Next week it will be my pleasure to have my third discussion on the Unbelievable radio show with host Justin Brierley. My partner in conversation will be Stephen Law, who teaches philosophy at Heythrop College, University of London.
Although the only public comments I have made about Stephen at this blog have been for the sake of disagreeing with him, the fact is that I like reading what he has to say – however mistaken I might think he is. Yes he has creativity and style, something lacked by plenty of academics, but unlike other vocal critics of religion like P Z Meyers, Richard Dawkins or Sam Harris, Stephen Law usually knows what he’s talking about as far as philosophy goes (I say usually because it does seem to me that philosophy of religion is not his strength, and this is the subject area of his “Evil-God Challenge.”). Law’s “Evil-God Challenge” should be read by anyone who wants to philosophically defend the Christian faith. That being said, the central point of the article, that theistic arguments are just as compatible with a malevolent deity as they are with the God of Christianity, is false. I think first year students in philosophy of religion who want to defend the Christian faith should – before being allowed to progress to the second year – be able to explain why the evil God challenge fails. If they’re not sure how they would do it, they should make sure they listen to the discussion on Unbelievable!
Glenn Peoples
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Tags: apologetics, atheism, Debates, public lectures, speaking engagements, stephen law
No, it’s not synonymous, and further I didn’t define goodness anywhere in that article, let alone defining it as God.
It’s not synonymous because “an action is right if God commands it” is compatible with a range of different relationships between rightness and God: That rightness means being commanded by God; that the property of rightness is identical with the property of being commanded by God; that the state of being right is caused by being commanded by God; that being right is constituted by being commanded by God – you get the idea.
What’s more, “right” doesn’t mean “loving,” so that connection seems to have popped out from nowhere as well. Remember that the comment of yours that I queried was where you had seen me define God as all loving (not as good), so it seems like a bunch of ideas are being mixed together here.
But more to the point (this was the point of my previous comment, and I don’t want it to be lost beneath the above confusion of concepts), I trust that you do see that there were actually quite a few lines of reasoning that you missed in your previous comment, and my position is not nearly as dependent on things like “faith” as you suggested (and I have no idea what you mean by that, but I suspect the term was meant to conjure up caricatures of believers as not particularly rational). There are several cogent lines of reasoning that address the evil-god challenge, and the moral argument is one such line.
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Glenn,
I’m sorry, but I still don’t understand. Stephen suggested a hypothetical scenario:
“Suppose purely for the sake of argument that it could be established that if there’s no evil god, then there are no moral facts. Would it then be reasonable to believe in an evil god?”
Your response to Stephen was to claim the following:
“Well that’s actually not a mirror image of the argument I used, Stephen. What I said is that if there’s no God at all, there are no moral facts. That this God is good rather than malevolent is something inferred from what we discover those facts to be like.”
Now, what would it take for Stephen’s hypothetical to be “a mirror image” of your argument? It seems that the mirror image of Stephen’s argument is this:
“If there’s no maximally good God, then there are no moral facts.”
(Note two things: (i) The rest of the argument is implicit, and (ii) I say “maximally good” because, I take it, Stephen meant to be talking about the Evil God from his paper, which is defined as maximally evil.)
Now, since you claim that Stephen’s hypothetical was not a mirror image of your argument, evidently you don’t defend the premise that I just described. So whatever argument you do present must be different than that. Once again, here’s your response to Stephen so we can see the difference between the “mirror image” and your actual argument:
“[I]f there’s no God at all, there are no moral facts. That this God is good rather than malevolent is something inferred from what we discover those facts to be like.”
According to traditional theism, since God is by definition maximally good, we should interpret your first sentence as the following:
“If there’s no (maximally good) God, there are no moral facts.”
The reason we interpret it like this is because it’s just built into the concept of God that he is maximally good. (In that case, we can simply drop the “maximally good” because it’s already implicit. I’m including it for emphasis.) But now, if we interpret your argument like this, then it is a mirror image of Stephen’s hypothetical after all.
Since you claim your argument wasn’t a mirror image, we have to understand your argument differently than we would if we were working in the framework of traditional theism. And you do tell us the difference in the very next sentence: “That this God is good rather than malevolent is something inferred from what we discover those facts to be like.”
In other words, the goodness of the being (rather than malevolence) is not being built into the premise you’re using. You suggest that if there is no God “at all” (in general? broadly construed?), then there are no moral facts. You suggest that it is a separate question whether the being is good or malevolent. But then, clearly, you’re understanding the concept of God more broadly than traditional theism. This is because, evidently, you are not building maximal goodness into the concept.
Nothing you have said in response to me clears up this confusion. I’d still like to know, if you maintain that I’m misunderstanding your view, what exactly you meant when you wrote that response to Stephen. The straightforward interpretation of what you wrote is what I have suggested.
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Matthew,
The fact that Swinburne defends a version of the moral argument does not detract from the further fact that he takes the conditional premise of Craig’s moral argument (i.e. “If God does not exist, then objective moral values and duties do not exist”) to be false. He is on record saying so. Stephen is therefore entirely correct to cite Swinburne as a Christian philosopher who sides against this version of the moral argument.
As you note, a number of theistic philosophers do agree that moral obligations depend on God. So Stephen would be incorrect (evidently) to claim that, say, very few theistic philosophers would take that view. I’m not sure if Stephen did make such a claim. But even if he did, he doesn’t need to. All he needs to do is maintain that it is a controversial premise (as evidenced not only by the fact that one of the greatest Christian philosophers of the past fifty years rejects it, but also by the fact that it is widely rejected among philosophers more generally), and that the burden is on the theist to defend the premise of the argument. Citing the philosophers who disagree with the premise serves to emphasize the fact that Craig, Peoples, etc. have a burden of proof here. The premise is not going to be taken for granted.
This is all Stephen needs to claim. If Glenn presents a strong case for the controversial conditional premise, great! Let’s see it.
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“According to traditional theism, since God is by definition maximally good, we should interpret your first sentence as the following:”
This is where you go wrong. As I said, I was choosing to simply overlook (i.e. to concede for argument’s sake) the classical conceptions of goodness, greatness and being, thus forgoing what might be seen as the easy victory of saying that my position is true by definition. So you should interpret me as saying no more or less than what I actually did say: If there’s no God at all, then there are no moral facts.
True – if you change this claim into a different claim, then you could change it into a mirror image of Stephen’s. But that’s not really important. The point is, without just saying from the start that we already know that God is good (since the whole discussion was about how we might infer that God is good and not nasty), that there could be moral facts at all – so say I – points to a creator and the nature of those facts gives us a way of knowing what the creator is like.
Ergo the moral argument does not provide symmetrical support for a good god and an evil God.
Now, if you’re expecting a discussion which consists of me providing a detailed defence of a moral argument, then your expectations won’t be met by this radio discussion. As I said on the show, what I offered as a very small part of this discussion was just a very brief thumbnail sketch of the moral argument – Just as I am sure Stephen will admit without hesitation that he never offered a substantial argument from evil, just a very short summary of what that argument is like.
But nobody – I sincerely hope – would reject either of those arguments just because in this discussion they were only presented in summary form. However, Landon, I did do a somewhat more substantial presentation on the moral argument back in Episodes 9 and 10 of the podcast.
Hopefully the confusion is, at very least, lessening for you. If not, well I think I’ll just disagree with you about the implications of my comments. That’s allowed.
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Maybe I’m naive but why is the intrinsic difference between good and evil not a viable argument? Good and evil are not just synergistic opposites. At its essence the good creates and the evil destroys.
The gods of myth are more human than god and their goals are petty and self-centered. The goal of the machine god of the Matrix is perpetuation. The omnipotent good and just God of the Bible uses anthropomorphism to relate to time-bound humanity. But evil god must be anthropomorphic in order for his endless reign of pain and suffering to make sense.
For evil god the only meaning behind the good is to simply contrast evil in order to increase fear and suffering with an end to perpetuate more fear and suffering. What purpose does evil god have for lessening humanity’s suffering in this life for the promise of everlasting suffering in the afterlife?
It can be logically and rationally theorized that for finite humanity transitioning to the infinite some kind of process is necessary. But progressively learning the true meaning of suffering so that one can achieve a suffering perfection in order to fulfill the amusement of evil god is just non-sense. An illustration of the absurdity of evil god is a short story by outspoken atheist author Harlan Ellison, “I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream.”
The evil god proposition is a semantic trick. And even though the purpose behind it is to demonstrate the absurdity of the arguments for good, to simply re-word all the arguments for good with evil doesn’t work.
Logically evil god must be some sort of sadomasochistic suffering demigod. For if evil god was the embodiment of evil than nothing would exist, for the ultimate goal of evil at the period of the uncreated state is already achieved!
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Glenn,
You wrote: “I was choosing to simply overlook (i.e. to concede for argument’s sake) the classical conceptions of goodness, greatness and being, thus forgoing what might be seen as the easy victory of saying that my position is true by definition. So you should interpret me as saying no more or less than what I actually did say: If there’s no God at all, then there are no moral facts.”
The problem is, I don’t know what you mean when you say that! In particular, I don’t know what you mean when you say “If there’s no God at all, then there are no moral facts.” To narrow down the source of the confusion, I don’t know what you mean by “God.” To take the view of traditional theism is to hold that God is essentially maximally good. If by “God” you don’t mean to be talking about the being posited by traditional theism, that’s fine, but that’s precisely what I originally claimed was curious about your statement.
