A Bit of Armchair Sociology

I've met a fair number of theists who think some cosmological argument (CA) or other is better than the fine-tuning argument (FTA). I shall say, though, that I haven't met any atheist impressed by any CA (though if I ever met him, Rowe might be one), while I have met at least one atheist impressed by the FTA.

Though the Dawkins quote is false, if we're being charitable, we'll note that he is an evolutionary biologist and further attribute his words to the fact that he's heard the following said to him on the street (and elsewhere) more often than we have hairs on our head:

"Look around! Where did all of this come from? X is so complex, it couldn't have come out of nothing randomly and by complete, accidental chance. Surely, there must be a God!"

Heck, even my lips have grown weary from saying, "No, actually, natural selection is not random."

Further, I find the CA terribly unpursuasive because whatever a posteriori versions of it I hear are terribly outdated; Craig hasn't modified his Kalam argument since the late 70's, even though the cosmology has grown and expanded leaps and bounds in sophistication beyond the "man-on-the-street" Standard Inflationary Model as to render the argument as it stands obsolete and without much scientific grounding since the 80's.

I'm an atheist. FWIW, I find the CA family of arguments more persuasive (or I guess I should say less unpersuasive) than the AFD or FTA. And in that order.

It would be interesting to know if atheists and theists at least tend toward the same ranking.

What's AFD?

Anyway, I'm a theist, and my ranking is as follows:

Cosmological arguments
Moral arguments
Ontological arguments
Design/fine-tuning arguments
Arguments from miracle x

If there's another class I'm forgetting, then I guess I could rank that too.

For what it's worthy, I'm a theist and I'd have to agree with Robert's ranking, though I would add that I think moral arguments, for me at any rate, come in a VERY close second.

In response to Michael Drake's suggestion: a ranking from a non-theist:

I find cosmological arguments extremely compelling, and I think that studying them has just about moved me to the accept the conclusion that there is a necessary being. But I have not been impressed by any of the attempts I've seen to get from that conclusion to the existence of a personal God with the standard attributes.

After that, I'd rank the arguments as follows:

2. Ontological arguments
3. Design arguments

I'm not moved in the least by moral arguments.

I don't quite agree with Collins. I think a particular version of the fine-tuning argument offers by far the most persuasive argument for an intelligent designer than do any of the other arguments. I think none of the arguments gets one to a God, but the fine-tuning argument, in some sense, gets us the closest. Personally, I don't find any of the other arguments plausible either for a God or for an intelligent designer or a necessary being.

I'm a physicist, leaning towards theism. My ranking:

1. Moral arguments
2. Introspection/Consciousness/Free will
3. Fine-tuning/Design/Teleology
4. Ontological arguments
5. Cosmological arguments
6. Miracles

As a physicist, I find cosmological arguments unpersuasive: The big-bang singularity is not part of spacetime (neither is a potential omega point), and hence the intervals (0,infinity), (0,omega), (minus infinity, infinity) and (minus infinity, omega) are all open intervals and topologically equivalent. God's existence wouldn't be more unlikely if the universe were existing forever, so God's existence is not more likely in a big-bang universe than a steady-state universe.

Fine-tuning is much more convincing - and there is a lot of potential. There are even numerous scientist who aren't yet quite aware of it. Some may invoke the multiverse in order to get around a designer, but the multiverse is a metaphysical postulate just like a designer, and arguably more ad hoc than the design assumption.

I think the cosmological argument is quite persuasive. I agree it is not obvious how to get from necesary being to personal God (but if you agree with me that agent causation is the only sort of causation we understand, as Bishop Berkeley argued....) The ontological argument is the most fun and interesting. I go back and forth on fine tuning...Sometimes I think its a great argument, other times I think it is based on a confusion

FWIW, this theist feels the persuasive force of

1. fine-tuning arguments
2. miracle arguments (the resurrection esp.)

and much less force to

3. moral arguments
4. cosmological arguments (I agree with Geoff; I can get to a necessary being or a first cause; why this thing should be personal is much less clear)

and no cred at all to

5. ontological arguments.

I'm curious: For those who listed moral arguments, do you have in mind arguments from realism about obligations and moral facts generally? Or something more like arguments from moral motivation? I don't really find either all that compelling.

FWIW:

Fine-tuning
Cosmological
Ontological
Miracles

Robert, I used 'AFD' for the argument from design.

My big problem with fine-tuning arguments is that I can't see how we can have any confidence at all in what other universes could have possibly arisen. So I really don't know how we're supposed to assign probabilities.

