The coherence of theism

Both Michael Martin and Theodore Drange have raised objections to the coherence of Christian theism. Let’s begin with Drange’s criticisms.

http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/theodore_drange/incompatible.html

1. The Perfection-vs.-Creation Argument

Version #1
1. If God exists, then he is perfect.
2. If God exists, then he is the creator of the universe.
3. A perfect being can have no needs or wants.
4. If any being created the universe, then he must have had some need or want.
5. Therefore, it is impossible for a perfect being to be the creator of the universe (from 3 and 4).
6. Hence, it is impossible for God to exist (from 1, 2, and 5).


Here the weak link is #3.

i) Drange treats needs and wants as interchangeable. But that’s far too facile.

We can need things we don’t want, and want things we don’t need.

God cannot have needs. But can he have no wants?

Some wants are needs, but are all wants needs? On the face of it, an agent can want something he doesn’t need, or need for himself.

ii) It would be inconsistent for God to want something he could not have? But is it inconsistent for God to want something at all?

iii) Another distinction is important: the difference between wanting something for myself, and wanting something for another.

iv) Even assuming that God cannot want something for himself, does it follow that he cannot want something for another?

He makes the world because he wants to share his beatitude with rational creatures.

v) Is there something inconsistent with the idea of a magnanimous God? Is generosity a problematic attribute?

Drange says that “if a being wants something that he does not have, then he cannot be perfect, for he would be in a certain way incomplete.”

But this is a poor argument on several grounds:

i) If a being wants something that he “cannot” have, he would be incomplete.

ii) If God is timeless, then God never wants something that God doesn’t have. There was never a time when God didn’t have exactly what he wanted.

iii) Does it make one incomplete to want something good for the benefit of another, other than oneself?


Version 2
1. If God exists, then he is perfect.
2. If God exists, then he is the creator of the universe.
3. If a being is perfect, then whatever he creates must be perfect.
4. But the universe is not perfect.
5. Therefore, it is impossible for a perfect being to be the creator of the universe (from 3 and 4).
6. Hence, it is impossible for God to exist (from 1, 2, and 5).


The weak link is #3.

i) It trades on an equivocation of terms. The creature will never be perfect in the same sense that the Creator is perfect. At most, a creature will be perfect in a creaturely way, not a divine way.

If, say, divine perfection includes incommunicable attributes like omniscience, omnipotence, and immutability, then the creature cannot be perfect in the same way that God is perfect.

This doesn’t mean the creature is imperfect. Merely, that it is perfect for what it is.

For example, a perfect key is a perfect fit for a lock, and a perfect screwdriver is a perfect fit for a screw. A key isn’t imperfect because it isn’t a perfect screwdriver, or vice versa.

ii) Perfection can also be teleological concept. A fallen world is imperfect, but sin is a means to a second-order good.


2. The Immutability-vs.-Creation Argument

1. If God exists, then he is immutable.
2. If God exists, then he is the creator of the universe.
3. An immutable being cannot at one time have an intention and then at a later time not have that intention.
4. For any being to create anything, prior to the creation he must have had the intention to create it, but at a later time, after the creation, no longer have the intention to create it.
5. Thus, it is impossible for an immutable being to have created anything (from 3 and 4).
6. Therefore, it is impossible for God to exist (from 1, 2, and 5)


The weak link is #4.

If God is immutable in the sense that God is timeless, then God is not prior to the world in a temporal sense. For God, there was never a time when the world did not exist.

Drange says that “creation is a temporal concept. This is built into the very definition of ‘create’ as ‘to cause to come into being.’ X cannot cause Y to come into being unless X existed temporally prior to Y.”

But this is not a cogent argument. Yes, creation is a temporal concept. And an effect is a temporal effect.

But to say that every cause must always be temporally prior to an effect would mean that nothing to ever come into being, for in that event, everything is in process of becoming. Nothing ever is. There can be no being, only becoming.

But becoming must be a property of something actual. A process must take an object.