You wrote: “The point is, without just saying from the start that we already know that God is good (since the whole discussion was about how we might infer that God is good and not nasty), that there could be moral facts at all – so say I – points to a creator and the nature of those facts gives us a way of knowing what the creator is like.”
This language once again confirms what I’ve been suspecting all along–that, for you at least, maximal goodness isn’t built into the concept of God. You might have another look at the Craig-Law debate, because as I recall one of the first points that Craig raised in his rebuttal was that it was incoherent to speak of God as being evil–since God is, by definition, maximally good. I take it that this is the view commonly accepted among theistic philosophers. Of course, that mere definition doesn’t settle the substantive metaphysical question of whether or not there’s an omnipotent, omniscient, maximally evil being (what Stephen calls “Evil God,” and others call “Anti-God” or “God*” or whatever). This was the question you and Stephen were debating, I take it. You were trying to show that it’s more reasonable to believe that there’s an omnipotent, omniscient, maximally good being than there is to believe that there’s an omnipotent, omniscient, maximally evil being. And the reason the former is more reasonable is because of the nature of moral facts.
Craig, Plantinga, Swinburne, etc. would, I think, deny that the being under question (Stephen’s “Evil God”) would, even if it existed, be properly called “God.” You, apparently, would not deny that, because evidently it’s an open question for you whether God is good or evil. (I mean “open question” not in the sense that you haven’t made up your mind, but in the sense that it’s something up for debate–and the assessment of empirical evidence could lead us one way or the other.)
You can of course just disagree with me about the implications of your comments, but I think the evidence is beginning to mount at this point, given that even this comment of yours indicates what I’ve been saying all along.
Lastly, I’m very much interested in seeing a formal presentation of this moral argument if you ever put one together. I might check out your podcast at some point, but presumably you’ve got plans to work it into a paper or something eventually? (Or has this already been done? I know that Craig’s moral argument, bad as it may be, is not the same as yours.) Part of what makes me interested in your moral argument is that I can’t see how you can possibly substantiate the conditional premise, especially given your peculiarly non-traditional concept of God. I’m thinking, nevertheless, that one of the same problems that plagues Craig’s argument is going to apply equally well to yours. But I’ll withhold judgment on all that until I see what you’ve got to say.
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Hey Glenn,
Have you seen Stephen’s response to the EAAN in the latest edition of Analysis? It’s available on his blog. He proposes to get around it by supposing that there are “conceptual constraints” which make true beliefs more valuable to evolutionary progress. I’m still not sure that the “conceptual constraints” get you beyond more functional to more likely to be true, but it’s an interesting response to the EAAN. Do you have any thoughts on it (or are you planning a post in the future)?
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It’s up:
http://www.premier.org.uk/unbelievable
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Hi G K E – I hadn’t seen that. But it’s ironic that Stephen should criticise the EAAN, given that in our discussion he appeals directly to the sort of scepticism about our belief forming structures that Plantinga’s argument is driven by. In my next blog entry I’ll comment briefly on why I think Plantinga and Law are (probably) wrong, for the same reason.
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“The problem is, I don’t know what you mean when you say that!”
Sorry Landon.
“This language once again confirms what I’ve been suspecting all along–that, for you at least, maximal goodness isn’t built into the concept of God.”
You shouldn’t think that. Remember that I said I was choosing to simpl;y skip over and concede the whole issue of whether or not maximal greatness and hence goodness is part of what it means to be God. Recall that in my last reply to you I tried to explain that I did this – at least partly – to avoid that charge that I was seeking an easy victory by just saying “Of course God’s not bad, because God means perfectly good!”
Given that I told you explicitly that I was just conceding this for argument’s sake, I’m a little bothered by the fact that you now seem to think that you’ve discovered that you were right all along in thinking that I don’t actually think that maximal greatness implies perfect goodness (i.e. that goodness is part of God’s very nature as God). I tried – I told you this was only a concession for argument’s sake. If you really won’t take me at my word on this, then I don’t know what else I should or could say to you. But I can’t fathom why you don’t believe me.
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It may be true that the arguments of natural theology for God’s existence can be flipped to permit an evil God. However, the historical arguments cannot, in my opinion. I will consider them in three parts: 1) the OT’s record of future prophecies regarding the life and mission of the Messiah, 2) the person of Jesus, and 3) the future fulfillment of the remaining prophecies after Jesus returns.
1) The OT has many specific references to characteristics the Messiah must have, which make it coincidental in the extreme for them all to be fulfilled in any one person. For example, he would be of the tribe of Judah, a prophet like Moses to whom the people must give an account, a king, of the line of David, born in Bethlehem, born of a virgin, born a precise number of years Persian decree to rebuild Jerusalem, that he would die for the sins of the people, that he would live in Galilee and in Nazareth, that he would die by crucifixion, on Passover, that he would inaugurate a new covenant of the spirit, that he would be a light to the nations, and many others – some say around 300. Now, granted, taken individually, it’s difficult to say in every case that they must refer to Jesus. However, in many cases he is the only possible candidate, and their cumulative weight to a discerning mind is, I believe, overwhelming. One might even compare the odds of any person fulfilling even the major ones as rivaling the improbabilities of the fine-tuning of the constants of physics to permit intelligent life, or the accidental arrangement of atoms to form DNA. The nature of the person described by the Old Testament prophecies is unquestionably good, not evil. The people of Israel looked forward to his coming – they did not dread it. He was a savior, redeemer, liberator. There is no set of prophecies anywhere else in history that I know of that relate to an evil one who will come, and which have been fulfilled to the same extent in a living person, as the prophecies of Jesus the Messiah.
2). Jesus life was unquestionably good. He gave sight to the blind, caused the lame to walk, freed those who were demon-possessed, fed the hungry, calmed the storms, raised Lazarus from the dead, and taught people the meaning of life and how to be in right relationship to God and others. Although he had done nothing wrong, he willingly suffered a criminal’s death to make a way for all of mankind to be reconciled to God, when they were helpless to do so on their own. He validated all his actions and teachings when God raised him from the dead to inhabit a new, immortal body. There is no counterpart to this in the evil God hypothesis.
3) The future events to take place when Jesus returns. Due to Jesus’ impeccable credentials, as the one who fulfilled detailed prophecies recorded 400 – 1200 years before his birth; and given his record of accomplishing so much good and not any evil during his life, then it’s quite reasonable, even compelling, to believe that he will fulfill the remaining prophecies about the Messiah in the Bible. And, you guessed it – those prophecies are about him doing good, not evil. He will bring the Jewish people back to their own land to dwell in safety, to recognize him as their Messiah, and to believe in him. He will defeat all the genocidal and oppressive dictators of the world, and all those who do evil, bringing about world peace under his rule. He will recreate the natural order – the lion will lay down by the lamb, the child will play by the viper’s den, and no creature will hurt or destroy another creature. He will raise up the dead and judge them in righteousness, righting all the wrongs that were done under the old order. He will give eternal life and rewards to those who loved him, and banish those who hated or dismissed him.
Once these things have all taken place, all of the atheist objections will be revealed as erroneous, short-sighted, and misguided, whether they relate to God’s existence, the truth of Christianity, or the problem of evil. Once this happens, no one will believe the evil God hypothesis.
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Ari – I think you’re quite right that historical apologetics (setting the details of those arguments aside) certainly warrants attention in making a case that God is good and not bad/evil/malicious.
In my next podcast episode I will be saying some things about the evil god challenge, and historical arguments for Christianity will certainly get a mention.
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Landon
Stephen said “Take, for example, the Christian philosopher Professor Richard Swinburne of Oxford University. Swinburne says, “I cannot see any force in an argument to the existence of God from the existence of morality.”
So Professor Craig is putting up against a mountain of evidence against what he believes an argument that even one of the world’s leading Christian philosophers finds utterly unconvincing.”
Here he gives the impression that the case for Craig’s conditional is so bad that even leading Christian thinkers reject it. In fact many of the most important leading Christian thinkers accept it. Moreover Swinburne rejects it because he departs from the standard position that God exists necessarily and instead believes Gods existence is contingent. So Swinburne is in fact not representative here.
This seems to me a bad argument, it assumes that if a premise is controversial then the burden of proof is on the person who makes it. This creates an obvious problem. Take the claim
1. Moral obligations can exist independently of God.
This is also a controversial claim, many theists and also many error theoriest also many non cognitivists reject it. So by your reasoning those who affirm it have a burden of proof.
Similarly just as one can cite Swinburne one of the greatest Christian philosophers of the last 50 years one can also cite Mackie one of the greatest athiest philosophers of the last 50 years as rejecting 1. So this argument cuts both ways.
Moreover, if the burden of proof is on the person who makes a controversial claim skepticism about pretty much every substantive philosophical claim looms, because to be justified in believing them you would have to appeal to premises which are not controversial and hence accepted by every one
No position is supported by arguments of this level of proof.
See above, Craig can also cite philosophers who disagree with 1 above which would mean the burden of proof is on you to show 1 is true.
Great, now take the claim
2. A divine command theory is false
I can cite philosophers who disagree with this claim, so its controversial hence you cannot take it for granted. All I need to claim then is that this view is controversial and now you need to present a strong case for this premise, lets see it.
Moreover your case must be based on premises which are not in anyway controversial otherwise I can simply point out they are controversial meaning the burden of proof is on you to show it.
So by parity of argument I can make Craig’s conditional the default one.