As for moral arguments, I think that divine-command theoretical groundings of moral obligations are nothing to sneeze at, but I'm more moved by moral motivation arguments--e.g., if you think ought implies can and you think our moral obligations are extremely demanding, this might give you some reason to believe that there is an afterlife wherein it's possible to fulfill your obligations, or some reason to think God will make us into the kind of people who can fulfill our moral obligations, or something similar.

An interesting post. Dawkins makes the AFD sound like some form of aero engine! I imagine he describes it so because he has at hand an argument to an infinite regress that he believes demolishes it. And presumably he believes further that if his argument is successful, then there's little to be said in favour of all the other arguments for God's existence, that are 'not in regular use'. But in any case, his argument does not succeed (in my view).

Cosmological arguments are certainly intriguing and may have some intuitive weight to theists such as myself, for example an argument presented by Timothy O'Connor in“Theism and Ultimate Explanation: The Necessary Shape of Contingency” was very enlightening if not impressive. But, most of my sympathies lie with arguments, or perhaps its best to describe them as inferences, from religious experiences, a view recently defended by Phillip Wiebe in “God and Other Spirits: Intimations of Transcendence in Christian Experience”.

I find interesting the fact that ontological arguments are found on several lists. Ontological arguments sometimes get completely dismissed as just a curiosity, one where the only question is how to refute it.

My little bit of sociological speculation is that the popularity of design arguments, especially the fine-tuning one, is to some degree (but not exclusively--remember Kant's remarks on the design argument) a function of the valorization of science as the best (or second-best, after mathematics, but ordinary folks don't usually think about mathematics as a field of knowledge) means of knowing.

I also think one needs to distinguish what one feels to be most persuasive from what arguments one takes to be strongest (Kant's famous remarks on the design argument are important here). For instance, my "cool and measured examination of the arguments" makes me favor cosmological arguments, especially of the Leibnizian sort. But emotionally, what I often feel most persuaded by are the less abstract arguments, like the argument from mind (content/intentionality/reference, personal identity, consciousness) or normativity/value or some particular version of the design argument, or just the intuitive plausibility (to me) of the conditional that if theism is false, then either micro mereological nihilism and eliminative physicalism is true (and so we don't exist) or five-dimensional mereological universalism is true (and we have Unger's problem of too many selves wtih a vengeance).

. . .five-dimensional mereological universalism is true (and we have Unger's problem of too many selves wtih a vengeance).

Where does the fifth dimension come from? Hyperspace?

The fifth dimension is that of worlds. Five-dimensional mereological universalism, at least on one version, holds that for any function f from worlds to fully occupied (perhaps empty) subsets of the space-time of those worlds there is an entity O(f) with the property that O(f) exists in w iff f(w) is non-empty, and if f(w) is non-empty, then it's true at w that O(f) occupies precisely f(w).

I see, so you'll have objects with parts/stages occupying space-time regions in different worlds. Do you have an argument for this claim,

. . . if theism is false, then either micro mereological nihilism and eliminative physicalism is true (and so we don't exist) or five-dimensional mereological universalism is true (and we have Unger's problem of too many selves wtih a vengeance).

why could not a non-theistic dualist or idealist hold that mind is an intrinsic part of nature? I don't see the necessary connection between denial of theism and materialism (though non-materialist views are more friendly to theism, and vice-versa)

Gordon:

One could do this, but there is more to explain: the laws regarding minds, their interactions with physical stuff, the emergence of minds, etc. The best non-theistic hope for explaining the emergence of minds is evolution. But it's going to be hard to do this in the case of immaterial things.

In the end, I think a lot of these arguments may just be ways of making the reasoning in the cosmological argument more vivid. :-)

Alex:

There is also a similiar problem for theism. I don't think you can just stop and say "God does it" and wish the mind/body problem away.

I think there probably could be some kind of theistic argument from emergence though, though there is also the competitor thesis of panpsychism (see Galen Strawson's wonderful work on this). Panpsychism might be a bold metaphysical view, but so is theism. And, of course it is quite possible to believe them both:)

1. The kind of panpsychism that I would find plausible as a solution to the problem would be one where every system is conscious in every way that it can be made functionally isomorphic to a conscious system. I think this would lead to human-type consciousness everywhere, with every movement of ours causing pain to lots of persons and pleasure to lots of persons. This is not ethically satisfactory.

2. I am not bothered by the mind/body problem as much as the problem of the origin of the mind. In fact, I see no special metaphysical difficulty for the interaction between mind and body that one doesn't already have in the case of the interaction between billiard balls.

