Glenn Peoples and Stephen Law to Discuss the “Evil God” challenge on Unbelievable Radio

AWESOME! Ive been waiting to hear Glenn and Stephen talk on this exact subject.

I also agree with Quinton

I’ll definitely be tuning in for this!

Hi,

I’m pleased that you’ll be debating Law on this subject and am looking forward to what you have to say regarding EGC. I would recommend checking out Law’s interaction with Feser and Rauser at their respective blogs as well as aforementioned post-debate comments from both Craig and Law.

Ed Feser has recently been demolishing Law’s challenge from a classical theist (Thomistic) perspective.

Well Matt sure stole your thunder there Glenn. I bet he’s right though. Nobody would have wanted to interview you unless he recommended you. It must be a bumpy ride on those coat tails of his! Ah well, at least you know someone famous!

Awesome! Very excited for you!

(Ask him lots of questions and make sure he answers them — hopefully you might even be able to persuade him!)

Sorry Glenn! Got carried away there – it’s your debate not mine. Feel free to delete the previous comments if you like.

Actually Richardo, I told Justin that Glenn was writing on the evil god issue and had researched it. I also suggested that Tim Mcgrew was the person to talk to about Miracles. Glenn did not ride my coat tales anymore than Tim Mcgrew does if Justin talks to him.

Glenn would probably do the same thing if he was asked about a topic he knew I was writing on and he was not.

Excellent Glenn. Looking forward to it.

Oh 🙁 I thought it was going to be yesterday. It’s like delaying a birthday by a week 🙁

I’m not sure when it will air. Within the next few weeks I would assume.

No, that will happen late on Wednesday night.

Yeah, I don’t have to show that Christian theism is the true explanation of morality, I just have to argue that Evil-god is an implausible explanation (as I shall), or just not as good as Christianity.

The point about the moral argument is that Law thinks theistic arguments are just as compatible with an evil God as with a good God. The moral argument, I will argue, is not.

Ixcillent! hehehe

>But as for material that couldn’t be included – I had some things to say about the way that Stephen’s paper/argument really doesn’t connect as a polemic against a classical view of God, greatness, being and goodness, but there just wasn’t anywhere to slot those comments.

Something Dr. Feser & those of us who are his Fanboz tried to point out in vain. Prof Law seems closed to the idea his EGC doesn’t apply across the spectrum of Theism.

To a Thomist the EGC is like giving your devastating refutation of Young Earth Creationism to a room filled with convinced Theistic Evolutionists.

The EGC is the ultimate non-starter for the Thomist and other Classical Theists. It might give the Theistic Personalist God of Swimburne headaches but I am a strong Atheist in regards to the existence of any being that resembles Swimburne’s “god”. But I believe in the God of the Bible, of Augustine, Aquinas, the Catholic church and I am content.

(No offense to Swimburne but I can’t accept his view of God. God save him thought & Prof Law and you too Glen)

God Bless.

Glenn you just said: “What’s more – and I took this to be our starting point – We had already agreed (just for argument’s sake) that the Christian theist does indeed have a theodicy for the problem of evil, and the evil-God worshipper does indeed have a theodicy for the problem of good, and hence were evenly matched.”

That was indeed an agreed starting point. But, in the very next sentence, you then conclude:

“So we had agreed that the so-called “mountain” of evidence that you still wanted to appeal to had been addressed.”

No, we didn’t agree that at all.

Read what you said above carefully. I did indeed agree that the good and evil god hypotheses were evenly matched before we considered the moral argument. Was I then conceding that the “mountain” of evidence against each hypothesis had been addressed? No. Obviously not.

One of the main points of the EGC, made pretty clearly in every version I’ve published, is that we consider the EG hypothesis to be pretty conclusively empirically falsified by the vast quantities of good we see around us, notwithstanding the mirror theodicies then offered as attempts to explain that evidence away. Appeals to an afterlife, a vale of soul-destruction, free-will, etc. are typically shrugged off as hopelessly ad hoc and indeed rather comical attempts to explain away all the good stuff. People generally recognize that such moves are nowhere near good enough to deal with the problem of good, which remains devastating.

In “The Evil God Challenge” I bring this out with a scales analogy on page 7:

QUOTE“Now most of us, theists included, consider the evil-god hypothesis highly unreasonable. We suppose that there is little of any substance to place on the left-hand side of the scale, and that, when the boulder that is the problem of good is added, the scale lurches violently to the right, notwithstanding the effects of any reverse-theodicy helium balloons we might then try to attach. Yet adherents of the good-god hypothesis typically suppose the good-god scale far more evenly balanced. To believe in a good god, they think, is not like believing in fairies, Santa or, indeed, an evil god. When this scale is properly loaded and the pointer observed, they say, we find it points to ‘not unreasonable’ or even ‘quite reasonable’.

In short, those who embrace the good-god hypothesis typically reject the symmetry thesis. The challenge I am presenting to those who believe in the god of classical monotheism, then, is to explain why, if belief in an evil god is highly unreasonable, should we consider belief in a good god significantly more reasonable?

We might call this the evil-god challenge.”END OF QUOTE

In short, it turns out that you have just assumed that the theodicies are effective in BOTH cases, when one of the main points of the evil god challenge is that they’re NOT effective in the evil god case. The evil god hypothesis remains absurd on the basis of the available empirical evidence, notwithstanding consideration of the reverse theodicies. The reverse theodices are, as they stand, pretty hopeless at rescuing the evil god hypothesis from empirical absurdity.

Of course, you may say that the theodicies do work well in both cases, raising both hypotheses to the status of “not unreasonable”, say. But this flies in the face of the thought that the evil god challenge is absurd on the basis of the empirical evidence notwithstanding the reverse theodicies. Moreoever, it leaves it mysterious why the evil god challenge should indeed be considered downright absurd. Given what you’ve said thus far, it isn’t absurd! It’s just not as well supported as the good god hypothesis (assuming your moral argument is good).

But then, supposing the evil god hypothesis is indeed absurd on the basis of the empirical evidence, notwithstanding the reverse theodicies, it follows that your moral argument is useless, for the reason I explained. It’s useless whether or not the premise that if there’s no god there are no moral facts is true. Hence I did not need to refute that premise.

Don’t know whether this is of interest but I had a further thought so far as explaining what I’m getting at. Suppose purely for the sake of argument that it could be established that if there’s no evil god, then there are no moral facts. Would it then be reasonable to believe in an evil god?

Surely not.

Why not? Because the evil God hypothesis, considered independently of the claim: if there’s no evil god then there are no moral facts, is clearly downright absurd. It’s absurd on empirical grounds (notwithstanding the reverse theodicies). So establishing the truth of that claim would not establish that belief in an evil god is reasonable after all. Rather it would make it reasonable for us to abandon our belief in moral facts – a belief which in any case already looks somewhat suspect because there’s a plausible evolutionary explanation for why we would hold this belief even if it were false.

Ditto the good god hypothesis. This is why your moral argument, even with an established first premise (and, as I say, the consensus is it’s a very dodgy premise), is inadequate as a response to the evidential problem of evil. It might raise the probability of a good god with respect to an evil god a little bit. But of course that’s not nearly good enough!

Ah right. You really do want to take that route. You want to say that there’s no good evidence against an evil god provided by observation of the world around us. For what evidence there might *appear* to be against the thought that the world has sch an all-evil, all-powerful creator (and pretty much everyone starts of acknowledging that there *appears* to be a very great deal) is successfully neutralized by the suggestion that there’s an after life of unremitting horror, that this may be a vale of soul-destruction, that evil god gave us free will to allow for moral evils which then outweigh the goods, etc?

So there really is no good empirical evidence against an evil god!

Nor presumably, is there good empirical evidence against any kind of god hypothesis as it’s always possible to cook up various explanations for whatever evidence we might seem to have against the god hypothesis in question by appealing to afterlives, god’s mysterious ways, etc. etc.

Glenn, what I’m interested in, and what I think Stephen pressed WLC for in their debate, is a reason to accept the first premise of the moral argument. The problem I have with the moral argument is that in seems like all the hard philosophical work is in demonstrating the truth of the first premise. But it’s this hard work which is either skipped, or not clearly laid out. What I’d like to see is a premise-by-premise argument for the truth of the first premise. What does such an argument look like?

Has anybody here seen Shutter Island? I found it fairly disappointing, but there’s an interesting speech toward the end, delivered by good ol’ Ted Levine. He goes on about how God loves violence, and how obvious this is based on the evidence available to the keen observer. Of course, he also seems to think that violence is a good thing. I’m throwing this out there as an example of a real hurdle I have in getting Dr. Law’s argument. In the case of Levine’s character, he believes that God loves things that most of us would consider morally bothersome. This is not because he thinks God is evil, however, but because he thinks that everybody else doesn’t really get what a good thing violence is (and he seems to just value violence as an end). Levine’s character believes that God is supremely good, and that he has made the world a violent place out of that goodness, not that God is evil and that people who want to be good are on the wrong side of things or something like that. It just seems natural to give ‘goodness’ some ontological privilege over evil, even if one is very confused as to what good is. I don’t see how an evil god can be construed as anything other than a sort of lesser being, which may just as well be responsible for all the things around us but is otherwise absurd. Why does the theist need to be bothered? I understand we’re not meant to take an evil god as actually being a possibility, but then where is the challenge? That is, if we reject the symmetry thesis, why should we be bothered? Or, perhaps better, why think that there should be symmetry between the case against an evil god (which is essentially a demi-god or some similar being) and God (who would be the ground of being, or understood as having existence on a different order)? It just comes off like a case of arguing against apples by appealing to oranges to me.