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Matt,
You did not quote Law as saying that very few theistic philosophers take Craig’s view. What he said was that even Richard Swinburne, arguably the greatest Christian philosopher of the past fifty years (in competition with Plantinga) rejects Craig’s argument. I was leaving it an open question whether Law said elsewhere that most theistic philosophers side with Swinburne. Note also that there’s a difference between theistic philosophers rejecting the conditional statement, and theistic philosophers rejecting Craig’s case for the conditional statement. For all I know, it may be the case that most Christian philosophers would accept the conditional statement, but reject Craig’s case for it. But your point is well-taken that Swinburne’s motivation for rejecting the conditional derives from a view he holds which is widely rejected among other Christian philosophers.
Everything else you say in your comment is unfortunately seriously misguided, I’m afraid. I claimed that the theist who is putting forward the moral argument for the existence of God has the burden of proof regarding the controversial conditional premise (“If God does not exist, objective moral values and duties do not exist”). This is made ever more apparent by the fact that Swinburne (a great Christian philosopher) rejects the premise, along with a great number of other contemporary philosophers.
Your response is to claim that this commits us to the following (allegedly problematic) principle: “if a premise is controversial then the burden of proof is on the person who makes it.” (I would have worded the principle a bit differently: “…is on the person who puts forward the argument with that premise.”)
Now I’m having a hard time figuring out precisely why this is supposed to be a problematic principle. It seems straightforwardly obvious to me that, in a debate, if my opponent puts forward an argument for the existence of God, he or she has the burden of supporting the premises of that argument. I would have thought this was wholly uncontroversial. It has nothing to do with the burden of proof being unfairly put on the theist’s shoulders. It has everything to do with the burden of proof being put on the shoulders of the person who is making the argument. So, if the atheist puts forward an argument for the non-existence of God, it’s not the theist’s burden to show that the premises are false; rather, it’s the atheist’s burden to show that the premises are true.
(If you disagree with that, then I want to debate the existence of God with you. I’ll put forward seventy five arguments for the non-existence of God, and leave it up to you to show that each argument has at least one false premise!)
Now, here’s why you think the principle is a bad one. You write:
“Take the claim
1. Moral obligations can exist independently of God.
This is also a controversial claim, many theists and also many error theoriest also many non cognitivists reject it. So by your reasoning those who affirm it have a burden of proof.”
Yes indeed! I don’t see anything wrong with that. If I put forward an argument in a debate with that as one of my premises, then I think I do have the burden of supporting that statement. This is made more apparent by the fact that Mackie (a great philosopher) rejects that statement, as do a number of other good philosophers. The premise shouldn’t just be taken for granted. Again, I don’t see what the problem is here.
You write: “Moreover, if the burden of proof is on the person who makes a controversial claim skepticism about pretty much every substantive philosophical claim looms, because to be justified in believing them you would have to appeal to premises which are not controversial and hence accepted by every one. No position is supported by arguments of this level of proof.
Here the worry seems to be that if people have the burden of supporting the premises of their arguments, then skepticism will result. But what exactly are our alternatives? It seems that either people have the burden of supporting the premises of their own arguments, or they don’t. If they do, then the point of my previous comment seems correct. (And it’s not clear to me why we should think that skepticism would result. We can discuss that further if you like.) If they don’t, then arguing for one’s own position on a philosophical topic becomes too easy–one merely has to develop a logically valid (or strong) argument. Tell me, out of all of the peer-reviewed philosophy you’ve ever read, how often is there an indication that one doesn’t have the burden of supporting the premises of their own arguments?
You write: “Craig can also cite philosophers who disagree with 1 above which would mean the burden of proof is on you to show 1 is true.”
Yes, if that’s a premise in one of my arguments, then you’re certainly correct! But I have no burden of proof on the matter if my arguments don’t hang on (1) being true. Suppose I’m debating Craig, and (1) is never even on the table until his rebuttal. In his rebuttal he offers (1) up for consideration, cites some philosophers who disagree with it, and then says: “Now I think the burden of proof is on Landon to show that (1) is true.” How should I respond to such a charge? Why should I feel at all obliged to support (1), if none of my arguments rely on (1)? Since I have no need for (1), Craig cannot pin this burden of proof on me.
(If you think he can do this in the way just suggested, then I’d like to debate you. I’ll randomly state seventy five different controversial philosophical theses, and then cite some philosophers who take a stand on each of them, and then declare that you have the burden of proving those philosophers wrong.)
As for the end of your comment, you simply do precisely what Craig did in my thought experiment above. You take the controversial philosophical claim that Divine Command Theory is false, and declare that I have the burden of proving that claim true. The disanalogy here should be obvious at this point: I haven’t offered any arguments with (2) as a premise. If I had, then I’ll grant that I’d have a burden of proof here.
It seems to me that you’re greatly confused here. It really looks like you’re taking the position that the person making an argument in a debate doesn’t have a burden of supporting the premises of said argument. If that’s the case, I’ll start drafting up my seventy five arguments for atheism
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Landon – the problem is that Law offered the claim that the crucial premise here is controversial (i.e. some philosophers don’t believe it) as the only real response when some considerations were offered in favour of accepting it.
This suggests the view that claims should be denied just if they are controversial – which does indeed entail that you should deny that atheism is true (and that a divine command theory is false). Surely this applies whether you’re in a debate or not.
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You are misrepresenting what I said, Glenn.
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Glenn,
I’ve listened to that section of the show a couple times and I’m not sure the argument is “this premise is controversial, therefore don’t accept it.” I think it’s more as part of an evidential argument from authority:
1. Most philosophers (in the broad sense) reject moral arguments – evidence is the Phil Papers survey he cited
2. Some Christian philosophers of the highest caliber also reject the crucial premise – evidence is Swinburne
3. Therefore, we should at least hold the argument to a high degree of skepticality as the argument does not have strong support from the academy.
The problem are that the Phil Papers survey was highly weighted toward philosophers who might not even be aware of any of the moral arguments. The largest fields surveyed were philosophy of mind and philosophies of science. Of those surveyed who are in the right field (i.e. philosophy of religion) and specialize in such arguments, nearly 80% accept or lean toward accepting theism. How many of those find moral arguments persuasive? No idea, as there hasn’t been such a survey done.
But even if the points are weakened by analysing the data further, it only lowers the evidence in support of the claims, but doesn’t negate that it’s just an argument from authority. Stephen said that it was not, but never made clear why it is not.
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G K E – OK fair enough, “don’t believe it” is too strong. But it’s meant to have evidential significance that X number of people don’t believe that argument, and that significance is supposed to count against considerations in favour of the moral argument. So yes, your final comments are spot on, it really does seem like a fallacious argument from silence.
Stephen, I’ve just listened to the podcast, and that is certainly what you said on the day: The number of philosophers who don’t accept the key premise of the moral argument counts as a reason to doubt it. You even granted in the closing minutes that you suppose it is a sort of argument from authority. It just doesn’t strike me as anything more than a fallacious appeal to authority in response to an argument.
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Glenn,
I didn’t get the impression that Stephen was making that argument (and indeed he has now chimed in here to point out that you’re misrepresenting what he said). To argue that X is false because X is controversial surely is a poor argument, as even Stephen would admit.
What Stephen said was that it’s a controversial philosophical claim that requires a good defense. It’s not just controversial among philosophers in general, it’s also controversial among Christian philosophers (as evidenced by Swinburne). Admittedly, it would be nice to come up with some other examples as well, to really drive the point home.
So Stephen isn’t using the fact that it’s controversial as grounds to think it’s false. He’s using the fact that it’s controversial as grounds to emphasize that Craig has to offer a good defense of it.
Now, your other complaint is that this was Stephen’s “only real response when some considerations were offered in favour of accepting it.” In other words, the idea here is supposed to be that Craig has upheld his burden of proof here. He did offer some considerations in favor of the premise, and the only thing Stephen said in response was that Craig has a burden of proof because it’s a controversial claim.
If that’s your complaint, it’s misguided on a couple of accounts. First, I recall that Stephen did say some other things in response to Craig in the debate (and what he said was spot-on from what I remember). Additionally, it’s not clear what considerations Craig offered in favor of accepting the premise. I would contend that he didn’t offer any good considerations in favor of the premise, and that if you go back and listen closely you’ll be hard-pressed to find any decent argument. It’s not just that he didn’t offer any good considerations in favor of the premise in the debate, it’s the same in his written work. Have a look at his defense of the moral argument in Reasonable Faith, and let me know how Craig supports that premise. Here’s my prediction of what you’ll find: good rhetoric, fallacies, rhetorical questions, and shirking the burden of proof. (That was the conclusion I came to a couple of years ago when I wrote a paper on Craig’s moral argument.) If you want to contest that, though, feel free to explain Craig’s considerations in favor of the premise.
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Glenn,
I didn’t see this before I posted my comment:
Stephen, I’ve just listened to the podcast, and that is certainly what you said on the day: The number of philosophers who don’t accept the key premise of the moral argument counts as a reason to doubt it. You even granted in the closing minutes that you suppose it is a sort of argument from authority. It just doesn’t strike me as anything more than a fallacious appeal to authority in response to an argument.
I have to say that I haven’t listened to the podcast, so what I said above doesn’t apply to your debate, it applies to Stephen’s debate with Craig. Nevertheless, the fact that so many good philosophers reject the premise is a reason to doubt it, if by “doubt” we mean something like “remain skeptical or agnostic in the absence of good evidence.” If, on the other hand, Stephen meant to imply that we should think the premise is false on those grounds, then it’s admittedly a poor argument. I’ll let him clarify things himself, but I suspect he meant by “doubt” something more like “remain skeptical…”
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My point about the majority of philosophers rejecting the first premise, including even some leading christian ones, was to emphasise that the premise cannot just be assumed and is, indeed, highly controversial – indeed is generally considered very dubious indeed (contrary to what many Christians assume). However, I did not then conclude that the moral argument based on it must be no good. Obviously. I was making a different point.
