Now Dawkins is a Zoologist and I, not being a Zoologist, would not presume to assess his work on Zoology. What is interesting, however, is that much of Dawkins’ most famous work is not on Zoology; it is on Theology and specifically Philosophy of Religion. That field of Philosophy which critically analyses religious questions, such as, the veracity of arguments for and against God’s existence. Having some background in these fields I find it a little surprising that an Auckland University publication would contend that his work is open minded because it is evidently not.

In The God Delusion Dawkins’ main argument against the existence of God alludes to Fred Hoyle’s famous claim that the probability of something as complex as life evolving by blind chance was less likely than a fully-functional Boeing 747 being created by a hurricane blowing parts around in a junk yard. Dawkins writes, “However statistically improbable the entity you seek to explain by invoking a designer, the designer himself has got to be at least as improbable. God is the Ultimate Boeing 747.” Dawkins has made the same line of argument elsewhere “God, or any intelligent, decision-making calculating agent, is complex, which is another way of saying improbable.” In The Blind Watchmaker he argues,

Once we are allowed simply to postulate organized complexity, if only the organized complexity of the DNA/protein replicating machine, it is relatively easy to invoke it as a generator of yet more organized complexity”. But of course any God capable of intelligently designing something as complex as the DNA/protein machine must have been at least as complex and organized as that machine itself.

This argument contains three premises. First, that theism (belief in God) is justified by “postulating” God to explain the existence of organised complexity. Second that the God appealed to by theists is complex. Third, that the existence of complex beings are highly improbable. These lead to the conclusion that “God is the Ultimate Boeing 747” and hence “almost certainly does not exist”. The problem with this argument is that all three premises rest on caricatures and misunderstandings of contemporary theology and ignorance of contemporary philosophy of religion. I will explain.

Dawkins contends that God is postulated to explain organised complexity. There are two problems with this contention. First, Dawkins assumes that God is rationally believed only if his existence is inferred by some kind of argument for the best explanation of a given phenomenon. However, not all beliefs are justified on the basis of some kind of argument of this sort. Our belief in the existence of the past, our belief that it is wrong to rape, our belief that other people exist or that basic axioms of logic are true are not based on inferences to the best explanation. It is not that they are rationally believed because they explain some phenomena better than all alternatives, it is rather that these beliefs are part of the background data that we use to assess proposed explanations against. These things are true because we immediately experience them as true. I have the experience of remembering the existence of a past event. I intuitively perceive that rape is wrong. I experience the basic axioms of logic as self-evident and so on. Such beliefs are called properly-basic beliefs.

Since the late 1970’s an extremely important movement within Philosophy of Religion, known as the reformed epistemology movement, has offered detailed and rigorous defences of the contention that, for theists, belief in God can be properly-basic. This position has been defended by leading philosophers of religion such Alvin Plantinga, William Alston, Nicholas Wolterstorff, Peter Van Inwagen and others. Now, of course, it is possible that this movement is mistaken but Dawkins surely owes us an argument to this end as opposed to his simply assuming it and ignoring the counter evidence.

Second, among those theists who do defend God’s existence on the basis of some argument for the best explanation, very few do so on the basis that God explains “organized complexity”. Richard Swinburne, the leading proponent of such arguments, argues that God explains the existence of laws of nature, religious experience, the origin of the universe and the continued existence of the universe. Swinburne does not postulate God to explain “organised complexity”. Similarly, William Lane Craig, a leading defender of theism, suggests that God explains the origin of the universe, the existence of morality and the fine tuning of the laws of nature. Again, Craig makes no appeal to “organized complexity”. In 2009 The Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology was published which contains the most up to date versions of the 11 most definitive arguments used to defend the existence of God in the literature today. Not one of them involves an appeal to “organised complexity”. While the cogency of arguments for the existence of God that do not involve “organized complexity” remains open to substantive debate, it is undisputed that these arguments exist. Dawkins’ picture of God as a postulate to explain organised complexity is a crude caricature of theistic scholarship.

To be fair Dawkins attempts to address some of these other arguments elsewhere in the book. However, here again much of his writing consists of caricature. He attacks five arguments proposed 800 years ago by Thomas Aquinas as being representative of the current case for theism and completely ignores the vastly more sophisticated and vigorous versions being defended in the literature today. Ironically, Dawkins quite severely misunderstands Aquinas’ arguments and attributes to him a position no Aquinas scholar would accept as accurate. However, even if his account were accurate, critiquing theism by attacking the arguments of one 12th century theologian is a bit like me attacking evolution on the basis of the evidence for it gathered in the 12th century and ignoring any of the scientific developments of the last 800 years. Such ineptitude would not be tolerated in the scientific world and should not be seen as de rigueur just because the topic is religion.

Dawkins’ second contention fares little better. Dawkins states that “A God capable of continuously monitoring and controlling the individual status of every particle in the universe cannot be simple” this seems to be because,

The corners of God’s giant consciousness are simultaneously preoccupied with the doings and emotions and prayers of every single human being—and whatever intelligent aliens there might be on other planets in this and 100 billion other galaxies.

