Contra "Why I'm An Atheist"

Blogger The Sacred & The Secular (TSS) wrote an article recently titled Why I’m Atheist that presented fifteen arguments for God’s non-existence. I found the article thoughtful and interesting—it was pretty similar to what I might have written when I was an atheist (though it was written better than what I’d have written at the time). But I no longer agree with most of the main points.

Many of the arguments on the list are variants of the problem of evil. Thus, I’ll first lay out the solution to the problem that seems most plausible to me and then explain why this solves the various problems. The theodicy I find most plausible is called the omission theodicy.

The story in a nutshell: various otherworldly and likely supernatural entities were tasked with making the world good. Completing their task was costly. It required hard work on their part. They did not deliver. The world is largely pitiless and indifferent because those beings tasked with making it not indifferent did not succeed. The school is in such disarray because the janitor never showed up.

Now, why would God set up a world where there were beings tasked with making the world very good? The answer is that it is valuable when creatures can make a difference to each other’s lives. If you pull someone out of a burning building at great personal risk, that forges a life-long connection between you and them. This connection, insofar as it lasts forever, has infinite value stretched across eternity.

However, for creatures to make a genuine difference, God cannot bail them out in the cases where they fail. If you want the janitor to make a real difference to the cleanliness of the school, you cannot send in a back-up janitor in case he fails. If one being makes a difference to another’s life, it must be that if the first being doesn’t do as he ought, the other’s life will be worse.

Thus, if God wants creatures to make a real difference to one another’s lives, it must be that if they fail, the other’s life will be worse. Our world is what results when the beings tasked with making the world good fail. The evils in our world are not “worth it.” They do not all lead to greater goods. Instead, they are an unfortunate downside of something valuable: beings having the opportunity to make one another’s lives go well.

I’ve defended the theodicy elsewhere, as have Brian Cutter and Philip Swenson. So let me briefly discuss a few objections you might have.

First, doesn’t this require positing exotic supernatural entities like angels and demons? Yes. They don’t have to be angels or demons—perhaps they are the more secularly respectable simulators or aliens (though supernatural entities seem the best candidates). But once one thinks there is a perfect God who made all things, it’s not that surprising that there would be other beings of great power. If a limitless being can create whatever he wants, why think he wouldn’t create supernatural archons?

Most religious people throughout history have thought that there was more to reality than just God and nature. Belief in other spiritual beings has been common. I don’t see what’s so improbable about this notion. I realize that it is not very respectable in secular circles, but neither is belief in God. The fact that a position is jeered at by secularists is not adequate proof that it’s wrong.

Second, why doesn’t God simply give these beings overriding desires to always do what’s right? The answer is that actions done for another’s sake forge a more valuable relationship if you felt genuine psychological pull in the opposite direction. It is more valuable to undergo genuine sacrifice for another than simply to do what is right without feeling any conflict, like an automaton. A right act is more noble if you feel some pull not to do it. Running into a burning building is more valuable—and forges a deeper connection—if the one who did it was afraid.

It is valuable to make a difference to another’s life even when doing so is psychologically difficult. But insofar as God is going to make success psychologically difficult, then there must be some chance that his creatures fail. A free choice cannot be directly dictated by an outside agent (and even compatibilists standardly grant this). Of course, you might deny this if you don’t think we have free will, but insofar as the problem of evil hinges on a deeply controversial denial of free will that is widely rejected among philosophers, that limits its persuasive force.

Third, you might wonder: is it worth it? Perhaps allowing supernatural entities to make a difference to our lives has the opportunity to forge a valuable connection between them and us so long as they succeed. But is this worth all the world’s suffering? Here, the answer is yes. In the afterlife, the joys of connection will be infinitely intense. More importantly, they will last forever. Any deepening of the connection will pay out infinity times over.

Fourth, you might wonder: why doesn’t God intervene after the fact? Sure, perhaps he wants us to make a big difference. But after the beings tasked with making the world good fail, why doesn’t he step in? The answer is that he must have a policy of not doing that if we are to be genuine difference makers. If God has a policy of intervening whenever we fail, then we no longer make a difference to how well each other’s lives go. You would be more grateful and have a deeper connection to the person who saved your life if you knew that had they not done so, you’d have died—that God wouldn’t have bailed you out.

What’s to like about this theodicy? The main thing is that it gives a holistic account of the world’s evils. It agrees with the atheist that the world is indifferent, but provides a different diagnosis. The atheist suggests the world is horrendous because there is no doctor; the omission theodicy suggests it’s horrendous because the doctor didn’t show up for work.

With this in mind, let’s address TSS’s arguments.

The first argument is the evidential problem of evil, claiming that theism makes it improbable that the world is so richly saturated with evil. The theodicy I’ve provided, if correct, explains this fact without being outrageously improbable. I agree it’s a bit improbable. The problem of evil lowers the odds of theism. But not enough given how strong the case for theism is.

