Dmitry Chernikov’s Blog

Why it won’t work, proves Rothbard:

Another alternative right-wing strategy is that commonly pursued by many libertarian or conservative think tanks: that of quiet persuasion, not in the groves of academe, but in Washington, D.C., in the corridors of power. This has been called the “Fabian” strategy, with think tanks issuing reports calling for a two percent cut in a tax here, or a tiny drop in a regulation there. The supporters of this strategy often point to the success of the Fabian Society, which, by its detailed empirical researches, gently pushed the British state into a gradual accretion of socialist power.

The flaw here, however, is that what works to increase state power does not work in reverse. For the Fabians were gently nudging the ruling elite precisely in the direction they wanted to travel anyway. Nudging the other way would go strongly against the state’s grain, and the result is far more likely to be the state’s co-opting and Fabianizing the think-tankers themselves rather than the other way around. This sort of strategy may, of course, be personally very pleasant for the think-tankers, and may be profitable in cushy jobs and contracts from the government. But that is precisely the problem.

Continue reading…

HT: Lew Rockwell

Almost every point in this critique of ID is off the mark. It is simply not true that ID deals with the origins of life; and evolution, with the “progress” of life once life arose. ID claims that numerous biological systems could not have come about via the Darwinian pathways from whatever their physical precursors were; that is, by slight, successive modifications of the previous, presumably less complex and less specified, system in the changing organisms. This becomes especially clear if we examine cellular structures and molecular machines.

On the issue of testability, etc. as signs of ID’s scientific nature, see William Dembski’s “Is Intelligent Design Testable?”

Intelligent Design is not theology. Congdon writes: “In other words, science, by the very nature of the discipline, is naturalistic and materialistic.” Nonsense. Methodological naturalism must be defended not merely asserted. Further, intelligent causes are clearly part of nature: we humans are intelligent. We encounter effects of intelligent causes all the time. Speaking of design in nature does not require us to discuss the designer of nature at all, although nothing prevents figuring out who the designer is from being part of the ID research program.

For these reasons ID is not “a contemporary version of natural theology.” In The Design Revolution Dembski devotes an entire chapter to distinguishing between intelligent design and the design argument for the existence of God. (Part I, Question 7, p. 64) At this point we come to the strangest part of Congdon’s essay, in which he condemns philosophy of religion and natural theology, whereby we can come to know God by reason without any aid from revelation, as illegitimate and “anti-Christian” disciplines. Even according to the Vatican Council, “If anyone says that the one true God, our Creator and Lord, cannot be known with certainty by the natural light of human reason by means of the things that are made, let him be anathema.” And if indeed it is true that “by and large, natural theology is dead,” then I suppose it falls onto me and, hopefully, a few other folks to revive it.

ID does not postulate a god of the gaps; it is an inference to the best explanation, seeing that there exist rigorous ways of detecting design.

Finally, the Christian faith may not blithely allow for scientific naturalism which does not admit intelligent causation, as such a thing is contrary to its understanding of grace. If God designs souls — that is, uplifts them into fellowship with Him, then it is unnatural flatly to deny, without adducing any evidence, that He can design bodies, as well.

Suppose that instead of a good you have n units of an economic bad. Now an economic bad is something that takes away your utility, deepens your dissatisfaction, provides services you’d rather be without. In other words, a bad is something it costs (money, let’s say) to get rid of. For a normal good, the first unit of that good is put to its highest valued end on one’s value scale. The second unit is put the second highest valued end. Etc. And the nth unit is assigned the least important job. With bads its the reverse. Suppose it takes $10 to neutralize one unit of a bad (e.g., dispose of 1 pound of pollution). Then the first $10 you spend to free yourself from the first unit of the bad is taken away from the least valued use of your total money stock. For example, now you have to live without that extra cone of ice cream — a trivial pleasure. Spending the next $10 on the second unit of the bad, however, will be equivalent to sacrificing the next-to-last pleasure that this $10 could have bought for you, had you not wanted to eliminate the bad’s influence. And so on, until the last, say 20th unit of the bad is disposed of with the last $10 of the $200 you had. And this last $10 would have been put to the highest valued use of this amount of cash, such as paying a utility bill. It follows that the first unit of the bad is the least unpleasant, and the last unit is, on the contrary, the most hurtful to your wallet, despite the equal price of getting rid of both.

Switching to neoclassical economics now, the normal indifference curves between two goods look like this:

The indifference curves between two bads will look like this:

The curves are straight, because the law of diminishing marginal utility does not apply here. Every good is unique and satisfies a different want. That’s why if you have a lot of Xs but few Ys, you might be willing to forgo relatively more of X in order to acquire even a little of Y. But all bads are the same, manifesting their badness in the cost of removing them and the utility gained thereupon. The “law of increasing marginal disutility” makes sense only as outlined above. If one unit of bad X costs $10 to eliminate, and one unit of bad Y costs $5 to eliminate, then the marginal rate of substitution is always the same: 1 X for 2 Ys.

If you have one bad and one good, then the indifference curves will have the following shape:

, with the good on the vertical axis and the bad on the horizontal axis. The more of the bad you have, the more of the good you need to “compensate.” The curves are not straight, because as the amount of the bad in your possession increases, its marginal disutility increases, as well, and requires more and more of the good to offset it.

The “divine love is holy, meaning that God accomplishes God’s purposes over against all opposition,” says D.W. Congdon. So much for Craigian limits on God’s power to save.

In other words, God’s judgment destroys opposition, while God’s mercy and grace build up the new you. (Assuming the purpose of judgment is to correct rather than to destroy or deter, etc.)

See also: Congdon’s whole series.

HT: Victor Reppert

I see two reasons for why not everyone can be saved.

1. There are persons who are transcircumstantially depraved. T-c depravity is entirely equivalent to the Calvinistic doctrine of positive reprobation. It postulates a peculiar species of man, one which is totally unreceptive to any kind of saving grace. I have written on it before, and my conclusion has not changed: William Lane Craig should be ashamed of himself for putting together such an idea.