Glenn,

I have no doubt that you think God is good. Certainly you do. But there’s a difference between merely attributing that property to God and building it into the concept of God. For example, (supposing God exists) we can say that he has certain contingent properties–e.g. the property of being the creator of Glenn Peoples. But it’s not part of the concept of God that he is the creator of Glenn Peoples. If it were part of the concept of God, it would seem to be an essential property that he has. But God presumably exists in worlds in which he refrains from creating you, and therefore lacks the property of being your creator.

Now, what you seem to say in the passage I quoted was that you have a moral argument for the existence of God–but not necessarily a good God. The additional considerations of what the moral facts are like help to tip us off that the God that exists happens to be good. But this suggests to me that you’re willing to say that if the moral facts had been different, the argument you provide would still prove that God exists, even though he wouldn’t be a good God. If I’ve got you right about this, then it seems to me that you’re willing to countenance the possibility that God needn’t be a good being. But traditional theists will generally say things like the following: If any being is morally imperfect, then it (by definition) cannot be God. In other words, moral perfection is one of the divine attributes built into the concept of God, such that if that property is not instantiated, then God does not exist. Craig, for example, would say this.

So my point was just that your claim seems to be incompatible with the way theists generally understand the concept of God. As I said, I have no quarrel with this way of talking; it was just interesting to see you make that claim. But perhaps I’ve misinterpreted your statement? In that case, I’d wonder what you meant when you wrote:

“What I said is that if there’s no God at all, there are no moral facts. That this God is good rather than malevolent is something inferred from what we discover those facts to be like.”

I’m interested in Law’s claim that most theistic philosophers don’t accept the first premise of the moral argument.

First, Swinburne in his earlier edition of the existence of God rejected moral arguments, but in the preface of his latter edition said he had considerable more sympathy for them and now defends a version from moral knowledge.

Second, as I note in my forthcoming article. Tooley Plantinga and the Deontological Argument from evil. ( forthcoming in Philosophia Christi) In fact quite a few contemporary theistic philosophers claim that moral obligations depend on God. Those who have defended it include, Robert Adams, John Hare, William Alston, William Lane Craig, Stephen C Evans, Philip Quinn, Edward Wierenga, Janine Marie Idziak, William Wainwright, William Mann, Thomas Carson and more recently Alvin Plantinga, David Baggett, and Jerry Wall’s. These people are not obscure, marginal representatives of theism; these names include some of the leading defenders of theism in the literature today. Moreover, people like Nicholas Wolterstorff, Mark Linville and Loius Pojman have offered arguments that certain features of morality other than obligations depend on God.

So I am not sure Law’s can dismiss this by appealing to Swinburne.

Speaking of Swinburne, I would be very interested to hear you do a podcast comparing and contrasting your view on the moral argument to Swinburne’s! I would have thought that the moral argument was one of the best one’s we theist’s had going, but Swinburne disagrees obviously! I think this needs some attention Glenn 🙂

I read your “A New Euthyphro” as essentially defining goodness as god. You accept the proposition that: “an action is right if God commands it, and an action is wrong if God forbids it” (that’s what you wrote in the article). This is synonymous with “rightness is whatever God commands” and “rightness is defined by God”. Correct?

No, it’s not synonymous, and further I didn’t define goodness anywhere in that article, let alone defining it as God.

It’s not synonymous because “an action is right if God commands it” is compatible with a range of different relationships between rightness and God: That rightness means being commanded by God; that the property of rightness is identical with the property of being commanded by God; that the state of being right is caused by being commanded by God; that being right is constituted by being commanded by God – you get the idea.

What’s more, “right” doesn’t mean “loving,” so that connection seems to have popped out from nowhere as well. Remember that the comment of yours that I queried was where you had seen me define God as all loving (not as good), so it seems like a bunch of ideas are being mixed together here.

But more to the point (this was the point of my previous comment, and I don’t want it to be lost beneath the above confusion of concepts), I trust that you do see that there were actually quite a few lines of reasoning that you missed in your previous comment, and my position is not nearly as dependent on things like “faith” as you suggested (and I have no idea what you mean by that, but I suspect the term was meant to conjure up caricatures of believers as not particularly rational). There are several cogent lines of reasoning that address the evil-god challenge, and the moral argument is one such line.

Matthew,

The fact that Swinburne defends a version of the moral argument does not detract from the further fact that he takes the conditional premise of Craig’s moral argument (i.e. “If God does not exist, then objective moral values and duties do not exist”) to be false. He is on record saying so. Stephen is therefore entirely correct to cite Swinburne as a Christian philosopher who sides against this version of the moral argument.

As you note, a number of theistic philosophers do agree that moral obligations depend on God. So Stephen would be incorrect (evidently) to claim that, say, very few theistic philosophers would take that view. I’m not sure if Stephen did make such a claim. But even if he did, he doesn’t need to. All he needs to do is maintain that it is a controversial premise (as evidenced not only by the fact that one of the greatest Christian philosophers of the past fifty years rejects it, but also by the fact that it is widely rejected among philosophers more generally), and that the burden is on the theist to defend the premise of the argument. Citing the philosophers who disagree with the premise serves to emphasize the fact that Craig, Peoples, etc. have a burden of proof here. The premise is not going to be taken for granted.

This is all Stephen needs to claim. If Glenn presents a strong case for the controversial conditional premise, great! Let’s see it.

Maybe I’m naive but why is the intrinsic difference between good and evil not a viable argument? Good and evil are not just synergistic opposites. At its essence the good creates and the evil destroys.

The gods of myth are more human than god and their goals are petty and self-centered. The goal of the machine god of the Matrix is perpetuation. The omnipotent good and just God of the Bible uses anthropomorphism to relate to time-bound humanity. But evil god must be anthropomorphic in order for his endless reign of pain and suffering to make sense.

For evil god the only meaning behind the good is to simply contrast evil in order to increase fear and suffering with an end to perpetuate more fear and suffering. What purpose does evil god have for lessening humanity’s suffering in this life for the promise of everlasting suffering in the afterlife?

It can be logically and rationally theorized that for finite humanity transitioning to the infinite some kind of process is necessary. But progressively learning the true meaning of suffering so that one can achieve a suffering perfection in order to fulfill the amusement of evil god is just non-sense. An illustration of the absurdity of evil god is a short story by outspoken atheist author Harlan Ellison, “I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream.”

The evil god proposition is a semantic trick. And even though the purpose behind it is to demonstrate the absurdity of the arguments for good, to simply re-word all the arguments for good with evil doesn’t work.

Logically evil god must be some sort of sadomasochistic suffering demigod. For if evil god was the embodiment of evil than nothing would exist, for the ultimate goal of evil at the period of the uncreated state is already achieved!

Hey Glenn,
Have you seen Stephen’s response to the EAAN in the latest edition of Analysis? It’s available on his blog. He proposes to get around it by supposing that there are “conceptual constraints” which make true beliefs more valuable to evolutionary progress. I’m still not sure that the “conceptual constraints” get you beyond more functional to more likely to be true, but it’s an interesting response to the EAAN. Do you have any thoughts on it (or are you planning a post in the future)?

It may be true that the arguments of natural theology for God’s existence can be flipped to permit an evil God. However, the historical arguments cannot, in my opinion. I will consider them in three parts: 1) the OT’s record of future prophecies regarding the life and mission of the Messiah, 2) the person of Jesus, and 3) the future fulfillment of the remaining prophecies after Jesus returns.

1) The OT has many specific references to characteristics the Messiah must have, which make it coincidental in the extreme for them all to be fulfilled in any one person. For example, he would be of the tribe of Judah, a prophet like Moses to whom the people must give an account, a king, of the line of David, born in Bethlehem, born of a virgin, born a precise number of years Persian decree to rebuild Jerusalem, that he would die for the sins of the people, that he would live in Galilee and in Nazareth, that he would die by crucifixion, on Passover, that he would inaugurate a new covenant of the spirit, that he would be a light to the nations, and many others – some say around 300. Now, granted, taken individually, it’s difficult to say in every case that they must refer to Jesus. However, in many cases he is the only possible candidate, and their cumulative weight to a discerning mind is, I believe, overwhelming. One might even compare the odds of any person fulfilling even the major ones as rivaling the improbabilities of the fine-tuning of the constants of physics to permit intelligent life, or the accidental arrangement of atoms to form DNA. The nature of the person described by the Old Testament prophecies is unquestionably good, not evil. The people of Israel looked forward to his coming – they did not dread it. He was a savior, redeemer, liberator. There is no set of prophecies anywhere else in history that I know of that relate to an evil one who will come, and which have been fulfilled to the same extent in a living person, as the prophecies of Jesus the Messiah.

