Christian historian Dr. Wallace Marshall and I are debating whether or not enough evidence points to the existence of a god. For background and format, and Dr. Wallace’s opening statement, see entry one; for the rest, our index.
We are now discussing what I call the Argument from Indifference against the existence of God. Marshall just answered my opening case on that. I shall here respond to his answer.
That the Evidence Points to Atheism (VII)
by Richard Carrier, Ph.D.
In response to my Argument from Indifference, Marshall gets the logic of evidence wrong, then builds and mocks a straw man that in no way resembles what I argued, and fails to address any of my actual arguments.
The Logic of Evidence
It’s not true there’s “at least some evidence on both sides.” Just because I can always have more evidence gremlins don’t cause plane crashes, that’s not thereby evidence gremlins cause plane crashes. The probability gremlins cause plane crashes can never be increased by the absence of evidence. Marshall is confusing ignorance (the probability gremlins might exist owing to our uncertainty) with knowledge (that we therefore have evidence for gremlins). Wrong.
Evidence only counts as evidence if it’s more likely to exist when a hypothesis is true than when it’s false. Because that’s the only way evidence can increase the probability of a hypothesis. [1] No proposed evidence for God meets this condition.
As with gremlins, if the prior probability of God or Atheism starts out 50/50—equally likely—and no evidence for either position is yet found, citing all that absence of evidence for atheism does not create evidence for theism. “But atheism could be more probable given more evidence,” though true, is simply not evidence for theism. That’s not how evidence works.
Imagine arguing “That planes crash is evidence for gremlins, because ‘gremlins exist’ predicts plane crashes.” Wrong. That planes crash is equally likely on any theory of their cause. So crashes are not evidence for gremlins. Likewise, “If planes never crashed, then we’d have more evidence against gremlins, therefore planes crashing is evidence for gremlins.” Wrong. The absence of crashes would reduce the probability of all causes of crashes. It would not increase the probability of gremlins relative to any other causes.
Ditto God.
All evidence that supposedly argues for a god, actually argues against god, once we put it back into context. [2] The “fine tuning” argument for example: it’s actually impossible for a godless universe not to be finely tuned. Because on (at least naturalist) atheism that’s the only way life could arise to observe itself. But there are other ways it could on theism; because God has no need of fine tuning. The observation of fine tuning is therefore more probable on atheism than theism. [3] Fine tuning is therefore evidence against God; not for.
Marshall falsely claims a discovery of past eternality would be evidence against God. But God could be co-eternal with the universe he governs and molds. So that the universe has always existed is not evidence against God. Being just as likely on either atheism or theism, it’s evidence for neither. Marshall thus confuses the invalidity of one argument for God (the KCA) as evidence against God. And I just got done showing the same is true even on the converse observation: that “existence had a beginning” is also no more likely on God than atheism and therefore evidence for neither. [4]
The same happens to all other evidence: either it’s equally likely on either hypothesis, or more likely on atheism; never more likely on theism. [5]
It is not “unscholarly” to point this out.
Straw Men Are Bogus Arguments
Marshall then straw man’s my arguments using a Black or White Fallacy. [6]
Marshall starts with ‘but for god’ we would find ourselves “on a planet resembling the surface of the moon.” False. That’s improbable—not only if environments were chosen at random (vastly more of the options capable of sustaining intelligent life are far richer environments than barren moons) but also because of natural selection (intelligent life is vastly more likely to evolve in rich, i.e. complex and diversified, biospheres than poor, i.e. simple and spare). No other process choosing our environment is likely on atheism. Ergo Marshall’s conclusion that this would be expected is false. We should expect instead to have a messy, complex, rich environment, by both chance and natural selection. Exactly as we observe.
We will also expect to evolve aesthetic responses to our environment no matter what it looked like. [7] So that can never be evidence for God; nor would the absence of aesthetic responses be evidence for atheism, as it’s not in the definition of God that he’d know about them or care if we had them.
Marshall then moves on to assert that on my thinking God would do all sorts of bizarre things I never said nor any of my arguments entailed.