2. The enormously complex human interconnections in the world do not allow everyone to be saved; instead, there must a some sort of utilitarian optimization of, say, total human happiness. I quote Rev 2:10 in On Craig on Salvation, Part II. But surely, the devil, too, may act through secondary causes: it is wicked men who will imprison the apostles. If the devil is doomed, why not those men? Against this I already made the point that God is too good an artisan to throw away his work. And I’m not even that sure there is a devil. But we can argue also that sending people to hell does not merely fail to add happiness to the total (however aggregated) but rather subtracts an enormous amount from it, as hell is pain that, thankfully, cannot be conceived. Henry Hazlitt makes a similar point in his The Foundations of Morality: if one half of the population enslaves the other half, there will be a great decrease in total utility. What of God’s artificially hardening people’s hearts in order to bring about some greater good? (e.g., Ex 4:21, Ex 7:3) I say that (1) this may have been merely a temporary effect and (2) this is all OT stuff which no longer applies to us.

Moreover, a case can be made that if some are condemned, then at least one half of the world are condemned. Presumably, each good person, scheduled for salvation, must encounter moral evil to overcome. But if, say, only 1/10 of the population were scumbags who are chaff to be burned, there may not be enough moral evil in the world to create a good challenge for the saints. Yet if exactly half the world are slated for hellfire, then, just as there is a single guardian angel for each person, there is a single human demon-in-the-making (or rather, human-in-the-unmaking) for each person, as well. A crude calculation, to be sure. But as we shall see, at least somewhat compelling.

Again it may be argued that the damned are an inescapable price to pay for the salvation of the elect. But my opinion is that this price, even in the form of a single condemned person, is far too high. If I were God, and if I foresaw the eternal torture of the damned, I wouldn’t have created the world. And if the number crunching in the previous paragraph makes sense, then the bliss of the saved may well be completely offset by the suffering of the damned. Why create the world then? Now we may further ask, what do the saved care about the damned? Let the whole world be deservedly destroyed, so long as I am OK. This may be a defensible attitude from my point of view (cf. Aquinas, ST, II-I, 4, 8: “Is the fellowship of friends necessary for happiness?”) but certainly not from God’s who would be revealed as profoundly incompetent and even insane to have led almost all of the world to ruin.

The idea is that a world in which everyone is saved would be a toy world, in which there is no drama, no real risk, and therefore no real victory. But if hell is a possibility, then suddenly our choices acquire enormous significance, and the battlefield of life becomes as real as it gets.

Here is a bad reply: Jesus says that “If a man owns a hundred sheep, and one of them wanders away, will he not leave the ninety-nine on the hills and go to look for the one that wandered off? And if he finds it, I tell you the truth, he is happier about that one sheep than about the ninety-nine that did not wander off.” (Mt 18:12-13) But what if by leaving the 99 sheep to go search for the lost one Jesus will cause these 99 to be eaten by wolves? Will Jesus exchange one sheep for 99? Not likely.

My reply is first to note that the world contains enough suffering to imbue our actions with sufficient importance. Even if no one actually goes to hell, one can make his life pretty miserable before at some point coming to his senses. The drama is real even without damnation. The road to heaven can be very circuitous and hard even if going to hell is always prevented. God’s glory is promoted by creating beautiful and unique finite reflections of His infinite perfection. Damnation is a destruction of identity, of form; there are no real people in hell, just burned-up ashes, tormented and full of insane hatred. But God is a master craftsman, in whose hands we are clay. He doesn’t make mistakes and throw poorly made humans out into the fire. Secondly, I am quite certain that hell exists. And that it is the worst thing in the world. But it is precisely the horror of it which serves as an incentive not to fall into hell. It’s true that some criminals are not deterred even by capital punishment. But hell is infinitely worse than any earthly torture. Hence no amount of irrationality or obstinacy can prevent a person from righting his ways as a consequence of feeling the hellfire.

I have written that “repenting entails rejecting a part of yourself, an evil part but one you still love, because otherwise you would not have done according to it.” But what if every part of you is corrupt? You can’t reject everything, lest you disappear. Further, in this case you are probably shameless in evil. Well, it seems to me that it is precisely the job of God not to permit such a thing. God is our savior not just in the sense that He forgives sins, but also because He builds us up (often through secondary causes, of course) and does not destroy His handiwork.

Again it may be objected that as devils are sacrificed for the sake of humans, so some men are sacrificed for the sake of the elect. And I again reply that God is far more cunning than any devil and is able to save all of us, though our glory is still going to be unequal.

See also: Thoughts on Punishments, Part II

> Christianity condemns the bodies we know, this world we know, as false and meaningless.

Attributing the properties “false” and “meaningless” to bodies seems as absurd as attributing, say, hunger to triangles. What’s a “meaningless body”?

> The suspicion arises, however, that this “other” world does not exist, and that it is thus, as the opposite of this world, the opposite of life, i.e., death, nothingness.

Yes, this suspicion may arise in anybody who reflects on the ultimate issues. And yet our friend Solon here who promotes his death and nothingness doctrine is accusing Christians of being anti-life. Beam me up.

> Christianity’s genealogy suggests it’s judgments arose out of a hatred of life, by a people that suffered from life. Is Christianity an expression of revenge upon life? Hence a form of illness?

Now look, I’d be the first to argue that we ought not to give up and struggle valiantly in life for happiness, our own and of those we love. But, you see, death is inevitable and with it, as might appear to an unenlightened mind, the destruction of all subjectivity, all meaning, and all previous action and striving and success. At least Christians are reconciled to death through a highly sophisticated doctrine. (Or, at least, more sophisticated than “your soul (if such there be) corrupts into nothingness, and your body rots into death.”) Christianity, then, far from being anti-life, is much more aptly described as anti-death.

> Christianity fundamentally devalues our world and bodies, and values the opposite, but if we reject this “opposite” that Christianity is selling, we’re only left with this world, and then Christianity strikes us as a bizarre predilection for the opposite of life.

Let’s consider the most friendly to Solon possibility. The body may well be simply an incredibly complex tool, a way of permitting us to interact with the material world, and most important, a means to soul-making. Once it is shed at death, the personal identity built with its help remains and is glorified in the hereafter. Christianity does not devalue our world and bodies in the absolute sense but only relatively, as compared with heavenly existence. It “devalues” them to the same extent as the life of a fetus is devalued compared to the life of an adult, as the life of a caterpillar, to the life of the butterfly. There is a transformation, a transcendence going on as the soul leaves the body.

