Gratuitous evil and compensation

In the last couple of decades, the most prominent argument from evil is base on the idea that God couldn’t allow a gratuitous evil. Here is one way to define a gratuitous evil, paraphrasing Rowe:

1. E is gratuitous if and only if there is no greater or equal good G that is only obtainable by God if God permits E or something equal or worse.

(For simplicity, I am taking the prevention of an evil as itself a good.)

By (1), if E is any earthly evil, it’s too easy to show that for all we know E is not gratuitous.

To see this, observe that for all we know, the persons suffering from E are compensated in an afterlife by God bestowing on them a greater good G₀. Now let G be the good of receiving G₀ in compensation from God for suffering E. Then G is a good, and is at least as good as G₀ itself. But G₀ is greater in magnitude than E. Thus, G is greater than E. Moreover, God’s permitting E is a necessary condition for God’s compensating someone for suffering E, since God cannot compensate someone for something that didn’t happen. Therefore, G is obtainable by God only if God permits E.

So we don’t want to go for (1), since it’s too easy to find goods that are only obtainable given E if there is an afterlife.

The problem with this example is that while it is impossible for God to give G₀ as compensation for E without E, God can give G₀ gratuitously, and that seems to be just as good as giving it as compensation. The atheist who wants to argue for the existence of God should modify (1) as follows:

2. E is gratuitous if and only if there is no greater or equal good G such that something at least as good as G is only obtainable by God if God permits E or something equal or worse.

But given (2), it is implausible to say that God couldn’t allow a gratuitous evil. Consider a case where Alice makes a slightly mean joke at Bob’s expense. She then repents, and asks Bob for forgiveness, who forgives. It is easy to imagine that the value of the repentance and forgiveness is greater than the disvalue of the joke, but just as the joke was a minor evil, the repentance and forgiveness are minor goods. It seems intuitively clear that the case of Alice’s slightly mean joke does not require any theodicy beyond what has just been said. Yet Alice’s joke appears to be a gratuitous evil according to (2).

For the goods in the previous paragraph are all minor goods. But God could create a major good without permitting any evil at all. For instance, God could create an infinite number of happy mathematicians who eternally enjoy the search for truth and who do not have the freedom to choose between good and evil, but must do good. That infinity of happy mathematicians would be a major good. But surely any minor good is less than any major good. Thus, if we let G be the minor goods of repentance and forgiveness in the previous paragraph, then something greater than G—namely, the infinite number of happy mathematicians—is obtainable by God without any evil at all. And hence the story in the previous paragraph isn’t enough to provide a theodicy, if (2) is the right account of gratuitous evils.

Maybe the solution is a very strong doctrine of incommensurability, on which the good of the infinitely many mathematicians is incommensurable with the goods of repentance and forgiveness even when the latter two are minor. But given such a strong doctrine of incommensurability, we can go back to my original compensation story. The problem I saw with that original story is that God could give G₀ gratuitously and not as compensation, and I said that that would be at least as good. But given a strong doctrine of incommensurability, giving G₀ gratuitously will be incommensurable with giving G₀ as compensation for E. And, plausibly, any good that isn’t and instance of compensating for E or something at least as bad will be incommensurable with the good of compensating for E with G₀. Thus, mere compensation will suffice for theodicy.

I am not comfortable with saying that mere compensation suffices for theodicy. But there is something to this idea.

Skepticism and a causeless beginning to the universe

Suppose that the universe began with the Big Bang, and the Big Bang had no cause, so the universe came into existence ex nihilo. It then went through many (infinitely many if time is continuous) stages—the one-second-old universe, the ten-second-old universe, the five-minute-old universe, the one-year-old universe, the 7-million-year-old universe, before arriving at the present 13.7-billion-year-old universe, and then (presumably) going onward.

Question: Why did the universe start in the Big Bang state rather than in one of these many other states?

Assuming the universe has no cause, there does not seem to be any compelling reason to think the Big Bang state is somehow “more likely” as a starting state of the universe. (If anything, it seems a less likely state, because it has lower entropy than the later states.)

Now, granted, if the universe started in a sufficiently “late” (as compared to our state) stage, there would be no observers in that universe other than perhaps Boltzmann brains, due to the universe having expanded too much. So we have an interesting bit of fine-tuning: the universe started in a sufficiently early stage that there was still time for life.

Let’s ignore that otherwise intriguing observation, however, and push ahead. Let S_t be the t-units-of-time-past-Big-Bang stage of a universe like ours. And let’s ask:

• Conditioning on all our observations, and given that the universe has no cause, is it more likely that the universe starts with S₀ (i.e., starts with the Big Bang) than with, say, S_t1, where t₁ > 0?

If the answer is negative, then the supposition of a causeless universe leads to a skeptical hypothesis: we have no more reason to think the universe started with the Big Bang than that it started in the t₁ stage.

The answer may be positive in some cases. As we already saw, if t₁ is past the time of there being any observers—or just past the time of there being any observers making observations like ours—then we can be sure the universe didn’t start in S_t1.

If it turns out that evolutionary is logically necessary for consciousness, as some materialists think (because, basically, evolutionary history is necessary for defining proper function for making functionalism run), we might get a positive answer if t₁ is so close to the present that there was insufficient evolutionary history for our consciousness if the universe started at t₁.

But if t₁ is any time between 0 and about 3.7 billion years ago, our observations do not differentiate between the hypothesis that the universe started with S₀ or that it started with S_t1. Thus, the answer to the bulleted question above is negative. Moreover, it’s negative for each of the many t₁ in the relevant range (more than 0 but less than about 10 billion years). Thus, on a no-cause hypothesis we should not prefer the Big Bang hypothesis over a whole bunch of skeptical hypotheses holding that the universe started in a more developed form.