2). Jesus life was unquestionably good. He gave sight to the blind, caused the lame to walk, freed those who were demon-possessed, fed the hungry, calmed the storms, raised Lazarus from the dead, and taught people the meaning of life and how to be in right relationship to God and others. Although he had done nothing wrong, he willingly suffered a criminal’s death to make a way for all of mankind to be reconciled to God, when they were helpless to do so on their own. He validated all his actions and teachings when God raised him from the dead to inhabit a new, immortal body. There is no counterpart to this in the evil God hypothesis.

3) The future events to take place when Jesus returns. Due to Jesus’ impeccable credentials, as the one who fulfilled detailed prophecies recorded 400 – 1200 years before his birth; and given his record of accomplishing so much good and not any evil during his life, then it’s quite reasonable, even compelling, to believe that he will fulfill the remaining prophecies about the Messiah in the Bible. And, you guessed it – those prophecies are about him doing good, not evil. He will bring the Jewish people back to their own land to dwell in safety, to recognize him as their Messiah, and to believe in him. He will defeat all the genocidal and oppressive dictators of the world, and all those who do evil, bringing about world peace under his rule. He will recreate the natural order – the lion will lay down by the lamb, the child will play by the viper’s den, and no creature will hurt or destroy another creature. He will raise up the dead and judge them in righteousness, righting all the wrongs that were done under the old order. He will give eternal life and rewards to those who loved him, and banish those who hated or dismissed him.

Once these things have all taken place, all of the atheist objections will be revealed as erroneous, short-sighted, and misguided, whether they relate to God’s existence, the truth of Christianity, or the problem of evil. Once this happens, no one will believe the evil God hypothesis.

Landon

As you note, a number of theistic philosophers do agree that moral obligations depend on God. So Stephen would be incorrect (evidently) to claim that, say, very few theistic philosophers would take that view. I’m not sure if Stephen did make such a claim.

Stephen said “Take, for example, the Christian philosopher Professor Richard Swinburne of Oxford University. Swinburne says, “I cannot see any force in an argument to the existence of God from the existence of morality.”

So Professor Craig is putting up against a mountain of evidence against what he believes an argument that even one of the world’s leading Christian philosophers finds utterly unconvincing.”
Here he gives the impression that the case for Craig’s conditional is so bad that even leading Christian thinkers reject it. In fact many of the most important leading Christian thinkers accept it. Moreover Swinburne rejects it because he departs from the standard position that God exists necessarily and instead believes Gods existence is contingent. So Swinburne is in fact not representative here.

But even if he did, he doesn’t need to. All he needs to do is maintain that it is a controversial premise (as evidenced not only by the fact that one of the greatest Christian philosophers of the past fifty years rejects it, but also by the fact that it is widely rejected among philosophers more generally), and that the burden is on the theist to defend the premise of the argument.

This seems to me a bad argument, it assumes that if a premise is controversial then the burden of proof is on the person who makes it. This creates an obvious problem. Take the claim

1. Moral obligations can exist independently of God.

This is also a controversial claim, many theists and also many error theoriest also many non cognitivists reject it. So by your reasoning those who affirm it have a burden of proof.

Similarly just as one can cite Swinburne one of the greatest Christian philosophers of the last 50 years one can also cite Mackie one of the greatest athiest philosophers of the last 50 years as rejecting 1. So this argument cuts both ways.

Moreover, if the burden of proof is on the person who makes a controversial claim skepticism about pretty much every substantive philosophical claim looms, because to be justified in believing them you would have to appeal to premises which are not controversial and hence accepted by every one
No position is supported by arguments of this level of proof.

Citing the philosophers who disagree with the premise serves to emphasize the fact that Craig, Peoples, etc. have a burden of proof here. The premise is not going to be taken for granted.

See above, Craig can also cite philosophers who disagree with 1 above which would mean the burden of proof is on you to show 1 is true.

This is all Stephen needs to claim. If Glenn presents a strong case for the controversial conditional premise, great! Let’s see it.

Great, now take the claim

2. A divine command theory is false

I can cite philosophers who disagree with this claim, so its controversial hence you cannot take it for granted. All I need to claim then is that this view is controversial and now you need to present a strong case for this premise, lets see it.

Moreover your case must be based on premises which are not in anyway controversial otherwise I can simply point out they are controversial meaning the burden of proof is on you to show it.

So by parity of argument I can make Craig’s conditional the default one.

Landon – the problem is that Law offered the claim that the crucial premise here is controversial (i.e. some philosophers don’t believe it) as the only real response when some considerations were offered in favour of accepting it.

This suggests the view that claims should be denied just if they are controversial – which does indeed entail that you should deny that atheism is true (and that a divine command theory is false). Surely this applies whether you’re in a debate or not.

Glenn,
I’ve listened to that section of the show a couple times and I’m not sure the argument is “this premise is controversial, therefore don’t accept it.” I think it’s more as part of an evidential argument from authority:

1. Most philosophers (in the broad sense) reject moral arguments – evidence is the Phil Papers survey he cited
2. Some Christian philosophers of the highest caliber also reject the crucial premise – evidence is Swinburne
3. Therefore, we should at least hold the argument to a high degree of skepticality as the argument does not have strong support from the academy.

The problem are that the Phil Papers survey was highly weighted toward philosophers who might not even be aware of any of the moral arguments. The largest fields surveyed were philosophy of mind and philosophies of science. Of those surveyed who are in the right field (i.e. philosophy of religion) and specialize in such arguments, nearly 80% accept or lean toward accepting theism. How many of those find moral arguments persuasive? No idea, as there hasn’t been such a survey done.

But even if the points are weakened by analysing the data further, it only lowers the evidence in support of the claims, but doesn’t negate that it’s just an argument from authority. Stephen said that it was not, but never made clear why it is not.

Glenn,

I didn’t get the impression that Stephen was making that argument (and indeed he has now chimed in here to point out that you’re misrepresenting what he said). To argue that X is false because X is controversial surely is a poor argument, as even Stephen would admit.

What Stephen said was that it’s a controversial philosophical claim that requires a good defense. It’s not just controversial among philosophers in general, it’s also controversial among Christian philosophers (as evidenced by Swinburne). Admittedly, it would be nice to come up with some other examples as well, to really drive the point home.

So Stephen isn’t using the fact that it’s controversial as grounds to think it’s false. He’s using the fact that it’s controversial as grounds to emphasize that Craig has to offer a good defense of it.

Now, your other complaint is that this was Stephen’s “only real response when some considerations were offered in favour of accepting it.” In other words, the idea here is supposed to be that Craig has upheld his burden of proof here. He did offer some considerations in favor of the premise, and the only thing Stephen said in response was that Craig has a burden of proof because it’s a controversial claim.

If that’s your complaint, it’s misguided on a couple of accounts. First, I recall that Stephen did say some other things in response to Craig in the debate (and what he said was spot-on from what I remember). Additionally, it’s not clear what considerations Craig offered in favor of accepting the premise. I would contend that he didn’t offer any good considerations in favor of the premise, and that if you go back and listen closely you’ll be hard-pressed to find any decent argument. It’s not just that he didn’t offer any good considerations in favor of the premise in the debate, it’s the same in his written work. Have a look at his defense of the moral argument in Reasonable Faith, and let me know how Craig supports that premise. Here’s my prediction of what you’ll find: good rhetoric, fallacies, rhetorical questions, and shirking the burden of proof. (That was the conclusion I came to a couple of years ago when I wrote a paper on Craig’s moral argument.) If you want to contest that, though, feel free to explain Craig’s considerations in favor of the premise.

My point about the majority of philosophers rejecting the first premise, including even some leading christian ones, was to emphasise that the premise cannot just be assumed and is, indeed, highly controversial – indeed is generally considered very dubious indeed (contrary to what many Christians assume). However, I did not then conclude that the moral argument based on it must be no good. Obviously. I was making a different point.

But as you’re now conversing with me again, what about my earlier comment, in which I tried to state what your view is re the problem of evil. Is the following accurate…?

[quoting myself] “Ah right. You really do want to take that route. You want to say that there’s no good evidence against an evil god provided by observation of the world around us. For what evidence there might *appear* to be against the thought that the world has sch an all-evil, all-powerful creator (and pretty much everyone starts off acknowledging that there *appears* to be a very great deal) is successfully neutralized by the suggestion that there’s an after life of unremitting horror, that this may be a vale of soul-destruction, that evil god gave us free will to allow for moral evils which then outweigh the goods, etc?

So there really is no good empirical evidence against an evil god!

Nor presumably, can there be good empirical evidence against any kind of [all-powerful] god hypothesis as it’s always possible to cook up various explanations for whatever evidence we might seem to have against the god hypothesis in question by appealing to afterlives, god’s mysterious ways, etc. etc.”[end of quote]

In short, your view is that we cannot legitimately draw conclusions about the character of an all-powerful god on the basis of empirical observation (i.e. you embrace “skeptical theism”)?

