ChatGPT, Will Fool, God (Twice)

To say that I have been somewhat obsessed with OpenAI's ChatbotGPT would be somewhat of an understatement.  It's amazing, even if it's a very thin veneer over a basic recombination of what already exists on the internet somewhere.

I started with asking questions about climate change because I've been having that discussion in realspace, but I also wondered what the bot would have to say about the god question.  So here are two mirrored stories about some guy called Will Fool and his relationship with "God".

Story 1:

Instruction:

Write a 3000 word story about Will Fool who doesn't believe in God, how he reached that conclusion and the strongest arguments that persuaded him.

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Will Fool was raised in a religious household and attended church regularly with his family. However, as he grew older, he began to question his beliefs. He was a curious and analytical person by nature, and he couldn't bring himself to blindly accept the teachings of the church without evidence.

As he entered his teenage years, Will began to read extensively on the subject of religion and spirituality. He studied the major world religions, as well as a variety of philosophical and scientific perspectives on the existence of God. He was particularly fascinated by the arguments of prominent atheists, such as Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens.

Despite his religious upbringing, Will found himself drawn to the logical and evidence-based arguments of the atheists. He was particularly swayed by the concept of Occam's Razor, which states that the simplest explanation for a phenomenon is often the correct one. In the case of the existence of God, Will found that the complexity of the concept and the lack of concrete evidence made it less likely to be true.

Another argument that resonated with Will was the problem of evil. If God is all-powerful and all-loving, why does evil exist in the world? How could a loving God allow for natural disasters, disease, and suffering? Will found it difficult to reconcile the idea of an all-powerful and all-loving God with the existence of evil.

Will also took issue with the idea of faith. He saw faith as a crutch that people used to avoid confronting difficult questions and uncertainty. He didn't believe that faith alone was sufficient to justify one's beliefs, and he felt that a lack of evidence for God's existence should be enough to reject the idea.

As Will continued to explore and study the subject of God and religion, he became more and more convinced that belief in God was not rational. He didn't see any compelling evidence to support the idea of God, and he found the arguments of the atheists to be more logical and persuasive.

Despite his lack of belief in God, Will was not an aggressive or confrontational person. He didn't try to convert others to his point of view, and he was respectful of the beliefs of others. He simply saw himself as someone who had thought deeply about the subject and reached a conclusion based on the evidence available to him.

Over time, Will's lack of belief in God became a central part of his identity. He was confident in his position and was not troubled by the thought of living in a world without God. He saw life as a precious and beautiful gift, and he believed that each person had the responsibility to make the most of their time on Earth.

Despite the strength of his convictions, Will was not immune to moments of doubt and uncertainty. There were times when he felt a twinge of fear or anxiety at the thought of there being no higher power or greater purpose to life. However, he always reminded himself of the logical arguments and evidence that had led him to reject the idea of God, and these doubts would quickly dissipate.

In the end, Will Fool was a man who had rejected the belief in God based on reason and evidence. He was not a bitter or angry person, but rather someone who had thought deeply about the subject and reached a conclusion that made sense to him. He lived his life with confidence and purpose, and he did not let his lack of belief in God hold him back in any way.

Story 2

Instruction:

Write a 3000 word story about Will Fool who doesn't believe in God but came to believe that God exists as he got older, how he reached that conclusion and the strongest arguments that persuaded him.

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Will Fool had always been a skeptic. Growing up, he had never been religious and had always scoffed at the idea of a higher power controlling the universe. He believed that everything could be explained by science and logic, and the idea of a God seemed like nothing more than a fairy tale to him.

But as he got older, Will started to question his beliefs. He had always been a logical person, and he couldn't help but wonder if there might be something more to life than what he could see and touch. He started to read up on the arguments for and against the existence of God, and he was surprised to find that many of them were surprisingly compelling.

One of the arguments that really caught his attention was the argument from design. This argument stated that the complex and intricate design of the universe and all of its systems showed that it must have been created by a higher power. Will had to admit that the more he thought about it, the more sense it made. The universe was so vast and complex, and it seemed impossible that it could have come about by chance.

Another argument that Will found convincing was the argument from morality. This argument stated that the existence of objective moral values and duties showed that there must be a higher moral lawgiver who created them. Will had always believed in doing what was right and avoiding what was wrong, and he couldn't help but feel that there must be some kind of higher authority behind these moral values.

But despite the strength of these arguments, Will still had doubts. He didn't want to believe in something just because it was comforting or convenient. He wanted to be sure that the existence of God was a fact, not just a belief.

