Morality as Evidence for God?

There are four separate ways for a moral argument for God’s existence to work.  

(a) The meta-ethical approach; moral values and/or obligations cannot be adequately grounded apart from a theistic worldview.  This claim has been asserted most forcefully in regards to obligations.  Robert Adams believes that our ought terms are irreducibly social and require a superior to ground them, and that God best fits this role.  There are also attempts, namely by William Lane Craig, to argue that moral value is best accounted for in a theistic universe.  I think that he’s right about this claim, but it’s difficult to show it.  There are a few routes of escape for atheistic moral realists:  Morality can reduce to pragmatic value.  Morality can be a Platonic universal.  Morality, concerned as it is with necessary truth, requires no explanation.  Morality is brute.  Morality can be generated from rational agents (conventionalism?).  Moral value reduces to a natural property (pleasure? happiness?).  Each of these suggestions I take to have problems, but it’s going to take an involved and lengthy argument to answer each one of them.

(b) The epistemological approach:  Theism best accounts for how we have true moral beliefs.  Platonism, if construed as belief in abstract objects, struggles to explain how we can make epistemic contact with an object that lacks causal powers.  Evolution, too, would seem to endanger at least some forms of secular ethics:  Evolution isn’t aimed at bringing about true moral beliefs, it’s guided towards survival.  So evolution without further explanation seems like it may undermine moral beliefs.  Theism has a ready explanation.  Our God is a good agent and would be interested in making sure agents that he creates would have access to moral truth.  

(c) The accountability approach:  This would be Kant’s argument.  Our moral system calls out for evil to be punished and virtue rewarded.  If atheism is true, many such cases will go unrewarded and unpunished.  But not on theism. God will make sure all wrongs are righted and all rights rewarded.

(d)  Indirect Argument Approach:  These are sort of hodge-podge.  They’d best fit in the meta-ethical category, but their nature is so occasional that I think that they deserve their own.  This category would include Robert Adam’s suggestion that our detection of excellence in the world seems to rely on an intuition that we’re comparing various excelleneces to a transcendent excellence, which would be God.  Maybe.  Adams also suggests that theism is able to maintain the Critical Stance in a way that naturalism in ethics cannot.  I don’t understand this suggestion, so it carries no weight for me. 

My favorite of the indirect approaches is newly emerging work from Alexander Pruss.  He argues that natural law is the best metaethical account and that natural law metaethics requires theism to be cogent.   See my earlier post “Rambling about Metaethics” to see this approach.

God is the Good

A central driving belief of the western theistic tradition is that God is the Good.  We see this claim in Augustine, Aquinas, and all the way to Robert Adams.  It derives from one prominent strand in Plato, that which takes the Forms to be exemplars rather than abstract universals.   Despite my interest in preserving central intuitions and claims of classical theism, this particular claim has always puzzled me.  What does it mean to say that something is the Good? 

I think this puzzlement tracks back, at least partially, to the fact that good is an ambiguous term.  It can mean prudential goodness, that is, something that is good for well-being or instrumentally good for.  Good can denote an emotive property, like when someone hears that their favorite basketball team won and exclaims, “Good!.” Clearly none of these uses are meant by the claim that God is the Good.

So what is meant?  I take it that the best account for the claim that God is Good is that it’s equivalent to saying that God is all-value.  “Goodness” as used in this claim merely denotes valuableness, and the claim that God is “the” Good is the further claim that he’s all-value.  Wait. Hold on.  This is still extremely puzzling. If God is all-value simpliciter, then what about other things that are clearly valuable?  The Mona Lisa, for instance.  Isn’t it valuable? And it clearly isn’t God.  So God is not all-value.  There are other things that have value.

The Mona Lisa is valuable because it resembles God.  Donating to orphans is good because it reflects the goodness of God.  Humans are valuable because we participate in the goodness of God.  These three terms are after the same idea.  (Clearly the Mona Lisa doesn’t look like God in a literal pictorial sense.  Perhaps it resembles God in a way that both are beautiful, even though they are not beautiful in the same way.)  The point of these terms is that creaturely goodness is merely reflecting back the goodness of God.  It doesn’t stand on its own.  These terms are themselves somewhat ambiguous, but I think they can do some work if we can give some sort of explanation of the terms.  I think the following analogy goes some way towards that goal.

Imagine a person who has proven a complex theorem in mathematics.  If that person shares the proof for the theorem with someone else and that person understands the proof, then the original person’s justification for believing the theorem has been duplicated.  There’s another case of unique and distinct justification in the world.  Now consider the case where you just tell another person that you’ve proven the theorem, but don’t provide the proof.  They accept the theorem on the basis of your testimony and not on the basis of the proof.  This would be a case where there’s more justified believers, but not more justification.  It’s a derived justification, not another case of justification alongside the original justification.  This story parallels the Mona Lisa case.  The goodness of the Mona Lisa is a derived or participated goodness in God, and not another separate instance of goodness.

Perfect being theology offers us reasons to accept this sort of story.  That which is not only good in itself but is the source of any goodness of other things is greater than that which is simply good in itself, and God is the greatest possible being.  So God is the source of all other goodness in other things. 

Epistemic Desirables

The following is taken from a conversation with a thoroughgoing evidentialist: 

Toward the goal of ensuring that our epistemic disputes do not reduce to verbal disputes over the word “knowledge,” I propose the following:

By Knowledge+ I mean: Those true-belief states that have the appropriate amount and quality of internally accessible evidence. This evidence cannot be circular. I mean to leave the word "evidence" vague.  (Or, honestly, plug in whatever definition of knowledge that you best like here.  I'm reserving this word for what you mean by it.)

But there are other epistemic desirables beyond just Knowledge+. 

Here's one:
Knowledge#: Reliable belief formation is a desirable, that is, beliefs that result from a reliable process is an epistemic desirable.  

Take Reformed Epistemology to be the following: Christian belief can be subsumed under both Knowledge+ and Knowledge#.

How valuable is Knowledge#? 

Knowledge# is that form of knowledge possessed by most laymen when it comes to their sense-perception.  If Christianity can exhibit the same form of rationality as that possessed by sense-perception, then it's in a fairly good position.

Should we require Knowledge+ of sense-perception in order for it to be rational?  Perhaps not.  Alston has devoted many pages demonstrating that sense-perception cannot be subsumed under Knowledge+, and yet we still hold that it is rational to accept sense-perception.