There are several problems here. First, as Craig has noted, this confuses whether what God thinks about is complex with whether God himself is complex. Second, as Plantinga has noted, in The Blind Watchmaker Dawkins states that something is complex if it has parts that are “arranged in a way that is unlikely to have arisen by chance alone.” However, the concept of God employed by most theists is of an immaterial being that does not have material parts so by Dawkins’ own definition God is not complex (unless one assumes that God is a material being but theists almost unanimously maintain that God is an immaterial being).

This misrepresentation is made all the more pertinent by the fact that for centuries theists have been offering rigorous and sophisticated arguments that God is not in fact complex but is simple. While these arguments may not be successful, Dawkins still needs to actually provide reasons for rejecting them. To simply assert that God is to be conceived in a way that no one conceives Him and to ignore the numerous arguments to the contrary seem more like a child who asserts his position and then puts his hands over his ears and repeats “I am not listening” than it does a serious critical evaluation of another’s position.

Dawkins’ final contention, that the existence of complex beings is improbable, is similarly confused. Suppose one grants that God is “the Ultimate Boeing 747” and that God’s existence is as statically improbable as the complexity it is invoked to explain. Little in fact follows from this. This is because what is improbable in the Boeing 747 analogy is that the plane came into existence by chance. If God is “the Ultimate Boeing 747” then the conclusion to be drawn is only that it is improbable that God came into existence by chance. This, however, provides us with no reason for thinking that God does not exist. No theist holds that God came into existence by chance, theists hold that God is eternal. Here, again, Dawkins attacks a concept of God nobody holds to and hence is caught jousting with a straw-man.

On examining Dawkins’ central argument what one discovers is not an open-minded, informed, careful examination of the contemporary debate over the existence of God. Nor does one find a carefully researched assessment of theism. Instead one finds Dawkins simply ignoring what theists mean by God. He ignores how they conceptualise God and ignores the arguments and discussions they have actually made. The theism Dawkins dismisses apparently assumes that God is a material being with parts, that He came into existence by chance and is postulated merely to explain organized complexity. The actual arguments proposed in defence of theism that have been put forward in the literature are not addressed at all.

Some Auckland University academics might consider such tactics to count as open-minded but I do not. In my view an open-minded honest assessment of religion requires accurately representing what theologians say and teach. It means endeavouring to read and understand their position and offer informed and critical responses to these positions. Ignorance and caricature is not open-minded scholarship.

I write a monthly column for Investigate Magazine entitled Contra Mundum. This blog post was published in the May 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:
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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

Matt’s essay “Showing Christianity is True” was selected to be the concluding essay and it too has been made into a podcast. To hear the podcast and join in the global discussion pop on over to Apologetics 315 (or you can read it below).

Showing Christianity is True

“Can you show that Christianity is true?” To help us focus our thinking as to how one should answer this question I will pose some other questions as follows. Can you show that other people exist or that there exists a world that endures independent of our senses, which continues to exist when we no longer perceive it? Can my belief that it is wrong to inflict pain on another person for no reason at all be shown as true? What about my belief that Russell’s sceptical hypothesis that the whole Universe came into existence six seconds ago, including all apparent memories and signs of age – is this false or true?

I hope that the point of these examples is clear. Unless we want to fall into a global scepticism that defies all common sense we have to acknowledge that there are some beliefs which we hold rationally and know are true that, nevertheless, cannot be shown or proven to be true from premises that all intelligent people are required to accept. In fact, somewhat ironically, the claim that one is only rational in believing something unless it can be shown to be true from premises all sane people are required to accept, is self-refuting; after all, many sane people reject it and it has yet to be shown to be true from premises that all sane people accept.

However, one is rational in accepting some beliefs independent of any argument showing the truth of those beliefs; philosophers term such beliefs ‘properly basic beliefs.’ These beliefs typically function as foundational beliefs, a person reasons from them as premises to the truth of other propositions one holds. Similarly, they function as the background data against which one assesses hypotheses proposed for one’s acceptance. They arise because ongoing appeals to premises to prove premises to prove premises have to end somewhere. Properly basic beliefs constitute those beliefs where it is rational for the appeal for proof to end.

It needs to be noted that properly basic beliefs are not groundless. While one does not believe a basic belief based on an inference, basic beliefs are often based on some form of experience. Alvin Plantinga discerns two types of experience, “sensory evidence”, such things as appearing to see, hear or feel a given object and “doxastic evidence”, which he refers to as “the belief feels right, acceptable, natural.”1  Doxastic beliefs appear to be self-evident. An example of such a belief is the corresponding conditional of modus ponens. When one entertains the conditional of modus ponens it just seems to be correct. Modus ponens seems self-evident in a way that an overtly-fallacious inference does not. It is this kind of experience that grounds basic beliefs.