Marshall hasn’t demonstrated any of those things would happen. What would happen is that we’d live in a world like we do now, only with no serious catastrophes, diseases, disabilities, deformities, scarcities, or crime; and all human cultures from the dawn of history would report the same simple gospel message of kindness, honesty, and reasonableness, consistently from the beginning condemning everything abhorrent God knows we’d otherwise attempt, like slavery. Instead we have endlessly ignorant, contradictory, abhorrent gospels, that even outright endorse things like slavery. The latter is 100% expected on atheism; all but 0% expected on “a moral God exists.”
I never said “life should be common instead of rare” nor said anything about “the benefits of textbook instruction should override the beauty of gradual development.” What I said is that, for example, allowing thousands of years of brutal slavery, and allowing everyone to claim you endorsed and commanded it, is immoral. A moral God would announce from the start that they don’t endorse slavery but damn it as wicked and why. Marshall prefers to defend a monster, rather than admit the truth. I prefer the truth.
In the end, Marshall gets the logical requirements of his case exactly backwards when he asks “How does Dr. Carrier know that God lacks morally sufficient reasons…?” No, Dr. Marshall. You must show such reasons are real or probable. Otherwise they are not.
What’s the probability that a benevolent God would have a valid excuse not to say one moral word to his devoted believers about slavery, for example—not even to correct people falsely citing his authority? From our extensive background knowledge of benevolent people with the power to speak unharmed, a valid excuse not to is so rare we’ve yet to see even one instance of such an excuse. That means the probability such an excuse exists on present evidence is millions to one against. Ditto every other supposed excuse for every other useless evil Marshall insists must exist yet can’t even imagine, much less sustain with any evidence.
That’s extraordinarily improbable. Therefore so is his God.
-:-
Such is my response to Marshall.
Continue now to read Marshall’s answer.
-:-
Endnotes
[1] See the following as well as Richard Carrier, Proving History (2012).
[2] See Richard Carrier, “Bayesian Counter-Apologetics” (10 January 2017).
[3] Ibid., “§2-3. Design Arguments” and Richard Carrier, “Neither Life Nor the Universe Appear Intelligently Designed,” in John Loftus, ed., The End of Christianity (2011), pp. 79-304, 404-14. In which I am summarizing the peer reviewed conclusion of two independent teams of analysts: Michael Ikeda and Bill Jefferys, “The Anthropic Principle Does Not Support Supernaturalism,” and Elliott Sober, “The Design Argument.”
[4] As shown, again, in Richard Carrier, “Bayesian Counter-Apologetics.”
[5] See my entries on the KCA (the Kalam Cosmological Argument) in our Debate Index.
[6] See discussions of the “Black or White Fallacy” at Fallacy Files and “False Dilemma” at Logically Fallacious and Wikipedia.
[7] See “We Want Things…Because of Natural Selection, Not Magic” in Richard Carrier, “Timothy Keller: Dishonest Reasons for God (Chapter 8)” (25 July 2017) and “Musical Aesthetics” (26 July 2012); also “§X. Why Are Landscapes and Seascapes Beautiful?” in “Plantinga’s ‘Two Dozen or So’ Arguments for God: Moral & Other Arguments” (15 February 2018); likewise, op. cit., “§U. Why Is Music Beautiful Rather Than Random Noise?” and “§T. How Does Love Exist?” etc. I provide a thorough treatment of the expected evolutionary and ontological foundations of aesthetic experience in Sense and Goodness without God, Part VI, “Natural Beauty.”
