Monday, July 29, 2013

Debate Round 5: Closing Statements

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Preface



Below is the final round of a debate between me and fellow blogger Potnia Theron (a.k.a. Steven) over the existence of God. The debate thus far:



The Moral Argument



Definition Quibbling



First, a mild quibble: my opponent seems to think that my definition of “objective” was inappropriate in the context of the moral argument, where I stated that moral properties are objective in the sense that the hold independently of human belief and perception of them. But in the context of the moral argument the term “objective” typically means something like this, e.g. speaking in the context of the moral argument, philosopher Robert Adams writes that a moral fact is objective in the sense that “whether it obtains or not does not depend on whether any human being thinks it does”[1], and the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy’s entry on the moral argument speaks of moral properties as “objective in the sense that they hold or not regardless of human opinion.”

Moral Ontology



In my opening statement I discussed moral ontology. I noted that moral properties exist either solely as part of the physical realm or else (to at least some degree) as part of the nonphysical realm. One of these must be true, because if morality exists neither as part of the physical realm nor as part of the non-physical realm, then it follows that morality does not exist as part of reality at all. So if morality exists, some ontological explanation or other must be true.

Properties attached to the physical world likewise have some sort of ontology. For example, certain objects have the property of “redness.” Redness is a physical property and its ontology is fairly well understood (the natural sciences account for how the property exists). The property of moral wrongness however (as in the case of a man stealing a television where the man’s action has the property of moral wrongness) is different. Moral wrongness is a nonphysical property, and as a property of objectively existing oughtness (an action is morally wrong only if one ought not to do it), it cannot be empirically detected; barring the supernatural, the presence or absence of objectively existing oughtness would not affect the physical world at all. The ontology of objective moral properties like moral wrongness is rather curious and cries out for explanation.

I thus put forth what I called the argument from ontological simplicity. Given that all else held constant, the simplest explanation is the best and most probable one, I argued that the simplest ontological explanation leads us to an eternal, transcendent, metaphysically necessary entity that imposes moral duties upon us with supreme and universally binding authority. I further noted that the entity being a personal being most intelligibly accounts for the entity imposing duties upon us and having authority over people. If the entity is a personal being, we end up with an eternal, transcendent, metaphysically necessary being who imposes moral duties upon us with supreme and universally binding authority. We thus end up with a personal Supreme Being.

The other moral argument was noting that moral properties of objectively existing oughtness are objective and non-natural; some moral ontological explanation must account for this, and theism is the best ontological explanation; e.g. moral wrongness is one and the same property as that which God forbids.

I do not know of a better ontological explanation for objective morality than a God-like entity, so I asked for Steven’s alternative ontological explanation. Steven said his view was simpler because “it’s simpler to posit nothing than to posit something.” I thought this was an apposite response, because by my lights Steven scarcely provided an alternative moral ontology; with no metaphysical entities postulated, there is no ontological explanation. A moral ontology should at least posit the existence of moral properties, and it then becomes a question of how exactly these properties exist. One way to answer this question would be to provide an ontological explanation that is as vague and uninformative as possible about the ontology of morality, thereby avoiding the opportunity of describing an obviously inferior alternative to theism.

Was Steven’s answer that bad? Maybe not, but a good ontological explanation should tell us whether moral properties are physical or nonphysical, as well as tell us specifically how these properties exist. For example, moral Platonism tells us that moral values are nonphysical and specifically explains how objective moral values exist (namely, as Platonic objects), thus moral Platonism provides an ontological explanation of objective moral values (though in my opening statement I argued God being the Good is a better ontological explanation). Of course, we need an ontological explanation for objective moral duties too, and one example is divine command theory, which tells us (among other things) that moral wrongness is nonphysical, and it specifically explains how moral wrongness exists (namely, that moral wrongness is one and the same property as that which God forbids). In contrast, Steven’s response does not clearly answer whether moral properties are physical/nonphysical—though from his response I’m guessing the latter—nor does his response specifically explain how objective moral properties exist; his response is vague and largely uninformative on this issue.

For example, we know, according to Steven’s view, that moral properties supervene on non-moral properties (I agree), but this still doesn’t quite tell us how these mysterious nonphysical properties exist. We also know, according to his view, that moral facts are “fixed independent of what any stance any agent might take towards them,” yet at best this only tells us how mysterious nonphysical moral properties don’t exist rather than how they do exist. Steven does seem to think that objective morality (which presumably includes objective moral values) has “no foundation outside of itself,” but it isn’t clear from this if he accepts moral Platonism (where moral values exist as abstract objects independently of the mind) or some other moral ontology—if indeed he has one to offer at all. If Steven rejects Platonism, how exactly does he think these nonphysical moral properties exist? Alas, no clear answer was provided.

Perhaps he thinks objective moral properties are nonphysical and that they “just exist,” supervening somewhat inexplicably on certain actions in the physical world (like moral wrongness being attached to a man stealing a television) with no further explanation for why these nonphysical properties exist or why these properties are attached to certain actions. Is this simpler? I suspect not. With this view, I tend to visualize nonphysical moral properties as ectoplasmic clouds attached to certain actions in the physical world, and it seems simpler to posit just a single entity grounding all these nonphysical moral properties. This “consolidates” the nonphysical moral properties into a single entity (God being the Good grounds all objective moral values, God being the divine commander grounds objective moral duties e.g. moral wrongness being one and the same property as that which God forbids), and God grounding morality also provides a more intelligible moral ontology of e.g. objective moral duties. Given that some ontological explanation or other is needed for morality to be real, I do not think we can get simpler than a single grounding entity.

The Deductive Moral Argument



The deductive moral argument I gave was this:
  1. If God does not exist, then objective morality does not exist.
  2. Objective morality does exist.
  3. Therefore, God exists.
My space was limited in my opening statement so I skipped a few things I perhaps should not have. The first thing is that in the context of the deductive moral argument “God” refers to a personal Supreme Being, and stops short of saying that the Supreme Being is omnipotent (much as my argument from ontological simplicity does). Second (and I left this somewhat implicit) my view is that if no God (no Supreme Being) exists then atheism is the most plausible stance to take on the position of whether there are gods, but if atheism is true objective morality does not exist, and so we have good grounds for accepting the first premise. It should be noted that my opponent is a polytheist and might disagree with me on the probability of “If God does not exist, then atheism is true.”

While two of my moral arguments argue that God grounds morality, the deductive moral argument is an independent argument and makes no such claim.

