If there is no evidence in support of the existence of God, then it is reasonable to believe that God does not exist. The essential line of thought which I would hope to develop later on is that if you consider other things like fairies, leprechauns, golden teacups orbiting around Venus, and so on, I would suggest that we have no evidence against the existence of those sorts of things, but if I asked you whether you were agnostic I think the answer would be “no.” You would believe there are no fairies, no leprechauns, no golden teacups orbiting around Venus. That illustrates the general principle in regard to God’s existence that the burden of proof must fall upon the person who is arguing in support of God’s existence. If there’s no positive support for it, then the other side wins by default.

Something like Tooley’s argument regularly features in popular discussions of religion where fairies, leprechauns and golden tea-cups are substituted for flying spaghetti monsters. The basic idea remains the same, to believe in God without providing compelling arguments or evidence for his existence is on par with believing in fairy tales and this is something no sensible, educated, intelligent person can take seriously.

To address this argument it is first necessary to unpack it. Three separate claims are being made; first, it is assumed that the rational stance to take towards the existence of fairies, leprechauns, orbiting golden tea-cups and spaghetti monsters is not a stance of agnosticism but one of certain denial. Second, it is contended that the reason why this stance is correct is not because we have reasons for believing such things do not exist, but rather that we lack any positive evidence for the existence of these things. Third, the objector assumes that a person who advocates or defends belief in God, in the absence of compelling evidence for God’s existence, has no principled way of distinguishing the case for God from the case for the existence of fairies, leprechauns, et al. Now I grant the first of these claims, it is obviously silly and irrational to believe in things like fairies, leprechauns, orbiting golden tea-cups and spaghetti monsters. The real issue is whether the second and third claims are correct; I will argue that they are not.

Turning to the second claim that the reason it is irrational to believe in fairies, leprechauns, et al is solely because we lack evidence for their existence and not because we have reasons for thinking that they do not exist. I am inclined to think this claim is false. Consider another claim for which we also lack evidence for thinking is true, that intelligent extra-terrestrial life (ET’s) exists somewhere in the universe. We lack compelling reasons for thinking this claim is true yet it seems mistaken to infer from this that such beings absolutely do not exist, at best all that we can say is that we do not know. Moreover, even in face of agnosticism, many scientists take the existence of ET’s quite seriously; for example, the SETI research site in California spends millions of dollars sending messages into outer space and searching the universe for signs of intelligent life. I note that they do not do the same in pursuit of the search for signs of fairies, leprechauns, orbiting tea-cups or spaghetti monsters and I cannot find any evidence of an agency anywhere in the world that does.

This example suggests that the reason it is rational to deny the existence of the stuff of fairy tales cannot be simply the lack of positive evidence for these things, if it was we would take the same stance towards ET’s yet we do not. This is because there are important differences between ET’s and fairies, leprechauns, et al over and above the mere lack of evidence we have for their existence. ET’s are the sort of things that could exist even if we lack evidence that they do. ET’s fit with the picture of the world we hold, we know that intelligent life can evolve on planets. This is not the case with fairies, leprechauns, orbiting tea-cups, spaghetti monsters and so on.

Leprechaun’s first appeared in fairy tales and folklore; in such tales they store their wealth in pots of gold at the end of rainbows. We know that the genre of fairy tales is fantasy. We know rainbows do not have ends in the way this picture envisages. Similarly tea-cups we know are artefacts made by human beings, seeing humans have not been to Venus it is unlikely that such things orbit Venus – even if they are made of gold. It is not just that we lack evidence for the existence of such things but that we have evidence against their existence. What we do know about the world provides us with reasons for doubting they can exist. With ET’s, on the other hand, we have no such reasons for doubting they can exist. Hence, in the latter case agnosticism is justified whereas denial is required in the former case.

The insinuation that belief in God is on par with belief in fairies, leprechauns, et al is equally questionable. In the case of these things we have no evidence for their existence. With God, however, the situation is different. It is not that no evidence exists; on the contrary, sophisticated and rigorous arguments for God’s existence have been offered and are still being offered in the literature today, it is that experts in the field are divided on the cogency of these arguments. The best that sceptics can suggest is that the evidence is inconclusive. However, even if we grant this, those who defend belief in God can and have offered principled distinctions between God and things like flying spaghetti monsters.

Two examples will suffice. The first stems from a tradition going back to William James and Blaise Pascal is that when one cannot avoid making a choice, one can act in hope or faith that a belief is true, even if there is no evidence for it, if the expected benefits of the thing hoped for outweigh the benefits of the alternatives. James Jordan provides an example,

A castaway builds a bonfire hoping to catch the attention of any ship or plane that might be passing nearby. Even with no evidence that a plane or ship is nearby, he still gathers driftwood and lights a fire, enhancing the possibility of rescue. The castaway’s reasoning is pragmatic. The benefit associated with fire building exceeds that of not building, and, clearly, no one questions the wisdom of the action.

Pascal argued that if one acts on the assumption that God exists and that assumption turns out to be incorrect then one has lost little but if one acts on the assumption that God does not exist and that assumption turns out to be incorrect the one has lost everything. Modified versions of this line of argument are still defended by philosophers today.

A second reason is that even if one has insufficient evidence for the truth of some proposition, one can be rational in believing it if it is grounded directly in one’s experience. There are plenty of things we believe which are not based on evidence, our belief in the existence in the past or our belief that it is wrong to rape women, our belief that other people exist or that basic axioms of logic are true are not based on arguments or proofs. These things are true because we experience or see them to be true, for example, I remember the existence of a past event, I intuitively conclude that rape is wrong, I observe that other people exist, I see that basic axioms of logic are self-evident. Philosophers such as Alvin Plantinga argue that belief in God is like these beliefs; it is something a person directly sees as true via direct experience or intuition of some sort as opposed to the conclusion of an evidentiary proof.

I am not in a short article like this going to be able to develop and defend these lines of argument further. I mention them only to show that according to two standard ways of defending belief in God in the face of inconclusive evidence a principled distinction between belief in God and the stuff of fairy tales can be made. People tend to not directly experience or perceive the existence of these things nor does one risk losing everything by acting on the assumption they do not exist. Moreover, if belief in fairies, leprechauns, orbiting tea-cups and spaghetti monsters did possess these features then it is no longer obvious that belief in such beings is irrational. Suppose that instead of there being no evidence for the existence of leprechauns there was in fact some evidence but it was not compelling, perhaps experts were in disagreement. Suppose also that if I failed to act on the assumption that leprechauns existed and it turned out that they did then I would lose everything but if it turned out that they did not I would gain little. In addition, suppose that I directly perceived a leprechaun in front of me or I remembered clearly seeing one a few days ago and I had no reason for thinking my perception or memory was unreliable. If these conditions were satisfied then it would cease to be obvious that belief in leprechauns was obviously irrational. The claim that believing in God is on par with believing in “fairies, leprechauns, golden teacups orbiting around Venus” and flying spaghetti monsters is then unjustified.

I write a monthly column for Investigate Magazine entitled Contra Mundum. This blog post was published in the July 10 issue and is reproduced here with permission. Contra Mundum is Latin for ‘against the world;’ the phrase is usually attributed to Athanasius who was exiled for defending Christian orthodoxy.

Letters to the editor should be sent to:
editorial@investigatemagazine.DELETE.com

RELATED POSTS:
Contra Mundum: Secularism and Public Life
Contra Mundum: Richard Dawkins and Open Mindedness
Contra Mundum: Slavery and the Old Testament
Contra Mundum: Secular Smoke Screens and Plato’s Euthyphro
Contra Mundum: What’s Wrong with Imposing your Beliefs onto Others?
Contra Mundum: God, Proof and Faith
Contra Mundum: “Bigoted Fundamentalist” as Orwellian Double-Speak
Contra Mundum: The Flat-Earth Myth
Contra Mundum: Confessions of an Anti-Choice Fanatic
Contra Mundum: The Judgmental Jesus

One good way to end a conversation – or start an argument – is to tell a group of well educated professionals that you hold a political position (preferably a controversial one such as being against abortion or pornography) because it is required by your understanding of God’s will. In the unlikely event that anyone hangs around to talk with you about it, chances are that you will be challenged on the ground that you are intent on imposing your religious beliefs on other people. And in contemporary political and legal culture, nothing is worse.

Carter puts his finger on an important perspective which is pervasive in contemporary liberal societies. This is the view that citizens of liberal democracies may justly support the implementation of a law only if they reasonably believe themselves to have a plausible secular justification for that law. Further, they must be willing to appeal to secular justifications alone in political discussion. The upshot of this perspective is that it is perceived to be unjust to support or advocate for laws for theological or religious reasons.

I will refer to this position as secularism, the commitment to the position that the public square should be secular. The secularisation of political culture is, of course, an implication of accepting this position.  Richard Rorty described it as,

The happy, Jeffersonian compromise that the Enlightenment reached with the religious. This compromise consists in privatizing religion — keeping it out of … “the public square,” making it seem bad taste to bring religion into discussions of public policy.

My experience as a New Zealand citizen is that secularism is widely held and taken for granted in our culture by media, politicians and popular culture. I also think, perhaps predictably, that secularism of this sort is questionable.

Let me begin by pointing out that several writers have observed that prima facie there is something unfair or discriminatory about secularism. Contemporary critics of secularism, Christopher Eberle and Terence Cuneo, note that it entails “There is an important asymmetry between religious and secular reasons in the following respect: some secular reasons can themselves justify state coercion but no religious reason can.”

Another critic, Philip Quinn, observes that secularists impose “burdens on religious people” that they nowhere suggest “imposing on nonreligious people.” Secularists do “not propose that nonreligious people must be sufficiently motivated by adequate religious reason for their advocacy or support of restrictive laws or policies. The lack of symmetry is striking.”

This raises an obvious question, why the asymmetry? On the face of it secularism appears to privilege secular ideologies and doctrines in public debate whilst relegating religious or theological perspectives to the private sphere.  What is the basis for this? Two reasons are typically offered and neither is terribly compelling.

The first is that it is dangerous to allow theological or religious concerns into public debate. Defenders of secularism raise the specter of the wars of religion that tore Europe apart during the 17^th century or they mention episodes such as the Inquisition and Crusades, which are said to be consequences of allowing religious reasons to influence public and political life. It is argued that the only way to keep social peace and prevent the kind of violence that Europe witnessed is to ensure religious reasons do not influence public life and that all political discussions take place on secular terms.

This argument assumes that appeal to religious reasons is the cause of religious wars and appeals to secular reasons protect us against such wars. Writing in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Eberle and Cuneo note that the religious wars of the 17^th century were caused not by the appeal to religious reasons per se but rather by the violation of religious freedom. Moreover, they note that even in the 17^th century, religious persecution was typically justified on secular grounds. They go on to observe that religious freedom is not necessarily safeguarded by secularising public debate. They note that many “secularists have a long history of hostility to the right to religious freedom and, presumably, that hostility isn’t at all grounded in religious considerations” In addition, they note correctly that some of the most important defences of religious persecution and defences of religious tolerance, such as those proposed by John Locke and Pierre Bayle, appealed to explicitly theological grounds.