This argument will please theists who think the universe had a cause. Of course, the theist still has to find a way to give a positive answer to the bulleted question. I think there are two ways of doing so. First, likely a perfect being would have a preference for greater creaturely participation in creation, and creating the universe in, say, the 10 billion year stage, or indeed in any post-Big Bang stage, would pointlessly cut short creaturely participation in creation (e.g., in the 10 billion year stage, the Solar System would be created ex nihilo, rather than being generated from a star-forming nebula). Second, such a being would be likely to create a world that doesn’t make true what is intuitively to us a “skeptical hypothesis”.

The argument will also please the now-less-common atheist who thinks the universe is eternal.

Gratuitous and objective evil

Suppose, highly controversially, that no defensible atheist account of objective value is possible. Now consider a paradigmatic apparently gratuitous horrendous evil E—say, one of the really awful things done to children described by Ivan in the Brothers Karamazov. The following two claims are both intuitive:

1. E is gratuitous

2. E is objectively evil.

But if there is no defensible account of objective evil on atheism, then (1) and (2) are in serious tension. For if there cannot be objective evil on atheism, then (2) cannot be true on atheism. Thus, (2) implies theism. But on the other hand, (1) implies atheism, since E gratuitous just in case if God existed, then E would be an evil that God has conclusive moral reason to prevent.

On our initial assumption about atheism, then, we need to choose between (1) and (2). And here there is no difficulty. That the things described by Ivan are objectively evil is way more clear than that God would have conclusive moral reason to prevent them, even if the latter claim is very likely in isolation.

Is a defensible atheist account of objective value possible? I used to think there was no special difficulty, but I’ve since come to be convinced that probably the only tenable account of objective value is an Aristotelian one based on form, and that human form requires something like a divine source. That said, even if objective value is something the atheist can defend, nonetheless knowledge of objective value is very difficult for the atheist. For objective value has to be (I know this is controversial) non-natural, and on atheism it is very difficult to explain how we could acquire the power to get in touch with non-natural aspects of reality.

But if knowledge of objective value is very difficult for the atheist, then we have tension between:

1. E is gratuitous

2. I know that E is objectively evil.

And (3) is still, I think, significantly more plausible than (1).

Cartesian-style ontological arguments

Cartesian-style ontological arguments run like this:

1. God has all perfections.

2. Existence is a perfection.

3. So, God exists.

These arguments are singularly unconvincing. Here is a simple reason they are unconvincing. Suppose we are undecided on whether there are any leprechauns and, if so, whether they have a king, and someone tells us:

4. The leprechaun king is very magical.

This sure sounds plausible in a certain frame of mind, and we may accept it. When we accept (4), while remaining undecided on whether there are leprechauns and, if so, whether they have a king, what we are accepting seems to be the conditional:

5. If the leprechaun king exists, he is very magical.

By analogy, when the agnostic accepts (1), it seems they are accepting the conditional:

6. If God exists, God has all perfections.

Given premise (2), we can conclude:

7. If God exists, God exists.

But every atheist accepts (7).

It seems to make little difference if in (2) we replace “existence” with “necessary existence”. For then we just get:

8. If God exists, God necessarily exists.

That’s not quite as trivial as (7), but doesn’t seem to get us any closer to the existence of God.

The above seems to perfectly capture why it is that Cartesian-style ontological arguments are unconvincing.

Even if the above is adequate as a criticism of Cartesian-style ontological arguments, I think there is still an interesting question of what sort of a conditional we have in (5)–(8)?

It’s not a material conditional, for then (5) would be trivially true given that there are no leprechauns, while (5) is non-trivially true.

Should it be a subjunctive conditional, like “If the leprechaun king existed, he would be very magical”? I don’t think so. For suppose that in the closest possible leprechaun world to ours, for some completely accidental reason, the leprechaun king is very magical, but in typical possible worlds with leprechauns, leprechaun kings are are actually rather a dud with regard to magicality. Then it’s true that if the leprechaun king existed, he would be very magical, but that shouldn’t lead us to say that the leprechaun king is very magical.

Perhaps it should be a strict conditional: “Necessarily, if the leprechaun king exists, he is very magical.” That actually sounds fairly plausible, and in light of this we would actually want to deny (4). For it is not necessary that the leprechaun king be very magical. But if we take it to be a strict conditional, we still have a triviality problem. Imagine an atheist who thinks that God is impossible. Then the strict conditional

9. Necessarily, if God exists, God has all perfections

is true, but so is:

10. Necessarily, if God exists, God has exactly 65% of the perfections.

But while it seems that our atheist would be likely to want to say that God has all perfections (indeed, that might be a part of why the atheist thinks God necessarily does not exist, for instance because they think that the perfections are contradictory), it doesn’t sound right to say that God has exactly 65% of the perfections, even if you think that necessarily there is no God.

I think the best bet is to make the conditional be a strict relevant conditional:

11. Necessarily and relevantly, if God exists, God has all perfections.

It is interesting to ask whether (11) helps Cartesian-style ontological arguments. Given (11), if all goes well (it’ll depend on the modal relevance logic) we should get:

12. Necessarily and relevantly, if God exists, God exists.

That sounds right but is of no help. We also get:

13. Necessarily and relevantly, if God exists, God necessarily exists.

Again, that sounds right, and is less trivial, but still doesn’t seem to get us to the existence of God, barring some clever argument.

Deserving the rewards of virtue

We have the intuition that when someone has worked uprightly and hard for something good and thereby gained it, they deserve their possession of it. What does that mean?

If Alice ran 100 meters faster than her opponents at the Olympics, she deserves a gold medal. In this case, it is clear what is meant by that: the organizers of the Olympics owe her a gold medal in just recognition of her achievement. Thus, Alice’s desert appears appears to be appropriately analyzable partly in terms of normative properties had by persons other than Alice. In Alice’s case, these properties are obligations of justice, but they could simply be reasons of justice. Thus, if someone has done something heroic and they receive a medal, the people giving the medal typically are not obligated to give it, but they do have reasons of justice to do so.

