The Probability of God

I’m speaking of the God of classic theism. I’m not specifically thinking of Yahweh or any other ancient representation/revelation of God.

The probability of God’s existence, on Bayes’ Theorem, is

P(G|O) = P(O|G)/P(O) x P(G)

where G stands for “God exists” and O stands for the body of relevant observations. ‘|’ means “given that”.

P(O|G)/P(O) is the probability of the body of relevant observations we find given God’s existence divided by the probability of those observations occurring without assuming God’s existence. This is the explanatory power of God’s existence. Given some observations to explain, does God’s existence make it more probable than it would have been otherwise? If so, then it counts toward God’s existence.

P(G) is God’s prior probability, it measures how inherently probable it is that God exists, without considering any observations.

In God debates, atheists assume P(G) is very low, so much so that just about any naturalistic (that is, atheistic) alternative explanation of observations offered as evidence for God’s existence would be better than explaining them by saying “God did it.” So they come up with some alternatives and declare victory.

But do we know how inherently probable God is? That’s a topic for another post. But right now I want to make another point.

Let me rearrange the terms a bit first (just basic algebra):

P(G|O) = P(O|G) x P(G)/P(O)

Suppose P(O|G) is fairly high; that is, we observe a lot of things that are more probable if God exists than not. Then the remaining two terms, P(G) and P(O) will determine the plausibility of believing in God, that is, the probability that God exists given the observations would then depend on P(G)/P(O) not being too low. It would depend on which is more likely, God’s existence just on its own, or the observations occurring without God.

An example: I know this is a gross overestimation; let’s suppose that the probability of life occurring in the universe without God’s existence (includiong the fine-tuning of physical constants at the Big Bang), was less than 0.001, but pretty probable if God exists (say, 0.8).  Then God would have at least an 80% chance of existing if his prior probability is greater than or equal to 0.001, if this were the only peice of evidence to consider.

Of course, other evidence would have to be weighed as well. Suppose, after considering everything, P(O|G) is about 50%, while P(O|Not-G) is low. Then God’s prior probablity still wouldn’t have to be high to leave us with a signficant chance of God’s existence.

Given considerations of this sort, if one could argue that God’s inherent probability is significant at all, then I think a reasonable argument for a significant change of God’s existance could be made by arguing that God’s existence isn’t, in itself, that improbable, and that, all things considered, the probability of our observing the world we observe is higher if God exists than if God didn’t exist.

Heaven for Atheists: Drugs

Suppose that there were no God. I say that both atheists and theists would be deluded.

Theists would be deluded because they believe in God. Simple.

Atheists, or at least most atheists, would also be deluded. They think there is a meaning to life. Not a grand meaning, but a personal meaning. They make the meaning. It’s subjective, of course.

This meaning would be reducible to a set of brain states. These can be ultimately reduced to chemicals. Thus this meaning could be achieved chemically. So if we could invent an advanced heroin-like drug, something akin to the soma found in Brave New World, one that could induce a sense of awe, wonder, purpose, connectedness, community,  happiness, etc, then we can all find meaning in our lives. Why not? We could make this available to everyone, so that everyone lives a meaningful life.

So here’s the delusion; if an atheist/naturalist thinks that meaning, purpose, and all that makes life worth living is anything beyond a set of states that can be induced by drugs, then they are deluded too.

However, if an atheist is willing to accept that happiness can be achieved by some kind of drug, then I guess they aren’t deluded after all. This could be extended. Imagine that we can solve our survival problems with machines so that we don’t have to work, and arrange for the machines to manufacture and deliver our drugs, then an uninterruptedly happy and meaningful life can be achieved completely by drug use. Ahh, heaven at last!

Am I Allowed to be a Christian? Am I Allowed not to be a Christian?

Reagan was a Christian, and he was loved, back in the day.

I used to be much more outgoing about my faith. I talked to people about it. Most of the time they agreed with what I said, but they didn’t want to become practicing Christians. It often was about giving up partying, sex, drugs — all the fun stuff of the 80s that I didn’t do. But they agreed with me that being a Christian is a good thing: “I think it’s awesome that you are a Christian! It’s just not for me. I can’t live like that.”

These days I don’t sense this. Instead, whenever I express Christianity,  I feel like I’m breaking the rules, doing something bad. I can’t pinpoint where this comes from, though I suspect it’s from authoritative voices at universities, school administrators, the media, and politicians supporting progressive causes.

It’s not that they directly attack Christianity. They rub against it with demands that are incompatible with it. According to them, we have an intellectual duty to believe only what science supports, a pluralistic duty to respect and admire all religions, a duty to provide health care for women in the form of abortions, and a duty to celebrate LGBTQ. These really chafe against evangelical Christianity.