Dr Carrier, I often hear the complaint that the Christian God endorses slavery. When the same Christian God says to love your neighbor as yourself doesn’t it seem strange that He would endorse slavery? Yes, so there must be a problem understanding context or translation. When we look at the scripture a little closer we find the word δούλος meaning slave or worker. That word is still used today. If I say που δουλεύεις; I’m asking where do you slave (work). If I say που πας; and you respond πάω δουλειά I’m asking “where are you going” and you are responding “I’m going to slave (work)”. God endorses work but certainly not slavery as we recognize in American history. God certainly didn’t want workers/slaves mistreated but as you know human nature, workers/slaves must’ve been horribly treated often back then. Each of the worker/slave laws was an improvement for the worker/slave but a radical change for the masters/bosses. I couldn’t worship a God that endorsed the old American style slavery either. Real Christians abhor slavery. No doubt you would find cases (if you had a time machine and could go back and look) where the boss/worker relationship was just like the old American south but God nowhere puts His stamp of delight or approval on that. God showed his disgust with Israel when they turned to wicked ways. He never applauded. When people spread these lies and repeats them enough, people start believing the lies.
Um. Dude. You are talking to a Ph.D. expert in these very ancient languages and cultures. You aren’t going to pull off lies like this with me. Everything you just said is bullshit.
I know damn well what the words for slavery in antiquity meant and how they were realized in practice by all the nations who employed them, which includes Israel.
Maybe you are not lying but just the gullible dupe of someone who told this lie to you. But if so, please read:
Jennifer Glancy, Slavery in Early Christianity (Fortress 2006)
Hector Avalos, Slavery, Abolitionism, and the Ethics of Biblical Scholarship (Sheffield 2013)
Gregory C. Chirichigno, Debt-Slavery in Israel and the Ancient Near East (Sheffield 2009)
And, if you can find them, read the Hermeneia commentaries on:
Leviticus 25:44-46
And:
Deuteronomy 21:10-12
Numbers 31:15-18
Dr Carrier, I must have been misunderstood again. I know that οι δούλες (the slaves/workers, for the most part, were treated terribly. But what do you do with the instances recorded where the slaves loved their masters and contracted themselves to more (various) years of service? It was the way life worked in those days. Some slave/master relationships were obviously better or worse than others.
Those verses you listed indeed are challenging but can be understood but they have to be parsed one at a time. Remember, does God say “love your neighbor as yourself except in some cases treat them horribly?” That would make no sense at all so that right there should inform us that we should inspect a bit closer as to what’s going on. For example, IF God had a sufficient moral reason to wipe out a wicked people that He knew wouldn’t change and that their wickedness would spread to surrounding communities AND there are innocent survivors, you can’t just leave them to fend for themselves. You’d graft them into your community and put them to work. Yes, life was rough and from our perspective could look cruel. Another example: those innocent girls who would be taken as wives would no doubt have been treated horribly by the wicked men of their former community and eventually became delighted to live in a much more civilized community where there were laws like love your neighbor and don’t commit adultry. I just find it unfair to assert “God endorses slavery” as though God would’ve endorsed what was going on in the antebellum south.
Do you think it would be morally ok for God to endorse the slave (worker)/master relationship where the slave “loved” their masters and wanted more years of work?
BTW, I’m never trying to lie, I may be mistaken but no need for you to call me a liar.
That slaves sometimes loved their masters does not make slavery okay. Nor was that even the norm. Nor even always true even when rarely evinced. Slaves, after all, must pretend to love their masters to avoid abuse. That’s the very thing about slavery and one of a dozen reasons why it is evil.
God did endorse slavery. Just exactly as it was. Explicitly and in detail.
Read the books I referenced to. Learn the truth.
It might not make sense, but if you are American you might (or should) be aware that the definition of citizens in the US Constitution didn’t include black people and that the 14th amendment which fixes the aforementioned problem doesn’t apply to women. Only by ignoring the context could one claim otherwise.
Even without taking the direct context into account to give this argument a better fighting chance, it amounts to claiming something singular and exceptional, and therefore implausible unless supported by evidence.
Speaking just for myself, I’d be absolutely delighted that the civilized man who killed my wicked family managed to restrain himself a handful of weeks before he raped me, and no one but me. Oh, what pleasure to finally be rid of my people’s wicked ways.
Dr Carrier, in the OT it says that masters are allowed to beat their slaves without receiving punishment as long as the slave doesn’t die. Do you know if in that context the term “punishment” referred to capital punishment, specifically? Were slave owners who beat their slaves subject to others forms of punishment?
I don’t understand your question.
