Recently in Atheism & Agnosticism Category

I've just finished a literature survey in preparation for my SEP entry on Skeptical Theism, and I've noticed a bit of a loose end. Consider two kinds of possible worlds including God and evil (from Russell and Wykstra's 1988 dialogue). One kind of world is the "morally transparent" world where the reasons God allows suffering are "near the surface" and so fairly easily discernible by us. Another kind is a "morally inscrutable" world where the reasons why God allows evil are either buried "beneath the surface" or in the distant future.

Wykstra's original 1984 debut of CORNEA (man there is a lot of philosophy in that paper!) advanced the thesis that it is more likely that God would create a morally inscrutable world. Russel and Rowe give reasons for the opposite claim. Below the fold I'll briefly summarize their arguments and suggest why it seems to me the atheist has the upper hand in this argument, and issue a call for attention to the research project of defending the goodness of a morally inscrutable universe.

Many people believe that there is: 1) no greatest number, 2) no greatest possible world, and 3) a greatest being (person, agent). The reason many people believe 1 and 2 is that there seems to be procedures to take a number (or world) and return a larger (or better) one. For any number (cardinal), take the powerset to get a larger number. For any world, stick some happy people in a far off corner to get a better world. (Of course, there is far from universal agreement on this second point.) The question arises: Is there any way to take a being, and return a better one?

One way is to try and link beings with the worlds they create. The idea would be that a being who creates a surpassable world is a surpassable being. This line of thought gives rise to a whole body of literature, some quite recent. Going in a different direction, here is another way that any being might be surpassable. Let us imagine that some virtues, e.g. courage, are traits wherein one wants to be at the mean that lies between extremes. We might imagine that 'courage-level' runs along a continuum from 0 (totally cowardly) to 1 (totally rash). Then, speaking loosely, somewhere in the middle is best. But, is it clear that any specific point is best? That is, what if the function, F, from courage-level (which runs from 0 to 1) to the value or goodness of the being goes as follows: F(x) = x for x in [0, 0.5] and F(x) = 1.01 - x for x in (0.5, 1]. Then there is no greatest being, as for any being, there is a better one. There is no greatest being, as beings get better as they approach 0.5 from the right on courage-level.

If there is an optimal point on a trait, call that trait 'closed'. If there is not an optimal point on a trait (for any level a being takes on the trait, there is a better level), as in the courage example above, call that trait 'open'. The question is, are all traits are closed? Or, what is the best argument to the conclusion that all traits are closed? In the absence of an argument regarding open and closed traits, the principle of indifference might suggest that courage is open with 50% probability and closed with 50% probability.

(One way to respond is to argue along these lines: certain traits/properties are fundamental (e.g., power, knowledge, freedom, goodness), these traits take maximal levels (individually and together), all other traits follow logically from these, and thus all traits take optimal levels and so are closed. Is there a relatively simple and convincing argument along these lines? Also, are there other ways to argue that all traits are closed? In particular, and thinking of approaching the question from a non-theistic angle, am I missing some sort of simple argument or reason as to why all traits are closed?)

Sahotra Sarkar lives just down the road from me in Austin, a grand town I visit often, and is in some way affiliated with the philosophy department there--I don't know if it's a courtesy appointment or what because I couldn't locate his CV--and I'm a BIG fan of the UT philosophy department (though, of course, not the football team :-)--so I don't want to cause trouble. BUT Sarkar is mean, and he attacked my friend Bradley Monton in a screedish review for NDPR. I'm honestly surprised--and dissapointed--that NDPR saw fit to publish this review at all. It's not Sarkar's first such one-sided rant. His review of Steve Fuller's book showed his inability to review fairly (I didn't like the book either, but it's just not the case--as it rarely is--that the book had not a single redeeming feature).

His suggestion that Brad's book is "one philosopher's attempt to cash in" is insulting and demeaning. Worse, it's false. I have been talking with Brad about philosophy of religion for about eight years now, and he is completely honest in his investigations, sincere in his affirmations and denials. And I am at a loss to understand the force of the following statement.

