Some evils are not just very bad. They are affronts to human dignity. But those evils, paradoxically, provide an argument for the existence of God. We do not know what human dignity consists in, but it isn’t just being an agent, being really smart, etc. For human dignity to play the sort of moral role it does, it needs to be something beyond the physical, something numinous, something like a divine spark. And on our best theories of what things are like if there is no God, there is nothing like that.
So:
There are affronts to human dignity.
If there are affronts to human dignity, there is human dignity.
If there is human dignity, there is a God.
So, there is a God.
This argument is very close to the one I made here, but manages to avoid some rabbit-holes.
17 comments:
Why can human dignity not be grounded in being an agent? Is the worry that humans have dignity even when they fail to be agents or that agency is too flimsy a ground for dignity?
Both.
Would you still be worried about the former problem if someone wanted to ground dignity in personhood, then said (something roughly like) a thing is a person if it is the sort of thing characterized by agency. We could give a sort of Aristotelian-Thomist account of what this would look like and which individual things it would cover.
If this takes care of the first worry, then we are left only with the second. If this does not take care of the first worry, why not?
As for the second worry, why think that personhood (however it is understood) is too flimsy to ground claims about human dignity?
I for one am happy to talk about human dignity as grounded in a divine spark of some sort, but I am content to think of this divine spark as a participation in the being of God. In fact, what is important is not the obtaining of the relation of participation, but instead the intrinsic features (taken broadly) of persons that, I think, we have only by participation.
Given my view, I think we need God to make sense of human dignity, but only because I think we need God to make sense of my intrinsic features (and all other contingent things for that matter). Of course, if someone contends that we can have contingent things and their features without God, then I would see no reason to think they could not help themselves to an account of human dignity too.
You clearly think this is all wrong. Why?
Peter:
I don't think this is all wrong. But I have three thoughts on it.
First, it may be that agency (perhaps, to put it Aristotelianly, the first potentiality for agency) is metaphysically sufficient for dignity. However, when I reflect on the property of dignity, it is more evidently a numinous property than agency is, it is more evidently the sort of thing that doesn't fit with naturalism. (Since being evident is hyperintentional, that observation is even compatible with agency being the same property as dignity.)
Second, I have a hard time seeing why the ability to grasp universals, including moral universals, and make free decisions in light of ultimate moral goals--or whatever exactly agency is--makes one have dignity, makes one set apart from nature, etc. If it turns out that agency is sufficient for dignity, that will be because there is in fact more to agency than meets the eye, because there is something numinous about agency.
Third, I am perfectly fine with dignity being an intrinsic feature of the human being. In fact, I find it quite implausible to think of it as a relational feature (except in the sense that all our "intrinsic features" are participations in God). But if so, it is an intrinsic feature of a sort that is evidently (to me) not a feature that would be exemplified in a Godless universe.
Alex
How is 3 not based on an argument from ignorance?
Just because you can't image how there can be human dignity without God doesn't make it a fact that human diginity can't exist without God.
Moreover, I can image human dignity without God, and I can't even imagine what human dignity would have to do with the existence (or non-existence) of God, (and there are lots of professional philosophers who can't), can we now conclude that 3 is wrong?
In fact, I strongly believe that the existence of God would actually mean human beings have less dignity.
Some quick reactions to Walter's reply:
Maybe Alex can be read as offering an argument that gives one reason to conclude that a God exists. (So, a reason. Maybe a weight one, but not, or not necessarily, a decisive reason.) The argument would then not be an attempted proof. So a rebuttal saying the argument doesn't necessarily entail the conclusion wouldn't effectively counter it (unless the "therefore" is meant to imply necessary entailment, which it could well).
The implicit notion of imagination as being so limited is odd. I think more imaginative effort would lead one to think, at least, that one possible world is one where the being made in God's image confers dignity on human beings somehow (as theorists for and against the idea have been able to imagine for millennia).
The belief that the existence of a God means human beings have less dignity is just that, a belief. Of course, it's a belief open for discussion along multiple lines, but it's not an argument. I can see how it might become an argument, but one I'd ultimately reject as I envision it playing out.
Dignity is rather like infinite value. You don't get infinite value from finite causes.
Alex
I agree that dignity is very high value. Of course if it's infinite value, it can't come from finite causes. I don't agree it's infinite, and, what's more it isn't infinite on most brands of theism.
Anonymous
I agree I haven't offered an argument and I am almost sure you (and Alex) would reject it if I did offer one, but the question would then be whether your rejection succeeds.
An indication of its being something like infinity is this: For all n, it is wrong to kill an innocent human to save n lives.