Yale philosopher Nicholas Wolterstorff makes a similar point, he notes that much of “the slaughter, torture, and generalised brutality of our century has mainly been conducted in the name of one or another secular cause–nationalism of many sorts, communism, fascism, patriotisms of various kinds, economic hegemony.” He also stated that “many of the social movements in the modern world that have moved societies in the direction of liberal democracy have been deeply and explicitly religious in their orientation.” Wolterstorff cites examples such as the abolitionist, civil rights and various other resistance movements as examples.

The assumption that secular reasoning is always tolerant and religious reasoning is always intolerant does not survive scrutiny. Particular types of religious reasons in particular political contexts can lead to wars and abuse, whereas appealing to other types of religious reasons in other contexts can be beneficent. The same is equally true of secular reasons. Certain types of secular reasons can be dangerous in particular contexts and other types of secular reasons are not. To single religious reasons out as being ‘too dangerous to be aired in public’ and insisting on a default to secular reasons seems ad hoc and unjustified.

The fear of religious wars is not the only argument typically offered for the secular public square. The main reason offered for secularism is that religious reasons are not accessible to all people. Auckland Law Professor Paul Rishworth observes, “some have contended that the nature of religious belief is such that, while it may be integral to individual autonomy and development, it has no proper role in public policy debates and that these ought to be conducted exclusively in secular terms that are equally accessible to all.” [Emphasis added]

Something like this is also evident in defences of secularism. Leading secular Philosopher Michael Tooley states, “For it is surely true that it is inappropriate, at least in a pluralistic society, to appeal to specific theological beliefs of a non moral sort… in support of legislation that will be binding upon everyone.” Robert Audi, one of the leading defenders of secularism, states “as advocates for laws and public policies, then, and especially for those that are coercive, virtuous citizens will seek grounds of a kind that any rational adult citizen can endorse as sufficient for the purpose.” [Emphasis added]  In essence, because not everyone in society accepts the existence of God or some theological perspective on life then it is unjust to base laws governing their conduct on theological or religious grounds.

This argument is deeply flawed. If taken consistently it would require not just the exclusion of religious reasons but the exclusion of any reasons that were controversial and not accepted by all people. The problem is that many secular justifications and ideologies are also controversial in the same way. Quinn makes the point,

If the fact that religious reasons cannot be shared by all in a religiously pluralistic society suffices to warrant any exclusion of religious reasons for advocating or supporting restrictive laws or policies, then much else ought in fairness also to be excluded on the same grounds.

He goes on to note,

Indeed, it would seem that the appeal to any comprehensive ethical theory, including all known secular ethical theories, should be disallowed on the grounds that every such theory can be reasonably rejected by some citizens of a pluralistic democracy. And if justification of restrictive laws or policies can be conducted only in terms of moral considerations no citizen of a pluralistic democracy can reasonably reject, then in a pluralistic democracy such as ours very few restrictive laws or policies can be morally justified, a conclusion that would, I suspect, be welcomed only by anarchists. [Emphasis added]

I agree with Quinn. There is special pleading going on whereby theological beliefs are rejected on certain grounds, while secular ones are not, even though the same grounds and reasons, consistently applied, should lead to the rejection of secular beliefs.

On examining secularism and the main arguments for it, it certainly is not evident that a just or fair society will have a secularised public square. To insist this is the case prima facie seems to favour secular views of the world for no adequate reason. Contrary to what some maintain, secular reasons, like religious reasons, can be used to justify atrocities and human rights abuses. Further, like religious reasons, secular reasons are frequently controversial and not shared by all intelligent people. Of course, secularists might consider religious views of the world to be false but then, of course, religious people consider secular views of the world to be false and given the diversity of secular moral theories on offer they cannot all be true (some are at odds with each other) so why single out religious views? The question remains as to why morality requires that public discussions privilege secular perspectives by requiring that all such discussions are engaged in on secular terms.  I suspect we will be waiting a long time for an answer.

[In this article I acknowledge being influenced by my wife Madeleine Flannagan’s supervised research paper “Religious Restraint and Public Policy” which she wrote under the supervision of Professor Rishworth, the Dean of the University of Auckland’s School of Law.]

I write a monthly column for Investigate Magazine entitled Contra Mundum. This blog post was published in the June 10 issue and is reproduced here with permission. Contra Mundum is Latin for ‘against the world;’ the phrase is usually attributed to Athanasius who was exiled for defending Christian orthodoxy.

Letters to the editor should be sent to: editorial@investigatemagazine.DELETE.com

RELATED POSTS:
Contra Mundum: Richard Dawkins and Open Mindedness
Contra Mundum: Slavery and the Old Testament
Contra Mundum: Secular Smoke Screens and Plato’s Euthyphro
Contra Mundum: What’s Wrong with Imposing your Beliefs onto Others?
Contra Mundum: God, Proof and Faith
Contra Mundum: “Bigoted Fundamentalist” as Orwellian Double-Speak
Contra Mundum: The Flat-Earth Myth
Contra Mundum: Confessions of an Anti-Choice Fanatic
Contra Mundum: The Judgmental Jesus

Hat Tip: I am Jonny King

Dr Craig has written his own thoughts as to how the debate went in his Reasonable Faith newsletter:

By contrast my debate the following evening at UNCC generated a lot of light but very little heat! My opponent for this debate on “Is God Real?” was Michael Tooley, a well-respected philosopher from the University of Colorado (Boulder). He has recently published a very complex argument against God based on examples of certain evils in the world. In preparation for the debate I worked through his argument carefully and prepared a four-point response. To read my critique of his argument click here. (I’m indebted to Timothy McGrew and Matt Flanagan for very helpful interaction!) Tooley also came well-prepared to the debate. Indeed, this was his undoing, for he had all four of his speeches (including “rebuttals”!) canned in advance. As a result, he was utterly inflexible and so didn’t respond to virtually anything I said in my rebuttals. It was as if I didn’t even need to be there! So the debate turned out to be pretty one-sided, with me replying to each of his relevant points and him just ignoring me and plugging ahead with his prepared speeches. While Dr. Tooley would, of course, disagree, I think Christian theism came away looking eminently reasonable and credible. [Emphasis added]

Matt had emailed Dr Craig a modified version of his Tooley, Plantinga and the Deontological Argument from Evil Part I and Part II blog series prior to the debate. Matt’s piece criticises the main line of argument Michael Tooley used in his recent debate with Alvin Plantinga and he is currently seeking its publication.

The Bible alone, and the Bible in its entirety, is the Word of God written and therefore inerrant in the originals. God is a Trinity: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, each an uncreated person, one in essence, equal in power and glory.

In a discussion with Bill Vallicella of Maverick Philosopher on the meaning, Alan Rhoda distinguishes two accounts of inerrancy,

It seems to me that the EPS statement is sufficiently vague to permit a few different readings.

The strongest is what’s known, I think, as verbal plenary inspiration (VPI). This is the view that each and every word used in the Biblical originals is exactly the word that God wanted used. Hence, since God is infallible, the Bible is inerrant. (VPI is the position of the Chicago Statement.)

A weaker, and I think more defensible view, may be called didactic plenary inspiration (DPI). This is the view that whatever the Biblical originals were intended to teach is inerrant. It is not necessary that the particular words of the Bible be chosen by God so long as the particular message that God wants to convey gets across. (VPI entails DPI, but not vice-versa.) If one accepts this view, then the question to be asked with respect to a Biblical text is “what was it intended to teach?” Is Genesis 1, for example, intended to teach that the world was created in six 24-hour days? Or is it, perhaps, a kind of literary framework intended to teach the absolute superiority of Yahweh over all other gods? Or perhaps its purpose isn’t primarily didactic at all, but something primarily evocative like poetry?

My point is that since the EPS inerrancy statement does not specify the primary locus of inerrancy (whether the words, the teachings, or something else) it permits a flexible range of approaches to Biblical interpretation.

Rhoda suggests two different ways of understanding the doctrine of biblical inerrancy; one that follows from affirming verbal inspiration and another that follows from didactic inspiration.

To see how DPI works consider a legal analogy, suppose that I want to write up a last will and testament. I approach a lawyer and tell set out precisely what I want put in my will. The lawyer then drafts a document that contains the provisions I stipulated but expresses them in standard legal terms and in accord with standard legal conventions and phrases e.g. “I, Matthew Flannagan, being of sound mind, hereby decree that…”

The document expresses, in first person, my will regarding my assets and property so I can be said to be its author, a court will call it my will as will my surviving family. However, I did not write it. The form, exact wording, turns of phrase, sequencing, choice of font and paper, etc are the lawyers’. Given that the will was drafted in New Zealand, in 2010 it will be in New Zealand English and drafted in accord with the styles and conventions of the statutes and precedents applicable to New Zealand wills and testaments. Nevertheless, as the content of the document express my wishes, despite my lack of authorship, it is a faithful expression of my will. Something like this picture of inspiration is suggested in Exodus 4:10-16.

Now it is important to note that a DPI model of inerrancy does not mean that people reject the entire biblical text as mythical and figurative stories, which illustrate theological and moral truths and assert nothing about space-time history. If the message is articulated through the literary and rhetorical conventions of human beings then a plausible interpretation, as opposed to a strained one, will take these conventions into account. When this is done, it is implausible to conclude everything in scripture is myth.

Take, for example, the genre of ancient biography, as mentioned in my previous post. This genre does not intend to affirm as true every detail it records but rather seeks to give an accurate picture of the person the biography is about. This still requires that much of what it records is true; no one would interpret biographies about Alexander the Great to read that they did not teach that he was king of Macedon, son of Philip, who conquered Persia, fought in the battle of Gaugamela, etc. Similarly, if Jesus did none of the things recorded in the gospels and said nothing at all remotely resembling what they attribute to him then these accounts do not give an accurate picture of him.  However, the genre of ancient biography does not require that Jesus’ teaching on divorce be presented verbatim, in precisely the same order or using exactly the same words in the various synoptic gospels. Neither does it require that every temporal or geographical detail mentioned within them is taught as correct.

Many historical books intend to teach historical claims. The Old Testament teaches, among other things, that Israel went into exile as a result of disobedience; it also teaches God lead the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt. These texts are, as far as I can tell, historiographies. Admittedly they are ancient near eastern “ANE” historiographies and the fact that the genre of ANE historiography uses hyperbole, lack of precision, a degree of historical reconstruction, etc needs to be taken into account. Nevertheless, as are historiographies they intend to teach us the significance of events that occurred in the past.

Now a person would not take an Egyptian history as entirely figurative. One should take it to teach that a particular event happened. It is true that one should recognise the hyperbole present, the theological/political message the text affirms but this would not be taken to be all that the author teaches. Ramses’ campaigns into Syria are intended to tell us that the campaigns actually happened, that the battles actually occurred even if they use hyperbole, rhetoric and historical reconstruction to articulate a political/theological message over and above the mere reporting of history. Hence, DPI does not necessitate a licence to de-historicise the text or embrace biblical minimalism.

