Argument from Evil as an Internal Critique

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Introduction

Even if certain atheists reject moral objectivism, can such atheists still use the argument from evil as an internal critique of theism?

A Problem for Atheists Who Reject Moral Objectivism

As I wrote about in my article Rosenberg’s Argument from Evil Folly, there’s a big problem for the atheist in using the argument from evil if the atheist in question believes objective morality does not exist. People can have different ideas of what sorts of things are morally good. Suppose for example a theist has a standard of goodness such that it’s good that God permits the evil we see for certain reasons that are morally sufficient on this standard of goodness. Some atheists might say that if God adopted their standard of goodness, God would not permit the evil we see. But without an objective moral standard, there’s no objective fact of the matter about which standard of goodness God would adopt if he existed, and thus there’d be no objective fact of the matter whether God would permit evil if he existed, in which case the argument from evil would collapse under its own weight.

A Solution?

Another idea is to use the argument from evil as an internal critique. For example, couldn’t the atheist at least criticize the theist for having an inconsistency in the theist’s conception of goodness with respect to a perfectly good God allowing evil? That depends on the theist, but it’s relatively trivial to construct a view of goodness that is consistent with a perfectly good God allowing evil in the world. Suppose for example a hypothetical theist says that it is morally good for us humans to try to fight against evil (refraining from doing morally wrong actions, advancing medical technology, learning to share our food with the hungry, etc.) with the limited abilities that we have, with the obstacles we face etc. and that this is better than God making the evils any less bad, such that if God adopted this standard of goodness God would allow the evil we see (on this view, it’s good that God permits evil in the way that he does, but it’s not necessarily good that we humans permit evil; in a sense God and humans would have different responsibilities). Maybe this view of the hypothetical theist is wrong, but it’s not self-contradictory, and so there would be no inconsistency in this hypothetical theist’s conception of goodness with respect to a perfectly good God allowing evil.

There is another way an atheist who isn’t a moral objectivist could supply an internal critique. God is not only perfectly morally good, he is also all-loving. In the June 2020 debate on Capturing Christianity between Cosmic Skeptic and Inspiring Philosophy, Cosmic Skeptic said this at around 1:46:23:

Let’s not talk about good and evil because if they’re not objective maybe it’s unhelpful. But if you think that God is all-loving as a separate point then the question just reformulates itself. It’s not just a question about what’s loving and what’s not. It’s like we know facts about the universe. We know that children get cancer and we have to be committed to the view that that is loving; that it is loving to allow a child to get cancer. It’s the same problem as saying you have to accept that it is good or at least not evil for a child to get cancer. It would just be framed differently. Whatever the person believes, as you say Cameron that’s probably the best way to answer it, with any argument I ever make on any debate that I do, on any video I make, it’s always an argument of consistency—pretty much, most of the time. And that’s what I’m looking for here; is just consistency.[1]

Does it follow that if a loving God permits cancer, that it is loving to allow a child to get cancer? No. For starters, let’s ask this question: why assume that a loving God would not permit suffering? Presumably it’s because that if you love someone you value their well-being. It’s reasonable that loving someone implies valuing that person’s well-being, but the problem is that a morally good God might value other things as well, things that “interfere” with valuing one’s well-being.

To give an example of how valuing someone’s well-being can conflict with another value, suppose a loving and just judge is tasked with sentencing a man who has committed a heinous crime. The judge loves everyone including the man she is sentencing, so she values the man’s well-being, but on the other hand she also values punishing those who commit heinous crimes. So, the judge gives the man a long prison sentence to pay for his crime, even though she loves the man (by virtue of loving everyone) and values his well-being, and even though a lengthy prison sentence would decrease the man’s well-being.

