Let’s assume causal finitism is false, and that the past can be infinite.
If an object pops into existence ex nihilo at a specific time t, that feels objectionably arbitrary, since we want to know why did it pop into existence then rather than earlier or later (or if it couldn’t have done that, for essentiality of origins reasons, why didn’t something just like it do that).
But if the object has existed for infinite time, that does not feel arbitrary, and some people have the intuition that the object does not call out for an explanation even if it is metaphysically contingent.
This failure to be puzzled is I think based on a mistake. For even if the object existed for an infinite time, we can ask why it didn’t exist for a longer infinite time. That question makes sense. After all, if the object existed on days ..., − 3, − 2, − 1, 0, where 0 is today, then we can ask why before all those days it didn’t exist on an earlier day, one which we might denote − ω, where ω is the first infinite ordinal.
One might answer: “Well, it didn’t exist on day − ω, because time does not include day − ω.” But that doesn’t solve the puzzle. After all, imagine that on day − 18 an object popped into existence, and when we are puzzled by this, we are told: “Well, day − 18 is the first day of time. The object couldn’t have existed on day − 19 because there was no such day.” But now we want to know: Why did time itself begin on day − 18 rather than on day −19 or day −1094? And similarly, we should want to know why time extends only to the dates ..., − 3, − 2, − 1, 0 and not to day − ω, or day − ω − 1, or day − 2ω94.
In fact, there is a sense in which the first of the following questions might be less puzzling than the second:
Why did time begin on day − 18 rather than day − 1094?
Why did time extend only to days ..., − 3, − 2, − 1, 0 rather than beginning with day − ω, inclusive?
For if time is relational, then there might be no real metaphysical difference between time beginning on day − 18 and time beginning on day − 1094, but even so there is a metaphysical difference between time extending only to days ..., − 3, − 2, − 1, 0 and its starting on − ω. If time extends only to days ..., − 3, − 2, − 1, 0, then it has no first day, but if it starts on day − ω, then it has a first day, namely − ω.
In fact, there are infinities of different possible temporal orders, all of them linear (i.e., reflexive, transitive and total). Why is time one of these rather than another? If times are representable as real numbers (as classical physics assumes), why? Why not merely as rational numbers? Or, more expansively, why not as hyperreals? Or why not as an order that looks like the real numbers with zero removed?
Whatever is the time sequence occupied by an object, even if the object fills the time sequence, it calls out for an explanation why the time sequence that it fills is this one rather than another one.
8 comments:
Hello Dr Pruss,
I wondered what are in your opinion the best evidences for christianity if we put aside the resurrection ?
Joe's conversion made me more curious about this topic than I previously was.
This is from my autobiography for the new edition of Philosophers Who Believe. It describes my reasoning minutes after, as a teenager, I became convinced that God exists: "If you thank a good person for doing something for you when they actually didn’t do anything very good for you, they will stop you. Good people can’t tolerate undeserved gratitude. Thus, if we try to thank a perfect being for doing something for us, if that being did not do that thing or something at least as good, the being will stop us. But Christians have thanked God for sending his only Son (God himself) to die for our sins and have not been stopped. Therefore God either sent his only Son to die for our sins, or he did something at least as good. No deed could be better, or even at least as good. Thus, I concluded, God did that. "
But Dr. Pruss, while that argument is clever and provocative, it seems to face severe counterarguments. Muslims fervently praise Allah for sending the final, uncorrupted revelation through the Prophet Muhammad, and explicitly thank God for not having a son or dying on a cross (Surah 112, Surah 4:157). Millions have offered this specific gratitude for fourteen centuries without divine intervention stopping them. Various Vaishnavite traditions praise Vishnu/Krishna for specific descents (avatars) and deeds to liberate devotees from karma, deeds fundamentally incompatible with orthodox Christian theology. Because mutually contradictory expressions of profound thanksgiving have persisted for centuries across billions of people without God intervening to halt them, the empirical fact of history contradicts the premise that God reliably intervenes to prevent misdirected religious gratitude.
To be honest, even though I am a Christian, I cannot help but notice that the Old Testament contains serious mistakes (e.g., commandments regarding women, slaves, and the Canaanite conquests). The Bible itself seems to exemplify a dynamic, gradual evolution toward truth. Typical assumptions of inerrancy, harmonization, etc., strike me as ad-hoc and plainly false. But this very process seems to point to the fact that God will permit individuals and groups to be genuinely mistaken (sometimes, even sincere Christians) indefinitely, at least until something like the eschaton. What do you think?
I don't think the cases you give are a counterexample to my principle that "if that being did not do that thing *or something at least as good*, the being will stop us".
