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).

Antiexplanation

If an explanation is a truth or hypothesis that removes or would remove mystery from the proposition to be explained, then an antiexplanation is a truth or hypothesis that adds or would add mystery to the proposition to be explained. Like in the case of explanations, we need to be sensitive to context with antiexplanations. That Alice dislikes bananas is, in typical contexts, antiexplanatory of why Alice ate the banana. But if we add to the background that it’s Lent and Alice wishes to do penance, then Alice’s dislike of bananas becomes explanatory.

It is widely held, though still moderately controversial, that:

1. The fact that a hypothesis p is explanatory of some known truth is evidence for p.

A parallel claim about antiexplanations would:

2. The fact that a hypothesis p is antiexplanatory of some known truth is evidence against p.

This sounds even more plausible than (1). In a typical context, the antiexplanatoriness of a dislike of bananas to actual consumption of a banana provides evidence that Alice who ate a banana does not dislike bananas. Similarly, the fact that Bob is in perfect health is antiexplanatory of Bob’s death, and hence if Bob has died, we have evidence that Bob’s health was imperfect.

There are lots of explanatory arguments in philosophy based on (1). But it would be worth exploring whether one can’t also give antiexplanatory arguments based on (2).

In fact, I think some fairly intuitive arguments can be rephrased as antiexplanatory arguments. For instance:

3. Materialism is antiexplanatory of consciousness.

4. Consciousness is a known fact.

5. So, we have evidence against materialism.

The thought behind (3) is simply that there is intuitively something particularly mysterious about a purely material thing having a conscious point of view.

C. S. Lewis’s version of the moral argument for theism can be taken to be in part an antiexplanatory argument.

6. Atheism is antiexplanatory of moral law.

7. Moral law is a known fact.

8. So, we have evidence against atheism.

Further evaluation of such arguments would call for a deeper philosophical analysis of antiexplanation and an examination of (2). This is a task worth doing. Someone should do it.

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.

Lying to prevent great evils

Consider this argument:

1. It is permissible to lie to prevent great evils.

2. Not believing in God is a great evil.

3. So, it is permissible to lie to get people to believe in God (e.g., by offering false testimony to miracles).

But the conclusion is absurd. So we need to reject (1) or (2). I think (2) is secure. Thus we should reject (1).

I suppose one could try to calibrate some great level E of evil such that it is permissible to lie (a) to prevent evils at levels greater than E but (b) not to prevent evils lesser than E. I am sceptical that one can do this in a plausible way, given that not believing in God is indeed a great evil, since it makes it very difficult to achieve the primary goal of human life.

Perhaps a more promising way out of the argument is to formulate some subject-specific principle, such as that it is wrong to lie in religious matters or for religious ends. But it is hard to do this plausibly.

It seems better to me to just deny (1), and be an absolutist about lying: lying is always wrong.

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.

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 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.

Pascal's Wager in a social context

One of our graduate students, Matt Wilson, suggested an analogy between Pascal's Wager and the question about whether to promote or fight theistic beliefs in a social context (and he let me cite this here).

This made me think. (I don't know what of the following would be endorsed by Wilson.) The main objections to Pascal's Wager are:

1. Difficulties in dealing with infinite utilities. That's merely technical (I say).
2. Many gods.
3. Practical difficulties in convincing oneself to sincerely believe what one has no evidence for.
4. The lack of epistemic integrity in believing without evidence.
5. Would God reward someone who believes on such mercenary grounds?
6. The argument just seems too mercenary!

Do these hold in the social context, where I am trying to decide whether to promote theism among others? If theistic belief non-infinitesimally increases the chance of other people getting infinite benefits, without any corresponding increase in the probability of infinite harms, then that should yield very good moral reason to promote theistic belief. Indeed, given utilitarianism, it seems to yield a duty to promote theism.

But suppose that instead of asking what I should do to get myself to believe the question is what I should try to get others to believe. Then there are straightforward answers to the analogue of (3): I can offer arguments for and refute arguments against theism, and help promote a culture in which theistic belief is normative. How far I can do this is, of course, dependent on my particular skills and social position, but most of us can do at least a little, either to help others to come to believe or at least to maintain their belief.