Stephen – Skeptical theism isn’t the view that we can’t show what God’s character is like by appealing to empirical evidence. Skeptical theism – as I understand it – is the view that we may simply not know why God allows X (where X is some thing in the world that people appeal to in order to undermine God’s character), but that this doesn’t mean there’s no reason for a good God to allow it. In other words, sceptical theism is the recognition that the burden of proof belongs to those who claim that there couldn’t be any good reason for a good God to allow X. A burden of proof, I’m sure you’ll agree, that you don’t attempt to meet in the evil God challenge.

“But I didn’t say that the fact that Swinburne rejects the premise entails that it’s controversial, I said that it’s evidence for thinking that it’s controversial”

Well it’s either controversial or it’s not, Landon. Does Swinburne’s rejection of the claim tell us anything about whether or not it’s controversial? I say no. it cannot do so if in fact the vast majority of Christian philosophers accept the premise. That one does not is just evidence… well, that one does not!. You appear to say yes, it does tell us something about whether or not it’s controversial. So what does it tell us, Landon?

“Now, what exactly was Craig’s argument/support for the premise? You said that some considerations in favor the premise were offered, and I’d be interested in finding out what those were.”

Well, *I* offered some, and throughout this thread I have simply noted that Stephen brushed them off with an appeal to authority/numbers (a flawed appeal, I allege – both because of the actual numbers involved and because of the fallacy involved). But turning tot he debate with bill Craig, yes, Craig did offer some too though, and I think it’s disingenuous to just say that he didn’t – even if you don’t accept the reasons he offered. It would be even more disingenuous to then ask *me* to quote Craig’s comments for you when you yourself have listened to the debate.

You can carry on like that – in which case I’ll likely just ignore it – or you can cut the nonsense and explain what it was about the considerations that Craig offered that you find fault with. But just saying that he offered none is not part of any discussion I’m interested in having.

Glenn,

Regarding the Swinburne thing, I said that the fact that Swinburne rejects the premise is evidence that it’s controversial among Christian philosophers. That is to say, we’re considering the claim:

(C) The premise “If God does not exist, then objective moral values and duties do not exist” is controversial among Christian philosophers.

By claiming that Swinburne’s rejection of the conditional statement is evidence for (C), I’m claiming that it raises the probability of (C) being true. This leaves open the possibility that other evidence effectively renders (C) false. For example, you claim that the vast majority of Christian philosophers side with you and Craig against Swinburne. Let’s suppose it’s nearly unanimous. This would, I think, effectively show (C) to be false. But you’ve yet to provide the evidence that Christian philosophers are nearly unanimous in siding with you and Craig on this issue. I asked you in my last comment what your grounds were for making that claim, and you seem to have ignored that part of my comment.

You write: “Well, *I* offered some, and throughout this thread I have simply noted that Stephen brushed them off with an appeal to authority/numbers (a flawed appeal, I allege – both because of the actual numbers involved and because of the fallacy involved).”

Well, as I said I haven’t listened to your debate with Stephen so I wouldn’t know about that. But this particular thread of back-and-forth comments between you and I began while we were discussing Stephen’s debate with Craig, and you claimed in that context that some considerations in favor of the premise were offered. I assumed you were referring to the debate with Craig. So I’m going to focus on that, since that’s what I’ve been talking about. When I have time someday I’ll listen to your debate.

You write: “But turning tot he debate with bill Craig, yes, Craig did offer some too though, and I think it’s disingenuous to just say that he didn’t – even if you don’t accept the reasons he offered. It would be even more disingenuous to then ask *me* to quote Craig’s comments for you when you yourself have listened to the debate.”

Glenn, you can rest assured that I have listened to what Craig has to say with his moral argument. I’ve carefully pored over his (apparently) longest discussion of the argument in Reasonable Faith (3rd Ed.), and it’s just not clear to me what the considerations in favor of that premise are supposed to be. As I said, there’s a lot of nice rhetoric, and there’s some fallacies (including the very fallacies you’re complaining about with Stephen!), and there’s some rhetorical questions, and there’s some shirking of the burden of proof. And that’s pretty much it. So if you think that Stephen needs to say more in order to neutralize Craig’s defense of the premise, here’s what he needs to say: Craig’s case is a nicely packaged combination of rhetoric, fallacies, rhetorical questions, and shirking the burden of proof.

In other words, Craig’s case doesn’t actually support the premise. And given that Craig’s got a burden of proof here (I contend, though I’m surprised to find that Matt thinks that those who make arguments don’t have the burden of supporting their own premises!), Stephen’s points all seem to be in line.

You write: “You can carry on like that – in which case I’ll likely just ignore it – or you can cut the nonsense and explain what it was about the considerations that Craig offered that you find fault with. But just saying that he offered none is not part of any discussion I’m interested in having.”

Here, let me give you a taste of what I’m talking about from Craig’s defense of the premise in Reasonable Faith:

“Consider, then, moral values. If theism is false, why think that human beings have objective moral value? After all, on the naturalistic view, there’s nothing special about human beings. They’re just accidental byproducts of nature which have evolved relatively recently on an infinitesimal speck of dust called the planet Earth, lost somewhere in a hostile and mindless universe, and which are doomed to perish individually and collectively in a relatively short time. Richard Dawkins’ assessment of human worth may be depressing, but why, on atheism, is he mistaken when he says, “There is at bottom no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pointless indifference…. We are machines for propagating DNA. It is every living object’s sole reason for being”?” (p. 173-4)

Now, what considerations has Craig offered here? (Note that he has another page about objective moral values in the book, so I’m not including it all right here. But let’s focus on what he’s offered in this paragraph.)

Well, he’s got some nice rhetoric in there about the naturalistic perspective on the universe. We’re just animals on a rock in this big, pointless universe. Okay, and what can we infer from that? If we’re inferring from this that there is no objective morality, then Craig is working with this sort of premise:

(P) If we’re just animals on a rock…etc., then there are no objective moral values.

Fascinating claim. And we should believe that…why? Craig never says. Okay, so maybe the rhetoric about the naturalistic perspective isn’t meant to support the controversial premise of his moral argument. What else has he offered?

Well, he asks rhetorical questions. He asks: Why think there would be objective moral values given naturalism? We should pause and ponder this. Good question. Well worth thinking about. But does the rhetorical question lend any support for the claim that, say, naturalism entails that there are no objective moral values? I don’t see how. Instead, it looks to me like Craig is simply shirking the burden of proof. (I don’t have to show that my premise is true, you tell me why it’s false!)

Oh, and the Dawkins quote is excellent. If you think that Stephen’s appeal to Richard Swinburne is fallacious, I’d like to see your response to Craig! Why is Dawkins wrong he he says this about objective morality? Oh gee, that really is good evidence in favor of Craig’s claim that objective morality depends on the existence of God: Richard Dawkins says there’s no good and evil, and Craig has now asked us why Dawkins is wrong.

Well, count me unimpressed. As I said, when I looked at this in detail a couple of years ago for a paper, I found that Craig’s argument was almost entirely like this. I’m now toying with the idea of folding that material into a section of another paper that I have in the works (sort of).

Anyway, the reason I was prodding you to go back and look at Craig’s justification for the premise was not because I was too lazy to do it myself. I wanted to see whether you’d notice that it’s extremely problematic. I think Stephen is correct to point out that Craig has the burden of proof here, and that he has failed to uphold it. In fact, I’ve been saying so for years.

Hi Glenn

I’m aware of what skeptical theism is, and also what its consequences are. Let’s think this through…

You maintain that, whatever we observe of the world, e.g. in terms of apparently gratuitous good/evil, we can’t know that there isn’t some entirely adequate evil/good justifying reason for it.

But then whatever we observe, this could, for all we know, be the best of all worlds created by an all-powerful, all-good god, or the worst of all worlds created by an all-powerful, all-evil god. We just can’t know, on the basis of observation, what the ultimate value of the world, or its creator, is.

Hence the evidential problem of evil (and good) is neutralized. Right?

Or wrong?

Landon, it’s good to see you now acknowledging that Craig (even unsuccessfully, in your view) offered some considerations in favour of his view. But as for your selection and treatment: Come off it. Your summary of Craig’s comments is worse than caricature.

“If we’re just animals on a rock…etc., then there are no objective moral values.”

You can do a lot better than this, and probably would if you had any interest in being charitable to the target of your criticisms. You’re certainly capable of seeing that Craig here is zooming in on one particular aspect of moral value: Whether or not human beings have moral value. His point is that on naturalism we are accidental – not intended for any purpose and hence any purpose we find for ourselves is not about objective value but subjective value.

Craig’s argument beyond this tiny snippet is that if theism is true (not just any theism, of course, but theism of certain kinds), then there is a basis for objective moral values and duties, but if naturalism is true, there’s no such basis. What was particularly troubling about your quotation from Craig is that you quoted where he stated his position, and then stopped – not mentioning for the benefit of other readers that in the paragraphs that immediately follow he offers reasons for thinking that his position is true. You stopped quoting when Craig stated his position on page 174, line 2. But from line 3 through to page 179, about halfway down the page, he actually defends that position in light of what a number of atheist philosophers have said about the position. After that, he then sums up what he has argued for: “In short, on an atheistic, naturalistic worldview, there just seems to be no basis for affirming the existence of objective moral values and duties.” It troubles me that you quoted Craig this way.