“Another example: those innocent girls who would be taken as wives would no doubt have been treated horribly by the wicked men of their former community and eventually became delighted to live in a much more civilized community where there were laws like love your neighbor and don’t commit adultry. ”
how do you know they would have been treated horrible?
did they have a religion which told them to treat humans horrible?
3.yhwh never sends messengers or guidance to non-jews in the ot, only spies. We see that the non-jews show more humanity, for example :
Indeed, there is an indication that their standards were noticeably more humane than Israel’s. Those elusive Amalekites, who kept coming up after they had been totally destroyed, once showed a much higher standard of humaneness than was shown in the examples noted above.
1 Samuel 30:1 Then it happened when David and his men came to Ziklag on the third day, that the Amalekites had made a raid on the Negev and on Ziklag, and had overthrown Ziklag and burned it with fire; 2 and they took captive the women and all who were in it, both small and great, without killing anyone, and carried them off and went their way. 3 When David and his men came to the city, behold, it was burned with fire, and their wives and their sons and their daughters had been taken captive.
you talk about “loving your neighbor” but when moses was thrusting sharp sword into the body of 3 year old children, he was “love thy god with all thy heart”
you act out your love for god by enacting the commands he gave you. so i don’t understand your bs “loving your neighbor” ?
jesus insult and abuses non-jewish canaanite woman. this nasty and harsh treatment was not neighborly or loving, but christians will say that his abuse and insult was STILL “loving his non-jewish canaanite neighbor”
is it not true that “love thy neighbor ” is subjective?
Indeed, the moral and legal codes of ANE cultures surrounding Judea tended in fact to be less draconian and more humane, and at worst no different. There is no evidence they were any more “evil” than the Jews. This has been well illustrated by Dr. Hector Avalos across several articles and books. For example, “Yahweh Is a Moral Monster” in The Christian Delusion.
Tbe charitabl t willi:
In Romans Paul intrudusis himself thus:
Παῦλος, δοῦλος Χριστοῦ Ἰησοῦ…
here δοῦλος has got a positiv meaning (same antics in muhummudunism – ‘Abd Allah’ -slave’v god’).
Prhaps this christianising δοῦλος ment a bettrmunt fr the slave by emptying the wurd’v its negativ use.
Instead of focusing on the various nuances of the term “slavery” between the different times and traditions, maybe it’s easier to look its practical implications. A slave back then was considered their master’s property (a slave owner even had the right to violently beat his slave, as long as the they didn’t die). This is consistent with our present-day understanding of slavery. The behavior is what matters, not its label. Rape means forcing someone to have sex with you, and it will still be an immoral act even if you start calling it “love making”.
It gets worse. As Richard has pointed out in other talks, American slavery (and earlier the slavery practiced by many European countries in the early era of colonialism) was practiced by Bible-believing people. Many of them would certainly have said (clearly not believing it) that one should indeed honor the commandment to love thy neighbor as yourself. Christian kings after the fall of the Western Roman Empire maintained serfdom and the peasantry, little better than slavery. The Christian emperors didn’t abolish slavery (some argue that they regulated it and made it more humane, but actually, so did many of the pagan emperors).
So even if we grant that maybe God communicated clearly the first time (never mind that this whole hippy “Never mind all those commandments and laws, the most important thing to do is to love your neighbor and be like the Good Samaritan” stuff was clearly only found in counter-cultural Jewish sects and many other Jews clearly didn’t buy it – otherwise the Gospel writers wouldn’t have needed to have Jesus say that), that just pushes the problem back a step. Why did God not, say, clearly send a vision to every slave owner throughout history to say “Nope, don’t do this, I don’t approve?” When his texts got translated, why didn’t It divinely inspire the translation to always be unequivocally, 100% anti-slavery? Why didn’t It make “Don’t own people” (and also “Don’t rape”) two of the Ten Commandments, before all that nonsense about not taking his name in vain (since obviously if It’s benevolent and telling us to love our neighbors then It must not be the kind of petty dick that cares how you refer to It)?
