said he has no problem accepting "a bat and a whale to have a common ancestor" and how "trivial in the grand scheme of things such a development would be". He even has no problem entertaining the ease with how "the evolution of amphibians from fish or birds from reptiles is miniscule compared to whole tree of life postulated by the [Darwinian] theory, for it still only involves evolutionary development within a single phylum." 

Wow. It's really amazing how far some Christians have embraced evolution. Someone like Craig just a few decades ago would probably be outright denying evolution altogether, as do about half of all Americans today. Now there's no time wasted arguing against whether species or genuses within a single phylum can evolve, but Craig's use of language makes the evolution of fish to mammals look like it's mere microevolution compared to a sponge and a fish. In Craig's version of theistic evolution, such an evolutionary leap from sponges to vertebrates via common ancestry is a "mind-boggling extrapolation from limited instances of microevolutionary change to conclusions that far outstrip the evidence."

In other words, for some theistic evolutionists like Craig who believe god's involvement is necessary, the Cambrian explosion where many of today's animal phyla appeared is the new god of the gaps. No longer is speciation contended, now the god of the gaps is over whether different phylum can have common ancestry. 

Perhaps Craig isn't researched into the fossil record surrounding the 30 million year long Cambrian explosion, but the Burgess shale in Canada and others around the world show a fair amount of fossil evidence for the evolution of major phyla. Sure we don't have a complete trail of fossils, we never will, but there is no grand mystery large enough to punctuate Darwinian natural selection with the need to insert the hand of god into the evolutionary tree of life. There are also vast resources out there available to anyone looking to conduct research like books, blogs, Wikipedia and for the lazy, YouTube. But, speaking of god's hands....

"Maybe God is instead more like the artist who enjoys getting His hands dirty in the paint or the clay to fashion a spectacular world", Craig Wonders. "Why not?'

God obviously doesn't have hands, but I'm sure that was a figure of speech. Anyway, Craig's artistic god who enjoys getting his hands wet in the clay amounts to nothing more than pure speculation. I can just as easily speculate that maybe god takes pleasure in giving babies cancer, or arbitrarily deciding which babies get cancer, and which ones don't. I can also speculate that god takes pleasure in designing all the wonderful genetic mutations that make millions of us suffer so miserably, or that god takes pleasure in designing the mutations that have resulted in diseases like smallpox, the bubonic plague, and leprosy, and enjoys unleashing it onto millions of animals and people to watch them suffer.

It's all pure speculation on Craig's part, a game I can enjoy playing too, because if you entertain the idea that god guides evolution and takes pleasure in it, then all the diseases and disorders which are the direct result of genetic mutations (which is the backbone of how evolution occurs), force you have to entertain the possibility that god's "hand" was somehow involved in them.


Sunday, May 19, 2013

My Evolutionary Argument Against God (EAAG)


Atheists generally tend to not rely on deductive arguments or syllogisms to make their case against god. However, while recently debating my challenge to theistic evolutionists against the incompatibility of a wholly good creator with evolution, I've come up with a counter argument to Alvin Plantinga’s Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism called the Evolutionary Argument Against God or the EAAG.

This argument is predicated on the traditional concept of god who is all-knowing, all-powerful, and all-good and the notion that god either started the evolutionary process as a means to enable human existence or that he guided the evolutionary process along some of its steps to ensure humans would evolve.

The argument goes as follows:

  1. If god chose to use evolution as the process by which he created human beings and all other forms of life, then god knowingly chose a process that requires suffering that is logically unnecessary.
  2. If humans are the product of gradual evolution guided by god, then at some point during the process the soul appeared.
  3.  Once human beings had souls, they could be rewarded in an afterlife for the suffering they endured while they were alive.
  4.  If higher level primates are capable of third level pain awareness (knowing they are experiencing pain) then our pre-human hominid ancestors did too and they did not have souls.
  5. This means god chose to create humans using a method that knowingly would involve conscious suffering that was not logically necessary.
  6. An all-good, perfectly moral god who is incapable of unwarranted cruelty would not create beings that could consciously suffer in a way that was not logically necessary.
  7. Therefore, the traditional notion of god who is all-powerful, all-knowing and all-good does not exist.

Since almost every premise here is a conditional, let’s examine each of the premises to see what objections we might find.


(1) If god chose to use evolution as the process by which he created human beings and all other forms of life, then god knowingly chose a process that requires suffering that is logically unnecessary.


Premise 1 asserts the fact that the evolutionary process logically requires suffering, which god would of course have known before using the evolutionary process to create humans. Some theists like William Lane Craig think of god like an artist who takes pleasure in the method for creating life using evolution. Another theory is that god chose to use evolution contingently as a punishment for original sin which god decided would be applied retroactively to the millions of species that existed before human beings. Alvin Plantinga has proposed the idea that “Satan and his minions” have tinkered with the evolutionary process and have caused the natural evils it produces. Regardless of what explanation a theist has in mind, god still willingly chose to create man using millions of other species merely as a means to an end, and many of those species contained sentient beings who suffered tremendous ordeals. It seems odd to me that a wholly good and benevolent god would intentionally choose a method of bringing about man that requires millions of years of suffering.


(2) If humans are the product of gradual evolution guided by god, then at some point during the process the soul appeared.

For premise 2, even if a theist believes that fully rational humans appeared at once in a single generation as some theistic evolutionists do, or that "humans" can only be body + soul composites, we still have enough evidence that our hominid ancestors and cousins like Neanderthals had language capability (via the FOXP2 gene that we share) and that means they certainly had higher functioning rational and cognitive faculties than modern day chimps and gorillas. So millions of years would have passed before we get modern humans during which our pre-human hominid ancestors and cousins lived who were capable of conscious, apperceptive suffering.


(3) Once human beings had souls, they could be rewarded in an afterlife for the suffering they endured while they were alive.


Most theists believe that the soul gives humans the possibility of being rewarded in an afterlife and that this compensates the suffering that humans endure in their physical form on Earth. Natural evils like disease all have a purpose, according to some theists, in that they bring people closer to god, or that they are the byproduct of original sin. But, if a human is defined as a body + soul composite, then our pre-human hominid ancestors lacked souls and were suffering from the same diseases and natural evils that we are. God must’ve chosen not to compensate their suffering, while at the same time he allowed them to evolve the ability to be consciously self-aware of their suffering. The original sin argument doesn't make sense either. There's no evidence that there were ever just two people, and, the theist would have to believe that the punishment for original sin was retroactively applied to animals before humans even evolved! Not only is this cruel, this doesn't make sense considering evolution requires suffering. It is impossible to have an evolutionary process unfold without it. So theists who bring up original sin are logically incoherent.


(4) If higher level primates are capable of third level pain awareness (knowing they are experiencing pain) then our pre-human hominid ancestors did too and they did not have souls.


If premise 4 is true it logically follows. Our pre-human hominid ancestors and cousins like Neanderthals would have had evolved advanced levels of cognition that may not have been quite as advanced as a modern human, but necessarily must have been more advanced than a modern day primate like a chimp or a gorilla.