Many philosophers and theologians such as Calvin, Pascal, Alston and Plantinga hold that certain theological beliefs are properly basic. Belief in the existence of God is, from the believer’s perspective, properly basic and grounded directly in some form of religious experience; hence it is justified and rational to believe these doctrines independently of any argument in favour of them. Although I cannot elaborate it in a small article, I am in fundamental agreement with this position. The request then that Christians show or demonstrate that Christianity is true often relies on an assumption that I think is mistaken; this assumption is that rational Christian belief requires that arguments or proofs be provided for Christianity and failure to provide them renders the believer irrational.

There is another more moderate question which lurks in the neighbourhood. If one grants that the believer is rational in accepting Christian belief in a properly basic way then what reasons can the believer give to those who do not hold to the same properly basic beliefs for accepting Christian belief? Perhaps some people, on the basis of some kind of religious experience, have immediate properly basic beliefs but many people do not have this kind of experience – what reason can be given to them for accepting the Christian faith? This problem is exasperated by the fact that it is extremely difficult to demonstrate the truth of foundational beliefs precisely because they are foundational beliefs. To prove something one needs to appeal to premises and the whole question in this instance is over what ultimate premises to accept. How then would one show to these people that Christianity is true?

I think several strategies are available but due to space I can only briefly sketch them here.

First, in many instances, one can show Christianity is true by rebutting objections to Christian beliefs. Properly basic beliefs are beliefs that one is rational in believing independently of any argument for them in the absence of any good reasons for them. It does not follow, however, that these beliefs cannot be defeated by reasons offered against them.  If I see John screwing his face up and grasping his leg, I might form the belief that John is in pain. However, if later John tells me that he was not in pain but rather rehearsing his death scene in a play he is acting in I might change my belief to believing that he was not in pain. The initial belief that he was in pain was properly-basic; however, because of what I later discovered, its rational status was defeated.

I think many people stand in an analogous position to various Christian beliefs; they reject them not because they do not see them to be true but because they accept various objections to these beliefs. Consider Richard Dawkins’ “All appearances to the contrary, the only watchmaker in nature is the blind forces of physics, albeit deployed in a very special way… it is the blind watchmaker.” What is interesting here is the phrase, “all appearances to the contrary,” Dawkins admits that, prima facie, the world appears and looks like it was designed and in the absence of any reasons for denying design then the natural observation is to say that it is. Dawkins suggests, however, that appearances are deceiving because science has allegedly provided defeaters for this belief. Showing Dawkins’ arguments are unsound in such a context enables people to accept appearances.

The second line of argument is to show that various alternatives to Christianity are false. Often people fail to see the truth of Christianity because they accept mistaken views of the world and mistaken epistemic standards such as those associated with naturalism. They may experience God’s presence in nature but believe this is an illusion because they are convinced that nothing beyond nature exists. They might think that only things which can be empirically demonstrated can be rationally believed and these experiences are an illusion fostered by evolution to ensure social co-operation. Showing that these pictures of reality are false helps them to re-consider the veridical nature of these experiences. Refuting alternatives to Christianity provides another impetus for seeing the truth of Christianity.

People have to live by some vision of the world. In terms of practice, one cannot remain agnostic on many existential questions. If all the viable alternatives to Christianity can be shown to be implausible then Christianity has to be taken seriously by people who cannot, in practice, live a life which suspends judgment on ultimate questions.

Third, even if a person does not accept a given proposition they can still reason about such beliefs. One can reason “conditionally”,2  if one accepts certain premises or propositions as properly basic beliefs. Then certain other positions, hypotheses and theories are likely, and people from all sides of the dispute can assess and debate whether the reasoning is cogent. Plantinga notes,

The conclusions of theistic science may not be accepted by non-theists, but the method – trying to see how best to explain the relevant phenomena from a theistic perspective – is indeed open to all.3

One can show that when one does reason from a theistic perspective then certain existential and theoretical questions can be given coherent answers. One can explain such things as the origin of the universe, the existence of contingent beings, the existence and nature of moral obligation, the existence of laws of nature, existential questions about guilt and forgiveness and so on. Plantinga notes that the existence of God imports a “great deal of unity into the philosophic endeavor, and the idea of God helps with an astonishingly wide variety of cases: epistemological, ontological, ethical, having to do with meaning, and the like of that.”4 Showing that if one accepts theism, then plausible, defensible, comprehensive and unified answers are available to what would otherwise be intractable questions, provides one way of showing others why they should accept belief in God as a properly basic belief.

The fourth and final way is to put a person in a position where that person is likely to have the requisite experience that grounds properly basic theological beliefs. Suppose I see a tree in the park and my wife asks me to show her that this tree exists. The obvious way to do so is not to construct a proof of the existence of a tree but to take her to a park and show her it. Similarly, many people fail to grasp self-evident axioms of logic because they fail to understand them, but when these are explained to them they become self-evident. The same is true with Christian belief. One way to show agnostics the truth of Christianity is to put them into circumstances where, if they are attentive, they are likely to start seeing the truth.