The fact is that, throughout history, countless groups have practiced brutal, awful forms of owning other human beings as chattel, including passing their “further increase” to descendants, and did so in the name of God. Richard’s point is that no good God would allow that. Even fictional, limited Starfleet practicing the Prime Directive will intervene when people in planets below would come to speak in their name, having detected them. Even if we imagine a God under a Prime Directive kind of rule (which would then immediately invite the question, “Why did It write a book at all?”), It would have no excuse to at least clarify Its message. Writing down once, in one language, that maybe you should be nice to slaves (rather than “Don’t own them at all. No, it doesn’t matter how nice you are to them. Also, don’t have indentured servants. Also, have a minimum wage. Don’t exploit your workers. Don’t put your workers in unsafe environments. Make your workers wash their hands when they leave the bathroom and before touching food. Try to make sure your workers keep food at safe temperatures – by the way, here’s how you build a thermometer to do that”, none of which is in there), doesn’t cut it. It makes no sense. No benevolent being would be so selective and random with such important messages. But it is precisely what we would expect if there is no God that can communicate moral advice. In that instance, societies would try their best, slowly learning and improving.
Even if you’re right, you’re wrong. Even if the Jews happened to have come up with an anti-slavery ethos early, that’s not evidence for God. It would only be evidence that a society happened to have some basic decency. The fact that even that didn’t happen just makes it far worse.
Well, I think one should expect that there are no billions of unnecessary planets, galaxies and perhaps other pocket universes in the theist hypothesis. The geocentric view in a small universe is what one should expect. Of course one can come up with excuses; Ken Ham claimed God did this way (a universe so big) because he wanted us to appreciate his power or something like that. But that’s a silly argument.
Regarding the possibility of God co-existing with the universe. That would, at least, contradict the christian hypothesis, since it claims creation ex nihilo. Or doesn’t it?
Dr. Marshall’s case for an eternal past universe being evidence in favor of atheism is confusing because it omits the procedure for how we determine something to be evidence (a fact or phenomenon that makes a hypothesis more or less probable).
If I follow his reasoning based on his previous responses, it is something like:
The universe is past finite and had a beginning.
Because the universe had a beginning it also had a cause.
The cause is most likely god.
If the universe has an eternal past, it is less likely to have a cause.
If it is less likely to have a cause, it is less likely that god exists.
Therefore, an eternal past is evidence for atheism and against theism.
However, in order for the final conclusion to be correct, one must accept all five of the previous findings. If any one of the five cannot be sustained, then number six fails.
Dr. Carrier has presented many arguments for not accepting at least the first three, so it would be unreasonable to think that he would consider an infinite past universe evidence for atheism based on the above reasoning.
Dr. Marshall might consider it evidence because he accepts findings one through five. To him it can decrease the probability of the hypothesis that there is a god and is therefore evidence.
Determining evidence is a process solely within the province of the person evaluating the proposed evidence. As long as one employs a serious academic approach, it is scholarly.
The idea that we would need to live in a perfect world in every respect for there to be good enough reason to warrant belief in a God (a caring one at least) is not true.
God could have given us a moral guide or revelation that is unambiguous, self-consistent, free from misleading errors about the natural world, only one version (while leaving us with a lot of room to grow and enjoy the satisfactions that come with scientific discoveries and progress). Many of these problems characterize most books of ancient history. Books that have been supposedly divinely inspired and books that have not been divinely inspired are indistinguishable in this regard.
I also don’t understand why a loving God couldn’t intervene and at least minimize the amount of evil and suffering in the world. The worst argument I’ve ever heard against the problem of evil is that God doesn’t intervene because he doesn’t want to interfere with our free will. However, God has supposedly performed a plethora of miracles anyway, both in the past and in recent times. So interfering with our free will isn’t a problem for him. Plus I would argue that most sane people would agree that suspending a perpetrator’s free will to reduce an innocent person’s suffering, is morally justified.