But there are cases that fit the opening intuition where it is harder to identify the other persons with the relevant normative properties. Suppose Bob spends his life pursuing virtue, and gains the rewards of a peaceful conscience and a gentle attitude to the failings of others. Like Alice’s gold medal, Bob’s rewards are deserved. But if we understand desert as in Alice’s case, as partly analyzable in terms of normative properties had by others, now we have a problem: Who is it that has reasons of justice to bestow these rewards on Bob?

We can try to analyze Bob’s desert by saying that we all have reasons of justice not to deprive him of these rewards. But that doesn’t seem quite right, especially in the case of the gentle attitude to the failings of others. For while some people gain that attitude through hard work, others have always had it. Those who have always had it do not deserve it, but it would still be unjust to deprive them of it.

The theist has a potential answer to the question: God had reasons of justice to bestow on Bob the rewards of virtue. Thus, while Alice deserved her gold medal from the Olympic committee and Carla (whom I have not described but you can fill in the story) deserved her Medal of Honor from the Government, Bob deserved his quiet conscience and “philosophical” outlook from God.

This solution, however, may sound wrong to many Christians, especially but not only Protestants. There seems to be a deep truth to Leszek Kolakowski’s book title God Owes Us Nothing. But recall that desert can also be partly grounded in non-obligating reasons of justice. One can hold that God owes us nothing but nonetheless think that when God bestowed on Bob the rewards of virtue (say, by designing and sustaining the world in such a way that often these rewards came to those who strove for virtue), God was doing so in response to non-obligating reasons of justice.

Objection: Let’s go back to Alice. Suppose that moments after she ran the race, a terrorist assassinated everyone on the Olympic Committee. It still seems right to say that Alice deserved a gold medal for her run, but no one had the correlate reason of justice to bestow it. Not even God, since it just doesn’t seem right to say that God has reasons of justice to ensure Olympic medals.

Response: Maybe. I am not sure. But think about the “Not even God” sentence in the objection. I think the intuition behind the “Not even God” undercuts the case. The reason why not even God had reasons of justice to ensure the medal was that Alice deserved a medal not from God but from the Olympic Committee. And this shows that her desert is grounded in the Olympic Committee, if only in a hypothetical way: Were they to continue existing, they would have reasons of justice to bestow on her the medal.

This suggests a different response that an atheist could give in the case of Bob: When we say that Bob deserves the rewards of virtue, maybe we mean hypothetically that if God existed, God would have reasons of justice to grant them. This does not strike me as a plausible analysis. If God doesn’t exist, the existence of God is a far-fetched and fantastical hypothesis. It is implausible that Bob’s ordinary case of desert be partly grounded in hypothetical obligations of a non-existent fantastical being. On the other hand, it is not crazy to think that Alice’s desert, in the exceptional case of the Olympic Committee being assassinated, be partly grounded in hypothetical obligations of a committee that had its existence suddenly cut short.

Double Effect and symbolic actions

There is an intrinsic value to standing against evil. One way to do that is to intentionally act to reduce the evil. But that’s not the only way. Another way of standing against evil is to protest it even when one reasonably expects one’s protest to have no effect. When we see standing against evil as something of significant intrinsic value, then sometimes it will even make sense to stand against evil even when we foresee that doing so will unintentionally increase the evil. It can be legitimate to protest an abuse of power even if one foresees that such protest will lead to further abuses of power, such as a crackdown on the protesters. Of course, prudence is needed, and one must keep proportionality in mind: if the abuses of power inspired by the protest are likely to be much worse than the ones being protested, it is better not to protest. Another way to stand against evil is to punish it. Again, this can make sense even when one does not expect the punishment to reduce the evil (e.g., perhaps the evil is a one-off and it is unlikely that there will be any further temptations to deter people from).

Similarly, there is an intrinsic value to standing for good. A central way to stand for good is to act to increase the good. But, again, it’s not the only way. Admiring, rewarding and praising also are ways of standing for good, even when they are not expected to increase the good.

The actions that constituting standing for good or against evil but that are not intentional acts to increase the good or reduce the evil may be called symbolic. “Symbolic” is often used as a way to downplay the importance of something. That is a mistake: the symbolic can be of great importance. Moreover, “symbolic” suggests a social dimension that need not be relevant. When an atheist hikes alone in order to contemplate the goodness of nature, that is a way of standing for the good of nature that is symbolic in the above sense but not social. Moreover, “symbolic” suggests a certain arbitrariness of choice of symbol. But there need not be such. There is nothing arbitrary in virtue of which admiring a beautiful view is a way of symbolically standing for the good. We thus need to understand “symbolic” in a broad way that is compatible with great intrinsic value, that need not be social in nature, and need not involve arbitrary socially instituted representations.

If we do this, then here is a promising way to make the kinds of deontological views that are tied to the Principle of Double Effect plausible. On these views, certain fundamental evils are wrong to intentionally produce but may be tolerated as side-effects. But now things look puzzling. Let’s say that we can end a war by dropping a bomb on the wicked leaders in the enemy headquarters in a busy city, and which bomb will also kill and maim thousands of innocents in the surrounding buildings, or one can end the war by kidnapping and maiming the enemy leader’s innocent child. The attack on the child is wrong while the attack on the headquarters is permissible on this deontological ethics, but that may just feel wrong. But if we see symbolic standing for good and against evil as really important, the difference becomes more plausible. In intending the maiming of the child, one is standing for evil: for it is unescapable that by intending an evil one stands for it. In refusing to maim the child, one is standing against evil. But in dropping the bomb, the mere foresight of the plight of thousands of innocents does not make one be standing for evil. One can still count as standing against evil by intending to kill the evildoers in the headquarters.