One can explain the scriptures to them, encourage them to seek God in prayer – this is analogous to the way a person lost in the bush might call out to a rescuer even if he or she were unsure anyone was searching for him or her. One can encourage them to engage in the study of the scriptures whilst taking seriously the possibility that they are the word of God. The person could get involved in a community of believers where God dwells and works, where the person could be encouraged to live in accord with the moral law and honestly confess their failings and seek forgiveness for their moral errors. Pascal made this point in his famous wager; while an agnostic cannot simply choose to believe something he does not believe, he or she can choose to look, to seek and to understand. When the agnostic sincerely does so, it is likely that he or she will come to experience God. Just as a person who attempts to understand logic will see why its axioms are self-evident or a person who actually looks in the park will see that there is a tree there.

In conclusion the basic doctrines of Christianity, if true, constitute properly basic foundational beliefs. One does not believe them on the basis of argument or proof as they are grounded directly in experience. Typically it is very difficult to prove with argument that a foundational belief is true; however their truth can be shown in other indirect ways. One can argue that the arguments against such beliefs are false, one can argue that the alternatives to accepting them are false or problematic, and one can show that if one accepts Christianity then these beliefs make coherent sense out of the world, they provide comprehensive answers to many theoretical and existential questions. Finally, in the context of all of the above, one can assist the sceptic to adopt the stance of a sincere seeker; to get him to put him or herself into the kind of position where he or she can come to have the requisite encounter with God so as to see that Christianity is true. This is ultimately how one shows that Christianity is true.

1 Alvin Plantinga Warranted Christian Belief (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000) 110-111.
2 See Alvin Plantinga “Creation and Evolution: A Modest Proposal” in Darwinism Design and Public Education ed John Angus Campbell & Stephen C Meyer (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2004) 521-232; “Reason and Scripture Scholarship” in Behind the Text: History and Biblical Interpretation ed C Bartholomew, C Stephen. Evans, Mary Healy & Murray Rae (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2003) 98-100.
3 Alvin Plantinga “On Rejecting The Theory of Common Ancestry: A Reply to Hasker” Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith 44 (December 1992): 258-263.
4 Alvin Plantinga “Two Dozen or so Theistic Arguments” accessed 7 March 2010.

Many of my readers will not know but Alston was one of the leading contemporary Christian Philosophers of the last fifty years. I discovered his writings while studying philosophy at the University of Waikato and have always found his discussions to be perceptive and insightful.  Alongside others such as Plantinga and Wolterstorff, Alston was one of my early Philosophical heroes and continues to be so.

He wrote several excellent works in the area of epistemology and later turned his talents to contributing to the emergence of the Reformed Epistemology movement, which argues that belief in God can, in certain contexts, be properly basic: justified in the absence of any inference or argument for theism’s truth. Alston developed these insights in his ground breaking work Percieving God where he defended the rational status of mystic and religious experience, arguably one of the most significant discussions of the epistemology of religious experience since William James.

Alston published several important essays on religious language;  critiques of the problem of evil, an excellent defence of the concept of divine action in the world, an interesting discussion on divine command theories of ethics and an inspiring spiritual auto-biography on his conversion to Christianity is published in God and the Philosophers: The Reconciliation of Faith and Reason.

Alston’s work has influenced the current generation of Philosophers of Religion including, William Row, Alvin Plantinga, Robert Audi, George Mavrodes, William Wainwright, Daniel Howard-Snyder (who has on-line both a biography of Prof. Alston and a bibliography of his writings) and a number of others.

Alston will be sorely missed. May he rest in peace. May the grace and peace of God be with his family and friends.

Hat tip: Christian Theist

It is commonly argued that darwinian evolution renders belief in God rationally untenable because it refutes the teleological argument, commonly referred to as the argument from design. Darwin himself suggested this in his autobiography;

The old argument of design in nature, as given by Paley, which formerly seemed to me so conclusive, fails, now that the law of natural selection had been discovered. We can no longer argue that, for instance, the beautiful hinge of a bivalve shell must have been made by an intelligent being, like the hinge of a door by man. There seems to be no more design in the variability of organic beings and in the action of natural selection, than in the course which the wind blows. Everything in nature is the result of fixed laws.[2]

The temporal order of the universe is, to the man who bothers to give it a moment’s thought, an overwhelmingly striking fact about it. Regularities of succession are all pervasive. For simple laws govern almost all successions of events. In books of physics, chemistry, and biology we can learn how almost everything in the world behaves. The laws of their behavior can be set out by relatively simple formulae which men can understand and by means of which they can successfully predict the future. The orderliness of the universe to which I draw attention here is its conformity to formula, to simple, for mutable, scientific laws. The orderliness of the universe in this respect is a very striking fact about it. The universe might so naturally have been chaotic, but it is not—it is very orderly.

Evolution can only have taken place, given certain special natural laws. These are first, the chemical laws stating how under certain circumstances inorganic molecules combine to make organic ones, and organic ones combine to make organisms. And secondly, there are the biological laws of evolution stating how organisms have very many offspring, some of which vary in one or more characteristics from their parents, and how some of these characteristics are passed on to most offspring, from which it follows that, given shortage of food and other environmental needs, there will be competition for survival, in which the fittest will survive.

