THE WAGES OF THEISM:
SCEPTICISM AND DEPRAVITY
by
Matthew Morgan Harrop
Thesis
submitted in partial fulfillment
of the requirements for the Degree of
Bachelor of Arts with
Honours in Philosophy
Acadia University
April, 2010
© Copyright by Matthew Morgan Harrop, 2010
This thesis by Matthew Morgan Harrop
is accepted in its present form by the
Department of Philosophy
as satisfying the thesis requirements for the degree of
Bachelor of Arts with Honours
Approved by the Thesis Supervisor
______Dr. Stephen Maitzen Date
Approved by the Head of the Department
______Dr. Paul Abela Date
Approved by the Honours Committee
______Dr. Matthew Durant Date
ii
I, Matthew Morgan Harrop, grant permission to the University Librarian at Acadia University to reproduce, loan or distribute copies of my thesis in microform, paper or electronic formats on a non-profit basis. I however, retain the copyright in my thesis.
______Signature of Author
______Date
iii
Acknowledgements
My supervisor, Dr. Stephen Maitzen, has been a tremendous help throughout the entire thesis writing process. He has improved my work by asking me stimulating questions, providing me with helpful information, and giving me immensely valuable suggestions. He stuck with me the whole time, pushing me whenever I needed motivation and giving me a break whenever I needed time. But Dr. Maitzen has been so much more than a dedicated supervisor, academic advisor, and professor. He has been my friend and mentor since my first week on campus. I am truly grateful for the fact that he has helped me improve not only my thesis, but also my intellect and character.
During the latter stages of the writing process, Dr. Ian Wilks has been invaluable.
His insightful comments and extremely close proofreading have been greatly beneficial— they‘ve helped me to improve the clarity of my arguments and eliminate many unsightly typographical errors. I couldn‘t have asked for a more astute and careful second reader.
In general, the quality of my thesis was dramatically improved by the influence that all of the wonderful philosophy professors at Acadia University have had on my academic career. Dr. Paul Abela, Dr. Marc Ramsay, and Dr. Anna Wilks—and, of course, Dr. Ian Wilks and Dr. Stephen Maitzen—have pushed me to strive ever-harder to reach goals that didn‘t exist for me before I arrived in Wolfville. Their knowledge, personalities, and passion for teaching provided the impetus for many of the ideas that
I‘ve tried to synthesize in my thesis. Additionally, their commitment to living the examined life has regularly provided me with inspiration.
Finally, I would like to thank my parents for their ever-present support and love.
They have given me everything I have ever truly needed. iv
Contents
Acknowledgements iv
Abstract vi
Introduction 1
Chapter One: Heaven, Killing, and Troubles for Ordinary Morality 7 I. Introduction 7 II. Killing According to Ordinary Morality 8 III. Accounts of the Wrongness of Killing 12 IV. Objections and Replies 19 V. Conclusion 27
Chapter Two: From Theism to Psychological Egoism and the Impossibility of Altruism 29 I. Introduction 29 II. Psychological Egoism 30 III. Constraints on Psychological Egoism 31 IV. Eschatological Moral Compensation‘s Implications for Theism 32 V. Heaven and Infinity 37 VI. Conclusion 40
Chapter Three: Theism, Libertarianism, and Another Conflict with Ordinary Morality 42 I. Introduction 42 II. Theism and Free Will 43 III. Theism and Soft Determinism 44 IV. Theism and Libertarianism 48 V. Divine Timelessness: A Possible Solution 50 VI. Another Conflict between Theism and Ordinary Morality 54 VII. Conclusion 56
Chapter Four: From Contextualism and Theism to Scepticism 57 I. Introduction 57 II. The Sceptical Possibility of a Deceptive God 58 III. Divine Deception and Epistemic Contexts 63 IV. Non-Theists‘ Immunity to this Sceptical Threat 65 V. Avoiding Semantic Descent 67 VI. Conclusion 68
Conclusion 70
Bibliography 75
v
Abstract
Historically, philosophers and theologians have argued for what remains a popular position—the view that atheism threatens morality and even knowledge.
Contrary to historical custom and popular sentiment, I argue that morality and knowledge are actually threatened by theism. Throughout my thesis, I use ―theism‖ to refer to the proposition that an omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent God exists. Theists believe in the existence of God, while also commonly believing in the existence of heaven and the notion that we will ultimately be rewarded or punished depending on how laudable or blameworthy our earthly deeds are. I arrive at my conclusion—that theism threatens morality and knowledge—via four distinct, but related, arguments. My first argument attempts to show that theism‘s explanation of the wrongness of killing heaven- bound victims clashes with our ordinary moral intuitions. My second argument tries to force theists to admit that their beliefs imply either the impossibility of altruism and laudable self-sacrifice or the dissolution of our ordinary conception of morality. My third argument is based on the premise that theism implies the existence of libertarian free will.
It concludes that theism once again comes into conflict with our ordinary moral practice and commitments. My fourth argument moves from morality to epistemology by arguing that, given the popular theory of epistemic contextualism, theists cannot accurately claim knowledge of the external-world for themselves or others. By combining these four arguments, I hope to repel both historical and popular criticism of atheists by showing that theists, not atheists, ought to bear the burden of explaining unacceptable moral and epistemological consequences.
vi
Introduction
For thousands of years—from the birth of Judaism to the present day—classical monotheism has offered itself as a foundation for many valuable aspects of the human condition, including morality and knowledge. Presently and historically, theists popularly, and sometimes philosophically, invoke God as the only possible foundation for objective morality.1 Additionally, some of the giants of Enlightenment philosophy argue that acknowledging God‘s existence is necessary in order to avoid universal scepticism. I intend to dispute both of these positions. In contrast to these popular and philosophical views, I‘ll argue that monotheism (or, as I prefer, just ―theism‖) is, in fact, the enemy of morality and knowledge because of its implications for our moral commitments and practice and because it flirts dangerously with scepticism. As such, my project concludes that the ―wages of theism‖ (with apologies to St. Paul) are depravity and scepticism.2
Atheists, people who disbelieve in classical monotheism‘s God, face frequent attacks on their character from theists.3 In contemporary times, atheists are frequently viewed suspiciously due to the popular assumption among theists that atheism implies moral nihilism. In fact, atheists are the most distrusted minority group in the United
States of America, according to survey results published in the American Sociological
Review. When asked to explain this distrust, most respondents opined that only believers
1 By ―objective morality,‖ I‘m referring to moral standards that hold regardless of anyone‘s say-so.
2 Compare Romans 6:23a (KJV): ―For the wages of sin is death...‖.
3 It should be noted that, given my definition of ―theism‖—i.e., as classical monotheism—polytheists, animists, and others who hold similar beliefs are, strictly speaking, atheists (or at least non-theists): they deny the existence of monotheism‘s perfect God.
1 in God are morally trustworthy, implying that atheism is anathema to morality.4 Other, more philosophically sophisticated theists also accuse atheism of being unable to support objective morality. They target atheism by arguing that, while evolution can explain our actions, it cannot conclusively demonstrate that our actions are objectively moral or immoral. One of these sophisticated theists, William Lane Craig, concludes that
if there is no God, then any basis for regarding the herd morality evolved by
Homo sapiens as objectively true seems to have been removed. Some action—
say, rape—may not be biologically or socially advantageous and so in the course
of human evolution has become taboo; but on the atheistic view there‘s nothing
really wrong about raping someone.5
In expressing his view, Craig affirms the popularly held belief that atheism is unable to underwrite the existence of objective morality, despite the fact that evolution and other naturalistic worldviews are able to explain our tendency to believe in objective morality.
Indeed, the sentiment that theism is necessary to uphold objective morality, which remains strong today, has been expressed throughout the centuries. John Locke, one of the previously mentioned giants of the Enlightenment, professes:
4 Penny Edgell, Joseph Gerteis, and Douglas Hartmann. ―Atheists as ‗Other‘: Moral Boundaries and Cultural Membership in American Society,‖ American Sociological Review 71 (2006): 212.
5 William Lane Craig, ―The Kurtz/Craig Debate: Is Goodness without God Good Enough?,‖ in Is Goodness without God Good Enough?: A Debate on Faith, Secularism, and Ethics, edited by Robert K. Garcia and Nathan L. King (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2009), 32.
2
[T]hose are not at all to be tolerated who deny the being of a God. Promises,
covenants and oaths, which are the bonds of human society, can have no hold
upon an atheist. The taking away of God, though but even in thought, dissolves
all.6
In this manner, Locke argues that atheism cannot provide a basis for morality. As such, he concludes that atheism inevitably leads to the collapse of moral obligations and, ultimately, civilization. Thus, it‘s eminently clear that many theists see atheism and morality as mutually exclusive.
In addition to viewing theism as the ally of morality—like many contemporary and historical theists—some theists go even further and argue that theism is also a necessary foundation for knowledge. For example, Descartes uses a geometric example to advance his position:
The fact that an atheist can be ―clearly aware that the three angles of a triangle are
equal to two right angles‖ is something I do not dispute. But I maintain that this
awareness of his is not true knowledge, since no act of awareness that can be
rendered doubtful seems fit to be called knowledge.7
6 John Locke, ―A Letter Concerning Toleration,‖ in The Second Treatise of Government and A Letter Concerning Toleration, edited by J. W. Gough (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1956), 158.
7 Rene Descartes, Mediations on First Philosophy, edited and translated by J. Cottingham (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 103.
3
In essence, Descartes contends that, while they can be aware of truths, atheists cannot be regarded as having true knowledge due their lack of immunity from deception. Descartes concludes that the atheist ―will never be free of this doubt until he acknowledges that
God exists‖ because ―he cannot be certain that he is not being deceived on matters which seem to him to be very evident.‖8 For Descartes, knowledge is impossible unless one acknowledges God‘s existence. Without divine illumination to guide them, atheists can only search in vain for knowledge, forever lost in a dark world threatened by deception.