But even if a tool, an essential one. And a means is valued proportionately to the value of the end. So, the body and mental and physical health and natural happiness are important.

> It’s again telling that Christianity had to proscribe against suicide early on.

You don’t want to commit suicide because you do not want to miss valuable opportunities to succeed in some way and make a difference in this life precisely such as will “echo in eternity.” (Gladiator) Further, we read that “From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked.” (Lk 12:48) Thus, letting go when your body is at the point of death is not wrong, yet killing oneself in the prime of life is clearly wicked. (Note that the existence of difficult cases, such as assisted suicide and the like, does not entail that there are no obvious cases.) Surely, proscribing suicide is pro-life, while looking at it in some pagan, perhaps, way as just another option, is hardly such.

Solon might argue that getting to heaven is an incentive to suicide or improper martyrdom. I’ll grant him that point. But where there is a problem, there is a solution, and we see the correct behavior clarified: “Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit lives in you? If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy him; for God’s temple is sacred, and you are that temple.” (1 Cor 3:16-17) Suicide, normally, is just the wrong way to that “better place.” The life here and the life there are connected, and the transition must be in some way “natural.” (See, Christianity likes nature. Will Solon now be reduced to arguing that Christianity does not permit certain forms of euthanasia, abortion, etc., thereby still being anti-life?) Perhaps the point can be put in this way: the nature of heaven is such that it precludes attaining heaven by inappropriate means. Understanding this should only strengthen the natural repulsiveness of self-murder.

> What I am saying is simply that next to pagan religions’ divinization of procreation and sexuality, Christianity’s anti-animality (and hence anti-sexuality) is put into very strong relief.

Yes, well, Christianity claims that there exist pleasures in comparison with which the pleasures of sex pale. In fact, Christianity is not anti-anything; it is pro-happiness (like Ron Paul is pro liberty, property, and peace); it’s just that it teaches that true happiness can be hidden in what to uninitiated, to “natural men” untouched by grace, might seem like odd places.

At any rate, even the Catholic church does not micromanage sex within marriage. If you want to have sex 5 times a day 7 days a week, by all means, more (sexual) power to you. Yes, artificial birth control is frowned upon, but this attitude is not arbitrary; there are reasons for it, whether you agree with them or nor. And it encourages having children. But even our author will concur with the point that having children outside of marriage is crazy, and even premarital sex is highly problematic, because true communion between lovers is impossible.

I used to like imaginative retellings of the story of creation and fall, and I think I still do. Here is one such, from Aeon Flux’s “Chronophasia”:

Trevor is holding Aeon captive in his tent and is feeding her.

I recommend that brilliant series to everyone; just try to get the original versions, instead of the unfortunately altered director’s cuts presently being sold on DVDs.

“Our foreign enemies,” terrorists, etc. are those to whom it is less profitable to sell arms at the moment, and “our friends” are those to whom it is more profitable to sell arms, Jeff apparently argues.

Consider now another case. I am driving on the highway and my tire blows up. How irritating, I think. I stop on the shoulder, call my insurance company, wait, watch them put on a spare, drive to a mechanic who then patches up the tire and puts it back on. The entire adventure takes 3 hours out of my life and costs me $20. Who is responsible for this affront? In the case of Sue we tried to find deep cosmic significance of this tragedy. But will I have enough sympathy from the philosophers to come to my aid in figuring out why this small misfortune happened to me? Just because it is trivial does not change its nature as a physical evil. Well, once again, we take refuge in natural laws and, in particular, the law of entropy. “Nothing,” my uncle is fond of saying, “happens by itself.” Things break, wear down, etc. I should expect troublesome annoyances along the way. And it was valuable for God to put us in a naturally deteriorating world. Etc.

According to many scientists, the clergy and the Church are:

• fanatical;
• anti-intellectual;
• irrational in their mindlessly blind faith;
• moralistic and intrusive;
• eager to impose their arbitrary values onto people;
• prone to persecuting those who disagree with them “for their own good” or to save them from themselves;
• closet Inquisitors, torturers, and killers for their petty god.

A ridiculous stereotype, sure. But I’d like to point out that scientists are themselves not innocent of crimes against humanity. Consider all the terrible weapons which have been created, especially in the 20th century, and are being created now. It is scientists who are doing this work, contrary to any kind of ethical imperative or religious impulse to love our fellow man, etc. As Oppenheimer famously thought after witnessing the first nuclear bomb test, “Now, I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds,” according to the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad-Gita. “‘Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down? That’s not my department,’ says Wernher von Braun,” Tom Lehrer sings. Then there are the numerous issues such as stem cell research, about whose ethically controversial nature most scientists apparently could not care less. In short, an NT may give you the means to your ends, but it takes an NF to figure out if the ends ought to be striven for.

The moral from this tu quoque is, let’s understand each other, rather than thinking the worst of our temperamental complements.

A perfectly loving God, says J.L. Schellenberg, would ensure that a personal relationship exists between Him and every other person who did not refuse an offer of that relationship. But in order for a relationship to have a chance to develop, a person must first believe in the existence of God. But there is such a thing as inculpable or reasonable non-belief. That God exists is not self-evident, and a person may without violating any epistemic duties hold that God does not, in fact, exist or at least that His existence is improbable. (The Improbability of God, 390-426) But God would have overriding reasons not to permit inculpable nonbelief. Hence God does not exist, etc.

Now it seems to me that if knowledge of God constitutes wisdom, then a non-believer in God does not have wisdom. But neither does he have folly, because the failure to hold the true belief of God’s existence is reasonable; it is excused. So, that person is innocent. This innocence may be due to the fact (1) that he has never entertained the idea of God, or (2) that religion is uninteresting to him (e.g., because of mental retardation), or (3) that he has reflected on the concept of God and concluded that He does not exist. But not, of course, innocent as a child whose humility and trust in his parents which stand for God Jesus said we must imitate. (Mt 18:1-4; Lk 18:15-17) Nor innocent as a dove which complements the wisdom of the serpent. (Mt 10:16) Rather, this is shameful innocence, however reasonable at first glance it may be.