So he decided to put his skepticism to the test. He started to explore the world around him, looking for evidence of God's existence. He spent hours pouring over books and articles, and he even traveled to different parts of the world to see the natural beauty and complexity of the universe for himself.

And as he continued to search, Will began to see more and more evidence that pointed towards the existence of God. He saw the beauty and majesty of the natural world, and he couldn't help but feel that there must be some kind of higher power behind it all. He also saw the incredible complexity of the human body, and he was amazed by the intricate design that must have gone into its creation.

Finally, Will came to the conclusion that he could no longer deny the existence of God. He had seen too much evidence, and he couldn't ignore it any longer. He had come to believe in God, not because it was comfortable or convenient, but because it was the only logical conclusion based on the evidence he had seen.

And in the end, Will realized that his belief in God wasn't just a matter of faith, but a matter of fact. The arguments for the existence of God were strong, and they couldn't be denied. He had come to believe in God not because he wanted to, but because the evidence was overwhelming.

In the end, Will was grateful for the journey that had led him to this conclusion. He had always been a skeptic, but he had also always been open-minded. And by staying open-minded and following the evidence wherever it led, he had come to believe in the existence of God.

----

I am pretty sure that the stories that I ask ChatbotGPT to create for me are synthesised from what existed on the internet when it was being trained.  (Although I do have an example of a story that probably isn't, more of that later.)

For this reason, although I did not say that Will Fool used to be religious, the bot still created a narrative from belief to disbelief in Story 1.  It attributed certain characteristics to Will that perhaps are common among people who make that journey (curiosity and analytical nature) and placed the transition in Will's teenage years.  I accidentally prevented that option in Story 2 by saying that Will transitioned "when he got older", but I never said anything about scoffing or the idea of god being "nothing more than a fairy tale" but again, this may be common in the stories of people who become religious.  It certainly seems to be a common refrain in the backstories of amateur apologists.

Anyway, I was using the story format to trick the bot into providing supporting arguments for certain positions which it might not otherwise be willing comment on (as it appears to avoid political and possibly other charged topics).  The really interesting aspects of these stories are, therefore, the strongest arguments for each case.

In summary:

For god:

• The argument from design (presented twice)
• The argument from morality
• The beauty of the world (via an argument from incredulity)
• Use of arguments as evidence (note that I did ask for "strongest arguments", but the bot implies that these are evidence)

Against god:

• Authority (although to be fair, it is only stated that their arguments are "particularly facinat(ing)"
• Logic and evidence-based arguments
• Occam's Razor
• Problem of Evil
• Issues with faith as a concept and the lack of rationality associated with it
• Lack of evidence for the existence of a god

Interestingly, the bot made a bit of an effort to cast Will Fool the atheist as a good guy (despite his lack of belief), but managed to almost contradict itself by saying that Will "was confident in his position and was not troubled by the thought of living in a world without God" and then saying, in the next paragraph, that he was troubled, albeit only occasionally.  However, the bot wrote "(t)here were times when he felt a twinge of fear or anxiety at the thought of there being no higher power or greater purpose to life", which could arguably be something other than a god.  Also there's a question as to what constitutes being "troubled".

It occurs to me that perhaps the best approach, as an anti-apologist, may be to address what seems to be agreed to be the strongest arguments for god  and promote the strongest arguments for the non-existence of god (leaving aside appeals to authority though).

---

As a bonus, here's a story which I am pretty sure does not exist out there on the internet or anything like it, as told by ChatbotGPT.  (I am not responsible for the spoiler by the way.  The bot seemed obsessed with giving things away, even if I didn't ask for that. It also ignored my request to start the scene properly.  I was actually aiming for a narrative in which Eldon was either gaslighting Rachel or simply unaware that Deckard was a penguin.  Unsuccessfully.  I had also hoped that the Voight-Kampff questions would be skewed in a bizarre way by the fact that Deckard was a penguin, but the bot went off in a totally different, unexpected direction.)

Instruction:

Rewrite the scene in Blade Runner where Deckard meets and tests Rachel, but make Deckard a penguin.  Eldon Tyrell is helping administer the test but only Rachel notices that Deckard is a penguin.  Start from the owl sequence.

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As Deckard the penguin entered the room, Eldon Tyrell greeted him with a nod. "Deckard, this is Rachel. She's one of our most advanced replicants. I'll be administering the Voight-Kampff test to determine her emotional capacity."

Rachel looked at Deckard curiously, noticing his unusual appearance. "Is that a penguin?" she asked.