Moreover, objection (4) works differently. For the Wager now isn't an argument for believing theism, but an argument for increasing the number of people who believe. Still, there is force to an analogue to (4). It seems that there is a lack of integrity in promoting a belief that one does not hold. One is withholding evidence from others and presenting what one takes to be a slanted position (for if one thought that the balance of the evidence favored theism, then one wouldn't need any such Wager). So (4) has significant force, maybe even more force than in the individual case. Though of course if utilitarianism is true, that force disappears.

Objections (5) and (6) disappear completely, though. For there need be nothing mercenary about the believers any more, and the promoter of theistic beliefs is being unselfish rather than mercenary. The social Pascal's Wager is very much a morally-based argument.

Objections (1) and (2) may not be changed very much. Though note that in the social context there is a hedging-of-the-bets strategy available for (2). Instead of promoting a particular brand of theism, one might instead fight atheism, leaving it to others to figure out which kind of theist they want to be. Hopefully at least some theists get right the brand of theism—while surely no atheist does.

I think the integrity objection is the most serious one. But that one largely disappears when instead of considering the argument for promoting theism, one considers the argument against promoting atheism. For while it could well be a lack of moral integrity to promote one-sided arguments, there is no lack of integrity in refraining from promoting one's beliefs when one thinks the promotion of these beliefs is too risky. For instance, suppose I am 99.99% sure that my new nuclear reactor design is safe. But 99.9999% is just not good enough for a nuclear reactor design! I therefore might choose not promote my belief about the safety of the design, even with the 99.9999% qualifier, because politicians and reporters who aren't good in reasoning about expected utilities might erroneously conclude not just that it's probably safe (which it probably is), but that it should be implemented. And the harms of that would be too great. Prudence might well require me to be silent about evidence in cases where the risks are asymmetrical, as in the nuclear reactor case where the harm of people coming to believe that it's safe when it's unsafe so greatly outweighs the harm of people coming to believe that it's unsafe when it's safe. But the case of theism is quite parallel.

Thus, consistent utilitarian atheists will promote theism. (Yes, I think that's a reductio of utilitarianism!) But even apart from utilitarianism, no atheist should promote atheism.

From the denial of divine simplicity to atheism

Premises 1-3 of the following valid argument seem plausible:

1. If God is not simple, then God is infinitely complex.
2. If God is infinitely complex, then atheistic naturalism is a better theory than theism. (Ockham's Razor)
3. If atheistic naturalism is a better theory than theism, then there is no God.
4. So, if God is not simple, then there is no God.

So, theists should accept divine simplicity.

Naturalism and the problem of pain

Here's one way to formulate the argument from pain against theism: "Granted, beings like us need an intense sensation normally triggered by damage that in turn normally triggers strongly aversive behavior. But if God were designing us, we would not expect this sensation to be painful. We would instead expect some intense non-painful sensation to be triggered by damage that in turn triggers strongly aversive behavior. Hence God did not design us." This version of the problem of pain is based on the Possibility Premise:

(PP) It would be possible to have a non-painful sensation that normally has the same triggers as pain and normally leads to the same aversive behavior.

Now, the typical atheist is a naturalist and the best naturalistic theories of mind are functionalist theories on which mental states are defined by their functional interconnections. If functionalism is true, PP is unlikely to be true. This creates a dialectical problem for the typical atheist running the above version of the argument from pain.

Here's one way to see the dialectical problem. Either there is good reason to believe in PP or there isn't. If there isn't, then the theist shouldn't be saddled with PP either. Nothing in theism commits one to PP. It's true that the typical theist is a dualist, and dualism does make PP plausible, but even that is a fairly weak "make plausible": it is easy to be a dualist who denies PP. This is especially true if what pushes one to dualism is not the problem of consciousness but the problem of mental content. Now if there is good reason to believe in PP, then it's fair enough to use PP in an argument against theism. But now the dialectical problem is that PP also provides significant evidence against functionalism, and hence against naturalism, and hence against typical versions of atheism.

Of course, one can give versions of the argument from pain that don't make use of PP. What I say only applies to one version of the argument from pain.