I’m not complaining, by the way. I’m just expressing my own inner tension. I really don’t feel good doing anything! If I don’t live as a devoted Christian, go to church, get involved in outreach, then I feel guilty for not following Christ. If I do live a life for Christ, then I feel like I’m doing wrong by breaking the rules of tolerance, rationality, and inclusiveness. And if I reinterpret Christianity to be more progressive, then, again, I’m wrong for putting words into God’s mouth.

Rarely do I miss the 1980s, but when I feel like this, I do.

God Allowing Evil

God really does allow a lot of bad things. One wonders if God could do better.

But, and this is a bit hacky, I admit, what if more than one possible world could be created? What I mean by “possible world” is a way things can be. Maybe God could create more than one possible world, worlds or universes that exist in parallel with each other.

If that’s true, then God wouldn’t just create the best possible world, He’d create every possible world worth creating! This means that there would be universes with a lot of evil — just as long as in those universes the good outweighs the evil.

This makes sense to me. We are not in the best possible universe. We’re only in a “good enough” universe. Statistically, most universes will be of this kind; the proportion of perfect or near perfect worlds will be very low compared to the proportion of merely good enough worlds.

So there is a lot of suffering and evil in our world, but there is enough good to offset it and make it worth creating.

Take this with a grain of salt, please, as I’m just musing.

Path to Atheism, the Second Most Rebellious Worldview

I think that a lot of atheists would insist that their path to atheism is one of discovering that it is unreasonable to believe in God, much like discovering that it is unreasonable to believe in the tooth fairy or Santa Claus. My hypothesis is different. It seems to me, the more I look at debates and such between theists and atheists, that atheists make a choice about how they view the world that prohibit belief in God a priori (that is, right at the start, before any evidence is examined). This choice seems so natural and obvious to atheists that they may not even see it as a choice. It’s the choice of epistemology (way of knowing, forming beliefs). I think that this choice is ultimately rooted in the desire for autonomy and a bit of rebelliousness.

The Surface Path

To be clear, I’m not saying that atheists reject God for purely emotional reasons, of course (a lot of Christians seem to think this — they probably do because many of them are pretty emotional themselves). I’m not saying that people get pissed-off at religious people and become atheists because of this. Or that they might be horribly disappointed at unanswered prayer, or something really bad happening to them or someone else, and reject God as a result. Intellectual steps are what I’m interested in. Here’s what I think they are. They aren’t always made explicit, but I think that atheists usually go through these.

1. Choose an epistemology that focuses on (perhaps exclusively) tangible, practical, “hands-on” values and goals either through usable knowledge, or theories that aid in the prediction/control of nature.

2. Point out that such an epistemology has no need of God.

3. Claim that the fact that such a godless epistemology is successful in meeting tangible goals is evidence against God.

4. Reject God.

I don’t think reflective atheists would deny that they have went through all of these at some point in their adoption of atheism. To them, these steps seem obviously right. Key to this path is the first step.

The choice in 1 goes back a long way, with roots in Francis Bacon, and later, explicit endorsement in John Dewey and his “bulldog” Sidney Hook. A current example of 1 is Sean Carroll’s rejection of God as a hypothesis because it doesn’t produce new information about how the world works. Atheist physicist Lawrence Krauss also seems to point to this, as does the atheist philosopher Alva Noe. Noe points out that belief in God will not help you fix your car. To be fair, Carroll (and the others as well, probably) also rejected God as a hypothesis because he didn’t think it was testable. However, the multiverse hypothesis isn’t really testable either, yet they are all willing to entertain it. I think that for them, as for most atheist scientists, it is 1 that is doing most, if not all of the work.

In general, natural explanations are the ones that have hope of allowing us to predict and control nature. These are, in turn, what are useful in developing new technology and solving social problems. In short, natural explanations are what best suit humanistic goals.

2 is insisted by every atheist. Just about anything you can think of could possibly have a natural explanation (How does one rule out all possible natural explanations?). So it’s a short logical step to God not being necessary for such an epistemology.

Regarding 3, that godless science is successful in meeting tangible goals, is obvious to everyone. Theists have to agree. But is this really evidence against God? Only if there’s reason to expect that natural science wouldn’t be successful if God exists. I honestly can’t see why it wouldn’t be successful: if anything, the success of natural science is something God wants, just as long as we don’t see it as the end of all knowledge. Natural science is certainly successful, but limited in its scope (Phillip Goff makes a similar point here about math, physics and subjective experience).

Ok, so the atheistic conclusion doesn’t necessarily follow from the above premises. But maybe, for atheists, it’s more like this: God is not useful, for atheists have all that they want in a science that doesn’t need God. I find it hard to argue with this; given what atheists value (see 1 above), it makes perfect sense to ignore God in the way that they do.