Objection #1

Steven claims that premise (1) of the deductive moral argument tells us that God is responsible for the distribution of moral values and duties. The fact that this is not so is revealed by considering that even an atheist can agree with premise (1); all that’s needed to accept premise (1) is to believe that objective morality probably doesn’t exist if God does not exist. Many atheists believe this, and none of these atheists believe God is responsible for the distribution of anything. Thus, this objection fails against the deductive moral argument.

However, my other moral arguments do claim that God (in the sense of a personal Supreme Being) grounds objective morality. What about them? Steven seems to think that if God grounds morality then the “pain caused by a rape isn’t what makes rape wrong” and that rape being wrong would have “nothing to do with violating one’s autonomy,” but this doesn’t follow. We can all agree that so cruelly violating someone’s autonomy and inflicting such unwanted pain is something that objectively ought not to be done and that this is what makes rape morally wrong, but notice that this merely pushes the objective oughtness question back a step: we still need an ontology that accounts for the objective oughtness in morality whereby we ought not to inflict such unwanted suffering etc., and theism provides an excellent ontological explanation for objective moral oughtness.

Objection #2

Steven says, “Maverick Christian thinks that objective moral duties exist in every possible world.” I never claimed this (nor do any of my arguments), though I do believe objective moral values exist in every possible world (since God qua the Good grounds objective moral values in all possible worlds). Thus, this objection fails against my moral arguments.

Objection #3

Steven says, “It has been assumed that objective morality needs to have a foundation outside of itself.” It should first be noted that the deductive moral argument makes no claims about moral ontology, and even if morality has no foundation outside itself, that does not attack any premise of the argument. Nor does one need to accept that morality has a foundation outside itself to accept either premise of the argument (e.g. an atheist can believe objective morality has no foundation and accept premise 1). Thus, this objection does not attack my deductive moral argument.

Still, don’t I assume that objective morality needs to have a foundation outside itself in my argument from ontological simplicity? Not quite. I gave an argument that some sort of moral ontological explanation has to be true if morality exists (and Steven never disputed this point), and it just so happens that the simplest ontological explanation appears to give us a God-like entity.

Objection 4:

In criticizing the first premise, Steven says, “God’s non-existence would not be a sufficient reason to give up objective morality because it is more obvious that morality is objective than that objective morality depends upon God’s existence.” Again, the first premise does not say that morality is dependent on God; as a material conditional it merely says “It is not the case that God does not exist and objective morality exists are both true.” But what if “objective morality exists” is more obvious than “It is not the case that God does not exist and objective morality exists are both true”? All this really implies is that the second premise is more obvious than the first, and this is quite compatible with the claim that both premises are probably true.

The LCA



The LCA was as follows.
  1. If the contingent universe has an explanation of its existence, that explanation is an eternal, transcendent, metaphysically necessary, personal cause.
  2. The contingent universe has an explanation of its existence.
  3. Therefore, the explanation of the contingent universe’s existence is an eternal, transcendent, metaphysically necessary, personal cause.
Steven says:
For, however we characterize God’s “explanation” of this contingent universe—whether it be as an event, a state of affairs or an action—it will itself be contingent, thus belonging to the contingent universe it’s explaining.
Not quite, because in my opening statement I defined the contingent universe as (roughly) the totality of all contingent things (as rocks, trees, and galaxies), whereas God being the personal cause of the universe is more of an action. By asking “Why does the contingent universe exist?” I’m asking the question, “Why do contingent things exist at all?” Steven himself admits, “Of course, we can simply shift to speaking of purely contingent things, which excludes contingent events, states of affairs or actions involving necessary beings,” apparently unaware that contingent things was what I was talking about all along.

Apart from this misconstrual, Steven does not seem to dispute any premise of the argument; indeed he seems to think it is essentially sound. He does say the LCA doesn’t get us God. Right; the LCA by itself doesn’t get us to God (as we have defined him in this debate) but I’m making a cumulative case here and the LCA does give us some an entity with some of the key attributes of God.

Simplicity



In my opening statement I noted that ceteris paribus, the simplest explanation is the best and most probable one. I also noted that the simplicity leads us to a God that is omnipotent and omniscient. This was not disputed in Steven’s rebuttal.

Steven does say that simplicity isn’t the only earmark for truth; that beauty is another. One problem with this claim is that old cliché that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Steven says that
no description of this ‘personal cause’ fills me with the sense of awe and admiration as that of the greatest beings in existence working with one another to bring the universe into existence.
As for me, no description of a polytheistic explanation fills me with a sense of awe and elegance as the following. God, the greatest being in existence, is an infinite power that all other power ultimately derives from (both physical and volitional; e.g. God delegated some of his power to us humans when he gave us power over our own actions). God is also the locus of morality, and as an omniscient being God knows everything. Some of our beliefs are properly basic, and theists believe that God designed us (by evolution or otherwise) in such a way that when our cognitive faculties are functioning properly we intuitively apprehend certain elementary truths about logic, mathematics, and morality. Our knowledge of such basic truths ultimately originates from God himself. By my lights, there is a kind of elegant simplicity in the theory that all power, knowledge, and goodness ultimately originates from some ultimate source, and that God delegated some of his power to us so that we have the ability to follow his will or defy it.

I suspect “beauty” is too subjective to be a good earmark for truth (witness my and Steven’s differing tastes for beauty), unless perhaps it is metaphorical for e.g. how well a theory ties in with background knowledge, the breadth of its explanatory scope, the depth of explanatory power, and so forth. Moreover, while it may well be that a polytheistic explanation fills Steven with a sense of awe and admiration, to think this constitutes an earmark for truth strikes me as more a fallacy of wishful thinking than an appeal to some philosophically sound truth-conducive virtue.

Evil



Steven’s arguments are perhaps not quite arguments from evil but they at least live in the same neighborhood. One argument relied on the belief that if God is real, nothing would be ultimately unfair in any possible world. But this doesn’t follow from the type of God I am arguing for in this debate, since while the definition of God being used in this debate says that God is omnipotent and omniscient in the actual world, no claim is made about how powerful God is in other possible worlds. The theist could believe that God is omnipotent in the actual world but there are also possible worlds where God is incapable of e.g. preventing a Boltzmann brain from living a merely ephemeral existence.

Another argument relied on the assumption that allowing a child to suffer purely for someone else’s mistake is child abuse. I pointed out this was mistaken with the counterexample of leaving Billy suffer a headache so I could save two women from dying, and thus while I would be permitting Billy to suffer purely for someone else’s sake this would not constitute child abuse.