Hope and afterlife

The following argument is valid, and is sound if we take the conditional in (2) to be material.

1. (Premise) In despairing, one engages in a vice.
2. (Premise) If there is no afterlife, it is sometimes appropriate to despair.
3. (Premise) It is never appropriate to engage in a vice.
4. So, there is an afterlife.

Let me say a little about (2). Despair is appropriate in situations of objective hopelessness. But if there is no afterlife, then when one has misspent one's life in wickedness, and is now facing death with no opportunity to make things up to those whom one has mistreated, then despair is appropriate.

If there is an afterlife, then one can hope for mercy or justice.

JFK's assassination

Here's a theory about JFK assassination:

1. a speedily moving bullet came into existence out of nothing for no cause at all an inch from JFK's body.

This theory is crazy. It is crazy given what we know about Oswald, but it would also have been crazy if no assassin had ever been found.

Yet this theory isn't that different from the atheist's theory of the origins of the cosmos (the sum total of all contingent existence).

And notice that it is, intuitively, easier for a speedily moving bullet to come into existence ex nihilo than for a cosmos with the low entropy and high energy of our cosmos to do so.

Gratuitous evils

1. (Premise) There are no gratuitous evils.
2. (Premise) If there is no God, some evils are gratuitous.
3. Therefore, there is a God.

Here, a gratuitous evil is one that doesn't serve some greater purpose, or something like that. Now, one might think this is question-begging: that the only reason to believe (1) is that one believes (3). But I think not. A lot of people have the intuition that "there is a reason for everything". And they don't mean by that that there is an explanation for everything—they aren't just asserting the standard Principle of Sufficient Reason. They mean that there is a justifying reason—that the evils in their lives contribute in important ways to the value of the lives, etc.

Here is a hypothesis. For some (a few? many? I have no idea) atheists, the conviction that there are gratuitous evils is a consequence of, not reason for, atheism. There is the natural intuition that there is a reason for everything, but a belief in atheism is rationally incompatible with that intuition, so the intuition is abandoned.

Guilt

One of the interesting questions about Christian moral philosophy is how moral life differs if Christianity is correct from how it would be if atheism is correct. Here is one difference. When I have culpably done wrong, I become guilty of the wrongdoing. The state of guilt is a bad state to be in. (It is good, however, if in addition to being guilty, I feel guilt.) If Christianity is right, then every state of guilt in this life has a potential cure through divine forgiveness. If atheism is right, however, then there will be incurable states of guilt.

There are two plausible ways of guilt being relieved. One of them is making sufficient restitution/satisfaction—as it were entirely undoing the badness of what one had done (I actually don't know if this really removes guilt—I think forgiveness may still be needed—but I don't need this for the argument). The other is accepting or maybe just receiving (it's a really interesting question which) forgiveness. But not just anyone can forgive a wrongdoing—the right person or persons must offer forgiveness. The most obvious thing to say here is that it is only those against whom the wrongdoing was done that can offer forgiveness.

If Christianity is right, every wrongdoing is also a wrongdoing against God. One can then argue that God has the authority to forgive the wrongdoing on behalf of all the aggrieved parties, say because all of the goods of all the aggrieved parties come from God, or because the aggrieved parties' very possibility of being better or worse off is a participation in God, or some such story. If this is true, then every wrongdoing can be forgiven by God, in a way that removes guilt. The defense of an exact account here needs more work, but it is clearly true that if Christianity is right, then forgiveness is possible.