Moreover, I’m always baffled when I hear apologists say that it’s the atheist who has to show that God doesn’t have morally sufficient reasons for allowing all this evil. As if people who believe that God is all-good don’t have a burden of proof in this respect. But I sense a double standard here…
Suppose there was a person witnessing a brutal rape and elected to not stop the rape, even though he had the capability and power to do so. In fact, the power he possessed far exceeded the power required to end the rape. Would anyone view his decision as a moral one? Most people would either view his decision as immoral or at best amoral. No one would consider it morally good. If the witness or anyone defending him would propose that his decision was morally good or justified, then it would be up to them to demonstrate it.
Or suppose a scientist created a contraption that resulted in thousands of innocent people dying and suffering, and elected to not intervene and prevent the dying and suffering from continuing, even though he had the resources to easily do so. This person would immediately be deemed a public danger and face indictment.
In many holy books God not only allows people to suffer and die, but he actually kills them himself and causes them to suffer. If a person commits homicide are we expected to show that he didn’t have morally sufficient reasons for committing murder, before we lock him up?
If one claims that we would have to show that God doesn’t have morally sufficient reasons for allowing the suffering of the innocent, before regarding him as immoral, while at the same time agreeing that the aforementioned witness, scientist and murderer acted immorally (or any one of them), then the burden of proof is on them to show why this double standard is justified.
Dr Carrier, I sometimes notice after the end of a comment there’s not always a reply option. Just wondering what that’s all about.
2nd, I try to not seem like the forum chatterbox but the ratio of responses between the atheists (or non-theists) vs theists must be at least 5 to 1 in favor of the atheists. I don’t mind being the David vs the Goliath if you don’t mind a balance of exchanges.
I find myself in an exchange and I let the exchange drop with the other person having the last word. Certainly not because I find myself successfully refuted and don’t have something to offer in response but rather because I’m trying to not overstep my welcome or I sense the exchange can go on and on like the exchange between you and Johnny over concepts of infinity.
I also usually find the atheist commentors volley a tirade of complaints, objections, assertions, questions etc in their post that a fair response would require at least a seemingly overwhelming amount of forum space. Those I usually ignore because if respond to just 2 or 3 of the 10-20 complaints I’d be accused of “HA, he didn’t have a response to this or that point which I mentioned”. I see plenty of that already from the atheists here responding to Dr Marshall’s limited post. Some though are polite enough to directly ask him questions without the peanut gallery heckling (I do wish he had the time you have to respond to the sincere questioners and even the disingenuous insults that reply with things like “can’t he even figure out simple math like…”).
Of course the debate is between you and Dr Marshall and not me but I find it sad that if you add the atheist comments with your replies and compare that with the theist comments and Dr Marshall’s few replies (not by his choice) you might understand my chomping at the bit to jump in and try to sort of carry the banner for balance.
Your thoughts?
On the threading: the threading stops when there isn’t room to squeeze further a narrower reply text. Basically, there is no reply option, because there is no room to post a reply.
To get around this, Reply to the original comment in the thread, and your comment will start a new thread under all the previous ones. Or just post a new comment and refer to the comment you are replying to with the poster’s moniker, a quote, or even a hyperlink (the time stamp for each comment contains the URL that goes direct to that comment: right-click to see and copy it for pasting).
I want to load a better comment system, but they are all hopelessly buggy and it will take days to debug any new system, days I never have. Maybe someday.
On the comments: as I note in the first entry, no one should expect Dr. Marshall to respond to many comments here precisely because he won’t have time. I haven’t seen any heckling, just statements and objections and questions, which Marshall is welcome to ignore. Though when they make points I think are unfair, I usually comment myself with a “to be fair” remark. That has been less the case since I started doing that from entry one; the comments are getting more and more on point now.
There is no avoiding this alas. It’s the nature of internet comment systems. For my debates, I just purge trolling or mere attacks and other unproductive stuff. Otherwise, whoever says something productive or sincere here, gets in. I don’t control who decides to do that. You are welcome to go find some Christians on the internet to come in and join this process. Just make sure they aren’t trolls and don’t devolve into rage posting. Think: productive and sincere (as opposed to disingenuous and unproductive). That’s all it takes.