Perhaps it would be child abuse if one had no morally sufficient reason for allowing a child to suffer, and not knowing of a morally sufficient reason for God to suffer gives the argument from evil some plausibility. But a big problem, as I pointed out in my rebuttal, is that due to the chasm between God’s infinite mind and the finite human mind, it is plausible that if God and evil were to co-exist we would not (fully) know why God allows evil any more than an ant knows why the sun gives off heat. So while our ignorance of a morally sufficient reason for God to allow evil gives the argument from evil a superficial plausibility, it doesn’t quite work on a deeper intellectual level. The consequences of the infinite chasm between our minds and God’s may be unfortunate (e.g. we plausibly wouldn’t understand all the reasons why God allows evil), but they would be real if God existed. For good or ill, a comprehended God is not God.





[1] Adams, Robert M. The Virtue of Faith (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), p. 105.

Monday, July 22, 2013

Debate Round 4: Answers

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Preface



Below are my answers for my opponent in the “Answers” round of a debate between me and fellow blogger Potnia Theron (a.k.a. Steven) over the existence of God. The debate thus far:



Question #1



You wrote:
God's allowing a child to suffer purely for someone else's sake would constitute child abuse because—unlike you in your scenario—God could ensure that the child ultimately benefits from her suffering.
To some degree I take what I said back about that, because I don’t know whether God could do this without also eliminating some greater good.
To incorporate this into your analogy, it'd be like being perfectly able to prevent both Billy's suffering and save those women, but nevertheless ignoring the child. Obviously, I'd understand prioritizing those women's lives, but can you imagine someone ignoring a child in agony when he need only walk to the medicine cabinet and get some aspirin? Sounds like abuse to me. What do you think?
It depends whether that person leaving the child in agony has a morally sufficient reason for doing so. If not, then I think it would be child abuse or at least a cruel act. Maybe you think there can be no morally sufficient reason, but I can think of a few conceivable scenarios. Suppose the boy has a health condition such that, if the person were to give the boy aspirin, the boy would later suffer even worse than what he’s experiencing now. Or perhaps you can’t think of any morally sufficient reason beyond benefiting the child, in which case I could again think of counterexamples. Suppose for example the person doesn’t give the boy some aspirin because he is needed immediately to deliver injections that will save thirty people, and if he paused to give the boy some aspirin, the thirty people would die in horrible agony.

I think we agree that it wouldn’t be child abuse to allow the child to suffer if there were a morally sufficient reason. If a person allows something as horrible as child agony to happen and we can’t think of a morally sufficient reason, at face value we think the person is doing something morally objectionable, and so it’s understandable why some people think up the argument from evil. But a big problem, as I pointed out in my rebuttal, is that due to the chasm between God’s infinite mind and the finite human mind, it is plausible that if God and evil were to co-exist we would not (fully) know why God allows evil any more than an ant knows why the sun gives off heat. So while our ignorance of a morally sufficient reason for God to allow evil gives the argument from evil a superficial plausibility, it doesn’t quite work on a deeper intellectual level. The consequences of the infinite chasm between our minds and God’s may be unfortunate (e.g. we plausibly wouldn’t understand all the reasons why God allows evil), but they would be real if God existed. Inevitably, a comprehended God is not God.

Question #2



You wrote:
While there may be a possible world in which God counter-balances the unfairness of a Boltzmann brain's life-span with an after-life (or something else), the possible worlds my argument references consist in the events of the coming into, and passing out of being of a Boltzmann brain. There's no room in such worlds for compensation because only two events happen in them. Do you agree that such worlds are possible? If not, why not?
I don’t think such a world is possible for two reasons. First, because I believe in the Plantingan God (omnipotent, omniscient, and morally perfect in all possible worlds) and I’m not sure God wouldn’t provide an afterlife for Boltzmann brains. Second, if such a world existed there would also need to be another event: God (or some other personal cause) creating the universe. I don’t believe it’s metaphysically possible for physical universes to exist without being created by some transcendent personal cause (though explaining why I think this would involve an argument I did not get to in my opening statement).

As for whether there are possible worlds where a Boltzmann brain pops into being and neither God nor anybody else provides an afterlife for it, my answer is I’m honestly not sure. You’ve said that such an event happening is unfair but it’s unclear to my why that it so. Existence and life is a gift. If a small child receives $50 for his birthday and not $5 million, that his wealthy father could have given him more than $50 is insufficient for saying his father treated him unfairly. We might say it is better to have a lengthy life rather than a short one, and perhaps this is so, but when receiving a small gift (short life) rather than a larger one (long life), this doesn’t seem quite sufficient to fit the category of “unfair.”

A better objection, it seems to me, is that a perfectly good God qua being perfectly good would ensure the Boltzmann brain person continues to exist for all eternity, whether via the afterlife or something else. Maybe, but I’m not sure. It largely depends on what God views as good, and his ways may be slightly different from my own, and there might be infinitely many aspects of reality that factor into a decision like that (and this might include some goods I am not aware of). If I were to believe there is no possible world where a perfectly good God would allow that though, then since I believe in the Plantingan God, I would believe there is no possible world where God allows a Boltzmann brain to pop into being like that without also giving the Boltzmann brain an afterlife. For what it’s worth, if I were agnostic about the Plantingan God existing I would also be agnostic about whether such a world is possible.

All that said, I’m not arguing for the Plantingan God in this debate. The sort of being I am arguing for does not commit one to believing that God is sufficiently powerful in all possible worlds to stop events like that (Boltzmann brains popping into being for a short time and then ceasing to live with no afterlife) from happening. I argue that God is omnipotent in the actual world but I stop short of claiming that God is omnipotent and omniscient in every possible world. This would allow for the possibility of Boltzmann brains popping into being with no afterlife, since the theist could believe that in some possible worlds God is incapable of doing anything about it.

Question #3



Recall that the position I’m arguing for is that there is a being with the following characteristics in the actual world:
  1. omnipotent
  2. omniscient
  3. morally perfect
  4. metaphysically necessary
While I am to argue that God’s existence is metaphysically necessary (i.e. that he exists in all possible worlds), it is not part of the above description that God has all of these attributes in every possible world. To illustrate, I believe Michael Jordan played great basketball in the actual world, but in believing this I need not believe that Michael Jordan played great basketball in every possible world that he exists (there are some possible worlds where Michael Jordan was unable to do so due to a disability). Similarly, the theist could believe in the God of the above description without also believing that God has the property of omnipotence in every possible world, even though such a theist would believe God is omnipotent in the actual world.