For instance, I think God did do something *at least as good as* sending the final, uncorrupted revelation through Muhammad: he sent the Holy Spirit to ensure the infallibility of his Church. Similarly, he did do something *at least as good as* (indeed, better than) not dying on the Cross--namely, he died on the Cross.
The Vishnu case might be handled in the same way, but might be different. It depends on the question of whom the Vaishnavite is actually thanking when they thank Vishnu. Assuming theism is actually true (which I was assuming in my quoted argument), there are three options: (a) God, (b) a non-existent being, and (c) some lesser but existent being. If they are thanking a non-existent being, then there is no counterexample to my principle. If they are thinking some lesser being, then the lesser being might not be perfectly good, and we do nt have a counterexample. If they are thanking God, I will have to make the same move as I make in the case of Muslims, namely insist that the Christian story is *better*.
While I happen to accept that everything Scripture teaches is true (with nuance about genre, teaching vs. presupposing, etc.), the principle in my argument is compatible with lots of sincere Christians being mistaken. The principle just rules out cases where they are mistaken in a way that overestimates the goodness of God's actions and they thank God for this overestimated goodness. You might say that they do overestimate the goodness of his actions when they say that he made Scripture inerrant. But I suspect you think that it is *at least as good* to have "a dynamic, gradual evolution toward truth" of the sort you believe in.
Of course, the differences in people's evaluations of what is and is not better might suggest that the principle is useless. I disagree: even if evaluations of value are controversial, some people can still know the true values of things.
Thank you for the thoughtful clarification, Dr. Pruss—I really appreciate how carefully you think through these nuances. The move to “did that thing or something at least as good” is an intriguing refinement, but I wonder if it creates a couple of gentle tensions for the original argument.
First, it seems to leave the historical specifics epistemically underdetermined. If God regularly permits millions of sincere believers to spend centuries thanking Him for monumental events that never occurred simply because His actual deeds are even greater, a Christian might face the very same worry: perhaps the Cross never literally happened, but God tolerates our gratitude because He achieved reconciliation through an even higher, unrevealed means. Moreover, deciding whether the Incarnation is objectively "better" than preserving absolute divine transcendence (as an Islamic theologian would argue) seems to presuppose a Christian axiology from the start, making it difficult for the principle to serve as independent evidence for which tradition is correct. Of course, I think the Christian story is broadly correct, but I'm thinking about the (theistic) person who doesn't believe that already.
Finally, I’m not entirely sure our everyday moral intuitions support treating gratitude as a fungible ledger of value. If a friend warmly thanks me for a specific sacrifice I never made, ordinary virtue still seems to prompt me to gently correct the misunderstanding, even if I happen to have done something of equal or greater value for them elsewhere. Relational integrity seems to value truthfulness about what actually transpired between two parties.
I’d be very curious to hear how you see the principle preserving that historical and relational specificity without already assuming the Christian framework.
I agree that one does need to worry about whether one's axiology is right and whether God didn't do something greater. Regarding the axiology, there I think we can just say what many people who became Christian have said: the glory of the Cross indeed exceeds all the things other religions have presented as divine action. That's a judgment call. But no less objective for being one.
Regarding the possibility of even higher, unrevealed means, I think that's something worth considering. But there is good reason to think that a perfect being would want us to know him, and hence it's likely that there would be some revelation. Thus it is likely that if God did something so great, he would have revealed it to us, and so we need not search the infinite space of logical possibility, but only the finite space of what other religions have posited. And maybe only major religions?
As far "fungible ledger of value", I think it's different in a two-way interaction and a one-way interaction. If you and I are talking face to face and you thank me for X, and I don't correct you, I kind of am endorsing the claim that I did X. But if you send me an email thanking me for X, I think I have less reason to correct you if I in fact did something greater.
And even face-to-face, it's not absolute. Suppose I told a student that I would recommend them for a position. And then they got the position and came to thank me, saying: "Thank you so much for writing me a letter of recommendation." But in fact I was so enthusiastic about this student, that I didn't write them a letter. Instead, I phoned five different people at the department they were applying to (I've never actually done that), and had long and extensive conversations about how amazing this student was. I don't need to tell the student all that. I can just smile in a friendly way.
On the other hand, if the student effusively thanks me for the letter and it turns out I forgot to write it, oooh, that calls for apologies.
Yeah, honestly, I think your point is actually not bad, now that I think about it. Understand Bayesianly, it has high explanatory power - i.e., if it were true, we would expect to observe this data (or something like it). Taken with this and the overall texture of Christianity and Jesus' life and claims, I think it's a good way to begin or reflect, even if it cannot replace the evidence for the resurrection. If I may ask, Dr. Pruss, what do you think is the best argument for the physical resurrection of Jesus, and why? Please explain.
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