A reader inquires,
I was wondering whether you had any direction you could offer for rational arguments for God's existence?
If you are looking for arguments that are not merely rational, but rationally compelling, I don't believe that there are any. I also believe that there aren't any such arguments for the nonexistence of God. A rationally compelling argument for a proposition is a proof; a rationally compelling argument for its logical contradictory is a disproof. When it comes to God, and not just God, there are no proofs or disproofs. There are arguments, some better than others. That's as good as it gets.
Note that my claim that this is so is not a proposition that I claim to be able to prove. I claim merely that it is reasonable to believe. I do believe it and will continue to believe until someone gives me a compelling reason not to believe it. If I am right, however, that cannot happen. For my meta-philosophical thesis is substantive, and if I am right, said thesis can neither be proven nor disproven. So the the best you could do would be counter me with the contradictory of my meta-thesis. But then we would be in a stand-off.
What is it for an argument to be rationally compelling?
Philosophers make reasoned cases for all manner of propositions, but their colleagues typically do not find these arguments to be compelling. So a reasoned case need not be a compelling case. But it depends on what exactly is meant by 'compelling.' I suggest that a (rationally) compelling argument is one which forces the 'consumer' of the argument to accept the argument's conclusion on pain of being irrational. (What is it to be irrational? That's a long story I cannot now go into, but the worst form of irrationality would be the acceptance of a logical contradiction.) I will assume that the 'consumer' is intelligent, sincere, open to having his mind changed, and well-versed in the subject matter of the argument. Now it may be that there are a few arguments that are rationally compelling in this sense, but there are precious few, and surely no arguments for or against the existence of God.
To appreciate this, note first that arguments have premises and that no argument can prove its own premises. (An argument of the form p therefore p is an argument valid in point of logical form in which premise and conclusion are identical, but no one will take an argument of this form as proving that p.) Now given that no argument can prove its own premises, what reason could one give for accepting the premises of a given argument? Suppose deductive argument A has P1 and P2 as premises and that conclusion C follows logically from the premises. Why accept P1 and P2? One could adduce further arguments B and C for P1 and P2 respectively. But then the problem arises all over again. For arguments B and C themselves have premises. If P3 is a premise of B, what reason could one give for the acceptance of P3? One could adduce argument D. But D too has premises, and if you think this through you soon realize that you have brought down upon your head an infinite regress which is vicious. The regress is vicious because the task of justifying by argument all the premises involved cannot be completed.
To avoid argumentative regress we need premises that are self-justifying in the sense that they are justified, but not justified by anything external to themselves. Such propositions could be said to be self-evident. But what is self-evident to one person is often not self-evident to another. This plain fact forces a distinction between subjective and objective self-evidence. Clearly, subjective self-evidence is not good enough. If it merely seems to subject S that p is self-evident, that does not suffice to establish that p is objectively self-evident. Trouble is, when someone announces that such-and-such is objectively self-evident that too is a claim about how it seems to that person, so that it is not clear that what is being claimed as objectively self-evident is not in the end itself merely subjectively self-evident.
Example. Suppose an argument for the existence of God employs the premise, 'Every event has a cause.' Is this premise self-evident? No. Why can't there be an uncaused event? So how does one know that that premise is true? It is a plausible premise, no doubt, but plausibility is not the same as truth. And if you do not know that the premises of your argument are true, then your argument, even if logically impeccable in every other way, does not amount to a proof, strictly speaking. Knowledge entails certainty, objective certainty.
My point is that there are hardly any rationally compelling arguments for substantive theses. But one can make reasoned cases for theses. Therefore, a reasoned case is not the same as a compelling argument.
Because people are naturally dogmatic and crave doxastic security, they are unwilling to accept my meta-philosophical thesis that there are hardly any compelling arguments for substantive theses. They want to believe that their pet beliefs are compellingly provable and that people who do not accept their 'proofs' are either irrational or morally defective. Their tendency is to accept as sound any old argument for the conclusions they antecedently accept, no matter how shoddy the argument, and to reject as unsound arguments that issue in conclusions they do not accept. Their craving for doxastic security swamps and suborns their critical faculties.