Rather than attempt to describe what a moral god would do, I think it would be better to address what Marshall is saying. He has hinted that he is aware of the crappy world we have, when he uses terms like, “beauty of gradual development”. You address this partially by pointing out how a lot of that development is not beautiful. I’m sure Marshall also uses terms like “broken” or “fallen” when referring to this world. He’s already done a lot of work to deal with the difference between a world we all know would be great and the one we actually experience, so I don’t see the value in describing the world both of you know doesn’t exist.
You do this in response to his assertion that God would do some “bizarre things”, which on review I see where that is, he calls it “Carrier-world”. That in turn is in response to your opening list of “non-design” evidence. This list too contains ideas for things God could have done, like give us souls that can’t be harmed instead of very vulnerable brains. At some high level, these are good arguments, but I don’t find support for them in religions. Religions tell us we have to go through a lot of trials and struggle with our imperfections, then someday we might get this better world. It’s pretty rare that religions say their god can do anything and those statements are contradicted in their own scripture. They spend a lot more time explaining why their god is not making the crops grow or protecting us from disaster.
Addressing the actual failed promises of gods, and the psychology of wanting a savior seems like a better tactic than leaping all the way to a hypothetical benevolent miracle worker that is not portrayed. Maybe in the first 5 days of creation, but from the time humans are created, they start acting in ways that would be expected given the world He created.
The “God has to torture and abuse us for our own good” argument is self-refuting. As it can only be defensible by identifying God as evil or radically mentally defective, indeed less compassionate and creatively intelligent than humans, who don’t need to torture and abuse people to test or improve other humans.
If God has not learned that, then God is less intelligent or less moral (or both) than we are, and we are pretty flawed on both accounts, so that means God would have to be a positive disaster as a person. So much so, we should never trust such a being, even should one exist. But there is no evidence even a terrible and incompetent god exists. So why believe one does?
I don’t think it is a “god has to torture us” argument. I know some people make that, but I don’t think Marshall is making it. The natural explanation is that we endure suffering and we’ve evolved some tools to deal with it, but there’s ultimately no way out of that. If I’m trading an agent that is purposely torturing me for a universe that doesn’t think but includes suffering, I’ll take the unthinking universe. But if I’m trading that universe for one with everything I know, plus an agent that has a plan that could end up being good for me, now I have something to think about.
I know it’s flawed thinking to make up something to fix my problems, but there are different arguments for that. The argument “a good God would do X” though, is not a counter argument to “God is doing Y”. They’ve already worked that out for centuries; God is going to give us that better world, but first we have to do something. As the somethings fail, they evolve into something else, sacrifice a goat, follow the purity laws, build a temple, don’t build a temple, find Jesus in your heart. Their system already includes the idea that they keep getting it wrong, so any suggestion of a “right” world is going to look like you just don’t understand how God works.
Instead, I would stick to how the story of their God actually does work. Someone pointed out to me that Numbers 19 tells us to wash after being around a corpse, and then connected that to germ theory, as if the Bible had the theory figured out all along. Of course, there were people washing before the Bible and where was God for 4,000 years, plus where was he when the theory was actually worked out? Experimentation gave us the answers we have now, not a divinely inspired text.
“there’s ultimately no way out of that”
Only if there is no God.
If there is a God, he’s the way out of that. Which is why his non-action is monstrous.
Yes, the Bible’s theology is wildly superstitious and savage, and wholly in reality rejected by believers now, though they won’t admit that, nor admit to the primitive blood magic their religion is built on, or its outdated cosmology, or any of its blatant errors. But we aren’t talking about the God of the Bible here; Marshall has not defended blood magic or the savagery of Yahweh or the barbarity of the Mosaic commandments. He’s defended God’s allowing horrific torments and injustices in the world He’s supposed to be curating.
And on that point we aren’t talking about stubbed toes and hurt feels. We are talking about mass rape and murder, horrific illnesses, mass drownings, burnings to death, blatant victimization, literal torture. And that’s just a short list. This cannot be justified by any plausible means. God is a monster. Or he does not exist. No other possibility bears any appreciable probability.