The next argument is the logical problem of evil: it claims that if there were a God, there would be no evil at all—that there is some deep contradiction between a perfect being existing and evil. Summarizing Aquinas playing devil’s advocate, TSS writes, “by its nature, an infinite amount of good leaves no room for evil, in much the same way that infinite heat leaves no room for cold.”

But why think goodness is like heat and evil is like cold? Here is another possibility: certain great goods require the possibility of evil. It is very good that God gives us free will. But for him to do so, he must risk us doing evil. There is nothing formally contradictory about the notion that some great good leads to evil—or a risk of evil—as an unfortunate side-effect. This is why it has generally been recognized that there’s no straightforward logical contradiction between God and evil. Maybe God wouldn’t allow evil, but in denying this, one commits no explicit logical contradiction.

The next two arguments are the problems of teleological evil and dysteleology. Many things in nature have evil functions. Other things function badly. There are wasps that can only reproduce by laying eggs in the skin of other organisms. Cells often turn cancerous. The omission theodicy explains both of these. They are a byproduct of our indifferent world—produced because those tasked with ridding the world of its indifference failed.

Next we have the argument from scale: why does God make the universe so big and mostly empty? I’ve written a longer piece about this, but here are the main points:

1. A big universe is awesome and beautiful. It’s not surprising that the universe is big. Why would it be better if it was small?

2. The universe is probably infinitely big. If it’s infinitely big, there are the same number of people no matter how tightly packed the universe is with observers (and one can change how tightly packed it is simply by moving a set number of observers around). Thus, how densely populated the world is with observers is not evidentially relevant, as it has no impact on the total number of observers. Filling the world with more observers would make observers denser, but not more numerous.

3. Because the universe is probably infinite, this is an own goal. If creation is good, we’d expect God to create an infinite universe. That’s what we observe.

4. It’s not hard to imagine God would have a reason to keep civilizations far apart, so that advanced alien civilizations don’t destroy primitive ones.

5. Worst case scenario, this can be regarded as a suboptimality—but the theist already needs to explain the world’s suboptimality. However they explain other evils, they can explain this one.

6. Insofar as God makes a giant multiverse, he can make any number of total conscious creatures with any distribution of them per universe. Thus, there’s no strong expectation of a world packed with observers.

Overall, I think the scale of the universe slightly favors theism.

The sixth argument is the problem of divine hiddenness. Once again, we ought to think that this is a byproduct of the general indifference of the cosmos. One respect in which the supernatural entities were tasked with making the world good was that they were given the ability to allow us to know God deeply. Because they failed, all we are left with is pale shadows of the divine (in this life, at least).

Once one thinks that there’s a good reason for God permitting cancer, malaria, and torture, it’s not hard to believe that there’s a good reason for him to permit people not to know him. Hiddenness, therefore, doesn’t add much beyond evil. If we’re here to help each other relate to the divine, when we fail, God must be harder to reach.

While it is true that God’s hiddenness provides some evidence against his existence, the fact that so many people believe in God provides evidence for his existence. A priori, given atheism, it’s surprising that most people throughout world history have believed in an all-powerful and all-good God, many even claiming to speak to him regularly. That is much less surprising if there really is such a being who wants a relationship with them (though that relationship must be tempered through the screwed-up nature of our world). It is surprising, if there is a God, that so many don’t believe in him; it is surprising, if there is no God, that so many do.

The next bit of evidence cited is the presence of so many religions. But insofar as these all imperfectly grok the divine, it’s unclear exactly what’s so problematic about this. Once again, if we have a general explanation of the suckiness of the world, it will also explain the incompleteness of our recognition of—and relationship with—God himself. Why think that what ruined the world wouldn’t ruin our connection with its creator?

Next the author suggests that the fact that various psychological traits predispose people towards religion is surprising if there’s a perfect God. Women are more religious than men, autistic people less religious than others. But psychological traits affect all sorts of beliefs. So it’s not at all clear why religion would be any exception (unless one imagines majorly changing the structure of the world). In any case, the theodicy I gave can explain this.

Argument 9: if God knows what we’ll do ahead of time, how can we be free? The best piece on this is by Zagzebski. Broadly, there are two possibilities:

1. There’s no fact about what you’ll do before you do it. That way, we don’t need to think God knows what we’ll do ahead of time. God only knows facts, and on this view, there’s no fact of the matter about what you’ll do before you do it.

2. There’s a fact about what you’ll do before you do it. Even before I decided to freely stretch out my hand, it was a fact that I would do so. But then everyone who believes in free will faces the same problem as the theist. The atheist who believes in free will thinks in 500 BCE the following was true: Bentham’s Bulldog on 7/28/2026 would move his right hand. If it was already set in stone, then how could I be free to do otherwise?

   Thus, this problem doesn’t just arise for the theist, but for anyone who believes in free will. The answer: God knowing that you will take some action does not mean the action is unfree. It’s not that you can’t do otherwise; it’s that if you were to do otherwise, then God would know that. God’s knowledge is not like a vise forcing you to perform some action. Instead, your action is like a vise, forcing God to know that you’ll do it. An action only strips away your freedom if it determines you to perform some action. But God’s knowledge has no influence on what you do. What you do determines what God knows, not the other way around. Nothing that is downstream of your action can make it unfree.