(5) This means god chose to create humans using a method that knowingly would involve conscious suffering that was not logically necessary.


Premise 5 suggests that god is just a mere utilitarian who uses millions of other species as a means to his end goal of creating human beings, but what makes god different from other utilitarians is that since evolution requires massive amounts of suffering, god actually chooses the greater of two evils rather than the lesser of two evils! It’s kind of odd since he’s supposed to be morally perfect.


(6) An all-good, perfectly moral god who is incapable of unwarranted cruelty would not create beings that could consciously suffer in a way that was not logically necessary.


Premise 6 states the most important logical aspect of the argument – that a morally perfect being like god is incapable of unwarranted cruelty, which evolution requires. There seems to be no plausible way that a theist can justify the suffering that evolution requires. I have heard theists like William Lane Craig argue that animals are not consciously aware that they’re in pain, but he even admits this does not apply to the higher primates, and that logically means it wouldn’t apply to our hominid ancestors. That's really all I need to show in order for my argument to work. And so if our suffering is logically necessary for some unknown purpose because we have souls, then this fails to explain why soul-less conscious animals would have to suffer under the evolutionary process.


(7) Therefore, the traditional notion of god who is all-powerful, all-knowing and all-good does not exist.


If my premises are correct, then the conclusion in number 7 logically follows because an all-good god is incompatible with creating unwarranted cruelty, and because that requires the ability or at least the capacity of intentional cruelty or indifference.

If this argument is successful this means theists like William Lane Craig and Alvin Pantinga have to accept that god is intentionally cruel and capable of committing unwarranted suffering, which means of course he cannot exist!

In order for the theists who holds to the view of god this argument is predicated on the refute the EAAG, they would have to show how the argument is somehow logically invalid, or show how a wholly good, morally perfect god is compatible with the existence of gratuitous, logically unnecessary apperceptive animal and pre-human hominid suffering, in which case they’d have to attack the science backing up third level pain awareness. If the theist cannot do this, they must admit that their notion of god is either incompetent, indifferent, or intentionally cruel, in which case their concept of god would be logically incoherent with what they’d be conceding. That would mean that this concept of god cannot logically exist. And since this concept of god must exist in every possible world, as per the ontological argument, if there exists a single possible world that this god is incompatible with, then it destroys the possibility of this god existing in any possible world. That world is the actual world. 

This argument is admittedly in its first draft and will most certainly need to be refined with time. I've considered shortening it down to 5 or 6 premises. I want this argument to be part of the public domain, so if you think it works and you think you can improve it, by all means customize it to your liking.

For other versions of this argument click here.

Thursday, May 9, 2013

The Boltzmann Brain Dilemma



The multiverse theory is probably the single best argument against the apparent fine tuning of our universe’s physical constants that many theists like William Lane Craig say implies a designer. That means it naturally has its religious critics because they see the existence of a multiverse as an undermining threat to what theists see as something god best explains. 

Since the existence of a potentially infinite number of universes comprising a vast multiverse puts a damper into the argument from fine tuning, let me address the so called “Boltzmann Brain” dilemma rebuttal that theists are using. On his website, William Lane Craig made the following objections to the idea of a multiverse:


If we were just a random member of a World Ensemble, then we ought to be observing a very different universe. Roger Penrose has calculated that the odds of our solar system’s forming instantaneously through the random collision of particles is incomprehensibly more probable that the universe’s being fine-tuned, as it is. So if we were a random member of a World Ensemble, we should be observing a patch of order no larger than our solar system in a sea of chaos. 

In order to be observable the patch of order needn’t be even as large as the solar system. The most probable observable world would be one in which a single brain fluctuates into existence out of the quantum vacuum and observes its otherwise empty world.

On another Question of the week, Craig writes:

Now a similar problem afflicts the contemporary appeal to the multiverse to explain away fine-tuning. Roger Penrose of Oxford University has calculated that the odds of our universe’s low entropy condition obtaining by chance alone are on the order of 1:10^10(123), an inconceivable number. If our universe were but one member of a multiverse of randomly ordered worlds, then it is vastly more probable that we should be observing a much smaller universe. For example, the odds of our solar system’s being formed instantly by the random collision of particles is about 1:10^10(60), a vast number, but inconceivably smaller than 10^10(123).

First, a little background knowledge if you’re not familiar with a Boltzmann Brain.

Boltzmann Brains are a term made by Austrian Physicist Ludwig Boltzmann. In short, he lived in the late 1800s at a time when the steady state theory of the universe prevailed. He and many others believed the universe was timeless and eternal, and Boltzmann, who was an atomist, (a theory still controversial at the time since the atom hadn't yet been discovered) theorized that all the matter and structure in the universe could be the product of a random fluctuation of matter. Although this would be highly improbable, the infinite history of the universe he thought would give it the time necessary to happen. But, an entire universe fluctuating out of random collisions is more improbable than just a single solar system, and just a single brain would be more probable than a solar system. So any sentient being in the universe is much more likely to be just a single conscious brain that suddenly materializes from random particles colliding, rather than be a person with a whole body, living in a vast and orderly universe full of galaxies. Hence the term, Boltzmann Brain.

The Boltzmann Brain concept is interesting and I’m only a little familiar with it. One argument I heard against it goes like this. Imagine estimating the probability that if you were born as a form of life on earth, what would be the chances that you’d be born human. Since the number of insects on earth dwarfs the number of human beings overwhelmingly, there is a much higher probability that we should have been born as insects. There are an estimated 10^18 insects on earth compared to a relatively small 7 billion human beings (up from just 1.5 billion 100 years ago). That means that there are about 150 million insects for every one human being on earth. But you obviously weren’t born as an insect despite the overwhelming odds against it. So just because there is a much greater probability of something, it doesn’t mean that it will happen. Rare events happen all the time. In fact, every single event that ever happens in our universe is a rare event because the chances of that event not happening and some other event happening instead are always probabilistically more likely.

So we know we aren’t Boltzmann Brains given that they exist for a tiny amount of time, look around (with no eyes!) and then disappear back into quantum foam. I suppose chance again can explain this dilemma, in the same way that it does for how our universe’s physical constants could fall in the life permitting range. In the multiverse scenario, eternal inflation involves there being an unlimited number of rolls of the dice, and given an eternal future, a universe like ours is inevitable. Does that mean that hyperspace is littered with Boltzmann Brains amongst the universes? I don’t know, but it seems the chance hypothesis and the multiverse still has a chance.


Friday, April 26, 2013

Does Evil & Suffering Disprove God? A Debate Review Between Walter Sincott-Armstrong v. William Lane Craig



Professor of philosophy Walter Sincott-Armstrong debated William Lane Craig once upon a time long ago on the topic of whether the existence of evil and suffering disprove that god exists. In the debate, Armstrong makes some pretty compelling arguments that there cannot be a god who is all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-loving to the maximal degree. He says god could be mostly powerful or mostly loving for example, but not all of all of those three attributes. He opens his argument with a personal anecdote of a friend who had lost their child and whose death split the family apart. What justification does god have, Armstrong asks, for allowing such evil?