There are other epistemic desirables beyond just Knowledge+ and Knowledge#.  “Certainty,” for instance.  “Knowing-that-you-know” (so, a second-order knowledge) may be another. And so on.

Actually, I’d like to revise my criteria for Knowledge#.  I want to add an internal requirement, but one that isn’t capable of being shared with people via arguments.

Knowledge# Revised:  An agent A possesses Knowledge#  

(a) if that agent believes that p, 
(b) p is true, 
(c) p is a result of a reliable-process, and 
(d) the presence of the belief that p phenomenologically compels A to accept p.

(d) is the condition that is internal yet unshareable via argument.  Revised-Knowledge# (RK#) is more valuable than Unrevised-Knowledge# (UR#), as RK# produces an assurance that p.  So UR# may still be an epistemic desirable, but not as desirable as RK#.  

RK# is the sort of knowledge most laymen possess concerning their beliefs based on sense-perception.

Phenomenal Conservatism and the Argument from Morality

I’ve never been a big fan of the standard argument for theism from morality, the one that argues that the existence of morality requires the existence of God.  But I think there are decent arguments that show that morality is a better fit in a theistic universe.  What do I mean by better fit? Quite a number of things.  For one of them, consider a story told by Phenomenal Conservatives that aims to justify moral realism.  

PC:  If some thing p seems to be the case, then that seemings-to-be gives us prima facie evidence to believe that p.  

Given this principle, a Phenomenal Conservative would argue from: It seems that it’s wrong to wantonly murder children, to; we’re prima facie justified to believe that it’s wrong to murder children.

Of course prima facie justification can be defeated.  We only have ultima facie justification if defeaters are lacking or if they fail.  It’s this stage of the argument that the truth of theism can be of use.  

There are a few alleged defeaters for moral realism, ranging from moral disagreement to evolutionary debunking arguments.  If theism is true, then we have a method open to us that allows us to debunk the evolutionary debunker--it seems plausible that a morally perfect God would want to give his rational creatures a moral sense even if God used evolution to create us.  

So theism allows us to answer at least one powerful and popular alleged defeater for moral realism, edging us a step closer to ultima facie justification. 

Rambling about Metaethics

This post will be less apologetic focused than most (though there is a sort of indirect argument for theism that will make an appearance).  It’s also over an area that I have very little confidence to discuss. But in an attempt to get my bearing on the field I’d like to get some of my thoughts down on paper.  It will be mostly a sketch.  If anyone feels that I’ve made an error, please correct me.

Whatever metaethical theory we adopt, it should be consistent with the Ultimacy Intuition:

Ultimacy Intuition:  Whatever is not God is created by and depends upon God.

Moore’s O-QA tries to demonstrate the fundamentality of the good, showing that it cannot be reduced to any other more fundamental property.  It probably fails due to Kripke-style arguments.

Reduction: Every moral theory will eventually reach a final stage of explanation that may seem brute and abrupt.  

Natural Law theory holds that our nature determines what is good for us.  Knowledge is good for humans because we have the natural capacity for knowledge and so on.  

Question: Does the good precede the right? 
On NL, the good precedes the right.  Kant would reject this due to some opaque argument about the autonomy of reason.  I still haven’t been able to grasp how that argument is supposed to work.  
Many philosophers seem to think that a rejection of the right preceding the good leads to consequentialism.  NL claims otherwise, holding instead that the right moral rules are generated by the basic goods of human nature in a non-consequentialist way (the incommensurable thesis?).

Why hold to NL?

1. It explains Mersenne problems in ethics.  (Our natures are essential features of us.  Essential features seem to require less of an explanation than features that are non-essential.  Or God decides our features and this just gives us a single brute fact rather than a multitude of them.)
2. Closeness Principle: It locates moral norms in an appropriately close way to us.  They’re not far off and external, like a command.
3. Kind Relative: It would provide differing moral norms for intelligent sharks, which seems right.
4. Objective: Yet it’s still objective and controlling for each individual, contra relativism. 
5. Epistemic Claim: It provides an easy path of knowing moral noms:  Statistical evidence.
6. Supervenience-Intuition?--Normative truths supervene on the non-normative.
7. Plausible normative implications (contra Utilitarianism?).

Question:  Is this consistent with an EoL?  See Pruss.

NL Requires Theism (Pruss thinks so)

1. Evolutionary history seems to violate the closeness principle.  Need alternative story.  
2. Why are there not conflicting norms within individuals?  We need an explanation.  Because God providentially ordered it that way.
3. Why do natures not include really nasty features?  Because our forms are ways to participate in God, and there’s no way to participate in God in an evil way.

The basic argument for theism being given here is indirect.  It goes something like:

1. We should adopt the best metaethical account available.
2. The best metaethical account is Natural Law.
3. Natural law requires theism.
4. We should adopt theism.  

But why would God choose the natures we have? Wouldn’t that introduce Mersenne problems?  (a) Free choice or (b) incommensurable reasons that do not have arbitrary parameters.

Aside from Pruss, it otherwise seems like NL is a relatively secular theory.  If so, this may imply that the theory violates the Ultimacy Intuition.  The goods of being a human seem to make no reference to God.  Are the goods of humans independently sovereign and would they be good even if God failed to exist?

One way to approach this problem is to say that the goods of humans are just a specification of God’s goodness.  When we say that it’s good to possess knowledge as a human, we’re saying that it’s good to participate in God’s goodness qua human rationality.  That would enable the theory to uphold the Ultimacy Intuition.  This is the approach of both Pruss and Mark Murphy.  Mark Murphy calls this Moral Concurrentism, drawing from the theological position of the same name.  To better understand this we probably need to make sure we also understand concurrentism.  

But the suggestion makes reference to a vague concept, participation.  What does it mean?  Given that its use in NL is a Thomistic suggestion, it does not mean what Plato meant by it.  

As far as I can tell from my study of Aquinas, this is the best account I can give of the concept: 

Participated existence = an effect having a share of the cause plus it having the cause as an exemplar (created properties might turn out to all be deep down relational properties, Leftow for this).  Anything that possesses some trait p (existence, or whatever) but does not possess p to the fullest universal extent is participating in that trait.  Participation is just a weak term of negation.  It means ~simple.  Simple here means essence=existence.  Any essence that is not simple instead has participated existence.