3. The Immutability-vs. -Omniscience Argument

1. If God exists, then he is immutable.
2. If God exists, then he is omniscient.
3. An immutable being cannot know different things at different times.
4. To be omniscient, a being would need to know propositions about the past and future.
5. But what is past and what is future keep changing.
6. Thus, in order to know propositions about the past and future, a being would need to know different things at different times (from 5).
7. It follows that, to be omniscient, a being would need to know different things at different times (from 4 and 6).
8. Hence, it is impossible for an immutable being to be omniscient (from 3 and 7).
9. Therefore, it is impossible for God to exist (from 1, 2, and 8).


The weak links are 5-6.

i)#5 presupposes the A-theory of time. The passage of time. Presentism.

Drange needs to defend the A-theory of time over against the B-theory, according to which the timeline is a given totality.

ii) Why would God need to know different things at different times? This assumes that God’s knowledge of the world is direct rather than indirect.

But God could know the future by knowing his plan for the future.

To say “the origin of the planet earth is in the past” assumes that tense is an objective property of time.”

For an alternative view, cf.

R. Le Poidevin, Travels In Four Dimensions (Oxford 2003).

D. Mellor, Real Time II (Routledge 1998)

L. Oaklander, The Ontology of Time (Prometheus 2004).

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/eternity/

To say that one must be “situated within time (somewhere between the origin and end of the earth)” assumes a spatial metaphor for time, as if time were literally linear, with divisions along the timeline. But this is picture-language, not reality.


4. The Immutable-vs.-All-Loving Argument

1. If God exists, then he is immutable.
2. If God exists, then he is all-loving.
3. An immutable being cannot be affected by events.
4. To be all-loving, it must be possible for a being to be affected by events.
5. Hence, it is impossible for an immutable being to be all-loving (from 3 and 4).
6. Therefore, it is impossible for God to exist (from 1, 2, and 5).


The weak links are 2 & 4.

i) To say that love is a divine attribute doesn’t mean that God is all-loving, as if love is God’s only attribute, or as if God loves all things, or as if God loves all things equally.

ii)#4 is an assertion, not an argument. It assumes what it needs to prove.

Is there no possibility of disinterested love? Of loving something, not out of personal need. Of loving something without wanting something from it, something in return, but simply loving one’s own handiwork, because it exemplifies the excellence of its creator.


5. The Transcendence-vs.-Omnipresence Argument

1. If God exists, then he is transcendent (i.e., outside space and time).
2. If God exists, then he is omnipresent.
3. To be transcendent, a being cannot exist anywhere in space.
4. To be omnipresent, a being must exist everywhere in space.
5. Hence, it is impossible for a transcendent being to be omnipresent (from 3 and 4).
6. Therefore, it is impossible for God to exist (from 1, 2, and 5).


The weak link is #2.

It assumes that God is literally omnipresent. But this is simply a metaphor for God’s omnipotence and omniscience. God does not occupy physical space. He is not extended in time and space.


6. The Transcendence-vs.-Personhood Argument

1. If God exists, then he is transcendent (i.e., outside space and time).
2. If God exists, then he is a person (or a personal being).
3. If something is transcendent, then it cannot exist and perform actions within time.
4. But a person (or personal being) must exist and perform actions within time.
5. Therefore, something that is transcendent cannot be a person (or personal being) (from 3 and 4).
6. Hence, it is impossible for God to exist (from 1, 2, and 5).


The weak links are 3-4.

i) To say that if something is transcendent, then it cannot exist and perform actions in time bundles together two distinct propositions:

a) What is transcendent cannot exist;

b) What is transcendent cannot perform actions in time.

How are these propositions related?

How does nonexistence follow from transcendence?

To say that what is transcendent cannot exist is an assertion, not an argument. Certainly the claim is not self-explanatory.

“Exist” in what sense? If it’s transcendent, then it cannot exist in time and space.