Alex
I guess you mean that it is wrong to kill an innnocent human being even it it could save infinitely many lives, but notice that you have added "innocent" to the equation.
So, human dignity is limited to innocent human beings.
I strongly disagree with that. Human dignity extends to all human beings.
Secondly, if human life has infinite value, it would also be wrong to allow evil to happen to one human being in order to save many.
But that kind of dignity cannot exist on most brands of theism, but it can exist on naturalism, because actually, all that's needed for human diginity is human consciousness.
Now, of course I am aware that you believe consciousness cannot be explained on naturalism, but that's another matter that is not directly related to this issue.
Non-innocent human beings have dignity, too. Their dignity is indicated, in part, by the fact that if they were innocent, it would be wrong to kill them to save infinitely many.
I am not claiming human life actually has infinite value, but that there is some kind of infinitary character to human dignity, an infinitary character *akin* to infinite value.
Walter, also notice the following about your two interesting points.
The first point is a sufficiency claim, not a necessity claim. This concerns Alex’s response.
The second point is about the ethics of allowing. It’s truth or falsity thus depends on the possibly quite different ethical permissibility of doing versus allowing.
Alex
"Some kind of infinitary character" is not sufficient for the claim you are making, because while it may be true that you cannot get infinite value from a finite cause, it does not follow that you cannot get some very high value from finite causes.
Anonympus
My claim that human dignity extends to all human beings is a necessity claim, not a sufficiency claim. My claim is that human dignity is a necessary consequence of (human) consciousness, and consciousness is not confined to innocent human beings.
The second point: I don't accept that there is an important moral difference between acting and allowing. If I knowingly allow something evil to happen which I could have easily prevented, I am as guilty as the actual wrongdoer. Anyway, the God of classical theism doesn't merely allow anything. He is the active creator and sustainer of everything apart from Himself. So, God actively brings about and sustains every instance of evil. Hence, the kind of dignity required for Alex' argument to work cannot exist on classical theism.
But it can exist on naturalism provided naturalism can account for consciousness, which is, of course another issue.
That there is an important moral difference between doing and allowing is a fairly standard view among ethicists. But no doubt it can be disputed, and has been.
Allowing a moral agent to exist with the freedom to act morally or immorally seems rather different from bringing about and sustaining evil. The very act of such allowing seems to require, in a sense, leaving the agent alone: i.e., free to act in an evil way or in a good way. Otherwise we get, at most, a very cheap kind of moral freedom--"you can do evil, but once you try I (God) will stop you or make the effects good." In which case, we'd just learn empirically, I'd think, that our evil acts will just be causally impotent. What do you think about this line?
And how could God be as guilty as me if I sin gravely, know God doesn't want me to, and know God will very likely leave me free to do so? God didn't sin. I did. Right?
Your view implies God is as guilty as me. But of this there should, I think, be much doubt.
Anonymus
The point is that just about everything in Alex' argument here can be disputed.
I am not saying i can prove him wrong, just that his claims are highly controversial and rely on a kind of intuition that is far from unanimously agreed upon.
As to your second remark, it may seem rather different from bringing about and sustaining evil, but on classical theism literally everything that exists (apart from God)is actively created and constantly sustained by God. If God were to "leave the agent alone" the agent wouldn't be able to do anything, the agent wouldn't even exist for an instance.
So, it's not a matter of God stopping me and making the effects good, it's that God is actively involved in every stage of the process of my wrongdoing. If God doesn't want me to do X, then God should not sustain my doing X, and X won't exist. it's really as simple as that. The kind of libertarian free will required for me being more guilty than God cannot exist on classical theism. I doubt it can exist in any system, but that is another matter.
Libertarian free will actually seems to be the most prominent view of free will among classical theists.
Yes, Aquinas and many other theists view God as creator and sustainer, literally keeping the world in existence, as you say. I don't deny that. "By leave the agent alone" I don't mean "do not sustain the agent or her act's in being." The intended meaning is something more like "leave the agent free to act/not act." This, I take it, is the ordinary sense of leaving a person alone. We can just apply it to the God-human person relationship.
So I don't see why persons can't have libertarian free will even though God sustains them in being. (Sorry if I've misunderstood you.) God's keeping us in existence seems to imply virtually nothing about whether we are libertarian-free to act or not act rightly/wrongly. At most, it might limit our freedom to decide whether to exist/not exist.
Anonymus
This is turning into a dicsusion of classical theism and libertarian free will, which seems to get too far off topic, so, at this stage I would suggest we agree to disagree.
Post a Comment