Part 1: Summarizing the debate

In the debate Armstrong makes a deductive argument using the existence of gratuitous evil as the source of evidence against the compatibility of god’s most commonly agreed upon attributes mentioned above. Armstrong’s argument is as follows:

1. If there were an all-powerful and all-good god, there would not be any evil in the world unless that evil is logically necessary for some adequately compensating good.

2. There is some evil in the world and some of that evil is not logically necessary for any adequately compensating good.

3. Therefore, there can’t be a god that is all powerful and all good.

Armstrong defines evil as “anything that all rational people avoid for themselves unless they have some adequate reason to want that evil.” This would include things like pain, ignorance, disability, death. He says “evil is justified when there are no other ways or better ways to avoid it.” For example, going to the dentist might cause immense pain and suffering, but it’s for the long term benefit of your teeth and health. The only evil god is justified in allowing he says, are those that are logically necessary in order to promote some compensating good.

After making his opening argument against god’s existence using evil, Armstrong then preempts some of the most common objections.


Possible responses:

1. Evil is imposed by god as a punishment for sin. But evil is not distributed evenly according to sin. Original sin is unfair. We view group punishment as barbaric and unjust.

2. The child who suffers in this life is repaid in heaven. Isn't it better to have a fulfilling life while also going to heaven? God could send the child straight to heaven instead of having it suffer.

3. Free will is so valuable that god let us have even though he knew we’d misuse it. But this doesn’t address natural evil, disease, earthquakes, etc. Free will cannot provide god with a reason for allowing natural evil.

4. Evil builds character. Observers and sufferers of evil might become more compassionate. But god can make people compassionate in many other ways than to force someone around them to suffer and die. It’s unfair to make someone suffer so that somebody else can learn something.

5. Evil is used by god to maximize the number of people to know god and glorify god. If god allows babies to suffer for other people to glorify god, it seems very narcissistic. God can bring people to him voluntarily in other ways that don’t involve evil.

6. God has a reason for permitting evil, we just can’t see it. Imagine your neighbor lets his kids starve. He has plenty of food but doesn’t feed his children. We’d think he’s a bad parent. But imagine if someone says “maybe he has sufficient reason to starve the kids, maybe he has some better purpose later on.” Because we cannot know this reason we are justified in concluding that the parent is bad based on what we know.

7. Evil gives us some reason not to believe in god but theists insist that this evidence is overridden by other evidence for god. Even if the other arguments for god are good, it’s hard to show how that kind of creator is all-good and not just very good or mostly good.

In conclusion Armstrong says, it seems that theists have a choice: they can say that god is all powerful, but not all loving. What they can’t do is face the evidence of evil in this world and still believe in the traditional god.

Before I weigh in, let me summarize from the debate the main points that Craig argues in favor of god’s existence.

Craig's Arguments:

Craig opens his arguments by saying that the problem of evil does not count as a disproof of the existence of god intellectually. He offers the following summary of Armstrong’s syllogism as he sees it:

1. If god exists, gratuitous evil does not exist. (Evil that is morally unjustified)

2. Gratuitous evil exists

3. Therefore, god does not exist.

Craig argues that gratuitous evil does not exist because we cannot know that it does. He then says that the atheist assumes that if god allows these evils to exist, then it must be evident to us, which he says is ungrounded.  We shouldn’t expect to see the reasons why god permits evil, he argues. Evil that exists today “could” according to Craig, might not be understood why god allowed it until centuries later. Our limitations in time prevent us from knowing this, but that is not the case for god who’s timeless.

Craig then argues that certain Christian doctrines mention that we’d expect to see evil in the world that appears gratuitous, making it harder for Armstrong’s case. He says Armstrong cannot infer the appearance of evil to the fact of evil. Craig then offers three arguments to make this case:

1.  The purpose of life is not human happiness, it is to know god. We naturally assume that if god exists, the purpose of this life is to be happy, and that god should make all of our lives happy. It may well be the case that only in a world involving natural and moral evils that the maximum number of persons would freely come to know god and his salvation. Armstrong has to show that it is feasible to create a world which has the same amount of the knowledge of god and of his salvation, but that has less evil.

2. Mankind is in a state of rebellion against god and his purpose. He’s spiritual alienated. Christians should expect to see terrible evils in the world. God has given mankind over to the evil that he’s chosen. God lets it run its course.

3. God’s purpose spills over into eternal life. In the afterlife god will reward those who’ve suffered and who’ve trusted in god. We shouldn't expect to see the reasons in this life for why permits evil. The glory of eternal heaven outweighs any suffering in the world. Given the prospects of eternal life, some suffering may be justified only in light of eternity.

Craig then goes on to say that Armstrong would then have to refute these three doctrines which he hasn’t done in order to show that natural evils are indeed gratuitous. Then in another tactic Craig is so fond of, he tries to turn the tables and argue that if god exists, then the evil in the world is not gratuitous. So he then puts forth a modified version of his summary above of Armstrong’s argument above:
  
1. If god exists, gratuitous evil does not exist.

2*. God exists

3*. Therefore, gratuitous evil does not exist.

Then Craig goes onto argue for god using the cosmological, the fine tuning, and the moral arguments which I've written about before so I won’t summarize here.

Interestingly, there is no back and forth rebuttal in this debate and they just go right into a dialogue after their opening speeches.


Part 2: My Analysis of the Debate

I want to summarize for myself the arguments made in the debate and of course I will be especially critical of Craig.

I've just recently written of the inadequacy of speculating whether god has morally sufficient reasons for doing what he does so this will allow me to critique someone who thinks he actually knows.

Let me now argue against Craig’s 3 points that he justified human suffering with.

1. The purpose of life is not human happiness, it is to know god.

Is that so? Well, of course that’s Craig’s opinion, and is not verifiable. One must have faith in Christian doctrine in order to accept such a proposition. But if we take it at face value, why is it true that millions of people who have been born and who are alive today have suffered from such levels of mental retardation that they are incapable of the cognitive functioning necessary to know anything truthful of the outside world, let alone that god exists? You cannot know god unless you’ve got a reasonably functioning brain. If the purpose of life is to know god, it would seem at odds with his plan that he’d build into the design the very impediments that prevent one from actualizing the whole purpose of the plan. In light of this fact, the purpose of all our lives we’re being told by Craig is fundamentally flawed.