"Monton's self-portrayal as an atheist who thinks that some Intelligent Design (ID) arguments have enough force to make him less certain of his atheism, though not eschew it altogether."

"Self-portrayal"? Does he think Brad is lying about being an atheist or lying about thinking some ID arguments have *some* force? Is it now some kind of "weakness" to admit that arguments which contradict one's views have *some* force? I have been unable to come up with some non-weasily understanding of these claims.

Continuing the recent theme of skeptical theism. It only recently occurred to me to puzzle over the fact that skeptical theism--at least for leading proponent Mike Bergmann--has nothing to do with theism. Of course, there's the axiom ST ---> T, but that's not what I'm talking about.

What I mean is that skeptical theism's skeptical thesis are just about the nature of the good. That seems a *bit* odd to me: there's nothing theological motivating skeptical theism as Bergmann expresses it. It has nothing obvious to do with "God's ways being greater than ours." It's just that we don't understand goodness well enough.

And here's another thing I noticed recently that bothered me--then I'll put the criticism below the fold: It's almost all deontolgical stuff. But I'm a virtue and value guy. As such, I think I have some insight into the *nature* of the good, which tells me something about *all* goods. This gives one more purchase than may be compatible with Bergmann's versions of the "S" in "ST."

My previous entry, "Atheist Burnout and the Direction of Philosophy of Religion", which was inspired by Keith Parsons's public decision to quit the philosophy of religion, generated a very nice discussion about whether or not atheists think the case for theism is, as Keith Parsons, put it, "a fraud", why some atheists might think smart philosophers work in philosophy of religion, and what direction we should expect to see philosophy of religion take in the future. In addition, at around the same time Brian Leiter independently found Parsons's announcement and generated a discussion on his blog. A number of people weighed in on both discussions, and I thank everyone who did so.

There were some interesting results from the discussions. First, there were, broadly speaking, two reactions to Parsons's announcement: those who agreed with him that the case for theism is so weak as to call for a special explanation for why smart philosophers make it, and those who disagreed. I shall call the members of the first camp "Unfriendly Atheists""psychologizers" (although this camp might include two theists, namely Howard Wettstein and Jon Cogburn; I can't tell how to classify them) and members of the second camp "Theists/Friendly Atheistsnon-psychologizers". The members of the unfriendly atheistpsychologizers' camp include:

1. hiero5ant [anonymous]
2. John W. Loftus [independent scholar]
3. Anon (grad student who does not wish to anger anyone higher on the food chain) [anonymous graduate student]
4. kurt [philosopher at a Roman Catholic school]
5. Greg Janzen [University of Calgary--can't tell if he is a graduate student or faculty]
6. Blinn Combs [graduate student at UT, Austin(?)]
7. Brian Leiter [University of Chicago]
8. Allin Cottrell [economist, Wake Forest University]

Arguably, Craig Duncan (Ithaca College) and John Schellenberg (Mount Saint Vincent University) count as unfriendly atheistspsychologizers, but their case is complicated by the fact that, on the one hand, both Duncan and Schellenberg seem to think that the quality of philosophical work in PoR is often very high, but on the other hand, both think that there are psychological factors going in PoR that shapes the work of its theistic practitioners, factors that exist to a lesser degree in other areas of philosophy.

The list of theists/friendly atheistsnon-psychologizers is as follows:

1. christian [anonymous]
2. mohan matthen [University of Toronto]
3. https://me.yahoo.com/a/VeVm7GkGjsJ7xwH.k903N27vMLCxRZq1#0ed60 [anonymous]
4. ZT [anonymous]
5. tedla [anonymous]
6. John H. [anonymous]
7. Ken Taylor [Stanford University]
8. John Fischer [UC, Riverside]
9. L.A. Paul [University of ArizonaUNC, Chapel Hill]
10. indignant idealist [anonymous]

What conclusions can we draw from these lists?