Argument 10 is the meager moral fruits argument: why do religious believers act so badly? Christianity promises that those following it will be morally transformed, yet they seem to act no better than non-Christians. This may be a problem for those who follow some particular religion, but it’s no problem for the generic theist, who was never committed to the idea that those who believe in God will behave much better than those who don’t.

In addition, the empirical premise on which this argument rests is doubtful. As Tom Holland documents in Dominion, Christianity has had a profoundly transformative effect on the world, replacing amoral barbarism with deep moral concern. Insofar as belief in God has transformed the world like nothing else in history, it’s hard to say that its fruits really are meager. And certainly religions have not standardly taught that those following them will behave perfectly. Insofar as we live in a screwed-up world, it’s not clear why following the right religion will automatically make one stop behaving badly.

It is noted that “religious identity has been used to reinforce tribalistic tendencies, dividing believers from nonbelievers, and partitioning believers amongst each other, feeding into an us-against-them mentality.” But it’s no surprise that lots of bad things have come from religion. Lots of good has come from religion as well.

Argument 11 is the problem of hell, but I don’t believe in hell. Argument 12 is the problem of psychopathy—but whatever explains the screwed-up state of the world will explain why some people are born psychopaths. Arguments 14-15 are problems specifically for classical theism: I’m not a classical theist.

That leaves only argument thirteen: the argument from parsimony. Atheism, it is claimed, is a more parsimonious hypothesis than theism. It posits one less thing. Thus, it should be preferred all else equal.

This is dubious. What matters is the number of fundamental things, not the total number of things. Otherwise we should all be solipsists, as the solipsist just posits his own mind. In fact, one could make this argument even if the initial conditions spelled out “made by God with love,” in all human languages. One could still say “this doesn’t prove that God exists—for the atheist and the theist agree that these initial conditions exist, but the theist adds a God on top of that.” Thus, the fact that the atheist posits “one less thing” is not dispositive.

Theism posits one very simple thing at the base of reality: a mind without limit. Because this being is unlimited, nothing constrains what it knows or can do. It’s thus omniscient and omnipotent (and there are various other options for making theism simple). Knowing all the moral facts, it’s motivated to follow them, for if one is fully rational and has no contrary psychological inclinations, they’ll be motivated to do what’s good. This is probably simpler than naturalism.

Now, admittedly, some of what I just said is controversial. I’ve assumed moral realism and that a perfectly rational person would be motivated to do what’s good. I don’t think those are outrageous assumptions. But this at least means theism doesn’t have an extremely low prior probability. It has the potential to be very simple and elegant if a few reasonably plausible stipulations happen to be true. Its prior probability is, therefore, not unreasonable. And we shouldn’t be that surprised if deep theistic metaphysics is a bit mysterious; science often elucidates the behavior of everyday objects by appealing to a partially mysterious entity.

The considerations The Sacred & The Secular presents are some of the best arguments for atheism. But they only reinforce my impression that there is only one really serious problem for theism: the world is totally messed up. If one has an explanation of that, they can explain nearly all the evidence cited in support of atheism. A few puzzles remain, but that is the basic thrust of the case for atheism. And I’m not much troubled by the remaining puzzles. It would be surprising if the infinite limitless creator of the universe didn’t leave us with any questions.

The problems for atheism aren’t that way. The atheist doesn’t just need to explain one weird feature of the world. They need to explain many: psychonomic harmony, fine-tuning, psychophysical harmony, anthropic evidence, nomological harmony, moral knowledge, and more. The prospects of explaining all those seem a lot dimmer than the prospects of explaining the suckiness of the world.

Now, here’s one last worry you might have. I’ve argued that God explains good features of our world, but indifference explains bad features. How can I have it both ways? If God entrusted beings with making the world good, and they failed, how does theism explain any features of our world?

The right view is a middle ground. God ensures that there are agents who are broadly capable of experiencing the basic goods: pleasure, knowledge, relationships. However, making the world go from one with minimal smatterings of goodness to one full of goodness is entrusted to his creatures. We are given the opportunity to make the world good.

In order to ensure that the created order could be made good, God needed to make creatures who were capable of making the created order good, in case the supernatural entities failed. This required fine-tuning, psychophysical harmony, and the like. God built the world’s basic furniture, ensuring each of reality’s great goods was realizable and that agents were able to influence the world, but he trusted other creatures with making it amazingly good. When humans do good for each other and animals, we are helping right the ultimate wrong—to bring light to the darkness. I’ll end by quoting William Blake’s poem Jerusalem:

And did the Countenance Divine,

Shine forth upon our clouded hills?

And was Jerusalem builded here,

Among these dark Satanic Mills?

Bring me my Bow of burning gold:

Bring me my arrows of desire:

Bring me my Spear: O clouds unfold!

Bring me my Chariot of fire!

I will not cease from Mental Fight,

Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand:

Till we have built Jerusalem,

In Englands green & pleasant Land.