Switching gears;

Parfit is not a naturalist. But he is a reductionist.  He thinks that the concept “good” just means “reason to prefer.” Buck-passing account.  Reasons for Parfit are objective and external to the human mind, can take a truth value, but they do not have an ontology.  Reasons to believe are a species of moral reasons more broadly, and if we accept the former then that gives an argument for the existence of the latter. Why does he believe that these reasons are the reasons?  Why not other reasons?  Are they necessary?  Parfit’s approach reminds me of WLC’s response to the Platonic challenge to theism.  

It seems that the theistic tradition has a strong impulse to say that God is the Good.  Does Parfit’s approach enable us to say this?  Saying that God is good just means that there’s reasons to prefer God. Saying that God is the Good means what?  And could Parfit give us an account of participation?  

Faith Once More

I’ve been thinking a bit more deeply about my analysis of faith, specifically my (c) condition.  This was borne over the question whether we’ll have faith in heaven.  If (c) is a requirement on faith, it seems not, for we will see “face to face.”  This position is the one taken by the Scholastics--we do not have faith in heaven, but vision.  Vision and faith are exclusive of one another.  The Scholastics also took this condition to imply that Jesus did not have faith either, as he had perfect vision of the Father.  But I think we can avoid these consequences if we amend (c) so that faith can obtain even in situations where we do possess vision, and I think we can do this without violating verses such as Hebrews 11:1 and 2 Cor. 5:7.  

Amended (C):  Faith possesses the property able to know without sight.  

But this ability is not necessarily exercised.  So those in heaven have faith with sight even though those on earth know some things by faith that are invisible or future.

How well does this fit with Hebrews 11:1? Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.  On the amended (C) account, a property of faith becomes actualized in the Hebrews verse.  It enables us to see invisible things. I think amended (C) melds well with the verse.  

Now we may ask: How does faith possess this property, and why would it be a virtue as Hebrews 11 has it?

How?:  Amended (C) flows from the basic account of faith as trust.  So it reduces to a more fundamental property of faith (reductions are always nice).  This makes (C) second order and often latent.  In trusting a person, we rely on what we know about their character and goals. If my wife tells me she’ll pick me up from the airport and she’s running a bit late, I don’t lose hope.  I know she’s stuck in traffic and that she’ll be there.  This is an example of faith giving me the ability to see in the future--I can see my wife arriving in 5 minutes on the basis of her character.  This, of course, does not mean that faith is opposed or absent evidence.  I have plenty of evidence that my wife is true to her word.  Hebrews makes much the same point: “This salvation, which was first announced by the Lord, was confirmed to us by those who heard him.  God also testified to it by signs, wonders and various miracles, and by gifts of the Holy Spirit distributed according to his will.” (Heb. 2:3b-4)

Why?:  Because it demonstrates our dedication and focus even in the absence of visual immediacy.  It works our dependence on God and his character and draws our attention to it.  These bring out the personal relational aspect of faith as trust.  

But it’s important to keep in mind these two points:  Faith with actualized (C) encompasses (1) A limited domain of Christian belief, those for which visual immediacy is lacking.  This would encompass truths such as the second coming of Christ, the future resurrection, and so on.  And (2), even with actualized (C), faith is not exclusive of rational evaluation or support, as shown by Heb. 2:3b-4.

"[Hebrews 11:1] is talking about the promises of God and trusting in the promises of God even though they haven't been actualized yet. We, for example, have faith in God for the resurrection of the dead, for heaven, and eternal life. These are things that we hold to, trusting in God for these future promises. This is not an irrational faith; it is a faith which is rooted in good grounds and therefore is rational to trust in God for these things."  (WLC)

Another Argument that an Eternal Hell is Just

This one is from William Lane Craig.  I used Jonathan Edwards' argument last time.  

Hell is a just desert for evil.  Justice requires that a person be punished for as long as they do evil.  If those in hell continue to sin without end while they're in hell, then they continue to merit punishment without end.  

Of course I still think Edwards' argument works as well.  But there's no reason not to double up on arguments for those that aren't compelled by Edwards.  This also goes to strengthen the conviction of those that are persuaded by Edwards that an eternal hell is just, for those in hell aren't being punished eternally for committing merely one infinitely wrong action, they're being punished eternally for committing infinitely many infinitely wrong actions.

Arguments from Authority: Theism's Popularity among Philosophers

As we await the results of the 2020 philpaper survey that sent questionnaires to hundreds of philosophers to gauge the popularity of various philosophical positions, I’ve decided to talk about the last philpaper survey which occurred in 2009.  While there have been many claims from both theists and atheists that theistic belief is on the rise in Anglo-American philosophy departments, this last survey seemed to show otherwise.  Theism had a measly 14.6% affirmation rate among the respondents.  I'm hoping that number has increased this time around.

The Problem:  This may give cause for concern, especially if we should give significant weight to experts or our epistemic peers.  We, in the ordinary case of life, invest expert testimony with quite a bit of weight.  It’s the way courts proceed, for instance.  It’s also the way our usual visits to the doctor go.  And it seems like philosophers are probably in the best position to be experts on the question of God's existence.

So how should the average Christian take theism’s unpopularity in the philosophy community?  

1. As a first volley, we should keep in mind that arguments from authority give only prima facie justification.  They are defeasible.  This should inspire us to enter the debate and get down to brass tacks, knowing and able to defend our beliefs.  

2.  As William Lane Craig pointed out, there are some worries about the methodology of the survey.  The survey had less than a 50% participation rate of those surveyed.  Only 931 responded.  This seems too small a sample and the participation rate is too low--indicators, according to sociologist Rodney Stark, that the results should not be trusted.  It also seems that the survey may have suffered from selection bias, as it was not sent to universities associated with strong religious departments.  WLC reports that neither he nor any of his colleagues received the survey.  This is troublesome especially given the prominence of WLC.  

3.  The results of the survey are also tempered when one realizes that philosophers of religion, which are the philosophers we'd expect to be the most familiar with the literature on God’s existence, are overwhelmingly (72.3%) theist according to the survey.  If philosophers of religion are the relevant experts for whether belief in God is rational, then it seems that an argument from authority would then boost the case for theism.  