If everything needs to be proven then the premises of every proof would need to be proven. But if you need a proof for every proof, you need a proof for your proof, and a proof for your proof of a proof and so on-forever. Thus it makes no sense to demand that everything be proven because an infinite regress of proofs is impossible.[7]

If the relevant evidence points towards a theory it does not follow that all the evidence points towards it. That’s because there might be evidence which science does not consider, such as theological claims, that are relevant.”

…on many issues the relevant scientific evidence is the only evidence, but on questions of origins that is not the case. The question of our origins is both a scientific and theological question so a correct examination of the issue will take into account both the theological and scientific evidence that is relevant to the question. To teach evolution is the true theory of origins one would have to show it is probable on all relevant evidence, and seeing science excludes relevant theological evidence from the discussion it cannot claim to have shown it’s true on all relevant evidence.

Implicit in the “different ways of knowing” argument, and hinted at by Matt in his comments, is the desire to change the science process to include theological “evidence” and claims that are not based on, or tested by, evidence. To give theology a “free pass.”

It’s claiming a logic or justification for the theist belief without allowing the normal checking that should go with knowledge claims.”

[1] that scientific claims differ from theological claims in that the former are empirically testable and the latter are not; [2] lack of testability disqualifies theological claims from being taken into account in theorising about the world.

So what would the trumping of science by theology/philosophy be like? We have seen some disastrous examples. Such as Stalin’s promotion of Lysenko, trumping of science by Stalinist interpretations of Marxism-Leninism. This put Soviet genetic science back many years and led to the death and persecution of many scientists. In many ways the current theological/creationist/wedge attack on science is of a similar ilk to Stalinism.

He [Matt] argues that teaching evolution is actually teaching “fundamentalist children that their religious beliefs are false.” Well, of course that is a problem for fundamentalism, not science. We cannot ignore reality because some silly people are offended by it.

“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.

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Tooley, Plantinga and the Deontological Argument from Evil Part II

Avoiding Strawmen
Before turning to Loftus’ arguments, it is necessary to spell out exactly what a divine command theory of ethics is. It is the thesis that “an action or kind of action is right or wrong if and only if and because it is commanded or forbidden by God.”[2] two things are noteworthy about this definition.

What is a Divine Command Theory?
First, the thesis is limited to deontological properties. Philip Quinn defines deontological properties as follows, “I mean to refer to whether it has such properties as being morally permitted, being morally forbidden or prohibited, and being morally obligatory or required.”[3] Deontological properties are contrasted with axiological properties such as goodness and badness. Evans notes, “it does not appear that the concept of obligation is identical to the concept of what it is ‘good to do’ … It might be good, even saintly, for me to give a kidney to benefit a stranger, but it not an act I am obliged to do.”[4]

Despite frequently being portrayed this way in common critiques, divine command theories do not offer accounts of broader axiological properties. This is evident from the writings of those who defend such theories. Quinn, after defining deontological properties in the aforementioned way, affirms he is not offering a divine command theory of axiological properties. In this he is followed by Adams, Alston, Craig, Wierenga, Hare and Plantinga and, even to some extent, Thomas Carson. This is not something unique to modern divine command theories; older divine command theorists such as Paley, Locke, Berkley and Suarez typically limited divine command theories to accounts of deontological properties and not to broader axiological properties such as goodness in general.

The second point is to note is that the word “because” in English is ambiguous. When a divine command theorist claims that “an action or kind of action is right or wrong if and only if and because it is commanded or forbidden by God.”[5] The theorist could mean either, that one cannot know what is right and wrong unless one believes in divine commands; or that right and wrong cannot exist independently of Gods commands. The first claim states that beliefs about right and wrong are epistemologically dependent on beliefs about divine commands. The second is that the existence of moral properties, such as right and wrong, are ontologically dependent on God’s commands.

It is important to note that epistemological dependence and ontological dependence are not the same thing. Take a straightforward example of identity; the property of being water is identical with (or constituted by) the property of being H20. As such, H20 and water are not ontologically independent. Yet people for thousands of years could perceive water, drink it, detect it and use it without knowing anything about atomic theory. Hence, our knowledge of the existence water is not dependent on our knowledge of H20.

When divine command theorists state that an action or kind of action is right or wrong if and only if and because it is commanded or forbidden by God they are using “because” in an ontological sense. The locus classicus for contemporary defences of divine command theory is the work of Robert Adams who affirms that “ethical wrongness is [identical with] the property of being contrary to the commands of a loving God.”[6] Adams here states that the relationship between the property of being contrary to God’s commands and wrongness is the ontological relationship of identity.

