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.”

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