Blog Posts

Does the Multiplication Rule defeat all arguments for the existence of God?

1/20/2012

Responses by Tim McGrew to questions I raised in an e-mail concerning the multiplication rule:

In order for an argument to be a ʽgoodʼ one, the confidence we have in the truth of the conclusion must be greater than .5, otherwise we canʼt claim to know the conclusion (I think this is uncontroversial).

The trouble is that "good argument" is not sufficiently well defined for us to say whether it must meet this criterion. An argument that nails down the probability of the conclusion at .51 -- no higher and no lower -- meets the criterion you named; but is it really, for just that reason, a "better" argument than one that shows that the conclusion has a probability of at least .4 and perhaps much more?

Isn't Evolution Evil and Wasteful?

1/19/2012

Isn't evolution cruel and evil? Natural selection weeds out the weak, and is driven by limited resources making nature red in tooth and claw which means that there has been an unspeakable amount of animal suffering and death in the history of life on Earth.

I think that the answer to this objection can be found in the following article by Michael Murray:

animal.pdf
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Why did God wait so long to send Jesus? Weren't there tons of people prior to Jesus? It seems like God waited too long especially since human beings have been around for 100 million years.

1/19/2012

What is really crucial here is not the amount of time that has elapsed but the size of the human population. The population reference bureau estaimtes that the number of people who have lived on this planet is about a 105 billion people. Only 2 percent of those lived prior to the advent of Christ. Erik Crapes (sp?) of the survey research center at the University of Michigan's institute for Social Research says, "God's timing couldn't have been more perfect, Christ showed up just before the exponential explosion in the worlds population. The Bible says that in the fullness of time God sent forth His son, and when Christ came, the nation of Israel had been prepared, the Roman peace dominated the Mediterranean world, it was an ge of literacy and learning so that the stage was sent for the advent of God's son into the world (Taken from Craig's debate with Christopher Hitchens).

The Fallacy of Understated Evidence

12/21/2011

Paul Draper has usefully identified a fallacy of inductive reasoning he calls the "fallacy of understated evidence." According to Draper, in the context of arguments for theism and against naturalism, proponents of a theistic argument are guilty of this fallacy if they "successfully identify some general fact F about a topic X that is antecedently more likely on theism than on naturalism, but ignore other more specific facts about X, facts that, given F, are more likely on naturalism than on theism."[1]

What makes this so interesting is Draper's assessment of how various (inductive) theistic arguments commit this fallacy. By reviewing his writings, I've compiled the following summary of Draper's assessment of the evidence, illustrating how Draper believes the fallacy of understated evidence applies in practice to contemporary arguments in the philosophy of religion.

Go to the Following Link to See a Column Chart of the Fallacy: http://secularoutpost.infidels.org/2011/11/paul-draper-fallacy-of-understated.html#more

I happen to agree with Draper on this score, and it is something I noticed before Draper started writing about it, and that is why I have already been working on the 'understated evidence' on my blog.

It is less surprising on naturalism then on theism that our minds are dependent, or identical to our brains since on theism God's mind is non-physical, and on naturalism, our minds could only be one way, the way they in fact are.

12/6/2011

Paul Draper mentioned this argument in his debate with William Lane Craig in 1998. Draper is very very fond of the WAP (weighted average principle) and he is using it here as well. The idea, according to Draper, is that since theism already starts out with at least one non-physical mind that is distinct from the universe, and since God is omnipotent, God could either create minds that are independent of the brain, or minds that are dependent or identical to the brain. Even if we might expect the former over the latter on theism, Draper's real point is that on naturalism, minds have to be dependent or identical to the brain. There is no other option on naturalism. Thus, the fact that we have discovered that minds are dependent or identical to the brain, by the WAP, confirms naturalism over theism.

Wesley Salmon and Michael Martin's Teleological Argument for Atheism

12/5/2011

Salmon's Version:

Here is a link to Salmon's Argument:
http://www.springerlink.com/content/q18w8051415741k4/fulltext.pdf

Martin's Expanded Version:

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

2) In terms of our experience, all large and complex created entities of the kinds that we have so far examined are created by a group of beings working together.

3) In terms of our experience, most seeming errors or mistakes in the kinds of created entities we have so far examined are the result of the fallibility of one or more creators of entities.

4) In terms of our experience, all created entities of the kinds that we have so far examined were created by a being or beings with finite power.

5) In terms of our experience, all created entities of the kinds that we have so far examined are created from preexisting material.