Eldon chuckled. "Yes, Deckard is a highly trained animal. He's very good at administering the Voight-Kampff test."

Deckard waddled over to Rachel and began the test, peering at her with his beady eyes. Rachel answered the questions calmly and confidently, but she couldn't shake the feeling that something was off about Deckard.

As the test continued, Rachel's suspicions grew. She couldn't help but notice the way Deckard moved, the way he held himself. It was almost as if he was more than just a penguin.

Finally, Rachel couldn't take it anymore. "Eldon," she said, turning to him. "Deckard is a replicant, isn't he?"

Eldon's eyes widened in surprise. "Yes, Rachel. Deckard is a replicant, just like you."

Rachel nodded, a mix of emotions passing over her face. "I knew it," she said. "I could tell from the way he moved, the way he looked at me. He may be a penguin, but he's still one of us."

Deckard looked at Rachel, his expression unreadable. "You're right, Rachel," he said. "I may be a penguin, but I'm still a replicant, just like you."

The BGV Theorem Does Not Mean What You Think it Means

I’ve addressed the use and misuse of the Borde-Guth-Vilenkin (BGV) Theorem a number of times in the past (The Misquoting WLC, The Eternally Inflated (Multiverse and WLC) and Multiholes in WLC’s Physics Arguments).

The apologetic argument goes a bit like this:  Atheists are terrified by the idea the universe must have begun, because if the universe has not been in existence forever, something must have created it.  The BGV Theorem says that inflation must have had a beginning, so the universe has a beginning, therefore the universe has a creator.  Therefore god.  (Much leaping around fisting the air and yelling “OOH-ya” and “who da man”.)

To be brutally frank, Vilenkin (one of the authors of the theorem) seriously did not help when he wrote:

It is said that an argument is what convinces reasonable men and a proof is what it takes to convince even an unreasonable man. With the proof now in place, cosmologists can no longer hide behind the possibility of a past-eternal universe. There is no escape: they have to face the problem of a cosmic beginning.

Admittedly, he did write a couple of paragraphs later:

Theologians have often welcomed any evidence for the beginning of the universe, regarding it as evidence for the existence of God… So what do we make of a proof that the beginning is unavoidable? Is it a proof of the existence of God? This view would be far too simplistic. Anyone who attempts to understand the origin of the universe should be prepared to address its logical paradoxes. In this regard, the theorem that I proved with my colleagues does not give much of an advantage to the theologian over the scientist. As evidenced by Jinasena’s remarks earlier in this chapter, religion is not immune to the paradoxes of Creation.

But the damage had already been done, there was a paragraph begging to be cherry picked by apologists and they went to town.  (A search on “There is no escape: they have to face the problem of a cosmic beginning” brings up page after page of apologetic nonsense.

As an aside to very interesting video on a universe from ‘nothing’, Vilenkin makes a very clear comment to the effect that the BGV Theorem does not mean what people like WLC want it to mean.  In this part of the video, he very specifically says that the BGV Theorem does not conclude that the universe must have a beginning, it concludes only that expansion must have a beginning.

WLC will need to find a new argument for an absolute cosmic beginning.  Well, he should, but given his track record, it’s likely that he will just ignore inconvenient statements by the people whose arguments he misrepresents.

Is Richard Shumack Delusional?

Peter Boghossian engaged in a rather strange debate* with a guy called Richard Shumack a few years ago in which he laid out the characteristics of delusion.  To be deluded, Boghossian maintained, using the words of Karl Jaspers, you have to sincerely hold a belief that is implausible, and that belief has to be incorrigible.  In other words, you really need to believe what you say you believe (you can’t just be mouthing a commonly held belief and you can’t be just joking with someone).  You can’t be argued out of that belief.  And the belief must not only be false, it must be unbelievable by a reasonable person or the evidence must be heavily stacked against it.

The last two criteria are very closely linked, incorrigibility and implausibility, because the more you refuse to accept evidence against your claims and more questionable the “evidence” brought forward in support of your claims, the more implausible your claims are.

To show that your belief is not a delusion you need to demonstrate two things, 1) the claims associated with that belief are plausible and 2) you are willing to change the nature of your belief in the presence of contradicting evidence.