One way to refute what I am saying would be by providing a compelling argument for the existence of God, or a compelling argument for the nonexistence of God. You won't be able to do it.
In the absence of compelling arguments, what should one do?
I don't believe that there can be talk of proof when it comes to God, the soul, and other big topics, assuming you use 'proof' strictly. After considering all the evidence for and against, you will have to decide what you will believe and how you will live. The will comes into it. One freedom comes into it. I thus espouse a limited doxastic voluntarism. In the shadowlands of this life there is light enough and darkness enough to lend support to either answer, that of the theist and that of his opposite number. So it is up to you to decide what you will believe and how you will live.
For me the following consideration clinches the matter. Bring the theoretical question back down to your lived life, your Existenz in the existentialist sense. How will you live, starting right now and for the rest of your days? Will you live as if you will be utterly extinguished in a few years or will you live as if what you do and leave undone right now matters, really matters? Will you live as if life is serious, or will you live as if it is some sort of cosmic joke? Will you live as if something is at stake in this life, however dimly descried, or will you live as if nothing is ultimately at stake? Will you live life as if it has an Absolute Meaning that transcends the petty particular relative meanings of the quotidian round? Will you take the norms that conscience reveals as so many pointers to an Unseen Order to which this paltry and transient sublunary order is but prelude?
It is your life. You decide. You can drift and not decide, but your drifting in the currents of social suggestion and according to the idols of the age is a deficient mode of decision. Not to decide is to decide.
Now suppose that when Drs. Mary Neal and Eben Alexander die the body's death, they become nothing. Suppose that their phenomenologically vivid paranormal after-death experiences were revelatory of nothing real, that their experiences were just the imaginings of malfunctioning brains at the outer limits of biological life. What will they have lost by believing as they did?
Nothing! Nothing at all. You could of course say that they were wrong and were living in illusion and giving themselves and others false hope. But no one will ever know one way or the other. And if the body's death is the last word, then nothing ultimately matters, and so it can't matter that they were wrong if turns out that they were.
If they were right, however, then the moral transformation that their taking seriously of their experiences has wrought in them can be expected to redound to their benefit when they pass from this sphere.
Hi Bill,
I have been pondering this post for days now, so I decided to write.
We have agreed in the past that our ignorance of many metaphysical realities is an evil that marks our entire fleshly transit, whatever its cause. So, while I am convinced by your argument, I, and I assume you, do not take any solace in the remedy that you propose to our cognitive inability to know whether God does or does not exist. In saying this, I do not pretend to have another antidote to our predicament, since I do not. Your prescription that we chose cannot be evaded, once one has given up the illusion that logical proofs or demonstrations can be marshaled with regard to the question of God’s existence and nature or to that of other obscurities. Hence, I chose to believe that He exists and seek to act in ways that reflect that belief, but I am not entirely happy in doing so. A residual resentment underlies my choice, for some part of me contends that is only right that we know more. I am grateful for your prescription, for it has allowed me over the last several years to move out of the intellectual box in which I found myself confined for a very long time, hoping to know what I could only believe; however, it comes with a cost, in that the revelatory truths on which Christian faith depends now must stand on far more precarious grounds than those on which our ancestors, or most of them at least, based their faith. For instance, to anchor our faith commitments on what is essentially a rational existential choice, rather than a claim to knowledge, markedly alters our confidence in both the veracity or plausibility of the testimony-- individual and collective, first and second hand-- at the core of Christian revelation. If one followed the Catholic way in the past, to take just one tradition, in affirming that God’s existence could be known and His nature at least negatively delineated through rigorous argument, the background knowledge for revelation was taken as firmly established and not in dispute. Thus, the testimony of scripture rested on what was taken as the firm truths of natural religion. Now, instead, we are rationally choosing to believe in God and rationally choosing among arguments that define his nature, and then we go on and add additional beliefs, those of testimony, to make faith more specific. For those who have not been graced with deep religious experiences, the holding onto faith is all the harder. I believe that this is why so many continue to insist on the lucidity of this or that proof or demonstration, for the alternative is simply too stark and dry for many people.