It is tempting to think that when standing against evil does not actually reduce evil, as in the case of the refusal to maim the child, the the action is merely symbolic, and moral weight of the obligation is low. But that is a mistake: “merely” is a poor choice of words when connected with “symbolic”. Symbolic actions can be of great import indeed.

Cats versus nothing

Suppose I insisted that the Big Bang happened due to a cat generating an extremely high energy hairball. You would think I’m crazy. But why is the cat theory any worse than a theory on which the Big Bang happened for no reason at all?

Granted, we haven’t ever seen such a high energy hairball coming from a cat. But we likewise haven’t seen something come from nothing.

Granted, we know something about the causal powers of cats, namely that they lack the power to originate high energy hairballs. But likewise we know about the causal power of nothing, namely that where there is nothing, there is no causal power.

However, this last response is too quick. For when we talk of the universe coming from nothing versus the universe coming from a cat, we are equivocating on “coming from”. When the atheist says the universe came from nothing, they don’t mean that nothing was something that originated the universe. Rather, they simply deny that there was something that originated the universe. Cats don’t have the power to generate universes, so universes don’t get generated by cats. Similarly, where there is nothing, there is no power to generate universes, so universes don’t get generated by nothing. But the atheist doesn’t say that the universe is generated by (a?) nothing—they simply deny that it was generated by something.

Thus, the problem with the universe coming from a cat is with the origination: cats just aren’t the sorts of things to originate universes.

I guess that’s right, but I still feel the pull of the thought that a cat comes closer to making it possible for a universe to come into being than nothingness does. After all, where there is a cat, there are some causal powers. And where there is nothing, there aren’t any.

Perhaps another way to make the argument go through is to say this: There is nothing less absurd about the universe appearing causelessly ex nihilo than there is about a cat causelessly ex nihilo gaining a universe-creating power.

A bad argument from hiddenness

Consider the following variant of the argument from hiddenness:

1. If God exists, no mature human is ignorant of God’s existence through no fault of their own.

2. Some mature humans are ignorant of God’s existence through no fault of their own.

3. So, God doesn’t exist.

It’s occurred to me that premises like (3) are either nonsense, or trivially false, or far beyond our capacity to know to be true.

For to evaluate whether some x is ignorant of God’s existence through no fault of their own requires asking something like this:

4. Would x still have been ignorant of God’s existence had x lived a morally perfect life?

But it does not seem likely that there is a sensible positive answer to (4). Here is a quick argument for this. Those who deny Molinism are going to say that either the proposition asked about in (4) has no truth value or that it is trivially false. And even some Molinists will say this about (4), because Molinists are committed to there being conditionals of free will only when the antecedent is maximally specified, while “x lived a morally perfect life” is too unspecified. The question is much like:

5. Had Napoleon been born in South America, would he still have been a great military leader?

There are many ways for Napoleon to have been in South America, and they are apt to result in different answers to the question about whether he was a great military leader.

But even if (4) has a truth value, perhaps because (4) is to be interpreted in some probabilistic way or because we have an expansive version of Molinism that makes (4) make sense, it is far beyond our epistemic powers to know the answer to (4) to be true. Here is why. Our lives are full of wrongdoing. Our lives would likely be unrecognizable had they been morally perfect. To ask what we would have thought and known in the counterfactual scenario where we live a morally perfect life is to ask about a scenario further from actuality than Napoleon’s being born in South America.

Now, that said, there are times when we can evaluate counterfactuals that involve a massive change to the antecedent on the basis of certain generalities. For instance, while we have no answer to (5), we do have a negative answer to:

6. Had Napoleon suffered a massive head injury rendering him incapable of interpersonal communication, would he still have been a great military leader?

Similarly, if an atheist had suffered a head injury removing the capacity for higher level thought, the shape of their life would have been very different, but at least we can say that they wouldn’t have been an atheist, because they wouldn’t have had the concepts necessary to form the belief that there is no God. So, indeed, sometimes counterfactuals that take us far afield can be evaluated sensibly on general grounds.

But I do not think we have good general grounds for a positive answer to (4), unless we have independent grounds to doubt the truth and rationality of theism:

7. There are no good grounds for reasonably believing in God, and a person who lives a morally innocent life won’t believe things groundlessly, so they won’t believe in God.

8. There are people who grow up in societies where there is no concept of God, and they would not be aware of God no matter what the shape of their lives would have been.

Obviously, (7) requires independent grounds to doubt the rationality of theism. And if God exists, then for all we know, he has a general practice of making those who are morally perfect be aware of him, so (8) is dubious if God exists.

Of course, an atheist might think (7) is true, but this is unlikely to be a helpful move in an argument against the existence of God. After all, similarly, a theist might think the following is true:

9. God will ensure that every morally perfect mature human is aware of him.

Indeed, a typical Christian thinks that there have only ever been one or two people—Jesus and maybe Mary—who have been morally perfect, and both candidates were aware of God.

Divine hiddenness as a problem for atheists

One might think that divine hiddenness is a problem for the theist but not at all for the atheist. That is not so clear to me. Consider the plausible evolutionary psychology stories about theistic belief, such as that social animals as smart as us will be sufficiently able to outwit the social enforcement of cooperative behavior and the best evolutionary solution is to have us believe in a being who misses nothing and whose judgment cannot be escaped. But given such good evolutionary stories about theistic belief, why are there so many who do not believe?

I am not saying the problem has no good answer, just that there is still a problem there, even if theism is false.

Divine command theory and atheism

Suppose that the captain impersonates an admiral and yells: “Turn hard to starboard!” The sailors ought to turn hard to starboard and the captain had the authority to command them this. But nonetheless the captain has failed to issue a valid order. For in order to issue a valid order, the captain needs to make herself heard as the captain. The sailors’ obligation to turn to starboard is not a command-obligation but rather is an obligation of conscience to do what one believes, correctly or not, to be the commands of legitimate authority. A sailor who refused to turn would be acting badly, but would not be disobeying an order: she wouldn’t be disobeying the captain’s order, since the captain did not order anything qua captain, or the admiral’s order, since the admiral didn’t order anything.