But as you’re now conversing with me again, what about my earlier comment, in which I tried to state what your view is re the problem of evil. Is the following accurate…?
[quoting myself] “Ah right. You really do want to take that route. You want to say that there’s no good evidence against an evil god provided by observation of the world around us. For what evidence there might *appear* to be against the thought that the world has sch an all-evil, all-powerful creator (and pretty much everyone starts off acknowledging that there *appears* to be a very great deal) is successfully neutralized by the suggestion that there’s an after life of unremitting horror, that this may be a vale of soul-destruction, that evil god gave us free will to allow for moral evils which then outweigh the goods, etc?
So there really is no good empirical evidence against an evil god!
Nor presumably, can there be good empirical evidence against any kind of [all-powerful] god hypothesis as it’s always possible to cook up various explanations for whatever evidence we might seem to have against the god hypothesis in question by appealing to afterlives, god’s mysterious ways, etc. etc.”[end of quote]
In short, your view is that we cannot legitimately draw conclusions about the character of an all-powerful god on the basis of empirical observation (i.e. you embrace “skeptical theism”)?
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Landon: “I have to say that I haven’t listened to the podcast”
Then you definitely don’t know what argument Stephen was making in that podcast and it makes no sense to try to correct my understanding of what he said. Have you read Stephen’s article “The Evil-God Challenge”?
But I would say that it’s pretty dubious to call a claim controversial among Christian philosophers because Richard Swinburne doesn’t accept it (which is what you said). I may as well say that rejecting the crucial premise is “controversial” among atheists on the grounds that Nietzsche and Mackie accept it, which means that you should have a reason to doubt that we should deny this premise! The reality is that the overwhelming majority of Christian philosophers do accept the premise in question. it would have been misleading of Stephen to say otherwise.
Now, it’s true that atheist philosophers don’t accept the moral argument for theism. But they’re atheists. They ultimately do not accept any argument for theism.
But at the end of it all – and you may call me crazy for thinking this – I think that offering arguments is better than offering a head count.
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Stephen – Skeptical theism isn’t the view that we can’t show what God’s character is like by appealing to empirical evidence. Skeptical theism – as I understand it – is the view that we may simply not know why God allows X (where X is some thing in the world that people appeal to in order to undermine God’s character), but that this doesn’t mean there’s no reason for a good God to allow it. In other words, sceptical theism is the recognition that the burden of proof belongs to those who claim that there couldn’t be any good reason for a good God to allow X. A burden of proof, I’m sure you’ll agree, that you don’t attempt to meet in the evil God challenge.
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Glenn,
You write: “Then you definitely don’t know what argument Stephen was making in that podcast”
I already said as much! In my conversation with Matt I was talking about what Stephen said in his debate with Craig. You then replied to me, and I replied to you. None of that had anything to do with your debate with Stephen. I merely offered the second comment to clarify that I was indeed focusing on the Craig debate, not on your debate. I don’t see anything wrong with that.
You write: “it makes no sense to try to correct my understanding of what he said. Have you read Stephen’s article “The Evil-God Challenge”?”
I didn’t try to correct your understanding of what Stephen said. I offered two interpretations of what he might have meant given your comment. On one interpretation, he was making a good point; on the other, he was making a poor argument. I said I’d let him clarify things himself. The reason I said this was because I hadn’t listened to the podcast, so I wasn’t in a position to know precisely how his comments were phrased. So your impatience here is utterly bizarre, given that I explicitly refrained from making a judgment on the matter because I hadn’t listened to the podcast (which I also explicitly mentioned).
Maybe you’re taking issue with the fact that I said: “I suspect he meant by “doubt” something more like “remain skeptical…”” But I can’t find any fault with this statement, even if I haven’t listened to the podcast. (I merely registered my suspicion that Stephen wasn’t making the bad argument you attributed to him, since: (i) there’s an alternative interpretation available, and (ii) he’s not an idiot.)
To answer your question, yes I’ve read his paper.
You write: But I would say that it’s pretty dubious to call a claim controversial among Christian philosophers because Richard Swinburne doesn’t accept it (which is what you said). I may as well say that rejecting the crucial premise is “controversial” among atheists on the grounds that Nietzsche and Mackie accept it, which means that you should have a reason to doubt that we should deny this premise! The reality is that the overwhelming majority of Christian philosophers do accept the premise in question. it would have been misleading of Stephen to say otherwise.
This is an interesting comment. I suggested that the fact that Swinburne rejects the premise is evidence that it’s controversial among Christian philosophers. You dispute this, apparently on the grounds that ‘one dissenting philosopher does not a controversy make!’ But I didn’t say that the fact that Swinburne rejects the premise entails that it’s controversial, I said that it’s evidence for thinking that it’s controversial. I don’t know the head count of Christian philosophers who accept the premise vs. those who reject it. But the fact that one of the greatest Christian philosophers of the past several decades rejects the premise renders more probable the claim that the premise is controversial among Christian philosophers.
In any case, I did say that it would be nice to add to that list to drive the point home. Now, you say that the overwhelming majority of Christian philosophers accept the premise, and I’m wondering what your grounds are for that assertion. (Surely it’s not just coming from the list Matt offered earlier.)
By the way, the fact that Mackie and others have thought the premise was true wouldn’t make “rejecting the premise” controversial even among atheists, unless by “rejecting” you mean “declaring that it’s false.” In that case, indeed, rejecting the premise would be controversial. But if by “rejecting” you mean something broader (e.g. not accepting as true), then that wouldn’t be made controversial just by the fact that Mackie and others have taken a stand on it. And I take it that all the atheist needs is this broader sense of “rejecting.” Thus, in a debate I don’t have to support the view that your premise is false, I just have to support the view that we shouldn’t believe it’s true (by, e.g., undermining the reasons you’ve offered on its behalf).
You write: “But at the end of it all – and you may call me crazy for thinking this – I think that offering arguments is better than offering a head count.”
Sure! Now, what exactly was Craig’s argument/support for the premise? You said that some considerations in favor the premise were offered, and I’d be interested in finding out what those were.
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“But I didn’t say that the fact that Swinburne rejects the premise entails that it’s controversial, I said that it’s evidence for thinking that it’s controversial”
Well it’s either controversial or it’s not, Landon. Does Swinburne’s rejection of the claim tell us anything about whether or not it’s controversial? I say no. it cannot do so if in fact the vast majority of Christian philosophers accept the premise. That one does not is just evidence… well, that one does not!. You appear to say yes, it does tell us something about whether or not it’s controversial. So what does it tell us, Landon?
“Now, what exactly was Craig’s argument/support for the premise? You said that some considerations in favor the premise were offered, and I’d be interested in finding out what those were.”
Well, *I* offered some, and throughout this thread I have simply noted that Stephen brushed them off with an appeal to authority/numbers (a flawed appeal, I allege – both because of the actual numbers involved and because of the fallacy involved). But turning tot he debate with bill Craig, yes, Craig did offer some too though, and I think it’s disingenuous to just say that he didn’t – even if you don’t accept the reasons he offered. It would be even more disingenuous to then ask *me* to quote Craig’s comments for you when you yourself have listened to the debate.
You can carry on like that – in which case I’ll likely just ignore it – or you can cut the nonsense and explain what it was about the considerations that Craig offered that you find fault with. But just saying that he offered none is not part of any discussion I’m interested in having.
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Landon
My point is the significance of Swinburne’s rejection of the premise is of little significance when you consider that numerous equally competent Christian philosophers claim the opposite and his reasons are drawn from premises which are widely rejected by Thiests.
Here is the problem suppose Craig raises the conditional in a debate. As soon as someone in the debate claim you reject this conditional now you have to offer an argument for your rejection, because you are making a controversail claim in a debate and Craig can claim the burden is on you to do so. Moreover every premise you give for this argument he can do the same thing with and so on untill you come up with a knockdown argument from premises no philosopher denies.
That does not follow, the fact I reject the claim that the burden of proof is on him who makes a claim rejected by some philosophers does not entail that I therefore think one can make any claim at all and not share a burden of proof for it. This is a false dichotomy.
If you reject this claim then I’ll demand you prove every statement you make on this blog thread and every premise you use in these proofs, and every premise in these further proofs, until you can come up with an argument that appeals only to claims no philosopher rejects.
This assumes that unless one adopts your particular stance on the burden of proof, one can assert any premise they like and not defend it. That does not follow, all that follows is that it means that some other understanding of the burden of proof is correct.
Its the standard epistemic regress argument, if I defend a premise with an argument I must appeal to other premises, either you have to defend these premises with further argument or you don’t. If you don’t then the burden of proof is not on him who proposes a premise in a debate. If you do then the process is repeated ad infinitium until one gets to premises that are not controversial in the sense that it is not rejected by some significant philosopher. I suggest to you that no thesis of substance in philosophy can be supported by an argument whose premises consist soley of platitudes that no philosopher rejects.
Actually I addressed this, I would contend that every argument in the literature at some point will appeal to a premise that is rejected by some philosophers. The stance you propose in fact seems to implictly assume some kind of foundationalism whereby only assertions which are uncontroversial and accepted by all philosophers can be taken for granted. I think most modern philosophy does not assume or accept this kind of foundationalism.