To recap for the folks reading this, the second argument you offered was this:
  1. If God exists, then nothing is ultimately unfair in any possible world.
  2. But, there is some possible world where something is ultimately unfair.
  3. Therefore, God doesn't exist.
In your question #3, you said:
Finally, with respect to my second argument, you say "The justification for the first premise seems to rely on the assumption that if God exists he is omnipotent and omniscient in all possible worlds." But, it's unclear to me why my justification relies on this assumption.
Perhaps I should clarify my reasoning then. You defended premise (1) by saying, “if God existed, no gratuitous evil could obtain, and if something was ultimately unfair, it'd be gratuitously evil.” This seemed to be an allusion to the argument from evil that posits God as an omnipotent, perfectly good, and omniscient entity. When you said that in any possible world, nothing would happen unless God allowed it, this seemed to be alluding to God’s omnipotence. So it seemed to me that your defense of the first premise was relying on the assumption that if God exists in any of these worlds he is omnipotent and omniscient. I thus pointed out that while I was arguing that God is omnipotent and omniscient in the actual world, the position I was defending in this debate does not claim that God is omnipotent and omniscient in all possible worlds.

You say that, “God only needs finite power and knowledge to be in control of what happens in any given possible world.” You then ask if this has “changed your mind at all.” I agree one could formulate the argument and defend premise (1) in such a way that doesn’t require God being omnipotent in all possible worlds, but if God is so powerful that literally nothing can happen in the universe unless he allows it (and if he knows about all such events happening so he can prevent events that he doesn’t like) it does seem like we have at least a sort of quasi-omnipotence and quasi-omniscience, though again I agree that one doesn’t need to suppose that God has omnipotence and omniscience in every possible world to defend premise (1).

With that said, this hasn’t changed my mind about the success of the argument. Remember, my initial objection involved noting that the theist (of the sort of God I was describing) need not believe that God is omnipotent and omniscient in every possible world. Similarly, the theist could believe there are possible worlds where God’s power is nowhere near quasi-omnipotence, perhaps even possible worlds where God’s power is much closer to that of an ordinary human being. So I don’t think this works as a successful argument against the sort of God I am arguing for in this debate, because the theist could still believe that there are some possible worlds where God is incapable of preventing ultimately unfair events from happening, even though the theist would believe God is omnipotent and omniscient in the actual world.

Friday, July 19, 2013

Debate Round 3: Questions

Home  >  Philosophy  >  Atheism/Theism

Preface



Below are my questions for my opponent in the “Questions” round of a debate between me and fellow blogger Potnia Theron (a.k.a. Steven) over the existence of God. The debate thus far:



Question #1: First Premise of the Moral Argument



To recap, the deductive moral argument I used is this:
  1. If God does not exist, then objective morality does not exist.
  2. Objective morality does exist.
  3. Therefore, God exists.
Where in this context I defined “objective” to mean something like holding independently of human belief and perception. My argument for premise (1) was (in a nutshell) that objective morality probably doesn’t exist if atheism is true. Coming against the truth of the premise from a very different angle, you claimed the first premise of the deductive moral argument somehow implies that God is responsible for moral values and duties, but no explanation is given for why the first premise implies that objective morality is dependent on God. It seems to me that an atheist can agree with the first premise (believing that objective morality probably doesn’t exist if atheism is true) while also believing that even if objective morality did exist (and the atheist thinks it does not), its foundation wouldn’t be God. By my lights, this becomes especially apparent once one realizes that the first premise is most charitably interpreted as a material conditional, in which case all that’s needed for the atheist to accept the first premise is to believe objective morality doesn’t exist while maintaining his atheism. So my first question is this: (1) why think the first premise says (or commits one to believing) that objective morality depends on God, especially once the first premise is interpreted as a material conditional?

Questions #2 and #3: Moral Ontology



To recap what I said earlier, I noted that either morality exists solely as part of the physical realm, or it exists to at least some degree as part of the nonphysical realm. One of these must be true, because if morality exists neither as part of the physical realm nor as part of the nonphysical realm, then it follows that morality does not exist as part of reality at all. So if morality exists, some moral ontology or other must be true. After I argued that some ontological explanation or other must be true and that moral properties (like moral wrongness) exist as part of the nonphysical realm to at least some degree, I argued that the simplest moral ontology leads us to an eternal, transcendent, metaphysically necessary entity that imposes moral duties upon us with supreme and universally binding authority. You apparently don’t believe God grounds morality, but you have offered no alternative moral ontology. So my next two questions are these: (2) What is your alternative moral ontology; (3) Given the law of parsimony, on what grounds do you believe your alternative moral ontology is better than the one my argument from ontological simplicity offers?

Friday, July 12, 2013

Debate Round 2: Rebuttals

Home  >  Philosophy  >  Atheism/Theism

Preface



Below is the rebuttal for a debate between me and fellow blogger Potnia Theron (a.k.a. Steven) over the existence of God. The debate thus far:



Introduction



I seem to have begun round 1 at a disadvantage. My responsibility in this debate is to argue for the existence of a being that is eternal, transcendent, metaphysically necessary, morally perfect, omnipotent, and omniscient. That’s quite a tall order in the limited space I had, particularly with the last two attributes (omnipotence and omniscience) which I knew would be the most difficult to argue for. While I did offer justification for those two attributes, that justification is by itself insufficient to overwhelm the convincing force of the arguments from evil (or at any rate, something like arguments from evil) that my opponent gave in his opening statements.

A General Problem



Arguments from evil operate with an “If God did exist, he would not allow X” mentality, where X is some sort of evil. There are two types of evil: moral evil (evil resulting from misuse of free will) and natural evil (evils that occur in nature like cancer and tsunamis). From the standpoint of atheism, the argument from evil doesn’t work and indeed collapses before it can even get off the ground, because if atheism is true an objective moral standard doesn’t exist (as I argued in my opening statement), and an objective moral standard is needed for the argument to work.

To illustrate the problem, consider a hypothetical theist named Theophilus. Theophilus believes that the reason why God allows horrible things to happen is that in God’s eyes it is good for us humans to try to overcome and wipe it out (by advances in medical technology, learning to share our food with the hungry, etc.) with the limited abilities we have, and that it’s better for humans to do this than God doing it for us. And so with this view of what is good God does not intervene, because the existence of this suffering cannot be removed without also destroying the greater good of us humans trying to overcome the evil that causes it. Thus if God shared Theophilus’s standard of goodness, God would allow all the evil that exists in this world.