Other theists, even those who disagree with many aspects of Cartesian philosophy, agree with Descartes on this point. In defending his idealism as the only way to escape scepticism, Berkeley also strives to demonstrate the falsity of atheism. He writes:
For as we have shewn the doctrine of matter or corporeal substance to have been
the main pillar and support of scepticism, so likewise upon the same foundation
have been raised all the impious schemes of atheism and irreligion.... How great a
friend material substance hath been to atheists in all ages were needless to relate.
All their monstrous systems have so visible and necessary a dependence on it that,
when this corner-stone is once removed, the whole fabric cannot choose but fall to
the ground, insomuch that it is no longer worth while, to bestow a particular
consideration on the absurdities of every wretched sect of atheists.9
8 Ibid.
9 George Berkeley, ―Principles of Human Knowledge,‖ in The Empiricists (Toronto: Random House of Canada Limited, 1961), 188.
4
While Berkeley radically departs from Cartesian metaphysics—his monism contradicting
Descartes‘ dualism—the two share the belief that God is necessary to secure human knowledge. Since Berkeley sees atheism as dependent on materialism,10 he dismisses atheists, along with all other materialists, as sceptics, incapable of knowledge due to their mistaken worldview. Fundamentally, these giants of Enlightenment philosophy hold that
God‘s existence alone can provide the foundation necessary for human knowledge.
Unlike Craig, Locke, Descartes, and Berkeley, and contrary to popular opinion, I intend to argue that it‘s theism, rather than atheism, that threatens morality and knowledge. My thesis presents four main arguments that will attempt to establish this conclusion. First, I‘ll argue that theism and its entailments make any theistic explanation of the wrongness of killing heaven-bound victims clash with ordinary morality. Second,
I‘ll contend that theists must either admit the impossibility of altruism and laudable self- sacrifice or reject our ordinary conception of morality if they want to maintain their theistic worldview. Third, I‘ll assert that theism also comes into conflict with ordinary morality because we ordinarily reward and punish people regardless of whether we‘ve satisfied ourselves that they were libertarian-free when they acted. This is pertinent, because theism requires an exhaustive investigation of the causal history of the agent‘s behaviour, which theists show no interest in undertaking; consistent theists, in virtue of being libertarians regarding free will, must satisfy themselves that the action in question wasn‘t causally determined by the prior state of the universe if they are to regard
10 According to Lisa Downing, Berkeley is attacking any metaphysics which posits the existence of material things; thus ―he attacks Cartesian and Lockean dualism, not just the considerably less popular (in Berkeley‘s time) view, held by Hobbes, that only material things exist.‖ Lisa Downing, ―George Berkeley,‖ The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, winter 2008 edition, edited by Edward N. Zalta., italics in original).
5 punishment or reward as just. Fourth, I‘ll turn to epistemology and attempt to show that, given the popular theory of epistemic contextualism, theists are unable to accurately ascribe to themselves or to others external-world knowledge—even of things as basic to their worldview as the fact that the Bible exists.
Importantly, I‘ll be discussing a household variety of theism, rather than a straw man that I‘ve cobbled together in an effort to slander theists of all stripes. The version of theism I‘ll be targeting asserts the existence of heaven, ultimate moral compensation, and libertarian (i.e., contracausal) human freedom because these are all recognizable components of commonly held theistic belief and are frequently espoused by preeminent theologians. Theism would lose much of its lustre, and probably many of its adherents, were it to revoke its promise of a blissful afterlife. Similarly, ultimate moral compensation, at least according to preeminent theologian William Lane Craig, is essential to moral motivation. Without it, admittance to heaven would become morally arbitrary—the quality of our deeds on earth would have no bearing on our eternal destinations. Furthermore, libertarian freedom is essential to theism for various reasons, including maintaining human moral responsibility given the existence of an omniscient
God. Thus, my argument threatens the worldview held by a vast number of theists, not just an invented subspecies of them. In sum, my thesis attempts to burden theism with problematic moral and epistemological consequences in an effort to reverse the tide of criticism, which has historically flowed from theists to atheists.
6
Chapter One
Heaven, Killing, and Troubles for Ordinary Morality
I. Introduction
According to a recent survey, many theists regard atheists as morally unreliable, an attitude that implicitly assumes that only theism can uphold morality.11 This attitude sees theism as the friend of ordinary morality (OM) and non-theistic worldviews like naturalism12 as its enemies, in a context in which sustaining OM is regarded as vital.
From its purportedly crucial role in supporting OM, many theists conclude that theism is the only morally acceptable position. I plan to dispute this conclusion by showing that, contrary to what many theists believe, theism radically diverges from OM. I‘ll show that theism‘s entailments make any theistic explanation of the wrongness of killing heaven- bound victims inconsistent with OM.
Given my frequent use of the term, the reader may be expecting me to define
―ordinary morality,‖ but because of the vagueness inherent in the adjective ―ordinary‖
(and maybe also in the noun ―morality‖), I believe that no sharp definition of the term is possible. Even so, I believe that clear examples exist of principles and obligations that belong to ordinary morality, and I will be pointing out and relying on such examples in this chapter. In this respect, ―ordinary morality‖ is just like many other vague expressions that nevertheless clearly apply in some cases. The fact that ―tall Douglas fir
11 Penny Edgell, et al. ―Atheists as ‗Other,‘‖ 212.
12 I‘m using the term ―naturalism‖ in the moral sense that the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy calls ―moral naturalism‖; it covers moral realist positions ―according to which there are natural, objective moral facts and properties.‖ James Lenman, ―Moral Naturalism,‖ The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, winter 2008 edition, edited by Edward N. Zalta. http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2008/entries/naturalism-moral/. 7 tree‖ lacks a precise definition doesn‘t prevent us from identifying some Douglas fir trees as clearly tall. The fact that ―ordinary morality‖ lacks a precise definition doesn‘t prevent us from seeing that ordinary morality classifies killing an innocent, healthy child as clearly wrong.
Throughout the course of this chapter, I intend to argue that theism either entirely fails to explain the wrongness of killing heaven-bound victims or else improperly locates the wrongness of killing heaven-bound victims. I‘ll discuss a variety of theories of the wrongness of killing, and show that these theories produce accounts of the wrongness of killing that uphold OM only when they are combined with worldviews that disavow the theistic conception of the afterlife. When combined with theism, all of these theories contradict OM in their explanations of the wrongness of killing. In essence, I‘m arguing for the reverse of what theists often believe—that naturalism is the friend of OM and theism is its enemy. The success of my argument would show that the existence of the afterlife posited by theism precludes the existence of any recognizable morality. This is a deeply troubling consequence for theists, since it contradicts the common assumption that theism upholds our ordinary moral system.
II. Killing According to Ordinary Morality
According to OM, the act of killing is, in most cases, one of the most morally abhorrent acts that a person can commit.13 To refine OM‘s position on killing, it is instructive to examine the problems with basic versions of otherwise popular moral theories that have difficulty accounting for the wrongness of killing. Rather than giving
13 Samantha Brennan. ―The Badness of Death, the Wrongness of Killing, and the Moral Importance of Autonomy,‖ Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review 40 (2001): 724.
8 exhaustive accounts of the pros and cons of subtle versions each theory, I will simply give a brief account of why these theories fail to provide an acceptable account on their own of the wrongness of killing heaven-bound victims.
Pure utilitarianism fails to explain adequately the wrongness of killing because it entails that killing is wrong only when it fails to maximize utility.14 A simple example illuminates the error of this view. Judith Thomson‘s ―Transplant Case‖ uncovers our ordinary convictions regarding the impermissibility of killing one to save many. Her example shows that OM holds that it‘s morally unacceptable to harvest the vital organs of one healthy, innocent individual in order to save the lives of four people who require transplants.15 However, pure utilitarianism would judge the harvesting to be morally obligatory, or at least morally permissible, because performing it maximizes utility. In essence, utilitarianism mislocates the wrongness of killing because it pays no special attention to the interests of the innocent victim. Hence, utilitarianism is an unacceptable account of the wrongness of killing for both theists and naturalists alike because it tramples on OM given either of their worldviews.
14 Ibid., 723–725.
15 Judith Jarvis Thomson, The Realm of Rights (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1990), 134–137. 9
B. Deontology
Unlike utilitarianism, which says that killing is wrong only when it fails to maximize utility, deontology categorically condemns many acts of killing.16
Deontologists formulate a rule against killing and argue that killing is wrong (when it‘s wrong) because it violates the rule. However, deontology, just like utilitarianism, also fails because it mislocates the wrongness of killing purely in the violation of a rule, thereby ―leaving the person who is wronged out of the picture entirely.‖ Deontology requires no mention of the victim and the wrong done to them in order to explain the wrongness of killing.17 Furthermore, its categorical condemnation is problematic because there are examples where it‘s not only morally permissible but also arguably obligatory to kill. For example, Fred Feldman posits the case of the vicious serial murderer. In this case, the marksman acts morally if he pulls the trigger and kills the murderer, since the murderer will inevitably take the lives of additional innocent victims if he doesn‘t.18 So, deontology contradicts OM by categorically eliminating the possibility of just acts of killing.
Even if we restrict the deontological rule so that it prohibits the killing of innocents in particular, OM still seems to allow exceptions to that rule. Suppose that
16 I say ―many acts of killing‖ because some forms of deontology permit killing in certain cases. For example, Kant, the most influential deontologist in history, required the death penalty for murder. Kant writes: ―But whoever has committed murder, must die.... However many they may be who have committed a murder, or have even commanded it, or acted as art and part in it, they ought all to suffer death.‖ Immanuel Kant, The Science of Right (Stillwell: Digireads.com Publishing, 2005), 70–71. So, given Kant‘s formulation, we can‘t assume that most (or all) acts of killing are condemned by deontology, since it‘s possible that the number of murderers put to death could equal the number slain victims. Indeed, if two (or more) people can be responsible for murdering one victim, then the number of murderers put to death could exceed the number of slain victims.