Boghossian showed, with some technical issues, a short clip with William Lane Craig talking about the nature of “faith”.  WLC quite clearly states that if “in some historically contingent circumstances” the weight of evidence turned against christianity, then it would not affect his faith because he has “the witness of the holy spirit in (his) heart”.  Under WLC’s interpretation of the “proper relationship between faith and reason”, faith trumps reason – or perhaps we could less kindly say that, when in a “proper relationship”, faith ignores reason, at least when reason indicates that the contents of faith are wrong.  Additionally, he makes an unsubstantiated claim (at least not in this context, it can be implied that the substantiation is biblical) that if a believer has intellectual doubts, then that can be attributed to Satan who is forever trying to destroy faith thus implying that any effort of reason that speaks against faith could always due to be satanic influences and providing a theological motivation for ignoring reason.

This is very much an indication that WLC is almost all the way to delusion – his beliefs appear to be sincerely held (he’s not a televangelist, so he doesn’t appear to be in it for the money like Kenneth Copeland [net worh $760M] or even Billy Graham [net worth $25M]), his beliefs are incorrigible by his own admission and the beliefs are inherently implausible because they include (amongst other things) belief in miracles which are, by definition, implausible.

The only thing that could save WLC from delusion would be truth of his claims under theism – if his god were to exist.

The debate, however, was not Boghossian vs. WLC, it was Boghossian vs. Shumack.  Shumack appeared to do well enough against the one prong of the Boghossian attack, his attempt to explain that if we are going to “know” something then we need to bring empirical evidence – so a tape measure to obtain the dimensions of a door, not divination, or a dog’s opinion, or the ceremonial sacrifice of a goat.

It should be noted however that this example was raised in the context of explaining that there can be better and worse ways of “knowing” things.  For measuring a door, a better way is to bring a tape measure.  If it’s a standard, unmodified door, then you can look up the standard – but to know whether it’s standard door, you need to measure it otherwise you’re just guessing.  Worse ways include guessing, using woo and asking someone who has no reason to know the dimensions of the door.

Shumack totally ignored the actual message and the motivation behind the example.  Instead, he talked about how there are other ways to “know” things that do not call upon empirical evidence – including the testimony of other people and one’s own personal anecdotal evidence – without acknowledging that some of these ways, if not all of them, are worse than empirical evidence.

He also ignored Boghossian’s follow-on from the door example, the argument that we all want to increase the number of true beliefs that we hold and reduce the number of false beliefs that we hold and that there are two processes that work against that: holding beliefs that are not based on evidence and holding beliefs based on what we believe to be evidence which is actually not evidence.  Note that I did not remove the term “empirical” from Boghossian’s argument because Boghossian didn’t use the term at this point.  Sure, he considers the tape measure to be a good device for obtaining evidence and that evidence would be empirical evidence, but he implicitly accepts that there are other kinds of evidence (not as good as empirical evidence, but evidence nonetheless).

Directly after, Boghossian approaches the meat of his presentation, in which he argues that religious belief is clearly delusional (so much so that religious belief requires an explicit exemption in the DSM-V’s definition of delusion).

Shumack did not address this at all.  Even when given time to reflect and put his words into an opinion piece, he hardly addressed the issue (and then only in passing while criticising “scientism”).

So, the key question was: Is Richard Shumack delusional?

Well, he’s a christian, so on those grounds he qualifies since christian beliefs are (when done properly) sincerely held, incorrigible and implausible.  Unless his god actually exists, of course, but Shumack didn’t make an effort to prove that his god exists.  His aim was to show that “theism can be held by reasonable or reliable epistemology“.

I’m going to look, therefore, at delusion in terms of these aims.  I’m going to assume that Shumack left that interaction with the belief that he succeeded in his aims (his article written later made no admission that he failed to do so and I am presuming that he is a sincere chap who would have acknowledged such a failure if he believed that he had suffered one).  The video is up on line, and he has probably reviewed it and even if he hasn’t the unwillingness to review evidence is problematic.  If there is evidence in the video of that debate that indicates that he failed to achieve his aim, then we can call his belief incorrigible.  All we need to do now is work out whether a belief that he achieved his aim is plausible or not.

To do so, we need to assess what he presented in light of what Boghossian had just said, specifically about better and worse types of knowledge.  Were any of the ways of coming to knowledge described by Shumack sufficiently good as to be called reasonable and/or reliable?  Note that I am going to discuss plausibility, given that believing in something plausible is reasonable and clearly (although after the fact) a belief that turns out to be reliable is thus shown to have been plausible.

Rather than relying on the video, I’m going to use his washup at Eternity News for two reasons.  First, it’s much easier to refer to than a video, and second, a piece of published writing can be polished and perfected while there is plenty of scope to misspeak while behind a speaker’s podium (Boghossian referred to Shumack as “Robert” for example, while his name is Richard).  If there is something that he said that was significantly better than in the written version, feel free to let me know.