This point was also addressed by Armstrong in his point number 5. God certainly could bring people to him using other means besides natural evils like suffering and disease. In his infinite wisdom, he surely could bring about the same number of people, perhaps even more, to know him than if he allowed natural evils and could still achieve the same overall goal. For one thing, god could simply give us more evidence that he exists. That would convince billions to freely worship him and jettison their pagan gods. And why couldn't god have chosen to bring about the maximal number of people freely to him in a world without natural evil, but that still contains human evil? To say god could create any possible world he wants, and chose to create one with human and natural evils is to say god willingly chose to create the world with more suffering in it. The debate never addressed the origin of natural evil, whether it was through original sin or not, but such investigations lead to numerous other problems for theism in light of modern science.

And what about current and future advances in medical technology? If we can cure the diseases and remove the pain and suffering that god inflicts on us or allows us to experience, are we thwarting god’s plan? What if we alleviate suffering on a massive scale? Would the alleviation of suffering then not produce the kinds of positive outcomes god is hoping for down the road?

What does naturalism have to say about natural evils like disease and earthquakes? Well, we live in a volatile and imperfect world; you’d expect to see natural disasters harm people and animals.  Diseases are just other forms of life trying to survive in the same way we are – they just have to harm other beings in order for them to flourish, much like how we kill millions of animals for food in order for us to flourish. Under naturalism there’s no mystery why there exists natural evils and suffering in light of the knowledge we have of what causes them.

2. Mankind is in a state of rebellion against god and his purpose.

From god’s perspective, was there ever any expectation that mankind wouldn’t rebel? Assuming the Christian story to be true, god creates mankind and gives him and all his descendants thereof freewill and the desire to be free and to want to live autonomously. Then god imposes a set of very strict and impossible to follow set of rules and morals, and commands that his creation love him and submit to him and essentially be his slaves. Then god gets angry when he sees his creation rebelling against him. Really? What did god expect to happen? If you enslaved a nation of people and ordered them to worship you, of course you’d expect them to rebel against you.

I think that the Christian doctrine of man’s rebellion and the wrath he suffers from is better explained by the masochistic aspects of the human personality. It is just far too easy to believe that we rebelled against god, and that that’s why we live in a world with diseases and earthquakes. This also ignores the fact that suffering and disease predated the evolution of mankind by millions of years and therefore cannot be due to man’s rebellion against god. I think this debate occurred before Craig came to accept evolution as fact, which happened rather recently. In light of evolution and the fact that there was no literal Adam and Eve, this argument based on the fall of Adam in the Garden of Eden falls flat under its erroneous assumptions.

3. God’s purpose spills over into eternal life.

The promise of eternal life is really all the Christian has to justify natural suffering in this world. The problem is that this does not address the existence of animal suffering at all. Why should an animal suffer a horrendous ordeal only to die and be forfeited the same possible rewards human suffering is worthy of under the Christian worldview? A YouTube user going by the name of “skydivephil” recently made a video critiquing the many fallacious attempts by theists like William Lane Craig in order to try to argue that animals are not consciously aware of the pain they suffer and that animal suffering could not be used as an argument against god.

Craig invites to his own website’s weekly Q&A Prof. Michael Murray whose book Nature Red in Tooth and Claw is what Craig bases his justification on that animals are not consciously aware of pain. “Those parts of the brain most closely associated with consciousness of pain,” Murray writes, “are also the parts that were the last to arrive among mammals: the pre-frontal cortex.” As such, he concludes that there exists 3 levels of pain awareness:

Level 3: a second order awareness that one is oneself experiencing (2).
Level 2: a first order, subjective experience of pain.
Level 1: information-bearing neural states produced by noxious stimuli resulting in aversive behavior.

But it is simply not true that only advanced mammals have a prefrontal cortex. In fact, animals as wide ranging as opossums, guinea pigs, and rats all contain a prefrontal cortex or a neo-cortex. And this is attested by the majority of the scientific community. So it is simply not the case that non-primate lower mammals are not aware of their pain and suffering as apologists like Craig make it out to be.

Furthermore, from PZ Myers’ website on this outright lie of Craig, he mentions the implications of arguing that the prefrontal cortex is necessary for level 3 conscious awareness. “Craig has actually just rejected Cartesian dualism (and neo-Cartesian views of the ‘soul’) in that claim. If you assert that the neurological processes that are involved in self-representation are necessary for the existence of self-representation, then you are rejecting the possibility that something can self-represent without those processes. That’s the basic mode.

With this evidence in place, Craig fails ultimately to rebut Armstrong's second premise of his argument which is what he intended to do. The problem with Craig is that he knows how to deliver his arguments such that you sometimes need to play back the tape in order to break his false claims apart minute by minute, and point by point in order see determine their untruth. 


Conclusion

In Craig’s closing arguments he reads an emotional letter from a person who wrote him who was grieving over the recent loss of a child. No doubt this was a last ditch appeal to the audience’s emotions to try to win them over. In the letter he reads of a man who finds hope that he’ll one day be reunited with his deceased daughter in heaven. Now there’s no doubt that religion offers hope and consolation to those going through difficult times, but it’s also true that a false religion that wasn't true would have the same exact effect on people who believed in it. A false religion that offered hope would be just as effective as one that was real, so long as it was believed to be true. So the fact that religion provides some people a way to cope and face death with a bit more courage, says absolutely nothing about whether that religion is true. In fact, I’d argue that the consoling powers of faith are in part the reason why religions were created by our fearful ancestors in the first place – as a wishful thinking measure to sooth the inevitable pain of death.


More Thoughts On God's Timeless Paradox


We’re often told that god is a disembodied mind - he’s a mind with no physical body. Well what is it that minds do? Well, minds think! That’s what minds do. A disembodied mind that doesn't think, in some sense, doesn't exist. But thinking is a temporal process, it is a temporal event. How is it logically possible that a thinking immaterial mind can truly exist outside of time? What many theists often do in their description of god is that they simply just assert that god is timeless but they offer no evidence how such a being could actually exist. They simply just declare that “god exists outside of space and time”, but the burden of proof is on the one who makes such a claim to explain how it is logically verifiable.

Christian apologist William Lane Craig says on his own website on the nature of god and time, “A sequence of mental events alone is sufficient to generate relations of earlier and later, wholly in the absence of any physical events.” This means that if god were to count from one to five, “1,2,3,4,5” there would always be a moment prior to him counting and a moment after him counting. This means that in order to think, you cannot logically escape the dimension of time, even in the absence of physical matter. This puts a heavy burden of proof on the theist who asserts that god is a thinking mind and a timeless mind. It would also seem that the absence of time and of possessing temporal qualities prevents any ability to think along with the ability to execute one’s will, and it certainly prevents god from being able to impregnating an underage Palestinian virgin, so that god could have her give birth to himself.

All of these events are temporal events, requiring temporal qualities.

We have no evidence whatsoever that a mind can exist outside of a brain let alone one that exists outside of space and time.

Craig's alternative is that god becomes temporal with the creation of the time. This is kind of like believing god is a caveman frozen in a block of ice from eternity who not only cannot move and cause things to happen, he cannot even think. Then when the ice thaws, he's suddenly free from the constraints of timelessness. I think this is perhaps the only way that I'm aware of that can explain god's nature after time begins. But, in my assessment of the ontological argument, this path leads to its own logical paradoxes. 