First, I don't think we can draw any conclusions from them. The lists are too small to be indicative of anything about philosophy in general. Although the results of the debate were interesting (as I said above) I don't think we've really learned too much from this debate.

Second, if you want to be irresponsible and take these lists to be indicative of larger truths about the field, then it seems that there a lot of non-believing philosophers who don't accept philosophy of religion's conclusions but who take it as seriously as they take any branch of philosophy, while there are about an equal number of non-believers who don't take its conclusions seriously and also think the case for theism is so weak as to require a psychological explanation for why so many otherwise smart philosophers take it seriously.

Third, I can't help but to be cheered by the fact that Mohan Matthen, Ken Taylor, John Martin Fischer, and L.A. Paul, all of whom are philosophers with impressive accomplishments, take philosophy of religion seriously. By contrast, the only philosopher I noticed with an equally impressive reputation who thinks the philosophy of religion requires some psychological diagnosis is Brian Leiter, but as Leiter indicated, he seems to think the same is true of large portions of moral philosophy--that is, he doesn't think that philosophy of religion suffers from a unique badness of argumentation.

That said, a lot of the participants in the debate are anonymous, so many of them could have been philosophers with equally impressive reputations. Moreover, I'm not well-versed regarding everything that happens in philosophy; it could certainly be that some of the critics of PoR have immensely impressive credentials and accomplishments, and that I just haven't heard of them. And finally, the critics of PoR with less impressive credentials and accomplishments may be excellent philosophers--credentials and accomplishments aren't everything. (Finally, lest anyone think I haven't noticed this, I know very well that my accomplishments are nothing to write home about!)

You may have already seen this, but in case you haven't, philosopher Keith Parsons, author of the 1990 God and the Burden of Proof, among many other articles, has quit philosophy of religion.

He writes:

I have to confess that I now regard "the case for theism" as a fraud and I can no longer take it seriously enough to present it to a class as a respectable philosophical position--no more than I could present intelligent design as a legitimate biological theory. BTW, in saying that I now consider the case for theism to be a fraud, I do not mean to charge that the people making that case are frauds who aim to fool us with claims they know to be empty. No, theistic philosophers and apologists are almost painfully earnest and honest; I don't think there is a Bernie Madoff in the bunch. I just cannot take their arguments seriously any more, and if you cannot take something seriously, you should not try to devote serious academic attention to it. I've turned the philosophy of religion courses over to a colleague.

Finally, John Beversluis, author of C. S. Lewis and the Search for Rational Religion, as well as professor of philosophy (emeritus) at Butler University, tells John Loftus that he independently arrived at the same conclusion as Parsons.

I have a trio of wonderings about this:

First, it makes me wonder how often this phenomenon occurs. Are there a substantial number of atheists who dabble in philosophy of religion and find the best theistic arguments and defenses so wanting that they decide, "no, not for me. These people [e.g., van Fraassen, Plantinga, van Inwagen, Adams, etc.] are smart, but they leave their brains at the door when they do philosophy of religion"? Personally, I doubt this; or at least, I doubt that it happens after they read the aforementioned authors, as most of the atheists I know have never read any of van Inwagen's, Plantinga's, etc.'s, philosophy of religion.

Second, what do these philosophers think is happening to those philosophers who do top-notch work in other fields but who are also orthodox Christians? Do they have a theory? If their theory is indeed "compartmentalized insanity", have they looked into the psychological research on this? And what do they make of some of their smart atheist colleagues, like Quentin Smith, David Lewis, and William Rowe, who don't share their disdain for their theistic counterparts?

Third and finally, if I am wrong in my first speculation, and it is indeed the case that many atheists who read the best and brightest of theistic philosophy of religion come away thinking that the case for theism is as weak as, say, the case for intelligent design (assuming, of course, that the case for intelligent design is indeed weak; if you don't like that example, replace it with one you think is more apt), then should we expect philosophy of religion to become more and more dominated by religious theists? And if so, what will that mean for the direction of philosophy of religion? I expect that it would encourage more and more philosophers of religion to engage in philosophical theology and other such endeavors rather than defending the propriety of religious belief.