Now we might somewhat crudely say that God rewards the good, the wise, the righteous, etc. and punishes the wicked, the foolish, and the corrupt. What God does with the innocent is unclear, though the prospects are not good: Rev 3:16. So, God may have something prepared for the innocent, such as infants or, indeed, “reasonable unbelievers” which is different both from the glory of the good and the shame of the evil. Therefore, there is no contradiction between God’s justice and reflective adult innocence. It may be asked why God allows innocence in the first place rather than infallibly converting it into theism and finally, Christian faith. But this, then, would no longer be a problem of non-belief but a problem of evil restated in these particular terms, about which we have said quite a bit in earlier posts.

At any rate, what evidence does our author adduce for the proposition that there exist honest seekers who are disappointed in their search for God? There isn’t even anecdotal evidence or case studies. It is highly ironic that Schellenberg mentions atheist philosophers who “have long since concluded that God does not exist and think the world is better off that way.” (419, italics added) They are supposed to be inculpable? It seems that their guilt is greater than that of a run-of-the-mill unbeliever. Pascal is quoted to the effect that “I look around in every direction and all I see is darkness,” but he was a devout Christian, at least after his night of fire, and it was precisely Pascal who said that “There are only three sorts of people: those who have found God and serve him; those who are busy seeking him and have not found him; those who live without either seeking or finding him. The first are reasonable and happy, the last are foolish and unhappy, those in the middle are unhappy and reasonable,” apparently denying that confident non-belief can in principle be reasonable.

On one episode of “Family Guy” Stewie tells God to stay out of his way. And I think that that’s the ultimate reason God is hidden: He doesn’t want to impose. God will draw to you when you find yourself dissatisfied with mere nature, be it natural happiness or natural suffering.

I have written that “the first way seems to be a special case of the second way“. That may have been premature. Now Aquinas writes that “motion is nothing else than the reduction of something from potentiality to actuality.” (ST, I, 2, 3) The most important thing to do in considering this argument is to forget everything about uniform motion. It confuses things greatly. And I still deny that uniform motion is an act opposed to the potency of rest (or vice versa). So, let us deal then solely with act and potency as such. “Thus that which is actually hot,” St. Thomas goes on, “as fire, makes wood, which is potentially hot, to be actually hot, and thereby moves and changes it.” This is an excellent example, because it has nothing to do with uniform motion.

Now the potential is not yet, and what is not yet cannot act. Any becoming, any process, any movement from potentiality to actuality, therefore, cannot happen by itself but requires something already in the state of actuality to effect it. Thus, if O₁ is moving from state p to state a, then either (1) a part of its essence which is actual is producing this change in the part of its essence which is potential or (2) an external object-in-act is producing it. Considering (1), in the case of self-moving agents like humans, they can change themselves, e.g. by acquiring habits. The will, by which we move ourselves and which is in act, is different from our habits, which are in potentiality. On the other hand, as an example of (2), a body at rest cannot accelerate on its own; some other body must strike it or in some other way act in order to cause a change in its velocity. Let the will or that body be called O₂.

The question now is, is O₂ itself in the process of becoming? If it is, then it requires some O₃ to actualize it. But we cannot go to infinity in this process of actualization and must finally reach an object which “has become” or which is pure being without a trace of becoming in it.

Now we start running into problems. First, there is the existence of closed chains of movers. Let O_i be a thing with actuality A_i and potentiality x_i capable of mutating into actuality Y_i for an arbitrary i:

Here A₂ causes a move from x₁ to Y₁; …; A_n causes a move from x_n-1 to Y_n-1, and also A₁ causes a move from x_n to Y_n.

A different kind of closed chain occurs if the process of x_i → Y_i itself moves x_i-1 → Y_i-1. Suppose that A is actually hot and heats B which is potentially hot, whereas B is actually cold and cools A which is potentially cold. A changes B, and B, A. (From the point of view of physics only A will be considered actual, of course, because it has energy, while B is potential to receiving energy. But for our concerns such distinctions are not important.) In both cases there is no place for a prime mover.

Alright, let’s put this aside by saying that closed chains of movers tell us little about God, but what of open chains? The second problem is that there is a difference between an object which is not becoming at this moment and an object which cannot, in principle, become and which must needs therefore be pure act without any admixture of potentiality in it. In other words, we would like to demonstrate that there exists an n such that O_n is not merely accidental pure act which just happens to have nothing to actualize whatever potentialities are still within it, but rather an essential pure act which cannot change. Unfortunately, given our resources so early in our discussion of God, I don’t think we can. Aquinas himself is being extremely modest here: the prime mover is “put in motion by no other”; it’s not that it can be put in motion by no other. It seems that what we have is a piece of negative theology: if A is moving, then it is not God. But the reverse does not hold: something may not be in motion, yet it need not necessarily be God. God is thereby distinguished from all changing things.

What is so special about motion that God must be lacking it? Again, we want to complete the universe. To do so it is necessary to postulate an unchanging — though not, at this early stage of substantive speculation on God, unchangeable — source of change. (This means that God can evaporate by being put into motion by something prior; we cannot tell.) And this leads us to problem #3: our O_n is the source of actualities O₁ - O_n-1. But there may be numerous such chains of movers. Which chain is terminated by the one true God? We can only hope that subsequent investigation into the nature of God will reveal more.

Update. And it does, e.g., here.

It has, he says, contradictions! (The Improbability of God, 4, 4; p. 376) What an original claim. No Biblical scholar though I am, his sole example of a contradiction is trivially disposed of. Drange complains that the law propounded in Lk 13:3, “unless you repent, you too will all perish,” is not mentioned as a condition of salvation in Jn 3:16, “whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life”; nor in Mt 25:46, “the righteous will go away to eternal life”; nor in Jn 5:29, “those who have done good will rise to live.”

Well, shiver me timbers. Isn’t it obvious that believing in Christ is not merely dead faith? And that live faith requires repentance of sin, such that this repentance is an essential component of the life of practically every human being at whatever stage of spiritual development? The righteous will go away to eternal life, but repentance is necessary precisely for an unrighteous person to become righteous and to stay that way. Those who have done good will rise to live, but repentance is a good done to oneself (and others, if we take repentance in a broader sense of atoning for past misdeeds rather than in a more narrow sense of rejecting evil and resolving to do or be good; see also Mt 5:23-24).

