Is God Like a Cosmic Teapot?

In 1952, Bertrand Russell, a Nobel prize winner and influential philosopher of the 20^th century, wrote a paper entitled “Is there a God?” wherein he outlined why he doesn’t believe. Included in the paper is this famous quote:

“Many orthodox people speak as though it were the business of skeptics to disprove received dogmas rather than of dogmatists to prove them. This is, of course, a mistake. If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to disprove my assertion provided I were careful to add that the teapot is too small to be revealed even by our most powerful telescopes. But if I were to go on to say that, since my assertion cannot be disproved, it is intolerable presumption on the part of human reason to doubt it, I should rightly be thought to be talking nonsense. If, however, the existence of such a teapot were affirmed in ancient books, taught as the sacred truth every Sunday, and instilled into the minds of children at school, hesitation to believe in its existence would become a mark of eccentricity and entitle the doubter to the attentions of the psychiatrist in an enlightened age or of the Inquisitor in an earlier time. It is customary to suppose that, if a belief is widespread, there must be something reasonable about it. I do not think this view can be held by anyone who has studied history. … you must concede that nine-tenths of the beliefs of nine-tenths of mankind are totally irrational. … I cannot, therefore, think it presumptuous to doubt something which has long been held to be true, especially when this opinion has only prevailed in certain geographical regions, as is the case with all theological opinions.”

Russell is reminding believers in God that they have a burden of proof. He explicitly reminds them that the widespread acceptance of a belief does not fulfill that burden.  Many atheists believe that Russell was also implicitly reminding theists that the burden of proof for an unfalsifiable claim (remember how careful he was to point out that the teapot is undetectable?) is on the claimant, for - think about it - if the claim is unfalsifiable, how could and why should one try to prove that it is false? I don't completely agree with this adage, but more on that later on.

Fast forward to this month, when Gary Gutting published a NY Times interview entitled “Is Atheism Irrational?” In it, Alvin Plantinga argues that atheists should, at best, consider themselves merely agnostic since he guesses that they merely make a case for not believing in God’s existence rather than a case denying God’s actual existence. Here’s a quote:

“In the British newspaper The Independent, the scientist Richard Dawkins was recently asked the following question: “If you died and arrived at the gates of heaven, what would you say to God to justify your lifelong atheism?” His response: “I’d quote Bertrand Russell: ‘Not enough evidence, God! Not enough evidence!’” But lack of evidence, if indeed evidence is lacking, is no grounds for atheism. No one thinks there is good evidence for the proposition that there are an even number of stars; but also, no one thinks the right conclusion to draw is that there are an uneven number of stars. The right conclusion would instead be agnosticism.

In the same way, the failure of the theistic arguments, if indeed they do fail, might conceivably be good grounds for agnosticism, but not for atheism. Atheism, like even-star-ism, would presumably be the sort of belief you can hold rationally only if you have strong arguments or evidence.”

Ok, so both Russell and Plantinga are reminding the other side of their burden to make their case.   The theist has a burden to show that God exists, and the atheist has a burden to show that God doesn’t exist.

Both analogies chosen by these men are like the question of God’s existence in that they can’t be proven either way – the teapot is undetectable, and the precise number of stars is unknowable. So far so good. But how should one approach existential claims that are not provable? Should one just give up, and claim that it is an unanswerable 50/50 proposition and move on? It seems that that is the conclusion that Plantinga is suggesting that atheists should be stopping at, so it’s no surprise that he uses even-star-ism as his analogy. After all, the probability that the number of stars is even or odd is 50/50. But is that true for all un-provable existential claims, and, more importantly, regarding the claim that the classical God exists?

Firstly, let me point out that even if the question of God’s existence was an un-provable 50/50 proposition, the agnostic would still have quite a damning complaint about it, namely, that belief in the existence of God is irrational. In this sense, some atheists say that they lack belief in God, and they think that you should too, for belief in God is unjustified. If theism means belief in the classical God, then a-theism is simply to lack that belief just as asymptomatic means lacking in symptoms. Plantinga, though, takes atheism to mean the denial of God’s existence.