Monday, April 1, 2013

The Ontological Argument: Putting The Absurd Where It Belongs


Continuing with my refutations of the most popular arguments made for the existence of god, I thought I'd conclude with the ontological argument. The reason why I've never addressed it before is because I never even thought that the ontological argument was even really an argument. It’s really just an attempt at brain trickery through wordplay. What it surreptitiously tries to achieve is to trick the skeptic into agreeing that it’s possible that god may exist, and once having made this deal with you it moves on to try to “prove” god exists through the logical conclusion of its premises. Many agnostics and weak atheists who haven’t considered the paradoxical nature of god may actually fall for it, but when I first heard it, my bullshit alarm immediately went off. It is generally stated a bit more complex than many of the other arguments for god and there are many versions of it. The version here that I’m going to use is a derivation of philosopher Alvin Plantinga’s Modal Ontological Argument.

1. It is possible that a maximally great being exists (i.e. God).

2. If it is possible that a maximally great being exists, then a maximally great being exists in some possible world.

3. If a maximally great being exists in some possible world, then it exists in every possible world.

4. If a maximally great being exists in every possible world, then it exists in the actual world.

5. If a maximally great being exists in the actual world, then a maximally great being exists.

6. Therefore, a maximally great being exists.


When I first heard another version of the ontological argument I thought to myself, “Wait a second! You can’t define god into existence!” But that’s exactly what theists were trying to do. Another objection I have is what is meant by “possible world”. From a theistic perspective, a “possible world” might mean any other world god chose to create besides this one which we live in. But that definition presupposes god’s existence in the first place. In logic, a possible world really means possible scenario in our world, but not the existence of another physical or dimensional world. For example, I could say, “There’s a possible world in which I’m rich.” It need not necessarily be another physical world where I’m living the good life, but instead could be an alternative history to this world. I personally like the idea of a possible world being an alternative universe, perhaps in a level 3 multiverse, but for the sake of argument, I will define a possible world as another possible scenario of this world, one in which a hypothetical situation or thought experiment can be conducted.

Saturday, March 16, 2013

God, Time And Creation: More Problems For William Lane Craig


Central to any argument about whether god exists or not is the notion of time and its relationship with being. "What is time?", is such a profound question that underlies our entire sense of reality. The fundamental nature of time is so puzzling that we do not get a consensus amongst physicists and philosophers alike on what its true properties are.


In philosophy, there are generally two theories on the nature of time, A-theory and B-theory. The A-theory of time states that the present is all that exists. The past no longer exists, and the future is a mere possibility, but doesn't yet exist. There is only the eternal now of the present moment. Because past and future do not exist, they aren't in a sense, real. The A-theory of time is adopted by most Christian theologians as describing the nature of time within Christian theology. Buddhism also interprets time according to the A-theory. The A-theory states that there is a "master time" or absolute time of which all clocks are set to, even if others tick slower of faster. Our intuitions are more closely in tune with the  A-theory of time because we feel that we exist only in the present, and so the present is therefore all that exists.

The B-theory of time states however, that the past, present and future all exist and are therefore all equally real. The past doesn't cease to exist once it's gone and the future doesn't come into being when it is reached at the present moment. Think of it like driving down a road. The town up ahead doesn't begin to exist when you reach it, it already exists, you just haven't gotten to it yet. Under the B-theory of time, the future already exists, it has already happened in a sense, we just haven't gotten to it yet on our subjective journeys through time. This means that notions like the experience of the passage of time are subjective illusions, and indeed time itself is an illusion. Past, present and future are more like destinations that we can in theory, travel to. The B-theory of time runs counter-intuitive to how we generally sense our understanding of time.

Now what does physics say on the matter? Issac Newton's understanding of time as a fixed absolute would agree with the A-theory of time, but we now know that Newton was wrong on time for all his genius. Einstein's general theory of relativity helped close the gap in our knowledge on the true nature of time. Time and space are intertwined in what we now call space-time, and the laws of physics permit the passage of time to increase or decrease depending on your speed relative to other objects, and the strength of gravity where you are. The faster you move and the stronger gravity is around you, the slower time passes.

This has amazing implications on what we think of as "now". We generally believe that the present moment is the same for everyone and everything. While I'm typing this blog, you are currently doing something at the same time. My now is your now, and your now is my now. But general relativity tells us that that is not quite so. If another being living in some far off galaxy at the far reaches of the universe, say 13 billion light years away were to travel away from us at a certain speed, their "now" would actually be our past. And depending on how far or fast they were moving would depend on how far into our past their "now" would be. So their "now" could be a year ago or a thousand years ago before we were even born. If they started traveling towards us, their "now" would encompass our future, even after we might be dead. But you're thinking, "Wait a minute, the future hasn't happened yet. How could someone else's "now" be our future that hasn't yet happened?" I've pondered exactly this problem myself.

The reason this occurs is because time is relative, as Einstein showed us. When objects move, their clocks tick slower. So if a traveling alien billions of light years away starts moving away from us and their "now" becomes our past, the straight line of time between us that represented our "now", becomes angled for the alien backwards towards our past. But ahead of the alien, in the direction he's (or it's) travelling, that diagonal angle points toward someone or something else's future. So, if the alien travels towards us, its "now" is our future. And that means that the future already exists much like the town up ahead when you're driving down a road.

Physics therefore, has demonstrated that the B-theory of time is more compatible with its laws. Watch physicist Brian Green explains in the clip below from the Nova ScienceNow special, Fabric of the Cosmos: The Illusion of Time how this concept works.




Time is like a frozen river, and our experience of the present may just be a subjective illusion. What does this say about the existence of god? Well, the Kalaam Cosmological Argument, so often used by theists as the "shock and awe" tactic and front line of offense is predicated on the A-theory of time, which we now know not to be true. That doesn't mean that god is definitively disproven, but it punches serious holes in the argument that theists have to address.

This is where William Lane Craig enters since he is the current champion of the KCA. I've voiced my concerns over the problems of god and timelessness numerous times, particularly how a "timeless" and "changeless" being can have a causal relationship with temporal events, like creating a universe. Furthermore, if the beginning of the universe is the first event and thus the beginning of time, if god caused the universe to exist, then the cause of the universe would have to precede time. In other words, time would have to exist, before time existed. Logically, it's like saying I was born, before I was born.

I recently was reading a paper Craig wrote years ago about timelessness and creation in which he takes on these same concerns that were made by Oxford University Professor Brian Leftow. In it he writes:

God's choices are not events, since He neither deliberates temporally nor does His will move from a state of indecision to decision. He simply has free determinations of the will to execute certain actions, and any deliberation can only be said to be explanatorily, not temporally, prior to His decrees. If time is essential to choosing, then a timeless God could not choose between a beginningless or a finite time either.