Or if you had wanted an extended treatment of this one issue from Craig, a natural choice might have been his debate with Richard Taylor: “Is The Basis Of Morality Natural Or Supernatural?” http://www.leaderu.com/offices/billcraig/docs/craig-taylor0.html

It just looks to me like you’re putting in minimal effort, ignoring the arguments that Craig used, saying they aren’t there and putting the onus on other people to reiterate them for you. Sorry, I actually have things to do. I’ve previously offered my own podcast on the moral argument, and Craig has offered a moral argument as well. As far as I’m concerned, they are there to be criticised any time you feel like it.

And I couldn’t believe your attempted parallel between Bill quoting Dawkins and Stephen citing Richard Swinburne. Bill quoted Dawkins because he agreed with his assessment of the consequences of naturalism (he quotes Nietzsche, Mackie, Ruse and others to this effect as well). But he never pretended that these voices represent the norm of what atheists think, or even that this is what most of them think. Law quoted Swinburne in the attempt to show that Swinburne’s lonely voice among Christian philosophers somehow makes the view of the others controversial among Christian philosophers!

The following theodicy, called “Theodicy from divine justice”, may adequately account for all the horror we see around us, at least with respect to human suffering:

– God’s perfect justice prevents Him from relieving people with unforgiven sins from their sufferings (see Isaiah 59,1-2).
– Unlike God Christians are not perfectly just. Therefore, unlike God, they are in a position to help people with unforgiven sins. By doing this they may make those among them who haven’t yet accepted God’s salvation receptive of it (Matthew 5,16, 1 Peter 2,11-12, and 3,1-2), which in turn frees these persons from suffering in the afterlife.
– The greater God’s beneficial power due to His love, the greater God’s destructive power due to His justice (see Matthew 13,27-29). Striving to prevent as much suffering as possible God can only interfere to such a degree that the beneficial effect of the interference is not neutralized by the destructive effect of it.
– Someone who dies before he or she reaches the age of accountability, i.e. before he or she can distinguish between good and evil (see Genesis 2,16-17, Deuteronomy 1,39, and Isaiah 7,16) faces no punishment in the afterlife, as he or she would not have been able to commit sins. So, God may not be inclined to prevent such a person’s death.
– A person’s suffering in this life may have a redeeming effect (Luke 16,25) and consequently contribute to a decrease of the respective person’s suffering in the afterlife; the amount of suffering in this life is so to speak subtracted from the amount of suffering in the afterlife. So, God may not be inclined to relieve this person’s suffering.
– A person’s suffering in this life may make the person receptive of God’s salvation (Luke 15,11-21), which in turn frees this person from suffering in the afterlife.
– There are degrees of punishment in the afterlife depending on one’s moral behaviour (Matthew 16,27, 2 Corinthians 5,10), one’s knowledge of God’s will (Matthew 11,20-24, Luke 12,47-48), and, as mentioned before, one’s amount of suffering in this life (Luke 16,25).
– Those people who suffer more in this life than they deserve due to their way of life are compensated for it by receiving rewards in Heaven.

I think that the differance is that Craig was citing Dawkins’ statement with approval as supportive of the premise, not simply because Dawkins said it, but because of what Dawkins said (the point Dawkins was making, if it was a cogent point, provides support for the soundness of the premise). Dr. Law’s quoting of Swinburne was to demonstrate that the premise was not widely accepted, but Law failed to provide even Swinburne’s reasons for not accepting it (Swineburne is a Platonist, correct?), or, as far as I remember, his own reasons for rejecting that premise (he didn’t, say, provide much reason to think that it was wrong in itself, or problematic, just that it was controversial.). That’s actually a big difference.

Stephen, what I noted is that you observed the existence of a variety of theocidies in regard tot he problem of evil, and then just proceeded as though we can all rest assured that they don’t do the job. Well that’s hardly good enough, is it? I have no reason to think that all existing theodicies fail.

You also now seem to be saying that somewhere (not sure where or when) I’ve said that “[my] theodicies (whichever ones they are exactly) are able fully to deal with the problem of evil”

But I just didn’t say this. here’s what I really said in this thread:

I mean sure there might be unknown reasons (I certainly have time for sceptical theism just because I think there are great reasons to think that theism is true), but at this point I have no reason to think that there’s no merit in existing theodicies.

There’s a difference between thinking for certain that the existing theodicies leave nothing to wonder about (something I never said, but which you now attribute to me), and thinking that they have merit (which I did say). But surely rejecting theodicies because in spite of their merit they might not be a complete explanation strikes me as a bit like rejecting science because there are still some things we don’t know!

Matt,

Thanks for the comment. Peter Singer’s argument is not that atheism entails that “there is no basis for considering humans special.” He claims that there’s nothing about the species, per se, which is morally special. But individual humans beings, for example, can be “special” in the sense that their lives are more valuable than other non-human animals. Singer would agree, then, that my life is more valuable than the life of a cow. He would do so because he recognizes that my cognitive capacities are much greater than that of a cow, in the relevant respects.

Craig doesn’t mention Singer by name, but he does mention “speciesism.” He accuses secular humanists of “speciesism,” since he thinks there’s no morally relevant difference (given atheism) between members of the human species and members of other species. But this is really crude, and not the kind of reasoning Singer would endorse. If a secular humanist is claiming that all humans, no matter what defects they may have, are morally more valuable than any non-human animal, then Singer’s reasoning would work to undermine that view. (And it does an excellent job at undermining such a view, in my opinion.) But Singer’s line of reasoning doesn’t show that there are no morally relevant differences to be had among members of different species. That’s something Singer explicitly rejects in his work.

Moreover, you might wonder about this line of argument: How do we know that “if God does not exist, then objective moral values do not exist”? Because secular humanism is an intellectually bankrupt position, undermined by its speciesism. Really, so if secular humanism is shown to be false, does that entail that there are no objective moral values in the absence of God?

I’m familiar with the Ruse, and know where to find the Linville, but do you have a citation for Sharon Street? It could be helpful when I work on this more. In any case, the fact that naturalism and evolution provide a defeater for our moral beliefs (and/or intuitions) does not show that objective moral values do not exist, which is Craig’s claim. His claim is not: “If God does not exist, then we should be moral skeptics.” His claim is: “If God does not exist, then objective moral values do not exist.” By offering a defeater for our moral beliefs, he has at best given us a reason to be moral skeptics, not moral nihilists or anti-realists.

As for the last argument, I do recall Craig saying that. Do you remember where he said it?

(Citing the arguments of Hare and Layman is a different matter, since it’s a different argument. I was focusing on Craig’s case for the premise of his own moral argument.)

ps excuse the type-Os corrected and fuller version is available here….http://stephenlaw.blogspot.com/2011/12/glenn-peoples-on-evil-god-challenge.html

Hi Glenn

my quick response to your three comments.

1) I’m not even close to being persuaded that the plausibility of theodicies is anything like the plausibility of explanations for why we should believe in a young universe.

Me: What you’re persuaded of is irrelevant.

2) Theodicies don’t strike me as ad hoc. Things like the free will defence or the soul building defence (etc) are generalisable. E.g. the might be stated something like “For any perfectly good and all powerful being, it would still be conceivable that they allow X provided it has some outcome that is compatible with their good character, such as Y.” Ad hoc explanations are really one-off explanations of a sort that are just made up to explain one very specific situation by appealing to principles that are of no use otherwise. So it’s not ad hoc at all.

That’s not what ad hoc means, Glenn. Ad hoc explanations lead to no new tests. The theodicies are ad hoc, by Popper’s definition (he coined the phrase). Look it up. Or, when the theodicies are not ad hoc, and the further test is failed, they are salvaged by yet another defensive manouevre, just as in the case of YEC, thereby rendering the theory unfalsifiable (ar an appeal to mystery, of course). Nutters who believe dogs are spies are the planet Venus, etc. employ the exact same strategy.

3) Even if things were different and theodicies were ad hoc, they are intended as explanations for why a person might do or allow something that you didn’t expect them to. If anything is allowed to be ad hoc, surely it’s something about why so-and-so might do something. If you rejected the explanation because it was ad hoc, you’d be effectively stacking the deck against any explanation in terms of a person’s intentions, which would be unfair in this case, to put it mildly. But this is moot, since theodicies aren’t ad hoc in any important sense anyway.

ME: The theodicies are ad hoc. They lead to no new tests (either that, or further explaining away is done ad nauseum to deal with further explanatory failures, or their supplemented by appeals to mystery). This is not like when someone does something out of character and we say, ah, but they probably had this reason for doing it. Often, we can test our hypothesis. So the suggestion is not ad hoc at all. And the occasional ad hoc explanation for anomolies is in any case acceptable (even Popper thought so). However, when there’s considerable evidence against a theory and it’s all dealt with by ad hoc means (and/or appeals to mystery), then that counter-evidence is NOT neutralized.