17 Brennan, ―Badness of Death,‖ 725.
18 Fred Feldman, Confrontations with the Reaper: A Philosophical Study of the Nature and Value of Death (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), 170–171. 10
Svein has been kidnapped and drugged so that he loses conscious control of his actions, and like a zombie he is threatening you with deadly force; if the only way to save your own life is to kill the morally innocent Svein, then OM permits you to kill him in self- defence. Moreover, for the sake of efficient travel and commerce, traffic planners set highway speed limits higher than they would if they were concerned with preventing the killing of all innocent people; they set relatively high limits in the full knowledge that innocent (although unidentified) people will be killed who wouldn‘t be killed if lower limits were in place. This utilitarian aspect to our ordinary moral practice further illustrates that pure deontology is an unacceptable account of the wrongness of killing for both theists and naturalists because it contradicts OM given either of their worldviews.
C. Utilitarian and Deontological Components of Ordinary Morality
As I‘ve shown, our ordinary moral intuitions resist both pure utilitarianism and pure deontology as explanations of the wrongness of killing. So, in order to uphold OM, neither naturalists nor theists are able to appeal solely to utilitarianism or deontology as their account of the wrongness of killing. Still, these theories are far from useless.
There‘s a component of both in OM‘s attitude toward the wrongness of killing.
Utilitarianism correctly points out that, in the majority of cases, murder decreases the net amount of utility in the world. Similarly, deontology makes sense of some of our deeply felt, almost visceral reactions to killing, such as exclamations invoking non- consequentialist reasons, like ―Bill was an innocent human being!‖ These theories are also instructive because their shortcomings teach us that a successful account of the
11 wrongness of killing must account for the importance of the harm and injustice done to the victim.
III. Accounts of the Wrongness of Killing
Fortunately, utilitarianism and deontology are not the only moral theories that have attempted to account for the wrongness of killing. Other, more nuanced views attempt to preserve the more subtle judgements that OM requires. Because deontology and utilitarianism correctly account for many cases while failing to account for others, philosophers have sought to establish theories that account for these subtleties and avoid conflicts with OM. I will present and examine some of these views. Importantly, these theories, which are quite promising given naturalism, have disastrous implications given theism.
A. Harm-to-the-Victim Accounts
Harm-to-the-Victim (HV) accounts of the wrongness of killing attempt to rectify the clash between theoretical accounts of the wrongness of killing and OM by positing that ―what makes killing wrong (when it is wrong) must be something about the harm it does to the victim.‖19 Our ordinary moral convictions give credence to this type of theory. R. E. Ewin gives voice to this sentiment when he claims that OM, or the
―Common Moral Consciousness[,] is quite clear that the reason why it is wrong to kill somebody has something to do with him,‖ not with anyone else.20 Don Marquis‘s theory
19 Feldman, Confrontations with the Reaper, 168.
20 R. E. Ewin, ―What is Wrong with Killing People?,‖ Philosophical Quarterly 22 (1972): 126.
12 expands on this view. He states that the ―loss of one‘s life deprives one of all the experiences, activities, projects, and enjoyments that would otherwise have constituted one‘s future‖ and concludes that ―killing someone is wrong, primarily because the killing inflicts (one of) the greatest possible losses on the victim.‖21 Philosophers who espouse
HV theories give voice to the commonsense idea that a successful account of the wrongness of killing must account for much of the wrongness of killing in terms of the harm imposed on the victim. These accounts are intuitive because they locate the wrongness of killing in precisely the same location as we normally do in everyday life.
Of course, HV theories aren‘t without their detractors. Feldman criticizes them because they ―utterly ignore effects on third parties. In some cases, harm to the victim must be weighed against benefits and harms to others.‖22 Feldman is right: sometimes we do consider effects on third parties to be germane to the successful explanation of the wrongness of certain acts of killing. His example of the vicious serial murderer shows that sometimes the moral importance of the benefits and harms to others can outweigh the wrongness of harming the victim. Through this example, he shows that it is sometimes morally obligatory to kill despite the harm imposed on the victim.23
Although Feldman‘s critique does call into question some of the principles of HV accounts, it shows only that simplistic versions of these accounts are unsound. We shouldn‘t neglect HV accounts because there is a strong possibility that these accounts may eventually provide an answer to objections like Feldman‘s vicious serial murderer case (possibly by taking into account considerations like autonomy or free will). So,
21 Don Marquis, ―Why Abortion is Immoral,‖ The Journal of Philosophy 86 (1989): 189.
22 Feldman, Confrontations with the Reaper, 171–172.
23 Ibid., 170–171. 13 while keeping in mind the fact that HV accounts are not without problems, let‘s examine the implications that the heaven doctrine has on these accounts. Since the ability of HV theories to account for some complicated cases of killing is uncertain, I will concern myself only with relatively simple cases while keeping in mind that complicated cases must be considered in the formulation of precise moral theories.
Because, as their name makes obvious, harm-to-the-victim accounts base their explanation of the wrongness of killing (when it is wrong) on the harm inflicted on the victim, they run into great difficulties when they are combined with the theistic view of a heavenly afterlife. In fact, they are incompatible with the doctrine of heaven because of the outrageous results they produce when applied to the killing of heaven-bound victims.
To say that painlessly killing someone who, upon death, is immediately transported to paradise for eternity harms that person is to misrepresent the meaning of the term
―harm.‖ The heaven-bound person (I refuse to call him or her a ―victim‖ because to do so would be to misuse the word) in this example doesn‘t suffer physical pain, the loss of a promising future, or even the loss of life.24 The eternal ecstasy of heaven swamps any possible trauma or loss that could befall any human on earth. So HV accounts of the wrongness of killing contradict OM even in relatively simple cases if we assume that killing someone sends him or her to heaven.
Naturalism does not share theism‘s problems concerning HV accounts. By rejecting the theistic conception of the afterlife, naturalists are able to maintain that the person who was killed was, in the typical case, harmed and was, in fact, a victim. So, on
24 The victim might lose his or her worldly life, but, given the theistic conception of the afterlife, people continue to live in heaven.
14
HV accounts of the wrongness of morality, naturalism is able to accommodate OM whereas theism isn‘t.
B. Bradley’s Difference-Making Principle
Though not specifically an account of the wrongness of killing, Ben Bradley‘s
Difference-Making Principle is essentially a type of HV theory when it is applied to acts of killing. Bradley argues that ―death is typically bad for us in virtue of what it takes away from us.‖25 His theory entails that
when death takes a good life from its victim, that person‘s death is bad.
Conversely, it entails that when death keeps a person from living a bad life, it is
good for that person. It also gives us an extent to which death is good or bad: the
more of a good life it takes away, the worse it is; the more of a bad life it takes
away, the better it is.26
Bradley‘s account of death‘s badness coincides rather closely with our ordinary feelings about death. It accounts for our apprehension toward (or fear of) death by pointing out that death often deprives its victims of goods that they otherwise would have enjoyed.27
Theists can accept Bradley‘s general principles, but to do so they ought to ―draw different
25 Bradley, Well-Being and Death (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 47–50. Bradley defends this view using his ―Difference-Making Principle‖ which holds that ―the value of even E, for person S, at world w, relative to similarity relation R = the intrinsic value of w for S, minus the intrinsic value for S of the most R-similar world to w where E does not occur.‖
26 Ibid., 50.
27 Epicureans are an exception to this rule. I‘ll discuss the implications of their view below.
15 conclusions from those principles. While ... the principles entail that death is usually very bad for people, those who believe in afterlives might think the opposite.‖28
Bradley‘s account is problematic for theists because it entails that those who believe themselves to be destined for heaven are irrational if they fear death.29 His view also entails that death is good for all heaven-bound people because our worldly lives are pitiful when compared to life on the heavenly plane.
More importantly, however, it raises difficult questions about the doctrine of heaven‘s implications for the wrongness of killing. Bradley muses about these questions in the introduction to Well-Being and Death and wonders why, given the doctrine of heaven,
is it so seriously wrong to kill people? In fact, why is it not frequently obligatory
to kill people? If someone is a good person destined for heaven, it would seem
best for that person if he were killed, painlessly, as soon as possible, since every
day spent on earth is a day when that person is deprived of the infinite bliss of the
afterlife. 30
28 Bradley, Well-Being, xvii.
29 Some theists actually appear to hold this belief. Richard Dawkins suggests that Cardinal Basil Hume was one of them. However, the vast majority of theists don‘t hold this belief. Instead, their actions suggest that they fear death, and their words suggest that they believe that death is usually very bad for people. Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co, 2008), 356.
30 Bradley, Well-Being, xvi–ii. In a footnote to these concerns, he seems to back off slightly: ―Of course, according to the worldview in question, no matter when the person died, he would get the same amount of afterlife bliss. This raises some tricky issues about infinite well-being that mirror problems about infinite utility faced by utilitarians.‖ He points to ―Infinite Value and Finitely Additive Value Theory‖ by Vallentyne and Kagan to support this weaker stance. However, it doesn‘t seem clear that Vallentyne and Kagan‘s article is relevant to this issue, since their paper assumes that ―that the amount of goodness at each location is finite (so that the infinite goodness comes from the infinite number of locations and not from the values at the locations),‖ while it seems plausible that heaven could count as a location in which goodness was valued infinitely. Furthermore, my discussion in Chapter 2 brings up Rucker‘s point about the failure 16
It‘s clear, then, that when coupled with theism‘s afterlife, Bradley‘s view entails that the wrongness of killing cannot be located in the harm done to the victim if the victim is heaven-bound. But, if you ever asked people why the murder of an innocent child was wrong they would, almost invariably, tell you that it was wrong in large part because it harmed the child. So, OM locates the wrongness of killing precisely where theism is unable to, given Bradley‘s account.