There are, however, worries about arguing in this way.  It’s possible that narrowing in on only philosophers of religion is subject to confirmation bias, for why would an atheistic philosopher become a philosopher of religion?  If a person is going to study religion, they’re probably religious.  I think that’s part of it, but not the whole story.  I think there may even be a countervailing effect: There’s a selection effect towards religious skepticism in philosophical circles to demonstrate to others that one is a critical thinker, a true philosopher.   

So while this point doesn’t have overwhelming weight, it should have some.  

4.  Christian philosophers may also be picked out of philosophy departments given that their expertise and commitments open up career paths into Christian colleges, churches, and so on.  Atheistic philosophers presumably don’t have these career paths open to them.   This effect may diminish the number of theistic philosophers participating in the survey in an unjustified way.

5. This point is anecdotal, but still quite powerful in my mind.  It’s taken from Joshua Rasmussen: 

I’ve had many conversations with philosophers (including famous philosophers) at conferences about God, and, unless they specialized in philosophy of religion, they didn’t know much about the arguments for God. I’ve had many conversations where a philosopher said my argument gave them something new to think about and even moved them closer to theism.

6.  The epistemology of disagreement is complex.  There’s a burgeoning literature on it.  Many take it that when we encounter an epistemic peer that disagrees with our viewpoint that we should temper our confidence in our belief accordingly.  But McGrew suggests that this isn’t the correct procedure: “Popularity is a rotten test of truth.”  If we are well studied in an area, possessing arguments and evidence, then when we encounter someone who disagrees with us the disagreement should first cast doubt on that someone actually knowing what they’re talking about rather than undermine our confidence.  

7.  Despite the measly 14.6% of theists in philosophy departments, this may nevertheless still reflect an *increase* from decades ago. The 1950s were a barren wasteland for theists in Anglo-American philosophy.  Since the publication of Alvin Plantinga’s work in the 1960s, philosophers such as Alexander Pruss, William Alston, and Robert Adams have come onto the scene.  Many philosophers, including atheistic ones, have even described the last few decades as a renaissance for theism.  From the atheist philosopher Quintin Smith: “But in philosophy, it became, almost overnight, ‘academically respectable’ to argue for theism, making philosophy a favored field of entry for the most intelligent and talented theists entering academia today. A count would show that in Oxford University Press’ 2000-2001 catalogue, there are 96 recently published books on the philosophy of religion . . . . By contrast, there are 28 books . . . on the philosophy of language, 23 on epistemology (including religious epistemology, such as Plantinga’s Warranted Christian Belief), 14 on metaphysics,...” 

8.  We can also make some use of Reformed Epistemology in this debate.  If Christians really do have a path of knowledge open to them that is not publicly available--the testimony of the Holy Spirit--the lack of Christian belief among academic philosophers is not surprising and would not carry the usual weight of expert authority.  

9.  This point is taken directly from Joshua Rasmussen.  He's referencing another survey done by Helen De Cruz that was directed towards philosophers of religion only, which can be found here.  

In this study, De Cruz analyzes the belief revision of philosophers of religion. She reports, "12.2% (n = 17) went from religious belief to nonbelief, often as undergraduates, when encountering philosophical objections to theism. By contrast, 9.4% (n = 13) went from agnosticism or atheism to religious belief." At first blush, this stat may seem to confirm the impression that philosophy is more likely to make you skeptical of God. However, to get an accurate analysis, we need to factor in the fact that most of the respondents were theists. That changes the analysis. In particular, she found that 17 out of 85 theists surveyed moved to non-theism. So 20% of the theists who went into the field of philosophy became atheist or agnostic. By contrast, 13 out of 33 non-theists (atheists and agnostics) surveyed moved to theism. That's 39% -- almost double.  In other words, according to the study, philosophers of religion are nearly twice as likely to move toward theism than away from theism.

10.  This point is less relevant but I'm gonna stick it here anyway.  We can consider the testimony of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.  “They reported that 51% of scientists say that they believe in God or a higher power while 41% say that they do not. The Pew people point out that this is virtually unchanged from the time when the scientific community was first polled on this issue back in 1914.”

And more, “What is further interesting is a study that was conducted by the Rice University sociologist Elaine Ecklund reported in 2005. She surveyed over 1,600 faculty members at elite research universities. What Ecklund discovered was that the beliefs of scientists in God or not are typically formed before they chose their career path to go into science. It was when they were adolescents or younger, and then they chose to go into a particular field of study. So their disbelief among that percentage that does disbelieve isn't a reflection of their scientific training or their intellectual prowess. Those beliefs were formed prior to their entry into the career path of science.” 

Leibniz as Arbitrator: The Infralapsarian and Supralapsarian Debate

It’s been a few years since I’ve waded into the infralapsarian vs supralapsarian literature, so the following will probably have some oversights.

My suggestion is that it isn’t possible to hold to infralapsarianism without also adopting some version of Leibniz’s model.  If this is true, then it should motivate any Calvinists that are inclined towards the infralapsarian view to accept Leibniz’s model.  I take it that the majority of Calvinists are infralapsarian.  

Here’s the traditional principle behind supralapsarianism:  

The Sup Principle (SP):  Given a perfectly effective agent that wishes to perform an action, the event in an action which is last in execution is first in intention.  

The idea here is that since the last executed act in history is wrath for the reprobate and mercy for the elect that God must have predestined each group without any intervening considerations.  The predestination of each group is intended before any consideration of their qualities.  This just is supralapsarianism.  

But I don’t think that SP is sufficient to establish the truth of supralapsarianism.  It also requires a distinctive doctrine of standard Calvinism.  Let’s call it the CC doctrine:

CC Doctrine:  Human choices are post-volitional to God’s decree.  They follow entirely from God’s creative decree and are determined by it.

This doctrine is required in conjunction with SP for supralapsarianism to get off the ground.  If it is true, there can be no intervening human actions that enter the flow of God’s decree that can initiate a new action sequence from God. The CC Doctrine ensures that the creative decree of God is not in view of human causes.  Paired with the Sup Principle, all of God’s actions are really a part of a global and homogenous action of God.  My claim is that there’s no way to splice up God’s global action apart from positing a pre-volitional realm of human choice which would allow God’s decree to be interactive in some sense--this requires a rejection of the CC Doctrine.