The Deeper Path

Well, now that the intellectual path is out of the way, maybe I do need to return to emotions: to know what is useful one has to know what is valuable. And what is valuable to a person is rooted in what they want. What is it that atheists want, at bottom, anyway? I can’t speak for all of them, but I think that it’s expressed very well by atheist philosopher A.C. Greyling; it’s autonomy. It’s doing what you want, choosing your own path.

Atheism is the second most rebellious worldview: it won’t bow down to or follow any mere person. One’s personal autonomy is limited by only one thing: empirical reality, “the facts.” It is surpassed in rebelliousness by one worldview only: postmodernism. Postmodernists refuse to bow down to anything, not even reality! *

Consider another passage from the atheist philosopher Thomas Nagel:

. . . I am talking about something much deeper—namely, the fear of religion itself . . . It isn’t just that I don’t believe in God and, naturally, hope that I’m right in my belief. It’s that I hope there is no God! I don’t want there to be a God; I don’t want the universe to be like that.

My guess is that this cosmic authority problem is not a rare condition and that it is responsible for much of the scientism and reductionism of our time. . .Darwin enabled modern secular culture to heave a great collective sigh of relief, by apparently providing a way to eliminate purpose, meaning, and design as fundamental features of the world. (From The Last Word)

Compare atheism with Islam, the Arabic word for submission. Theism is all about bowing down to a person. The apostle Paul tells Christians to “present their bodies as living sacrifices.” Atheists devoted to personal autonomy could never accept this, even if they believed in God.

So, as a result of this basic preference, or choice, atheists choose an epistemology that is all about how they can know more, predict more, control more, do more. This epistemology finds no ultimate purpose in the universe, but this doesn’t bother atheists; for them, purpose is what they make it. All this epistemology can do is find out how to get from A to B. They decide whether B is worth getting to.

God, of course, could never be part of such an epistemology, for God will not be controlled, predicted, or used. Any epistemology that could learn of God would also have to be prepared to submit to God.

So, in essence, it’s really down to autonomy versus submission. I’m reminded of the famous line from Milton’s Satan: Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven.

Notice that none of this has to do with the truth about whether or not God exists. It’s more about whether a person could discover God, should He exist. Atheists make epistemological choices that forever make God unfindable. They claim to be open-minded, but they really aren’t. Once one commits himself to this sort of pragmatic empiricism, and only accepts explanations/hypothesis that “tell him how the world works,” he will never, ever, ever, find God. God will have no part of that. And even if God obliged and provided, say, an obvious miracle, the atheist’s methodological naturalism, empiricism, or whatever you want to call it would prevent him from accepting the miracle, and he would find some other possible way of explaining the miracle naturally, or, at worst, would simply say “We cannot know what really happened here.” Even God couldn’t get through to this person!

My feeling is that atheists would reply, “Well, there are no such obvious miracles, so your point is moot. Show me the obvious miracle, and then we can talk.” I think this misses the point, however. What I’m discussing are the logical implications of choices atheists make; it logically follows from the epistemology that atheists adopt that they can’t ever find God. It would be pointless for God to perform one for them, for it would have to fall on deaf ears, as long as they hold on to their epistemology. To be truly open-minded they would have to let go of the epistemology.

A Complication

The complication in this is morality. Although some atheists deny that morality is real, in my experience the vast majority of them do hold to an objective morality that they feel everyone should submit to. This morality is, of course, not empirically knowable (Hume, G.E. Moore, and a host of others have made this point). They also, for the most part, try to follow it. So autonomy is limited further still — it’s limited by “the facts,” and it’s limited by what’s right and wrong. Just as we do not get to choose the facts, we also do not get to choose what is right or wrong. We merely decide whether we will obey. And, by in large, atheists do choose to obey. Atheists, in general, desire rebelliousness, not wickedness.

Given the above, the key difference between atheists and theists is, once again, personal. I remember having a very long but interesting discussion with an atheist colleague in grad school about the Euthyphro problem aimed at deriving morals from God. Putting the problem’s details aside, for him the worst thing about morality from God is that it is personally derived; this makes morality arbitrary. He could only give credence to moral theories that are based in an impersonal principle. Following a law is reasonable, but a lawgiver isn’t.

So, summing it up, atheists will bow down to the impersonal, not the personal. If morality is indeed impersonal, and somehow either reducible to empirical facts (Patricia Churchland and Sam Harris argue that it can: I’m not convinced), or to some set of objective, but immaterial, impersonal facts (like those of math, logic), then the atheist can be a consistent moral realist (someone who believes morality is objectively real). Otherwise, he will have an internal conflict in his worldview. He will have to either reject atheism, or objective morality.