The same thing would be true, though perhaps less clearly, if the admiral impersonated the captain and told the crew to turn to starboard. The admiral had the authority to issue the order (or so I assume), but to do that she would have to have made herself heard as the admiral.

Similarly, if the captain is a telepath and induces in the helmsman a strong moral belief that he should turn the ship to starboard, no order has been issued to the helmsman. If the helmsman refuses to turn, he is disobeying conscience but he is not disobeying the captain.

Now, consider the command version of the divine command theory: God’s commands (rather than will) define moral obligation. Now we have a prima facie problem with atheists. The atheist believes in an obligation to refrain from stealing, but is not aware of it as a divine command. Therefore, it seems that no command has been validly issued to the atheist: the case seems relevantly like that of the telepath captain. Thus it follows that on the command version of the divine command theory, the atheist has no obligations.

This was a bit too quick, however. For a promulgation condition on commands that requires actual cognitive uptake is too strong. If the captain is yelling orders as captain but the helmsman has deliberately plugged her ears so as not to hear the orders, the helmsman’s failure to hear does not impugn the validity of the orders.

But suppose instead that the helmsman is hard of hearing due to a recent explosion, and the captain whispers the order while knowing the helmsman won’t hear it. In this case, the order is invalid. It seems, roughly, that if the captain could easily make the command heard as her command but does not do so, and the failure to hear it as her command is not something the other party is antecedently at fault for, then the command is invalid.

Now, it seems that there are atheists who are not at fault for their atheism, and whose failure to hear divine commands as divine commands is not something they are at fault for. But God could easily (everything is easy to an omnipotent being) make them hear them as such. So, on the command version of divine command theory, these atheists have never been validly commanded, and hence have no obligations—which is clearly false.

Maybe I will get some pushback on the claim that there are atheists who are not at fault for atheism. Let’s consider, then, the case of Alice, a life-long atheist who is at fault for her atheism and who was never aware of any divine command as a divine command. Then, at some point t₁ of time, Alice did the first thing that made her be at fault for her atheism and/or her failure to be aware of divine commands as divine commands. Perhaps an argument for theism was being offered to her by Bob, but she refused to listen to Bob out of racism.

Now to be at fault, you have to culpably do something wrong. And, according to divine command theory, the wrong is always a violation of a (valid) divine command. So, at t₁, Alice’s action was the violation of a valid divine command. But at t₁, Alice wasn’t aware of the command as one from God, since we’ve assumed that Alice was never aware of any divine command as a divine command. And Alice’s failure to be aware of the command as one from God was not due to any antecedent fault of hers, since we have assumed that t₁ is the time of Alice’s first action that made her be at fault with respect to this failure.

Thus, it seems that the divine command theorist who takes the command part of the theory seriously has to say that those who are now atheists are atheists because they disobeyed a command from God which they were aware of as a command from God. This is deeply implausible. It is way more implausible than the already not very plausible response to the hiddenness argument that says that all atheists are morally guilty for their atheism.

But perhaps we want to distinguish epistemic from moral fault, and say that a command can still be valid if it fails to be heard due to an epistemic fault that the commander could have easily overcome, even when that epistemic fault does not correspond to a moral one. I do not think this is plausible. Being unable to parse complex sentences might be an epistemic fault. But if I issue a complex command to someone I know to be incapable of parsing such complex sentences, when I could easily have used a simpler sentence with the same content, I do not validly command.

White lies

Suppose Bob is known by Alice to be an act utilitarian. Then Bob won’t believe when Alice asserts p in cases where Bob knows that by Alice’s lights, if p is false, nonetheless the utility of getting Bob to believe p exceeds the utility of Bob knowing that p is false. For in such cases an act utilitarian is apt to lie, and her testimony to p is of little worth.

Such cases are not uncommon in daily life. Alice feels bad about a presentation she just made. Bob praises it. Alice dismisses the praise on the grounds that even if her presentation was bad, getting her to feel better outweighs the utility of her having a correct estimate of the presentation, at least by Bob’s lights.

Praise from an act utilitarian is of little value: instead of being direct evidence for the proposition that one did well, it is direct evidence for the proposition that it would be good for one to believe that one did well. Now, that it would good for one to believe that one did well is some evidence that one did well, but it is fairly weak evidence given facts about human psychology.

And so in cases where praise is deserved, the known act utilitarian is not going to promote utility for friends as effectively as a known deontologist, since the deontologist’s praise is going to get a lot more credence. Such cases are not rare: it is quite common for human performances to deserve praise and for the agent to be such that they would benefit from being uplifted by praise. While, on the other hand, in cases where praise is undeserved, the known act utilitarian’s praise does little to uplift the spirit.

These kinds of ordinary interactions are such a large part of our lives that I think a case can be made that just on the basis of these, by the lights of act utilitarianism, an act utilitarian should either hide their act utilitarianism from others or else should convert to some other normative ethical view (say, by self-brainwashing). Since the relevant interactions are often with friends, and it is unlikely one can hide one’s character from one’s friends over a significant period of time, and since doing so is likely to be damaging to one’s character in ways that even the act utilitarian will object to, this seems to be yet another of the cases where act utilitarianism pushes one not to be an act utilitarian.

Such arguments have been made before in other contexts (e.g., worries that the demandingness of act utilitarianism would sap our energies). They are not definitive refutations of act utilitarianism. As Parfit has convincingly argued, it is logically consistent to hold that an ethical theory is true but that one morally should not believe it. But still we get the conclusion that everybody morally should be something other than an act utilitarian. For if act utilitarianism is false, you surely shouldn’t be an act utilitarian. And if it’s true, you shouldn’t, either.