The atheist might say that if a perfectly good God existed, God would not adopt Theophilus’s standard of goodness; God would instead adopt the atheist’s standard of goodness. But there’s a problem: without an objective moral standard, there doesn’t appear to be any objective fact of the matter as to which moral standard of goodness (e.g. Theophilus’s) God would adopt if he existed, and thus there would be no objective fact of the matter as to whether God would allow evil if he existed. The argument from evil would then collapse under its own weight.

Suppose though that one accepted my opening statement’s moral argument, which argued for the existence of an eternal, transcendent, metaphysically necessary, perfectly good being who imposes moral duties upon us with supreme and universally binding authority. While such an eternal sovereign entity that everyone ought to obey would seem to be a personal supreme being of some sort, the argument does not even attempt to establish that the entity is omnipotent and omniscient. So what if one is willing to grant the existence of the eternal sovereign entity (thereby abandoning atheism) but disbelieve in an omnipotent and omniscient God due to Steven’s arguments? In that case we will have to address the arguments more directly.

Argument #1



Arguments from evil typically claim that if God existed he would not allow some sort of evil to occur. In Steven’s argument, God would allegedly not allow any child to suffer when the suffering wasn’t for the child’s own benefit.
  1. If God exists, then no one ought to proactively prevent any child from suffering.
  2. But, someone ought to proactively prevent a child from suffering.
  3. Therefore, God doesn’t exist.
The justification offered for each premise is severely problematic. Why is it the case that no one ought to proactively prevent a child to suffer? Steven tells us that if God exists, any child’s suffering would ultimately redound to the benefit of the child. But even if that were true, it doesn’t follow that we ought not to proactively prevent child suffering. God could command us to prevent such child suffering (thereby creating an obligation for us to do so), all the while providentially ordering the world so that every time we did intervene it was for the child’s benefit, and every time we chose not to intervene God had already providentially ordered the world so that the child would benefit from the suffering. The situation would be akin to a mother telling her older son Johnny to look after his younger sister Jane. Johnny would then have an obligation to look after Jane even if the mother would prevent any non-gratuitous harm to come to Jane. Part of our place as humans, I think, is to proactively love and care for one another, not just for each other’s benefit, but because proactively being kind and virtuous is morally valuable for its own sake. So the justification offered for the first premise doesn’t seem to work.

There is another problem with the justification for the first premise. Why think that any child’s suffering would benefit of the child if God existed? Steven supposes that allowing a child to suffer purely for someone else’s sake (or for no one’s sake) would constitute child abuse. The justification for the first premise relies on this assumption, but the assumption doesn’t seem quite right. Suppose for example Billy is a child stranded somewhere with a headache, but two innocent women are in a critical, painful condition and both will die if I don’t drive them to the hospital. I have two options: drive towards Billy and give him an aspirin that would prevent further headache suffering, which would result in the two women dying, or I could save the two women and leave Billy with his headache. In this case I choose to save the women and allow Billy to suffer for the sake of other people. Is this action child abuse because I am not proactively preventing a child (viz. Billy) from suffering? One could define “child abuse” that way, but I think we really want to define as child abuse as allowing/causing a child to suffer without a morally sufficient reason. All things considered, the justification for the first premise therefore fails.

The justification for the second premise falters for the same reason. It is of course true in general that we ought to proactively prevent children from suffering, but there are conceivable circumstances where one has morally sufficient reasons for allowing a child to suffer. I do not pretend to know what God’s morally sufficient reason is for allowing children to suffer. In some cases it may well be for the child’s own benefit, but I doubt this is the reason for all such cases.

Argument #2



First, it should be kept in mind that my responsibility in this debate is to argue that a being in the actual world has the following characteristics: omnipotence, omniscience, moral perfection, and metaphysical necessity. With that description kept in mind, argument #2 is this:
  1. If God exists, then nothing is ultimately unfair in any possible world.
  2. But, there is some possible world where something is ultimately unfair.
  3. Therefore, God doesn't exist.
The justification for the first premise seems to rely on the assumption that if God exists he is omnipotent and omniscient in all possible worlds. To be sure, there have been some theists (e.g. the prominent philosopher of religion Alvin Plantinga) who believe God is omnipotent and omniscient in every possible world, but there are others (e.g. prominent philosopher of religion Richard Swinburne) who do not (Swinburne does not believe God exists in all possible worlds, hence he doesn’t believe God is omnipotent in all possible worlds).

But isn’t the being I’m arguing for metaphysically necessary? Yes, but the description I gave still doesn’t quite match the Plantingan God (omniscient, omnipotent, and morally perfect in all possible worlds). There is no contradiction in the idea that the being I described exists in the actual world and while this being is omnipotent in the actual world he is not omnipotent in every possible world—just as Michael Jordan was capable of playing great basketball in the actual world but there are possible worlds where he was not (e.g. due to a disability). So the type of God I am arguing for does not commit one to the Plantingan God (this is not to say I disbelieve in the Plantingan God, only that I’m not arguing for such a being in this debate). Moreover, none of my arguments for theism rely on God having omnipotence and omniscience in every possible world, though the moral argument and the LCA (collectively) seem to suggest an entity that is eternal, transcendent, and metaphysically necessary in every possible world.

At any rate, the first premise lacks adequate justification, largely because its alleged truth does not follow from the type of God I am arguing for in this debate. Still, let’s assume arguendo that the first premise is true so we can better examine the second premise.

Why think the second premise is true? An agnostic about the Plantingan God, it seems, should likewise be agnostic about whether there is any possible world where something is ultimately unfair. Let’s ignore that though and address Steven’s case of the Boltzmann brain. Wouldn’t such short life span be unfair? Not necessarily. Many theists believe in an afterlife, and the theist could believe that even in worlds with Boltzmann brains God has an afterlife prepared for such individuals (perhaps one where they could continue to make more choices?). It should be remembered that many theists believe an afterlife is available for babies who die in infancy and (if you’re pro-life) persons who die in abortions. So short life spans need not be unfair on a theistic worldview.

Morally Sufficient Reasons



Steven’s arguments are perhaps not strictly arguments from evil, but they at least resemble the argument from evil closely enough to be worth talking about, since both rely on claims about what sort of evils a perfectly good God would not allow. Arguments from evil critically depend on us not knowing of a morally sufficient reason for why God would allow evil, for if we did know of such morally sufficient reasons, the argument from evil would hardly be convincing. This raises an important question: if God did have morally sufficient reasons for allowing the evil we see, would we know about them?