I'd love to hear what other people make of this, but I'd be especially curious to hear from atheists about this.

As a friend of mine recently put it: "*What* problem of divine hiddenness? Almost everybody believes in God!"

Well, it does seem true that most people believe in the supernatural. If you sum the Abrahamic faiths, it's probably true that most people alive today believe in YHWH. The diachronic picture probably isn't much different, but it's hard to say when you should start the clock and our theological past is clouded by various issues. So it seems if there's a God, he's not *too* hidden. Also, more and more studies seem to show how instinctively religious we are as a species. (For a good study, see this book by my colleague C. Stephen Evans (http://amzn.to/9jCIA8).

One way to go is this:

DHE The existence of a single individual S--who's intellectually and morally fit--such that there is some time t at which S doesn't believe in God is incompatible with (or is overwhelming evidence against) the existence of God.

This seems to be the tree Schellenberg is barking up, and Ted and I have responded to that here. http://bit.ly/aCJ89Y

And I don't think a more moderate approach is going to do much better.

DHM The existence of a moderate sized group M--who are intellectually and morally fit--such that there is some moderately sized set of times T during which the M's don't believe in God is incompatible with (or is overwhelming evidence against) the existence of God.

I'd think this would be a common thought.

If problem in Problem of Evil is a problem for belief in God, then how could there be such a problem if God were sufficiently present. E&(God is present) is a hard way to argue against the existence of God. No Pr(God is present/E) might be low, that's fine. What I'm saying is, if it were clear to one that God were present, then there'd be no problem of evil as we usually think of it.

What we'd have would be a more traditional problem of evil like that Augustine struggled with, i.e. evil suggested a finite god or some kind of Manichean dualism.

It's no part of my thesis that the alleged fact of divine hiddenness wouldn't be a piece of token evidence for the evil-based atheologian. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't.

This suggests to me that the problem of divine hiddenness is more basic than the problem of evil, and that we ought to get clear on what the problem of divine hiddenness is.

Garry Gutting has a nice piece on faith and philosophy in a recent New York Times article. An excerpt:

The standard view is that philosophers' disagreements over arguments about God make their views irrelevant to the faith of ordinary believers and non-believers. The claim seems obvious: if we professionals can't agree among ourselves, what can we have to offer to non-professionals? An appeal to experts requires consensus among those experts, which philosophers don't have.

This line of thought ignores the fact that when philosophers disagree it is only about specific aspects of the most subtle and sophisticated versions of arguments for and against God's existence (for example, my colleague Alvin Plantinga's modal-logic formulation of St. Anselm's ontological argument or William Rowe's complex version of a probabilistic argument from evil). There is no disagreement among philosophers about the more popular arguments to which theists and atheists typically appeal: as formulated, they do not prove (that is, logically derive from uncontroversial premises) what they claim to prove. They are clearly inadequate in the judgment of qualified professionals. Further, there are no more sophisticated formulations that theists or atheists can accept -- the way we do scientific claims -- on the authority of expert consensus.

In these popular debates about God's existence, the winners are neither theists nor atheists, but agnostics -- the neglected step-children of religious controversy, who rightly point out that neither side in the debate has made its case. This is the position supported by the consensus of expert philosophical opinion.

Those with an interest in social epistemology might find some of Gutting's comments of particular interest. Thanks to Stephen Grimm for passing this along.

Sometimes I wish I lived in the UK. I can't imagine such a rational and fair discussion airing in the states, not even on NPR maybe.

Interview on Australian ABC affiliate.

Article in the Guardian on the old "New Atheists."

Morris's cool book _Inevitable Humans_.

A summary of some of his ideas from Wikipedia.

Simon Conway Morris's homepage in the Department of Earth Sciences, Cambridge U.

He's well known for his work on evolutionary convergence, the fact that certain features seem to evolve independently and almost inevitably. This has lead him to make the controversial claim--for which he however makes a good case based on the convergence data he's famous for in his field--that if there were life on other planets, it wold likely resemble life on Earth to a remarkable degree.