The Argument Schematized:

1.  If there are no independent human choices that play out in history, God’s plan cannot be spliced.  (The CC Doctrine and splice claim)
2.  If God’s plan cannot be spliced, then God’s initial plan is still in place. 
3.  His initial plan was put in place prior to man’s fall. 
4.  Given that the Sup Principle applies to the plan at this logical moment (at the beginning of creation), and there are no intervening novel action sequences, then God is predestinating individuals without regard to their property of being fallen.  This just is supralapsarianism.    

The way to escape the implication of supralapsarianism is to deny the CC Doctrine.  Leibniz offers a way to do this without violating the ultimacy/aseity intuitions of the Calvinist.  

This is a deeply vague paper.  Apologies.

The Nature of Faith: Credulity?

This blog works on the assumption that argument and evidence are appropriate in evaluating Christianity.  Many would not grant this assumption, including large swathes of Christians.  The usual reason for this rejection is a popular conception of faith as blind and uninterested in rational evaluation, or even opposed to it. But is this the conception of faith that the Christian Scriptures provide?

Here’s a list of Scriptural phrases, occurring in both the OT and NT, that show otherwise.  

• Set forth your case, says the Lord; bring your proofs, says the King of Jacob. (Isaiah 41:21)
• Declare and present your case.  (Isaiah 45:21)
• Test everything. (1 Thess. 5:21)
• Answer everyone who asks for the reason for your hope. (1 Pet. 3:15)
• We demolish arguments. (2 Cor. 10:4)
• Argue persuasively. (Acts 19:8)
• We vigorously refuted. (Acts 18:28)
• We debated publicly. (Acts 18:28)
• I carefully investigated. (Luke 1:3)
• He gave many convincing proofs. (Acts 1:3)
• He furnished proof to all people. ( Acts 17:31)

It certainly looks as if the New Testament has a different conception of faith from what we commonly assume!  This list shows that Christianity is open to rational evaluation.   

Obj:  What about texts such as John 20:29 and Hebrews 11:1?  Don’t they show that faith is blind and uninterested in rational evaluation?

The passages: “Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” And from Hebrews 11:1, which defines faith as “confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.” 

These passages are consistent with the above list.  Faith is not being opposed to rational evaluation, evidence, or knowledge--but sight or vision.  There are other forms of rational evaluation besides vision.  Coherence, prophetic fulfillment, attestation, and testimony all qualify.  

This discussion naturally calls for an attempt to give a biblically sufficient definition of Christian faith, which I think has two elements: (a) a propositional element, which is the belief content and (b) a volitional element, which is the act of entrusting oneself to God as revealed in the propositional content.  We may add one more condition, as required by the Hebrews 11:1 passage:  (c) Faith lacks a direct apprehension of the truth.  Notice that the (c) condition does not exclude rational evaluation in its own right, though it does seem to exclude one version of it.   “One might say that I have faith in the Hebrews 11:1 sense that the sun will rise tomorrow morning – not because I have seen the sun rise tomorrow (it hasn’t happened yet), but because I have experience of the sun rising every morning in the past, and so I have a rational justification for believing that the sun will rise again tomorrow. In like-manner, the saints of old trusted God with His future promises, which they hadn’t yet seen fulfilled, because they had evidence for God’s faithfulness in the past.” (McLatchie) 

What reason could Christianity give for positing (c) as a requirement for believers?  Perhaps because it leads to a greater reliance on (b) and calls for us to trust God’s promises on the basis of his character, leading us to depend more on our relationship with him. 

Alvin Plantinga suggests that those who do not directly apprehend through vision really are blessed in a unique way as John 20:29 has it, and that’s by us possessing the testimony of the Holy Spirit in addition to the other evidences.  But this doesn’t exclude Christianity from being rationally evaluated, it just provides another avenue of knowledge for us.  So perhaps (c) is meant to bring out the requirement of the Holy Spirit to work faith in us in a salvific way.  In Plantinga's own words: 

From the present point of view, [John 20:29] is neither a general counsel commending credulity nor a rebuke addressed to such embryonic empiricists as Thomas. It is, instead, the observation that those who have faith have a source of knowledge that transcends our ordinary perceptual faculties and cognitive processes, a source of knowledge that is a divine gift; hence they are indeed blessed.

Suggestion: Faith as a lack of direct apprehension canvasses a relatively small (but essential) area of Christian theology.  It seems as if it concerns trusting the words of God and his promises as promulgated in special revelation, and does not apply to the fundamental aspects of a theistic religion.  It does not take faith to believe that God exists, perhaps, but it takes faith to believe the specifics of the Christian religion, like the future resurrection.  Note that the (c) aspect of faith seems clearly missing in natural theology:  “For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been *clearly seen*” (Rom. 1:20)

Rasmussen has a good discussion of faith in chapter 13 of his book How Reason Can Lead to God.

Answering The Multiverse Objection to the Design Argument

The multiverse objection to the design argument attempts to address the extremely low probability of life existing in the universe by increasing the objector’s probabilistic resources.  If there are a multitude of universes, it’s less surprising that at least one of them has the resources for life to arise.  Paired with the Anthropic Principle, which points out that certain properties could never be observed by us because those properties exclude our existence--then of course we can only observe universes in which are fine-tuned.  We couldn’t exist otherwise.  These two moves seem to offer a powerful defeater to the design argument. 

Theistic responses are not wanting.  Here’s a sketch of such responses.  

(a) There’s no empirical evidence that we exist in a multiverse.  It’s a speculative hypothesis.

(b) The multiverse (or whatever generates subsequent universes) may itself exhibit extremely improbable parameters that call out for design.  It may only push the question a step back.

(c) Even if there is a multiverse, the odds of us occupying this specific one is still extremely low given the extremely complex and precise values we observe in it.  We’d expect instead to occupy a much simpler universe (Boltzmann Brains?).  The fact that we instead occupy this extremely complex one is extremely improbable in relation to the other multitudes of universes we could have observed instead.  

(d) If the most popular model for postulating a multiverse is correct (BGV theorem?), then the multiverse is not past eternal.  If it is not past eternal, it has not produced an infinite number of universes.  If it has not produced an infinite number of universes, it may not sufficiently increase the probabilistic resources of the objector.  

When did Judas Die?

The account Matthew gives has Judas throwing the money at the chief priests and then the chief priests buying the field with that money. Luke says in Acts that Judas "acquired" the field and died in it. Matthew stresses that the field is called the Field of Blood because it was bought with betrayal money. Luke seems to stress that it's called the Field of Blood because Judas died in the field. Both, however, can be true. They're not exclusive options.