C. Justicized Act Utilitarianism
Fred Feldman presents another plausible account of the wrongness of killing—
Justicized Act Utlitarianism (JAU). He locates the wrongness of killing in the injustice inherently associated with the act. He argues that
killing another person is all in morally wrong (when it is wrong) because it makes
the world worse; and such killings make the world worse primarily because they
unjustly deprive their victims of intrinsic goods that they would have enjoyed if
they had not been killed.31
JAU accounts for the wrongness of killing in terms of a notion of justice that Feldman bases on the notion of desert—it ―is measured by appeal to the extent to which people get
of commutativity in adding to transfinite ordinals to call into question this view. Peter Vallentyne and Shelly Kagan, ―Infinite Value and Finitely Additive Value Theory,‖ The Journal of Philosophy 94 (1997): 5–26.
31 Feldman, Confrontations with the Reaper, 172.
17 the other intrinsic goods (such as, perhaps, pleasure and life) that they deserve.‖32 Thus, according to Feldman, killing is wrong (when it‘s wrong) because it unfairly prevents victims from enjoying life in the multitude of ways that they would have were they not killed. Simply put, killing an innocent victim is wrong because it is unjust.
Just like the two preceding accounts, Feldman‘s theory is plausible for naturalists, but it generates implausible results when combined with the theistic worldview. Given naturalism, Feldman‘s account successfully coheres with OM in a variety of complicated cases that trip up many competing accounts of the wrongness of killing. However, given theism, Feldman‘s account diverges from OM on the very simplest case that Feldman presents, the case of the popular store clerk. Feldman‘s account concludes that it‘s wrong to kill the popular store clerk because doing so would deprive him of the pleasure that he deserves and give the holdup man pleasure that he doesn‘t deserve.33 However, given theism, we get the opposite result. Not only does the popular store clerk get the pleasure that he deserves in heaven, but the holdup man gets what he deserves in being denied the benefits of heaven (or perhaps even being sent to hell).
32 Ibid. Although Feldman describes his view in more detail, I‘ll stick to the bare-bones version. The more complicated version, which can be found on pages 185–186 of the same volume, ―assigns normative statuses to acts in the following way. First, we must consider all the alternatives to the given act. What else could the agent have done instead? For each alternative, we must consider how much of the primary intrinsic goods (whatever they may be) each person would get if it were performed. We must compare this amount with the amount of primary intrinsic goods that people would in that case deserve, so as to determine how closely each person‘s receipt level approximates his desert level. Then, for each alternative, we must find the sum that indicates the overall quality of the fit between desert levels and receipt levels in that outcomes. That is the universal justice level of that outcome. According to JAU, an act is morally right if no alternative has a greater universal justice level.‖
33 Ibid., 164–66.
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IV. Objections and Replies
Theists might object to my argument by claiming that actions acquire their moral status in virtue of their relation to God‘s commands. Since God commanded ―Thou shalt not kill,‖ theists can therefore conclude that killing is wrong simply because it disobeys
God‘s command. To launch this objection would be to accept divine command theory
(DCT).
Unfortunately for theists, to accept DCT is to concede the conclusion of my argument because DCT is fundamentally incompatible with OM. DCT implies that it would be morally obligatory for us to kill an innocent child if God were to command it, as was the case when he commanded Abraham to kill Isaac (Genesis 22:2). OM holds that killing innocents is nearly universally morally impermissible.34 The fact that we don‘t regard a criminal‘s appeal to received divine commands as an acceptable justification for his immorality makes our ordinary approach to DCT apparent. So, in order to avoid a conflict with OM, theists must reject DCT.35
B. Brennan and Autonomy
Samantha Brennan‘s contention that a modified HV account can preserve the wrongness of killing a heaven-bound person presents a challenge to my argument.
34 I‘m qualifying this proposition with the word ―nearly‖ because utilitarian concerns may make some moral judgements difficult. Consider, for example, the dilemma you would face if you had to choose to kill one innocent person to save the lives of a hundred (or a million, a billion, etc.) other innocent people. OM seems to suggest that, at a certain point, it becomes morally obligatory to kill the one to save the many.
35 Subjectivism, cultural relativism, nihilism and the like aren‘t available moral options for theists, since theism demands an objective, non-nihilistic moral framework.
19
Specifically, she argues that killing is wrong because it violates the victim‘s autonomy.
She goes on to remark that death, and possibly killing too, is bad because it prevents the victim from making autonomous choices in the future. For Brennan, a world that involves choice and the freedom to choose to continue one‘s life or not as one sees fit is better than a world in which this choice doesn‘t exist. Her view, if correct, preserves the wrongness of killing a heaven-bound person since killing an unwilling person violates his autonomy no matter where the killing sends him. As such, killing is wrong on Brennan‘s account because it deprives the victim of his choice to continue living or not and, if its importance applies to the wrongness of killing as well as the badness of death, his ability to exercise his autonomy in the future.36
Despite its promise, Brennan‘s account fails because it overemphasizes the importance of autonomy in OM‘s explanation of the wrongness of killing. We typically regard killing babies and small children as seriously wrong—in fact, we regard it as worse, in many cases, than killing adults—even when the babies and small children in question aren‘t autonomous.37 Brennan might respond that killing a child is worse than killing an adult because the child is deprived of more autonomy (on average) than the adult is.
However, basing the wrongness of killing on future contingencies has damning consequences for her theory. Killing a non-autonomous youngster comes out as morally wrong on Brennan‘s view only if that youngster would have enjoyed autonomy in their future. But this doesn‘t represent what we actually think about killing small children.
36 Brennan, ―Badness of Death,‖ 724–735.
37 It‘s possible that our ordinary moral attitude is confused in this respect. However, that isn‘t relevant to this chapter, since I take OM for granted.
20
We regard the killing of non-autonomous children as wrong in almost every conceivable case, despite the fact that a not-insignificant number of these children wouldn‘t have enjoyed autonomy in their future were they not killed. Furthermore, Brennan‘s view makes killing people who would have enjoyed a great deal of autonomy were they not killed worse than killing people who would have enjoyed a only limited amount of autonomy. It also implies that killing non-autonomous infants is less wrong than killing autonomous children if the incidence of infant mortality increases to the point that the expected life span of a non-autonomous one-year-old is less than that of an autonomous five-year-old.38 Clearly, these bizarre implications clash with OM. Additionally, we tend to rank some violations of autonomy as worse than others, and a violation of autonomy that sends you to paradise might be for that reason much less wrong than a violation of autonomy that ends your existence.39 As such, Brennan‘s account of the wrongness of killing conflicts with OM once again because OM regards killing as among the worst wrongs in almost every case.
C. The Conflation Objection
Theists might object to my argument by asserting that I‘ve conflated OM and naturalism, thereby skewing the argument in favour of the naturalist. But I haven‘t.
Naturalism and OM tend to come apart in controversial cases. Indeed, OM has yet to produce a verdict for controversial cases such as abortion, infanticide, and euthanasia
38 The precise ages of the children don‘t matter. The example merely relies on the fact that the younger, non-autonomous child has a lower life expectancy than the older, autonomous child.
39 Kant wouldn‘t approve of our doing so, but this is unimportant once again since my argument assumes OM (something that Kant‘s moral theory notoriously doesn‘t assume).
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(which is precisely why such cases are called ―controversial‖), whereas theism‘s position on these matters is much more settled.40 All of that said, it‘s important to remember that theism, not naturalism, bears the burden of fitting snugly with OM because theists often invoke God as the only firm foundation for OM. This is not to say that theists will always bear this burden, for the dialectical situation may someday change. Right now, however, it‘s theists who frequently accuse atheists of moral unreliability.41 Atheists might eventually begin to level an analogous charge against theists. At that point, naturalism may have to attend to conflicts with OM.42
D. Aquinas
Perhaps the most salient objection to my argument comes from St. Thomas
Aquinas. In his Summa Theologiae, Aquinas considers an objection to theism similar to the one I‘ve levelled:
Further, among those sins that are committed against one‘s neighbor, the more
grievous seem to be those whereby a more grievous injury is inflicted on the
person sinned against. Now to be killed is a greater injury to a sinful than to an
innocent person, because the latter, by death, passes forthwith from the
unhappiness of this life to the glory of heaven. Since then it is lawful in certain
40 I don‘t think that this current state of affairs can be taken as evidence of a clash between OM and theism, however, since OM might eventually come to dovetail with theism in its stance on these issues.
41 Penny Edgell, et al. ―Atheists as ‗Other,‘‖ 212.
42 Obviously any ethical theory or applied ethical position has to choose whether to coincide with OM or to reject OM wherever OM has spoken clearly.
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cases to kill a sinful man, much more is it lawful to slay an innocent or a righteous
person.43
Aquinas‘s interlocutor captures the gist of my argument by asserting that there are no grounds on which killing a heaven-bound person can accurately be considered worse than killing a sinful person, given a theistic worldview. The interlocutor explains that killing a heaven-bound person fails to inflict a grievous injury on that person, whereas killing a sinful person is much worse, because the victim will not meet the glory of heaven upon death.
Aquinas goes on to give four primary rebuttals to the basic line that my argument takes. He writes:
Wherefore he who kills a just man, sins more grievously than he who slays a
sinful man: first, because he injures one whom he should love more, and so acts
more in opposition to charity: secondly, because he inflicts an injury on a man
who is less deserving of one, and so acts more in opposition to justice: thirdly,
because he deprives the community of a greater good: fourthly, because he
despises God more, according to Luke 10:16, ―He that despiseth you despiseth
Me.‖44
43 St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae: Latin text, English translation, Introduction, Notes, Appendices, and Glossary, edited by Marcus Lefebure (London and New York: Blackfriars and McGraw- Hill, 1975), 63–79.
44 Ibid.
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Aquinas‘s rebuttals are primarily concerned with the notions of love, injury, desert, injustice, and piety. Each rebuttal attempts to give a reason that explains how killing a heaven-bound person is worse than killing a non-heaven-bound person. His first rebuttal contends that it‘s worse because it‘s more greatly opposed to charity. His second rebuttal appeals to its greater opposition to justice. His third rebuttal holds that it‘s worse because it‘s more damaging to the community. Finally, his fourth rebuttal asserts that it‘s more offensive to God.