The Atheist’s Wager

So what of it? Is the atheist unreasonable? In one sense, no. For he’s convinced that God’s existence, from the start, is extremely unlikely, and that there is some secular basis for morality. There is knowledge to be had, and being open to explanations that don’t provide usable knowledge about the world (i.e., “God did it”) could threaten at least some of this. So he puts his bet on natural science. He doesn’t fear the consequences. If he’s right about God’s inherent low probability, then this is a good bet.

But he might not be. For atheists don’t have good reason to think God is inherently improbable. Dawkins’s Ultimate Boeing 747 Gambit, for example, is a poster child for bad atheist arguments. Atheist mockery is more telling — from that their intuition that God is inherently improbable comes from false comparisons with beings that really are inherently improbable, such as fairies, Thor, The Flying Spaghetti Monster. But the God of theism isn’t really like these beings (I argue for that here). About that God, all the atheist can say is that he doesn’t know what the inherent probability of God’s existence is. And we can’t forget that saying that God’s probability is unknown is not the same as saying it is low.

Also, there is something that’s sacrificed in this wager: value, ultimate purpose and meaning. Going back to morality, atheists will indeed submit to it. Consider the intuition that right and wrong is somehow based on value. For empiricists (atheists are typically empiricists), value is personal, subjective. It comes from what some person wants, desires. But atheists also put their desires aside to do what’s right. This would be clearly irrational for an atheist to do, if value is merely the desires of some person (somebody else, in this case) and there is no God. The only way a value-based morality could be anything close to objective is if based on the values of God (or some being with universal authority). I would have to admit it wouldn’t be completely objective, as it would be coming from a person, but it would be as universal as the other things God made, including the physical universe.

Also, purpose and meaning themselves seem to be worth something. Even the ardent atheist Daniel Dennett claimed that the secret to happiness is finding something greater than you are, and committing yourself to it. It’s part of human thriving to be part of something larger, to, well, bow down to something greater than we are. Theism wins this one in spades.

But, at bottom, whether or not a wager is reasonable depends on the probabilities and the payoffs. Here we don’t know what the probabilities are, but we have some idea of the payoffs. Theists can retain much of what atheists want: there is no reason a theist can’t enjoy pretty much all of what science delivers, or contribute to the discoveries science makes. But theists also gain the possibility of true, ultimate purpose, and a more satisfying view of what is right and wrong, and why it makes sense to submit to it. They also gain the riches of experiencing a reality that transcends the material, and the comfort of belief in an afterlife.

One final note. I just saw my father-in-law pass away. When I comfort my wife, imagine the shock she would receive if I told her that her father no longer exists; what existence he has is reduced to the corpse we viewed! The only comforting thing to hear is that he’s in a better place, a place where he is no longer crippled. Theists can take this comfort. Atheists cannot. Given that atheists are, well, betting on unknown probabilities, it’s hard for me to see what the advantage of that is. But that’s just me.

* This one of Richard Rorty’s (well-known pragmatist/postmodernist) complaints about atheist realists (those that believe in reality): they reject the Cross, but they still bow down to the god of science. Rorty bowed to no god.

Should a Rational, Educated Person Believe in Life After Death?

If you asked a neuroscientist or a science-oriented-person-in-general, you would probably hear, “No.” After all, the mind is the brain and when the brain dies, so does the mind. Nothing survives death. There are no “souls.” The view that the mind is distinct from the brain and can survive the death of the body is called dualism, and it is very unpopular with neuroscientists and philosophers. It is so unpopular, in fact, that well-known philosophers such as Daniel Dennett don’t even need bother with a refutation of it — they just merely say “no one believes that anymore” and dismiss it (see here) to move on to their own form of materialism.

On the other hand, the vast majority of the American public (80% in 2014) does believe in life after death. When Dennett said nobody believes in dualism anymore, he was obviously referring to academics and neuroscientists — they are the ones that matter, I suppose. Are the experts right and the American masses wrong here? Has dualism been proven false?

No. In fact, Dennett himself more or less admits this. Consider this quote regarding dualism:

This fundamentally antiscientific stance of dualism is, to my mind, its most disqualifying feature, and is the reason why in this book I adopt the apparently dogmatic rule that dualism is to be avoided at all costs. It is not that I think I can give a knock-down proof that dualism, in all its forms is false or incoherent, but that, given the way dualism wallows in mystery, accepting dualism is giving up. (Explaining Consciousness, p. 37)

So the reason Dennett rejects dualism (and life after death) because it’s “antiscientific,” because it’s “giving up.” It’s not because it has been shown to be wrong. It stops scientific enquiry. Good enough.

More could be said, of course. Scientists, by in large, follow the principle of methodological naturalism; they do not consider the supernatural in their investigations. This doesn’t rule out the supernatural per se, but when following this principle leads to all the advances the neurosciences has enjoyed, it makes one doubt that there is a supernatural thing like the soul behind it all. Much remains to be explained in the neurosciences, but the fact that so much has been explained has given materialist neuroscientists and philosophers reason to at least place a very heavy burden of proof on those who do believe in souls.