Whether something can exist outside of time and/or space is a separate question.

ii) It is true that a transcendent being cannot perform actions in time. The way he performs an action is not to perform a temporal action, but to enact a temporal state of affairs.

Drange says: “I am inclined to resist this sort of conceptual expansion. If the concept of personhood is extended that far, then it ceases to do the work that it was supposed to do, which was to make God into a more familiar figure. Furthermore, if persons (or personal beings) can exist totally outside of time, then it becomes unclear what it might mean to speak of ‘persons’ (or ‘personal beings’) at all. The boundaries of the class become so blurred that the concept becomes vacuous.”

Several problems:

i) He says that that a timeless person represents a conceptual “expansion.”

That criticism assumes a certain theory of concept formation, as if we always abstract from the concrete.

But unless the human mind had certain innate categories, it would be unable to classify particulars. You can’t bootstrap a classification system. Rather, your conceptual scheme is what you use to frame the raw data.

ii) Christians are not in the business of making God a more familiar figure.

Rather, we have self-revelation of God, in which God is depicted in certain ways. And we can use ourselves as a point of reference. So there’s a relation between our self-conception and our concept of God as we compare and contrast ourselves with the God of Scripture.

iii) One would need to define what makes a person a person. What are the attributes of personhood? And does the subtraction of one property—the property of temporality—negate the entire concept?

I don’t see why. Indeed, it’s time which generates the conundra of personal identity in the first place. How is change compatible with personal self-identity?

Drange also says that “in order for a being to be free, it must exist and perform actions within time. Otherwise, there would be no way for any freedom to be manifested.

A few more problems:

i) One can be free without having occasion to manifest one’s freedom.

ii) While one’s freedom many be manifested by temporal effects, the possibilities from which one chooses, and which one chooses to instantiate, may be abstract objects—of which the effect is a property-instance.

Creation is an act of concretizing the abstract by enacting a particular state of affairs in time and space. God objectifies his plan.

iii) The possibilities inhere in God’s attribute of omnipotence.


7. The Nonphysical-vs.-Personal Argument

(1) If God exists, then he is nonphysical.
(2) If God exists, then he is a person (or a personal being).
(3) A person (or personal being) needs to be physical.
(4) Hence, it is impossible for God to exist (from 1-3).


The weak link is #3.

i) This is an assumption, not an argument.

What’s the assumption? How does Drange define a person?

He seems to be assuming a materialist philosophy of mind. If so, then that disregards the many arguments for dualism.

At the very least, a supporting argument is needed.

ii) Or is he assuming that to be a person, you must enjoy interpersonal relations, which is only possible through the medium of a body?

But this involves two distinct propositions: even if interpersonal relations are a condition of personhood, for which he’s offered no argument, is a body a necessary medium for interpersonal relations?

What about, say, the possibility of telepathic communication?

Drange says: “premise 3 has been advocated by Kai Nielsen, who wrote: "we have no understanding of 'a person' without 'a body'.”

i) Of course, a Cartesian dualist would disagree.

ii) There are those who claim to have a disembodied experience in certain altered states of consciousness.

iii) Apart from (ii), while our personal experience is ordinarily an embodied experience, a fundamental feature of human experience is an apparent difference between mental properties and material properties.

iv) Why should we go along with Nielsen’s presumptive materialism? It’s the mind that perceives the body.

Why not presumptive dualism? That is what we actually experience. That is a primitive datum.


8. The Omnipresence-vs.-Personhood Argument

(1) If God exists, then he is omnipresent.
(2) If God exists, then he is a person (or a personal being).
(3) Whatever is omnipresent cannot be a person (or a personal being).
(4) Hence, it is impossible for God to exist (from 1-3).


The weak links are 1 & 3.

i)#1 is a false premise. God is not literally omnipresent. That would be pantheistic.

Once again, Drange is getting carried away with picture language.

ii) And even if it were a true premise, #3 is fallacious since it does not follow by valid deduction from #1.

iii) Assuming, for the sake of argument, that #3 is valid, why believe that it is true?