But if atheism is right, then there will be wrongdoings which the wrongdoer cannot make sufficient restitution/satisfaction, whether due to the kind of wrongdoing (e.g., murder or rape), or due to the wrongdoer's lack of power (e.g., stealing money, then gambling it away, and then being unable ever to earn it back). Moreover, some wrongdoings of this sort will be such that it will be impossible to obtain forgiveness for them because the wrongdoings are against non-persons (e.g., wanton environmental damage, torture of non-human animals, etc.) or because for some other reason one or more of the victims are incapable of offering forgiveness (this will be the case if the victim is dead—by the wrongdoer's hand or not—or in a coma or the like). One might think that society as a whole can offer forgiveness on behalf of all victims. But that is implausible. First of all, a society plainly cannot offer forgiveness to someone whose crime was not against a member of that society. If Maxine wipes out an enemy tribe, forgiveness from a member of her own tribe will do nothing to remove her guilt. Likewise, society cannot offer forgiveness for the bulk of the wrong of torturing non-human animals (one might think society can forgive one for the parts of the wrong that consist of brutalizing society, or harming the animal's human friends or owners, but those are not the main wrong). Secondly, while one can argue that all wrongdoings are in a primary sense against God ("Against You, You alone, have I sinned," the Psalm has David praying) who is the first and final cause, and hence God's forgiveness suffices to remove guilt, many wrongdoings are clearly only secondarily wrongdoings against society.

This is not an argument against atheism or for Christianity. It is merely an observation of an important difference between the two. My feeling is that non-religious moral thought, however, mitigates the difference by not taking guilt to be as significant as Christianity takes it. But that mitigation is mistaken.

A defense of an ontological argument

Given an appropriate notion of maximal greatness, maximal greatness entails maximal greatness in all worlds. By the S5 axiom of modal logic, it follows that that if possibly there is a maximally great being, there is a maximally great being. Thus discussion of the modal ontological argument focuses on the possibility premise, the claim that possibly a maximally great being exists.

1. If a belief that p is within the center of the motivational life of a person or community, and that life is generally flourishing, then, probably, p is possible. (Premise)
2. There have been persons and communities that have led generally flourishing lives within the motivational center of which there was the belief that a maximally great being exists. (Premise)
3. Possibly, a maximally great being exists. (By 1 and 2)
4. A maximally great being exists. (By 3 and S5, as per opening remarks)

The idea behind (1) is that a life within whose motivational center there was an incoherent proposition would be unlikely to be flourishing. It would be a life that would, most likely, come apart. The flourishingness of a life is evidence of the coherence of the concepts by which that life is lived. And coherence is either identical with or evidence for possibility. In favor of (2), I cite such people as Francis of Assisi, Teresa of Calcutta, Jean Vanier or Thomas Aquinas, and perhaps such communities as the first generation Franciscans. And I even think the synchronic and diachronic Christian community over the ages, despite sins of many individuals, qualifies.

One might try to come up with parallel arguments for incompatible premises. For instance, deeply committed pantheists like Ghandhi appeared to live flourishing lives, and if pantheism is possibly true, it is true, a conclusion incompatible with (4). Two responses can be made. First, pantheists may well believe that a maximally great being exists, and think that the whole of existence is necessarily identical with it. So maybe what is at the motivational center of their lives is just the belief that a maximally great being exists, and the further claim that the whole of existence is necessarily identical with it is less central. This may not be very plausible, though. It seems that the divinity of everything is motivationally crucial to them.

A second response is to admit this. Yes, the existence of pantheists leading flourishing lives at whose motivational center pantheism was found give evidence for the truth of pantheism. So we have evidence for theism and evidence for pantheism. And maybe as far as this goes, the evidence is balanced. But, note that both the evidence for theism and the evidence for pantheism is evidence against atheism. We have evidence for theism and evidence for pantheism. Now we need to see what independent considerations we can bring against theism and against pantheism. (Note, for instance, that the problem of evil is more pressing given pantheism, if the world-deity is good.)

I doubt that there are people living flourishing lives at whose motivational center lies atheism. I do not here deny that atheists may lead flourishing lives, but I deny that if they do, their lives have atheism at their motivational center. For one (this suggestion is due to a grad student here), atheism is a negative doctrine, and lives centered on negative doctrines are unlikely to be flourishing. More likely, the motivational center is morality, love of fellow man, loyalty to friends, etc. In the committed theist or pantheist, these things are closely tied to the theism or pantheism. But in the atheist, these things are, I think, largely independent of the atheism, except maybe in the case of a kind of tragic loyalty in the face of the terrors of the unfeeling world, as in Russell, which I think is not going to lead a fully flourishing life, falling short in respect of the joyous aspects.

[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.]