But is that all that can be said? Should all the poor, benighted masses stop going to church, believing in the afterlife, believing that loved-ones who have passed away are in heaven? Should they all demand clear evidence of the afterlife before spending another day as a Christian, Muslim, Hindu? I think that the above reasoning could be challenged. Consider the use of burden of proof among soul-deniers. They require acceptable evidence for the soul. Unfortunately, this may not be possible even if there are such things as souls, for if anything were claimed to be evidence for the soul, materialists would simply say that they could find a natural explanation for it. And they’d be right.

Emotions are evidence for the soul, you say? Well, we can explain that with the activity of neurons in the hippocampus, the presence or absence of certain neurotransmitters.  What about the ability to learn? Neural nets in computers can do that: we have trillions of such in our brains. Don’t need a soul for that. Decision making? Look to the prefrontal cortex. Falling in love? Oxytocin. And so on. And even if there is no current neurobiological explanation for a phenomenon offered as evidence for souls, a materialist can either say that we should wait for one (give neuroscience some more time, for it has an excellent track record), or say that the phenomenon doesn’t exist. Free will (taken as most people mean it), for example, may not have a neurobiological explanation, but people like Dennett or Patricia Churchland would simply say that it doesn’t exist. The same goes for first-person experience, consciousness. Consciousness (or at least certain features of consciousness, such as the raw experiences known as qualia) is notoriously hard to explain just in terms of the brain. Those aspects of consciousness not explainable by science are deemed fictions, merely a part of a pre-scientific “folk psychology.”

Notice that these moves can be made even if there are such things as souls. And it would be nearly impossible to disprove them, given that they could keep making these same moves against any attempt to disprove them. In other words, materialism is unfalsifiable — even if it were false, there is no observation or reason that could ever disprove it. Hence it is untestable, and ironically, unscientific.

You might say, “Ok, so it’s impossible to win an argument with a die hard materialist. So what? That doesn’t mean there are souls or that we should believe in them.” And you would be right regarding the first point: materialism’s unfalsifiability doesn’t imply that it’s actually false, or that there are souls. But what about the second point? Maybe there might be reason to believe in souls, even if they can’t be proven to exist.

There are practical reasons. Belief in the afterlife gives people comfort. It allows them to hope for loved ones who have passed, and a hope for a reunion in the future. It also gives reason for people to “be good,” even if they can get away with being bad. They might be punished in the afterlife, or the next life. Another is that the afterlife is a central part of most religions. Abandoning it means giving up one’s religion. One other thing, it allows us to forget about death. As we get older, we start seeing the end more clearly. Belief that the end really isn’t the end allows me, at any rate, to not obsess about it as much.

Ok, I know a lot of people wouldn’t see the previous paragraph as much of a motivation. They have settled into a scientific worldview and have become comfortable with it. But I’m not speaking to them. For them, their bet has been made; they are betting on naturalism. But it is a bet; we can’t forget or deny it. Naturalism (the view that only scientific things can exist) is not known to be true. It’s a hunch, a take, a perspective. But so are worldviews that allow a place for the supernatural.

When it comes to whether or not to accept naturalism, it’s not about evidence, really. It’s about what first seems plausible to a person. She adopts a worldview. Then she goes and interprets the evidence in light of this worldview. But as to deciding which worldview to take, evidence isn’t the ultimate deciding factor — it’s about what she values, fears, and hopes for.

Given that naturalism/materialism hasn’t been proven, and that it has such a hard time with consciousness, free will, rationality, and other features of the mind, I don’t see it as the only bet a person could make. One could acknowledge all that neuroscience, as science, and not as philosophy, says, and still bet on the afterlife by believing in it. And for many people, the benefits outweigh the costs.

A-Theism, For Real?

Most of today’s atheists define atheism as sort of an “a-theism”, that is, lack of belief. This grants the atheist a burden of proof advantage; it’s a non-claim, and non-claims require no support.

I don’t like this definition: most vocal atheists aren’t merely non-committal or unopinionated about God. No, they really think God doesn’t exist!! They think God is improbable, ridiculous, like a unicorn, or the Flying Spaghetti Monster, or the Flying Teapot. They think that God needs to be opposed, eradicated. They aren’t a-theists, they are athe-ists.

The vocal, anti-theistic atheists should be more honest. They should embrace the traditional definition (athe-ism), instead of the more recent, watered-down, a-theism*; they should deny God’s existence. And this sort of atheism does have a burden of proof, for it is making a claim.

Also, if an atheist claims that belief in God is irrational, unjustified, harmful, etc, they have a burden of proof as well regarding the irrationality claim, for it is a claim.