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Glenn,
Regarding the Swinburne thing, I said that the fact that Swinburne rejects the premise is evidence that it’s controversial among Christian philosophers. That is to say, we’re considering the claim:
(C) The premise “If God does not exist, then objective moral values and duties do not exist” is controversial among Christian philosophers.
By claiming that Swinburne’s rejection of the conditional statement is evidence for (C), I’m claiming that it raises the probability of (C) being true. This leaves open the possibility that other evidence effectively renders (C) false. For example, you claim that the vast majority of Christian philosophers side with you and Craig against Swinburne. Let’s suppose it’s nearly unanimous. This would, I think, effectively show (C) to be false. But you’ve yet to provide the evidence that Christian philosophers are nearly unanimous in siding with you and Craig on this issue. I asked you in my last comment what your grounds were for making that claim, and you seem to have ignored that part of my comment.
You write: “Well, *I* offered some, and throughout this thread I have simply noted that Stephen brushed them off with an appeal to authority/numbers (a flawed appeal, I allege – both because of the actual numbers involved and because of the fallacy involved).”
Well, as I said I haven’t listened to your debate with Stephen so I wouldn’t know about that. But this particular thread of back-and-forth comments between you and I began while we were discussing Stephen’s debate with Craig, and you claimed in that context that some considerations in favor of the premise were offered. I assumed you were referring to the debate with Craig. So I’m going to focus on that, since that’s what I’ve been talking about. When I have time someday I’ll listen to your debate.
You write: “But turning tot he debate with bill Craig, yes, Craig did offer some too though, and I think it’s disingenuous to just say that he didn’t – even if you don’t accept the reasons he offered. It would be even more disingenuous to then ask *me* to quote Craig’s comments for you when you yourself have listened to the debate.”
Glenn, you can rest assured that I have listened to what Craig has to say with his moral argument. I’ve carefully pored over his (apparently) longest discussion of the argument in Reasonable Faith (3rd Ed.), and it’s just not clear to me what the considerations in favor of that premise are supposed to be. As I said, there’s a lot of nice rhetoric, and there’s some fallacies (including the very fallacies you’re complaining about with Stephen!), and there’s some rhetorical questions, and there’s some shirking of the burden of proof. And that’s pretty much it. So if you think that Stephen needs to say more in order to neutralize Craig’s defense of the premise, here’s what he needs to say: Craig’s case is a nicely packaged combination of rhetoric, fallacies, rhetorical questions, and shirking the burden of proof.
In other words, Craig’s case doesn’t actually support the premise. And given that Craig’s got a burden of proof here (I contend, though I’m surprised to find that Matt thinks that those who make arguments don’t have the burden of supporting their own premises!), Stephen’s points all seem to be in line.
You write: “You can carry on like that – in which case I’ll likely just ignore it – or you can cut the nonsense and explain what it was about the considerations that Craig offered that you find fault with. But just saying that he offered none is not part of any discussion I’m interested in having.”
Here, let me give you a taste of what I’m talking about from Craig’s defense of the premise in Reasonable Faith:
“Consider, then, moral values. If theism is false, why think that human beings have objective moral value? After all, on the naturalistic view, there’s nothing special about human beings. They’re just accidental byproducts of nature which have evolved relatively recently on an infinitesimal speck of dust called the planet Earth, lost somewhere in a hostile and mindless universe, and which are doomed to perish individually and collectively in a relatively short time. Richard Dawkins’ assessment of human worth may be depressing, but why, on atheism, is he mistaken when he says, “There is at bottom no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pointless indifference…. We are machines for propagating DNA. It is every living object’s sole reason for being”?” (p. 173-4)
Now, what considerations has Craig offered here? (Note that he has another page about objective moral values in the book, so I’m not including it all right here. But let’s focus on what he’s offered in this paragraph.)
Well, he’s got some nice rhetoric in there about the naturalistic perspective on the universe. We’re just animals on a rock in this big, pointless universe. Okay, and what can we infer from that? If we’re inferring from this that there is no objective morality, then Craig is working with this sort of premise:
(P) If we’re just animals on a rock…etc., then there are no objective moral values.
Fascinating claim. And we should believe that…why? Craig never says. Okay, so maybe the rhetoric about the naturalistic perspective isn’t meant to support the controversial premise of his moral argument. What else has he offered?
Well, he asks rhetorical questions. He asks: Why think there would be objective moral values given naturalism? We should pause and ponder this. Good question. Well worth thinking about. But does the rhetorical question lend any support for the claim that, say, naturalism entails that there are no objective moral values? I don’t see how. Instead, it looks to me like Craig is simply shirking the burden of proof. (I don’t have to show that my premise is true, you tell me why it’s false!)
Oh, and the Dawkins quote is excellent. If you think that Stephen’s appeal to Richard Swinburne is fallacious, I’d like to see your response to Craig! Why is Dawkins wrong he he says this about objective morality? Oh gee, that really is good evidence in favor of Craig’s claim that objective morality depends on the existence of God: Richard Dawkins says there’s no good and evil, and Craig has now asked us why Dawkins is wrong.
Well, count me unimpressed. As I said, when I looked at this in detail a couple of years ago for a paper, I found that Craig’s argument was almost entirely like this. I’m now toying with the idea of folding that material into a section of another paper that I have in the works (sort of).
Anyway, the reason I was prodding you to go back and look at Craig’s justification for the premise was not because I was too lazy to do it myself. I wanted to see whether you’d notice that it’s extremely problematic. I think Stephen is correct to point out that Craig has the burden of proof here, and that he has failed to uphold it. In fact, I’ve been saying so for years.
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Matt,
I was just typing a good comment in reply, but the computer messed up and I lost it. I don’t have the time or motivation to re-do it right now. I’ll get back to you.
In the meantime, I wonder if you’d answer this rather straightforward question: In a debate about the existence of God, when Craig offers his moral argument, does Craig have a burden of proof regarding the conditional statement “If God does not exist, then objective moral values and duties do not exist”? That is, does Craig need to offer considerations in favor of thinking that the premise is true? And assuming that Craig doesn’t offer any decent reasons to think the premise is true, has he really offered any reason to believe in the existence of God on the basis of the moral argument?
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Hi Glenn
I’m aware of what skeptical theism is, and also what its consequences are. Let’s think this through…
You maintain that, whatever we observe of the world, e.g. in terms of apparently gratuitous good/evil, we can’t know that there isn’t some entirely adequate evil/good justifying reason for it.
But then whatever we observe, this could, for all we know, be the best of all worlds created by an all-powerful, all-good god, or the worst of all worlds created by an all-powerful, all-evil god. We just can’t know, on the basis of observation, what the ultimate value of the world, or its creator, is.
Hence the evidential problem of evil (and good) is neutralized. Right?
Or wrong?
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“we can’t know that there isn’t some entirely adequate evil/good justifying reason for it.”
Stephen, that’s not what I said (as far as I can recall). I noted that theists have actually offered theodicies – I said this a few times. So if we’re thinking this through, that’s the point where we say “OK, so unless Stephen has offered good arguments that all the theodicies fail, there’s no need to wonder whether or not there might be other unknown reasons that God has.” As you know, you didn’t offer any such arguments.
I mean sure there might be unknown reasons (I certainly have time for sceptical theism just because I think there are great reasons to think that theism is true), but at this point I have no reason to think that there’s no merit in existing theodicies.
So I say wrong. The problem of evil isn’t neutralised by an appeal to the fact that there might be a great reason that God has that we just can’t know. In fact that appeal isn’t even intended to neutralise the problem. That appeal is intended by those who make it to point out that critics can’t show that there couldn’t be a good reason for God to allow X.
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Landon, it’s good to see you now acknowledging that Craig (even unsuccessfully, in your view) offered some considerations in favour of his view. But as for your selection and treatment: Come off it. Your summary of Craig’s comments is worse than caricature.
“If we’re just animals on a rock…etc., then there are no objective moral values.”
You can do a lot better than this, and probably would if you had any interest in being charitable to the target of your criticisms. You’re certainly capable of seeing that Craig here is zooming in on one particular aspect of moral value: Whether or not human beings have moral value. His point is that on naturalism we are accidental – not intended for any purpose and hence any purpose we find for ourselves is not about objective value but subjective value.
Craig’s argument beyond this tiny snippet is that if theism is true (not just any theism, of course, but theism of certain kinds), then there is a basis for objective moral values and duties, but if naturalism is true, there’s no such basis. What was particularly troubling about your quotation from Craig is that you quoted where he stated his position, and then stopped – not mentioning for the benefit of other readers that in the paragraphs that immediately follow he offers reasons for thinking that his position is true. You stopped quoting when Craig stated his position on page 174, line 2. But from line 3 through to page 179, about halfway down the page, he actually defends that position in light of what a number of atheist philosophers have said about the position. After that, he then sums up what he has argued for: “In short, on an atheistic, naturalistic worldview, there just seems to be no basis for affirming the existence of objective moral values and duties.” It troubles me that you quoted Craig this way.
Or if you had wanted an extended treatment of this one issue from Craig, a natural choice might have been his debate with Richard Taylor: “Is The Basis Of Morality Natural Or Supernatural?” http://www.leaderu.com/offices/billcraig/docs/craig-taylor0.html
It just looks to me like you’re putting in minimal effort, ignoring the arguments that Craig used, saying they aren’t there and putting the onus on other people to reiterate them for you. Sorry, I actually have things to do. I’ve previously offered my own podcast on the moral argument, and Craig has offered a moral argument as well. As far as I’m concerned, they are there to be criticised any time you fell like it.