Unfortunately for theists, none of the four rebuttals that Aquinas gives are convincing. His first rebuttal fails for two reasons and his second rebuttal fails in one important way. First, his claim we ought to love some people more than we love others is inconsistent with the extremely influential scripture in Matthew 5:44 that demands universal love: ―But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you.‖ His rebuttal violates this scriptural demand for universal love because it suggests that we ought to love certain types of people more than others. Second, and more importantly, Aquinas begs the question by saying that killing a heaven-bound person
―injures‖ him or her. The overwhelming ecstasy of heaven produces a benefit that swamps any worldly injury; if it‘s an injury at all, it‘s a pinprick that sends the person to paradise. Similarly, the second rebuttal also fails because of Aquinas‘s mistaken use of the word ―injury.‖ No net harm is being inflicted upon the person who is being killed, since the person is bound for the delights of paradise.45
45 Aquinas‘s second rebuttal might also fail because it misconstrues retributivism. Aquinas claims that the heaven-bound person is less deserving of an injury than a sinful person. While, given retributivism, that is true, in this case the heaven-bound person actually is getting his or her just deserts: a trip to the eternal bliss of heaven. Although I think this is a good objection to Aquinas‘s second rebuttal, I have left it out of the 24
Furthermore, his third and fourth rebuttals also fail to dovetail with OM. While
OM locates the wrongness of the killing in its depriving the person of a worthwhile future existence on Earth, Aquinas instead implausibly locates the wrongness of killing in its effects on the person‘s community. In similar fashion, his fourth rebuttal diverges from
OM by locating the killing‘s wrongness in its offending or showing contempt for God rather than the harm it causes the victim. These rebuttals both diverge from OM because explaining the wrongness of killing without reference to the victim misplaces the wrongness of the act. Instead of properly locating the wrongness of the act in the harm done to the victim, Aquinas mistakenly explains the harm solely in terms of the harm done to the community and later in terms of the violation of God‘s prerogatives.
Not only are Aquinas‘s rebuttals individually implausible; they‘re also implausible in sum, since they form a pluralistic account of the wrongness of killing.
While pluralistic accounts are by no means necessarily false, recent attempts to explain the wrongness of killing generally attempt to discover one defining feature that accounts for the wrongness of killing rather than several. OM seems better suited to a simpler account of the primary wrongness of killing. According to Occam‘s Razor, simpler explanations are preferable to more complicated explanations, all else equal. Pluralistic explanations of the wrongness of killing, which contend that all killing is A-or-B, are less simple than monistic accounts that suggest that the primary wrongness of killing must consist in the fact that all killing is A. It seems reasonable to assign the burden of proof to those who wish to say that the essence of wrongful killing, rather than being homogeneous, is heterogeneous: A-or-B, where A and B have nothing deeper in main text because some theists might object that no one ever deserves heaven, since heaven is always a gracious, undeserved gift from God. But, regardless of whether this additional reply to Aquinas succeeds, theists have to account for Aquinas‘s mistaken use of the word ―injury‖ in his second rebuttal. 25 common. Just as we tend to prefer simpler explanations over more complicated explanations, we typically favour claims that provide a simple definition of a thing‘s essence over those that provide an irreducibly complex definition of a thing‘s essence.
E. Epicureanism
My argument can also be objected to on Epicurean grounds. Someone might argue that the wrongness of killing can never be located in the harm done to the victim because death doesn‘t harm the victim. Epicurus‘s famous take on death includes the following excerpt:
So death, the most terrifying of ills, is nothing to us, since so long as we exist
death is not with us; but when death comes, then we do not exist. It does not then
concern either the living or the dead, since for the former it is not, and the latter
are no more.46
Essentially, Epicurus argues that there is no moment in which death is bad for a person because once one is dead one no longer exists. Though this objection has been widely discussed, it hasn‘t met with widespread acceptance.
It is important to note that, because Epicureanism conflicts with OM‘s explanation of the wrongness of killing, it is an unattractive option for theists and naturalists alike. Additionally, Epicureanism regarding death has been criticized because
46 Epicurus, ―Letter to Menoeceus,‖ in The Stoic and Epicurean Philosophers, edited by C. Bailey and translated by Whitney J. Oates (New York: The Modern Library, 1940), 30–34.
26 it fails to account for the deprivation imposed by death.47 Feldman objects to Epicurus on the grounds that death ―is bad (when it is bad) because it deprives us of the intrinsic value we would have enjoyed if it had not taken place.‖48 I think that Feldman‘s argument, that death is bad because it deprives its victims of a specific class of future goods, has significant merit.
However, even if Epicureanism regarding death is correct, naturalists are left relatively unscathed compared to theists. If death is nothing to us, then the theistic conception of the afterlife must be entirely rejected. Since theists often appeal to the rewards of heaven as reason to perform good acts and refrain from bad acts, theists are in trouble if Epicureanism regarding death is correct. In contrast, rather than having to entirely rethink their outlook on life, naturalists would merely have to tinker their accounts of the wrongness of killing. They might do this by giving more weight to the pain of the dying process, the notion of justice, and the harm done to the friends and family of the victim. While this would still be problematic to naturalists, it would be simple compared to the task facing theists. Traditional theism would be significantly shaken if it were forced to give up its commitment to the afterlife.
V. Conclusion
By examining OM‘s convictions regarding the morality of killing, I‘ve shown that several prominent theories correctly diagnose the wrongness of killing (when it is wrong) given naturalism, but fail terribly to cohere with OM given theism. Fundamentally, naturalism respects OM with regard to the wrongness of killing while theism fails to.
47 Feldman, Confrontations with the Reaper, 139–145.
48 Ibid., 140. 27
This is deeply problematic for theists, because they often claim that only theism can preserve OM and that heaven provides a necessary and powerful incentive to act morally.
Thus, theism is in trouble because of its relative inability to provide an account of the wrongness of killing that dovetails with OM. Naturalism is much closer to providing an acceptable solution.
It‘s possible that theists might bite the bullet and concede that theism isn‘t consistent with OM. Hebraic scripture seems to suggest this approach by unabashedly mislocating the wrongness of actions. Although he almost certainly isn‘t attempting to defend my line, Louis Pojman gives a fine example of this mislocation: ―David, after committing adultery with Bathsheba and arranging for the death of her husband, Uriah, can say to God without being misunderstood, ‗Against Thee only have I sinned.‘‖49
However, it seems unlikely that most theists would accept this approach, since doing so admits that theism isn‘t able to uphold our widely accepted system of OM. Instead, it seems more likely that theists will continue to strive to provide an acceptable account of the wrongness of killing. This isn‘t the only aspect of morality that theism has trouble accounting for, however; theistic belief makes it impossible to act altruistically, as I will argue in the following chapter.
49 Louis P. Pojman, ―Religion and Ethics,‖ in Philosophy of Religion (Boston: McGraw-Hill, 2000), 155. Pojman is quoting Psalm 51.
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Chapter Two
From Theism to Psychological Egoism and the Impossibility of Altruism
I. Introduction
Self-sacrificial altruistic actions (SSAAs) are, in many ways, the holy grail of morality. These actions are morally laudable and, in virtue of their altruistic nature, meaningful.50 Many people, including atheists and theists alike, consider SSAAs to be the epitome of moral goodness. As such, these people see many of the actions of people like Mahatma Gandhi as manifestations of this pinnacle of morality—SSAAs aimed at achieving the greater good. They view people who regularly perform SSAAs as moral heroes, reverently admiring the ability of people like Gandhi to transcend their own needs and put themselves in harm‘s way in order to assist others. In essence, SSAAs are supererogatory: though morally laudable, one‘s performance of them is always beyond the call of duty.
Interestingly, theists are unable to perform SSAAs because their motivation can always be described accurately in egoistic terms. Egoistic descriptions of theists are accurate due to theists‘ commonly held belief that our laudable actions on earth will ultimately be rewarded, whereas our blameworthy actions, in contrast, will ultimately be punished. This belief makes it impossible for consistent theists to perform laudable,
50 The word ―laudable‖ is extremely important here. As Donald C. Hubin points out, from the perspective of theism ―Sinning is a paradigmatic act of self-sacrifice, in the sense of being an action through which one diminishes one‘s overall, long-term well-being for some other purpose—perhaps immediate gratification or gaining power. But it is not a morally laudable act of self-sacrifice; it is not morally justified or morally praiseworthy.‖ I use the term ―altruism‖ to convey the fact that, like Hubin, I will be talking about morally laudable self-sacrificial acts. Donald C. Hubin, ―Empty and Ultimately Meaningless Gestures?,‖ in Is Goodness without God Good Enough?: A Debate on Faith, Secularism, and Ethics, edited by Robert K. Garcia and Nathan L. King (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2009), 136. 29 altruistic acts. I argue that theists must either accept this unflattering depiction of themselves or they must give up an extremely influential component of their worldview and accept the extremely uncomfortable consequence that God punishes and rewards individuals for merely arbitrary reasons. The only other available option for theists is to renounce their theistic worldview altogether.
II. Psychological Egoism
Indeed, SSAAs and altruistic actions in general are so highly esteemed that some philosophers and psychologists question whether truly altruistic actions are even possible.51 Despite the prevalence of what many people take to be evidence of altruistic acts and the intentional performance of SSAAs, psychological egoists believe that humans are incapable of acting truly altruistically.52 Thomas Hobbes describes what can be understood as a version of this position in Leviathan, where he writes:
For no man giveth but with intention of good to himself, because gift is voluntary;
and of all voluntary acts, the object is to every man his own good; of which, if
men see [that] they shall be frustrated, there will be no beginning of benevolence
51 Mark Mercer calls the position that answers this question negatively ―strong psychological egoism‖ in order to differentiate the view from his own position, which argues that ―anything an agent does intentionally, that agent does at least expecting thereby to realize one of her self-regarding ends.‖ Mark Mercer, ―In Defence of Weak Psychological Egoism,‖ Erkenntnis: An International Journal of Analytic Philosophy 55 (2001): 217, italics in original.