Elsewhere in the article he is explicit about this; he suggests that wrongness is identical with or constituted by being contrary to divine commands in the same way that water is constituted by (or identical with) H20. Other divine command theorists explicitly follow Adam’s lead on this. Stephen Evans and William Alston both affirm that divine commands are constitutive of deontological properties and note Adams’ identity claim as a paradigm of the type of relationship he is defending.[7] Craig cites Alston[8] as the inspiration for his position and contends that “commands constitute our moral duties”[9] he explains that by this he means to make divine commands an ontological foundation, and in particular, the concept of “informative identity”[10] analogous to the way “we explain the nature of water by identifying it with H20 or explain the nature of heat by identifying it with molecular motion.”[11] Craig is explicit that he is not offering divine commands as an epistemological foundation, “It would, indeed, be arrogant and ignorant to claim that people cannot be good without belief in God. But that was not the question.”[12]Also, “My concern here is with moral ontology not moral epistemology … to repeat, my concern is with an ontological foundation for morality, not with epistemological foundations.”[13]

The other leading defenders of divine command theory are equally clear that they are proposing a theory of the ontological and not the epistemological foundations of moral obligation. Quinn,[14] Weirenga,[15] Hare[16] and Plantinga[17] all offer accounts of the ontological foundations of deontological properties. Janine Marie Idziak notes that, historically, divine command theories were usually understood as ontological theories and not epistemological theories about how one knows what is right and wrong.[18]

John Loftus’ Mischaracterisation of Divine Command Theories
These observations lead into my main criticism of Loftus’ discussion. Loftus mistakenly understands divine command theories as signifying epistemological dependence. At the beginning of his article Loftus refers to the view that “[moral] standards are grounded in the commands of a good creator God, and these commands come from God’s very nature” and infers from this that “the Christian claims to have absolute and objective ethical standards for knowing right from wrong, which is something they claim atheists don’t have” [Emphasis added] here Loftus suggests that the claim that right and wrong depend on God’s commands is the claim that knowledge of right and wrong depends on belief in divine commands.

The same interpretation is seen elsewhere in his chapter when he defines a divine command theory Loftus states Morality is based upon what God commands. “No other reasons are needed but that God so commanded it. If God commanded it, then it is right. If God forbids it, then it is wrong.” and citing the Divine Command theory of William Lane Craig he states “Many Christians will maintain they have a superior foundation for knowing and for choosing to do what is good. They claim to have objective ethical standards for being good, based in a morally good creator God, and that the atheist has no ultimate justification for being moral.” [Emphasis added] Despite the fact that Craig and other divine command theorists have repeatedly stated they claim no such thing.

Another problem with Loftus’ characterisation is that in several places he suggests that divine command theories claim that axiological properties such as goodness depend on God’s commands. He states, for example, that divine command theory entails that “God could’ve commanded something else, or even something contrary, or something horribly evil and simply declared it good” or that “If we think that the commands of God are good merely because he commands them, then his commands are….well….just his commands.” Examples could be multiplied; the problem is, as I have noted, divine command theorists typically do not offer their theories as foundations for axiological properties, they limit their theories to deontological properties.

These misconstruals undermine many of the criticisms Loftus makes. As I will show, many of his objections are based on a conflation between epistemology and ontology.

In my next post, John W. Loftus on The Christian Illusion of Moral Superiority Part II, I will address Loftus’ arguments against a divine command theory, the emptiness of God is good and his arbitrariness objection.

[1] C S Lewis rejected a divine command theory; I believe, however, that Lewis’ dismissal is based on unsound arguments and the divine command theory coheres better with his argument in Mere Christianity as I argued in my paper “God and the Moral Law in C. S. Lewis” Theological Perspectives on C S Lewis Conference Carey Baptist College, Auckland, 1 July 2008.
[2] W K Frankena Ethics 2nd edn (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1973) 28.
[3] Philip Quinn “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) 291.
[4] C Stephen Evans Kierkegaard’s Ethic of Love: Divine Commands and Moral Obligations (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004) 16.
[5] Frankena Ethics 28.
[6] Robert Adams “Divine Command Meta-Ethics Modified Again” Journal of Religious Ethics 7:1 (1979) 76.
[7] 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) 303-304.
[8] William Lane Craig “This Most Gruesome of Guests” eds Robert K Garcia and Nathan King Is Goodness Without God Good Enough? A Debate on Faith Secularism and Ethics (Lanhan: Rowan and Littlefield, 2009) 186.
[9] William Lane Craig “The Craig/Kurtz Debate: Is Goodness Without God Good Enough” Eds Robert K Garcia and Nathan King Is Goodness Without God Good Enough? A Debate on Faith Secularism and Ethics (Lanhan: Rowan and Littlefield, 2009) 30.
[10] Mark C Murphy “Theism, Atheism and the Explanation of Moral Value” eds Robert K Garcia and Nathan King Is Goodness Without God Good Enough? A Debate on Faith Secularism and Ethics (Lanhan: Rowan and Littlefield, 2009) 127.
[11] Ibid.
[12] William Lane Craig “The Indefensibility of Theistic Meta-Ethical Foundations for Morality” Foundations 5 (1997) 9.
[13] Craig “This Most Gruesome of Guests” 168.
[14] Ibid, 293.
[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] John Hare God’s Call: Moral Realism, God’s Commands and Human Autonomy (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2001) 49.
[17] Alvin Plantinga “Naturalism, Theism, Obligation and Supervenience”
www.ammonius.org/assets/pdfs/plantinga.pdf.
[18] Janine Maree Idziak “In Search of Good Positive Reasons for an Ethics of Divine Commands: A Catalogue of Arguments,” Faith and Philosophy 6:1 (1989) 60.