Of course, there are other books and literary forms in scripture, such as the parables or the apocalyptic, which are not intended to be read as history. Then there are the early chapters of Genesis or the books of Job and Jonah, where it is not clear that the text intends to teach that the events actually occurred in history and where it seems more likely that these were stories were meant to convey theological and ethical truths. What is needed when reading these texts is attention to the genre. Conclusions about what a text teaches must be based on defensible claims about the literary style and the context of the text in question.

DPI, therefore, is not the same as the view that scripture is infallible in faith and morals but not in history. It may simply be that at certain junctures scripture intends to teach us something about the past. On the other hand, DPI does allow for certain types of errors that a more verbal account may not allow for. Here are two examples. The first is one I alluded to in my previous post, cases where the form or way the message is articulated presupposes error. Consider Jesus’ comments in Matt 15:18-19, “But the things that come out of the mouth come from the heart, and these things make a man unclean. For out of the heart comes evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander.” Some scholars take, as metaphoric, references to the heart as the seat of the will, emotions, intellect. However, others suggest that ancient cultures literally believed the heart was the seat of psychological states like this and conclude that these texts reflect and presuppose a false and erroneous view of anatomy. I am inclined to think that even if these scholars are correct, little of interest follows.

An analogue here would be a person who reads a 12th century account of a battle that is recorded to have occurred at “sun rise”. We know that 12th century people literally believed that the sun rose, in accord with the accepted pre-Copernican cosmology of the day. Hence, it is plausible to think that the human authors of these texts took the phrase “sun rise” to literally mean that the sun rose. Despite this, I think it would be a mistake to suggest that the phrase “the battle took place at sunrise” is false because of Copernicus’ discoveries. While the text presupposes an erroneous view of cosmology, it clearly does not intend to teach us pre-Copernican cosmology; all it teaches is that a battle occurred at dawn and it uses pre-Copernican cosmology to express this point. What the text teaches is true if the battle occurred and it occurred at dawn. It would be false if the battle occurred at another time of the day or never occurred at all.

I am inclined think that the references to heart, kidneys, etc in the scriptures function in an analogous way to the word “sunrise” in medieval texts. I would say the same thing about references to the “four corners of the earth” or “the waters above and below” even if the original human writers understood these to be literally true. The cosmology in question is presupposed by the text abut is not what the text is trying to teach us. The author uses these phrases them to teach something else and it is what the author taught not the author’s mode of presentation that matters.

A second example of an error that would be allowed under DPI would be where scripture affirms or states something which is unrelated to what is being taught. An example would be Paul’s instruction to Timothy in 2 Tim 4:15, “When you come, bring the cloak that I left with Carpus at Troas, and my scrolls, especially the parchments.” Suppose, for the sake of argument, Paul did not leave his cloak at Troas, perhaps he thought he had but in reality he had left it somewhere else. I am inclined to think this kind of error would make absolutely no difference to whether what Paul teaches in 2 Timothy is true or not. As the point of this letter is not to give an apostolic teaching on whether there is a cloak in Troas.

Paul’s teaching is authoritative because he is an apostle, what he teaches as an apostle is true. It does not follow from this, that every personal conversation, remark, Paul ever made in his life or every memory he had was without error. It’s rather that what he taught in the function of an apostle has divine authority. It seems to me that while the letter to Timothy expounds apostolic teaching and instruction and the whole book letter is therefore authoritative, the specific passage in v 4:13 records a personal aside Paul gives to Timothy regarding some property he left at Troas. To interpret Tim 4:13 as a divine command to collect Paul’s cloak, or a prophetic or apostolic utterance that a cloak existed in Troas seems to me to be excessively pedantic and implausible, hence I myself see nothing about the divine authority of scripture threatened by a discovery that there was no cloak in Troas. All it would show us was that Paul’s memory was not perfect, which we already knew.

So DPI is compatible with certain sorts of errors in the text provided they are not what the text teaches. Of course none of this means that scripture contains these errors. There may well have been a cloak at Troas. References to “the waters above,” “heart,” etc may be phenomenological language, the point is that even if these references do presuppose or  contain errors of a certain sort this does not really make any difference to the claim that whatever scripture intends to teach is true. Other examples could be given but I think you get the point.

I suspect something like what Alan Rhoda calls didactic plenary inspiration is the view I was elaborating in my previous post. It also appears to be the view defended (at least in some places) by William Lane Craig and something like it is the view expounded by Alvin Plantinga. I also suspect that Glenn Peoples holds this view; although Glenn considers himself to not be an inerrantist he would probably, on Rhoda’s classification, be a particular kind of inerrantist, one that rejected VPI and instead asserted DPI.

On the other hand, the sceptics I referred to in my previous post (people like Tooley, Fales, Brink, Loftus, etc) in their critiques, work with a fairly strong VPI view of inerrancy. John Loftus’ speaks of Jesus’ reference to “the heart” and how this reflects a primitive view of anatomy, Fales states that certain books may contain the genre of myth and Tooley suggests that Genesis contains a story in which God wipes out the human race. This suggests that they think that every word, illustration or literary convention used to teach us about God must itself be without error. If I am correct, then what sceptics attack is one particular version of inerrancy. They may or may not be successful in this attack but attacking one version of a doctrine does not show that all versions are false, and in this case many leading defenders of Christianity do not hold the version under attack any way.

RELATED POSTS:
Sunday Study: Inerrancy and Biblical Authority

RELEVANT CONVERSATIONS:
Basic Inerrancy @ First Things (also at Parableman)
Inerrancy again – a blog about a blog about a blog about a blog @ Beretta
The Pitfalls of Literalism & Plantinga on Inerrancy @ The Church of Jesus Christ

While there has always been a clear expression of the view that what Scripture teaches is correct, this has certainly not always been seen in terms of the notion of “inerrancy.” After all, the very disagreement that exists between evangelicals who affirm inerrancy and those who do not is whether or not the idea that the Bible is authoritative and truthful in what it teaches us should (or need not) give rise to the further claim that the Bible is also inerrant.

Peoples here distinguishes between two theses; the first is that bible contains no errors, the second is that whatever the bible teaches is true. In his article Peoples argues that the first of these theses is false, he argues that there are numerous factual errors in scripture. On the other hand Peoples maintains that the second thesis is true, none of the errors he mentions call into question the authority of scripture because they do not affect the truth or falsity of what scripture teaches. Hence, one can affirm the authority of the bible, even the claim that it is infallible in what it teaches, without affirming that it is inerrant, in the sense of containing no errors.

In A response to Glenn Peoples’s ‘No, I am not an inerrantist’ Bnonn argues that Peoples is attacking a straw-man. The doctrine that the bible is inerrant does not mean to deny that the kind of discrepancies Peoples points to do not exist; rather, supporters of the position Peoples attacked have in mind a different account of what constitutes an error to what Peoples’ critique suggests. Here, I do not want to discuss whether Bnonn is correct or incorrect here because whether he is or not, I think Peoples is onto an important distinction here and he offers an important critique of one way of understanding biblical authority which is often assumed by sceptics.

A couple of examples may illustrate this point. In Does God Exist Michael Tooley, for example, suggests that those who hold that Genesis is the revealed word of God run into trouble because in Genesis God decided to “drown all men, women, and children in a great flood” and suggests that this means they must believe that God has engaged in genocide of the human race.[1] David Brink similarly argues that the Genesis story of Adam and Eve is contradicted by contemporary geological evidence and evolutionary biology so, hence, is unreliable.[2] Fales notes “then, there is the generally mythical character of Genesis, and the fact that many of the themes in the first eleven chapters are borrowed from, or influenced by, the myths of other ancient Near Eastern cultures”[3] and considers this to undercut the authority and reliability of the book of Genesis. Some sceptics contend that primitive scientific understandings of the world are presupposed in various biblical passages. In Matt 15:18-19 Jesus states “But the things that come out of the mouth come from the heart, and these things make a man unclean. For out of the heart comes evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander” Some sceptics argue that this passage reflects a primitive ancient understanding of human anatomy that held that the heart was literally the seat of the emotions, will and intellect.

Now some evangelical scholars would contest each of these claims by questioning the existence of such underlying cultural beliefs, the geological evidence and so on, however, here, for the sake of argument, I will assume these basic contentions are correct. I think an important question to ask is, so what? Because even if the sceptic’s claims are true it is far from clear that this actually calls into question biblical authority, the distinction Peoples raised gives us some insight into why. The examples might show that the text contains errors in some sense of that term but it is not clear that they actually show that what the bible teaches is false.

Interestingly something like this distinction occurs in the characterisation of inerrancy offered by two leading, contemporary, Christian philosophers. Alvin Plantinga states, “Scripture is inerrant: the Lord makes no mistakes; what he proposes for our belief is what we ought to believe”. Here Plantinga defines inerrancy not in terms of the bible containing no errors at all, but rather that what God proposes to teach with scripture is not mistaken. William Lane Craig articulates a similar account:

Nobody thinks that when Jesus says that the mustard seed is the smallest of all seeds (Mark 4.31) this is an error, even though there are smaller seeds than mustard seeds.  Why?  Because Jesus is not teaching botany; he is trying to teach a lesson about the Kingdom of God, and the illustration is incidental to this lesson. Defenders of inerrancy claim that the Bible is authoritative and inerrant in all that it teaches or all that it means to affirm.  This raises the huge question as to what the authors of Scripture intend to affirm or teach.[4]

Craig’s point here is that Jesus’s comment taken literally contains a falsehood, that the mustard seed is the smallest of all seeds. I myself am inclined to see hyperbole here and so do not think that Jesus did literally say the mustard seed is the smallest of seeds, suppose however he did, then his statement would be false. Nether the less Craig notes, and I think correctly, that this is irrelevant because even if Christ said this about mustard seeds, this passage is not supposed to teach us about Botany. It’s a teaching about the growth of the kingdom of God. The saying about the mustard seed is simply a way of illustrating the point Jesus is trying to teach. And it’s the truth or falsity of this teaching, not the details of the illustration that is what is at stake in the question of biblical authority.  I think Craig is correct here, God uses texts written by human beings to teach people certain truths about himself and the world. What is authoritative is what is taught not the details of how it is expressed. This distinction between what the text teaches and what it contains then is I think illuminating, it also I think casts some light on cases of error that Peoples refers to the difference between the gospel of John and the synoptic gospels in terms of the cleansing of the temple:

Scholars have come to see that the genre to which the Gospels most closely conform is ancient biography.  This is important for our question because ancient biography does not have the intention of providing a chronological account of the hero’s life from the cradle to the grave.  Rather ancient biography relates anecdotes that serve to illustrate the hero’s character qualities.  What one might consider an error in a modern biography need not at all count as an error in an ancient biography.  To illustrate, at one time in my Christian life I believed that Jesus actually cleansed the Temple in Jerusalem twice, once near the beginning of his ministry as John relates, and once near the end of his life, as we read in the Synoptic Gospels.  But an understanding of the Gospels as ancient biographies relieves us of such a supposition, for an ancient biographer can relate incidents in a non-chronological way.