Now if one is presenting an example to illustrate a supposedly self-evident thesis, namely, the fact that the Bible contains contradictions, then one would presumably lead with the most powerful card he has under his sleeve. But if that’s the best Drange can do, then the case for the absurdity of the Bible and therefore the pathetic gullibility of the faithful, as Drange would have it, must be weak indeed.

Furthermore, life is too complex for God simply to “list the things you must do in order to be saved, followed by a clear list of actions.” (376) Everyone’s life is different and requires different things. And many of those things we can indeed find out on our own, perhaps with the help of grace. And some of those things are already part of the Ten Commandments. But Jesus did give us the most general rules, applicable to everybody: love God and your neighbor. (Lk 10:27) He even illustrated them with the beatitudes: “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God.” (Mt 5:9) He explained the meaning of the word “neighbor.” (Lk 10:29-37) He warned about hypocrisy. (Mt 23:28) He taught us an important prayer. (Mt 6:9-13) He revealed that God is a Trinity. I’ll bet that if Christ had done more, our professor would feel that his autonomy is in danger from the overabundance of rules he is supposed to follow.

In short, yes, a PhD in philosophy is useful in studying the Bible. But nobody was going to make Drange’s life easy for him. Theology, whether natural, systematic, moral, or whatever, is an arcane and difficult discipline which requires rigorous training, no different in this regard from any other science. Unfortunately, our author is arguably a dilettante.

Asks Theodore M. Drange in constructing his “argument from nonbelief.” (The Improbability of God, 341) My answer to that is that we are saved by Christ not by Christianity. It is OK if you do not know. But it is ironic that Drange, who presumably knows enough about Christianity to work with its doctrines, himself refuses to believe, because other people don’t believe. Shouldn’t our distinguished doctor of philosophy come up with his own opinions rather than follow the herd? And there is a simple way of making the number of unbelievers smaller, and the argument, less persuasive, and that is for our author to convert.

As for the alleged inefficiency of letting humans spread the Gospel rather than through “performance of spectacular miracles” or through “sending out millions of angels, disguised as humans, to preach to people in all nations in such a persuasive manner as to get them to believe,” (343) etc., once again, God will not do for any created nature what that nature can do for itself. The stunning success of Christianity cannot be denied. And now glory is due to those men and women who advanced the faith which would not be the case if the angels did it.

Thomas Metcalf commits an elementary blunder. He assumes that all evil is justified, “grants to the defender of theism that gratuitous evil does not exist,” (The Improbability of God, 329) and argues that “the position according to which there is no gratuitous evil will lead to a new argument from evil, a strong evidential argument against God’s existence.” (330) How does it work? He proposes the principle

(PA) If a person S is suffering intensely, and S’s suffering is justified, it is morally better to inform S that her suffering is justified than to withhold that information. (331)

Yet many people do not believe that their suffering is justified. Hence the all-good God does not exist.

Have you spotted the problem right there? The fact that many people consider their travails to be unjust is itself an evil. But by Metcalf’s own assumpton, all evils are justified, including this one! Therefore, any attempt to disprove that God has some good reason not to let everybody know the meaning of their trials is entirely vain. I’m done with this guy.

Update. Let’s be (very) charitable to Metcalf and suppose that he simply argues that in PA he has found an instance of unjustified evil:

1) Suppose the opposite: God exists.
2) Therefore, all evil is justified.
3) But that some people do not know how the evils they suffer are justified is itself an evil.
4) That evil is unjustified.
5) Hence not all evils are justified, and gratuitous evil does exist.
6) Hence God does not exist.

Metcalf goes on to prove 4). But he need not bother. The evil of the (perhaps temporary) failure to find meaning in one’s suffering is neither more nor less troublesome from the point of view of theism than any other evil, including the evil of the suffering itself, and therefore the standard theodicies apply to it. For example, our author’s third objection to his own thesis, namely that “God wants us to figure things out for ourselves, such as that our suffering is justified, because that process of discovery would provide the opportunity for mental, emotional, and spiritual growth,” deserves far more attention than the cursory and unsatisfactory treatment given to it in the article.

After a rather inauspicious beginning — and middle, and end — William L. Rowe comes up with a real gem in the last paragraph: “There are,” he says, “four different things a theodicy might aim at doing, each more difficult than its predecessor. First, a theodicy might seek to explain why [God] would permit any evil at all. Second, a theodicy might endeavor to explain why there are instances of the various kinds of evil we find in our world — animal pain, human suffering, wickedness, etc. Third, a theodicy might endeavor to explain why there is the amount of evil (of these kinds) that we find in our world. And, finally, a theodicy might endeavor to explain certain particular evils that obtain.” (The Improbability of God, 273) He considers the theodicy of soul-making through natural law and argues that it is “successful on the first level, and perhaps the second.” (273) But not further than that. Very well, let’s consider his levels. Clearly, from level 2 it follows that there will be some evils which serve the purpose of ordered soul-making. So, some — in fact, most (because soul-making must work as a rule not as some rarely happening near-miraculous event) — particular evils are justified or absorbed by various higher-order goods. The questions are, (1) are all evils ultimately absorbed (Rowe’s level 3)? And (2) how, precisely, are they absorbed for any given evil E (level 4)?

My view is that the answer to (1) is yes, and I think that this answer is an article of Christian faith. Or, anyway, it should be. As St. Catherine of Sienna said to “those who are scandalized and rebel against what happens to them”: “Everything comes from love, all is ordained for the salvation of man, God does nothing without this goal in mind.” (Catechism, §313) And not just God’s love, for if your suffering is used in a utilitarian manner for the sake of another, then if you love that other, then you will, perhaps if you had known the situation in full, perhaps in heaven during your life review, approve of God’s choices.