I hope that you’re beginning to see that the problem here has to do with the failure of the term ‘atheism’ to properly identify one’s complaint with theistic belief. It is important to distinguish de jure objections (the complaint that a belief suffers some epistemic defect independently of its truth or falsity) from de facto objections (the complaint that the belief is false). The former is to say that even if it may be true that God exists, theists are irrational or unjustified in doing so. The latter is to claim that God does not exist. If an un-provable existential claim is a 50/50 proposition, as even-star-ism is, then one simply can’t get past agnosticism. But are all unprovable existential claims really 50/50 propositions, and, more importantly for this discussion, is the question of God’s existence a 50/50 proposition as Plantinga seems to want us to believe?

I think that the answer to both questions is clearly ‘no’. Consider the proposition that the number of stars is X where X is a whole number between one sextillion and one septillion. While we aren’t in any sort of position to say with certainty that any X is true or false, the probability that any X is the correct number is surely much, much lower than 50/50. One would be entirely justified in not just proposing that X-star-ism is irrational, but that such a belief is very probably false. So it seems that in addition to making a de jure objection to an un-provable existential claim, one can also make a de facto objection of varying strength by making a case that the claim is, nevertheless, unlikely: the more unlikely, the stronger the de facto objection. A consequence of this is that whenever the probability of an existential claim - even an unfalsifiable or unverifiable one - can be judged, there is a burden to make that case, so it would seem that the burden isn't only on the claimant. If you think a claim is improbable, you have a burden, too. So much for that adage.

Is Russell correct in thinking that the existence of his celestial teapot is rather more like the question of God’s existence than the question of even-star-ism? Plantinga points out that there is plenty of evidence against belief in Russell’s teapot: “For example, as far as we know, the only way a teapot could have gotten into orbit around the sun would be if some country with sufficiently developed space-shot capabilities had shot this pot into orbit. No country with such capabilities is sufficiently frivolous to waste its resources by trying to send a teapot into orbit. Furthermore, if some country had done so, it would have been all over the news; we would certainly have heard about it. But we haven’t. And so on. There is plenty of evidence against teapotism.”

Is there also plenty of evidence against theism? As I outlined in my previous blog post, the two distinguished philosophers involved in this interview seem to have a hard time recognizing that there is. But, as far as we know, minds require complex physical nervous systems, while the God hypothesis tells us that minds can exist without one. And as far as we know, minds evolve from bottom up evolution adding function and complexity over time, but the God hypothesis tells us that a disembodied mind exists necessarily, without such a process contributing to its existence. Furthermore, as far as we know, immaterial minds cannot interact in or with the material world (how could they?), yet again, the God hypothesis tells us that disembodied minds regularly do. The evidential problem of evil is strong evidence against the existence of the classical God of monotheism, etc. So, it seems that the God hypothesis has plenty of evidence against it, too, and that theism is rather like teapotism.

But let’s not forget that Plantinga is a Christian theist. Accordingly, it is noteworthy that the Christian God hypothesis is one of many mutually exclusive God hypotheses among which either none or only one can be true. On this basis alone, one would be justified in claiming that Christian theism is at best unlikely; it’s certainly more like X-star-ism than even-star-ism. (The sophisticated reader might recognize that this inconvenient truth represents an undermining internal rationality defeater for Plantinga's argument that the Christian God's existence can be known without having to resort to any evidence or arguments at all.)

Do atheists (philosophers like Russell and non-philosophers like Dawkins) make de facto objections to theism? Of course they do. In fact, in the near future, I’m going to discuss a very strong one – stronger perhaps than even the evidential problem of evil. I actually think that Russell was implicitly making just this sort of argument in the very quote that Plantinga and Russell chose to deride. In the meantime, I submit that the Russell/Dawkins sound bite is too short to express their full thoughts on the matter, which probably are more like “Not enough evidence, God! Not enough evidence for your existence to counter the evidence against it!” Plantinga has made an illustrious strawman here, and it would seem that Gutting has facilitated.

Are Atheist Philosophers Really Irrational?