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John W. Loftus on The Christian Illusion of Moral Superiority Part II

In many of his publications and debates William Lane Craig has defended the contention that if theism is true then there exists a sound foundation for moral duties. In a recent article, Walter Sinnott-Armstrong has criticised this contention. Armstrong has claimed that his criticisms do not just call into question Craig’s argument for a theistic based system of ethics, he contends that his arguments are conclusive against any theistic account of ethics which is compatible with Christianity. He states, “Other theists might try to give better arguments for a religious view of morality. I don’t see how they could avoid all the problems in Craig’s account without leaving traditional Christianity far behind.”[1]

Before discussing Armstrong’s critique it is important to define a few key terms; this will become important later on. First, by theism, Craig means, belief in a necessarily existent, all powerful, all knowing, perfectly virtuous, immaterial person who created the universe. By foundation, he means, an ontological or meta-physical foundation. The ontological grounding he has in mind is that of “informative identification;”[2] an example of this is the way “we explain the nature of water by identifying it with H20 or explain the nature of heat by identifying it with molecular motion.”[3] Craig argues that if theism is true then one can informatively identify moral obligations with divine commands; hence, providing a plausible and defensible foundation for moral obligations.

“his arguments display a conflation of epistemic and ontological questions”Armstrong’s critique begins by noting that Craig defends “traditional divine command theory.” Armstrong contends that such a position is “incredible”[4] and subject to a “cavalcade of devastating objections.”[5]

Two initial points are worth making. First, the position Craig defends is not a “traditional divine command theory” but rather a version of the modified divine command theory defended by Robert Adams,[6] more recently by William Alston[7] and Stephen Evans[8], also I have defended it here.

This theory affirms that the property of being wrong is identical with the property of being contrary to God’s commands in much the same way that water is identical with H20. Second, many of the “devastating objections” consist simply of a repetition of the tired old lines always used against divine command theories; most of these objections have been subjected to rigorous criticism in the literature on divine commands over the last 30 years by people such as Philip Quinn,[9] Edward Weirenga,[10] Robert Adams,[11] William Wrainwright[12] and again by me[13]. Armstrong does not address any of these criticisms; he merely repeats the standard arguments without even mentioning, much less, addressing the problems noted by these authors. In fact, in several places, his arguments display a conflation of epistemic and ontological questions which is a common error as I have argued here.

Armstrong’s Argument from Harm
Putting these niggles to one side, however, Armstrong’s main line of argument is fairly novel.[14] He states,

There is a much more plausible foundation for morality. It seems obvious to me, and to everyone who does not start with peculiarly religious assumptions, that what makes rape morally wrong is the extreme harm that rape causes to rape victims.[15]

Armstrong suggests that Craig’s conditional, if theism is true then there exists a sound foundation for moral duties, is mistaken because a more plausible foundation exists for our duties, one that is independent of God’s commands. The wrongness of actions can be founded in the harm caused by immoral actions such as rape. Armstrong provides two arguments as to why this harm-based or secular account of the nature of wrongness is superior to a divine command theory.

(a) The harm account is more economical than a divine command theory;
(b) The harm account makes moral obligations more objective than a divine command theory does.

In my next post I will address arguments (a) and (b). I will leave you with the thought that it is worth noting that Armstrong’s conclusion misses the point. He contends that everyone who does not start with peculiarly religious assumptions will see that the harm-based foundation is more plausible than a divine command theory. Nothing in Craig’s contention contradicts this. Craig’s contention is that if God exists then there is a sound basis for moral obligations. The sound basis he identifies is divine commands. Craig, then, was not arguing that a divine command theory was the most plausible theory in the absence of religious assumptions, Craig argues that in the absence of religious assumptions it is Nihilism, not divine command theory, which is the most plausible account of moral obligation. Craig’s contention is that a divine command theory is plausible if one grants such assumptions. Armstrong’s conclusion actually has no bearing on the contention he is attempting to refute.