Obviously the child Cosmic Skeptic has in mind hasn’t done anything wrong to deserve cancer, so the loving and just judge doesn’t work as analogy, but it does work to illustrate this point: values can conflict, including valuing someone’s well-being. If God is not just all-loving but also morally good, God could conceivably have other values that supersede the immediate well-being of humans. Imagine a hypothetical theist who believes God is all-loving but also believes that God is morally good, and that God adopts a standard of goodness such that it is good that God permits the observed suffering we see even though he loves us all, and that (at least in part) because God is all-loving our suffering in the mortal realm is finite and a pleasant everlasting life is available to every human who freely chooses God. This hypothetical theist grants it is not loving to permit suffering, but believes it is good that God permits the finite suffering we observe; God has values that supersede the immediate well-being of certain individuals. Again, maybe this view of the hypothetical theist is wrong, but it’s not self-contradictory, and so there would be no inconsistency in this hypothetical theist’s conception of goodness with respect to a perfectly good and all-loving God allowing evil.

Conclusion

The problem of evil fails as an internal critique not just against a morally good God but an all-loving and morally good God, at least tout court. It’s reasonable that an all-loving God would value our well-being. However, a theist could believe that while God values our well-being because he is perfectly loving, this is only one of the things that God values, and that other values could outweigh our immediate well-being such that an all-loving God who is also perfectly morally good would permit the evil we see.

I said that the problem of evil fails as an internal critique against an all-loving and morally good God tout court, but the problem of evil could succeed as an internal critique if the theist really did adopt a standard of moral goodness in which it is not good that God permits the evil we see. So in a way whether the argument from evil works as an internal critique depends on the theist. My objection is that the internal critique is not inherently successful; the theist could easily adopt a standard of moral goodness that evades the problem. Alternatively, the theist could say that while she knows some moral values (“moral values” in this case being “stuff that’s morally good”), she doesn’t necessarily know all the values, much less all values in conjunction with the appropriate weights for each value, such that for all she knows God has morally sufficient reasons for allowing the evil we see even if those reasons are beyond her ken (there are even more complications for whether to permit evil beyond knowing all the values and their appropriate weights, but for purposes of this blog article I’m mostly focusing on this).

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[1] I’ve lightly edited the quote to remove some filler words such as “um” and “right” for better flow.

Great Cost of the Kalam?

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Introduction

Stephen Woodford has a YouTube channel called Rationality Rules and he posted a video titled Great Cost of the Kalam claiming that the kalam cosmological argument is incompatible with libertarian free will (I’ll explain what both are shortly). A popular version of the kalam cosmological argument, popularized by American philosopher William Lane Craig, goes like this:

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

There are other ways to word the first premise (e.g. “Whatever begins to exist has a cause of its beginning” and “Everything that begins to exist has a cause”). Libertarian freedom is the ability to choose without being determined by prior causes; e.g. when choosing between chocolate and vanilla ice cream. Determinism is roughly the view that all events are determined by prior conditions, such that given the initial conditions only one outcome is possible. For example, determinism would say that when Sally selected chocolate over vanilla ice cream, given the initial conditions there was only one selection she could make, even if the initial conditions were that both were available at the grocery store and she had sufficient currency for both.

What is a cause?

At around 2:30 to 2:38 Woodford says this.

A cause is a person or thing that gives rise to a phenomenon, action, or condition. It is a synonym of determinism.

No, it’s not. Something bringing about the existence of something else is not synonymous with deterministically causing its existence. To give a hypothetical example, suppose a ray gun has a 30% probability of creating chocolate ice cream, with the outcome being truly indeterministic (i.e. identical initial conditions can produce different outcomes). Now suppose I turn on the ray gun and chocolate ice cream appears courtesy of the ray gun. Since the ray gun did indeed bring about the existence of the ice cream (albeit indeterministically) the ray gun caused the ice cream to exist. But if it is correct to say that in this scenario the ray gun caused the ice cream to exist, then it is not the case that causality is synonymous with determinism.

To be fair though, there is one sense in which determinism and causality are related, and that has to do with the cause of an event (as in outcome 1 coming about versus outcome 2) as opposed to a cause of the existence of a thing. The difference is subtle but important. To illustrate, consider the case of two physically identical uranium-238 atoms A and B, where atom A emits an alpha particle and atom B does not. It may indeed be true that identical physical conditions can produce different outcomes, and while this would rule out the uranium atom deterministically bringing about the alpha particle, it doesn’t rule out indeterministic causation (viz. the uranium atom bringing about the alpha particle, after all it’s the uranium atom that emits it!). So let’s consider the theory that the uranium atom indeterministically causes the existence of the alpha particle. This theory would entail that the existence of the alpha particle (the existence of the thing) has a causal explanation, but this theory would also imply that there is no causal explanation for why uranium atom A emitted an alpha particle and physically identical uranium atom B did not, i.e. there wouldn’t be a causal explanation for the different outcomes between the two physically identical atoms (though there would be a “random chance” explanation for the difference), even though the existence of the alpha particle would have a causal explanation (viz. the uranium atom).[1] The “anything that begins to exist has a cause” claim says that every thing that begins to exist has a cause, but allows for the possibility of uncaused events (e.g. outcome 1 coming about versus outcome 2) in the sense described earlier.