Craig’s point can be seen this way. John records the cleansing of the temple near the beginning of his ministry, whereas the synoptic gospels record it occurring near the end of his ministry. Hence, these accounts contain contradictory records of the same event. This, however, does not call into question the accuracy of what is being taught because once one understands the genre being employed, the genre of ancient biography, it is evident the authors did not intend to teach that every event they recorded actually happened in the precise way they narrate. The authors are not teaching that Christ actually cleansed the temple at a particular time and place in history, they are trying, rather, to provide a faithful account of who Christ was, what he was like, what he taught, the major things he did and said. These records are accurate if they faithfully reflect a correct answer to these questions. They, like other biographers of the time, drew on accounts or traditions that highlighted the point they were trying to make without necessarily accepting that every account they refer to actually happened precisely how it is stated. The authors, in relaying the story of the cleansing of the temple, are teaching not that the event actually happened as they narrated it but that Christ was opposed to the kind of actions that were taking place in the temple; he was so opposed to it that given the opportunity, whether late in his ministry or early, he would respond in the way the Gospels portray and take the kind of stance he is portrayed as taking. The text teaches truth if it is true that Christ was like this and false if he was not. If Christ had no problem with money changers in the temple, and considered this activity to be a perfectly appropriate way to make money, then what this text asserts would be false.

I think many of the cases cited by sceptics of the Hebrew and Greek scriptures are unpersuasive because they fail to distinguish between what is contained in the text and what the text teaches. Given this they fail to really challenge biblical authority as this has, according to Peoples, been traditionally understood.

Suppose, as Fales suggests, the evidence supports the contention that Genesis is not an historical account of origins but a rewritten legend or myth, it does not follow that what this myth teaches is false. Myths are used to teach theological and ethical points and the question of whether these points are true or false or not is whether the genre that expresses them is mythic.

Similar points can be made about the other examples. The fact that Genesis contains a story about God drowning the human race in a flood does not entail that the text teaches that God committed genocide. For this latter conclusion to follow one would need to establish that the genre of Genesis is on par with the genre of modern histography and hence intends to teach the events recorded actually happened. This may or may not be the case but it requires argument. Merely citing a passage does not do this.

Similarly, Brinks’ argument assumes that the text not only contains stories about Adam and Eve but also teaches the story occurred as historical fact. This involves important questions of genre that Brink ignores. It is possible that these stories are included by the author to teach certain theological and moral truths about human beings, sin and God; of course they might not be either, but merely pointing out that a story contains error if taken as literal historical fact does not substantiate this.

Finally, even if Christ’s statement presupposes or reflects a mistaken ancient view of human anatomy it is clear that in the passage in question he is not teaching that this anatomy is true. He is teaching about human sin and its relationship to the Torah. He might use a primitive understanding of anatomy to illustrate or make the point but that is not the point he is imparting.

Here, as elsewhere, sceptics show themselves up as fundamentalists working with an excessively pedantic understanding of inerrancy; a conception that Peoples correctly rejects and also argues, again correctly, is largely irrelevant to the question of biblical authority. Moreover, if Bnonn is correct, most inerrantists do not assume this understanding of biblical authority either, which means that such arguments are simply attacks on straw men, often by people who should know better.

[1] Michael Tooley “Does God Exist?” in The Knowledge of God eds Michael Tooley and Alvin Plantinga (Malden, M A: Blackwell Publishers, 2008) 75.
[2] David O Brink “The Autonomy of Ethics” The Cambridge Companion to Atheism ed Michael Martin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007) 159.
[3] Evan Fales “Plantinga’s Case against Naturalistic Epistemology” 63 Philosophy of Science 1996, 447-448.
[4] William Lane Craig “What Price Biblical Errancy?” Reasonable Faith Q&A.

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Sunday Study: Two Forms of Inerrancy

Tooley states, “most contemporary formulations of the argument from evil … are formulated in terms of axiological concepts – specifically, in terms of the goodness or badness, the desirability or undesirability, of states of affairs.”[1] [Emphasis original]

Tooley then argues that axiological formulations of the argument from evil are problematic. Any attempt to argue that a perfectly good being would not fail to prevent some evil or undesirable state of affairs will rely on “controversial ethical claims” that are “within ethical theory, deeply controversial, and likely to be rejected by many theists, and others.”[2]

In response to this problem Tooley proposes, instead, a deontological formulation of the argument from evil; “rather than employing concepts that focus upon the value or disvalue of states of affairs, one instead uses concepts that focus upon the rightness and wrongness of actions, and upon the–rightmaking or wrongmaking–properties that determine whether an action is one that ought to be performed or ought not to be performed.”[3]

Tooley summarises, “the basic idea involved in a deontological formulation of the argument from evil” as follows,

The basic idea involved in a deontological formulation of the argument from evil is then as follows. First, it is claimed that the world contains certain states of affairs such that any action of allowing any of those states of affairs to obtain would involve one or more known wrongmaking characteristics that would outweigh the sum total of known rightmaking characteristics that the action would have. If this is right, then any such action is prima facie wrong, relative to the total information that one presently has concerning the action’s rightmaking and wrongmaking characteristics. Secondly, the crucial question is then whether there is any sound inductive argument that will take one from the conclusion that such an action is prima facie wrong to the further conclusion that the action is probably wrong all things considered. If there is, one will then have an ‘inductively sound’ version of the evidential argument from evil.[4] [Emphasis original]

What is crucial for my purposes is the claim that “any action of allowing any of those states of affairs [will possess] wrongmaking characteristics.” [Emphasis added] By “any action” Tooley means to include not just actions by human beings or other creatures sufficiently like human beings but also actions performed by God. Tooley’s argument then assumes that both human and divine actions can possess wrongmaking properties, and hence, both humans and God have duties.

I argued in Tooley, Plantinga and the Deontological Argument Part II that this assumption is questionable. I noted that, on a divine command theory of ethics, “an action or kind of action is right or wrong if and only if and because it is commanded or forbidden by God.”[5] It follows then that God’s own actions can have wrongmaking properties only if God issues commands to himself to refrain from these actions and then violates his own commands. It is dubious that God would have the kind of weakness of the will this picture suggests, and hence, if a divine command theory is true it is dubious that any of God’s actions have wrongmaking properties or that God has duties.

I also noted that many leading theists have offered sophisticated and rigorous defences of a divine command theory so it remains a serious option for theists in ethical theory. Tooley’s own deontological argument from evil relies on “controversial ethical claims” that are, “within ethical theory, deeply controversial, and likely to be rejected by many theists.” Given this, Tooley’s position is no better than the axiological formulation that he rejects.

In The Problem of Evil Peter Van Inwagen makes some comments in a footnote that address this line of argument. In formulating the problem of evil Van Inwagen states, “I’m going to assume that there is an objective moral standard, that this standard applies to both God and to creatures.”[6] By objective standard here I will assume that Van Inwagen is referring to the existence of duties, and hence, is contending that God has deontological obligations to act in certain ways. Van Inwagen is aware that some theists “resist the idea that there is an objective moral standard that ‘applies to God’.”[7] In response to this position he offers two important responses, which I will address in turn under the headings God and Moral Perfection and Non-Deontological Arguments from Evil.

God and Moral Perfection

Van Inwagen suggest the idea that if God has no duties then “presumably, there is no such property or attribute as “moral perfection”. … If there is no such attribute as moral perfection, the aliquid quo nihil maius cogitari possit will not be morally perfect–and not because it will be morally imperfect, but because there will not be any such thing for it to be.”[8]

Van Inwagen seems to hold that unless there is “an objective moral standard, that … applies to both God and to creatures” it follows that God cannot have the property of being morally perfect. On the face of it, it is unclear why Van Inwagen thinks this. Earlier in the same book he defines moral perfection as follows:

God has no moral defect whatever. It follows that he is in no way a subject of possible moral criticism. If someone says something of the form, ‘God did x and it was wrong of God to do x‘, that person must be mistaken: either God did not in fact do x or it was not wrong of God to do x.”[9]

It is unclear why the absence of divine duties entails, according to this definition of moral perfection, that God would not be morally perfect. If there is no “moral standard that applies to God” then God will not display any moral defect by disobeying such a standard as one cannot disobey a standard that does not exist. Similarly, if God has no duties then it is impossible for him to act contrary to these duties, and hence, impossible for God to do wrong. On the face of it then, the absence of divine duties is compatible with Van Inwagen’s definition of moral perfection.

That said, I think Van Inwagen means to assert something a bit different here. He is proposing is that a person can be morally perfect, in the sense he defines these terms, only if there is an objective moral standard that applies to that person and if they perfectly conform to that standard. This is what he means when he says, “God has no moral defect whatsoever,” God never goes against the standard of right and wrong that applies to him;  God has duties and acts in accord with them. Similarly, when he affirms, “If someone says something of the form, ‘God did x and it was wrong of God to do x‘, that person must be mistaken: either God did not in fact do x or it was not wrong of God to do x”,⁹ he is suggesting that God has duties and never, in any possible world, acts contrary to them. If moral perfection is understood in this deontological fashion, it follows that if God has no duties he cannot be morally perfect. Of course he cannot be morally imperfect either; to be morally imperfect there would have to be a moral standard that applies to God that God acts contrary to. On the deontological conception of moral perfection, the property of moral perfection simply does not apply to God.

Van Inwagen is correct that, according to the deontological conception of moral perfection he sketches, the denial of divine duties entails that God is not morally perfect. However, divine command theorists have contended that this really does not amount to much of a criticism because there seems no reason as to why God’s moral perfection has to be spelled out deontologically. If God does not have duties, it does not follow that he does not or cannot have certain character traits such as being loving, truthful, benevolent, compassionate, long-suffering, just, that he cannot possess hatred of actions that are, in fact, unjust and various other attributes that are traditionally attributed to God. Van Inwagen is aware of this point,

But no doubt anyone who felt compelled to remove “moral perfection” from the list of properties a “something” must have if it is to be something than which a greater cannot be conceived (having been convinced by some argument or other that there was no objective moral standard) would want to “replace” it with some attribute whose existence did not presuppose an objective moral standard: “benevolent in the highest possible degree”, perhaps, or “exhibiting perfect love toward all creatures.[10]

If God is not “morally perfect” in the deontological sense that Van Inwagen defines this term, this does not preclude attributing goodness in some non-deontological sense to God in a meaningful way, hence, in the absence of any argument as to why God’s goodness must be construed in a deontological sense, it is hard to see any cogent objection here.