So, if you are anti-God, anti-Christian, anti-theist, and you are honest, and you really think God is like the Flying Teapot or the Flying Spaghetti Monster, then you should own up to positive atheism, strong atheism, or whatever the vogue term is for denying God’s existence. And you will need to meet some sort of burden of proof.

 

 

*The earliest use of a-theism I am aware is Anthony Flew’s use in his 1972 paper, “The Presumption of Atheism.”

Zombies: A Case for God

Zombies are logically possible. That is, we can conceive of them. They aren’t like square circles. Philosophical zombies are human bodies that look and act just like we do, but have no experiences, no inner world. They aren’t conscious in this sense. They will tell you they are conscious if asked, by the way.  For their brain circuits are sufficient for this and any other human behavior.

A world that has complex organisms that do what we do yet lack consciousness is possible. If so, then consciousness is an added feature to a material world.  All of our survival can be explained purely in terms the evolution of mechanisms, without mentioning inner experience even once. Consciousness, defined strictly as inner experience, doesn’t have a real explanatory role.

Thus the philosopher David Chalmers thinks that consciousness is a primitive. It may be a basic feature of the universe, or at least as basic as matter and energy. It doesn’t seem explainable in terms of them. (For more about zombies and materialism, see this blog post from Phillip Goff. For more about the troubles of explaining consciousness, see this blog by Bobby Azarian).

“What does this have to do with God?” you might ask. Well, if there is something more than what physics studies (the material universe), that might open the door for immaterial beings like God. Moreover, given that there is no physical explanation for consciousness, and if it also is a primitive, then consciousness could only come from consciousness. And since God is an always existing conscious being, God could be an explanation for consciousness.

This wouldn’t be enough for a case for God: for one could just say that our consciousness derives from some general consciousness woven throughout the universe, and didn’t come from a particular conscious being. There is additional evidence for God, however, this evidence is problematic to skeptics. But one reason it is problematic may be disarmed by the mystery of consciousness.

The problematic evidence: consider the Kalam Cosmological Argument: The universe had a beginning, and things with beginnings have causes. Therefore, something caused the universe. That something must be outside the universe, and that something isn’t material (otherwise it would be part of the universe). Add to this that other features of the universe, such as the fine-tuning of physical constants for life, seem designed. Perhaps the cause of the universe is an immaterial mind.

The problem with the problematic evidence: we know that many features of our minds depend on physical brains. But there was no cosmic brain existing before the universe! Postulating such a being as an explanation for the universe is ridiculous, as Richard Dawkins argues, for a God like this would have be immensely complex and improbable.

How consciousness helps: Consciousness seems inexplicable in terms of brains. This opens up the possibility of a non-physical explanation. And, for all we know, there might be non-physical ways in which to instantiate other parts of the mind. So there could be such things as minds without problematically complex brains. And these ways, even if complex, might not contribute to improbability like physical complexity does (e.g., even complex mathematical statements are no less probable than simple ones). Thus God may not be such a long shot as Dawkins and others suppose.

It is a bit speculative to speak of such things; but regarding the beginning of the universe, and the fine tuning of the physical constants, it’s no more speculative than any of the other hypotheses floating around (especially the multiverse hypothesis). This, plus the fact that perhaps the most important part of mind can’t be explained purely in terms of physics fits better with this hypothesis than with atheistic naturalism. For not only could God create matter, He can create mind as well. Not so for multiverses. All a multiverse could do is create zombies.

Christians Should Just Admit the Bible isn’t Ethical by Secular Standards

In recent years a moral outcry has arisen against the Bible among secularists. Many of the actions/commandments in the Bible are moral abominations to them. Three noteworthy examples: God’s command to Abraham to burn Isaac on the alter, God’s wiping out, or commanding Israel to wipe out, entire peoples, and God’s prohibition of homosexuality.

As a Christian I might feel compelled to defend these actions of God. But I know that such defenses (e.g., God wiped out peoples because they were exceedingly evil and deserved it) would not only fail with secularists, but would make them question my own morality for offering such a defense.

Indeed, I would argue that there is no defense of the actions of Yahweh in the Old Testament that could work within a modern, secular moral framework. That is because of some of the assumptions of that framework. These assumptions have been with us for so long, and feel so right, that they seem axiomatic. Here are some of them:

1. All persons have the same basic rights (e.g., from the American Declaration of Independence: life, liberty, pursuit of happiness).
2. All of morality is to be based on these.

Things that follow:

1. We have the right to do whatever we want, just so long as we are not interfering with others.
2. We have the right to have our lives and property protected.
3. No one has the right to take away our lives, freedom, or property, except as a means to protect the rights of others, and in ways approved by a government formed by the people on the authority of the people.