So they have to choose: worship a monster; or give up the delusion that this monster exists. We’ve done the epistemic math on that, and made our choice. Time for them to. Everything else is just lies they tell themselves to avoid making that choice. And us pointing that out.
Okay, we’re getting to the meat of it here. I’m hammering on this one sentence in the debate about what a moral God’s world should look like, but my larger point is this thought you express here, “No other possibility bears any appreciable probability.” I’m glad we agree that Marshal is avoiding the actual acts of God in the Bible. I’ve had that same problem with more liberal believers, when I point out the story of Jesus is of a ritual blood sacrifice, they try to shift to some more symbolic interpretation. I’d be fine with that if they also changed all the songs and the symbols and started producing a lot more material that said the story is symbolic, but they don’t. That’s what I meant by “ultimately no way out”, it’s a difficult argument to win once they start changing from “it’s true” to “it’s symbolically true.”
I agree it is our part to point out the gruesome reality of reality. I’m not so sure it proves a moral God doesn’t exist. It proves a God with certain powers and attributes either is not moral or doesn’t exist, but a different God, with far less powers, could still exist. So, a different approach for example; I have had several very devout people agree with me that God is not completely knowable. That’s a God that can’t overcome the barrier of just showing everyone its real. It’s in the OT and NT and in the scripture and teachings of most other religions. This should give me the right to question anything they say, since they can’t really know for sure, but they’ll go on to tell me I just need to go read the Bible and pray.
The stakes are a lot higher than me winning an argument, as you pointed out. That’s why I don’t want to keep having conversations where I end up saying “that can’t be” and they walk away believing as before. I think they have already dealt with “that can’t be”, since they are so good at apologizing for how things are. They are showing us their cognitive dissonance. I can’t say it will work for everyone, but for me, I looked for the meaning in the gospels and realized what theologians said was there, was not. I was also exploring Nordic and Eastern mythology at the time, so I had a sense of how mythology works in culture, but I think that can be pretty easily shown, even just looking at how the Jesus myth developed, like you did in OTHJ.
I could go on, but I feel I’m starting to ramble.
Alas. Even weak gods don’t fit the evidence. And though immoral gods could, they remain extremely improbable. See my latest on this.
That post does fit well with what I’m asking. I’ll need to work through that one for a while though. You are saying a lot things are “highly improbable” that I’ve always thought worth further consideration. Seems I might not have thought those through.
Hi, Dr. Carrier. Regarding the logic of evidence, I’ve come across a post by Jeffery Jay Lowder on the Secular Web.
He argues that the existence of consciousness (not necessarily human) is at least some evidence for theism, as he claims that it is more probable on theism than on naturalism. His reasoning is that if theism is true, then consciousness (of at least the god) has to exist while if naturalism is true, consciousness doesn’t have to exist. He, of course, is a naturalist though, and so thinks the evidence is more on naturalism’s side.
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/secularoutpost/2020/02/11/an-f-inductive-argument-from-consciousness-for-theism-revisited/
Personally, I’m not too sure what to make of it. The reason this is relevant is because it seems that Lowder is making the same point as Dr Marshall and you’ve claimed in this debate that there’s no evidence for theism.
More importantly, what do you think?
That argument commits the error of omitting evidence (in particular, of what kind of consciousness we observe exists; and what kinds we observe don’t). When we put the evidence back in that it leaves out, you get the opposite conclusion. See Bayesian Counter-Apologetics: Argument from Consciousness.
It is invalid in Bayesian reasoning (or “unsound” if you want to use technical vocabulary) to leave any information out of b and e (background knowledge, and evidence). The sum of b and e must be inclusive of all human knowledge. Lowder has thus produced an unsound Bayesian argument. Unless he admits somewhere that the argument he is stating is incomplete or counter-factual (i.e. “if” all we knew was that “consciousness existed,” and nothing about the particulars of how and when we observe it to, then his argument would follow; but that’s counter-factual, because we do know about the particulars of how and when we observe it to).
Thank you