It would seem according to Craig, that the execution of god's will must create time since he believes god is temporal posterior to the creation of the universe, which is an event. But how can god have "free determinations of the will" if he is timeless? In the paper Craig scrutinizes three theories that Leftow criticizes. I won't mention all of them, but the theory that Craig settles on, is one that states that time was preceded by what Craig calls "finite time". In other words, in order for god to have created the universe before time existed, and in order to explain god's timeless state before he somehow willed time into existence, another form of time had to exist before time existed. Craig argues:

Since [the beginning of time] is preceded by finite time, that time is not the consequence of t's being the time of the first event (otherwise it would be infinite or amorphous, since if t's elapsing is itself sufficient that there should have been n finite time units prior to t, it would also be sufficient for there having been n+1 finite time units prior to t). So the times prior to t must be either substantival time units in their own right or the relational consequences of events going on prior to t. Thus, if God refrained from creating t, that would have no intrinsic effect on times prior to t; they would still have existed, only now they would be at the end of time. Thus, it is difficult to see how God could do anything at t to bring it about that time was infinite when it was in fact finite.

Basically Craig is saying finite time that existed before time cannot be infinite (hence the name) and must be some kind of "relational consequences of events going on prior to" time. But this doesn't make sense when Craig constantly stresses the absolute beginning of time at the Big Bang and according to his website says, "A sequence of mental events alone is sufficient to generate relations of earlier and later, wholly in the absence of any physical events." That sounds like regular time to me, and so it appears the theist might have to commit to the idea that time began before time began in order to make sense of the cosmological argument.

If theists can be expected to just make up imaginary units of time, as is the case with "finite time" existing before time on purely philosophical and theological grounds, with no scientific theories or hypotheses backing them up, then how can we be expected to have a serious debate? The atheist goes to great lengths to make his case as scientific as possible. That doesn't mean to say that a theist can't be knowledgeable of science and use it to make their case, but if they get to violate logic by resorting to theories that have no scientific basis, and in some cases are even refuted by science, like the A-theory of time, then they should at least stop making a big fuss when we say that the universe came into being without a prior cause. It's only fair.




Further reading on arguments against god:

The Kalam Cosmological Argument
The Fine Tuning Argument
Objective Morality Without God
Refuting William Lane Craig: "Is Good from God?" A Debate Review
Refuting William Lane Craig: The Moral Argument
The Logically Implausible God
The Logically Implausible God Part 2
The Ontological Argument: Putting the Absurd Where it Belongs

Friday, March 1, 2013

The Fine Tuning Argument


On my blog here I've written several times responding to the Cosmological Argument for god's existence and the various moral arguments, but I've only once written about the Fine Tuning Argument head on. I want to take some time expounding on some of its implications and the problems I think it has in a bit more detail than I previously did.

The Fine Tuning Argument, another staple of my favorite punching bag Dr. Craig, generally states like this:

1. The fine tuning of the universe is either due to physical necessity, chance or design.
2. Fine tuning is not due to either physical necessity or chance.
3. Therefore, it is due to design.

The Fine Tuning Argument poses what seems to be another tough obstacle for the atheist. The probability that all the elements in the universe would be as meticulously fine tuned to unfathomable levels that would allow life as we know it, are incomprehensibly small. But as scientists tell us, events that are extremely improbable happen all the time.

1. First I always like to use the probability of me being born as an example of chance. What is the probability that I would've been born? Well first my father and mother had to meet, that took some chance. I then had to have been conceived from one particular sperm cell and egg. The chances of that are extremely rare when considering that every time a man ejaculates, as much as 100 million sperm cells are thrust outward and only one will fertilize the woman's egg - and that's if fertilization even happens at all. The chances of me being conceived just considering that one specific time when my parents tried to conceive a child, and not even considering all their other attempts, is about 1 in 100 million. When you factor in all the other attempts at conceiving a child, combined with the probability of the circumstances that lead up to their decision and attempt to conceive a child, already the mathematical odds are stupendous. 

Then you have to multiply this to the chances of each of my parents being conceived and the circumstances that lead up to that event, and then do the same to their parents, and their parents, all the way back literally to the very first form of life some 4 billion years ago. The odds of this happening are unfathomable. Everyone alive today is the product of an unbroken chain of births, billions of generations in the making. The chances that any one of my distant relatives would have had a different offspring that wouldn't have been one of my ancestors, would have always been much more probable. And yet of course if this had happened, I wouldn't have ever been born, and yet I exist and I'm real. What are the chances of that?

So events that are extremely odd can happen all the time even when the odds against them are much more probable. But even this answer doesn't satisfy all the critics, so let me give a few others.

Wednesday, February 6, 2013

Why Most Atheist Debaters Suck Compared To William Lane Craig


It is true that William Lane Craig is a very good debater, perhaps the best theist debater alive. His arguments are very organized and he hardly ever skips a beat when delivering them. Many atheists who have debated him have done quite poorly and I have complained about atheist debaters before. Many of them cannot speak clearly, they fumble, they're not organized, and most importantly, when they debate Craig, they don't do their homework. When debating Craig, you cannot rely on weak arguments which he already has refuted or given sufficient counterarguments for or else he will tear them up in the rebuttals. Many atheists, I think, underestimate Craig perhaps as another unreasonable theist who relies on simple easily refutable arguments. But when Craig debates, he does it in such a way where he kind of forces you to disprove his arguments. In other words, he tries to put the burden of proof on the atheist instead of the other way around. That's why he's such a good debater. When debating Craig you do have to refute his arguments, or better put, the arguments he presents, especially the cosmological argument.

That being said, there is no atheist WLC. There is no atheist debater who has dedicated his life and career to defending atheism. When Craig debates he does his homework. He reads material his opponent has published, he is well read and knowledgeable of most of the arguments that atheists typically use and he therefore comes to the debate prepared with counterarguments for them. Atheist debaters on the other hand who've debated Craig have almost always underestimated Craig's debating skills and arguments, despite there being a tremendous amount of knowledge freely available of Craig's arguments and opinions on the internet. 

Therefore, in the future, in order for atheism to maintain the intellectual upper hand over the absurdities of religious belief and faith, we desperately need good atheist debaters on our side who are informed, articulate, charismatic, and as determined as those who argue for god. All an atheist really needs to do is study the best arguments made by theists, and find sufficient counterarguments for them. But this doesn't come easy: in order to refute the cosmological argument, one has to posses a substantial amount of scientific knowledge that often takes years to accumulate. Craig has been studying cosmology for decades and so most philosopher atheists fail to be able to articulate cosmology as good as he can. Most atheist cosmologists also fail to debate the philosophical aspects well because science and cosmology operate very differently than philosophy does. Craig has cornered both markets pretty well even though I think his moral argument fails miserably (see posts here and here). So unless we get a person who has all those attributes I mentioned above in addition to dedicating their life for defending atheism, we will not get an atheist debater as good as WLC.


Case in point: The recent Rosenberg v. Craig debate Is Faith in God Reasonable?

Monday, February 4, 2013

Absence Of Evidence: Why Is God So Timid?