So it looks like the chief priests bought the field using Judas's money, and it's through them that Judas acquired it. It isn't that Judas purchased it directly.  Matthew seems to indicate that Judas died the same day that Jesus was crucified "and then he went away and hanged himself,” but I don't think he necessarily means to teach that, even though it's implied. There must be enough time for the chief priests to buy the field before Judas can know about it and die there.

Here's the timeline: Thursday night Jesus is betrayed. He's tried that night and condemned Friday morning. He's dead by 3:00 pm on Friday.

It looks like Judas tried to repent after hearing of Jesus’s condemnation by the Jews. So that's Friday morning. Perhaps the chief priests tried to buy the field that afternoon and Judas killed himself Friday evening. Saturday is the sabbath, so probably not Saturday. Maybe they waited till Sunday to buy the field and that's when Judas killed himself.  Or maybe Monday. But Jesus is resurrected by Sunday

Here’s one scenario:  Perhaps when Judas had thrown the money the chief priests discussed using it to buy the field in front of Judas.  Judas inquired where the field was located so that he could go kill himself in it. That's possible. I think that's a plausible scenario. This would allow for Judas to be dead by Friday evening.

On Odd Objections

I’m going to collect here a hodge-podge of weak and often downright odd objections to Christianity that I encounter quite often with their corresponding responses.  I intend to update this list as I encounter more of these sorts of arguments.

Obj: Christianity is responsible for a higher than average suicide rate among homosexuals.

Two (or three?) Responses:

(a) The objection may be based on a falsity (see note). The sociological research on this matter is complex and though some studies have been done that allege a correlation between Christian upbringing and a resultant higher suicide risk among LGBT+, there are other studies that do not find such a correlation.  In any case, I think it should be borne in mind that it’s well supported that belief in Christianity has been correlated with a reduced risk of depression and suicide among the general population.  So even if it is true that Christian upbringing or Christian environments are correlated with a higher risk of suicide among LGBT, perhaps it balances out with Christianity reducing risks of suicide among the general population.

(b) But that isn’t the heart of my response.  I think the objection is wrongheaded at its core.  Here’s an analogy that can demonstrate this:  There’s a teacher that denounces stealing as wrong.  His teaching that it is wrong leads to increased rates of depression and suicide among the theiving population.  Is the teacher thereby responsible for their suicide? No.  Should he stop teaching that stealing is wrong? No.  Should he take these increased risks among thieves as a word of caution to present his teaching carefully? Sure.  

Substitute “stealing” with homosexuality.  The analogy still goes through.  And this then focuses us on the real issue, which is whether homosexuality is immoral or not--I provide an argument here that it is immoral.  

Obj:  Jesus didn’t know or teach about atoms.  I know about atoms, and am thus much smarter than a 1st century Jewish man.  Jesus couldn’t be God’s revelation without having taught about atoms.  

Four Part Response: 

(a) Presumably God incarnate had little care to be a trivia master. He would, on occasion, indulge in idle questions and answer them accordingly.  But he was primarily concerned with living a moral life, preaching the way of repentance and self denial, and preparing for his atoning work on the cross.  If we think he should have taught about atoms, then why not also how to program in C++, or how to build pianos---where would it end? 

I think this silly objection is based upon a desire for verification of Jesus’s message.  His possessing otherwise unattainable knowledge would go some way towards verifying that he spoke on God’s behalf.  But he did possess otherwise unattainable knowledge, and he did provide verification for his ministry--he predicted his own death and of the fall of the Temple in 70 A.D., also fulfilling OT prophecies, as well as performing various miracles in public.  His miracles, while verifying his ministry, also had a much higher symbolic value than trivia as well--they symbolized the inbreaking of God's kingdom, the forgiveness of sin, physical healing, and the overcoming of opposing forces.  So Jesus *did* verify his message and did so in a highly meaningful way.  

(b) But I also think this objection is just born of too strong an emphasis on the importance of scientific trivia.  Yes, science is important and can immensely help our lives.  But it’s of limited importance.  A life lived in service to the good and to others is vastly more worthy than a trivia master that knows the atomic number of hydrogen.  

(c) Again, the objection may just be based on a falsity. Jesus did possess a controversial and widely rejected belief that the universe had a beginning point, a belief that was not supported by scientific methods until the middle 20th century.

(d) And it seems that this sort of objection just misunderstands the incarnation.  Jesus, in his human nature, was of finite understanding.  There were many things he did not know, including the timing of his second coming.  The Logos which became incarnate in Jesus is omniscient, knowing all facts, but his assumed flesh known as Jesus of Nazareth was fully human, possessing a finite mind that was not omniscient.  He was like us in all things, fully human.

Obj: From Ehrman, In Matthew, Jesus’ disciples procure two animals for him, a donkey and a colt; they spread their garments over the two of them, and Jesus rode into town straddling them both (Matthew 21:7). It’s an odd image, but Matthew made Jesus fulfill the prophecy of Scripture quite literally.

As the renowned Greek scholar A. T. Robertson drily remarks, "The garments, of course. The words in Gk. might refer to the two animals, but such reference is by no means necessary. Matthew is not careful to distinguish, but common sense can do it."

Obj: This one is from Carrier.  Jesus shows that he's against people washing their hands in Mark 7.  That's unreasonable.

Jesus isn't forbidding handwashing.  He's attacking the pharisaical motivation for doing so, which stems from a legalistic mentality that's uninterested in honoring God.  

Obj: Where did Jesus get his Y Chromosome?  Men provide the Y Chromosome, and Jesus did not have an earthly father.

This is by its nature speculative, but a few suggestions can be quickly adduced.  Perhaps God fashioned a Y chromosome out of Mary's pre-existing genetic material, or perhaps God instead barrowed from Mary's male ancestors and copied it to Jesus.  In either case Jesus can be truly said to descend fully from Mary.  None of this is too weird once we admit the possibility of the virgin birth in the first place.  

Obj:  The Bible was written 2,000 years ago by simpletons.  It’s just been too long and we’re too advanced to believe what they believed. 

Imagine an individual in some technologically advanced futuristic age disregarding substantial primary evidence from the 21st century that Trump was president on the basis that the belief was held by simpletons centuries ago.  It’s just absurd. We have many avenues for accessing the evidence for historical claims.  Also RE.