The NY Times interview begins with Gutting acknowledging a recent PhilPapers survey finding that almost three quarters of philosophers accept or lean towards atheism. Plantinga suggests that is the case because these philosophers find the arguments for God’s existence unsound. He then suggests that atheism is an irrational position to hold on such a basis, for the failure of theistic arguments should only lead to agnosticism (withholding belief either way, I suppose). On that, I tend to agree with Plantinga, but why does he think that that is all that supports the atheism of the majority of philosophers? While Plantinga claims that atheism is a position that requires arguments and evidence of its own, he seems to completely fail to consider that the majority of philosophers may actually be atheists on the basis of specifically atheistic evidence and arguments. Furthermore, what evidence does Plantinga provide to support his belief that atheist philosophers make the erroneous assent to atheism merely on the basis of rejecting theistic evidence and arguments? The answer, I regret to inform you, is absolutely none. This is pure speculation on Plantinga’s part.

While Plantinga admits that none of the theistic arguments is “conclusive”, does he think that the majority of philosophers who reject them are irrational to do so? I’ll let you be the judge of how Plantinga answers that question in this interview, but he does say the following about them elsewhere: “These arguments are not coercive in the sense that every person is obliged to accept their premises on pain of irrationality”

So Plantinga doesn’t think that the majority of philosophers are irrational to reject theistic arguments, but he does think that they are irrational to go beyond agnosticism and accept atheism on that basis … but then he doesn’t provide any evidence to support the idea that they do.

Amazingly, Gutting then shifts the discussion to how some non-philosophers support their atheism. But this can’t possibly address the opening question! Philosophers develop expertise in rational thinking and strive, first and foremost, to be rational. That’s what philosophy is all about. It is startling that the majority of philosophers are atheists so Gutting was right to begin there, for if the widely held atheism of philosophers is irrational, then the rationality of atheism itself would seem to stand little hope. Atheists should shift gears and merely say that they are agnostic. Unfortunately, Gutting utterly fails to actually go there, but he nevertheless manages to leave the reader with the impression that even atheist philosophers are unjustified in getting beyond agnosticism.

What might the evidence and arguments for atheism look like? Plantinga  mentions the unimaginable ubiquity of worldly evil and suffering throughout time as evidence - "maybe the only evidence", he says - against God’s existence. Is it wrong to be astounded by two distinguished philosophy professors with expertise in religious epistemology failing to acknowledge the existence of more atheistic arguments than the evidential problem of evil (POE)?

At least Plantinga recognizes the tremendous weight of the evidential POE when he says, “it makes sense to think that the probability of theism, given the existence of all of the suffering and evil our world contains, is fairly low.” He goes on to say, “But of course there are also arguments for theism. Indeed, there are at least a couple of dozen good theistic arguments. So the atheist would have to try to synthesize and balance the probabilities. This isn’t at all easy to do, but it’s pretty obvious that the result wouldn’t anywhere nearly support straight-out atheism as opposed to agnosticism.”

Really? I suppose that it depends on what one might mean by “fairly low” and “straight out”. If one is rational to think that the probability of theism is “fairly low” on evil/suffering (as Plantinga claims), and one is not irrational in rejecting the theistic arguments (as Plantinga has also claimed elsewhere), then, while I agree that balancing the probabilities after all of these arguments is difficult, it seems to me that one could remain completely rational in continuing to believe that the probability of theism is low, and that would count as atheism if not “straight out” atheism, whatever that is.

Have Gutting and Plantinga so far shown that the majority of philosophers ought to be agnostic on the question of theism, and that they are irrational in their assent to atheism? Of course they haven’t. To do this, they’d have to accurately identify the atheistic evidence and arguments, which are multiple - not just the POE - and they’d have to show that one could not rationally weigh the strength of these arguments against the theistic evidence and arguments and conclude that atheism seems more likely. They have not done this. All we’ve received in this interview is Plantinga’s personal speculation that the majority of philosophers merely reject theistic arguments to erroneously move beyond agnosticism.

Now comes the really amazing part. Despite having just discussed the powerful atheistic force provided by the evidential POE, Gutting asks, “If, then, there isn’t any evidence to support atheism [emphasis mine], why do you think so many philosophers – presumably highly rational people – are atheists?”

Is Gutting so desperate to paint atheism as irrational that he gets a mental block when evidence for atheism is presented? And why doesn’t Plantinga correct Gutting and point out that they just did discuss strong evidence for atheism? Instead, Plantinga speculates that most philosophers accept atheism because, “of the serious limitation of human autonomy posed by theism.” Those philosophers just want to be free! It couldn’t possibly be that they rationally accept atheism because they reject theistic arguments and find atheistic arguments like the evidential POE and others more compelling, could it? Not for these 2 distinguished Christian philosophers from Notre Dame, it would seem.