Until getting into the atheism/theism debates I did not know there were schools of theologians trying to make logical and sophisticated arguments for the existence of god. What I was more familiar with were the loudmouth fundamentalists who portray religion in its most stupid form. What the fundis actually do, is make religion seem like it's for uneducated idiots who are willing to believe anything, no matter how irrational it is. They unknowingly actually hurt their religion and its cause by making it look so unsophisticated. Since the evolution/creation debate is over, (with evolution having clearly won) I do not plan on spending any significant amount of time in the future arguing the truth of evolution. Enough information is out there for anyone who wants to see the arguments and evidence on both sides of the issue.

What I am interested in is how religions have adapted to the truth of evolution by incorporating it into their beliefs. Even the Catholic Church and a growing number of Protestant churches are embracing evolution, something which was unthinkable just a few decades ago. This growing acceptance of evolution, which is even occurring among many Muslims too, has created a kind of religion 2.0 that brands itself as the new and improved theism, and not the old fashioned faith your parents knew. While there are still plenty of holdouts clinging onto a strict fundamentalist view of their religion, the scientific community is ecstatic that large numbers of the faithful are finally embracing what scientists already knew for 150 years. This new-found enlightenment comes with more questions about the role of religion and of god however..

I'm more focused on the more sophisticated arguments for god's existence like the cosmological and moral arguments. Theologians like William Lane Craig have tried to use logic along with scientific data to make as strong a case as possible that there exists a god, and that he had a son named Jesus. And this has recently got me asking the following questions: What kind of evidence does an atheist need to make his case? How do you disprove the existence of something that is totally undetectable? William Lane Craig's website ReasonableFaith.org has taken on these questions on along with many others. So let's see what the response is to the absence of evidence that atheist's point out.

One traditional argument made by atheists is that the absence of evidence of god is itself evidence of absence. Theists counter that if god exists, we wouldn't necessarily expect to see the kind of evidence atheists are asking for. This is usually justified for the following reasons:

  1. Man's sinful nature can obscure his ability to see truth by temporarily hindering his cognitive faculties. 
  2. Atheists require standards that are too high when theists assert a premise used to logically deduce god's existence from it (i.e. "Everything that begins to exist has a cause for its existence" from the Cosmological Argument).
  3. God doesn't actually want people to merely believe he exists, he wants people to voluntarily love him.

Thursday, January 3, 2013

My Question To William Lane Craig On God's Justice Part 2: My Analysis Of His Response


This is part 2 of my question about god's justice to Dr. William Lane Craig where I will analyze his response, so if you haven't read the question, please go here to read part 1. Dr. Craig did take the time and care to give me a pretty thorough response and I have to say I am quite pleased with it. I still have some disagreements of course with the overall concept behind the god of Christianity and justice so let me analyze his response regarding what I disagree with.

1. First, in his initial analysis of my question, Dr. Craig says I fundamentally misunderstand the Christian faith. He says getting into heaven or hell is not the result of the goodness or evil of our actions, rather it is by god's grace, and that nothing we can do merits salvation. He says, "Standing before a holy God of absolute and uncompromising justice, every one of us would be undone....But justice pure and simple would entail the condemnation of every morally responsible human being."

OK, right off the bat I disagree with Dr. Craig here on the idea that we all deserve hell by default and this is actually going to form the central disagreement between us. I do not agree with the masochistic Christian notion that all of us, perhaps even children, deserve eternal conscious torment from our very nature as human beings. Hell is not a natural consequence of anything, its existence is not essential to anything; it is designed by god, who could have instead designed numerous alternatives. So the foundation of Dr. Craig's argument is one I think has no rational justification.

Dr. Craig would of course disagree. He says, "We do deserve to die. That is perfect justice. If God saves any, that is a manifestation of mercy." Well the naturalistic concept of death perhaps differs from Christianity's. Under naturalism, death is a necessary component of life because if living things did not die, the Earth would soon be overpopulated by immortal creatures who would plunder all its resources. I have no problem with death, as I see it not as a matter of justice, but rather physical necessity. But, I do have a problem with the eternal conscious torment of hell as I find it extremely cruel and unnecessarily harmful.

2. A bit later Dr. Craig adds, "So the problem is not really a problem of justice. Rather it’s a problem of love....[god] wants to save as many persons as He can." But Dr. Craig explains the dilemma god is in, being both perfectly just and loving. He says god's justice would condemn everyone to hell, but his love would give everyone mercy and forgiveness. God's solution to this dilemma, Craig explains, is Jesus Christ. It is through Jesus that that the punishment we deserve is given and so we can be scapegoated into heaven. He says, "Jesus Christ...is the fulfillment of God’s mercy and justice. They meet at the cross: the holiness and the love of God. At the cross we see the justice of God, as Christ bears the punishment for sin that we deserved. But we also see God’s love, as He in the second person of the Trinity voluntarily lays down His life for us."

Now it is amazing how fondly Dr. Craig speaks of Christ. Reading his response I can almost see the tears in his eyes building up as he wrote it. Here I find more to disagree with him about. First, if god truly wanted to save as many persons as he can why would he force us to believe in him on such bad and inadequate evidence? Second, I have my own reservations of the vicarious redemption of Jesus. Not only would such a system allow a serial killer like Jeffrey Dahmer to be rewarded while his victims are punished, it would absolve anyone of their personal responsibility by placing all their punishment on a single human sacrifice. A gross perversion of justice if there ever was one.

3. Now he takes the case of Jeffrey Dahmer head on. Dr. Craig says "Perfect justice would have condemned that man to eternal perdition. But God loves him and wants to save him...Now what kind of God would it be who refuses his sincere cry for forgiveness? Such a God would not be loving and merciful!" I would say that such a god would be justified in punishing Jeffrey Dahmer, even if he repented. Because otherwise you'd also have to believe Adolph Hilter and Joseph Stalin are worthy of forgiveness in lieu of any punishment. To me justice is giving those what they deserve. Jeffrey Dahmer, who was determined to be mentally sane at his trial, deserved to be punished regardless of whether he was sorry. I certainly believe in forgiveness and mercy to a degree, but not the total surrender of one's deserved punishment through the scapegoating of a human sacrifice. The central tenet of Christianity, the vicarious redemption of Jesus, is I think one of its most disturbing aspects. Imagine the irrationality of being able to steal, rape and kill your way through life, and getting the same punishment as someone who humbly served those in need all their life.

For Jeffrey's victims, Dr. Craig says they were all as deserving of hell as Jeffrey was, irrespective of whether Jeffrey had committed any of his crimes or they had been his victims. The plight of Jeffrey's victims, according to Craig, has no merit over whether they are sent to hell or not. This goes back to the Christian belief that we are all deserving of hell by default, the crux of Dr. Craig's response, which I passionately disagree with.