And I couldn’t believe your attempted parallel between Bill quoting Dawkins and Stephen citing Richard Swinburne. Bill quoted Dawkins because he agreed with his assessment of the consequences of naturalism (he quotes Nietzsche, Mackie, Ruse and others to this effect as well). But he never pretended that these voices represent the norm of what atheists think, or even that this is what most of them think. Law quoted Swinburne in the attempt to show that Swinburne’s lonely voice among Christian philosophers somehow makes the view of the others controversial among Christian philosophers!
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I have presented the evidential argument from evil as a challenge to theism.
Your response to this challenge, in effect, is to say, “Oh, the evidential problem of evil is dealt with by the theodicies” (though which theodicies you have in mind, exactly, is unclear at this point – except that you don’t mean to appeal to god’s mysterious ways or facts-beyond-our-ken).
You then make a positive case for your all-good god using your moral argument.
And, if I have understood you correctly, you maintain your theodicies (whichever ones they are exactly) are able fully to deal with the problem of evil – that’s to say, they can adequately account for all the horror we see around us (such as God’s choosing a process of producing us [evolution by (among other things) natural selection] that requires ghastly, horrific death on a literally unimaginable scale over hundreds of millions of years before we show up, followed by ghastly, horrific death of e.g. something like half of all children under the age of five over millions of generations of humans before Jesus shows up – without resorting to God’s mysterious ways and/or any justifying facts lying beyond-our-ken?
If that’s your view, I must say I admire your chutzpah – I don’t think I have ever come across a theist that holds it. But is it your view?
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The following theodicy, called “Theodicy from divine justice”, may adequately account for all the horror we see around us, at least with respect to human suffering:
- God’s perfect justice prevents Him from relieving people with unforgiven sins from their sufferings (see Isaiah 59,1-2).
- Unlike God Christians are not perfectly just. Therefore, unlike God, they are in a position to help people with unforgiven sins. By doing this they may make those among them who haven’t yet accepted God’s salvation receptive of it (Matthew 5,16, 1 Peter 2,11-12, and 3,1-2), which in turn frees these persons from suffering in the afterlife.
- The greater God’s beneficial power due to His love, the greater God’s destructive power due to His justice (see Matthew 13,27-29). Striving to prevent as much suffering as possible God can only interfere to such a degree that the beneficial effect of the interference is not neutralized by the destructive effect of it.
- Someone who dies before he or she reaches the age of accountability, i.e. before he or she can distinguish between good and evil (see Genesis 2,16-17, Deuteronomy 1,39, and Isaiah 7,16) faces no punishment in the afterlife, as he or she would not have been able to commit sins. So, God may not be inclined to prevent such a person’s death.
- A person’s suffering in this life may have a redeeming effect (Luke 16,25) and consequently contribute to a decrease of the respective person’s suffering in the afterlife; the amount of suffering in this life is so to speak subtracted from the amount of suffering in the afterlife. So, God may not be inclined to relieve this person’s suffering.
- A person’s suffering in this life may make the person receptive of God’s salvation (Luke 15,11-21), which in turn frees this person from suffering in the afterlife.
- There are degrees of punishment in the afterlife depending on one’s moral behaviour (Matthew 16,27, 2 Corinthians 5,10), one’s knowledge of God’s will (Matthew 11,20-24, Luke 12,47-48), and, as mentioned before, one’s amount of suffering in this life (Luke 16,25).
- Those people who suffer more in this life than they deserve due to their way of life are compensated for it by receiving rewards in Heaven.
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Glenn,
You write: “Your summary of Craig’s comments is worse than caricature.”
There’s no need to caricature Craig’s treatment of the moral argument.
In the next paragraph he claims that humanists are unjustified in holding their position because they “continue to treat human beings as morally special in contrast to other species.”
In the following paragraph he claims that, for naturalists, “moral values are just by-products of socio-biological evolution,” and he quotes Michael Ruse who claims to be speaking for “the modern evolutionist,” when he declares that there are no objective moral values. (QED!)
Lastly, he wonders what basis there is for thinking that the “herd morality” that has evolved is objective. He accuses humanists of speciesism. And he asserts that “if theism is false, it is hard to see what basis remains for the affirmation of objective moral values and in particular of the special value of human beings.”
That’s the entirety of his defense of the claim that “if God does not exist, then objective moral values do not exist.” He then has one paragraph in which he defends his claim that “if God does not exist, then objective moral duties do not exist.” And what he does in that one paragraph is merely: (i) note that on atheism humans are just animals, and animals don’t have moral duties to one another, and (ii) quote Richard Taylor (evidently as an appeal to authority) who claims that there cannot be moral obligations without God. The very next paragraph presupposes that the conditional claim has been proven, and Craig goes on to talk about other things.
So what did he offer in support of the claim that “if God does not exist, then objective moral values do not exist”? He offered the rhetorical questions I mentioned earlier, he offered the nice rhetoric about the naturalistic perspective of the universe (we’re just an animal species on a small planet lost in a mindless universe–by the way, my summary of this as “we’re just animals on a rock…etc.” was not meant to be caricature, but merely a quick and easy way to summarize Craig’s rhetoric, so your complaint there is irrelevant), he offered a quote from Richard Dawkins and asked us “why is Dawkins wrong?”, he offered the claim that there is nothing special about human beings given naturalism because we’re just evolved animals (quoting Michael Ruse who is evidently supposed to be speaking for the atheist when he says that there is no objective morality), and then he wonders how our herd morality could be objective given naturalism.
That is no caricature. Anybody with access to the book can look at pages 173-175 to see that this is what he says in defense of the conditional statement. (He does go on for a few pages after that to attempt to shoot down some possible ways an atheist might try to show that the conditional statement is false–by appealing to, e.g., Platonism. Needless to say, Craig’s interaction with the vast literature in metaethics is minimal there. But this isn’t, as far as I can tell, a positive case for thinking that “if God does not exist, then objective moral values do not exist.” Rather, he’s rebutting alternative foundations for objective moral values. Unless he wants to claim that the options surveyed are exhaustive, I can’t see how his treatment of things in those few pages would lead us to conclude that objective moral values depend on God.)
And what did he offer in support of the claim that “if God does not exist, objective moral duties do not exist”? He offered one paragraph, which was mostly just quoting Richard Taylor’s say so.
If you want to say that rhetorical questions, rhetoric, appeals to authority, etc. are considerations in favor of the conditional statement, albeit perhaps unconvincing ones, fine. Craig does offer considerations in favor of the conditional statement. I mean, he did quote Richard Dawkins and Michael Ruse who claimed that there’s no good and evil, and no objective morality, respectively! Surely that ought to count for something.
I dunno, I sort of wonder why Craig has never bothered to try and publish his defense of the moral argument in a peer-reviewed philosophy journal (even just one of the phil. religion journals).
You write: “His point is that on naturalism we are accidental – not intended for any purpose and hence any purpose we find for ourselves is not about objective value but subjective value.”
Yes, on naturalism we weren’t intentionally put here for a specific purpose. We came about accidentally. Therefore… pain and suffering are not objectively bad?
You write: “Sorry, I actually have things to do. I’ve previously offered my own podcast on the moral argument, and Craig has offered a moral argument as well. As far as I’m concerned, they are there to be criticised any time you fell like it.”
When I get around to working this material into a section of my paper, I’ll listen to your podcast. As a graduate student, especially at the end of the semester, I can’t justify spending the time to listen to it now. Nor can I really justify spending the time to have this conversation, so my participation may drop off before long, at least until I’ve done all my grading and written all my papers.
You write: “Bill quoted Dawkins because he agreed with his assessment of the consequences of naturalism (he quotes Nietzsche, Mackie, Ruse and others to this effect as well). But he never pretended that these voices represent the norm of what atheists think, or even that this is what most of them think. Law quoted Swinburne in the attempt to show that Swinburne’s lonely voice among Christian philosophers somehow makes the view of the others controversial among Christian philosophers!”
Okay, so he quoted Dawkins’ opinion because he agrees with Dawkins’ opinion. I take it you’re willing to grant that this does not help support his conditional statement? He quotes Michael Ruse’s opinion because he agrees that, given naturalism, what Michael Ruse says really would be the case. You’re willing to grant that this doesn’t support his conditional statement either, right? Because in that case he’s just quoting people who have the same opinion he does. That doesn’t support the premise, does it? (If you say it does, then quoting Swinburne’s opinion not only supports remaining skeptical about the premise, but it supports believing that the premise is false. And you don’t want to say that.)
So the difference between Stephen quoting Swinburne and Craig quoting Dawkins and Ruse is that Craig was doing it innocently–just quoting them to show that he holds the same opinion they do, not to help show that the premise is true. Whereas Stephen quoting Swinburne is really bad, because he was trying to show that this is a controversial premise that requires argument. Or, to put it your way, he was trying to show that this premise is controversial among Christian philosophers (when it’s really not, because as you’ve continually asserted, the vast majority of Christian philosophers disagree with Swinburne–I’m still waiting to see the grounds for this claim). But going back to Matt’s quote of Stephen from the debate, all he actually says is that it’s rejected by one of the world’s leading Christian philosophers. Was he wrong?