As William Lane Craig (the American philosopher who popularized the kalam cosmological argument in the 20th century) said:

But in any case the reader needs to recall that the premise of the argument is very carefully formulated. It is: everything that begins to exist has a cause. That is deliberately formulated so as to allow for quantum indeterminacy with regard to events. This is quite consistent with admitting that there are events that occur without a cause. And so events that are, say, movements of a libertarian free will or decay of an atomic isotope or emission of a photon, we can happily admit, at least for the sake of argument, that those are uncaused events, and it wouldn't affect the truth of the premise, which concerns whether or not things can actually begin to exist without any causes.

To reiterate, kalam’s causal premise prohibits things (alpha particles, mountains, people, root beer, etc.) beginning to exist without a caused, but does not prohibit uncaused events in the sense described earlier.

Libertarian Freedom

At around 5:11 to 5:32 Woodford says:

According to libertarianism, that is according to the vast majority of theists, the will of a free agent is at least partially non-determined. Thus, by freely stating that whatever begins to exist has a cause, you have demonstrated the contrary. You have proven its falsehood. You are contradicting your statement though the very means in which you express it.

Woodford mistakenly believes that libertarian freedom implies that free acts are uncaused, but this doesn’t follow. While some variants of libertarianism require that our acts be uncaused to be free, this isn’t true for all versions of libertarianism. One libertarian view called agency theory posits agent-causation whereby an agent (person, self) causes events without being determined by prior causes. So, a free act is not uncaused; it is indeterministically caused by an agent. The existence of the agent and its ability to have free will in turn could have been caused by something else.

Conclusion

Woodford’s objection to the kalam cosmological argument for the libertarian proponent is that causality is synonymous with determinism, and the libertarian must hold to their free actions being uncaused, which would thus require the libertarian to not believe the kalam’s causal premise. Three main problems are: (1) causality is not synonymous with determinism; (2) indeterministic causation is still an option (e.g. a uranium atom indeterministically bringing about the existence of an alpha particle); (3) not all versions of libertarianism require an act be uncaused to be free (e.g. agency theory). It would seem therefore that this objection fails.

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[1] At the same time, there is a sense in which there is a cause of the event for why A emitted the particle and B did not: the cause is time and chance acting on inherent properties of matter indeterministically bringing about the two different events (the inherent properties of uranium-238 determine the probability, which is why it has a measurable half-life, as opposed to there being no consistent probability among atoms of the same kind). To some degree it boils down to semantics of what a “cause” is.

Is the Kalām Cosmological Argument Slyly Circular?

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Introduction

Cosmic Skeptic wrote an article called The Sly Circularity of the Kalãm Cosmological Argument. Before getting into the objection let’s review what the kalam cosmological argument (KCA) is.

The kalam cosmological argument (KCA)

A material cause is the stuff something is made out of, and an efficient cause is that which produces an effect. For example, when an artist creates a wooden sculpture, the wood is the material cause and the artist is the efficient cause. The relevant version of the KCA, popularized by William Lane Craig, is this:

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

Let’s unpack the two premises further. For Craig, the first premise “Everything that begins to exist has a cause” includes both material and efficient causation. You can see that in this Reasonable Faith webpage. So to say that the universe began to exist without a cause would mean beginning to exist with no efficient cause and no material cause, i.e. coming into being from nothing.

For the second premise, it should be noted that William Lane Craig defines “the universe” in way so that it “comprises all contiguous spacetime reality.” If for example there were some pre-existing physical reality that caused the big bang to occur, that physical reality would itself be part of “the universe” as Craig is defining the term.