As an example of what at first glance appear gratuitous unjustified evils Rowe considers two cases. The first one concerns the ordeal of a fawn trapped in a forest fire, who is “horribly burned, and lies in terrible agony for several days before death relieves its suffering.” The second is the real story of a little girl Sue who was “severely beaten, raped, and then strangled early on New Year’s Day of 1986.” (263)

I think that William P. Alston critiques Rowe brilliantly in his “The Inductive Argument From Evil and the Human Cognitive Condition,” which you can find on JSTOR, by biting the bullet and considering if not all than at least most known theodicies. Rowe himself calls Alston’s job “masterful” (292), yet in replying he fails to grasp his opponent’s point about free will and the lawlike structure of reality. God cannot interfere into nature (save by grace), for fear of setting a dangerous precedent. God does not even stop suicides, the ultimate (though not necessarily the worst) sin. There cannot be found out any general pattern of God’s activities, lest humans will use it for their own ends (or evade God’s purposes) and in so doing nullify God’s interventionist rule. There cannot be anything mechanical, any clockwork-like predictability in God. It is beside the point that stopping Sue’s murderer would justifiably diminish his free will; indeed, I could’ve stopped him by shooting him dead, and that would be the end of all free will in the guy. But, again, this would be my job or job for human beings not for God. He won’t fight our battles for us, even if some of these battles are lost miserably. Furthermore, in my “For Christians Who Are Mocked” I outline some last words that the girl could say to her torturer. And, as Alston argues, the sight of great moral evil energizes the rest of us to make sure that it happens “never again.” Is that not a good?

The free will theodicy, Alston says, has been subjected to “radical criticisms,” one of which is that free will is not “of such value as to be worth all the sin and suffering it has brought into the world.” With all due respect, that is just nuts. Free will is the capacity of choice, of ranking goals on a scale from most to least urgent. Its absence means that you do not examine alternatives of acting for their utility. Hence, also because the will and the free will are one and the same power, you have no feelings, you do not love. And if you have no love of concupiscence, you can’t have love of friendship, because what goods (none of which you yourself value) are you willing to your friends? But if no feelings, then no thoughts of how to achieve your goals. Nor is contemplation possible without enjoyment of it. Hence you are a stone, and if you would rather be that, then you have no business philosophizing.

The suffering of the fawn can also be justified as an unfortunate byproduct of a lawlike world. Alston goes into some detail contemplating alternative worlds without predation, animal suffering, natural disasters, etc. It’s an impressively conducted exercise. In the end he confesses his own powerlessness as an architect of creation. As do I, now that I have read him; all such ruminations are vain and far beyond our capacities for dealing with complexity. And, perhaps more important, as should Quentin Smith, in the previous post.

To emphasize the point, this is our world, and we can do in it as we please, even if it is evil. I am actually quite jealous of my autonomy, and though I may pray for certain goods, perhaps spiritual, perhaps temporal, I can’t let God tell me what to do. He gave me prudence and charity and other virtues, so that I can make my own decisions. (Sir 15:14) If God wants to influence me, He’ll have to do it via grace, enriching nature “naturally.” And it is an open question whether the murderer was receptive to any kind of grace at that fateful moment.

Alston’s attack on our presumption to know all of God’s ways should also be noted. Theology is not a stagnant discipline, and new discoveries may well be forthcoming. Further, some of God’s ways may be forever beyond our comprehension, as long as we are wayfarers.

Finally, someone, namely Quentin Smith, responds to my challenge to “design a better world,” thereby showing that if God did not actualize it, then this must not be the best possible world or even a good world, and if it’s not, then God does not exist. (The Improbability of God, 3, 1)

Behind his complex argument there is a simple point. There is a law E, according to which “animals must savagely kill and devour each other in order to survive” (235, italics removed), and that law is ultimately evil. There is a possible world W, Smith contends, which “is exactly like the actual world except that all (and not just some) animals or animal-like creatures are vegetarians. For example, in W there are counterparts to humans that are exactly like humans except that their DNA includes a strictly vegetarian blueprint.” (240ff) In W, unlike in the actual world V, even tigers are nourished exclusively by vegetables.

Is that a better world?

Let us first realize that death must come to us all and, moreover, can come at any age. It is immaterial for the animals whether they die naturally through old age and disease, are killed and eaten by predators, get starved by a changing ecosystem, or are put to sleep as in the case of pets. Death is death, and happy deaths are rare; humans often suffer horribly in the process of dying, and no predator hunts them. Smith’s argument, presumably, does not call for God to have created a world in which animals (or humans especially) are immortal and impassible. But if he were to refine his argument in that way, I’d wonder about the possibility of such a world myself.

Thomas Morris has identified four fears related to death: (1) fear of the process of dying; (2) fear of punishment; (3) fear of the unknown; (4) fear of annihilation. (Philosophy for Dummies, Ch. 16, “From Dust to Dust: Fear and the Void”) Animals are innocent; hence they can have no fear of punishment. There is nothing for them after death, so (3) does not apply to them either. Their souls are corruptible, so they must be naturally protected from (4), as fearing the inevitable would be pointless. So, it seems that animals are only afraid of the pain and suffering attendant upon dying. But, once again, it is hard to imagine a happy death. On one nature show there was a dying giraffe surrounded by a swarm of insects which were eating it alive. We were shown the moment at which the giraffe could no longer stand and collapsed, and that was the end of it. Is that a better way of dying than being consumed by a tiger? Or must insects, too, be vegetarians?

The first problem I see with Smith’s creation is that plant-eating animals would multiply unchecked, quickly fill the earth, and, once that has happened, many would die due to ruthless competition for scarce vegetable food. Now perhaps we could program animals to die within a few months or years of procreating: copulation would trigger a slow death-inducing mechanism in the parents. Unfortunately, it seems unnatural to die in the prime of one’s life and by earnestly obeying your instincts, especially ones which result in intense pleasure, salmon and perhaps a few other animals considered odd exceptions.

Secondly, plants compete for sunlight, good soil, etc. with equal brutality. Let me quote you from the speech by Absalom Weaver from the Garet Garrett’s novel Satan’s Bushel:

“This natural elm, was once a tiny thing. A sheep might have eaten it at one bite. Every living thing around it was hostile and injurious. And it survived. It grew. It took its profit. It became tall and powerful beyond the reach of enemies. What preserved it — cooperative marketing? What gave it power — a law from Congress? What gave it fullness — the Golden Rule? On what was its strength founded — a fraternal spirit? You know better. Your instincts tell you no. It saved itself. It found its own greatness. How? By fighting.

“Did you know that plants fight? If only you could see the deadly, ceaseless warfare among plants this lovely landscape would terrify you. It would make you think man’s struggles tame. I will show you some glimpses of it.