52 Michael Anthony Slote, ―An Empirical Basis for Psychological Egoism,‖ Journal of Philosophy 61 (1964): 230–237. Slote takes psychological egoism or, more specifically, what he calls ―non-altruism‖ to mean ―that no human act is ever unselfish.‖
30
or trust, nor consequently of mutual help, nor of reconciliation of one man to
another.53
Hobbes is expressing a judgement common to psychological egoists: that self-interest ultimately motivates every deliberate human action. Essentially, psychological egoists like Hobbes argue that all of our actions are ultimately motivated by the desire to produce a net benefit for ourselves. Hobbes stresses that interpersonal relationships are based on this principle and that these relationships will break down whenever one of the parties realizes that the intended goal of their actions will be frustrated. For example, psychological egoists argue that mothers don‘t perform genuine SSAAs when they devote themselves to their children. Instead, psychological egoism claims that mothers devote themselves to their children due to the immensely rewarding satisfaction that doing so affords them. Psychological egoism denies the existence of altruism by positing that self-interest fundamentally motivates every human action.
III. Constraints on Psychological Egoism
Despite its theoretical similarities with economics, psychological egoism isn‘t intuitive. It rules out the possibility that parents could sacrifice their own lives for their children because doing so is the morally laudable, albeit supererogatory, thing to do.
Psychological egoism is committed to claiming that a father sacrifices his own life for his
53 Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, edited by A. P. Martinich (Peterborough: Broadview Press, 2002), 113. Whether Hobbes was endorsing psychological egoism is, for the purposes of this paper, irrelevant. Additionally, I am aware that the meaning Hobbes wanted to attach to the verb ―giveth‖ is debateable. For the purposes of this paper, I‘m interpreting ―giveth‖ to mean ―perform actions that, at least initially, reduce one‘s well-being.‖
31 child only because failing to do so would make the rest of his life so unbearable that he would find living worse than dying. In other words, the father, according to psychological egoism, is merely acting out of a fear of pain.54 However, this explanation runs contrary to our normal conception of the father‘s motivation. Indeed, psychological egoism rules out altruism as the explanation for the actions of anyone who accepts death in order to benefit others. Similarly, psychological egoism makes it impossible to account in altruistic terms for the actions of a soldier who falls on a live grenade in order to save her beloved comrades.55 Psychological egoism produces the implausible result that her actions are motivated solely by selfishness. These familiar examples call into question psychological egoism‘s plausibility.
IV. Eschatological Moral Compensation’s Implications for Theism
While we have good reason to doubt psychological egoism‘s applicability to humanity in general, psychological egoism is useful in a limited sense: it describes people who hold certain beliefs.56 One‘s belief system affects one‘s ability to perform altruistic actions. Specifically, I will argue that belief in Eschatological Moral Compensation
(EMC) necessarily makes the believer act only egoistically. Donald C. Hubin describes
54 This is the most plausible option from the list that C. D. Broad gives of ―all the kinds of desire that [he] can think of which might reasonably be called ‗egoistic‘ in one sense or another.‖ Although I chose to focus on this particular option, it isn‘t essential to my argument; replacing it with any other type of egoistic desire maintains the validity of my argument. C. D. Broad, ―Egoism as a Theory of Human Motives,‖ in Ethics and the History of Philosophy (London: Routledge, 1952), 219.
55 Although the phrase ―sacrifices her life‖ is more idiomatic than the phrase ―accepts death,‖ psychological egoism makes it impossible to describe someone like the soldier as making a sacrifice, since she‘s choosing death in order to benefit herself by mitigating her own suffering.
56 I describe psychological egoism as ―useful in a limited sense‖ rather than ―correct in a limited sense‖ because psychological egoism is a generalization allegedly applying to all human beings. Thus, for psychological egoism to be true it has to be correct in a universal sense; it‘s false if there are any exceptions to it.
32
EMC as ―the thesis that, for each individual, divine intervention in an afterlife will ensure that there is perfect moral compensation.‖57 Importantly, belief in EMC is common amongst theists:
The desire to see justice prevail in the world is a common one and the belief that
it must, in the end, do so, is much easier to maintain if one accepts the existence
of a cosmic enforcer of morality.58
It is understandable that belief in EMC is common, since the thought of ultimate moral compensation (or comeuppance) is a comforting one. Furthermore, theistic belief is hospitable to EMC, since it posits the existence of a being easily powerful enough to uphold EMC. However, belief in EMC isn‘t popular only amongst ordinary believers.
It‘s also endorsed by preeminent theologians, including William Lane Craig. Craig embraces EMC in his statement that
On the theistic view, God holds all persons morally accountable for their actions.
Evil and wrong will be punished; righteousness will be vindicated. Despite the
inequalities of this life, in the end the scales of God‘s justice will be balanced.59
57 Hubin, ―Ultimately Meaningless Gestures?,‖ 135.
58 Ibid., 133–4, italics in original.
59 Craig, ―Kurtz/Craig Debate,‖ 31.
33
This belief—that a divine arbiter will inevitably balance the universal scales of justice— makes it possible to describe all theistic actions in egoistic terms. In virtue of their belief in EMC, theists believe that their morally good actions will be rewarded, and that their morally bad actions will be punished, in either this life or the next.60 Thus, whenever theists who believe in EMC perform good actions or avoid performing bad actions, they are acting in just the manner that psychological egoism describes.
Although the incentive of heavenly bliss and the disincentive of hellfire (or simply the lack of heavenly bliss) might be sufficient to motivate the performance of morally good actions and the avoidance of the performance of morally bad actions in some cases,61 the belief in EMC must ultimately motivate theists‘ actions in order for psychological egoism to describe them accurately. But eternal reward and punishment are extremely important as both explicit and implicit aspects of theism, and theism frequently indoctrinates its followers with messages of this sort. For example, some theistic parents may well encourage their children to act morally by invoking the promise of heavenly rewards for good behaviour (and, in some cases, invoking the threat of damnation for immorality). But the fact that there is always an egoistic reason for theists
60 Whether post-mortem punishment for morally bad actions takes place in hell or not is a matter beyond the scope of this chapter. However, it should be noted that the idea of hell is very much still alive in the theistic tradition. For example, Biola University‘s doctrinal statement includes the following passage: ―All those who persistently reject Jesus Christ in the present life shall be raised from the dead and throughout eternity exist in the state of conscious, unutterable, endless torment of anguish.‖ Far from being theistically marginal, Biola University is home to many distinguished theologians, including William Lane Craig himself. ―Biola University Doctrinal Statement,‖ Biola University, http://www.biola.edu/about/doctrinal- statement/ (accessed March 17, 2010).
61 Sociological data show that the promise of supernatural rewards and punishments isn’t sufficient to motivate good conduct in a great many cases. See, for example: Gregory Paul, ―Cross-National Correlations of Quantifiable Societal Health with Popular Religiosity and Secularism in the Prosperous Democracies: A First Look,‖ Journal of Religion & Society 7 (2005): 1–17. http://moses.creighton.edu/JRS/pdf/2005-11.pdf. Also see: Gregory Paul, ―The Chronic Dependence of Popular Religiosity upon Dysfunctional Psychosociological Conditions,‖ Evolutionary Psychology 7 no. 3 (2009): 398–441. 34 to act morally and avoid acting immorally doesn‘t necessarily entail that theists only act morally and avoid acting immorally because of that reason. The possibility remains that theists could have additional reasons, independent of their belief in the eternal rewards of heaven, to act morally and to avoid acting immorally. Furthermore, it‘s possible that these additional, heaven-independent reasons could be primarily responsible for motivating moral actions and deterring immoral actions.
However, nothing turns on this issue, since, at the very least, belief in EMC renders altruism impossible for theists because it makes theists believe that all of their morally relevant actions have self-regarding consequences. By definition, altruism requires the dismissal of primarily self-regarding ends during the performance of the altruistic act. Thus, belief in EMC makes it impossible for theists to act without regard for their own well-being. In other words, belief in EMC makes it impossible for consistent theists to act altruistically. Theists are only able to act truly altruistically if they completely disregard their belief in EMC, and thus their belief in God. Of course, if they do this they‘re turning their back on theism altogether.
The following thought experiment effectively illuminates EMC‘s implications for theism. A middle-aged man, while strolling along the bank of an icy river, spots a car sticking out of the ice as he rounds a bend. Immediately, it becomes clear to him that the car has careened over the side of the bridge above. As he runs to the scene, he sees three young people struggling in the icy waters. He realizes he must decide whether to brave the frigid temperatures in order to rescue the strangers from certain death in the river.
The man is fully aware of two salient considerations: first, he knows that attempting to help will almost certainly result in his catching a fatal case of hypothermia, due to his age
35 and the location‘s remoteness; second, he knows that he absolutely no duty to attempt to help the strangers.62 Because he bears no responsibility for their plight, and has no special ties of responsibility to them as a family member, friend, or protector, he wouldn‘t feel shame in the event that he chose not to attempt to rescue the victims.63
Moreover, by all lights the man is set to enjoy a promising future if he elects not to attempt to rescue the victims. He has no reason, other than his instinctive desire to save others, to intervene and sacrifice himself. But, because of his instincts and because he reasonably believes that his efforts would save the younger, more hypothermia-resistant strangers struggling in the water (he is, after all, a strong swimmer), the man decides to jump in after them. He succeeds in saving them, but, in doing so, tragically dies from his heroic efforts. Interestingly, the man‘s beliefs play an important role in determining whether his actions are altruistic. If the man is an atheist, it‘s extremely hard to deny the altruistic nature of his act.
However, if the man is a theist, it‘s easy to deny the altruistic nature of his act by appealing to his belief in EMC; by pointing out that he believed that his actions would ultimately be rewarded in heaven, one can conclude that he didn‘t act altruistically.
People who accept EMC believe that ―all morally laudable acts that involve local sacrifices of the agent‘s well-being will be ... fully compensated for in such a way that the agent will not suffer—at least as a result of performing the act in question—a net, long-
62 Whether this lack of a duty to assist is due to his age is a question for another time.
63 Although someone might object to my example on the grounds that it‘s implausible that the man wouldn‘t feel shame or remorse for failing to make a rescue attempt, this objection fails because of the fact that rescuing in these circumstances is well beyond the call of duty. Assuming that the man has some rational control over his emotions, he wouldn‘t feel shame or remorse about refraining from attempting a highly supererogatory, life-threatening rescue.