You’re strategy is, in short, very much like a wife who, when presented with a husband who very often acts in seemingly cruel and vicious way, beating her and her children, maintains he is nevertheless entirely noble and virtuous. She simply explains all the bad stuff away in a manner that is entirely ad hoc (or, when her excuses and explanations for his behaviour clearly fail, just constructs yet more explanations ad nauseum, and/or appeals to his having mysterious unknown reasons).

Such a wife is being irrational if she insists there’s no prima facie good evidence that her husband is NOT entirely noble and good. She’s deluded. You seem, to me, are a similar case.

Now of course, the wife might insist she has these other very good reasons for thinking her husband really is noble after all. Perhaps she has. But, as things stand, her husband’s horrific behaviour really is excellent evidence that he’s not entirely noble and good, notwithstanding the wife’s endless supply of untestable excuses and explanations.

That’s right, I am suggesting you’re deluded, Glenn. Not very gracious of me, but it’s what I think. Clearly, when we are both so very confident of the reasonableness of our respective, but mutually exclusive, positions, one of us very probably is pretty deluded. The above considerations suggest it’s you.

“Me: What you’re persuaded of is irrelevant.”

Stephen, why exactly am I supposed to be bothered by the fact that you think there’s a good comparison between young earth creationism and theodicies? Surely your opinion on the strength of the comparison is… irrelevant?

As for getting drawn into an argument about what “ad hoc” means (where I’m pretty sure I’m right – look it up), your real objection seems to be that we can’t test whether or not our suggested reason is God’s real reason. And it’s true that we probably can’t. This seems pretty unimportant to me, as long as the suggested reasons are consistent with the character of a good God. If you think a wife can come up with an account of why a husband who really loves her would beat her up, go right ahead.

It strikes me that the kinds of objections you’re raising now amount to more than the recycled “invisible gardner” objection from new Essays in Philosophical Theology in 1955. Effectively you’ve got to say that even though the existing theodicies may do the trick, they can’t be (empirically?) falsified and hence we have to assume that they aren’t the answer!

Well you’re welcome to assume that, but if a person who believes in a good God also believes that the various theodicies may well do the trick (or at least most of the trick), you’ll understand, I’m sure, why they aren’t terribly bothered by your reluctance to think the theodicies are any good.

I’m pleased to have helped you focus your thoughts, Stephen, and I too have enjoyed our discussions very much. But you’re wrong. 😉

Glenn,

For the record, I just wanted to point out that I recall writing a response to your last comment to me, but I no longer see it posted in this thread. I don’t know if you lost it when the servers were down, or for some other reason. I won’t bother re-typing it from memory now that it’s gone though. I just thought I’d point that out.

Stephen, there’s nothing as powerful as wishful thinking, which may explain why you see me as “on the ropes.” That gave me a chuckle. Given that you appear to have offered simply no reply – none at all – to the argument that God is good via the moral argument and your only apparent belief that you have a better argument seems to lie in your hope that there’s a relevant sense in which you can call theodicies “ad hoc,” this seems like wishful thinking of the highest order!

But now that you’ve effectively confirmed my suspicions about what you’re saying, I daresay there’s little more I need to add. You think theodicies are probably wrong because we don’t know for certain that in fact they have identitifed God’s real reasons for allowing X. You could, of course, had made a much more convincing case by arguing that the theodicies were – like the rationalisations of a beaten wife – implausible. But then, that would require coming up with a good argument, and just as in the case of you brushing off the moral argument, putting in the time to construct good arguments at the crucial junctures isn’t really a feature of the evil-God challenge.

If that’s the gravity of your argument, I’m comforted. 🙂

>An ad hoc hypothesis is one introduced to immunize a theory against refutation.

Yes and because Prof Law can’t or won’t define what he means by “Evil” or “Good” then he can change it’s sense from one minute to another to immunize his theory against refutation.

The hypocrisy here galls me the most.

If Prof Law would swallow his Pride and admitted his EGC only can be applied to an Anthropomorphic Personalist Deity who is composite and a moral agent (plus defining Good and Evil as ontologically equivalent but opposite things) then I believe it would be a credible response(not foolproof obviously) to the Theodicies of Swimburne and Plantinga.

But it would still be a non-starter challenge to the Classical view of God.

But Law has deluded himself into believing this is an all purpose argument that can apply to any God-concept with any backround philosophy. He hasn’t made the case he hasn’t even come close. I guess it’s very intoxicating convincing yourself you have the silver bullet to kill the werewolf of superstition.

But it seems to me to be delusional. I am so convinced if I stopped believing in any type of God tomorrow my opinion in the limited nature of the EGC would not change.

I guess it depends on what you mean by “argument.” I didn’t claim, for example, that Craig doesn’t say anything with the intention of supporting the premise.

Landon, you started this by asking – apparently being genuine – “it’s not clear what considerations Craig offered in favor of accepting the premise.”

This was surely rhetorical overstatement, as you went on to admit that actually you did see some (attempts at) arguments offered by Craig, but you thought them fallacious.

However, what you quoted was just Craig’s summary of his position, and not really his arguments for them. You quoted (loosely) that summary again in your last comment. Yet when I pointed this out to you, it struck me that the way you then sought to summarise the pages that followed was horribly unsympathetic – tot he point that it seems the only way I could defend Craig against your allegation in any way that would satisfy you would be to just reproduce Craig’s words from that whole section here!

It really did strike me that you were not willing to give Craig a fair hearing at all. This is further suggested to me by your allegation that Craig makes an argument by quoting Dawkins and then saying “why is Dawkins wrong,” moving the burden of proof. In fact he quotes Dawkins in the context of Craig himself giving reasons to accept that Dawkins’ outlook follows from naturalism – but again, you’re just saying that he gave no reasons! That’s frustrating to say the least. Clearly his argument are presented in summary form (indeed, Reasonable Faith is the place where he gives the shortest treatment of the moral argument, unlike his debate with Taylor), but there are there nonetheless.

I’m worried now (well not actually worried, but suspicious) that when you hear my discussion with Stephen you’ll conclude that since my presentation of the moral argument was just an outline, you’ll claim that I presented no argument at all!

I blogged last night on what reasons exist for accepting the conditional premise of the moral argument (if there is no God then there are no moral facts). Hopefully you’ll be prepared to grant that it contains… well… something! Maybe you’ll find more there than you found in Bill Craig’s work on why that premise should be granted.

PS Landon’s unpacking of Craig’s arguments for his first premise of his moral argument seem to me to be admirably full, clear and, so far as I can see, entirely accurate. Landon’s clearly spent some time reading Craig very carefully. Look forward to reading whatever comes out of your research, Landon….

Glenn may have something more substantial to offer – I haven’t looked yet.

Of course, I wasn’t really interested in exposing all the flaws in Glenn’s moral argument – nor did I need to expose its flaws, as the moral argument is rendered more or less useless if Glenn does not first succeed in neutralizing the evidential problem of evil, which he hasn’t (because Glenn’s method of dealing with it is almost entirely ad hoc).

At this point, Glenn’s position looks no more rational than that of a Young Earth Creationist.

Glenn,

You write: “Yet when I pointed this out to you, it struck me that the way you then sought to summarise the pages that followed was horribly unsympathetic – tot he point that it seems the only way I could defend Craig against your allegation in any way that would satisfy you would be to just reproduce Craig’s words from that whole section here!”

No, quoting the entire section of Craig’s book here in the comments of your blog would be unnecessary, and it would not “satisfy me” either. I had the book with me when I quoted the first paragraph of Craig’s defense of the premise (what you call his “summary”). I also had the book with me when I went on to summarize each subsequent paragraph. Merely quoting back at me the paragraphs I had just read wouldn’t have had much effect, all on its own. The simple fact is that Craig doesn’t offer any formal arguments for the premise (i.e. arguments with clearly stated premises which validly lead to the conclusion that the premise is true). If he’s got arguments, they’re a lot more informal than that, and the perceptive reader has to formalize them him or herself. What I did was briefly mention the basic content of each paragraph. If I missed something important, feel free to point that out. (This would not require quoting the full two pages.) But merely claiming that I’m misrepresenting and distorting Craig’s work isn’t getting us anywhere. If I’m missing something, I’d like to know what in particular I’m missing, and I can assure you it would probably be due to negligence on my part. I’m not intentionally lying about the contents of Craig’s book here.

You wrote: “This is further suggested to me by your allegation that Craig makes an argument by quoting Dawkins and then saying “why is Dawkins wrong,” moving the burden of proof. In fact he quotes Dawkins in the context of Craig himself giving reasons to accept that Dawkins’ outlook follows from naturalism – but again, you’re just saying that he gave no reasons!”

First, I did acknowledge Craig’s rhetoric about naturalism leading to the subjectivity of values. I quoted it, and then I mentioned it. Craig claims that, given naturalism, “there’s nothing special about human beings.” (Is this supposed to be uncontroversial, by the way?) He says that we’re doomed to perish in this hostile universe in a relatively short time. And so, he asks, why think human beings have objective moral values if there is no God? Why is Richard Dawkins mistaken when he says there’s no good and evil? And I’m wondering: Why do Craig and Peoples think the quick little assertions about the naturalistic perspective constitute a decent argument for the premise?