“I hold up this leaf from the elm. The reason it is flat and thin is that the peaceable work of its life is to gather nourishment for the tree from the air. Therefore it must have as much surface as possible to touch the air with. But it has another work to do. A grisly work. A natural work all the same. It must fight.

“For that use it is pointed at the end as you see and has teeth around the edge — these. The first thing the elm plant does is to grow straight up out of the ground with a spear thrust, its leaves rolled tightly together. Its enemies do not notice it. Then suddenly each leaf spreads itself out and with its teeth attacks other plants; it overturns them, holds them out of the sunlight, drowns them. And this is the tree! Do you wonder why the elm plant does not overrun the earth? Because other plants fight back, each in its own way.

“I show you a blade of grass. It has no teeth. How can it fight? Perhaps it lives by love and sweetness. It does not. It grows very fast by stealth, taking up so little room that nothing else minds, until all at once it is tall and strong enough to throw out blades in every direction and fall upon other plants. It smothers them to death. Then the bramble. I care not for the bramble. Not because it fights. For another reason. Here is its weapon. Besides the spear point and the teeth the bramble leaf you see is in five parts, like one’s hand. It is a hand in fact, and one very hard to cast off. When it cannot overthrow and kill an enemy as the elm does, it climbs up his back to light and air, and in fact prefers that opportunity, gaining its profit not in natural combat but in shrewd advantage, like the middleman.

“Another plant I would like to show you. There is one near by. Unfortunately it would be inconvenient to exhibit him in these circumstances. His familiar name is honeysuckle. He is sleek, suave, brilliantly arrayed, and you would not suspect his nature, which is that of the preying speculator. Once you are in his toils it is hopeless. If you have not drowned or smothered him at first he will get you. The way of this plant is to twist itself round and round another and strangle it.

“This awful strife is universal in plant life. There are no exemptions. Among animals it is not so fierce. They can run from one another. Plants must fight it out where they stand. They must live or die on the spot. Among plants of one kind there is rivalry. The weak fall out and die; the better survive. That is the principle of natural selection. But all plants of one kind fight alike against plants of all other kinds. That is the law of their strength. None is helped but who first helps himself. A race of plants that had wasted its time waiting for Congress to give it light and air, or for a state bureau with hired agents to organize it by the Golden Rule, or had been persuaded that its interests were in common with those of the consumer, would have disappeared from the earth.”

It seems most arbitrary to subject plants to the rigors of survival of the fittest yet exempt animals. And this brings us to point number 3: competition and fighting for survival of yourself and your progeny makes species strong, even if some individuals are sacrificed in the process of evolution. God gives animals a shot at life and strength to avoid dangers and pass on their genes and nature, which are more than they deserve. We might say that God acts towards animals as Conan’s god Crom in Robert E. Howard’s novels acts towards humans: Crom answers no prayers, and he dispenses only two gifts to the Cimmerian newborn: the strength in their sword arm and the fire in their hearts. And after that he doesn’t bat an eye at them.

Our author attacks what he see to be a premise in Richard Swinburne’s argument that “instances of E provide humans with helpful knowledge pertinent to themselves”: “It is good that animals savagely attack, kill and devour each other and occasionally humans, so that animals and humans can learn to avoid being savagely attacked, killed and devoured on some occasions in the future.” He says that if we take it to heart, then “we should be rejoicing in the AIDS epidemic since the instances of AIDS combined with the opportunities to learn how to prevent AIDS would result in an overall increase in the positive value of the universe.” (243ff) This is just a confusion. We do not rejoice in physical evil, but we recognize the value of metaphysical evil as an incentive to fight. As the character Gordon Chen considers in James Clavell’s Tai-Pan: “He looked covertly at Mauss. He respected him for being a merciless teacher and was grateful to him for forcing him to be the best student in school. But he despised him for his filth, for his stench and for his cruelty.” (29-30) So, we, too, should appreciate the challenging environment of nature as a merciless teacher both to humans and lower animals, yet at the same time nothing stops us from longing for eternal rest in God’s heaven.

Smith accuses God of “speciesism,” of favoring humans and letting animals serve them, thereby neglecting the latter’s welfare or rights. Of course, that’s nonsense. Domesticated animals often live happier lives than their wild cousins. But the more important point to grasp is that men do not rule the world by some divine mandate; rather, men are the kind of animals who are able to subdue and exploit other animals, given a sufficient level of civilization, better than those other animals are able to exploit them. Our dominion of the world is due to our nature and craftiness and resourcefulness, not necessarily to the reception of a divine inheritance a la early Genesis, though I speculate that the human intellect is intelligently designed.

To sum it up, the world either must be a full-fledged Garden of Eden, or it must be very much like our world without any artifices of tofu-eating tigers. But the Garden of Eden is gone, or it never existed. So our world is the only real possibility that remains. We can try to make it on this earth as it is in heaven. Tu ne cede malis, Quentin.

Martin falls victim to the grossest possible anthropomorphism. Repeatedly, he makes an argument of the following form:

(1) In terms of our experience, all created entities of the kinds we have so far examined are created by one or more beings with bodies. [Empirical evidence]

(2) The universe is a created entity. [Supposition]

(2a) If the universe is a created entity, then it is of the same kind as the created entities we have so far examined. [Empirical evidence]

[Probably]
(3) The universe was created by one or more beings with bodies. [From (1), (2), and (2a) by predictive inference]

(4) If the theistic God exists, then the universe was not created by a being with a body. [Analytic truth]

[Therefore]
(5) The theistic God does not exist. [From (3) and (4) by modus tollens] (The Improbability of God, 203)

In an analogous manner Martin “proves” that there must likely have been multiple creators, fallible, finite, and working with preexisting matter. In other words, if there is a God, then He is very much like a committee of human beings aided perhaps with superior technology.

In (1) Martin refers to the numerous man-made objects we find ourselves surrounded with. But why does making those objects require that their creators have bodies? Naturally, to move around and manipulate particles of matter as secondary causes. This does not show that the universe as a whole, which is not “of the same kind as the created entities we have so far examined” (nor is it merely “infinitely larger, older, and more complex than any created object we have ever experienced.” (204)) but is rather everything that’s been created was not made by a disembodied intelligence acting as the first cause. This is because nature as revealed by “our experience” can be shown to be incomplete without the theistic (disembodied) God — incomplete even if we disregard the fact that God’s grace can often also be detected and serve as evidence for His existence. In other words, our methodology of doing natural theology is not that of a primitive superstitious savage, as Martin would slander it.