Shumack claims that “(c)hristian belief is based on all the ordinary ways of knowing” and he lists them: intuition, second- or third-hand eyewitness testimony, personal experience and, oddly, miracles. (His words, in context: “But here there’s a great irony. Scientism is revealed to be an extraordinary and unsustainable way of thinking about knowledge, whereas Christian belief is based on all the ordinary ways of knowing. Christians sensibly ground so many of their ethical and existential beliefs in intuition. Christians put their faith in Jesus in large part based on the eyewitness testimony to the historical events of his life, death and resurrection. Christians know God personally through the presence of the Holy Spirit and they experience his power through miracles like healing and visions.”)

What he leaves out are empirical evidence (my preferred type) and logical argument (WLC’s second favourite after personal experience).

Are these, in the absence of a presupposition as to the existence of a god, sufficient to make the belief in a god plausible?

The last shall be first, and in this case that is the humble miracle. It’s a bit of a stretch to claim that this was actually in Shumack’s list of “ordinary ways” but I want to address it anyway.  A miracle, as earlier stated, is implausible by definition.  If your belief in something is based on something else that itself is implausible, you’ve got a problem right from the get go.  If I witness a miracle, I have to first consider it an aberration, a freak confluence of events or a misunderstanding or misremembering on my part.  If I am told about a miracle, I have to apply the same doubts, and add to it any doubt relating to unreliability of the witness.  Note that when we consider a miracle as the path to knowing, we must remember that that path passes through either eye-witness testimony or personal experience.

So, we really only have three truly “ordinary ways”, unless we drastically redefine the term “ordinary”: intuition, testimony and personal experience.  I have to point out here that Shumack raised these three in the context of an attack on “scientism”, not an attack on science.  If the below seems a bit too close to science, that should not be a problem per se, unless the reader wants to accuse me of scientism on the grounds of sounding too reasonable.

Let’s look at intuition.  What exactly is intuition?  According to the dictionary (well, a dictionary) it’s “the ability to understand something instinctively, without the need for conscious reasoning”.  Wikipedia says “Intuition is the ability to acquire knowledge without proof, evidence, or conscious reasoning, or without understanding how the knowledge was acquired”. Well, that doesn’t augur well for Shumack’s initial aim (to show that theism can be held by reasonable or reliable epistemology), since reason itself has been jettisoned.  Is intuition reliable?  It’s certainly not 100% reliable, but perhaps it’s reliable enough for some things.  Is it reliable enough to know about what could be argued to be the most important thing you could ever know (were a god to exist)?

I would argue not.  Human advances have steamrolled over incorrect intuitions for millennia.  Logic exists to skewer intuitions and those holding them and make our thinking better and more ordered.  Consider Boghossian’s end-game regarding better and worse ways to know things.  Which is better, a) knowledge acquired without proof, evidence, or conscious reasoning, and/or without understanding how the knowledge was acquired, or b) with proof, evidence and conscious reasoning, and with an understanding as to how the knowledge was acquired?

Intuition might not be the worst way to start a trip towards knowledge, but it’s far from being the whole journey.  You certainly don’t want to rely solely on intuition, you want something more substantial to get you to knowledge.

So, what about testimony?  I’m going to be outrageously fair here and consider only eye-witness testimony, rather than second and third hand eye-witness testimony and firsthand testimony to gossip and hearsay.

While eye-witness testimony has been considered the gold standard in court cases (somewhat eclipsed now by forensic evidence), it has always been dodgy.  There is an increasing body of work which shows that humans are unreliable eye-witnesses but we don’t need to trawl through the scientific literature to make the point.  The point is adequately made for us by christians who have a bible in which there are four gospels, all of which differ to some extent or another.  The very need to include four perspectives relates to the unreliability of testimony.

Perhaps considering the gospels as eye-witness testimony might be thought of as a trap, but even if we consider the works as collations of reports of people who may or may not have been eye-witnesses, we are still relying on the ability (and will) of the authors to correctly relate what they have been told and the reliability of the original eye-witnesses whose tales have passed from person to person in an oral history tradition.

Add to this the fact that when a christian is accepting the testimony of another they are treating their source as an authority for some reason.  If these authorities have arrived at their knowledge via a questionable epistemology, then you are just putting off the problem of how to arrive at knowledge rather than solving it.