I do not think it is necessarily the case that if God and evil co-existed that we would know why God allows evil. One mistake that theists and nontheists often make is having an overly anthropomorphic view of God. Among those who have the most anthropomorphic view of God, I think atheists take the cake; atheists would not allow evil and so they reason God would not either. It is surprisingly easy to forget that if God exists, God’s mind is infinite whereas ours is finite. Moreover, because the chasm between the God’s infinite mind and the finite human mind is so unfathomably vast, it’s very easy underestimate the effect his would have particularly if we have an overly anthropomorphic view of God. We cannot reasonably expect to know the “why” behind everything God does, and perhaps we cannot even reasonably expect to understand the “why” behind most things God does. Due to the chasm between God’s infinite mind and the finite human mind, it’s plausible that if God and evil were to co-exist we wouldn’t be able to comprehend all the reasons why God allows evil any more than an ant can comprehend why the sun gives off heat. By my lights, our inability to comprehend all the reasons why God allows evil is, if anything, to be expected.

Human knowledge of moral goods is finite and fallible (consider human disagreements about what is good and bad), and it may well be incomplete. To illustrate, at one point as a small child, the only moral goods I was aware of was pleasure and lack of pain. I have since learned that this moral knowledge was incomplete; pleasure and the lack of pain aren’t the only goods or even the most important ones. Consider a scenario I’ll call “Happy Land.” Everybody is bedridden as the result of being continuously fed drugs to put them into a state of extreme bliss all the time. While the drugs leave them in a mindless stupor and they can’t exercise much free will in their condition, the drug-induced euphoria results in a more pleasurable life than people have in the real world, and with all freedom removed there are no murders, rapes, thefts, or other moral evils that exist in the real world. There is great drug-induced bliss and no suffering. Which would you rather have? Happy Land or the real world? It seems to me that the real world is preferable to Happy Land, and if so that means there are more important things than mere pleasure and the lack of pain, and these important things are worth all the evil that exists in this world. If that’s true, the moral knowledge I had as small child was incomplete; pleasure and the lack of pain are not the only good things or even the most important things.

Not all of us our small children, but I think this illustration helps one to understand how one can have an accurate picture of moral goods (pleasure and lack of pain are good things after all) without having the full picture. We do not even have to look solely at small children for examples of incomplete moral knowledge either. Steven himself was seemingly unaware that there are in fact other morally sufficient reasons for allowing a child to suffer (considering that he believed any reason other than the suffering being for the child’s own benefit would be child abuse), and did not realize that one could allow the child to suffer purely for someone else’s sake without this constituting child abuse. I think it is likely, given us humans and the infinite non-anthropomorphic God, that we adult humans have an incomplete moral picture.

Adult humans and small children can of course still know how to behave properly even without a full understanding of all moral goods and evils, but as we tend to recognize that human knowledge is incomplete in many areas (mathematics, physics, etc.), I think it is quite reasonable to expect that human knowledge of goods and evils is no exception (perhaps human moral knowledge is not as incomplete as mathematics and physics, but it is plausibly incomplete to at least some degree). This especially holds if my theistic hypothesis is correct, since if God exists he is infinitely beyond us, even more so than an adult’s understanding of moral knowledge is beyond a small child’s. We cannot reasonably expect to understand the “why” behind everything God does, and I see little reason to believe that the reasons for why God would allow evil would be an exception.

Conclusion



One problem arguments from evil have is that to succeed they require an objective moral standard, and if atheism is true an objective moral standard doesn’t exist. Thus, from the vantage point of atheism, the argument from evil fails. One could get around this obstacle by conceding my opening statement’s moral argument and accepting the existence of the sort of personal supreme being that the moral argument argues for (eternal, transcendent, metaphysically necessary, perfectly good being who imposes moral duties upon us with supreme and universally binding authority), though this would require abandoning atheism.

Argument #1 falters in part because there are morally sufficient reasons for allowing a child to suffer that go beyond the suffering redounding to the benefit of the child.

Argument #2 is flawed because it supposes that God is omnipotent and omniscient in all possible worlds. While there are some theists who believe God is omnipotent and omniscient in all possible worlds, not all theists do adhere to this view, and I myself am not arguing for the existence of that sort of deity in this debate (though I am arguing that God is omnipotent and omniscient in the actual world). Even if we ignore that, it is at best unclear that there are possible worlds that are ultimately unfair, since (among other reasons) God is capable of providing an afterlife for Boltzmann brains just as (so many theists presume) God does for babies who die in infancy.

A general problem with arguments from evil is that we are not in a position to know that God would not have morally sufficient reasons for allowing the evil we see. It may be true that we cannot think of all the reasons why God would allow evil. Yet because the chasm between the God’s infinite mind and the finite human mind is so unfathomably vast, we cannot reasonably expect to know the “why” behind everything (and perhaps most things) God does. The argument from evil relies on us not knowing of morally sufficient reasons for why God would allow evil (if we did, the argument would fail) but due to the chasm between God’s infinite mind and the finite human mind, it is plausible that if God and evil were to co-exist we would not (fully) know why God allows evil any more than an ant knows why the sun gives off heat. The consequences of the infinite chasm between our minds and God’s may be unfortunate (e.g. we plausibly wouldn’t understand all the reasons why God allows evil), but they would be real if God existed. Inevitably, a comprehended God is not God.

Friday, July 5, 2013

Debate Round 1: Opening Statements

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Preface



Below is the opening statement for a debate between me and fellow blogger Potnia Theron over the existence of God. The debate thus far:




Introduction



In my opening statement I’ll argue for the existence of God, who is understood to be eternal, transcendent, metaphysically necessary, morally perfect, omnipotent, and omniscient.

The Moral Argument



What is Morality?

The type of morality I have in mind is this: (1) it involves the unconditional ought, as in an action being morally wrong only if one ought not to do it; and (2) it is supremely authoritative, overriding any other “ought” (e.g. legal rules). Moral properties (e.g. moral wrongness) are objective in the sense that they hold independently of human belief and perception of them. For example, torturing infants just for fun would be morally wrong even if the torturer thought it was morally permissible.

While not strictly part of my definition of morality, it does seem that morality is metaphysically necessary. If we let a possible world be a complete description of the way the world is or could have been like, something like “kindness is a virtue” is metaphysically necessary in the sense that it holds in all possible worlds. Similarly, there is no possible world where “torturing infants just for fun” isn’t morally bad.

Grounding Morality

If objective moral properties exist and are attached to certain actions in the physical world (as when someone steals a television), moral properties exist either solely part of the physical realm, or to at least some degree as part of the nonphysical realm. One of these must be true, because if morality exists neither as part of the physical realm nor as part of the non-physical realm, then it follows that morality does not exist as part of reality at all.