FWIW (and I'll put it in terms of initial premises)

1. The existence of contingent beings.

2. The finite past of the universe.

3. Flavors and Colors.

5. That I seem to perceive God at times.

6. Goodness of the universe.

7. Lack of naturalistic explanation of resurrection reports.

8. The apparent conceivability of a necessary being.

9. Insufficiency of finite existence to satisfy human longing.

10. The prevalence of theists among those most knowledgeable at the intersection of Science, Theology, and Philosophy.

The item listed #7 might be higher but for issues pertaining to prior probabilities. I.e. it's plausible that an agnostic really should follow an indifference principle, but this is controversial (too much so in my opinion). he

Sometimes the item at #3 is tops, and sometimes #1 and #2 are switched.

The only major arg I can think of that didn't make my top 10 was the moral arg.

I am surprised that so many people can rank arguments exactly according to the degree by which they are persuaded by them. Quite frankly I don't know how to assess any argument as it stands alone at all, in terms of 'to what degree this raises the probability that God exists' or anything like that.

For me I understand that there is some good probability rendered by the background evidence of my context as a human who is in the universe, with all other general assumptions about morality and humanity thrown in to an 'ulimate picture of things.' The only way I know how to assess the idea that God exists is against everything I know - for how does one know how important one feature of reality is over another?

Then after that, it will be the specific content of my life that will determine whether or not that claim seems worth believing and acting on, based on whether it makes sense of its specific content, like relationships and deciding how to act, and what not. So it doesn't seem like I can even divorce the intellectual probability of God's existence from my attitude towards the proposition and its livability - which means that isolated arguments again don't tend to be more or less persuasive to me in any meaningful sense.

I'm a bit of a fence-sitter, but having spent a lot of time thinking about the principle of sufficient reason lately, I've found myself inclined towards theism.

At the very least, the prima facie plausibility of the PSR seems to me to sufficiently decide the question of whether or not theism is rational.

Like Trent, I am inclined to think that arguments premised on the essential goodness of the universe, and the nature/possibility of human cognitive experience of the universe rank highly, so FWIW
my list goes...

1) The existence of subjective phenomenal experience/consciousness.

2) The intelligibility of the Universe to human inquiry.

3) Cosmological arguments.

4) "Fine-tuning" teleological arguments.

5) Arguments from subjective experience/perception of God.

6) Historical arguments from particular miracles

7) The necessity of God in order to relate us epistemically to the world (anti-skepticism)

8) Ontological arguments.

9) Arguments from desire (sehnsucht).

10) Moral arguments.

As to #7, I think either the Cartesian picture, or the Berkeleyean picture, must be true, and in either case, God is necessarily involved in our veridical epistemic relation to the world. I favor the Berkeleyean picture, since I am a disbeliever in the concept of "mind-independent" stuff.

While the TFA is persuasive, it's not the most persuasive out there.
Onw might say that the moral transcendental argument is the most persuasive, some might argue the KCA is the best one, other might say Leibniz got it right.

To me, the TFA and the MTAG seem more plausible than the KCA and the LCA, simply because I haven't seen any good reason to think that an agent has to be the cause/reason for the universe.

Apart from the ontological arguments, all the arguments for God seem to be essentially variations of the God-of-the-gaps argument: we don't have an explanation for this or that phenomenon, so we should attribute it to God. As such, the emotional appeal of the argument is inversely related to the apparent inexplicability of the phenomenon. Since Darwin, the argument from biological design has lost much of its appeal among serious thinkers. The argument from fine-tuning now seems to be preferred.

I just found a similar claim to the one by Dawkins in Dennett: "The Argument from Design is surely the most intuitive and popular argument, and has been for centuries" (Breaking the Spell, 242f)

Richard:

I reserve the term "God of the gaps" for cases where the phenomenon is of a sort that could in principle have a scientific explanation, but it is claimed that in fact the only or best explanation is theistic. Thus, the argument from apparent biological design, and the fine-tuning argument, are both God of the gaps arguments, since there could in principle be scientific explanations of biological design and of fine-tuning, though the proponents of the arguments think the theistic explanation is better.

On the other hand, cosmological argument tend not to be God of the gaps arguments, since arguably there couldn't be a scientific explanation of all contingent states of affairs, as scientific explanations presuppose contingent laws and/or contingent boundary conditions. Likewise, there are versions of design arguments that are not of the God of the gaps kind. For instance, Swinburne's argument from lawlike regularity is not a God of the gaps argument, since there in principle couldn't be a scientific explanation of why there are laws at all. Likewise, the arguments from teleology, proper function, moral truths, modal truths, and maybe mind.

I am not making a claim that there is anything wrong with giving God of the gaps arguments.