There’s quite a few approaches to verifying or at least supporting historical claims.  First, it’s important to keep in mind that testimony to some event is, by itself, some evidence that the event occurred.  It may not be very powerful evidence, but it is some evidence.  Multiple attestation, internal coherence, coherence with external witnesses, archeological traces, proper-period use of language, criterion of embarrassment, accounts by those that disagree, manuscript evidence, and so on are all justified ways to evaluate historical claims.

It’s possible also to approach historical knowledge of God’s action by exploring God’s nature through natural theology alone.  Call this increasing the prior.  Take Euclid--we don’t distrust his geometric conclusions even though he wrote over 2,000 years ago.  The reason for this is that we can duplicate his results with independent reason.  I’m claiming that something similar may be the case with distinctly Christian claims, like the atonement and incarnation. That is, we may be able to increase the prior probability of these events using public reason alone without reference to historical claims.  See here for more on this claim. 

Obj:  You can’t use the Bible to prove the Bible.

This is confused.  First, I think it’s necessary to realize that when we’re discussing the Bible in these sorts of contexts, we’re intending to refer to a collection of separate, historical documents written by diverse individuals in diverse situations, a collection that we happen to call the “Bible.”  We’re analyzing them just as we would any other piece of history.  We would apply the criterion of multiple attestation or the criterion of embarrassment to any historical document, so we’re justified in doing so in the case of the Bible, and these methods are ways to evaluate historical claims.  

In the cases of claims of fulfilment of prophecy, there’s background assumptions at work:  We have independent reason to believe that the OT documents predate the NT, we may have reason for believing that a NT writer is unaware of the theological relevance of some minor point mentioned, perhaps we have independent confirmation or plausibility to some claim made by an author of one of the Biblical documents that’s relevant to some purportedly fulfilled prophecy,  or perhaps, in those areas that we can verify the accuracy of one of the writers, the writer reports accurately (and this should provide us some reason to trust the other where we’re unable to check his claims independently).

Obj: I only accept scientific evidence.

Does “scientific evidence” = beliefs based on sense perception?  Is it intending to discount beliefs based on mathematics?  In any case, all of us, including scientists themselves, hold most of their “scientific beliefs” on the basis of testimony.  None of us have the time or equipment to derive the majority of our beliefs directly from experimentation.  This seems justified.  And if this sort of testimonial belief is still classed as scientific because it ultimately derives from sense-perception, then it seems that Christian assertions are also “scientific” in this sense: Christian claims ultimately derive from first hand sense perception of the apostles and their followers.  

In any case, scientific evidence itself is dependent upon even more fundamental assumptions, such as our assumption that our sense perception is reliable and that there’s an external world and so on.  Oftentimes the bare data is compatible with multiple interpretations, and it’s sound philosophical principles that determine which interpretation is the best--parsimony, beauty, coherence with other fundamental beliefs, etc.  Philosophical argumentation is a path to knowledge.  

Note: Findings from these studies have been generally inconclusive in determining the aspects of religiosity that are associated with mental health outcomes. One study found that, for LGB adults, suicidal thoughts had no association with a religious affiliation (Kralovec et al., 2012). In fact, a number of studies have found that measures of religiosity, across religious affiliations (e.g. Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, Buddhist), were not associated with any mental health outcomes for LGB adults (Barnes & Meyer, 2012; Harris et al., 2008; Shilo & Savaya, 2012) and very little is known about this association among individuals who are transgender. For researchers who explore minority stress, these findings may seem counter-intuitive, as religiosity has been associated with higher rates of internalized homophobia among LGBT adults (Barnes & Meyer, 2012, Kralovec et al., 2012; Shilo & Savaya, 2012) and internalized homophobia has been associated with negative mental health outcomes (Kralovec et al., 2012; Shilo & Savaya, 2012).

The Authorship of John

Craig Blomberg, D.A. Carson, Douglas Moo, Craig Keener, Richard Bauckham, and Martin Hengel. These are all first rate scholars that believe the Gospel of John was written by an eyewitness.  Not all agree that this John was John the son of Zebedee, but they do believe that the author was present at the events. I'm leaning once more towards it being the son of Zebedee.  The view that the Gospel at least largely incorporates John the apostle’s testimony maintains considerable support.  According to James Charlesworth in The Beloved Disciple, this broad position holds the longest list of defenders--Charlesworth lists 29 scholars that support it.  

The strongest evidence against it being the son of Zebedee is an early church tradition that holds that this John was martyred fairly early, if certain quotations of Papias given by Philip Sidetes and George Hamartolos in the Medieval period are to be taken at face value.  (Both of these authors, however, also assert that John survived into the reign of Domitian.)

But that tradition is difficult and not well-attested, and may be reconcilable with the wider tradition that John lived to an old age--in either that John was martyred in his old age or that his banishments and sufferings still count as "martyrdom."  Paul Anderson takes this route.

The Harris fragments also attest an early tradition of discomfort among Asian Christians due to the failure of John the apostle to be martyred, arguing that Polycarp’s martyrdom served as a substitute for John.  They took it that it was proper for all the apostles to be martyred. These fragments are independent of the Martyrdom of Polycarp and may date to the third century.

Some of the best arguments for John the son of Zebedee being the author are the following: 

• Westcott’s process of elimination, whereby he narrows in on John the son of Zebedee 
• The title “John” itself is geographically widespread and early in our manuscript tradition (Papyrus 75 has it, for instance), 
• Irenaeus clearly attests to the authorship by the apostle John (once we see that he uses the word “disciple” interchangeably with “apostle”) 
• Papias as interpreted by Keener provides support to it (the apostles are called “elders” by Papias and then he mentions “John the elder” as still ministering, indicating clearly that he thinks this John is an apostle), 
• The internal indications of the gospel itself plus a crosscheck with the Synoptic Gospels, 
• Gnostic ascriptions of the book to John the apostle (Ptolemy the Gnostic).

And if Blomberg is correct in understanding Eusebius to covertly quote Papias in 3.24.5-13, then we also have another attestation that Papias believed the gospel to be written by John the Son of Zebedee.   