The above, I think, is more generally relevant to any view on which everyday white lies are acceptable. For the only justifications available for white lies are consequentialist ones. But hiding from one’s friends that one is the sort of person who engages in white lies is costly and difficult, whereas letting it be known undercuts the benefits of the white lies, while at the same removing the benefits of parallel white truths. Thus, we should all reject white lies in our lives, and make it clear that we do so.

Here, I use “white lie” in a sense in which it is a lie. I do not think “Fine” is a lie, white or otherwise, when answering “How are you?” even when you are not fine, because this is not a case of assertion but of a standardized greeting. (There is no inconsistency in an atheist saying “Good-bye”, even though it’s a contraction of “God be with you.”) One way to see this isn't a lie is to note that it is generally considered rude (but sometimes required) to suggest that one's interlocutor lied, there is nothing rude about saying to someone who answered “Fine”: “Are you sure? You look really tired.” At that point, we do move into assertion category. The friend who persists in the “Fine” answer but isn't fine now is lying.

Believing of God that he exists

One formulation of Schellenberg’s argument from hiddenness depends on the premise:

(4) If for any capable finite person S and time t, God is at t open to being in a personal relationship with S at t, then for any capable finite person S and time t, it is not the case that S is at t nonresistantly in a state of nonbelief in relation to the proposition that God exists.

Schellenberg argues that God is always open to personal relationships if he exists, and that there are people nonresistantly in a state of nonbelief to the proposition that God exists, and so God doesn’t exist.

I want to worry about a logical problem behind (4). Schellenberg attempts to derive (4) from a principle he calls Not Open that says, with some important provisos that won’t matter for this post, that “if a person A … is … in a state of nonbelief in relation to the proposition that B exists” but B could have gotten A to believe that B exists, “then it is not the case that B is … open … to having a personal relationship with A”.

It seems that Schellenberg gets (4) by substituting “God” for “B” in Not Open. But “the proposition that B exists” creates a hyperintensional context for “B”, and hence one cannot blithely substitute equals for equals, or even necessarily coextensive expressions, in Not Open.

Compare: If I have a personal relationship with Clark Kent, I then automatically have a personal relationship with Superman, even if I do not believe the proposition that Superman exists, because Superman and Clark Kent are in fact the same person. It is perhaps necessary for a personal relationship with Superman is that I believe of Superman that he exists, but I need not believe it of him under the description “Superman”.

So it seems to me that the only thing Schellenberg can get from Not Open is something like:

(4*) If for any capable finite person S and time t, God is at t open to being in a personal relationship with S at t, then for any capable finite person S and time t, it is not the case that S is at t nonresistantly in a state where he does not believe of God that he (or it) exists.

Now, to believe of x that it exists is to believe, for some y such that in fact y = x, that y exists.

But then all that’s needed to believe of God that he exists is to believe in the existence of something that is in fact coextensive with God. For instance, suppose an atheist believes that her mother is the being that loves her most. Then she presumably believes that the being that loves her most exists. In doing so, she believes of the being that loves her most that it exists. But in fact, assuming theism is true, the being that loves her most is God. So she believes of God that it (or he) exists.

At this point it is really hard to find non-controversial cases of the relevant kind of nonbelief that (4*) expresses. By “non-controversial”, I mean cases that do not presuppose the non-existence of God. For if God does in fact exist, he falls under many descriptions: “The being who loves me most”, “The existent being that Jean Vanier loves the most”, “The most powerful conscious being active on earth”, etc.

It is true that Schellenberg needs only one case. So even if it is true, on the assumption that God exists, that the typical atheist or agnostic believes of God that he exists, perhaps there are some people who don’t. But they will be hard to find—most atheists, I take it, think there is someone who loves them most (or loves them most in some particular respect), etc. I think the most plausible cases of examples are small children and the developmentally challenged. But those aren’t the cases Schellenberg’s argument focuses on, so I assume that’s not the line he would want to push.

The above shows that the doxastic prerequisite for a personal relationship with B is not just believing of B that it exists, since that’s too easy to get. What seems needed (at least if the whole doxastic line is to get off the ground—which I am not confident it does) is to believe of B that it exists and to believe it under a description sufficiently relevant to the relationship. For instance, suppose Alice falsely believes that her brother no longer exists, and suppose that not only does Alice’s brother still exist but he has been working out in secret and is now the fastest man alive. Alice believes that the fastest man alive exists, and mistakenly thinks he is Usain Bolt rather than her brother. So she does count as believing of her brother that he exists, but because she believes this under the description “the fastest man alive”, a description that she wrongly attaches to Bolt, her belief doesn’t help her have a relationship with her brother.

So probably (4*) should be revised to:

(4**) If for any capable finite person S and time t, God is at t open to being in a personal relationship with S at t, then for any capable finite person S and time t, it is not the case that S is at t nonresistantly in a state where he does not believe of God that he (or it) exists, under a description relevant to his personal relationship with God.

This doesn’t destroy the hiddenness argument. But it does make the hiddenness argument harder to defend, for one must find someone who does not believe in anything that would be coextensive with God if God exists under a description that would be relevant to a personal relationship with God. But there are, plausibly, many descriptions of God that would be so relevant.

A different move is to say that there can be descriptions D that in fact are descriptions precisely of x but some cases of believing that D exists are not cases of believing of x that it exists. Again, one will need to introduce some relevance criterion for the descriptions, though.

[Note added later: This was, of course, written before the revelations about Jean Vanier's abusiveness. I would certainly have chosen a different example if I were writing this post now.]

Balancing between theism and atheism

The problem of evil consists of three main parts:

• The problem of suffering.

• The problem of evil choices.