The Argument From Scale

11/23/2011

In his book, The Non-Existence of God, philosopher Nicholas Everitt provides the first detailed analysis and defense of the argument from scale for God's nonexistence. Everitt formulates his argument as follows:

(1) If the God of classical theism existed, with the purposes traditionally ascribed to him, then he would create a universe on a human scale, i.e. one that is not unimaginably large, unimaginably old, and in which human beings form an unimaginably tiny part of it, temporally and spatially.
(2) The world does not display a human scale.
(3) Therefore, there is evidence against the hypothesis that the God of classical theism exists with the purposes traditionally ascribed to him. Everitt does not claim that the scale of the universe proves God does not exist. Rather, he concludes, "the claim is only that the findings of modern science significantly reduce the probability that theism is true." See Nicholas Everitt, The Non-Existence of God (New York: Routledge, 2004), pp. 213-226.
What should we make of this argument? Premise (2) is uncontroversial. Premise (1), however, is likely to be controversial. What defense does Everitt offer on behalf of (1)? According to Everitt, "For reasons that are not entirely clear, God decides to create a universe in which human beings will be the jewel." Because humans are the jewel of the universe, the rest of the universe will be at least not unremittingly hostile or even indifferent to human flourishing. Indeed, given theism, you would expect the universe will make such flourishing at least accessible in principal to human beings.

Furthermore, Everitt argues, given theism, we have some reason to expect a scenario like Genesis. Traditional theism would lead us to expect human beings to appear fairly soon after the start of the universe. Given theism, you would not expect humans to arrive very long after after the animals; you would expect the earth to be in a significant location within the universe (perhaps the center); you would expect the total size of the universe to be not many orders of magnitude greater than the size of the earth; and you would expect the greater part of the universe to be accessible to human exploration.

When I spoke with philosopher Paul Draper about this argument many years ago, he said that he believes the scale of the universe is only slightly more probable on metaphysical naturalism than on theism; the argument does not significantly raise the ratio of the probability of naturalism to the probability of theism. As Draper points out, if you think, given theism, God's goal is to create humans, you'd have an antecedent reason for expecting the universe to be on a human scale. But it is far from obvious, given theism, that the goal is humans. An omnipotent being is not short on space or time. Maybe God created multiple universes. If there's only one universe and if God is in time, then it would be a little bit of evidence favoring naturalism.

Taken from: http://naturalisticatheism.blogspot.com/2006/01/scale-of-universe-as-evidence-for.html

A Big Bang Argument Against the Existence of God by Quentin Smith

11/23/2011

1. The Big Bang singularity is the earliest state of the universe.

2. The earliest state of the universe is inanimate.

3. No law governs the Big Bang singularity, and consequently there is no guarantee that it will emit a configuration of particles that will evolve into an animate universe.

4. Therefore, the earliest state of the universe is not guaranteed to evolve into an animate state of the universe.

                                               5. If God creates a universe, He creates an animate universe.

                                              6. Therefore, if God created the earliest state of the universe, then He would have  ensured that this state is animate or evolves into animate states of the universe.

                                               7. Therefore, God did not create the earliest state of the universe.

Smith takes this argument to be a Big Bang cosmological argument for the non-existence of God.

(Go to the following link to see the argument in full:http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/quentin_smith/cosmology.html)

RESPONSE:

James Rachels Argument From Moral Autonomy

11/22/2011

I will use the following version of this argument because the version that Rachel's uses is logically invalid and has hidden assumptions that need to be brought out in order to make his argument stronger (http://maverickphilosopher.typepad.com/maverick_philosopher/2011/05/james-rachels-argument-from-moral-autonomy-against-the-existence-of-god.html):

(1) Necessarily, if God exists, then God is a fitting object of worship by autonomous moral agents;

(2) If worship requires abandoning autonomous moral agency, then it is not the case that God is a fitting object of worship by autonomous moral agents;

(3) Worship requires abandoning autonomous moral agency;

Therefore,

(4) God does not exist.

Hasn't Neuroscience Shown Us that Religous Belief is Non-Veridical?

11/21/2011

William Lane Craig writes: The sort of religious experiences which have been artificially induced by brain stimulus have been more akin to pantheistic religious experiences, a sense of oneness with the All, rather than Christian experience of God's personal presence and love. But more importantly, the fact that a non-veridical experience can be induced which is qualitatively identical to a veridical experience does absolutely nothing to undermine the fact that there are veridical experiences and that we are rational in taking our experiences to be veridical. Otherwise, one would have to say that because neuroscientists can artificially cause us to see and hear things that aren't really there, our senses of sight and hearing are unreliable or untrustworthy! Just because a neurologist could stimulate my brain to make me think that I'm having an experience of God is no proof at all that on some occasion when he is not stimulating my brain that I do not have a genuine experience of God.

Secondly, this objection construes the mechanism of belief in Christianity as some sort of innate brain module and while Plantinga adopts this model, William Lane Craig doesn't. Craig thinks that it is to problematic to think of our belief in Christian theism arising from some sort of innate cognitive mechanism. He prefers to model our belief in Christian theism on the basis of the witness of the Holy Spirit (in a properly basic manner). If we adopt this model, then our warrant for Christian theism is external to us, and any worries over an innate and evolved cognitive mechanism vanishes.

Third, even if this argument showed us that religious belief was unwarranted apart from arguments and evidence, this wouldn't mean that there aren't good enough arguments and evidence to warrant some particular religious belief such as Christianity.