Moral properties appear to exist as part of the nonphysical realm to at least some degree, thanks largely to the unconditional oughtness moral obligations have. Barring the supernatural, the presence or absence of objectively existing unconditional oughtness would not affect the physical world at all. So when looking for a moral ontology, our morality-grounding theory would have to involve the nonphysical in some way.

The Argument from Ontological Simplicity

Given that all else held constant, the simplest explanation (positing fewer explanatory entities etc.) is the best and most probable one, and given that morality exists as part of the nonphysical realm to at least some degree, it is interesting to note what would happen if we posited just one nonphysical entity to ground morality and tried to find the simplest explanation for it grounding morality. (Note: by authority below, I mean being the source of some obligation.)

What must this nonphysical entity be like if we were to obtain the simplest explanation for it grounding objective moral values and duties? As a nonphysical entity, it must transcend the physical world. This is not surprising, but the entity in question is also the foundation of objective moral duties, and as the source of moral obligation is must also have authority in the sense that it imposes moral duties and grounds the oughtness of those duties. Moreover, for morality to be objective and universally binding, the entity must impose moral duties with supreme and universally binding authority, because moral duties supersede any other duties that any (other?) person or culture might create for themselves, and moral duties are binding upon us all. Next, the entity must exist in every possible world (and therefore have necessary existence) to ground morality in every possible world, because morality is metaphysically necessary. While multiple entities spread about in different possible worlds grounding morality is logically possible, if we’re looking for the simplest explanation it is preferable to posit just one grounding entity to explain morality’s metaphysical necessity. And finally, the entity must also be eternal, since at no time and in no circumstances can metaphysically necessary entities fail to exist.

Thus if we posit just one nonphysical entity and search for the simplest explanation for that entity grounding objective morality, we end up with an eternal, transcendent, metaphysically necessary entity that imposes moral duties upon us with supreme and universally binding authority. This observation (and the claim that it rationally supports theism to at least some degree) is what I’ll call the argument from ontological simplicity.

Although the argument from ontological simplicity doesn’t say that the morality-grounding entity has to be a personal being, the entity being personal does, I think, most intelligibly account for the entity imposing duties upon us and having authority over people. If the entity is a personal being, we end up with an eternal, transcendent, metaphysically necessary being who imposes moral duties upon us with supreme and universally binding authority.

Other Approaches

Another way of looking at moral ontology is this: objective moral properties are objective and non-natural (non-natural in the sense that “cannot be stated entirely in the language of physics, chemistry, biology, and human or animal psychology”[1]). To quote from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy regarding non-natural and objective moral facts:
Such facts could be accounted for from within non-theistic world views, such as Platonism. However, theism provides a much more intelligible explanation via the notion that rightness is one and the same property as the property of being commanded by God (wrongness consists in being forbidden by God). So the argument in essence states that we must have a metaphysics that accounts for the existence of objective, normative facts and that a theistic metaphysics fits the bill better than any alternative.
The Platonist could hold to the view that the Good is merely an abstract object, but the Good being a personal supreme being whose perfectly holy nature supplies the standard of moral goodness seems more intelligible. In the absence of any people, how does the Platonic ideal “justice” exist? Indeed, without people, “justice” is not itself just, making the existence of Platonic “justice” without people incoherent if not self-contradictory. Platonism also fails to adequately deal with objective moral duties. Who or what imposes the obligation to align ourselves with one set of abstract objects over another? In contrast, God being the Good is more intelligible; unlike a Platonic object, God is himself just, and God as the supreme authority also makes sense of objective moral obligations.

Bolstering the moral argument further, there is the fact that it is unlikely on atheism that objective morality exists. Certain moral properties like moral wrongness have an “oughtness” component, e.g. an action is morally wrong only if one ought not to do it. Such objectively existing oughtness properties like objective moral wrongness are rather strange on atheism; they’re invisible, nonphysical, causally inert, yet exist somehow independently of our perception of them. Barring the supernatural, the presence or absence of objectively existing oughtness would not affect the physical world at all, and so it cannot be empirically detected. So why on atheism think that such strange nonphysical things exist? Why shouldn’t the atheist reject the existence of these invisible nonphysical things that cannot be empirically detected, if the atheist is also to reject the existence of invisible nonphysical deities that have not been empirically detected? Isn’t it likely on atheism that our evolved intuition of these invisible nonphysical properties is delusory, akin to humanity’s sociobiologically evolved belief in invisible nonphysical deities? I think the answer is yes. Given atheism, it is unlikely that objective morality exists and it is more likely that people’s belief in objective morality is a delusion brought about by evolution to get us to behave in certain ways and help our species survive.

In contrast, it makes perfect sense on a theistic worldview that there would be some component of reality transcending our opinion that says people shouldn’t do certain things. God makes sense of objective moral values and duties in the world. There is thus this moral argument:
  1. If God does not exist, then objective morality does not exist.
  2. Objective morality does exist.
  3. Therefore, God exists.
Conclusion on the Moral Argument

The moral argument gives us an eternal, transcendent, metaphysically necessary being who imposes moral duties with supreme and universally binding authority. It also gives us a being who is the Good, and thus a being who is perfectly good. God being the Good also prevents God’s divine commands from being arbitrary. On atheism, it is unlikely that objective morality exists, whereas on theism it makes perfect sense that there would be some transcendent part of reality that says we shouldn’t do certain things.

The Leibnizian Cosmological Argument



The Leibnizian cosmological argument (LCA) has many varieties, but here’s one of them. Suppose we define contingent universe as (roughly) the totality of all contingent things. By asking “Why does the contingent universe exist?” I’m asking the question, “Why do contingent things exist at all?”
  1. If the contingent universe has an explanation of its existence, that explanation is an eternal, transcendent, metaphysically necessary, personal cause.
  2. The contingent universe has an explanation of its existence.
  3. Therefore, the explanation of the contingent universe’s existence is an eternal, transcendent, metaphysically necessary, personal cause.
Justification for 1

By “cause” I mean (a) something that brings about something else; or (b) something that sustains it in being (as if it is eternal), and this way the term “cause” covers both ways something can explain the existence of a contingent thing. If we’re to explain the contingent universe, the cause will be metaphysically necessary since any contingent cause would be a part of the very contingent universe we are trying to explain. What is metaphysically necessary is also eternal, so the explanatory entity is also eternal. The entity must also be transcendent (nonphysical) because all physical objects are themselves contingent. It also seems that the explanatory entity is personal. Why? There are only two live options for nonphysical entities in the metaphysical literature: unembodied minds (as God) or abstract objects (like numbers). But abstract objects can’t cause anything, which leaves us with the unembodied mind as the only live option. So if the contingent universe does have an explanation of its existence, that explanation is an eternal, transcendent, metaphysically necessary, personal cause.