This KCA is logically valid, i.e. the conclusion follows from the premises inescapably by the rules of logic such that it’s impossible to have true premises and a false conclusion. Since a sound argument is just a valid argument with all true premises, the only way this argument can fail to be sound is with a false premise.

Cosmic Skeptic’s Rebuttal

In his article he said this:

However, I will stress that in granting that ‘the universe began to exist’, we are really granting that ‘the universe began to exist out of nothing’. If the universe were created out of preexisting material, we would be left with the question of where this material itself came from, and the argument would prove nothing important.

Charitably, by “the universe began to exist out of nothing” he actually means the universe began to exist without a material cause, i.e. beginning to exist without arising from pre-existing material (it could still have an efficient cause). Recall though that by “the universe” Craig means it in such a way that it includes all contiguous space-time, so there can’t be any pre-existing material that the universe arose from since by definition that “pre-existing material” would itself be part of the universe.

Cosmic Skeptic then says this:

If ‘beginning to exist’ means anything philosophically significant in this context, it must mean beginning to exist ex nihilo.

That’s not quite true; we could just define “the universe” in way so that it “comprises all contiguous spacetime reality” as William Lane Craig has done and the conclusion of the KCA would be theologically significant, since among other things the universe beginning to exist (in the normal sense of the phrase) implies the universe did not arise from pre-existing material given Craig’s definition of “the universe.”

With Cosmic Skeptic defining “begins to exist” as “beginning to exist without using pre-existing material to form it,” he interprets the first premise to mean “Everything that begins to exist [without using pre-existing material to form it] has a cause,” even though this is not what the first premise actually means.

Having redefined “begins to exist” as “beginning to exist without using pre-existing material to form it,” he notes how we’ve never seen anything “begin to exist” because all the things that have begun to exist (in the normal sense of the term) were made out of pre-existing material.

What, then, within the universe, has truly begun to exist (from nothing) at a particular point in the past?

Nothing. The answer is nothing. Energy cannot be created or destroyed, and thus nothing in physical existence ever ‘began to exist’ in the sense we are interested in.

It’s a widespread myth that energy cannot be created or destroyed. The expansion of space means that photons can lose energy from redshifting (the wavelength of the photons gets longer as space expands, and the photons lose energy as a result; the cosmic microwave background radiation used to be orange and it lost energy to become microwaves), and the expansion of space also means more dark energy. You can see this fun Science Asylum video for more on that.

But for sake of argument let’s pretend energy is always conserved, and that nothing in the universe begins to exist in the redefined ex nihilo manner. Cosmic skeptic says this leads to a circularity in the KCA because the only thing that began to exist is the universe, so “Everything that begins to exist [without using pre-existing material to form it] has a cause” becomes “The universe has a cause” and we get this argument.

1. The universe has a cause.
2. The universe began to exist.
3. The universe had a cause.

But this argument is circular, since the conclusion (3) just reiterates (1).

Now sure, if you mutilate the first premise of the KCA from “Everything that begins to exist has a [material or efficient] cause” to “The universe has a cause” then you get a circular argument, but at that point you’re no longer talking about the same argument! The original KCA is still not circular even if Cosmic Skeptic’s mutilated version of the KCA is.

Conclusion

Cosmic skeptic makes some points that, even if true, don’t really go anywhere in establishing the relevant point. (For more on this sort of maneuver, I made a video about red herrings.) For example, he says that for the first premise to be “philosophically significant” it needs to mean “beginning to exist without using pre-existing material to form it.” But even if that’s true, and as a sort of rescue effort (to make the KCA philosophically significant?) one modifies the KCA so that the first premise becomes “Anything that begins to exist without using pre-existing material to form it has a cause” and this modified first premise renders the modified KCA slyly circular, this modified KCA is not the original argument. One isn’t establishing that the original argument is “slyly circular” but is instead establishing a different point, viz. that the modified KCA is slyly circular.

If it is true that on the actual meaning of the KCA’s premises and conclusion, the KCA’s conclusion isn’t “philosophically significant,” one can object to the KCA’s utility for theism on that grounds. As it stands, the alleged circularity doesn’t arise until one mutilates the KCA into a straw man.