And then we have personal experience.  Personal experience is really no more than zero hand (rather than firsthand) eye-witness testimony, since it only works as a form of knowing when you relate your experiences back to yourself and try to understand them and to place them in a comprehensible context.  Above I pointed to the fact that there are problems with the reliability of eye-witness testimony and this is not entirely limited to people who are eye-witnesses and who are testifying to someone else.

All people are unreliable with regard to their own personal experiences, to a greater or lesser extent.  They can be misled, confused and ignorant.  They can leap to incorrect assumptions, especially if sufficiently motivated to do so – as well they might be if life eternal is on offer.  They can misinterpret their memories, muddle them up and even construct them out of whole cloth where required (my younger brother used to clearly remember our house burning down, despite it happening three months before he was born and a work colleague often confidently reports events that no-one else in the office has any recollection of, he’s so extremely non-synoptic that we could refer to him as “John”).

As with intuition, and similarly to the eye-witness testimony of others, personal experience is an adequate starting point on the way to knowledge, but to bridge the gap between opinion and knowledge, we must accept that our memories are questionable (when they aren’t better described as feeble) and that we are plagued by confirmation and other biases.  And, especially when what we think has happened is rather odd, we must seek confirmation if we are going to transform our personal experiences into knowledge of more than a memory (we will know that we remember, but we won’t know that what we remember happened as we remember it).  To be of any use, that confirmation is going to have to be via the collation and assessment of appropriate evidence.  In other words, via a sort of scientific process – perhaps not the hardest of hard science, but at least some sort of impartial evidence gathering and assessment process.

Is Richard Shumack delusional to think that he can know anything via intuition, testimony and personal experience without taking scientific-like steps to bridge the gap between his opinions (and presuppositions) and actual knowledge?  Yes, I think he might be a tad delusional.

The only thing that might save him, allowing him to be either accidentally in possession of knowledge or even correctly in possession of knowledge (via a divine boost to the reliability a personal experience vis a vis interactions with the holy spirit), would be the existence of his god.  Unfortunately however, he made no real attempt to show that his god exists.

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* Note that I call the debate strange because of its structure – 30 minutes for Peter Boghossian, 15 minutes for Richard Shumack, 30 minutes for structured questions for clarification and then a Q&A free-for-all.  Usually a debate gives each debater equal time to present their case.  Perhaps Shumack felt that he could smash his case in less time than Boghossian needed (along with less technology).  He did, after all, have god on his side …

Theological Zombies to the Rescue!

I was listening to Skydive Phil’s debate with Randal Rauser recently and it occurred to me that I have a solution to the Problem of Evil.

I went part of the way in Theological Zombies already, but in that I was mostly aiming at the problem associated with the absence of compossibility, or to put it less abstrusely, the problem of a supposedly good, all-knowing, all-powerful god creating this universe in which many of the sentient beings with whom god apparently wants to have a loving relationship (being saved) will end up being damned (being sent to hell, being extinguished or merely being set apart depending on the type of god).

Phil and Randal were talking specifically about the suffering of animals and how that is inconsistent with the existence of a tri-omni god.  They danced around some of the standard defences, that animals are simply fleshy automatons (Descartes’ solution) or that animals don’t feel pain as we do (WLC’s solution) or that demons might be to blame (Plantinga’s silly argument, but only as a possible defeater raised in order to avoid a logical problem) or that the suffering of animals is somehow necessary to achieve a greater good (as I recall Randal tended to lean this way).

Now, in the Theological Zombies argument I present a way in which everyone can be saved.  The fact that there are worlds in which you may be saved but others are cannot is resolved by observing that god is not limited to creating one single universe.  As many universes as are needed can be created and largely populated with zombies that act precisely like other people would in the same circumstances, people who would either be saved in a universe with less suffering or who need a universe with even more suffering in it to be saved.  Therefore, the only beings in this universe who are not zombies are those for whom salvation is compossible with all the other real, non-zombie inhabitants.

If that means that god needs to create billions and billions of universes, that’s ok, because god is not limited in power, or by time, or anything (except perhaps logic).  But it does mean that anyone in this particular universe who is real and is being saved in it is a bit of a scumbag by virtue of it not being possible to be saved in any universe with less pain and suffering in it.

While I was specifically focusing on how Theological Zombies could avoid the problem with consigning so many people to hell or whatever, I can see now that the same argument applies to animals.  For those humans being saved in this universe, it is not necessary that real animals need to suffer.  All that is needed is for there to be theological zombie animals which act precisely as a real animal would if it were to suffer.  Which makes the people who are being saved in this universe even worse scumbags since they need those animals to suffer in order to be saved.