Justification for 2

The contingent universe is, well, contingent. No contingent object had to exist. Consider then the following argument from subtraction: upon reflection it seems there is a possible world where only a thousand contingent things exist, and it seems there is a possible world where only fifty contingent things exist etc. all the way down to zero contingent things existing.

It is the nature of rational inquiry to look for explanations for contingent things because they could have failed to exist. We seek explanations for the existence of humans, of planets, of stars, and of galaxies. Avoiding all that and saying, “It all just exists inexplicably” would cripple science. And if we are rational to accept that there are explanations for the existence of planets, stars, and galaxies, why not also accept that there is an explanation for the existence of the contingent universe? The rational thing to do is to accept that there are explanations for the existence of things if we don’t have good reason to believe otherwise, especially if we have an explanation readily available and no evidence for the explanation being false (e.g. believing that the cosmic microwave background radiation just exists inexplicably is less rational than accepting that the big bang theory correctly explains it).

To illustrate further, I’ll borrow a bit from philosopher Richard Taylor’s illustration of finding a translucent ball in the woods. “How did it get there?” you ask. I reply, “There is no explanation for it being in the woods; the ball just exists inexplicably.” My response seems less plausible than the idea that there is some explanation for the ball’s existence. What if we enlarged the ball to the size of a car? Same problem: some explanation seems to be needed. How about a city? Same problem. A planet? Same problem. A galaxy? Same problem; increasing the size does nothing to remove the need for an explanation. How about if the ball were as big as the universe? Same problem. All things considered, it seems intuitively plausible that if a contingent thing exists, there is some reason why it exists, since it could have failed to exist.

Other Benefits

The existence of a personal cause of the contingent universe also has the added benefit of explaining why the physical universe exists. And since the personal cause in question is metaphysically necessary, the entity also explains why there is something rather than nothing (the entity is metaphysically necessary, so in all possible worlds there is something rather than nothing).

Most of the attributes of the entity that explains the contingent universe (eternal, transcendent, metaphysically necessary, personal) are also shared by the foundation of morality. Since Ockham’s razor tells us not to multiply our explanatory entities beyond necessity, the rational thing to do seems to posit the same entity for both the foundation of objective morality and the personal cause of the universe. God makes sense of objective morality and the existence of the universe. God also explains why the physical universe exists and why there is something rather than nothing.

Conclusion of the LCA

The situation with the LCA has the following characteristics:
  1. The universe is contingent; it could have failed to exist.
  2. There is an explanation for the universe’s existence.
  3. There is only one explanation that is a live option (since abstract objects are out of the question, the only remaining candidate is an eternal, transcendent, metaphysically necessary, personal cause).
  4. The explanation has significant explanatory scope; it explains the contingent universe, the physical universe, why there is something rather than nothing, and a certain sort of eternal, transcendent, metaphysically necessary, personal being also explains the existence of objective morality.
Given the nature of rational inquiry, Richard Taylor’s translucent ball illustration, and facts (1)-(4) on the list above, the most rational thing to do is to accept the explanation for the universe’s existence, at least in the absence of any evidence against the explanation. I think this is even more perspicuous once we envisage the shoe on the other foot. If the atheist had an explanation for the universe’s existence that was devastating to theism and it met criteria (1)-(4) above—in addition to there being no evidence against the explanation—I have a hard time believing atheists wouldn’t use this devastating-to-theism explanation as evidence against theism. Moreover, by my lights such atheists would be right in thinking that what they had constituted evidence against theism.

Omnipotence and Omniscience



Let S (for simple) and C (for complex) be placeholders for mathematical entities/relations. S is simpler than C if S can be understood without understanding C but C cannot be understood without understanding S. Quoting Richard Swinburne:
One does not need to know what a trillion is in order to understand what is the infinitely long or lasting or fast. It is because infinity is simple in this way that scientists postulate infinite degrees of quantities rather than very large degrees of quantities, when both are equally consistent with the data. The medieval postulated an infinite velocity of light, and Newton postulated an infinite velocity for the gravitational force, when in each case large finite velocities would have been equally compatible with the data then available measured to the degree of accuracy then obtainable.[2]
So why prefer an infinitely powerful God rather over a merely enormously powerful one as the personal cause of the contingent and physical universe? One reason is simplicity; an infinite quantity of power is simpler than a merely very large quantity of power. So all else held constant, it’s simpler to posit an infinitely powerful transcendent personal cause. To quote Richard Swinburne from his book The Existence of God:
A finite limitation cries out for an explanation for why there is just that particular limit, in a way that limitlessness does not…scientists have always preferred hypotheses of infinite velocity to hypotheses of very large finite velocity, when both were equally compatible with the data. And they have always preferred hypotheses that some particle had zero mass to hypotheses that it had some very small mass, when both were equally compatible with the data. There is a neatness about zero and infinity that a particular finite numbers lack. Yet a person with zero powers would not be a person at all. So in postulating a person with infinite power the theist is postulating a person with the simplest kind of power imaginable. [3]
A person with literally no power would not even have the ability to think, much less create a universe. The simplicity of zero and infinity can also be granted to “nothing” and “everything.” To illustrate, scientists tend to believe that the physical laws that apply to all observed electrons (a tiny fraction of all electrons in the universe) also apply to every electron in the universe, even though a more localized influence of physical laws would be equally compatible with the data. God knowing everything (and thus having infinite knowledge) is not only simpler than knowing a merely large finite quantity of stuff, but knowing all that can be known also seems to be the magnitude of knowledge most consonant with omnipotence.

Conclusion



The moral argument leads us to an eternal, transcendent, metaphysically necessary being that imposes moral duties upon us with supreme and universally binding authority. The entity being the Good also leads us to a perfectly good being. The LCA leads us to an eternal, transcendent, metaphysically necessary, personal cause of the universe. The law of parsimony suggests it’s simpler to posit the same entity responsible for all of these things, and the law of parsimony also steers us toward an omnipotent and omniscient deity. Thus, we have some fairly significant evidence for the existence of God.

[1] Adams, Robert M. The Virtue of Faith (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), p. 145.

[2] Swinburne, Richard. Simplicity as Evidence of Truth (Milwaukee, Wisconsin: Marquette University Press, 1996), pp. 33-34.

[3] Swinburne, Richard. The Existence of God, 2nd edition. (New York, New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), p.97