There are two potential applications of his work (at least) concerning the design argument. One is that it would settle a dilemma posed in this paper by Dougherty and Poston: "A User's Guide to Design Arguments." I.e. it would show that there is possibly a good fine-tuning argument for God's existence, but not a good biological design argument.

Second, it would go some way toward defeating the "strange alternative forms of life" objection to the fine-tuning argument.

I welcome both these results.

Non-philosophy-based writing on religious epistemology mostly confuses me and frequently frustrates me. This article on Slate.com definitely confused me. But it's an opportunity to make a point. Consider this excerpt.

"Agnosticism doesn't fear uncertainty. It doesn't cling like a child in the dark to the dogmas of orthodox religion or atheism. Agnosticism respects and celebrates uncertainty and has been doing so since before quantum physics revealed the uncertainty that lies at the very groundwork of being."

Apart from the ad hominem and the fact that though quantum mechanics is pretty fundamental it's still pretty far from the "very groundwork of being," the thing that bugs me is this idea that religious believers have any particular interest in certainty. "Lord I believe, help thou my unbelief."

I've been pretty forthcoming about my own undulating credences here (enough so that some folks have asked me to send them my Spreadsheet (yes, I keep one)). Religious publishers catalogs abound with books embracing the consistency of faith and some limited but real doubt. There might be some fundamentalist sombitches out there who espouse certainty, but their getting all the press gets old. I've blogged a good bit on my Catholic blog about a *species* of certainty faith includes, but it's not the kind of certainty these kind of people are talking about.

Now Brian Leiter lauds a comment on that story which includes this:

"Atheism is NOT the certainty that there are no gods. It is NOT a conviction that science will one day answer all questions. Atheism is the refusal to believe in gods in the absence of evidence for their existence.

Some of my Christian Evidentialist colleagues at Rochester--there's a small colony of us emanating from there now--were discussing this and it was noticed that we counted as atheists according to this! After all, we refuse to believe *anything* in the absence of evidence!

Another problem with this definition is that it makes metaphysically impossible irrational atheists who disbelieve in God in the *presence* of evidence. And I have evidence that such persons are possible (it involves the lemma that the actual is possible). :-)

[This post is not wholly unrelated to this one, which is a point I'll be harping on for, oh, say, the next 30 years. It's also not wholly unrelated to my recent confession concerning naturalism.] So Al is retiring as we know, and many people have been reminiscing about various aspects of his career. One thing that I think needs remembering is the brilliant and simple argument of _God and Other Minds_.

That argument, in brief, can be sketched as follows.

1. The case for the existence of other minds and the case for the existence of a Divine Mind are on a par (w.r.t. formal arguments).

2. If 1, then affirming one of them is rational if and only if affirming the other is rational.

3. It is rational to affirm the existence of other minds.

4. So it is rational to affirm the existence of the Divine Mind (supernaturalism).

My only quarrel is that I think the *philosophical* case for God is better than that for other minds, but let's let that go. Here's why it's important to me to bring this up now. During grad school, I met many more people who had come to believe in God during or just prior to grad school than who lost their belief. But those few who did all seemed to suffer from the same kind of bad epistemology, something very much like what Al calls "evidentialism": needing a pretty much indesputable argument for God's existence to believe. (N.B. all, please, PLEASE, that this is not what evidentialism is in epistemology, the latter is a supervenience thesis about propositional justification).

Forget that this standard is not applied consistently. My point is that, yes, design arguments and cosmological arguments have disputable points (though it's awfully hard to dispute the premises of Koons's or Pruss's arguments). But unless one starts out as an "antecende" naturalist (which, unfortunately, many do), then theism is the only game in town. And, naturalism is in shambles. It's the Metaphysical Shrug. I think Hume is totally with me on this. Unlike Hume, I think we can go on to give more content to supernaturalism, but that's a different matter. That's the discussion we should be having.