If these are true, Israel’s wiping out groups of people at God’s command couldn’t be justified, as no one person or society could ever have that kind of authority to kill. Prohibiting homosexuality is wrong as well; we have the right to whatever lifestyle we want if no one is hurt by it.

In addition to these, there are factual (that is, non-moral) assumptions secularists make that would make the Bible unjustifiable:

1. There is no life after death.
2. There is no clear, undeniable revelation from God.

If these last two are true, no one could have the right to kill because “God told me to,” for there is no clear revelation from God. And killing a person is the worst thing you can do to someone because there is no life after death. A dead person cannot be compensated. Given all of the above, the only possible justification for killing a person would be to prevent further killings. Thus the command for Abraham to kill Isaac (and the genocides, for that matter) has no justification at all! To kill Isaac would be merely a horrible, pointless act commanded by an imaginary divine fiend.

So, at bottom, the Bible cannot be justified within a modern, secular moral framework based on the principles of modern, liberal democracies.

What can a Christian say in reply? To start, Christians cannot accept the two factual claims. As I am focusing on moral principles, I won’t argue against them here. But it’s pretty obvious that secularists and Christians must disagree on these. On to the moral principles.

First I want to admit that the secular moral principles are, in a certain sense, correct. That is, they work in providing rules regarding how human beings ought to treat each other. I also think they are grounding principles for governments: we humans ought not to govern ourselves any other way. But are they the deepest truth regarding morality?

What if they are only a special case? For example, there are also principles regarding ethical treatment of animals that aren’t like the above principles. Not all secularists are vegans or vegetarians — many eat animals. They often have pets. Some visit zoos, Sea World, and other such places. They might kill household pests. They definitely allow the killing of fetuses. That is, they would agree that not all life has the above rights, only persons do. Sure, there are some rights subpersonal life forms have; we might be okay with killing pigs for pork, but we wouldn’t be okay with torturing them for fun. We might be okay with abortion, but not abortion for the sake of selling biomaterials. Still, subpersons have less rights than persons.

What about superpersons, beings with a  higher level of consciousness, ability, intelligence, emotion, and awareness than humans have? Might they be to us as we are to pigs? That is, the claim that all humans have the same basic rights might only apply to humans. If, for the sake of argument, God did exist, it seems plausible to me that He wouldn’t be at the same level of rights as human persons.

John Locke

To support this idea, consider, for a moment, the source of human rights. Two basic competing notions have been offered. John Locke, the one responsible for much of the discussion of rights behind the Declaration of Independence, claimed the source was God (so does the Declaration itself). God is the granter of rights. If so, then might he also be the revoker of rights? One thing is clear, the rights God enjoys would have to be of a higher level than our rights if our rights get their authority from God.

Thomas Hobbes

The other notion is that of Thomas Hobbes: we humans are roughly equal in ability and intelligence. Since we know that we are not strong or smart enough to dominate everyone else and keep safe, we agree to sacrifice some of our freedom by granting basic rights to ourselves and others. That is, human rights are really a contract between completely selfish people who know the limits of their own physical and intellectual power. On this view, human rights are the result of a political process, not, as in Locke, the motivation for it. If this is the case, then if God existed, He wouldn’t need to grant any of these rights, as a self-interested being, as he in no danger from the likes of us.

If these are the only two basic kinds of options, then it seems that God would be beyond and above the rights listed above. God is not beholden to them.

But Christians insist that God is good, not merely that he isn’t violating any social contract. In other words, what would be God’s morality that would make Him this wonderful being, if He doesn’t respect our rights? From the Bible we can find two parts: a part about our relationship with God, and a part about how we humans should treat each other. Regarding the former, from what I can tell, it seems that God has both great wrath and great love. Regarding wrath, He wipes out people who deface His name in the Old Testament. He is extremely jealous when it comes to who Israel worships, and punishes them when they “cheat on” Him.

God sounds horrible here, but think of it this way: have you ever been in love? Didn’t you feel jealous when he/she flirted with (or had sex with) other people, especially when you thought you were in a committed relationship with him/her? You felt betrayed, hurt, and angry. The God of the Old Testament is a superperson in love with an unfaithful people. A jilted lover at that. Read the OT yourself with this in mind (a good example the Book of Hosea —There he promises to punish Israel for her infidelity, and then restore His relationship with her, all with rather romantic sounding poetry); it will explain a lot.

Add to this the bad things these people were doing to each other (the lack of justice we find the prophets often preaching against), and we have the reasons God punishes them so horribly.

Now as human beings, we are limited in how we may treat unfaithful lovers. Again, we have agreed to a social contract to live in a democratic society, and we need to respect each other’s basic human rights. All we can rightfully do is break off the relationship with the unfaithful partner (and maybe rant about them to a friend). As for injustice, we can point to the law, or engage in peaceful protest, or, at the very most, defend ourselves. But God isn’t limited in His rights in the way we are. He isn’t in our social contract. Democracy is for us, not for Him. God may be within His rights to destroy an unfaithful creature He brought about.