I’ve already attempted to show how the prime mover and first cause complete the universe. The argument from time and contingency, for example, works similarly by showing that God, unlike creatures, by nature has no potentiality not to exist. We can further demonstrate that God’s existence is “in” His very essence. The argument from degrees of ontological perfection establishes God as the best being and source of all goodness in creatures. And so on.

Further, we can prove that God has no body directly. Suppose that a being with a body made the universe. Clearly, the embodied creator must be locatable in space. But space itself was created! And if God existed in some sort of quasi-space (also presumably 3-dimensional), then the natural question is, where did that space come from and why? God couldn’t have made a body for Himself for, say, His own convenience, because His nature is already complete. So, we don’t get anywhere with this.

Here are more proofs from ST, I, 3, 1, reproduced for your convenience. (1) If God is the Prime Mover, then He cannot move, and since every body can be put in motion relative to something, God cannot have a body. (2) Bodies can be divided into parts, but if God is pure act (as can be shown independently), then He can’t be potential to being divided in, say, half. Nor can God be an indivisible elementary particle like an electron, because that is potential to being combined into compounds. (3) Finally, if we establish that God is the source of all perfection (as per Aquinas’s fourth way), then if He has a body, there is in Him something manifestly imperfect. This is because living bodies are not mere robots; they are animated by some lifeforce or soul. But living things are metaphysically better than non-living things precisely by virtue of this animating power. Hence this power in its purest form without even a body to dilute itself with must be what God is, which turns out to be a disembodied soul or mind or spirit.

For proof of the fact that God is one, see ST, I, 11, 3. That even “prime matter” was created is established in I, 44, 2. And so on with the rest of Martin’s arguments. (I am letting Aquinas do my work for me, because it is clear that our author has not read him at all, and it is his responsibility to engage St. Thomas and try to rebut him.)

Furthermore, we can demonstrate through negative theology that God is unlike anything found in the created world. Aquinas does it with panache in ST, I, 3, and if he succeeds, then Martin’s arguments fail.

Before making a thing, a human being first desires that it be made. Then he plans his course of action. Both of these are immaterial. Only then does the mind command the body to move. Transformation of objects or production is therefore a fusion of spirit and matter. But omnipotent power can be such as to command that something be produced without the use of a body; in fact, producing an effect simply by speaking “Let there be…” we may take as the very definition of omnipotence. The question is, is there any reason to ascribe such an attribute to God? Again I refer our author to Aquinas, ST, I, 25.

And so Martin’s objections seem neatly taken care of.

Victor Stenger, the toughest-minded NT stone-cold sonofabitch this side of Californie, angrily rips apart the mystical anthropic principle and its allegedly theism-friendly consequences. Apart from that scary spectacle, there is an interesting note that “André Linde proposed that a background spacetime ‘foam’ empty of matter and radiation will experience local quantum fluctuations in curvature, forming many bubbles of false vacuum that individually inflate into mini-universes with random characteristics. In this view, our universe is one of those expanding bubbles, the product of a single monkey banging away at the keys of a single word processor.” (The Improbability of God, 145) Isn’t this an efficient way of creating our universe? All God would have had to do was prune the dead universes and wait until the one in which we live budded off. This is kind of divine artificial selection.

Then there is the theory of natural selection as collapsing black holes turn into random universes, such that “by chance some small fraction of universes will have parameters optimized for greater black hole production. These will quickly predominate…” (146) Of course, this differs from Darwinism in that the universes do not interact with one another, and unfit universes do not get eaten or starved by the fit ones. And this selects for black hole production efficiency not for intelligent life.

Finally, our author argues that natural laws emerged naturally. They evolved on their own, without divine intervention. The evolution of natural laws, in other words, was itself law-abiding. So, there is a meta-law governing the cosmic becoming. I don’t see how this helps Stenger. Where did these meta-laws come from?

Let’s consider the case of Michael Ikeda and Bill Jefferys who claim that “the more ‘finely-tuned’ the universe is, the more a supernatural origin of the universe is undermined.” (150) Here are their assumptions:

a) Our universe exists and contains life. L = “The universe exists and contains Life.”

b) Our universe is life-friendly. F = “The conditions in the universe are ‘life-Friendly’.”

c) Life cannot exist in a universe that is governed solely by naturalistic law unless that universe is “life-friendly.” N = “The universe is governed solely by Naturalistic law.”

Our authors say that

d) P(F | N & L) = 1.

This follows from (c) written as P(~L | ~F & N) = 1 or P(F or ~N | L) = 1. In other words, L → (F or ~N). It follows that (L & N) → ((F or ~N) & N) = (L & N) → (F & N). But (F & N) → F. Hence P(F | L & N) = 1. So, P(N | F & L) ≥ P(N | L). “The observation F cannot decrease the probability that N is true…, and may well increase it.” (155) The question is why this is so. Obviously, because if F, then there is no need for supernatural life support which is an option when only L is true. But the life support possibility is clearly unacceptable on numerous other grounds. So, this proves little.

They also charge theists with a contradiction. Both P(N | ~F & L) < P(N | L) and P(N | F & L) < P(N | L). What gives? Well, if ~F & L, then we would be having a direct experience of God keeping us alive supernaturally in a hostile universe, rather like Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego in the fire (Dan 3). But if F, then presumably, the anthropic argument kicks in.

They say that from P(F | N) << 1 it does not follow that P(N | F) << 1. Yes, it most certainly does! P(F | N) << 1 entails that N → ~F or that F → ~N which can be written as P(~N | F) ≈ 1 or as P(N | F) << 1.

I saved the best for last. Who would possibly deny that the universe is governed by natural law? Grace is not law; human law can be broken; the divine law applies to realms other than earth; so what are Ikeda and Jefferys talking about? They must be thinking of the law according to which universes spawn or are selected. But they fail to suggest the content of such a law, though they criticize, unjustly in my view, theists for ascribing intentions to God, such as to create a universe which can support human beings. If they don’t want to defer to theologians, they’d best come up with a scientific alternative. Otherwise, be quiet.