[1] Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, “Why Traditional Theism Cannot Provide an Adequate Foundation for Morality” in Is Goodness without God Good Enough: A Debate on Faith, Secularism and Ethics, eds. Robert K Garcia and Nathan L King (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2008) 114.
[2] Mark C Murphy “Theism, Atheism and the Explanation of Moral Value” in Is Goodness without God Good Enough: A Debate on Faith, Secularism and Ethics, eds. Robert K Garcia and Nathan L King (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2008) 127.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Walter Sinnott-Armstrong “Why Traditional Theism Cannot Provide an Adequate Foundation for Morality” 106.
[5]Ibid, 108.
[6] Robert Adams Finite and Infinite Goods (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999); “Divine Command Meta-Ethics Modified Again” Journal of Religious Ethics 7:1 (1979) 66-79; “Divine Commands and the Social Nature of Obligation” Faith and Philosophy 4 (1987) 262-275. [7] 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) 303-26.
[8] C. Stephen Evans Kierkegaard’s Ethic of Love: Divine Commands and Moral Obligations (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004).
[9] Philip L Quinn Divine Commands and Moral Requirements (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1978); “Divine Command Theory” in The Blackwell Guide to Ethical Theory ed Hugh LaFollette (Malden MA: Blackwell Publishing Co, 1999) 53-73; “Theological Voluntarism” in The Oxford Handbook to Ethical Theory Ed David Copp (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006) 63-90.
[10] 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.
[11] Robert Adams “A Modified Divine Command Theory of Ethical Wrongness” in Divine Commands and Morality ed Paul Helm (New York: Oxford University Press, 1981) 83-108; “Divine Command Meta-Ethics Modified Again” Journal of Religious Ethics 7:1 (1979) 66-79; Moral Arguments for Theistic Belief” in Rationality and Religious Belief ed C F Delaney (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1979) 116-140.
[12] William Wrainwright Religion and Morality (Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd, 2005).
[13] Matthew Flannagan “The Premature Dismissal of Voluntarism” in Colloquium: The Australasian Theological Review (forthcoming).
[14] I say “fairly novel” because a very similar objection was raised in Don Marquis’s seminal essay, “Why Abortion is Immoral” The Abortion Controversy: 25 Years after Roe v Wade, A Reader eds Louis Pojman and Francis Beckwith (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing Company, 1998) 345.
[15] Walter Sinnott-Armstrong “Why Traditional Theism Cannot Provide an Adequate Foundation for Morality” 106.

RELATED POSTS:
Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, William Lane Craig and the Argument from Harm Part II
Tooley, The Euthyphro Objection and Divine Commands: Part I
Tooley, The Euthyphro Objection and Divine Commands: Part II
Maverick Philosopher on the Historical Atrocities Argument

How does a Christian reconcile the fact of evil and suffering in the world in the face of a God that is omnipotent, omniscient and benevolent? If he is omnipotent then he knows about all evil before it occurs so why does he allow it? Surely if god is omnipotent then he can halt evil. If he is benevolent then why will not act against it?

Marc raised the same question in the comments section of, Good Friday: Why Celebrate Easter? In the discussion that followed I charged him with special pleading, of holding Christians to a higher standard than the standard he tacitly holds skepticism to. As discussions in comments sections are often missed instead of continuing the debate with Marc I thought I would express myself more clearly here. In doing so I will borrow extensively from a talk Matt gave for the launch of Thinking Matters (which you will see when we finally get the video footage of the talk online). [Given the difficulties of footnoting notes and impressions from talks and knowledge obtained through years of discussions with one's spouse (though some came from primary sources that I read myself) pretty much from this post from this point onwards, though not in entirety, should be seen as being authored by MandM as opposed to just me though it is posted by me because overall it I put it together.]

Before addressing an objection of this nature one should first establish the correct approach to take towards addressing criticisms of the faith and be clear as to what constitutes a fair set of rules for the terms of engagement. Timothy Keller writes,

All doubts, however sceptical and cynical they may seem, are really a set of alternate beliefs. You cannot doubt belief A except from a position of faith in belief B….

The only way to doubt Christianity rightly and fairly is to discern the alternative belief under each of your doubts and then ask yourself what reasons you have for believing it. How do you know your belief is true? It would be inconsistent to require more justification for Christian belief than you do for your own, but that is frequently what happens.

In fairness you must doubt your doubts. My thesis is that if you come to recognise the beliefs on which your doubts about Christianity are based, and if you seek as much proof for those beliefs as you seek from Christians for theirs – you will discover that your doubts are not as solid as they first appeared.[1]

[T]he theoretical “problem” of evil is often expressed in the form of a pointed question. God is able to prevent evil and suffering and He would know about them before they happened, right? Moreover, since He is unsurpassably good, surely He would not permit them just for the fun of it. So why doesn’t He prevent them?[2]

[1] That as God is omniscient and omnipotent (all-knowing and all-powerful) he would be both able to know about all the suffering that exists and act to prevent it;
[2] Given that God is good, he would not allow such evil to exist unless he had a good reason for it.

[3] If a Christian cannot provide a detailed account of God’s reasons in [2] then it follows that God has none.

[1] Timothy Keller Reason For God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism (New York: Dutton, 2008) xvii-xviii.
[2] Daniel Howard-Snyder “God, Evil, and Suffering” in Reason for the Hope Within (Eerdmans 1999), ed. Michael J. Murray, 3, http://www.ac.wwu.edu/~howardd/god,evil,andsuffering.pdf.
[3] Ibid, 4.
[4] Alvin Plantinga Warranted Christian Belief (Oxford University Press: 2000) 466.
[5] Keller Reason for God xvii-xviii.
[6] William Alston “Some Temporary Final Thoughts on Evidential Arguments from Evil” in The Evidential Argument from Evil ed Daniel Howard-Snyder (Bloomington Indianapolis, Indiana University Press: 1996) 317.
[7] Francis S. Collins The Language of God: A scientist Presents Evidence for the Existence of God (Free Press, 2006) 75.