• The problem of hiddenness (which is an evil at most conditionally on God’s existing).

The theist has trouble explaining why there is so much suffering. The atheist, however, has trouble explaining why there is any suffering, given that suffering presupposes consciousness, and the atheist has trouble explaining why there is any consciousness.

Of course, there are atheist-friendly naturalistic accounts of consciousness. But they all face serious difficulties. This parallels the fact that theists have theodical accounts of why God permits so much suffering, accounts that also face serious difficulties.

So, on the above, considerations of suffering are a net tie between theism and atheism.

The theist does not actually have all that much trouble explaining why there are evil choices. Libertarian free will does the job. Of course, there are some problems with libertarian accounts of free will. These problems are not, I think, nearly as serious as the problems that theists have with explaining why there is so much suffering or atheists have with explaining why there is consciousness. Moreover, there is a parallel problem for the atheist. Evil choices can only exist given free will. Prima facie the most plausible accounts of free will are libertarian agent-causal ones. But those are problematic for the atheist, who will find it difficult to explaining where libertarian agents come from. The atheist probably has to embrace a compatibilist theory, which has at least as many problems as libertarian agent-causalism.

So, considerations of evil choices look at best as a net tie for the atheist.

Finally, there is the problem of hiddenness for the theist. But while the theist has trouble explaining how we don’t all know something so important as the existence of God, the atheist has epistemological trouble of her own: she has trouble explaining how she knows that there is no God. After all, knowledge of the highly abstract facts that enter into arguments regarding the existence of God is not the sort of knowledge that seems to be accessible to evolved natural beings.

So, considerations of knowledge of the existence or non-existence of God look as a net tie.

The problem of evil, however, exhausts the powerful arguments for atheism. But the above considerations far from exhaust the powerful arguments for theism.

The above reasoning no doubt has difficulties. But I want to propose it as a strategy for settling disputes in cases where it's hard to assign probabilities. For even if it's hard to assign probabilities, we can have good intuitions that two considerations are a wash, that they provide equal evidence. And if we can line up arguments in such a way, being more careful with issues of statistical dependence than I was above, then we can come to a view as to which way some bunch of evidence points.

Reincarnation and theodicy

As I was teaching on the problem of evil today, I was struck by how nicely reincarnation could provide theodicies for recalcitrant cases. “Why is the fawn dying in the forest fire? Well, for all we know, it’s a reincarnation of someone who committed genocide and is undergoing the just punishment for this, a punishment whose restorative effect will only be seen in the next life.” “Why is Sam suffering with no improvement to his soul? Well, maybe the improvement will only manifest in the next life.”

Of course, I don’t believe in reincarnation. But if the problem of evil is aimed at theism in general, then it seems fair to say that for all that theism in general says, reincarnation could be true.

Here is a particular dialectical context where bringing in reincarnation could be helpful. The theist presses the fine-tuning argument. The atheist instead of embracing a multiverse (as is usual) responds with the argument from evil. The theist now says: While reincarnation may seem unlikely, it surely has at least a one in a million probability conditionally on theism; on the other hand, fine-tuning has a much, much smaller probability than one in a million conditionally on single-universe atheism. So theism wins.

Projection and the imago Dei

There is some pleasing initial symmetry between how a theist (or at least Jew, Christian or Muslim) can explain features of human nature by invoking the doctrine that we are in the image of God and using this explanatory schema:

1. Humans are (actually, normally or ideally) F because God is actually F

and how an atheist can explain features attributed to God by projection:

2. The concept of God includes being actually F because humans are (actually, normally or ideally) F.

Note, however, that while schemata (1) and (2) are formally on par, schema (1) has the advantage that it has a broader explanatory scope than (2) does. Schema (1) explains a number of features (whether actual or normative) of the nature of all human beings, while schema (2) only explains a number of features of the thinking of a modest majority (the 55% who are monotheists) of human beings.

There is also another interesting asymmetry between (1) and (2). Theist can without any damage to their intellectual system embrace both (1) and a number of the instances of (2) that the atheist embraces, since given the imago Dei doctrine, projection of normative or ideal human features onto God can be expected to track truth with some probability. On the other hand, the atheist cannot embrace any instances of (1).

Note, too, that evolutionary explanations do not undercut (1), since there can be multiple correct explanations of one phenomenon. (This phenomenon is known to people working on Bayesian inference.)

The argument from highly intelligent saints who are Christians

1. There have been many highly intelligent saints who were Christians.

2. If there have been may highly intelligent saints who were Christians, then probably (insofar as the above evidence goes) the central doctrines of Christianity are true.

3. So, probably (insofar as the above evidence goes), the central doctrines of Christianity are true.

(An interesting variant is to replace “are true” in (2) and (3) with “are approximately true”, and then to combine the conclusion with my previous post.)

I do not plan to defend 1. That’s too easy. Note, though, that while easy, it’s not trivial. I am not claiming that there were many highly intelligent people who were canonized “Saints” by the Catholic or Orthodox Church, though that’s true. Nor am I claiming that there were many highly intelligent people who were Christian saints. I am claiming that there are may highly intelligent people who were saints simpliciter, as well as being Christian.

What is a saint like? Saints are deeply morally good people who, insofar as it depends on them, lead a deeply flourishing human life. Their lives are meaningful and when seen closely—which may be difficult, as many saints are very unostentatious—these lives are deeply compelling to others. Saints tightly integrate the important components of their lives. In particular, those saints who are highly intelligent—and not all saints are intelligent, though all are wise—integrate their intellectual life and their moral life. Highly intelligent saints are reflective. They have an active and humble conscience that is on the lookout for correction, and this requires integration between the intellectual life and the moral life.