9. The Omniscient-vs.-Free Argument

1. If God exists, then he is omniscient.
2. If God exists, then he is free.
3. An omniscient being must know exactly what actions he will and will not do in the future.
4. If one knows that he will do an action, then it is impossible for him not to do it, and if one knows that he will not do an action, then it is impossible for him to do it.
5. Thus, whatever an omniscient being does, he must do, and whatever he does not do, he cannot do (from 3 and 4).
6. To be free requires having options open, which means having the ability to act contrary to the way one actually acts.
7. So, if one is free, then he does not have to do what he actually does, and he is able to do things that he does not actually do (from 6).
8. Hence, it is impossible for an omniscient being to be free (from 5 and 7).
9. Therefore, it is impossible for God to exist (from 1, 2, and 8).


The weak links are 2-7.

i)#2 tacitly defines divine freedom as freedom without any restrictions whatsoever. From that unrestricted sense, it then proceeds to generate a dilemma. But why should be begin with such a crude definition?

ii) As to #3, a timeless agent has no future. A timeless agent has no future actions.

iii)#4 fails to distinguish between the freedom to choose, and the freedom to change one’s mind.

God is free to choose, but God is not free to revise his intentions. Were he free to revise his intentions, he would be fallible.

iv)#5 builds on the error of #4. The necessity in view is a conditional necessity. God must do whatever he intends to do, on condition that he intends to it. This does not imply the necessitation of the choice, but the necessity of the consequence, given the choice.

v)#6 assumes an incompatibilist definition of freedom.

vi) Even if we were to grant #6, it fails to distinguish between open options from which one chooses, and the freedom to reverse one’s choice. Only a fallible agent needs to keep his options open.


10. The Justice-vs.-Mercy Argument

1. If God exists, then he is an all-just judge.
2. If God exists, then he is an all-merciful judge.
3. An all-just judge treats every offender with exactly the severity that he/she deserves.
4. An all-merciful judge treats every offender with less severity than he/she deserves.
5. It is impossible to treat an offender both with exactly the severity that he/she deserves and also with less severity than he/she deserves.
6. Hence, it is impossible for an all-just judge to be an all-merciful judge (from 3-5).
7. Therefore, it is impossible for God to exist (from 1, 2, and 6).


The weak links are 1-2.

i) The dilemma is a verbal gimmick, generated by the universal quantifier: “all,” as in all-just and all-merciful.

This assumes a quantitative rather than qualitative definition of these attributes, as if justice or mercy were God’s only attribute, or as if, to be merciful, God must always be merciful.

But there’s no reason to define God’s possession of an attribute in such quantitative terms.

ii) In Christian theology, the manifestation of mercy and justice are not incompatible, for God exacts his justice upon a Redeemer in order to extend his mercy to the redeemed.

Moving on to Martin, he distinguishes three different “kinds” of knowledge: “propositional,” “procedural” (know-how), and “direct acquaintance.” Cf. Atheism (Temple 1990), 287.

He than denies divine omniscience on the grounds that only one of the three (propositional) would be applicable to God.

But are these three different “kinds” of knowledge? Or are they different “modes” of knowledge?

Indeed, isn’t propositional knowledge the only knowledge there is, whereas know-how or direct acquaintance are merely modes of acquiring propositional knowledge?

Put another way, Martin fails to distinguish between modes of knowledge and objects of knowledge. Propositions are objects of knowledge, whereas know-how or acquaintance are modes of knowledge.

For example, sensation is a mode of knowledge, not an object of knowledge.

Blue isn’t true. The bare sensation of blue has no truth-value.

One can form true or false beliefs about the sensation, but the raw sensation itself is not an item of knowledge.

God knows blue, not because he has an experience of blue, but because he knows the abstract universal, which he exemplifies in nature.

“Blue” began as a divine idea. Many concrete particulars exemplify blue.

Martin also denies that God is omniscient on the grounds that God cannot know indexical propositions.