Non-Deontological Arguments from Evil

Van Inwagen’s second response to those who “resist the idea” that God has duties is to note that denying divine duties does not provide an answer to all versions of the argument from evil. Suppose that one adopts a non-deontological account of God’s goodness, such as those mentioned above, and understands God’s goodness not in terms of fulfilment of duties but in terms of certain character traits then non-deontological versions of the argument from evil are still available that do not rely on the assumption that God has duties. He states,

No doubt, the existence of vast amounts of truly horrible evil raises problems for those who believe in an omnipotent being who is benevolent in the highest possible degree (or whose love for all creatures is perfect) that are essentially the same as the problems it raises for those who believe in an omnipotent and morally perfect being.¹⁰

On this point Van Inwagen is correct. Denying that God has duties does not constitute a rebuttal to all forms of the argument from evil. It does, however, offer a rebuttal to the specifically deontological formulations of the argument, such as those proposed by Michael Tooley, and this is an important conclusion. Tooley formulated a deontological version precisely because he believed that other more axiological formulations of the argument are problematic. He believed that formulating it in deontological terms improved the argument and made it more plausible. If a divine command theory of ethics is a correct or defensible theistic account of obligation then this particular attempt to improve the argument fails.

[1] Michael Tooley “Does God Exist?” in The Knowledge of God eds Michael Tooley and Alvin Plantinga (Malden, M A: Blackwell Publishers, 2008) 70-147, 105.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid 106.

[4] Ibid 116.

[5] W K Frankena Ethics 2nd edn (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1973) 28.

[6] Peter Van Inwagen The Problem of Evil: The Gifford Lectures Delivered in the University of St Andrews in 2003 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006) 161.

[7] Ibid.

[8] Ibid, aliquid quo nihil maius cogitari possit is Latin for “something greater than which nothing can be conceived” referring to Anselm’s famous definition of God in the Proslogion.

[9] Inwagen, supra n 6, 26-27.

[10] Ibid, 161.

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Tooley, Plantinga and the Deontological Argument from Evil Part I

Tooley, Plantinga and the Deontological Argument Part II

“God can do wrong only if he commands himself to do something and then disobeys his own command.”In this post, I will argue that Plantinga’s criticisms can be reformulated by appealing to a divine command theory of ethics and when they are, it can be shown that Tooley’s argument relies on controversial moral assumptions that many theists do, in fact, reject. Finally I will look at two objections to this line of argument; the claim that, even on a divine command theory, God has obligations and Tooley’s critique of the divine command theory. I will argue both objections fail.

To save you having to click back repeatedly to the previous post, I will first re-cite step one of Tooley’s argument,

(12) The property of choosing not to prevent an event that will cause the death of more than 50,000 ordinary people is a wrongmaking property of actions, and very serious one.
(13) The Lisbon earthquake killed approximately 60,000 ordinary people.

Therefore, from (12) and (13):

(14) Any action of choosing not to prevent the Lisbon earthquake has a very serious wrongmaking property.

Tooley then adds as an additional premise,

(15) No rightmaking properties that we know of are such that we are justified in believing both that an action of choosing not to prevent the Lisbon earthquake would have had those rightmaking properties, and that those properties are sufficiently serious to counterbalance the relevant wrongmaking property.[1]

Modifying Plantinga’s Response : The Divine Command Theory
In a more recent paper, Naturalism, Theism, Obligation and Supervenience, Plantinga makes a comment that suggests he could formulate his objection so that “permitted by God” was taken in the second sense mentioned above. Plantinga writes,

Theists typically think ethical properties are intimately related to what God approves or values or commands. Thus they will often think of moral obligation as a matter of what God commands. What is obligatory are those actions God commands or wills; what is wrong are those actions God prohibits; what is permissible are those actions God does not prohibit.[2]

Plantinga here refers to what has been called the divine command theory of ethics[3]; the position that, “an action or kind of action is right or wrong if and only if and because it is commanded or forbidden by God.”[4] According to a divine command theory of ethics, being permitted by God is a right-making property; actions are right, if and only if, and because, they are permitted by God. I am inclined to think that any theist who accepts a divine command theory of ethics will deny (15) whether or not they “offer a theodicy.” They will also have reasons for denying (12).

This is because, if the divine command theory of ethics is true then (12) is false. Tooley affirms that, “the property of choosing not to prevent an event that will cause the death of more than 50,000 ordinary people is a wrongmaking property of actions, and very serious one.” According to a divine command theory of ethics this is false; there is only one ultimate wrong-making property, that of being contrary to God’s commands. Given that the property of “choosing not to prevent an event that will cause the death of more than 50,000” is not the same property as “being permitted by God,” it follows that the former property is not a right-making property of actions and, as such, (12) is false.

Even if one puts this point to one side, if a divine command theory of ethics is true, there is a further problem with (12); it is ambiguous compare:

[12 a] The property of choosing not to prevent an event that will cause the deaths of more than 50,000 ordinary people is a serious wrongmaking property of actions performed by human beings (or rational creatures relevantly like human beings).

and

[12b] The property of choosing not to prevent an event that will cause the deaths of more than 50,000 ordinary people is a serious wrongmaking property of actions performed by (including God).

For Tooley’s argument to be successful he must mean for (12) to be taken as [12b]. Tooley is arguing for the conclusion that if God exists then he has performed actions that it would be wrong for God to perform; which, given that God is good, is an impossible state of affairs.

However, what is an “uncontroversial moral claim” that “does not seem very problematic” is [12a]. If a divine command theory of ethics is true then [12b] is false. This is because one implication of a divine command theory of ethics is that God does not have obligations and hence, strictly speaking, nothing he does can be right or wrong.[5] Craig notes “nor, plausibly, is God bound by moral duties since he does not issue commands to himself.”[6] Similarly Alston, in an article defending the claim that God has no obligations, states “we can hardly suppose that God is obliged to love his creatures because he commands himself to do so.”[7]

Craig and Alston’s arguments seem sound. If the divine command theory of ethics is true then a person p is required to do an action a, if and only if, God commands p to do a. It follows then, that God is required to do a, if and only if, God issues commands to himself. Moreover, if divine command theory of ethics is true then a person engages in wrongdoing, if and only if, they disobey a command that God issues to them. Hence, if divine command theory of ethics is true then God can do wrong only if he commands himself to do something and then disobeys his own command.

Neither of these conditions seems very likely. It seems unlikely that God issues commands to himself. Why would he need to? If he wanted to do something wouldn’t he just do it? Moreover, it seems absurd to suggest that even if God issues commands to himself that he would then disobey them. That would suggest that God displays some form of weakness of the will and it is not clear that weakness of the will is compatible with a supremely excellent being such as God.[8]

The divine command theorist will take a similar stance towards (15). If a divine command theory of ethics is true then the property of “being permitted by God” is a right-making property. If God permits an action, in the sense of refraining from prohibiting it, then that makes the action morally permissible. Consider then, “[God's] action of choosing not to prevent the Lisbon earthquake.” For the reasons spelt out above, God did not forbid himself from doing this; hence, this action has a right-making property that a theist, who embraces divine command theory of ethics, knows about.

Similarly, this right-making property outweighs any wrong-making property that the action has. As I mentioned previously, according to a divine command theory of ethics, there is only one ultimate wrong-making property, the property of being contrary to God’s commands. Given that God did not command himself to stop the Lisbon earth quake, the action of allowing the Lisbon earthquake to occur does not have any wrong-making properties and so there can be none that outweigh it.

Consequently, if a divine command theory of ethics is true then both (12) and (15) are false. It is not just theists who offer a theodicy then who would reject (15).

The Significance of this Conclusion
I think this conclusion is significant for two reasons. First, a significant number of contemporary theists embrace and defend the divine command theory of ethics. Those who have defended it include, Robert Adams,[9] John Hare,[10] William Alston,[11] William Lane Craig,[12] Stephen C Evans,[13] Philip Quinn,[14] Edward Wierenga,[15] Janine Marie Idziak,[16] William Wanwright,[17] William Mann,[18] Thomas Carson[19] and more recently Alvin Plantinga.[20] These people are not obscure, marginal representatives of theism; these names include some of the leading defenders of theism in the literature today. Tooley’s argument then contains a premise that would be, and in fact is, rejected by many leading theists.

Second, this fact introduces a significant incoherence into Tooley’s discussion of the argument from evil. In “Does God Exist?” Tooley rejects an axiological argument from evil on the grounds that it rests on a moral claim that was “within ethical theory deeply controversial, and likely to be rejected by many theists and others.” Tooley’s own argument, however, presupposes the denial of a divine command theory of ethics. This is a controversial moral claim and one that is rejected by many theists. His own deontological argument then seems to be no better than the axiological version he rejects.

Finally, it seems in light of these conclusions that Tooley’s deontological argument from evil is incomplete. It is not enough for Tooley to simply ask “what rightmaking properties can one point to that one has good reason to believe would be present in the case of an action allowing the Lisbon earthquake and that would be sufficiently serious to counterbalance the property of allowing more than 50,000 to be killed?”[21] The theist can point to such a property. Tooley needs to supplement his argument with a refutation of the divine command theory; specifically, he needs to argue that even if theism is true then this theory is implausible and problematic. Until the divine command theory can be shown to be a rationally untenable option for theists, theists can avoid Tooley’s deontological argument from evil.

Objections
In this last section I want to anticipate and criticise two lines of argument that Tooley or a defender of Tooley, might make against the above line of critique.

Tooley’s Critique of Divine Command Theory
I suggested that Tooley’s argument was incomplete until he provides the theist with some reason why a divine command theory of ethics cannot be accepted then the theist can reject two crucial premises of his argument. (A defender of Tooley could object here that he has argued for this conclusion. In a debate with William Lane Craig at the University of Colorado Tooley addressed the divine command theory and offered a Euthyphro style argument against it. I agree that a complete defence of my position requires a response to this argument, regular readers, however, will note that I have addressed this argument previously in Tooley, The Euthyphro Objection and Divine Commands.)

Divine Commands and Divine Obligations
My argument depended on the claim, made by Craig and Alston, that if a divine command theory is true then God does not have duties. Linda Zagzebski has called this claim into question. In “More Suggestions for Divine Command Theorists,” Zagzebski proposes an account of divine obligations which is compatible with a divine command theory. Zagzebski starts by offering an account of the meaning of obligation, “What we mean by ‘obligation,’ is essentially this: there is no other option compatible with moral goodness.”[22] From this definition she argues that “the metaphysical source of divine obligation” and “the metaphysical source of human obligation are distinct.”[23]

The metaphysical source of the property of an act of a human being which makes it the case that there is no alternative act compatible with goodness is that it is commanded by God. The metaphysical source of the property of an act of God that makes it the case that there is no alternative act compatible with goodness is that that any alternative is incompatible with Gods nature.[24]

Hence, she concludes that it is “metaphysically necessary that an act X is an obligation for a human if and only if X is commanded by God” and “it is metaphysically necessary that an act X is an obligation for God if and only if X is compatible with Gods nature.”[25]

While I am not convinced by Zagzebski’s account of divine obligations, even if one grants them for the sake of argument it is clear that it cannot be used to defend Tooley’s deontological argument from evil. Consider,

(15) No rightmaking properties that we know of are such that we are justified in believing both that an action of choosing not to prevent the Lisbon earthquake would have had those rightmaking properties, and that those properties are sufficiently serious to counterbalance the relevant wrongmaking property.[26]

If Zagzebski’s account of divine obligation is correct then (15) is false. Plantinga’s original unreformulated response is rehabilitated. As Plantinga pointed out “God exists and is a perfectly good being. If this is true, then any action that God has in fact performed has the property of being performed by a perfectly good being.”[27] Moreover, “theists believe that God performed the action of permitting the Lisbon earthquake. They therefore believe that the action of performing the Lisbon earthquake has the property of being performed by God, who is a perfectly good person.”[28] But if the Lisbon earthquake was performed by a perfectly good person, performing it must be compatible with the divine nature and hence it has the very right-making property that Zagzebski identifies in her account of divine obligation.