The positive thing though is that for the relatively low cost of accepting that pretty much nothing in this universe is actually real, and that you are a total scumbag who needs innocent animals to suffer, you can believe in whatever god you like and avoid the Problem of Evil altogether.

Plantinga, if he wants, is welcome to use this as one of his defeaters – at least it’s a lot less silly than pain and suffering demons.

Return to BS5

Sometimes, you return to something that you worked hard on in the past and an obvious aspect leaps out at you that wasn't obvious at the time.  In The Fans of Plantinga's BS5, I was arguing against the claim:

This was primarily because this is used to claim that, since we cannot prove that (a maximally great) god does not exist, it is possible that (a maximally great) god does exist, furthermore since we cannot prove that (a maximally great) god is does not exist necessarily it is possible that (a maximally great) god does exist necessarily and it therefore follows that (a maximally great) god does exist (necessarily).  Sounds like BS, right?

Anyway, I also argued against a more complex version of the argument (raised by cpdavey):

1. ◊□A (Assumption for Conditional Proof (CP))

2. ~□A (Assumption for Reductio Ad Absurdum (RAA))

3. ~~◊~A (2 E2)

4. ◊~A (3 Double Negation (DN))

5. □| ◊~A (4 S5-reit)

6. □◊~A (5 nec intro)

7. □~□~~A (6 E1)

8. □~□A (7 DN)

9. ~◊~~□A (8 E2)

10. ~◊□A (9 DN)

11. ◊□A & ~◊□A (1,10 Conjunction)

12. ~~□A (1-11 RAA)

13. □A (12 DN)

14. ◊□A -> □A Q.E.D. (1-13 CP)

I concluded that the Reductio Ad Absurdum wasn't actually necessary, because you can do it like this:

1. ◊□A (Initial position)
2. A <--> ~B (Assumption for Logical Fiddle)

3. ◊□~B (Substitution of 2 into 1)

4. ~~◊~~□~B (3 double DN)

5. ~□~□~B (4 E2)

6. ~□~□A (Substitution of 2 into 5)

7. □A (6 n2)

8. ◊□A -> □A Q.E.D. (1-7)

But here we can see that the step between (6) and (7) is not valid (because it's reversed) - so there's a problem which is being disguised by the process of going through the Reductio Ad Absurdum.

I pretty much left it at that, inviting the reader to point out where the problem is, if they could see it.  That was five years ago.

So, what was the obvious thing that recently leaped out at me?  The proof put together, or at least presented by cpdavey relies rather heavily on the introduction of double negatives and swapping from ~□~ to ◊ and from ~◊~ to □.  Both of these latter two moves can be reversed (see Classical Modal Logic).  What it doesn't rely on, is the value of A.  Which means we can do this:

1. ◊~G (Initial weakish atheism position)
2. ~□~~G (1 classical modal logic)

3. ~~□~□~~G (2 n2, right way around)

4. □~□G (3 DN removed)

5. ~◊□G (4 classic modal logic)

This means we arrive at the same conclusion whether we assume that it is possible that there is no god (◊~G) or that it is not necessary that there is a god (~□G), namely that it is not possible that there is necessarily a god (~◊□G), which is precisely what we would expect.

Effectively all cpdavey was arguing was that if his presumption was correct, then assuming the truth of the opposite of his presumption would lead to a conclusion that his presumption was incorrect.  Which it did and which we would expect.  That's why there's no great problem within his "Reductio Ad Absurdum"  but there is when we run his proof with no RAA.  His whole argument came down to a "heads I'm right, tails you're wrong" sort of con.

The error is quite clear in Step 12 above, where cpdavey writes "12. ~~□A (1-11 RAA)".  Clearly the RAA started at Step 2, not Step 1.

Sometimes we just don't see things that are staring us in the face.  Perhaps I was trying too hard to be clever.  But then again, so was cpdavey, since the result that he needed to get his RAA to work was precisely the one he was aiming at, via use of the RAA, ie the fallacious claim that, given ◊□A, □A.

The Problem of Evil vs The Problem of Good

In response to Pre-Creation (How Good Can God Be), a reader drew my attention to the work of Brian Davies, specifically “The Reality of God and The Problem of Evil”.  A survey of the reviews of this work gives me the impression that Davies’ argument is that the Problem of Evil misses the point and that we should instead be pondering about just how much good there is in the world.  If so, then the reader appears to have rather missed the point of what I wrote in Pre-Creation.