It’s common enough to hear that the majority of NT scholars believe that the authors of the gospels are unknown.  “But it's hard to say who qualifies as a ‘scholar’ here. People with seminary degrees? Probably a lot of them accept traditional authorship. So usually the assertion is qualified--'The majority of critical scholars agree...'  But who is a critical scholar? Why, among other things, someone who doesn't believe in the traditional authorship of the Gospels! And so we come full circle.”

The Necessity Objection to the Fine-Tuning Argument

The Fine-Tuning Argument relies on this premise:  

The highly precise and seemingly arbitrary values that enable the existence of life are either the result of (a) necessity, (b) chance or (c) design.  This post is meant to cross off option (a).  

Obj:  The highly precise and arbitrary values that enable the existence of life are necessary and could not have been otherwise.  

But this seems false.

(1) Modal intuitions. Nothing seems necessary about these highly precise values.  It seems like they could be otherwise.  They appear brute if not designed.

(2) These values are not deducible from grand physical theories.  Our best grand theories are compatible with any number of these sorts of values, so they don’t seem to get their necessity from more fundamental facts.  Stephen Hawking for this one. 

The Age of the Patriarchs

Constraint:  In interpreting Scripture, we should always follow the intent of the author of the text.  This controls our interpretative scheme and allows for the author to speak to us from the text.  We should never violate this rule. 

There are hints within the text of Genesis 1-11 that the listed ages of the patriarchs are not meant to be taken in their straightforward sense.  These chapters give us many examples of individuals that live well over 200 years, some up to 900 years of age.   This does not cohere well with what we know from archaeological evidence--we have preserved skeletal remains of individuals that date from this period and their ages line up fairly well with modern averages of human lifespans, usually a decade or two lower.

Chronological Oddities:  Noah would still be alive at the time of Abraham.  Seems weird and not intended by the author.

Statements in the text itself:  

Abraham was surprised that a man could have a child at 100 years of age.  Yet, Abraham’s father had him at the age of 130 years if the ages are literal.  It doesn’t seem that Abraham should have been surprised if the age of his father is taken in a straightforward way.  

The author records that Abraham died at a ripe old age, yet he died when he was 175, well short of his contemporaries who are supposed to have lived to 500 or so years of age.  

This is a good indication that the author himself understood the figures in a not straightforward way.  

We also have examples outside of the Bible in which clearly historical figures are given extraordinarily long lifespans, like Sumerian kings reigning for over 20,000 years, even though that’s implausible, we do know that these kings really did exist.  Just not with that lifespan.

There are some explanations on offer as to why the author would inject these unrealistic lifespans to the pre-diluvian fathers; ranging from tribal identification to other numerological explanations.  The ages given follow a generally predictable factorization that is otherwise highly unlikely to obtain if the ages were listed in a random way following actual individuals.  This is explained by a deeper symbolism at work in the ages.  

Bridging the Gap

Granting that the Cosmological Argument is successful and that we can reach the conclusion that there is a first cause of the universe, what reason do we have for identifying this first cause with God?  This is what Alexander Pruss calls the Gap Problem. 

There are a few arguments that attempt to bridge this gap and identify the first cause with God, or at least attempt to show that the first cause has at least some of God’s attributes.  Here’s 5 of them: 

1.  The Causal-Likeness Principle

The idea here is that a cause cannot give to its effect that which it itself does not have. The universe contains intelligent creatures. So the cause of the universe must also be intelligent.  Once a popular principle in the Medieval period, this principle is now highly contentious, but it has its defenders. Samuel Clarke argued for it from the ex nihilo principle. Perhaps it can be given a probabilistic spin?

2.  Disjunctive-Explanation; Personal or Scientific Explanation

This suggestion stems from Swinburne. Scientific explanation works from prior physical facts to explain subsequent physical facts. Given that we're concerned in the Cosmological Argument with the beginning of the universe, there are no prior physical facts to explain the subsequent ones. So scientific explanation is ruled out. Personal explanation is the only other sort of explanation we have, so we should opt for it. So the first cause is a person.

3.  Plausible Candidates: Abstract Objects or Disembodied Minds

This stems from William Lane Craig.  Given that the cause of the universe is the cause of all physicality, the cause cannot be physical.  But our lists for possible non-physical objects is quite small: Either abstract objects or disembodied minds.  Abstract objects are things such as numbers or propositions.  But abstract objects cannot enter into causal relations (that's what makes them abstract), so they cannot have caused the universe.  This leaves disembodied minds as the only thing left on our list that could plausibly cause the universe.

4.  The Teleological Argument

This one is straightforward.  It makes the Cosmological Argument work in a cumulative way with the Teleological Argument.  The universe exhibits design, design implies intelligence, so whatever caused the universe is probably intelligent.  

5.  Simplicity-Style Arguments

Swinburne inspired suggestion. These arguments are given their best up-to-date treatment by Calum Miller. It goes like this: The properties we ascribed to God are actually more simple than arbitrarily limited properties. So instead of ascribing to God limited intelligence, we should ascribe to him infinite or full intelligence. Limited intelligence is less simple as it requires a reason to posit the intelligence as well as a reason to posit the limit to the intelligence.

Rejoinder to the B-theory Objection to the Kalam

I’ve come across some new information that discredits a central claim that I made in my last post.  William Lane Craig does not take B-theory to be fatal to the Kalam.  Alexander Pruss, Calum Miller, and Robert Koons also take it that Kalam is compatible with B-theory. 

Here’s WLC in his own words:  

"[Would KCA go through if B-theory is true?] 

Well, I would give up the second philosophical argument based on the possibility of forming an actual infinite by successive addition.  

And I would have to redefend the causal premise in such a way that it doesn't appeal to something's coming-into-being without a cause, but rather just say that something can't begin to exist without a cause.  The scientific evidence for the finitude of the past would still go in place.

So even though the abandonment of an A-theory of time would damage the argument and cause you to reformulate some of its support, it wouldn't be fatal."

And a quote by Pruss: "There is temporal becoming on the B-theory. An object comes into being provided that it exists but didn't use to exist." We'd then reformulate the causal premise in light of this.

Pruss's adoption of the Kalam argument as he presents in his book Infinity, Causation, and Paradox has such a reformulation: "Like the Kalam argument, our argument denies the existence of backwards-infinite sequences. But the details are quite different. The Kalam argument opposes sequences that are temporally backwards-infinite, while the present argument denies all causally backwards-infinite sequences."