The same is true for (12). Tooley contends,

(12) The property of choosing not to prevent an event that will cause the death of more than 50,000 ordinary people is a wrongmaking property of actions, and very serious one.

On Zagzebski’s account (12) is false. There are only two right-making properties that exist. The property of being compatible with God’s nature, which is what makes God’s actions right, and the property of being permitted by God, which is what makes human actions right. Now the property of “choosing not to prevent an event that will cause the deaths of more than 50,000 people” is neither of these properties and hence, is not a right-making property.

[1] Michael Tooley “Does God Exist?” in The Knowledge of God eds Michael Tooley and Alvin Plantinga (Malden, M A: Blackwell Publishers, 2008) 119; I am following Tooley’s enumeration.
[2] Alvin Plantinga “Naturalism, Theism, Obligation and Supervenience” 31 available at http://www.ammonius.org/grant_topics.php#0708 accessed 4 April 2009.
[3] The position is perhaps more correctly known as ethical voluntarism as some proponents of it emphasise the divine will as opposed to divine commands. However, because of the widespread use of the term ‘divine command theory’ in the literature I will stick with the term.
[4] W K Frankena Ethics 2nd ed (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1973) 28.
[5] It should also be noted that the claim that God does not have obligations has been defended on grounds other than a divine command theory. See, for example, William Alston, “Some Suggestions for Divine Command Theorists” in Christian Theism and the Problems of Philosophy ed. Michael Beaty (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1990). Hence, even if one dismisses a divine command theory of ethics it still follows that [12a] is not the obviously uncontroversial statement Tooley thinks it is.
[6] William Lane Craig Philosphical Foundations of a Christian World View (Downers Grover Il: Intervarsity Press, 2003) 529.
[7] William Alston “Response to Zagzebski” Perspectives on the Philosophy of William P. Alston eds Heather D Battaly, Michael P Lynch, William P Alston, (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2005) 204.
[8] It is worth noting the definition of God that Tooley works with in formulating his argument. For the purposes of his argument, Tooley is defining God as “an appropriate object of worship” as well as an appropriate object of other human concerns such as the desire that good will triumph over evil, and that justice will be done” etc.
[9] Robert Adams “Divine Command Meta-Ethics Modified Again” Journal of Religious Ethics 7:1 (1979); Finite and Infinite Goods (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999).
[10] John Hare God’s Call: Moral Realism, God’s Commands and Human Autonomy (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2001); God and Morality: A Philosophical History (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2007).
[11] William Alston “Some Suggestions for Divine Command Theorists” in Christian Theism and the Problems of Philosophy ed Michael Beaty (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1990).
[12] William Lane Craig “This most Gruesome of Guests” in Is Goodness Without God Good Enough? A Debate on Faith, Secularism and Ethics eds Robert K Garcia and Nathan L King (Lanthan: Rowan and Littlefield Publishers Inc, 2009) 172; also Philosphical Foundations of a Christian World View (Downers Grover Il: Intervarsity Press, 2003) 529-532.
[13] C Stephen Evans Kierkegaard’s Ethic of Love: Divine Commands and Moral Obligations (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004).
[14] Philip L Quinn Divine Commands and Moral Requirements (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978); “An Argument for Divine Command Theory” in Christian Theism and the Problems of Philosophy ed Michael Beaty (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1990) 289-302; “The Recent Revival of Divine Command Ethics” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research (Fall 1990) 345-365; “The Primacy of God’s Will in Christian Ethics” Philosophical Perspectives 6 (1992) 493-513; “Divine Command Theory” in Blackwell Guide to Ethical Theory ed Hugh Lafollette (Cambridge: Blackwell Publishers, 2000) 53-73; “Theological Voluntarism” The Oxford Handbook of Ethical Theory (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006) 63-90.
[15] Edward Weirenga The Nature of God: An Inquiry into the Divine Attributes (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1989) 215-27. See also, “Utilitarianism and the Divine Command Theory” American Philosophical Quarterly 21 (1984) 311-318; and “A Defensible Divine Command Theory” Nous 17 (1983) 387-408.
[16] Janine Marie Idziak “Divine Commands Are the Foundation of Morality” Contemporary Debates in Philosophy of Religion (Malden, MA:Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2004) 290-298.
[17] William Wrainwright Religion and Morality (Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd, 2005).
[18] William Mann “Theism and the Foundations of Ethics” in The Blackwell Guide to Philosophy of Religion ed William Mann (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2005).
[19] Thomas Carson Value and the Good Life (Notre Dame IN: Notre Dame University Press, 2000).
[20] Alvin Plantinga “Naturalism, Theism, Obligation and Supervenience”available at http://www.ammonius.org/grant_topics.php#0708 accessed 4 April 2009.
[21] Michael Tooley “Does God Exist?” in The Knowledge of God eds Michael Tooley and Alvin Plantinga (Malden, M A: Blackwell Publishers, 2008), 122
[22] Linda Zagzebski “More Suggestions for Divine Command Theories” in Perspectives on the Philosophy of William P. Alston eds Heather D Battaly, Michael P Lynch, William P Alston, (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2005) 189.
[23] Ibid.
[24] Ibid.
[25] Ibid.
[26] Tooley “Does God Exist?” 119.
[27] Alvin Plantinga “Reply to Tooley’s Opening Statement” in The Knowledge of God eds Michael Tooley and Alvin Plantinga (Malden, M A: Blackwell Publishers, 2008), 170
[28] Ibid.

RELATED POSTS:
Tooley, Plantinga and the Deontological Argument from Evil Part I

In my next post, Tooley, Plantinga and the Deontological Argument from Evil Part II, I will argue that Plantinga’s criticisms can be reformulated by appealing to a divine command theory of ethics and when they are it can be shown that Tooley’s argument relies on controversial moral assumptions that many theists do, in fact, reject. Finally I will look at two objections to this line of argument; the claim that, even on a divine command theory, God has obligations and Tooley’s critique of the divine command theory. I will argue both objections fail.

Deontological and Axiological Arguments from Evil
Tooley distinguishes axiological versions of the argument from evil from deontological versions. The former, “are formulated in terms of axiological concepts—specifically, in terms of the goodness or badness, the desirability or undesirability of states of affairs.”4 [Emphasis original] The latter, “uses concepts that focus upon the rightness and wrongness of actions, and upon the–rightmaking or wrongmaking–properties that determine whether an action is one that ought to be performed.”5

Tooley suggests that axiological versions are problematic. He takes as a paradigm the version proposed by William Rowe. Central to Rowe’s argument is the following conceptual claim about a perfectly good being.

(2) Any omnipotent, omniscient and morally perfect person would prevent the existence of any state of affairs that is both (a) intrinsically bad, or undesirable, and (b) such that he could prevent its existence without either allowing an equal or greater evil, or preventing an equal or greater good.6

Rowe applies (2) to concrete evils in the world. He identifies various concrete evil states of affairs and contends that these concrete cases meet the criteria (a) and (b) specified in (2).

There are well rehearsed problems with Rowe’s attempt to do this.7 While Rowe can maintain that there are cases where we do not know of any greater good lost or greater evil prevented by the allowance of these evils, this is insufficient to show that the cases meet the specified criteria. His argument requires that we know that there are no greater goods lost or evils prevented known to an omniscient being. Tooley notes that the step from “we don’t know” to the claim that an “omniscient being does not know” is difficult to bridge and Rowe’s attempts to do so have been unsucessful.8

Tooley’s most important objection is to contest (2) itself. Tooley notes that (2) appears to rely on a,

common consquentialist claim … namely, the claim that an action is morally wrong if it fails to maximise the balance of good states of affairs over bad states of affairs. But the difficulty then is that “such a claim is, within ethical theory, deeply controversial, and likely to be rejected by many theists, and others.9

In response, Tooley develops and defends an argument from evil which does not rely on “controversial ethical claims,”10 one that focuses “upon the rightness and wrongness of actions.”

Tooley’s Deontological Argument
Tooley summarises his argument succinctly,

The basic idea involved in a deontological formulation of the argument from evil is then as follows. First, it is claimed that the world contains certain states of affairs such that any action of allowing any of those states of affairs to obtain would involve one or more known wrongmaking characteristics that would outweigh the sum total of known rightmaking characteristics that the action would have. If this is right, then any such action is prima facie wrong, relative to the total information that one presently has concerning the action’s rightmaking and wrongmaking characteristics. Secondly, the crucial question is then whether there is any sound inductive argument that will take one from the conclusion that such an action is prima facie wrong to the further conclusion that the action is probably wrong all things considered. If there is, one will then have an ‘inductively sound’ version of the evidential argument from evil.11 [Emphasis original

As Tooley notes the argument has two crucial steps. The first is the claim that an argument that allows a certain states of affairs to occur is prima facie wrong. The second is an inductive argument from the conclusion that such an action is prima facie wrong to the claim that it is ultra facie wrong; that is, wrong all things considered.

It is clear that Tooley considers the second step to be the ‘crucial question’ and he spends most of his article defending the inductive inference he draws. Tooley appears to think that the first step is fairly straight-forward and uncontroversial. His defence of it consists of a few paragraphs.

Tooley’s Argument for Step One
Tooley’s argument for the first step consists of three premises,

(12) The property of choosing not to prevent an event that will cause the death of more than 50,000 .ordinary people is a wrongmaking property of actions, and very serious one.

(13) The Lisbon earthquake killed approximately 60,000 ordinary people.

Therefore, from (12) and (13):

(14) Any action of choosing not to prevent the Lisbon earthquake has a very serious wrongmaking property.

Tooley then adds as an additional premise,

(15) No rightmaking properties that we know of are such that we are justified in believing both that an action of choosing not to prevent the Lisbon earthquake would have had those rightmaking properties, and that those properties are sufficiently serious to counterbalance the relevant wrongmaking property.12

Tooley believes that (12)-(15) are uncontroversial “(12) makes a moral claim, but one that does not seem at all problematic while statement (13) makes a historical claim for which there is, I believe, very good evidence."13 Tooley appears to think that the only potentially controversial premise is (15) but that this would be denied only by philosophers who offer a theodicy.14 Tooley maintains that (15) is,

[V]ery reasonable, given the relevant facts about the world, together with the moral knowledge that we possess. For what rightmaking properties can one point to that one has good reason to believe would be present in the case of an action of allowing the Lisbon earthquake, and that would be sufficiently serious to counterbalance the wrongmaking property of allowing more than 50,000 to be killed.15

Tooley concludes that, in the absence of a defensible theodicy, there are compelling arguments for concluding that allowing the Lisbon earthquake to occur is prima facie wrong. This is not an insignificant conclusion. Many contemporary theists discuss the argument from evil by conceding that there are no defensible theodicies and then arguing that even in the absence of such a theodicy, belief in God is not rendered improbable by the existence of evil. If Tooley is correct, this line of argument is mistaken. The burden of proof is clearly on the theist to provide a theodicy; if he or she cannot then God’s action of permitting the Lisbon earthquake to occur is prima facie wrong. Moreover, if Tooley’s inductive arguments hold, the God’s actions will be ultra facie wrong.