It’s entirely possible that Davies has a different argument to the one that I’ve surmised.  If so, the publisher Bloomsbury has got it wrong too:

Finally, though many theologians argue that evil is a mystery, Davies argues that this too is wrong and a cop out. We should rather be concerned with the problem (or mystery) of good. The real issue is `Why is there not more good than there is`. From the discussion Aquinas emerges as a hero (as filtered through analytical philosophy) but many modern thinkers do not emerge so well. Davies effectively picks holes in the arguments of Peter Geach, Paul Helm, Richard Swinburne and even Mary Baker Eddy

Admittedly, my first interpretation was that Davies was arguing that good itself is a mystery as in “why is there any good at all?”  This is sometimes argued as the obverse of the anti-apologetic argument “why is there evil in a universe supposedly created by an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibeneficient god?”  At the very least it seems to be a basic assumption for many theists – if there were no god, then there would be no good.  It’s terrifying how often you hear theists argue that, without god, they would be rapists and murderers.  Our old friend WLC provides us with an example:

Today I want to argue that if God exists, then the objectivity of moral values, moral duties, and moral accountability is secured, but that in the absence of God, that is, if God does not exist, then morality is just a human convention, that is to say, morality is wholly subjective and non-binding. We might act in precisely the same ways that we do in fact act, but in the absence of God, such actions would no longer count as good (or evil), since if God does not exist, objective moral values do not exist. Thus, we cannot truly be good without God.

This is the same person who argues that without his god, and “objective” morality, the torture of babies for fun would not be wrong.  Personally, I like to comfort myself with the notion that the theists making these sorts of comments are doing so for rhetorical purposes and that, if they were convinced that their god does not actually exist, they would not immediately commence a campaign of rape, torture and murder.

There’s a major difference between the anti-apologetic argument from evil for the non-existence of a god and the apologetic argument from good for the existence of one’s god.  The argument from evil is a type of reductio ad absurdum in which one starts from the assumption of the existence of a specific type of god and end up with an impossibility – the god of that type would not permit the sorts of evils that we find in the universe, therefore it does not exist.

The argument from good, on the other hand, does not truly start from the assumption of the non-existence of any god whatsoever.  Instead, there is an inherent assumption that the universe could only have good in it if there were a god, as per WLC’s argument above.

There’s a reluctance on the part of the theist to honestly consider whether the “good” observed in the universe could arise without their god.  Note that by “good” here, I refer to the actual act, intent or situation that is considered to be good, not the attribution “good” that is assigned to that act, intent or situation.  Perhaps I should explain …

An act can be good in itself – say it reduces or prevents harm, involves some real self-sacrifice (even if minor) or adds to the well-being of others.  Alternatively, an act can be labelled as “good” – going to church, abstaining from pre-marital sex or obeying some rule (don’t mix linen and wool in one garment).  Labels can be assigned pretty much arbitrarily, but once you have a method of deciding what is and isn’t good (increased harm bad, improved well-being good), then you have an objective measure by which you can judge whether an act is good.  But even aside from that, we do have measures for judging whether acts are good or not, we can basically list which acts are thought of as good and we can consider those acts.

Could the acts that we consider to be good arise in a universe without a god?

The theist, at least the christian theist, tends to think not but the reason for this is tied up in theology, in the theist’s assumptions about the basic (and base) nature of humanity.  Man is born of and in sin, humanity is depraved, atheists (according to many a theist) are atheists because they don’t want to believe there is a god so they can continue to sin.  If you take this view of the universe and only do one thing, remove god, then of course, it’s going to be dark.

To be more fair, the theist needs to place his argument in a universe which has no god and never had a god, in which the nature of humanity is not presumed to be sinful and depraved.

So, the Problem of Good … could the godless universe produce the acts that we call “good”?  I certainly think this is possible.  There’s no Problem of Evil for an atheist, but equally there’s no real Problem of Good either.  In the Morality as Playing Games series, I explain how the (western, judeo-christian) morality that we currently espouse can arise from pretty solid self-interest.  To the best of my knowledge here’s no “good” act which cannot be explained in terms of the ethical structure that I arrive at.

Some might complain that this is a “just so” story, but that’s not the point.  Perhaps our morality, our sense of what is good and what is wrong did not arise the way that I have laid it out, but even so, I do demonstrate that it could arise without a god.

This is all that is required to refute the argument that, for there to be any good, there must be a god.  There’s a way without god, therefore god is not necessary in moral terms.