36 term decrease in well-being.‖64 In this example, it‘s clear that belief in EMC precludes the possibility of intentional altruism because those who accept EMC believe that altruistic acts will ultimately be met with full compensation.65 Additionally, the man‘s decision seems much more praiseworthy if it‘s motivated only by the desire to do the right thing than if it‘s motivated, even in part, by the selfish desire to reap heavenly rewards. Therefore, theists must reject their belief in EMC, and thus renounce their theism, in order to act with genuine altruism.
V. Heaven and Infinity
Might there be a way out of the trap for theists, though? Perhaps there‘s a threshold for the degree of moral virtue that one needs to attain in order to make it to heaven—a place in which everyone experiences the same level of ultimate bliss and fulfillment. Once you attain that threshold, further virtuous behaviour nets you no further heavenly reward.66 Suppose the man has lived a virtuous life prior to decision time and, being under no conceivable duty to save the victims, wouldn‘t jeopardize his ticket to heaven by refusing to risk his life in order to save them. Furthermore, assume that heaven lasts an equal (infinite) amount of time for all of its inhabitants. Since the earthly life ahead of him appears quite promising, the man is choosing to sacrifice what we can reasonably assume to be a significant amount of worldly value in return for no added
64 Hubin, ―Ultimately Meaningless Gestures?,‖ 141.
65 As Hubin points out, unintentional altruism is possible for theists, but only if theism is false. Of course, theists won‘t want to countenance this possibility. Ibid.
66 Although performing sufficiently wicked actions (or failing to perform morally obligatory actions) in the future will likely cause you to lose your heavenly reward (and possibly face supernatural punishment). 37 benefits in the afterlife. Under these conditions, it appears that the man is indeed acting altruistically if he decides to sacrifice his life to save the victims.
Unfortunately for theists, however, there are two problems with this view. First, it contradicts the belief in EMC held by most theists. The notion of EMC is an extremely important component of theism for many believers—at least if Craig is correct about his fellow theists—since it is basic to their conceptions of morality. If everyone in heaven were to experience the same level of bliss and ultimate fulfillment, then, given EMC, everyone would have to have lived, on balance, equally virtuous lives. Otherwise, EMC would fail to balance the scales of justice in the precise way Craig claims that it does.
Cleary, however, not everyone lives, on balance, equally virtuous lives. Unless only moral saints or moral monsters regularly surround you, you‘re likely to encounter people from all across the spectrum of moral character.
Second, the notion that sacrificing part of one‘s finite time on earth can be meaningful despite the infinite period of time that will follow in heaven isn‘t mathematically sound. When one adds an infinite amount of time to a finite amount of time, the resulting sum is infinity. Additionally, one also produces infinity as a result when one adds an infinite amount of time to a slightly smaller finite amount of time. In quantitative terms, infinity swamps anything finite. Thus, sacrificing part of your finite life does not make a difference to the overall length of your existence if you‘re heaven bound, since adding infinity to any finite number produces infinity regardless of the value of the finite number. In other words, the quantity expressed by the finite number is of no significance when calculating the value of the total sum. As Rudy Rucker explains, the commutativity of addition holds only for finite numbers. But, ―once we start working
38 with infinite ordinals, commutativity no longer holds. Thus, 1 + ω is just the same as ω, but ω + 1 is the next number after ω.‖67 So, rather than acting altruistically, the man is acting selfishly by choosing certain death, since a larger proportion of his total existence is now spent in heaven.
Protestantism attempts to avoid this problem entirely by declaring that faith alone is rewarded, as opposed to mere actions. But this view, which relegates morality to a position subservient to faith, has monstrous implications. Rewarding only faith provides no motivation for moral action. In fact, despite its Protestant heritage, this view brings to mind the Catholic Church‘s sale of indulgences by which heavenly reward is preserved even for those who, despite their sins, pay the required price. Two considerations drive home the immorality of this position. First, according to this view, the deathbed confession and repentance of a theistic perpetrator of genocide is rewarded,68 whereas the morally heroic life and deeds of Gandhi are unimportant given that, as a Hindu, he rejected monotheism (as strictly defined). Second, atheists ought to immediately stop all their good deeds, given this view, and instead flock to churches, synagogues, and mosques in desperate attempts to find God. Non-believers should do everything they can to try to ―find‖ God, even neglecting, if necessary, doing good deeds and upholding their moral obligations. Indeed, this view makes it prudent for non-believers to neglect their duties and their everyday lives, since they have yet to find God. Rewarding faith alone makes fidelity to God the single most important aspect of human existence. But surely
67 Rudy Rucker, Infinity and the Mind: The Science and Philosophy of the Infinite (Toronto: Bantam Books, 1983), 71. The symbol ‗ω‘ is used in Cantorian number theory to denote the smallest transfinite ordinal number.
68 The confession and repentance are rewarded as long as the perpetrator is genuinely theistic and acts in good faith. 39 theism‘s benevolent God wouldn‘t bestow heavenly rewards on faithful monsters while dishing out punishment on their morally laudable, but faithless, counterparts.
Furthermore, ordinary morality typically classifies people as laudable or reprehensible based on their actions rather than their belief states. Thus, a Protestant, purely faith- based eschatology contradicts ordinary morality, since it makes faith a belief state, distinct from ―works‖ or actions. This view thoroughly undermines ordinary morality.
VI. Conclusion
I have argued that, while psychological egoism is untenable as a universal theory of human motivation, it accurately describes those who maintain belief in EMC—that good actions are ultimately rewarded and wrong actions are ultimately punished— because this belief necessarily provides egoistic motivation for every morally laudable action. Since EMC‘s plausibility is bolstered by its acceptance by preeminent theists and its widespread support amongst theists in general, psychological egoism accurately describes the vast majority of theists.
Of course, some forms of theism disavow EMC. Protestantism is one of them. It holds that your faith, rather than your deeds, is the sole factor in consideration when your eternal fortune is being determined. However, this view radically departs from ordinary morality, since it implies the possibility that moral monsters can achieve heavenly rewards that moral exemplars are denied. So, belief in EMC renders altruism and laudable self-sacrifice impossible for its proponents; those who wish to give up EMC must reject ordinary morality or give up their theistic worldview. Theism‘s commitment
40 to ordinary morality is also, as I‘ll argue in the next chapter, undermined by the implications of its requirement that humans enjoy libertarian freedom.
41
Chapter Three
Theism, Libertarianism, and another Conflict with Ordinary Morality
I. Introduction
Many features of the universe, including the existence or illusion of free will and the presence or absence of causal determinism, are morally relevant. I‘ll discuss various possible meanings of ―free will‖ in a moment. By ―causal determinism‖ (or just
―determinism‖ for short), I mean the proposition that every event in the universe, including every human action, is made inevitable by the prior state of the universe in conjunction with the laws of nature. Describing an acceptable combination of these features is of vital importance to theism, since the theistic worldview is fundamentally committed to maintaining the moral responsibility of humans for at least some of our actions. Theists cannot deny that we are morally responsible for at least some of our actions, because to do so would be to heap the blame for our immoral actions on God or strip our immoral actions of their blameworthiness altogether.69 Both of these possibilities are clearly hostile to theism. Therefore, theism requires that we‘re morally responsible for many of our actions: specifically, that we can rightly be praised (and possibly rewarded) when we freely act morally, and that we can rightly be criticized (and possibly punished) when we freely act immorally.
As such, theism, and especially its commitments to our freedom and moral responsibility, permits only particular combinations of the previously mentioned features
69 Stripping our immoral actions of their blameworthiness would give our actions the same (neutral) moral status we typically assign to the actions of animals. For example, we don‘t judge that a lion acts wrongly when it kills a wildebeest.
42 of the universe. Naturalism however, is hospitable to a wide range of these combinations, because it has no particular commitments to our freedom and its commitments to our moral responsibility are less clearly defined than theism‘s.
Furthermore, theism is also constrained by the fact that only libertarianism can maintain humanity‘s enjoyment of free will in a manner consistent with the existence of an infallibly omniscient God. This is all unfortunate news for theists, since libertarianism conflicts with ordinary morality in significant ways. Once again, in order to maintain their beliefs, theists must accept the fact that theism isn‘t compatible with ordinary morality.
II. Theism and Free Will
Theism‘s commitment to maintaining that humans are ultimately responsible for our actions suggests that, given theism, we enjoy free will. While Calvinism espouses a theory of predestination and ―meticulous providence‖ that seems to deny that humans enjoy free will, theism, with its emphasis on the importance of choosing to act morally, seems to require a universe that includes human free will. Additionally, scripture suggests the falsity of hard determinism—the view that holds both that free will and determinism are incompatible and that determinism is true.70 Given theism‘s commitment to human free will, two combinations of the previously discussed morally relevant features of the universe are plausible for theists: soft determinism—the view that we have free have will and determinism is true—and libertarianism—the view that we
70 As Thomas P. Flint points out, hard determinism contradicts not only the stories in the Pentateuch, which are incomprehensible if the human characters involved are not free, but also implicit affirmations of human free will throughout the Bible, such as those found in Deuteronomy 30:15–20 and Matthew 23:37. Thomas P. Flint, Divine Providence: The Molinist Account (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998), 24.
43 have free will and determinism is false. Although these two theories are both compatible with theism in the sense that they uphold humanity‘s possession of free will, I‘ll argue that traditional theism is inhospitable to soft determinism and that libertarianism is problematic not only because it presents challenges for theists, but also because it conflicts with our ordinary moral intuitions about blameworthiness. By doing so, I‘ll be attempting to trap theists in a dilemma that forces them to choose one of two painful horns.