So when I was offering an assessment of the paragraph, I mentioned the rhetorical question at the beginning–pointing out that a rhetorical question such as that does not prove the premise, and in fact it seems to just be a maneuver to shift the burden of proof. I mentioned the rhetoric, though perhaps you think it’s the reader’s responsibility to develop an argument for Craig here, fueled by those considerations. And I mentioned the Dawkins quote–again pointing out that this isn’t sufficient to make his case. It’s not as if I just claimed: Look, all Craig does is quote Dawkins’ opinion.

Secondly, it’s interesting to note that in the paragraph I quoted, barring the introduction sentence “Consider, then, moral values,” Craig’s paragraph is: (1) A rhetorical question, followed by (2) The assertion that, given atheism, there’s nothing special about human beings, and (3) The assertion that, given naturalism, we’re just evolved animals on a small planet in a big mindless universe, destined to die in the relatively near future, then followed by (4) Another rhetorical question (“why is Dawkins mistaken…”). That paragraph, at least, doesn’t offer much.

Now, you seem to want to say this is just Craig’s summary, not his actual argument. And in that case, his argument must come in the next page, because after that he moves on to defending his assertion that without God there are no objective moral duties. But I’ve already summarized (unfairly, you claim) what Craig says in that next page. And it’s not looking all that good from where I’m sitting.

You write: “Clearly his argument are presented in summary form (indeed, Reasonable Faith is the place where he gives the shortest treatment of the moral argument, unlike his debate with Taylor), but there are there nonetheless.”

Really? In terms of his written work, I thought Reasonable Faith is the place where he actually offers the longest treatment of the moral argument. (Perhaps with the exception of his response in the book Is Goodness Without God Good Enough?) The frustrating thing is that Craig has defended this argument in his books and in debates, but hasn’t bothered to defend it under peer-review as far as I can tell. So I’ve got to be content with his treatment in Reasonable Faith, along with any additional considerations offered in those debates. As I said, I’ll have another look at the Taylor debate.

I’ll have a look at your new blog post when I have some time. Perhaps it will contain more straightforward argument than Reasonable Faith.

By the way, am I to understand that when you claimed that the vast majority of Christian philosophers accept the premise, you were just offering your general impression? I take it that, given that you’ve been ignoring my request pretty consistently for a while now, you’re implicitly acknowledging that you don’t have any easily verifiable means of checking out your claim?

Glenn,

I think you are playing a sematics game.

1)If there’s no God, there are no objective moral values.
2)There are objective moral values
3)Therefore there is a God.

Are you saying that your premises (1&2)and more plausible than their negations or they are abosolutely true? It seems to me that you imply the first one. Then let us do some basic math. Consider two extreme situations. You premises are 49 percent true or they are 99 percent true. I am considering only integers for the sake of calculation. What is the mathematicl probability of the conclusion being true? Since you cannot establish that your premises are 100 percent true, the concluiong being 100 percent true is a mathematical and logical impossiblity and Dr. Law is jusified in doubting your premises.

Glenn you say:

{{{QUOTING: Stephen, good heavens…. To say that a specific piece of evidence was planted by aliens to fool us is not generalisable. if there is some weird esoteric sense in which you think it is, it is certainly not in the sense that “A perfectly good being could allow things like X if doing so is a means to some good end” is generalisable. You comparison is just silly.}}}

Of course it’s generalizable. One can employ a general rule like this – “whenever a piece of evidence X presents itself against the hypothesis that aliens rule the world, explain X by saying the aliens planted it there to fool us.”

Or say this: “Aliens rulers can and will plant things like X if by doing so they can create the impression they don’t rule the world.”

In what sense, then, is explaining counter-evidence by saying the aliens put it there to fools us not generalizable, or only generalizable in some “weird, esoteric sense”? (Moreover, I have already pointed out that being generalizable has in any case got nothing to do with ad hoc-ness, as Popper and I use the term.)

At this point, I’ve explained exactly why your approach to counter-evidence is essentially like that of YECs, aliens-rule-the-world conspiracy theorists, and various other nutcases. I have pointed out that it’s ultimately entirely ad hoc. I’ve explained clearly what ad hoc means, and have even illustrated many times using both theodicies and other examples. I have explained why almost entirely ad hoc defences of theories against powerful counter-evidence fail (if that’s not clear, I’ll happily explain further – basically, once we say such defences work, every theory, no matter how nuts, turns out to have no good evidence against it).

So how, then, does your response to the problem of evil avoid the charge that, like the responses of YEC’s, aliens-rule-the-world nutters, etc. to counter-evidence, boil down almost entirely to ad-hoc-ery and mystery-mongering?

I’ve done three things: Read Stephen’s article “The Evil God Challenge,” listened to the discussion with Justin, Glenn and Stephen, and read (most of) the comments in this discussion thread. Here’s the way I think things unfolded:

Stephen: The traditional arguments for theism don’t specify that God is good.

Glenn: OK, let’s grant that for argument’s sake.

Stephen: Now you could object to the view that God is good by using the evidential problem of evil. There are mountains and mountains and mountains and mountains of empirical evidence against a good, God, namely, suffering and bad stuff like that. But classical theists have theodicies, like free will, soul making and so on. And so they “take the sting” out of the problem of evil [to use Stephen’s words in the interview].

Glenn: Agreed.

Stephen: But if you’re happy with this, suppose we object to the evil-god believer by pointing out that there’s a lot of good in the world. There’s a mountain of empirical evidence against evil-god, namely, all the good stuff in the world. But now the evil-god believer can use all the same theodicies in reverse! The free will theodicy, the “soul destroying” theodicy, and so on.

Glenn: OK, just for argument’s sake let’s grant that the evil-god believer can also do this.

Stephen: But clearly the evil-god hypothesis is absurd anyway. And since you would still say that about the evil-god hypothesis, why don’t you also say it about the good God? And that’s the evil God challenge.

Glenn: Well, if we concede for argument’s sake that the evil-god believe can also take the sting out using theodicies, then we can’t, on the basis of the problem of good, say that the evil-god hypothesis is absurd. If we do say that, we’ll have to say it for other reasons.

Glenn: Now that’s out of the way, the moral argument gives us good grounds to suppose that God is good. If God is required in order for there to be moral facts (and here’s a sketch of an argument for that), then the nature of those moral facts tells us about what God is like, and he’s clearly good rather than malevolent.

Stephen: Well, that’s a controversial argument because a lot of philosophers reject the moral argument. Even this Christian philosopher Richard Swinburne.

Glenn: Well can you give a good reason to reject the outline of an argument I gave?

Stephen: I don’t need to, because it’s controversial. And remember, there’s that mountain of empirical evidence against a good God.

Glenn: Well, our discussion was premised on the fact that both types of theism has theodicies for the evidential problems of good and evil.

Stephen…. Well yes but now I want to run a new argument: Those theodicies don’t work! They’re ad hoc! The unvarnished problem of evil can carry my whole case.

End of summary.

If I have read this correctly, Stephen has beaten a retreat. When both parties (Glenn and Stephen) allowed the theodicies to remain in place, Stephen had no answer whatsoever for the moral argument. The only way he can avoid it (and I say “avoid,” rather than answer it) is to go back and renegotiate the theodicies. In short, the evil God challenge brings nothing new to the discussion table at all and does not move any debate forward.

Lovely Stalinesque rewriting of history Sandra! I never said I don;t need to dreal with the moral argument because it’s controversial. Go and check.

Glenn did indeed insist the theodicies worked (perhaps supplemented by mystery-mongering – which I didn’t grasp during the radio show as he didn’t make it clear and because it is so counter-intuitive (no ones taken that line with EGC before). However, once it became clear that that was indeed what Glenn was suggesting, I just bolstered the intuition that the theodicies are hopeless with an argument – an argument Glenn has subsequently failed to deal with.

The overall argumentative architecture is this. I present powerful evidence against the classical theism. Glenn insists it’s not powerful evidence (despite the fact even many theists think it is). I then bolster the intuition that it is powerful evidence with an argument (Glenn’s theodicies etc. are all ad hoc, and once we allow ad hoc explanations, every nutty belief turns out to face no counter-evidence). Glenn’s clearly out of his depth at this point, tries to deal with the charge of ad hocness with an opaque and irrelevant point about generalizations. If the evidential problem of evil is very powerful evidence against theism, then the moral argument, even with an established first premise, is pretty useless. Classical theism remains, frankly, silly.

I have in addition now raised one very obvious, well-known and devastating problem with the moral argument (on Glenn’s newer thread) which Glenn has basically responded to by saying he doesn’t have time to deal with it….

But I needn’t have bothered as, given the problem of evil is indeed overwhelming empirical evidence against Glenn’s god (and it is), the right conclusion to draw if the first premise of the moral argument is true (which it ain’t) is that there are no objective moral values. Which was only ever an intuition in the first place, and moreover, an intuition which evolutionary theory suggest we would have even if it was not true.

Overall, Glenn explains away counter evidence by ad hoc means and mystery mongering, and supports his theory by saying “But explain *this* then – see my hypothesized x must have done it” (where an inability to explain so-and-so certainly doesn’t establish x did it). This is exactly how YECs, aliens-rule-the-world, aliens-built-the-pyramids theorists think (substitute “god” or “aliens” for “X”).