The above view of a God in love isn’t a very flattering view of God at first glance, I admit — a superperson in love with creatures so far beneath Him that He justifiably wipes them out when they are unfaithful to Him. My justification is very counterintuitive. This is because we (or those of us fortunate enough to grow up in a democracy) have been taught from early childhood that democracy is right, that all humans have basic human rights, and so forth. And I agree with this, as far as human-human relationships go. But I’m treating that as a special case here: if it is, God’s morality might be beyond this.

I maintain that God still would be a good being, nonetheless, with all of the above. The fact that God would condescend to such a relationship with us is noble. And His anger at our refusing it is justified by the fact that God is so much higher than us and worthy of us. And our infidelity is all the more punishable for this. And let’s not forget: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only son.” God’s Son was his most beloved; he was willing to give him to us for our salvation.

What about the other part of morality: how we ought to treat each other? There are the God-given rights that Locke and the Declaration of Independence list. But God never speaks of “rights” in the Bible. Still, Jesus says, “Love your neighbor as yourselves.” In fact, Jesus captures the whole of morality in this same passage. From Matthew chapter 22:

³⁷ Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’³⁸ This is the first and greatest commandment. ³⁹ And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’⁴⁰ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

Modern democracies with their rights don’t go this far. Jesus commands us to love other people as much as ourselves, even our enemies. The key word here is, of course, love. It’s a morality of love, not rights. Modern ethical systems don’t mention it.

Back to the original problems. Regarding genocide, God has this right. God is still good, for God condescends to love the human race, despite its comparative insignificance and ubiquitous evil. And humans are pretty evil; when I look a the thoughts in my own mind, I know I have evil in me. So will you, if you are honest. God commanding Israel to kill, again God has the right. Add to that the view that clear revelation is possible, then Israel is also justified in wiping out groups of people (If the revelation is true, of course. Most of the killings in the name of God are not the result of genuine revelation.).

What about Abraham and Isaac? First, God has this right as creator. Second, there is the possibility of God raising Isaac from the dead. If God exists and life after death is possible (secularists assume neither is true), then God is justified in asking for this to test Abraham’s faithfulness. He could restore Isaac. And Abraham might have thought this too.

The prohibition of homosexuality is harder. Honestly, I don’t have an answer to this one, other than God finds it offensive. But again, we are talking about God, not us. Just because I might find it distasteful doesn’t mean I have the right to prevent others from enjoying it. I’m a citizen of the United States; so are they. We, as citizens, have a civil right to our lifestyles. But God is not a citizen of the United States. He’s God. He designed humans to be a certain way, and has the right, as a superperson, to prohibit them from departing from it.

So I did try to justify God, as I said I shouldn’t do. No doubt a secularist would not accept this justification. There’s no way she can, with her assumptions about reality and morality. But if these aren’t the ground truth, and if a case could be made for God and for life after death, then I think my justifications do have some weight.

So what this amounts to is that Christianity is consistent in its own worldview regarding how it views reality and morality. So is secularism. But these views are not consistent with each other.

I did a lot of work to come to an obvious conclusion. I did it to make a related point. The the point is regarding the fact that that secularists think Christians ought to be ashamed when God doesn’t fit into their secular idea of morality, or that God’s not fitting into this morality is a legitimate objection to Christianity. My point is that of course the Bible doesn’t fit into secular morality; it’s not supposed to.

Bottom line: God cannot be justified in a secular moral framework. Nor should He be.

God’s Inherent Probability

Atheists think God is inherently improbable, much like the Flying Teapot or Flying Spaghetti Monster. Theists don’t think God is anything like these objects (for one thing, God is immaterial — those things are physical objects with weird qualities or locations). David Hume/Richard Dawkins argued that God is improbable because God is complex. But as God is immaterial and lacks parts, it’s hard to imagine how this is possible, or even if it were, why it would affect God’s probability.

A better argument is this: the only minds we have clear experience of are tied to (some insist “identical to”) physical brains. Thus God, even as pure mind, is extraordinary. A mind without a body is statistically unlikely, given our evidence of mind/brain correlation.

I think this would be the strongest atheist reply to what I have been arguing for some time about the atheist assumption that God is inherently improbable. For theists do think God is a Mind, and it doesn’t make the obnoxious mistake of assuming God would have to be like a flying horse with a horn or some pile of omnipotent spaghetti.

The best theist response would be to argue for some form of dualism regarding human minds. They should argue that neuroscience has, and maybe always will, fail at explaining the most important part of the mind: conscious experience.