An intelligent saint who is a Christian is also a Christian saint. For Christianity is not the sort of doctrine that can be held on the peripheries of a well-lived life. Someone who is a Christian but to whose life Christianity is not central is neither a saint simpliciter nor a Christian saint. For a central part of being Christian is believing that Christianity should be central to one’s life, and an intelligent saint—in either sense—will see this and thus either conscientiously act on such a belief, making Christianity be central to her life, or else conclude that Christianity is false.

Now, the existence of a highly intelligent saint who is a Christian is evidence for coherence between central moral truths and the truth of Christianity. For if they were not coherent, the reflectiveness of the highly intelligent saint would likely have seen the incoherence, and her commitment to morality would have led to the rejection of Christianity. But it’s not just that the moral truths and the truth of Christianity cohere: the truths of Christianity support and motivate the moral life. For the saint who is a Christian is, as I just argued, also a Christian saint. And a Christian saint is motivated in the moral life by considerations central to Christianity—the love of God as shown in creation and in the incarnate Son’s sacrificial death on the cross.

It is difficult to have a coherent theory that includes in a highly integrated way deeply metaphysical beliefs and correct moral views in a way where the metaphysical beliefs support the moral ones. That a theory is such is significant evidence for the theory’s truth. More generally and loosely, I think that a person whose life is deeply compelling is likely to be right in those central beliefs of her that are tightly interwoven with what makes her life compelling. But the saint’s moral life is compelling, and if she is a Christian, then her central Christian beliefs are tightly interwoven with her moral life.

Hence, 2 is true.

Of course, the above is not all the evidence there is. What about highly intelligent saints who are not Christians? The existence of such may well weaken the argument. But at least, I think, the argument makes Christianity an intellectually serious option.

And there may be something we can say more specifically on a case by case basis about saints outside of Christianity. Crucial to my argument was that one cannot be a saint and a Christian and have the Christianity be peripheral to one’s moral life. But one can be a saint and an atheist and have the atheism be peripheral to one’s moral life. Atheism is a negative doctrine, after all. If one turns it into a positive motivational doctrine, one gets something like Russell’s “A Free Man’s Worship”. But that is too proud, too haughty, too cold, too dark to be the central motivational doctrine of a saint. A saint who is an atheist is, I suspect, not as likely to be an atheist saint as a saint who is a Christian is to be a Christian saint.

Eastern religions have their saints, but there is an obvious tension between the irrealism to which Eastern religions tend and moral truths about the importance of love of others, of corporal care for the needs of others. One can adhere to an irrealist philosophy and despite this live a life of service to others, but it is unlikely that the service to others be central to one’s life in the way that moral sainthood requires.

What about Jewish and Muslim saints? Well, it may be that many of the motivationally central parts of Judaism and Islam are shared by Christianity—though the converse is not true, given the motivational centrality of the Incarnation to Christianity. One might object that the transcendence and simplicitly of God as taught in Judaism and Islam is motivationally central. But classical Christian theism embraces the transcendence and simplicity of God—and the Incarnation and Trinity, too.

The elegance of fundamental physics

Plenty of the mathematics in science is ugly. But the mathematics in fundamental physics tends to be beautiful. It could be that in the correct fundamental physics it won't be beautiful. I wonder if we have reason to think it will be. The fact that in our current fundamental physics theories there is mathematical beauty doesn't seem to say much, because our current fundamental physics is probably false.

Still, I hope that the book of the world is written by God in such a way that the mathematical elegance of approximately true theories points to the mathematical elegance of the true theory in physics. I wonder, though, if an atheist could have any reason to have such a hope.

Causation and collapse

If determinism were true, then since each state could be project from the initial state, we could simply suppose that the whole four-dimensional shebang came into existence causally "all at once", so that there would be no causal relations within the four-dimensional universe. The only relevant causation could that of God's causing the universe as a whole--and an atheist might just think the four-dimensional universe to be uncaused.

I think that this acausal picture could be adapted to give an attractive picture of the role of causation in a collapse interpretation of quantum mechanics (whether the collapse is of the GRW-type or of the consciousness-caused type). On a collapse picture, we have an alternation between a deterministic evolution governed by the Schroedinger equation and an indeterministic collapse. Why not suppose, then, that there is no causation within the deterministic evolution? We could instead suppose that the state of the universe at collapse causes the whole of the four-dimensional block between that collapse and the next. As long as collapse isn't too frequent, this could allow occasions of causation to be discrete, with only a finite number of such occasions within any interval of time. And this would let us reconcile quantum physics with causal finitism even with a continuous time. (Relativity would require more work.)

Epiphenomenalism and the problem of animal pain

Suppose the following epiphenomenalist thesis is true, at least for non-human animals: qualia do not affect behavior. It's interesting that if this is right, then the argument for atheism from animal pain is seriously weakened. The argument from animal pain contends that God would have reason to prevent many instances of animal pain that he does not in fact prevent. However, we have good reason to think that God's interventions would be targeted and hence minimal. Now a minimal intervention for the prevention of pain is simply to suppress the quale of pain. Given epiphenomenalism, however, suppressing a quale of pain does not affect either behavior or neural state. So if God thus intervened, things wouldn't look any the different. And hence the atheist cannot non-circularly deny that God did intervene to prevent the pain.

Of course, this might be taken to be yet another reason to deny epiphenomenalism.

The five minute hypothesis reconsidered

Let S₁ be the state the universe in fact had five minutes ago and let S₀ be the state the universe in fact had "at" (it may be a limiting boundary condition) the Big Bang. Is S₀ any more amenable to coming into existence causelessly ex nihilo than S₁? Surely not! (Can one even compare compare probabilities of causeless ex nihilo poppings-into-existence?) But then why should the atheist think that it was S₀ rather than S₁ that came into existence causelessly ex nihilo? Neither hypothesis is intrinsically more likely than the other, and both fit our observations equally well.

The theist has no such problem, because there are good value-based reasons why S₀ is more likely to be created than S₁.