Plantinga’s Response
Plantinga responds to Tooley’s argument by calling into question (15).

Christians and other theists believe that God exists and is a perfectly good being. If this is true, then any action that God has in fact performed has the property of having been performed by a perfectly good being. Furthermore, Christians and other theists believe that God performed the action of permitting the Lisbon earthquake. They therefore believe that the action of permitting the Lisbon earthquake has the property of having been performed by God, who is a perfectly good person. This is a rightmaking property that clearly outweighs and counterbalances any wrongmaking properties that action has.16

In this citation, Plantinga denies that only theists who offer a theodicy would contest [15]. Plantinga suggests that theists will typically believe that there is a right making property of which they know of; the property of being permitted by God. This property overrides all others and the action of allowing the Lisbon earthquake has this property. Hence, the Theist has good reasons for rejecting [15] even if he or she cannot offer an adequate theodicy.

Tooley’s response is to deny that being permitted by God is a right making property,

Suppose that God exists, and, thus permitted the Lisbon earthquake. One can ask “What property did the action of permitting the Lisbon earthquake have that made it morally permissible for God to permit it?” The response that it had the property of having been permitted by God, who is perfectly good, is not a satisfactory answer to that question: there must be some other property that made it permissible for God to permit the Lisbon earthquake. The property of having been permitted by God, while it entails that there must have been a rightmaking property, is not itself a rightmaking property.17 [Emphasis original]

The phrase “having been permitted by God” is ambiguous. In one sense it could refer to God allowing an event to occur; if he does not stop it occurring then God permits the Lisbon earthquake. In another sense, however, it can refer to God refraining from forbidding an action. God permits drinking alcohol, for example. If God refrains from issuing a command to abstain from drinking alcohol then it is clear, I think, that Plantinga means the former and Tooley seems18 correct in suggesting that in this sense it is clear that being permitted by God is not a right making property but this leaves an important question hanging; couldn’t Plantinga’s critique be reformulated in terms of the “second sense” of the phrase “having been permitted by God.”

In my next post, Tooley, Plantinga and the Deontological Argument from Evil Part II, I will propose a Plantingan reformulation and address some objections.

1 Michael Tooley “Does God Exist?” in The Knowledge of God eds Michael Tooley and Alvin Plantinga (Malden, M A: Blackwell Publishers, 2008) 70-147.
2 Tooley “Does God Exist?”105.
3 Ibid.
4 Ibid.
5 Ibid, 106.
6 William Rowe “Evil and Theodicy” Philosophical Topics 16: 119-32. I am following Rowe’s enumeration.
7 Stephen John Wykstra “Rowe’s Noseeum Arguments from Evil;” Peter van Inwagen “The Problem of Evil, the Problem of Air, and the Problem of Silence” and “Reflections on the Chapters by Draper, Russell, and Gale;” William P Alston “The Inductive Argument from Evil and the Human Cognitive Condition” and “Some (Temporarily) Final Thoughts on Evidential Arguments from Evil;” Daniel Howard-Snyder “The Argument from Inscrutable Evil” in The Evidential Argument from Evil ed Daniel Howard-Snyder (Bloomington, Indiana University Press: 1996). See also, Alvin Plantinga Warranted Christian Belief (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000).
8 Tooley “Does God Exist” 104.
9 Ibid, 105.
10 Ibid.
11 Ibid, 116.
12 Ibid, 119; I am following Tooley’s enumeration.
13 Ibid, 122.
14 Ibid.
15 Ibid.
16 Alvin Plantinga “Reply to Tooley’s Opening Statement” in The Knowledge of God eds Michael Tooley and Alvin Plantinga (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 2008) 170-71.
17 Michael Tooley “Closing Statement and Reply to Plantinga’s Comments” in The Knowledge of God eds Michael Tooley and Alvin Plantinga (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 2008) 238.
18 I say seems because Linda Zagzebski’s account of divine obligations would challenge this contention as I will argue in part IV.

RELATED POSTS:
Tooley, Plantinga and the Deontological Argument from Evil Part II

Some commentators claim that feticide is not homicide until the fetus is sentient. Bonnie Steinbock made perhaps the most sophisticated defence of this position. In an article summarising her position Steinbock states, “my thesis is that killing fetuses is morally different from killing babies because fetuses are not, and babies are, sentient”.[i] She states that she finds the notion that feticide is on a par with infanticide and hence homicide, “completely implausible” because:

A newborn can feel, react, and perceive. It cries when it is hungry or stuck with needles. Very soon after birth it cries from boredom or loneliness as well and can be soothed by being rocked and held. By contrast, the first-semester fetus cannot, think, feel, or perceive anything.[ii]

I propose two responses. Firstly, I will analyse Steinbock’s argument in favour of this thesis, then I will criticise her conclusion in Sentience Part 2. In both cases, I will argue that Steinbock does not provide a reason for thinking that feticide is different from infanticide. On the contrary, her arguments in favour of feticide are also arguments in favour of infanticide.

Steinbock’s Argument
Steinbock argues that being sentient is essential for possession of interests.

[S]entience is important because nonsentient beings, whether mere things (e.g., cars and rocks and works of art) or living things without nervous systems (e.g., plants), lack interests of their own. Therefore, nonsentient beings are not among those beings whose interests we are required to consider.[iii]

Why is sentience necessary for possession of interests? Steinbock says “[I]t is only sentient beings to whom anything matters… since non-sentient beings cannot be hurt or made to suffer it does not matter to them what is done to them”.[Emphasis original][iv] Elsewhere Steinbock states that what is necessary for a being to have interests in something is that it desires or wants the thing in question.

Steinbock’s argument then rests on these claims. Firstly, that killing an individual is homicide only if continued life is in the interests of that individual. Secondly, an individual cannot have an interest in living unless it cares about living. Thirdly, that sentience is necessary to be able to care about anything.

This argument equivocates on two separate senses of the word ‘interests’. Interests can refer to things a person is interested in, what a person likes or cares about; in this sense, tramping is one of my interests. On the other hand, to talk of someone’s interests can mean to talk about what is best for him or her, what enhances and promotes his or her welfare.

When we examine the second premise of this argument it is clear that it is true only if interests are defined in the first of these senses. In order for something to be in someone’s interests in the first sense, then it must matter to him or her. He or she must care about the thing in question. It is not necessary for a person to have interests in the second sense. A thing can be in someone’s best interests even if he or she is not interested in it. Matters in the best interests of children such as nutritious food, clothing, shelter and education are often things they have never taken an interest in. People who suffer from mental illness can fail to take care of their interests correctly. Consequently, the second premise of the argument is true only if the word ‘interest’ is used in the first sense.

However, if the first premise is to have any plausibility at all then interests must be understood in the second sense. If one has a duty to refrain from taking something from an individual only if the individual cares about the thing in question, then depriving the insane or children of what is in their best interests will not be wrong as long as they are not interested in it. Infants lack the mental ability to conceive, and hence, care about their future existence so infanticide would not be homicide by this line of reasoning. The argument is unsound.

This problem with Steinbock’s position leads naturally to a second one. From the quotes above Steinbock seems to think that sentience is not only a necessary but also a sufficient condition. She concedes that it would be wrong to kill unwanted infants but adds that this is different from killing a fetus “because fetuses are not, and babies are, sentient”.[v]

The problem is that her above argument does not justify this conclusion at all. What the argument says is that sentience is necessary for possessing interests. Moreover, it explicitly states that in order to have an interest in continued existence, an individual’s existence must matter to it; it must care about it in some way. While sentience is clearly necessary for caring about one’s continued existence various other factors are also necessary.

Michael Tooley has argued one must also be able to conceptualise one’s continued existence and this requires awareness of one’s self as a subject of future experiences. An infant does not acquire the neurological capacity for this until some time after birth. In fact, an infant’s awareness of itself and future-orientated preferences to live are less developed than those of a mature cow. Consequently, if the premise of the argument offered is correct then infants do not have an interest in continued existence and consequently infanticide is not homicide.[vi]

Steinbock offers a second argument in favour of sentience as a significant threshold.

“[G]olden rule”- type reasons do not apply to nonsentient beings. That is, no one would explain opposition to burning the flag of the United States of America by saying, “How would you like it if you were a flag and someone burned you?[vii]

Here, Steinbock appeals to a version of the Golden Rule. This rule prescribes consistency in one’s ethical judgments so that if one holds that it is permissible for you to do a particular action X to another person in certain circumstances then one must also hold that it is permissible for someone to do X to you in the same circumstances. Steinbock’s point is that such consistency is impossible with non-sentient beings. It does not make sense for one to object to destroying a flag because if one were a flag I one would not object to being burned. Flags after all cannot object to anything.

Again, Steinbock’s argument relies on concealed ambiguities. Harry Gensler has distinguished two different interpretations of the Golden Rule. In one, the rule asks for our reaction to a hypothetical case involving ourselves. On the other it asks how we would react if faced with the actual case itself.[viii]

Two examples demonstrate the difference between these two interpretations; a temporarily-unconscious individual and a case of infanticide. Taking the unconscious individual first, the first interpretation of the Golden Rule asks, would I object to the idea of someone killing me if I ever fell into a temporary coma? The second interpretation asks, would I object to being killed if I were, in fact, already in a coma? The answer to the first question is yes, I do object to the idea of someone killing me in the event I fell temporarily unconscious. I do not think it permissible for a surgeon to kill me while I was under general anaesthetic, for example. However, the answer to the second question must be no. If I were already unconscious, I could not object to being killed. While unconscious, I would not be capable of objecting to anything at all.

The infanticide example demonstrates these differences further. Applying the first interpretation I would ask, would I object to the idea of being killed when I was an infant? The second interpretation asks, would I object to being killed if I was an infant? Again, I would answer yes to the first question but no to the second. I do object to the idea of being killed when I was an infant. However, I clearly could not object if I were an infant because infants lack the cognitive development to be able to object or even understand what it means to object to being killed.

Returning now to Steinbock, it is evident from her discussion that she is interpreting the Golden-Rule in the second way. Her question, “how would you like it if you were a flag and someone burned you?” asks us how we would react if we were a flag. Such a question is absurd because as a flag we could not have any cognitive reactions at all. However, interpreted this way it is equally absurd to apply the Golden Rule to infants or the temporarily unconscious. Consequently, if feticide is not homicide because the Golden Rule questions interpreted in this manner do not apply to fetuses, then killing infants and killing the temporarily unconscious are also not homicide.