Take a step back and try to take a cool, impartial look at the overall rational architecture of your belief system. You might be surprised.

Stephen, calling explanations ad hoc isn’t an argument. I think this question is important, and since you didn’t answer it, here goes again. I think the answer may be telling:

“Since you reject the existing theodicies, if God had any reason for allowing suffering that you would accept, what sort of reason would it have to be?”

I want to see if your rejections of theodicies is actually meaningful, and I think your answer to this question may help to tell us this.

Otherwise, all we’ve got is you ignoring the moral argument, saying in effect that any theodicy should be rejected from the outset, and then wondering why your argument isn’t getting traction!

Stephen, your answer, I think, shows why Sandra’s question matters – because I really do think you’re setting up an “unchallengeable” argument, much like the unfalsifiable ones you complain about. It’s bed time for me, but I’ll check back to see if you answer it.

When I think of a purely “ad hoc” rationalisation, I think of one that would be entirely unmotivated other than to step in at a given moment out of the blue and save a theory from defeat. This is the definition that Glenn linked to.

But theodicies – unlike rationalizations of a wife-beating husband, are not like this. Instead they are introduced because there are already reasons to think that God is good. Glen refers to the moral argument, but we might also think of historical apologetics, as well as a classical consideration of maximal greatness, being, evil (being nonbeing) and the like. If these considerations didn’t exist (or if we, like Stephen, just ignore these issues and continually refuse to address them), then maybe theodicies might look ad hoc. But once we acknowledge these as motivators for our background belief that God is good, theodicies aren’t ad hoc – or at any rate if there’s some sense in which Stephen can call them such, the complaint becomes trivial – and they definitely aren’t like rationalisations of young earth belief or the violent husband. Instead they are motivated by pre-existing plausible reasons to think that God is good, and they show that the problem of evil can’t overturn those arguments unless the proponent of the argument from evil is willing to shoulder the burden of proof and argue that a good god couldn’t have these (or any plausible) reasons for allowing suffering. And if there’s one uniting theme in Stephen’s approach, it’s a steadfast unwillingness to actually argue for the assumptions he relies on (or to argue against Glen’s argument for divine goodness!). Of course, if a person turns to the problem of evidential evil presupposing that there’s no existing reason to think that God is good, they might be tempted to assume that every explanation is a rationalisation without warrant.

I’m looking forward to the next podcast!

Stephen, I have to say – I think your line of argument is in a fairly unenviable position. In effect, you’ve got to insist that even explanations that are compatible with all the facts and are true will be discarded by your method of labelling explanations as ad hoc, basically ensuring that no explanation at all will get through your filter, and then you will claim the victory of an unassailable argument!

At least the moral argument (like the classical argument about goodness and greatness, along with historical apologetics) has the philosophical strength of being open to question.

Were there objective moral facts during the Juraasic Period?

Glenn you say: “At least the moral argument (like the classical argument about goodness and greatness, along with historical apologetics) have the philosophical strength of being open to question.”

I maintain that a theory defended against seemingly powerful counter-evidence by more or less entirely ad hoc means (plus mystery mongering) does not succeed in neutralizing that counter-evidence.

I have also given an argument in support for this principle – that if we do not accept it, then any theory no matter how nuts, can justifiably be defended in the same way – with absurd consequences.

My thesis and the supporting argument are obviously potentially open to challenge (whether or not a good challenge). So I am not sure what you are insisting is not “open to question”.

You seem to be attacking a straw man.

Glenn: “Well what I see is someone setting aside all considerations in favour of a good God (i.e. ignoring them) and assessing responses to the “evidence” as though no such considerations existed.”

Ah but now you’ve forgotten what the issue is, conveniently. The issue is, does the evidential problem of good constitute powerful evidence against classical theism, sufficient to justify our rejecting it, PRIOR to our considering arguments that might be given in support of classical theism (such as your moral argument)?

YOU said that theodicies, by themselves, pretty much neutralized the evidential problem of evil, without even considering e.g. the moral argument. In fact, maintaining this was pivotal to your strategy of dealing with the EGC.

Well now we have seen that they don’t neutralize the evidential problem of evil. At all.

Your final remark is blather. I don’t have to go through every last frigging creationist explanation for counter evidence in order to justifiably dismiss their entire strategy. Some of their moves are ad hoc. Some are not. The ones that are not lead to explanatory failures, which are then dealt with by further explanations and/or appeals to mystery. Ad nauseum.

In fact several of the theodices ARE very easy to find fault with. Not all are immediately ad hoc. I could list several glaring problems now with some of the major ones, if you like. But you won’t then say, “Oh, OK these theodicies are pretty inadequate, then” (which many more intellectual honest theists do). You’ll just cook up more explanations and/or appeals to mystery. One way or another, you’ll find a way to make your preferred theodicies (whatever they are – we don;t even know yet!) “work”.

Either the theodicies fail, or else they are salvaged by ad-hocery and mystery mongering.

We can go through the whole laborious process if you really want. I’ve done it a million times. It’ll be just like a conversation with a young earth creationist. Who is deluded.

I bet you now say, “Ah but you haven’t gone through every single last one and show it is false and/or ad hoc.”

Yeh, that’s what creationists and nutters say. Fact is, it’s an impossible task, because the game of constructing yet more explanations to deal with explanatory failure can continue ad infinitum. Does that mean creationism hasn’t been shown to be empirically absurd? No.

But if you want to play the game, the onus is on you to start the ball rolling. I have given you seemingly powerful evidence against classical theism. So now state exactly which theodicies deal with that evidence. Explain them clearly, please – show exactly how they work, individually or collectively, to neutralize the problem of evil. It’ll be interesting to see how quickly you end up resorting to ad hocery and mystery.

It’s not clear that the evidential problem of evil is itself not ad hoc, by the standards being thrown around here. Once it is put forward, if a theodicy softens the force of the argument, then some other criteria for determining what counts as gratuitous or unjustifiable can be drummed up (and then isn’t that ad hoc?). At best this sounds like the pot calling the kettle black, but I’m inclined to think that it just shows that we don’t have the epistemic resources to actually mount a successful evidential or probabilistic argument from evil. In this case, one doesn’t need a ton of theodicies, they just need other good reasons/arguments for believing in God as classically conceived. That is to say, no one needs to have their reason bothered by the evidential problem of evil (although I don’t think a person wouldn’t be very human if it didn’t bother them emotionally or existentially -or existentielly, rather- but that is a different matter).

What the F*** is an “Evil” God anyway?

Stephen Law can’t tell us since the definitions of “Good” & “Evil” are pre-theoretical, thus “Good” and “evil” are subjective preferences.

Hitler see’s the Judeo-Christian God as “evil” because He won’t let him kill Jews with impunity.

Ayn Rand might see God as “evil” because He commands Charity and Rand see charity as a bad thing.

If God doesn’t exist this is the most bull**** piece of sophistry I have ever saw.

“PS it’s interesting that Sandra knows in advance, that there can be no good empirical counter-evidence against her God. How does she know this? Because, of course, she knows, in advance, that every bit of evidence can be explained away ad nauseum. In the style of a YEC or nutcase.”

No, it strikes me that Sandra’s observation – which I share, is grounded in your method of deciding that things are ad hoc and dismissing them. If any after-the-fact claim about the compatibility of a good God with suffering is ad hoc and dismissed (and this is exactly what you do), then there’s no need to even talk about it. You know in advance that there’s no viable theodicy. When you say that nobody can offer good reasons, it’s because you’ve got filters set up so that any good reasons – in fact any reasons, will be categorised, boxed, shelved and ignored.

You can just decide to look at the problem of evil PRIOR to considering arguments that God is good, but this strikes me as self serving. I do it the other way around: Are there reasons to think God is Good? Yes. Are there challenges to this? Yes, the problem of evil. You seem to say: Are there reasons to think God is good? NO. And there is the problem of suffering with no background belief that God is good.

You can throw in emotive terms about “mongering” if you like, but I think it’s quite clear that the challenge you’re presenting isn’t a genuine one as it does not admit of critique. And just as you said “Oh I don’t need to answer the moral argument,” you now say that you just don’t need to explain why some theodicies fail (actually you need to show that all of them fail – in principle).

“Explain them clearly, please – show exactly how they work, individually or collectively, to neutralize the problem of evil.”

No. Part of the benefit of there being such a thing as history is that the wheel doesn’t have to continually be reinvented. If you’re not even aware of the theodicies, then you’re in the wrong territory when you write about it. If you’ve got new interesting challenges to them, then one day it’d be helpful to see them. if you don’t, I’m happy to just leave your comments about the problem of evil alone. You can either interact with the theodicies or you can’t. But dismissing them all in principle is just an escape from having to do any philosophical work.

I will say, however – that although I find your defences of the EGC fairly poor, this interaction has greatly helped the current writing project. We’ve probably had more discussion here than anyone would have if I had just sent you the article and asked for some comment! I will remember to thank you for your comments, but continue to think the ECG very weak. It just doesn’t do any of the heavy lifting needed.