One can think of many other past atrocities much worse than that which Jeffrey Dahmer's victims had to endure, where the same perversion of justice applies: the Nazi holocaust and the Spanish Inquisition of the New World, to name a few. The perpetrators of those crimes against humanity may have been rewarded by god in the hereafter, while their victims were sent to an even worse fate than the one they experienced in this world.

4. Now Dr. Craig turns to what he thinks might really be bothering me about this scenario: that god chose to create a possible world in which such a scenario could exist rather than one where it couldn't. He challenges me by asking, "What you’d have to show is that there is some other world of free agents feasible for God in which as much good, including people’s salvation, is achieved as in this world but without scenarios such as the one you envision."

Well such a world would, as Dr. Craig later says be one that is the result of lots of conjecture. But taking his question head on, I could imagine a world with free agents who are judged by a god solely by their actions, and not whether they believe certain holy books over others, and who receive their salvation by acts of goodness. The Jeffrey Dahmer scenario would not occur in such a universe.

But truthfully, I have never had much faith in the idea of eternal reward or punishment, or that there is such thing as perfect justice. Any such system is bound to have an unbalanced approach. Perfect justice would have to take into consideration one's genetic predispositions towards certain behaviors, one's environment where they were raised in, and a multitude of other circumstances that affect their moral decision making process. The version of god found in Dr. Craig's Protestantism is thoroughly unconcerned with these variables when it comes to his judgement.

5. Dr. Craig then takes some of my questions head on. I ask him:

How can the scenario above be, not only the work of a "perfect" and "all-loving" deity, but an example of perfect justice that could not possibly be improved upon by any generation of humans, past, present, or future?

He responds in part by saying "You seem to think that the scenario you describe is unilaterally brought about by God. I disagree...No one says that this is an example of perfect justice unimprovable by any generation of human beings. It would be easy to improve on this situation by all the persons’ freely turning to God for salvation."

Here Dr. Craig misses the point. It is not the actions of the victims that I have a problem with, it is this system of divine justice itself that is the problem. The outcome of the scenario in my question is unilaterally brought upon by god because it is god that designed hell and determined it should be everyone's fate by default. As I mentioned earlier, hell is not a natural consequence of anything, it is made and designed by god, and its existence is not essential to have justice.

His idea that the simple act of turning to god would solve all the problems in this scenario is problematic for me too. Let me use an analogy to explain why. Imagine if the Nazis during WW2 had granted mercy only to those Jews who accepted Adolph Hitler as their supreme ruler, and those that didn't went to the death camps. Under this scenario, the holocaust technically could have been averted if every Jew accepted Adolph Hitler. This sick idea of justice is paralleled by Dr. Craig when he tries to justify god's "mercy". But if the Nazis had simply not determined that every Jew is worthy of the death camps by default of their ethnicity, that could have also averted the holocaust. However, during my discussions with Christians I have learned to understand that the masochistic Christian mentality exemplified by people like Dr. Craig, can never accept the idea that all of humanity is not worthy of eternal suffering by default. Believing that we are all deserving of hell is actually a necessary component of Christian dogma because it justifies Jesus' atonement.

6. He then asks himself my question, "Do I truly agree with a notion of justice that would allow a sadistic serial killer off scott-free of divine punishment, when his victims, who pleaded for their lives and were killed without mercy, are now being tortured even worse, while all their cries for mercy go unanswered for all eternity?"

Dr. Craig responds by enthusiastically affirming that yes indeed he is perfectly fine with this version of "justice". True to his Christian roots, he tries to rationalize away the problem at the core of my scenario, by adhering to the belief that we all deserve hell by default, and that we are only saved by acts of mercy from god and that any punishment we deserve was prepaid for by Jesus' sacrifice.

Other Christians I asked this question to have given me similar responses but not in this much detail. I can surely understand how a committed Christian could accept the response given by Dr. Craig. There is no rational justification in believing that a world where all human beings (with the possible exception of the very young and the unborn) are all collectively deserving of eternal suffering and damnation by default due to their species membership. There is no reason why things must be this way because there are so many alternative possible worlds that require much less unnecessary misery to be endured which still allow for humans acting as free agents.

Final Thoughts

Justice is synonymous with fairness. Dr. Craig thinks he's solved the apparent unfairness of my scenario by arguing that having us all being deserving of hell is fair. But rationally, all that does is throw another monkey wrench into an already complex problem because we are then forced to discuss the rational basis why all humans are deserving of hell. Neither of us had time to discuss this and because of that Dr. Craig near the end of his response assumed that I do not refute the default punishment of hell. But I do, and this is the main problem I have with this notion of Christian justice. Unfortunately, given the format of this question and answer scenario, I was unable to cover all my bases and I failed to mention in my question that I disagree with the idea of hell by default. These kind of complex issues related to theology and philosophy can never be fully covered in a simple question and answer format.

After hearing Dr. Craig's response I better understand the Christian concept of god's justice, but I still do not agree with it. I have been arguing for years that Christianity is a product of mankind's masochistic imagination, and the response I got from Dr. Craig only confirms this even more. If to be a Christian requires one to accept the perverted notion of justice that Dr. Craig and other Christians have argued for, whereby we all are worthy of eternal suffering, then I want nothing to do with it. I cannot accept the idea that every human being is worthy of never ending suffering and torture. Such a masochistic concept is a perversion of justice and fairness, and no doubt in my mind the product of men suffering from inferiority complexes. I would not want to live in a universe where such is the case, and I have reservations about anyone who does.

Of course I accept that the universe does not have to exist in such a way where it conforms to what I want. I will ultimately have to accept whatever reality has in store for me. Dr. Craig is a clever man who's entire life is spend arguing for and defending Christianity. I don't think he has all the satisfactory answers needed to explain the problems of his faith, but he does a very good job trying. I will give him that.

My problem with Christian justice is both emotional and intellectual as I have outlined in my analysis of Dr. Craig's response. Emotionally, I wouldn't want reward and punishment to depend solely on acceptance of Jesus, in fact I wouldn't want consciousness to exist eternally at all. I'd prefer a system where there is no eternal rewards and punishments, where people are motivated to do good based on knowing it positively benefits those affected by it. Intellectually, believing we all deserve hell has no necessary rational basis since many other alternatives could exist that still allow for human free will, and where salvation could depend on performing acts of goodness towards others. Hell is therefore chosen by god, and a system of justice that sentences all people regardless of their actions to hell is one born out of cruelty. Finally, if how good or bad we behave has no effect on whether we go to heaven or hell, that means a person can knowingly live a life harming others, and still expect to be rewarded eternally. This can be used to justify any level of evil acts from rape to genocide.





Further reading on arguments against god:

The Kalam Cosmological Argument
The Fine Tuning Argument
Objective Morality Without God
Refuting William Lane Craig: "Is Good from God?" A Debate Review
Refuting William Lane Craig: The Moral Argument
The Logically Implausible God
The Logically Implausible God Part 2
God, Time & Creation: More Problems For William Lane Craig
The Ontological Argument: Putting the Absurd Where it Belongs

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