But this fails to distinguish between self-knowledge and the knowledge of what it’s like to be someone else.

Since God isn’t me, God cannot literally identify with my first-person point of view.

If God were to do so, then God could believe something that isn’t true. God can only know what is true. A false belief doesn’t count as knowledge.

If God were to believe a false proposition, then that would be an argument against his omniscience.

One can know that a proposition is false, but one can only know it to be a false proposition.

God cannot know what it is to be me, since I’m not God. But God can know what it’s like to be me, down to the last detail.

Martin then argues that God cannot know the infinities of math on the grounds that “in order to know all mathematical facts, it would be necessary to investigate all mathematical entities and the relations between and among them. But the number of mathematical entities and relations is infinite. So even God could not complete such an investigation,” ibid. 295.

Several problems here:

i) Numbers involve truths of reason, not truths of fact. It’s deductive, not inductive.

ii) What are numbers? On a common Christian view, numbers are constituted by the mind of God.

That’s how you can have actual infinite sets. They inhere in the timeless mind of God.

Far from numbers imposing a limit on divine omniscience, his omniscience is the source of numbers.

God knows all the numbers by virtue of his self-knowledge.

Martin then raises the Cartesian product in objection to divine omniscience. There is no set of all truths. He borrows this argument from Patrick Grimm.

However, Grimm had a debate with Alvin Plantinga over this issue.

http://www.sunysb.edu/philosophy/faculty/pgrim/exchange.html

Decide for yourself.

Martin next says that God’s omniscience is incompatible with the libertarian freedom of his creatures.

A Calvinist would agree.

We resolve the dilemma by denying libertarian freedom.

In this same connection, Martin says that God could have no knowledge of his past and future actions.

But, of course, a timeless God has no past or future. So there’s nothing to be known in that respect.

Martin moves on to paradoxes of omnipotence, beginning with the stone paradox.

Although he mentions this paradox in passing, he doesn’t develop it into an argument against God’s omnipotence.

So I don’t know why he brings it up. Does he think this is a good argument or a bad argument?

Is he just using it as an illustration of other arguments, even if it’s a lousy argument in its own right?

There are a couple of basic problems with the stone paradox:

i) It’s very anthropomorphic, as if God were a weightlifter, raising a cosmic boulder.

So it’s hard to know what the paradox literally amounts to. What does the atheist have in mind? If we strip away the picturesque imagery, is there anything left? Where does the metaphor begin and end?

ii) There is a physical upper limit on the size of rocks.

In addition, to “lift” something implies a spatial frame of reference. Lift something relative to what?

For example, what would it mean for an earthling to lift a rock larger than the earth itself?

God can levitate a rock. But beyond a certain magnitude, the question is physically meaningless.

One of the systematic weaknesses with Martin’s discussion is the identity of the God whose existence he is laboring to disprove.

From a Protestant perspective, all that matters is the way in which the Bible describes divine omnipotence.

So, for example, Martin says, summarizing Swinburne, that “only an embodied being can sit down” (303).

True, but would that disprove the existence of Yahweh?

God cannot do things incompatible with his nature.

Martin also says, summarizing Swinburne, that “it is logically impossible to bring about events in the past” (303).

Assuming that accidental necessity is true, does that disprove the existence of Yahweh?

Does it contradict a power which the Bible predicates of God?

It’s unclear from Martin’s summary if he believes these caveats undercut divine omnipotence.

Summarizing Richard La Croix, Martin says that “an omniscient and powerful being could bring about S, indirectly by causing the beaver to build a dam and flood the valley” (306).

How is this argument a defeater for Biblical theism? How does it undercut or disprove the Scriptural depiction of God’s knowledge and power?

Later, he says things like: “Infinite knowledge would hardly be a property of the perfect explorer” (313); “An omnipotence competitive athlete is not a perfect competitive athlete at all (314).”

How do these truisms have any bearing on the self-revelation of God in Scripture?

Even if his arrows hit their target, he’s aiming at the wrong target.