Posted by: Vito B Caiati | Monday, September 28, 2020 at 02:49 PM
Thanks for the detailed and thoughtful comments, Vito.
>> . . . however, it comes with a cost, in that the revelatory truths on which Christian faith depends now must stand on far more precarious grounds than those on which our ancestors, or most of them at least, based their faith. For instance, to anchor our faith commitments on what is essentially a rational existential choice, rather than a claim to knowledge, markedly alters our confidence in both the veracity or plausibility of the testimony-- individual and collective, first and second hand-- at the core of Christian revelation. If one followed the Catholic way in the past, to take just one tradition, in affirming that God’s existence could be known and His nature at least negatively delineated through rigorous argument, the background knowledge for revelation was taken as firmly established and not in dispute.<<
True, it WAS TAKEN as firmly established and not in dispute. Our ancestors, many of them, were subjectively certain. But I am questioning whether they were objectively certain.
>> Thus, the testimony of scripture rested on what was taken as the firm truths of natural religion. Now, instead, we are rationally choosing to believe in God and rationally choosing among arguments that define his nature, and then we go on and add additional beliefs, those of testimony, to make faith more specific. For those who have not been graced with deep religious experiences, the holding onto faith is all the harder. I believe that this is why so many continue to insist on the lucidity of this or that proof or demonstration, for the alternative is simply too stark and dry for many people.<<
That is correct as a psychological explanation of why many insist that some of the God proofs are probative. They cannot tolerate doxastic insecurity. And so the religious person with a skeptical bent, a person like myself, will tend to see them as involved in more or less 'metaphysical bluster': they claim to know what in fact they don't know, but merely believe, even when their belief is reasoned.
Posted by: BV | Monday, September 28, 2020 at 08:07 PM
I have a question, Bill, the answer to which may seem obvious to you, but it truly troubles me. Do not feel obligated to answer it if you lack the interest or time.
If I rationally belief something the truth or falsity of which cannot be logically demonstrated or proven, such as the existence of God, and then add to that belief a subset of beliefs that are dependent on it and more specific in content, and whose veracity or even coherence is beyond the reach of reasoned argumentation, as in the dogmas of orthodox Christianity (Trinity, Incarnation, etc.), am I as or less justified in holding the latter than the former? If less justified, then should one not stop with the former, given the obscurity of these matters, that is, with generic theism of one sort or another, or perhaps adhere to something like the view of John Hick in affirming an transcendent reality that lies beyond human cognition but that is imperfectly grasped to one degree or another by the various religious traditions of the world?
Vito
Posted by: Vito B Caiati | Tuesday, September 29, 2020 at 01:34 PM
Good question, Vito.
I think the answer to your first question has to be, "less justified." The belief that God (as standardly defined) exists, and the belief that a certain person was fully human and fully divine are very different. With respect to the second, but not the first, the question of its logical coherence is a major issue.
Now suppose that a person believes that God exists, and lives this belief: he prays, he meditates, he examines his conscience, he strives to improve himself morally, he reflects on the transient goods of this world and appreciates the folly of pursuing them as if they are ultimately real. But this person has serious doubts about the coherence (and consequently the truth) of Trinity, Incarnation, Virgin Birth.
You ask whether he should "stop with the former." Well, I don't think that he has an moral or epistemic duty to do that. He might continue to think about them and pray for enlightenment. Maybe God did become man in Jesus of Nazareth. Maybe there is a way to make sense of this. Perhaps light in a suprarational form will dawn later. This is one way to proceed.
Posted by: BV | Wednesday, September 30, 2020 at 11:59 AM