On the other hand, if the golden rule is interpreted the first way a different result emerges. It remains absurd to ask whether I would object to the idea of being killed in the event that I became a flag. It is dubious that I could ever be a flag, that a human adult and a flag could ever be the same individual. However, it does make sense to ask whether I object to the idea of being killed when I was an infant or when I was a fetus. This is because rational agents like myself once were fetuses and infants. The fact that a being is a potential rational agent makes it possible for rational agents to ask Golden Rule questions about them.

Steinbock’s arguments for the sentience threshold are unsound. Further, when conjoined with certain facts of neurology they entail that infanticide is not homicide. The claim that feticide is not homicide while infanticide is appears ad hoc and arbitrary.

I will address Steinbock’s conclusion in my next post, Sentience Part 2.

[i] Bonnie Steinbock, “Why Most Abortions are Not Wrong,” in Advances in Bioethics: Bioethics for Medical Education, Vol. 5, ed. Rem B. Edwards & E. Edwards Bittar (Stanford, CT: JAI Press, 1999), 248.
[ii] Ibid.
[iii] Ibid.
[iv] Ibid.
[v] Ibid.
[vi] Michael Tooley, Abortion and Infanticide, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983) 47.
[vii] Steinbock “Why Most Abortions are Not Wrong,” 248-49.
[viii] Harry Gensler, “Abortion and the Golden Rule,” in The Abortion Controversy 25 Years after Roe v Wade: A Reader, ed. Francis Beckwith & Louis Pojman (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1998), 323.

RELATED POSTS:
Is Abortion Liberal? Part 1
Is Abortion Liberal? Part 2
Sentience Part 2
Viability
Abortion and Child Abuse
Abortion and Brain Death: A Response to Farrar
Abortion and Capital Punishment: No Contradiction
During, Sherwin & Hutchison on Backstreet Abortion
Imposing Your Beliefs onto Others: A Defence
Boonin’s Defense of the Sentience Criterion: A Critique Part I
Boonin’s Defense of the Sentience Criterion: A Critique Part II

(a) the fetus is a person but its existence inside the mother without her consent constitutes a form aggression, and hence, the mother’s action of killing it is defensive; or,
(b) a fetus is not a person.

I will now address each of these in turn.

Is the Fetus an Aggressor?
Consider first (a), the contention that a fetus can be considered an aggressor because it is intruding upon a woman’s body without her consent; an intrusion grave enough to justify the use of lethal force. In this respect then, being subject to an unplanned pregnancy would be on par with being the recipient of a serious assault such as being raped or severely beaten.

Frank Beckwith and Steve Thomas in Consent, Sex and the Pre-Natal Rapist, have demonstrated several problems with this claim. It leads to the conclusion that, in certain circumstances abortion is justified without the consent of the woman.

Consider the following scenario. A young woman is involved in a car accident and is rendered unconscious by her injuries. She is brought to a hospital where, still comatose, she is examined by a doctor. While performing some tests, the doctor determines that the woman has been pregnant for several weeks. Furthermore, suppose that evidence comes to light to suggest that the woman is unaware of her pregnancy, perhaps her close friends know nothing of the pregnancy, her diary shows no knowledge of being pregnant, and so on.

Adopting McDonagh’s understanding of pregnancy as morally equivalent to rape or assault, what is the doctor’s obligation to this unconscious patient? It would seem that, under these conditions, the doctor is morally required to perform an abortion to rid his patient of the ‘massive intrusion’ being imposed upon her by her unborn offspring. After regaining consciousness, the woman would have to be told that she’s undergone an abortion for a pregnancy of which she was not aware, for there was good evidence that no consent had been given and that she was under assault.[i]

Beckwith’s point is that if the fetus is morally or legally on par with an aggressor who intrudes upon a woman’s body without her consent, such as a assailant or rapist then it would follow that in the case sketched above the doctor would be justified (and arguably would have an obligation) to abort despite the fact that no consent from the women had been obtained.

Consider, that if one saw a person having sex with an unconscious woman and one knew the woman had not consented, it would be absurd to wait for the woman to wake up to see if she wanted to consent to sex. One would be obligated to intervene. “[T]he doctor in the midst of the situation, aware of the pregnancy in the absence of consent, must see it as the rape-in-progress of his unconscious patient. How could he do anything else but end the assault?”[ii]

Now I assume that liberals would oppose the idea that any woman who both does not know she is pregnant and is unconscious should be subjected to an abortion without her consent. If this is the case then it is clear that they do not think that an unconsented to pregnancy constitutes an act of serious aggression.

If the fetus is an unjust aggressor then liberals are committed to coercive abortions. If coercive abortions are not liberal then the fetus is not an unjust aggressor.

Is the Fetus a Person?
If the fetus is not an unjust aggressor then a liberal defense of abortion must be based upon (b), the idea that a fetus is not a person, a being that possesses the rights to life, liberty and property that liberals believe the state exists to protect.

Now a fetus is clearly a human organism. After 14 days at least, it is an individual living being that is a member of the species homo sapiens. To justify abortion via (b), the liberal needs to tell us what property a human being possesses that grounds the right to not be subjected to the initiation of force, to not be killed. Further a liberal must also be able to plausibly maintain that a human organism does not acquire this property until after the fetal stage.

Peter Cresswell takes the view,

[T]he foetus is not yet a human being, but a part of a human being – the mother – who has rights over it. To be an actual, rather than merely potential, human being is, among other things, to be physically separate, which a foetus is not.[iii]

This claim is erroneous. First the “parts of” relationship is transitive; if a brick is part of a wall and the wall part of a house then the brick is part of the house. If a fetus is part of a woman’s body it follows then that any organ that is part of the fetus will be part of the mother. A woman pregnant at eight weeks then possesses four arms, four legs and two brains. If the fetus is male, she will have both a vagina and a penis and be both male and female. Conclusions that are even more bizarre follow if the woman is pregnant with twins. She could have three faces, three brains, six arms, two penises and a vagina, three hearts, six kidneys and so on.[iv]

Moreover, PC’s contention that “to be an actual human” one must be “physically separate” entails that conjoined twins are not human. Consider conjoined twins Bob and Scott. If Bob is a human being then since Scott cannot live independently of Bob, Scott must not be a human person (the converse is equally true).

Yet it is difficult to see what property Bob has that Scott lacks which would justify considering one of them human and the other not simply because neither is dependant of the other. It appears then, that one would be forced to conclude that they both are and are not, human. Perhaps PC is simply giving a poorly worded defence of the viability criteria, which I have previously critiqued here.

However, the usual liberal response is to ground the right to not be subjected to the initiation of force, to not be killed, in certain psychological capacities that human beings typically display; such things as sentience, rationality, self-awareness, autonomy, etc.

Despite the pervasive appeal of this approach, it faces serious problems. Boonin notes that those who attempt to ground humanity in the amount of brain development an organism has face a dilemma. “Any appeal to what a brain can do at various stages of development would seem to have to appeal to what the brain can already do. Or to what the brain has the potential to do in the future.”[v]

Either option leads to problems for a defender of the permissibility of abortion who does not also want to endorse infanticide. This is because “by any plausible measure dogs, and cats, cows and pigs, chickens and ducks or more intellectually developed than a new born infant.”[vi] Suppose, then, one takes the first horn and appeals to what the brain can already do. However, unless one wishes to affirm that cats, dogs and chickens are human beings, “appeals to what the brain can already do” will “be unable to account for the presumed wrongness of killing toddlers or infants.”[vii] Suppose, then, one takes up the second horn of the dilemma and appeals to “what the brain has the potential to do in the future;”[viii] Boonin notes that this will entail that feticide is homicide. “If [such an account] allows appeals to what the brain has the potential to do in the future, then it will have to include fetuses as soon as their brains begin to emerge, during the first few weeks of gestation.”[ix]

A couple of examples will illustrate this. Suppose the liberal appeals to sentience, the capacity for consciousness and the ability to perceive pleasure and pain. This criterion will mean abortion is permissible up to 24 weeks.[x] The problem is that this criterion also catches cats, dogs, cows, and chickens as well all. All of which are as sentient if not more sentient than new born infants and post-24 week fetuses.

If the liberal draws the line at sentience, he/she will have to hold that farming, butchers shops, McDonald’s restaurants, Kentucky fried Chicken restaurants all engage in unjustified aggression against people because they kill sentient beings without their consent. Further, to remain consistent, the liberal will have to maintain a policy of outlawing all these industries and prosecuting those who engage in them for murder and cannibalism.

Suppose the liberal appeals to more advanced psychological states such as self-awareness, rationality or autonomy. Such accounts of the grounding of rights will exclude the animals mentioned above and will exclude human fetuses. The problem is, according to this account, newborn infants are not persons either.

In a definitive study of infanticide, Michael Tooley compiles an impressive array of neurological and physiological data that demonstrates that infants are not persons in this sense until some time after birth.[xi] The price of this line of inference is the reduction of newborn infants to the ethical level of cows. A newborn cow, and certainly a mature cow, is more person-like than an infant is. It is difficult to understand by this view why killing and eating infants is any more problematic than consuming a Big Mac.

Of course the liberal can avoid this by claiming that it is the potential to acquire properties such as rationality, self-awareness, autonomy, not their actuality that matters. This will enable one to claim infants are protected by the non-initiation of force principle and will exclude animals. But the problem of course is that foetuses will also be protected by the non-initiation of force principle because fetuses also have the potential to possess these properties.

In summation, liberal proponents of the non-initiation of force principle can only support abortion if they are willing to be inconsistent and arbitrary in their application of the principle or if they are willing to endorse not just infanticide but the eating of newborn infants or state mandated vegetarianism or coercive abortions. These policies are an anathema to most liberals; as such, abortion is not liberal.

UPDATE: In response to comments below see Sentience Part 1 and Sentience Part 2.

[i] Francis J. Beckwith & Stephen Thomas, “Consent, Sex, and the Prenatal Rapist; A Brief Reply to McDonagh’s Suggested Revision of Roe v Wade,” Journal of Libertarian Studies 17: 3 (2003): 4.
[ii] Ibid, 6.
[iii] Peter Creswell, “Not PC: Cue Card Libertarianism – Abortion”.
[iv] Here I am influenced by Peter Kreeft, The Unaborted Socrates (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1983), 45-47 and Francis J Beckwith, Politically Correct Death, 124.
[v] David Boonin, A Defense of Abortion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003) 125.
[vi] Ibid, 121.
[vii] Ibid.
[viii] Ibid.
[ix] Ibid.
[x] It is generally accepted that sentience occurs around 24 week’s gestation. There is some dispute over this and some scientists date sentience in the first 10 weeks of gestation.
[xi] Michael Tooley, Abortion and Infanticide (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983) Ch. 11.5.

RELATED POSTS:
Is Abortion Liberal? Part 1
Sentience Part 1
Sentience Part 2
Viability
Abortion and Child Abuse
Abortion and Brain Death: A Response to Farrar
Abortion and Capital Punishment: No Contradiction
During, Sherwin & Hutchison on Backstreet Abortion
Imposing Your Beliefs onto Others: A Defence
Boonin’s Defense of the Sentience Criterion: A Critique Part I
Boonin’s Defense of the Sentience Criterion: A Critique Part II