(Or maybe he claimed that it’s controversial among Christian philosophers in your podcast…)
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I think that the differance is that Craig was citing Dawkins’ statement with approval as supportive of the premise, not simply because Dawkins said it, but because of what Dawkins said (the point Dawkins was making, if it was a cogent point, provides support for the soundness of the premise). Dr. Law’s quoting of Swinburne was to demonstrate that the premise was not widely accepted, but Law failed to provide even Swinburne’s reasons for not accepting it (Swineburne is a Platonist, correct?), or, as far as I remember, his own reasons for rejecting that premise (he didn’t, say, provide much reason to think that it was wrong in itself, or problematic, just that it was controversial.). That’s actually a big difference.
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Landon, you’re not investing any intellectual effort at all in considering what Craig says. Suit yourself, but you have no grounds for complaint when people don’t go out of your way to re-present arguments to you. I realise you’re a grad student and so this time-consuming business of genuinely looking at what a person says even when you disagree with them might not be something you’re interested in, in the case of Bill’s argument. But it’s irritating to see you claiming he really offered no arguments. That’s simply an intellectual turnoff to me.
As for the business of quoting people, obviously there’s nothing wrong with simply quoting someone you agree with. In Craig’s case, he did in in the context of offering the same types of considerations that those authors themselves gave.
In Stephen’s case, the quoting was done in the absence of any argument on Stephen’s part, and in the name of claiming that there was some sort of consensus. I see that as night and day, but see it as you wish.
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Stephen, what I noted is that you observed the existence of a variety of theocidies in regard tot he problem of evil, and then just proceeded as though we can all rest assured that they don’t do the job. Well that’s hardly good enough, is it? I have no reason to think that all existing theodicies fail.
You also now seem to be saying that somewhere (not sure where or when) I’ve said that “[my] theodicies (whichever ones they are exactly) are able fully to deal with the problem of evil”
But I just didn’t say this. here’s what I really said in this thread:
There’s a difference between thinking for certain that the existing theodicies leave nothing to wonder about (something I never said, but which you now attribute to me), and thinking that they have merit (which I did say). But surely rejecting theodicies because in spite of their merit they might not be a complete explanation strikes me as a bit like rejecting science because there are still some things we don’t know!
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Landon
Actually what you show is the Craig summarised arguments some of them interesting and important.
He summarised for example the argument, made by Peter Singer and Nicholas Wolterstorff that in the absence of God, there is no basis for considering humans special. Thats not mere rhetoric its an important argument, it may be unsound but thats not the same as saying its rhetoric.
He summarised the argument proposed by people like Ruse, Sharon Street, and Mark Linville, that naturalism and evolution conjoined provide a reason for thinking our moral beliefs do not reliably track objectively true principles, again thats an argument not mere rhetoric.
Third, he cites an argument from Richard Taylor which is based on the idea that moral obligations would not exist outside of a social relationship where one person makes demands on another. Others like Robert Adams have offered a similar argument. Thats three arguments.
He also on occasion cites the argument suggested by Hare, Layman and going back to Sigwick that without God, moral obligations would not have rational authority. Due to the fact that prudential reasons and moral reasons can come apart and there is no apparent meta reason to prefer one over the other.
He also has on occasion raised the queerness argument.
So it seems to me Craig does offer arguments. He does so in summary rhetorical form, I don’t always think his elaboration is clear. but he does offer them.
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Matt,
Thanks for the comment. Peter Singer’s argument is not that atheism entails that “there is no basis for considering humans special.” He claims that there’s nothing about the species, per se, which is morally special. But individual humans beings, for example, can be “special” in the sense that their lives are more valuable than other non-human animals. Singer would agree, then, that my life is more valuable than the life of a cow. He would do so because he recognizes that my cognitive capacities are much greater than that of a cow, in the relevant respects.
Craig doesn’t mention Singer by name, but he does mention “speciesism.” He accuses secular humanists of “speciesism,” since he thinks there’s no morally relevant difference (given atheism) between members of the human species and members of other species. But this is really crude, and not the kind of reasoning Singer would endorse. If a secular humanist is claiming that all humans, no matter what defects they may have, are morally more valuable than any non-human animal, then Singer’s reasoning would work to undermine that view. (And it does an excellent job at undermining such a view, in my opinion.) But Singer’s line of reasoning doesn’t show that there are no morally relevant differences to be had among members of different species. That’s something Singer explicitly rejects in his work.
Moreover, you might wonder about this line of argument: How do we know that “if God does not exist, then objective moral values do not exist”? Because secular humanism is an intellectually bankrupt position, undermined by its speciesism. Really, so if secular humanism is shown to be false, does that entail that there are no objective moral values in the absence of God?
I’m familiar with the Ruse, and know where to find the Linville, but do you have a citation for Sharon Street? It could be helpful when I work on this more. In any case, the fact that naturalism and evolution provide a defeater for our moral beliefs (and/or intuitions) does not show that objective moral values do not exist, which is Craig’s claim. His claim is not: “If God does not exist, then we should be moral skeptics.” His claim is: “If God does not exist, then objective moral values do not exist.” By offering a defeater for our moral beliefs, he has at best given us a reason to be moral skeptics, not moral nihilists or anti-realists.
As for the last argument, I do recall Craig saying that. Do you remember where he said it?
(Citing the arguments of Hare and Layman is a different matter, since it’s a different argument. I was focusing on Craig’s case for the premise of his own moral argument.)
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Hi Glenn, I’m sticking this up on my blog, where I’ll be pursuing the discussion henceforth, as this thread is way too long…
Let me explain how things look from my end.
I give you what appears to be overwhelming empirical evidence against the existence of your particular God.
You appear to respond, in effect, by saying: (i) but we have all sorts of explanations for all the evil (theodicies), which I think are quite good explanations (ii) even if they are not that good, they can be supplemented by sceptical theism which I don’t rule out, so (iii) the onus is on you to show all these theodicies collectively fail and that sceptical theism is untenable, before you can say that you have provided good evidence against the existence of my God.
But the thing about the theodicies, Genn, is that they are what Popper calls ad hoc. They lead to now new tests. Or, if they do, but the further test fails, there’s always another gerrymandered explanation for the failure that can be cooked up. Similarly, appeals to God’s mysterious ways and facts-beyond-our-ken are ad hoc. There’s no way empirically to test the claim that such facts-beyond-our-ken is indeed the correct explanation for why there’s so much evil.
Much the same intellectual strategy that you are employing to defend theism is also employed by Young Earth Creationists (YEC), conspiracy theorists, Erich von Daniken histories and countless other wackos to convince themselves and their followers that what they believe cannot be so silly after all.
For, of course, if I present a series of evidence-based arguments against YEC, it’s proponents can say, “Ah, but we have some, we think, quite good explanations of the order of the fossil record, for light from distant stars, etc. – hundreds of such explanations in fact” (explanations cooked up at the Institute for Creation Research and other multi-million dollar funded “research” institutions), and (ii) in any case, God might have his mysterious reasons for arranging the fossils, etc. like that, so (iii) the onus is on you to show all these YEC-type explanations collectively fail and that such appeals to God’s mysterious reasons is untenable, before you can say that the facts to which you point provide good evidence against YEC.
Of course, when we then try to show the failings of the YEC explanations offered, the proponent of YEC can always gerrymander up yet more explanations, and then even more, thereby continuing to make their theory “fit” the evidence. They thus render their theory empirically unfalsifiable (this is the strategy I call “But it Fits!” in my book Believing Bullshit).
But that is, indeed, all bullshit, isn’t it? The fact is, YEC IS pretty straightforwardly falsified by the available empirical evidence, notwithstanding the possibility of endlessly explaining that evidence away by ad hoc means and/or appeals to mystery. Most of us can see that straightaway (those of us whose minds have not been captured by YEC, that is). The endless ad hoc-ery and mystery-mongering is just a smokescreen.
The onus is clearly not on us to refute all the explanations on offer by the YECs. In fact that’s an impossible task given the ad hoc character of their explanations and the fact they’re prepared to keep constructing them ad nauseum. It’s entirely reasonable for us to insist that the available empirical evidence DOES indeed very effectively undermine YEC, and that it does so precisely because the YECs’ method of explaining it away is so hopelessly ad hoc.
This is why, before we are presented with any argument FOR classical theism or YEC that might be furnished to save or support the theory, it’s entirely reasonable to conclude, on the basis of the kind of observational evidence outlined, that classical theism/YEC is false.
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ps excuse the type-Os corrected and fuller version is available here….http://stephenlaw.blogspot.com/2011/12/glenn-peoples-on-evil-god-challenge.html
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Thanks for your graciously expressed thoughts Stephen.
I think the three comments I’d make are:
1) I’m not even close to being persuaded that the plausibility of theodicies is anything like the plausibility of explanations for why we should believe in a young universe.
2) Theodicies don’t strike me as ad hoc. Things like the free will defence or the soul building defence (etc) are generalisable. E.g. the might be stated something like “For any perfectly good and all powerful being, it would still be conceivable that they allow X provided it has some outcome that is compatible with their good character, such as Y.” Ad hoc explanations are really one-off explanations of a sort that are just made up to explain one very specific situation by appealing to principles that are of no use otherwise. So it’s not ad hoc at all.
Here’s a refresher on Popper where ad hoc explanations are described just as I have described them. They are explanations that have absolutely no reason for existence other than to save a theory from failure, and there are otherwise no considerations that would lend any support to them. So the Christian has no good reasons to consider theodicies ad hoc, since they are compatible with other things they believe, and if their broader beliefs about God are true (broader beliefs that the Christian thinks there are reasons to accept) then the theodicies are motivated by those broader beliefs. If you have in mind another sense in which an explanation can be ad hoc, I’d question why it matters.