In case you couldn't tell, I was pretty disappointed with the first two thirds of this interview. Gutting should have gone right for the money, which is Plantinga’s Evidential Argument Against Naturalism (EAAN). The EAAN is a clever argument that I like quite a bit and it could give pause to atheists who accept unguided evolution and think that they’re rational to do so. But before I discuss the EAAN, I’ll comment on where the conversation went next: is God like a celestial teapot?

Is Atheism Irrational?

A couple of weeks ago, Dr. Gary Gutting, a Catholic philosophy professor at University of Notre Dame (which is also Catholic) published in the NY Times Opinion Pages an edited email interview he had with Dr. Alvin Plantinga, who is also a Christian philosophy professor from Notre Dame. This, the first of a number of interviews by Gutting about religion, was provocatively titled: “Is Atheism Irrational?”

In the next few posts, I’ll be responding to what I consider to be some of the amazing claims that seem to be made in this interview, but why should anybody care about what Plantinga has to say in the first place?

Atheists are frequently criticized for failing to address sophisticated arguments, so Plantinga’s opinions are important because he arguably represents the pinnacle of sophisticated – philosophically sophisticated - Christian apologetics.

So please have at the interview, and ask yourself if you agree that atheism (as opposed to agnosticism or even theism) is an irrational belief. I’ll share my thoughts about Plantinga’s views this week.

Ham-strung

On February 5, 2014, Bill Nye ("The Science Guy") debated Ken Ham (President of Answers in Genesis and The Creation Museum) on whether the Genesis account of creation is a viable model of origins given what science has taught us so far. Both of these guys are characters and they were very well behaved, so it's actually a reasonably entertaining debate as far as these sorts of events go. I thought that Nye could have done a better job, but he clearly did a good enough job. A poll at Christian Today - a Christian Website - had Nye winning by a land-slide. Ham was very clear and polite and he actually garnered a few laughs along the way. You've got to hand it to him for doing a great job of exposing the Christian fundamentalist/literalist mindset.

Ham repeatedly made a distinction in the debate between “observational science” and “origins or historical science”. This distinction is based upon what one can observe in the present and conclude about the present (what he calls “observational science”) and what one can observe in the present and infer about the past (what he calls “origins or historical science”). There is a difference here, to be sure, but it’s not the difference Ham needs for Creationism to be considered as science. Here’s what he says in his introductory statements explaining what is different about what he calls “origins or historical science”:

“At the Creation Museum, we make no apology about the fact that our origins or historical science actually is based upon the Biblical account of origins.”

Well, Ken, your science isn't science. Science doesn’t proceed from the bible. It proceeds from efforts to assess evidence as objectively as possible and it leads to whatever conclusions that assessment produces. If the best explanation for the evidence we find around us is that Yawheh exists and that He created the universe 4-6,000 years ago with all of the “kinds” in their present form, then that would be a scientific conclusion. But Ham starts and ends there, without providing any evidence or justification for doing so. This is textbook circular reasoning and it’s just one of the many fallacies and biases that science tries its best to avoid.

As he demonstrates in the debate, Ham is both woefully ignorant of the evidence and guilty of the most wishful of thinking in trying to conclude that the evidence around us is best explained by the creation account in Genesis. In this regard, the debate exposed the reality of the situation quite well: there is no debate. There is no controversy. The matter has been settled, and there is only ignorance and wishful thinking on the literalist creationist side.

Since Ham’s “origins or historical science” begins with the conclusion it "proves"(according to Ham, at least), it can’t possibly represent anything anybody would rightly call science. Moreover, the evidence doesn’t support that presupposition. A real scientist - any reasonable person, actually - should reject it. Accordingly, creationism, at least Ham’s version of arriving at it, while appropriate for religion classes, has no place in science class. If that is one of Ham’s goals (and surely it is), I’m afraid he has handily defeated it all by himself.

Welcome

Welcome to my blog. In Greek, skepsis means inquiry or examination, and that's what I hope to do around here. Socrates, who left no writing of his own, thought that an unexamined life wasn't worth living. So here's to a life worth living, while leaving some writing around to show for it.