3) Even if things were different and theodicies were ad hoc, they are intended as explanations for why a person might do or allow something that you didn’t expect them to. If anything is allowed to be ad hoc, surely it’s something about why so-and-so might do something. If you rejected the explanation because it was ad hoc, you’d be effectively stacking the deck against any explanation in terms of a person’s intentions, which would be unfair in this case, to put it mildly. But this is moot, since theodicies aren’t ad hoc in any important sense anyway.
PS: Your comment went into the moderation queue because it contained the word BS. I have my filters set pretty strictly for profanity to keep certain elements out.
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Hi Glenn
my quick response to your three comments.
1) I’m not even close to being persuaded that the plausibility of theodicies is anything like the plausibility of explanations for why we should believe in a young universe.
Me: What you’re persuaded of is irrelevant.
2) Theodicies don’t strike me as ad hoc. Things like the free will defence or the soul building defence (etc) are generalisable. E.g. the might be stated something like “For any perfectly good and all powerful being, it would still be conceivable that they allow X provided it has some outcome that is compatible with their good character, such as Y.” Ad hoc explanations are really one-off explanations of a sort that are just made up to explain one very specific situation by appealing to principles that are of no use otherwise. So it’s not ad hoc at all.
That’s not what ad hoc means, Glenn. Ad hoc explanations lead to no new tests. The theodicies are ad hoc, by Popper’s definition (he coined the phrase). Look it up. Or, when the theodicies are not ad hoc, and the further test is failed, they are salvaged by yet another defensive manouevre, just as in the case of YEC, thereby rendering the theory unfalsifiable (ar an appeal to mystery, of course). Nutters who believe dogs are spies are the planet Venus, etc. employ the exact same strategy.
3) Even if things were different and theodicies were ad hoc, they are intended as explanations for why a person might do or allow something that you didn’t expect them to. If anything is allowed to be ad hoc, surely it’s something about why so-and-so might do something. If you rejected the explanation because it was ad hoc, you’d be effectively stacking the deck against any explanation in terms of a person’s intentions, which would be unfair in this case, to put it mildly. But this is moot, since theodicies aren’t ad hoc in any important sense anyway.
ME: The theodicies are ad hoc. They lead to no new tests (either that, or further explaining away is done ad nauseum to deal with further explanatory failures, or their supplemented by appeals to mystery). This is not like when someone does something out of character and we say, ah, but they probably had this reason for doing it. Often, we can test our hypothesis. So the suggestion is not ad hoc at all. And the occasional ad hoc explanation for anomolies is in any case acceptable (even Popper thought so). However, when there’s considerable evidence against a theory and it’s all dealt with by ad hoc means (and/or appeals to mystery), then that counter-evidence is NOT neutralized.
You’re strategy is, in short, very much like a wife who, when presented with a husband who very often acts in seemingly cruel and vicious way, beating her and her children, maintains he is nevertheless entirely noble and virtuous. She simply explains all the bad stuff away in a manner that is entirely ad hoc (or, when her excuses and explanations for his behaviour clearly fail, just constructs yet more explanations ad nauseum, and/or appeals to his having mysterious unknown reasons).
Such a wife is being irrational if she insists there’s no prima facie good evidence that her husband is NOT entirely noble and good. She’s deluded. You seem, to me, are a similar case.
Now of course, the wife might insist she has these other very good reasons for thinking her husband really is noble after all. Perhaps she has. But, as things stand, her husband’s horrific behaviour really is excellent evidence that he’s not entirely noble and good, notwithstanding the wife’s endless supply of untestable excuses and explanations.
That’s right, I am suggesting you’re deluded, Glenn. Not very gracious of me, but it’s what I think. Clearly, when we are both so very confident of the reasonableness of our respective, but mutually exclusive, positions, one of us very probably is pretty deluded. The above considerations suggest it’s you.
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ps Glenn, I am afraid that will be last comment here as I am spending more time writing your blog than I am mine…. by all means comment over there. http://www.stephenlaw.org
It’s been fun, and interesting. helped my focus my thoughts a bit more….
best
Stephen
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“Me: What you’re persuaded of is irrelevant.”
Stephen, why exactly am I supposed to be bothered by the fact that you think there’s a good comparison between young earth creationism and theodicies? Surely your opinion on the strength of the comparison is… irrelevant?
As for getting drawn into an argument about what “ad hoc” means (where I’m pretty sure I’m right – look it up), your real objection seems to be that we can’t test whether or not our suggested reason is God’s real reason. And it’s true that we probably can’t. This seems pretty unimportant to me, as long as the suggested reasons are consistent with the character of a good God. If you think a wife can come up with an account of why a husband who really loves her would beat her up, go right ahead.
It strikes me that the kinds of objections you’re raising now amount to more than the recycled “invisible gardner” objection from new Essays in Philosophical Theology in 1955. Effectively you’ve got to say that even though the existing theodicies may do the trick, they can’t be (empirically?) falsified and hence we have to assume that they aren’t the answer!
Well you’re welcome to assume that, but if a person who believes in a good God also believes that the various theodicies may well do the trick (or at least most of the trick), you’ll understand, I’m sure, why they aren’t terribly bothered by your reluctance to think the theodicies are any good.
I’m pleased to have helped you focus your thoughts, Stephen, and I too have enjoyed our discussions very much. But you’re wrong.
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Hi Glenn. Sorry but having said I’d stop commenting, I’ll make one last comment as you do appear to be seriously on the ropes at this point and I can’t resist taking advantage…
I wouldn’t go to answers.com for full and accurate philosophical definitions. An ad hoc hypothesis is one introduced to immunize a theory against refutation but which cannot be tested independently. So for example, when Aristoteleans claimed the heavenly bodies are perfectly spherical, but Galileo observed mountains on the moon through his telescope, one Aristotelean tried to save his theory by saying that there was an invisible substance on the moon that filled the valleys to the tops of the mountains, thus making the moon spherical after all. That suggestion was classically ad hoc because there was no way in which the immunizing hypothesis could (at that time) be independently tested. Some ad hoc hypothesis are permissible. But salvaging a theory almost entirely by ad hoc means is not. Yet that is what YECs do, and nutters do too.
Here’s the crux. You say: “your real objection seems to be that we can’t test whether or not our suggested reason is God’s real reason. And it’s true that we probably can’t. This seems pretty unimportant to me, as long as the suggested reasons are consistent with the character of a good God. If you think a wife can come up with an account of why a husband who really loves her would beat her up, go right ahead.”
Of course a wife can do that. Women do it all the time. Deluded women. But in those cases, their explanations very often are NOT ad hoc – we can test whether e.g. the husband really is suffering from a medical condition, really is justifiably punishing her, or whatever it is she suggests, etc.
Whereas the explanations offered by YECs, and the free will character-building theodicies, etc. either aren’t testable explanations, or else are testable and fail the test (e.g. the distribution of suffering obviously doesn’t make sense if it’s for character-building purposes, plus people’s characters are more often than not destroyed by it). If the latter, then further explanations or appeals to mystery are gerrymandered, like so: “Er, well this suffering is for character-building purposes, only in, er, a manner we don’t fully understand” (untestable!).
Testability is key. If a theory is defended endlessly by its proponents against seemingly powerful counter-evidence by such explanations none of which can be tested, then the evidence DOES still constitute strong (if not indefeasible) evidence against what they believe.
That is precisely the situation in which you’re in re the problem of evil. I think you should reflect on that before you say “Problem of evil – no problem! The theodicies (perhaps plus a sprinkling of mystery) take care of it.”
Of course the reason most people, even many theists (not you), accept that the evil god hypothesis is not salvaged from refutation by all the good we observe by the reverse theodicies is that they do recognize, even if only intuitively, that the reverse theodicies are indeed theory-immunizing devices that are ultimately entirely ad hoc and untestable.
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Glenn,
For the record, I just wanted to point out that I recall writing a response to your last comment to me, but I no longer see it posted in this thread. I don’t know if you lost it when the servers were down, or for some other reason. I won’t bother re-typing it from memory now that it’s gone though. I just thought I’d point that out.
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Landon, when the server needed to be rebooted nothing was lost – and I certainly haven’t intervened – so if it’s not there now I’d say it never was.
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Stephen, there’s nothing as powerful as wishful thinking, which may explain why you see me as on the ropes. Given that you appear to have had simply no reply – none at all – to the argument that God is good via the moral argument and your only apparent belief that you have a better argument seems to lie in your hope that there’s a relevant sense in which you can call theodicies “ad hoc,” this seems like wishful thinking of the highest order!
But now that you’ve effectively confirmed my suspicions about what you’re saying, I daresay there’s little more I need to add. You think theodicies are probably wrong because we don’t know for certain that in fact they have identitifed God’s real reasons for allowing X. You could, of course, had made a much more convincing case by arguing that the theodicies were – like the rationalisations of a beaten wife – implausible. But then, that would require coming up with a good argument, and just as in the case of you brushing off the moral argument, putting in the time to construct good arguments at the crucial junctures isn’t really a feature of the evil-God challenge.
If that’s the gravity of your argument, I’m comforted.
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So… what started out in a journal as a confident, supposedly new and interesting challenge, styled “the evil god challenge,” has now been whittled away in this thread to Stephen, having retreated to a dark corner, reproducing the old problem of evil and putting all his eggs in that basket. There was no interesting new challenge at all. Thanks for clarifying that for us Glenn, and for basically having Stephen demonstrate it!
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