III. Theism and Soft Determinism
The dilemma‘s first horn involves the unstable combination of theism and soft determinism. According to theism, God created the universe. Furthermore, given theism, if soft determinism is true then the universe is deterministic and created by God.
God‘s omniscience entails that if God created the universe such that all human actions are determined, then God knows every evil action that will be (and has been, and is being) performed, and by whom.71 Thus, not only did God create the universe in such a manner that humans are determined to perform evil acts, but He also knows exactly how and when every evildoer will sin. But the question naturally arises: how could a perfectly loving and benevolent God knowingly determine that certain people will sin, and then proceed to punish them for their determined sinful actions?72 This sort of God seems inherently unjust. Considering a biblical example, God‘s condemnation of humanity for
71 This knowledge can either be considered foreknowledge or, if proponents of divine timelessness are correct, an example of God‘s atemporal knowledge of temporal events. I discuss the notion of divine timelessness below.
72 This punishment could be worldly or eternal—either being denied entrance into heaven or being sent to hell.
44 the actions of Adam and Eve seems excessively harsh, since God Himself, by creating a deterministic universe, made their actions inevitable. Thus, it seems unlikely that a perfectly loving God would create a deterministic universe.
Due to His omnipotence, God could have made the universe in such a manner that no evil would ever exist in it.73 Moreover, in virtue of his omnibeneficence and omnipotence, God necessarily avoids creating unnecessary evil in the universe. Thus, since evil does, in fact, exist in the universe, it must serve a purpose—it must produce a compensating benefit (or prevent some evil that is at least as bad as the extant evil) that could not be achieved (or prevented) otherwise.74 But if the sins committed by humans are necessary in order to ensure the maximal goodness of the universe, then it seems fundamentally unjust for God to punish the humans who He determined would commit those sins in the first place. Therefore, the truth of soft determinism undermines either
God‘s benevolence or the moral responsibility of humans.
Theists might object to my claims by pointing out that my argument applies to soft determinism regardless of the truth of theism. Soft determinism concedes that the prior state of the universe makes our actions inevitable, while also claiming that we‘re
73 There seems to be no plausible reason why doing so would be logically impossible. Granted, Alvin Plantinga‘s well-known ―Free Will Defence‖ arrives at the modally complex conclusion that it’s logically possible that God couldn‘t have created a universe containing no evil. But Plantinga never claims that it‘s in fact true, or even plausible, that God couldn‘t have created a universe containing no evil. Alvin Plantinga, The Nature of Necessity (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1974).
74 For the purposes of this paper, I‘m assuming that this plausible requirement, the classic expression of which is provided by William L. Rowe, is correct. William L. Rowe, ―The Problem of Evil and Some Varieties of Atheism,‖ American Philosophical Quarterly 16 no. 4 (1979): 335–341. It should be noted that philosophers, including William Hasker, have rejected this requirement. Hasker famously argues that the existence of evil that ―is not necessary for the creation of a greater good, or for the prevention of some equal or greater evil‖ is compatible with theism. William R. Hasker, ―The necessity of gratuitous evil,‖ Faith and Philosophy 9 (1992): 24, emphasis in original). However, arguments like Hasker‘s have been trenchantly criticized in the literature. See, for example: Keith Chrzan, ―Necessary gratuitous evil: An oxymoron revisited,‖ Faith and Philosophy 11 (1994): 134–137. Also see: David O‘Connor, ―Hasker on gratuitous natural evil,‖ Faith and Philosophy 12 (1995): 380–392.
45 still responsible for at least some of those actions. Not only does inevitability fail to devastate morality according to soft determinism; it is precisely what makes morality possible in the first place. However, this objection fails because it fails to account for the difference in intentionality between theistic and non-theistic accounts of the origin of the universe.
Theism identifies and reveres God as the absolutely sovereign creator of the universe. Accordingly, God as creator must take responsibility for his creation.
Specifically, He is responsible for everything that He determined would happen in the universe. By creating a wholly deterministic universe, God manipulated creation in a manner that denies humans the possibility of moral responsibility. Whenever an actor, knowing the consequences that her actions will produce, intentionally performs an action, that actor is responsible for the consequences produced by her action. In other words, an actor must take responsibility for whatever she intentionally and knowingly causes.75 For example, if Rhys places two healthy Siamese fighting fish together in a cramped bowl, knowing that a fight to the death will be the (virtually) inevitable result of his actions,
Rhys takes responsibility for the death(s) of one (or both) of the fish.76 We wouldn‘t judge the victorious fish culpable for the death of the loser. Instead, we would judge
Rhys culpable, because he knew full well that placing the two fish together in an unnatural environment would almost certainly cause the fight. Similarly, God becomes
75 Proponents of the Doctrine of Double Effect would dispute this claim, at least as it applies to human agents. Alison McIntyre, ―Doctrine of Double Effect,‖ The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, fall 2009 edition, edited by Edward N. Zalta. http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2009/entries/double-effect/. But this doctrine, which has been widely criticized, seems plausible (if at all) only in describing agents who face hard choices resulting from limited resources, unavoidable medical side-effects, and the like. The doctrine therefore doesn‘t plausibly apply to God, whose resources and options aren‘t limited in such ways.
76 Human foreknowledge is, of course, fallible. The purpose of this example is to show that Rhys is responsible for the outcome of his actions if he knew that his actions would produce that outcome.
46 responsible for all human actions if He intentionally creates a deterministic universe, knowing everything that will inevitably result from His actions, which is, given soft determinism, everything that occurs in the universe‘s history. Thus, soft determinism and theism are incompatible.
Non-theistic explanations of the beginning of the universe, like the Big Bang
Theory, don‘t suffer from this problem because the causes of the universe that they appeal to lack intentionality; they‘re compatible with soft determinism because they don‘t involve an actor whose act of creation intentionally manipulates the universe. Since the
Big Bang isn‘t an agent, it doesn‘t appropriate our responsibility in the same way God does by creating a deterministic universe.77 Thus, non-theistic accounts of the beginning of the universe allow the compatibility of determinism and human moral responsibility, whereas theistic explanations fail to accommodate soft determinism because God becomes responsible for the actions that humans would be responsible for had God not chosen to create a deterministic universe. By creating a deterministic universe, God shelters humans from any moral responsibility. Therefore, soft determinism is false if theism is true, since traditional theism demands moral accountability from human beings.
Thomas P. Flint presents one final problem for the combination of theism and soft determinism. He points out that soft determinists typically take comfort from the alleged inability of libertarianism to show that one can be morally responsible for one‘s undetermined actions. However, Flint argues that God‘s possession of libertarian freedom makes libertarianism plausible for theists in a way that it isn‘t for atheists.
77 Again, since theism requires that humans have free will, it isn‘t open to the theist simply to deny that humans are ever responsible.
47
Theists believe that God—a libertarian-free agent—can act rationally, appropriately, and in a morally praiseworthy manner. Thus, for theists,
there clearly can be no conceptual problem with the notion of free, rational,
responsible, but undetermined actions. And if there is no such conceptual
problem, then there seems to be no conceptual problem with viewing ourselves as
agents with libertarian freedom as well.78
Flint‘s point is relatively simple. Libertarianism‘s opponents generally claim that the position is conceptually implausible. Flint is merely pointing out that theists are unlikely to take this line since it‘s incoherent to be conceptually opposed to the possibility of libertarian freedom when you already accept that God possesses it. Since soft determinism has proven intellectually inhospitable for theists, let us turn to an examination of theism‘s compatibility with libertarianism, since libertarianism, as both
Flint and I have pointed out, seems better suited to theism.
IV. Theism and Libertarianism
The dilemma‘s second horn involves theism‘s compatibility with libertarianism.
This horn is especially important, since many theistic philosophers embrace libertarianism.79 Indeed, libertarian free will is an influential aspect of theistic thinking.
Many theists claim that humans enjoy libertarian freedom, and the great majority of
78 Flint, Divine Providence, 30.
79 Ibid., 11.
48 traditional theists and theologians have attributed libertarian freedom to God.
Furthermore, the Free Will Theodicy is a popular theistic attempt to explain the existence of evil in the world as necessary in order for humans to enjoy the (allegedly) compensating good of libertarian freedom. Thus, one of the reasons that libertarianism is attractive to theists is that it provides a potential answer to the problem of suffering.
Before I proceed to examine explicitly theism‘s compatibility with libertarianism,
I think it is important to examine a problem that libertarianism faces regardless of the truth of theism, namely that libertarianism can‘t sustain moral responsibility because it relies too heavily on luck. Alfred R. Mele explains the problem:
In the actual world, Joe decides at t to A. In another world with the same laws of
nature and the same past, he decides at t not to A. If there is nothing about Joe‘s
powers, capacities, states of mind, moral character, and the like in either world
that accounts for this difference, then the difference seems to be just a matter of
luck. And given that neither world diverges from the other in any respect before
t, there is no difference at all in Joe in these two worlds to account for the
difference in his decisions.80
Essentially, the ―Luck Problem‖ stems from the libertarian‘s claim that the same agent could perform any possible action given the exact same causal history of the universe.
The agent‘s so-called ―free‖ choice becomes a matter of chance because nothing inherent in her or the history the universe can explain her choice to perform one rather than any of
80Alfred R. Mele, Free Will and Luck (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 9.
49 the other options she could have chosen. Many libertarians of various ideological stripes have attempted to provide answers to the Luck Problem.81 Although delving into the relevant literature would be beyond the scope of my project, I think that the recent developments in neuroscience that bear on this problem and the fact that this problem remains extremely live in the literature show that this problem is unresolved.82 In fact, this problem bears directly on theism, because while it is open to non-theists to accept soft determinism and reject libertarianism in the face of these problems, I have shown that theists don‘t have the same leeway since theism is unfriendly to soft determinism.
V. Divine Timelessness: A Possible Solution?
In addition to having to answer the Luck Problem and other problems that arise independently of theism, theists also have to overcome problems that arise when libertarianism is conjoined with theism. Infallible divine foreknowledge seems, at least on the face of it, to rule out any libertarian-free human actions. According to traditional theism, God is omniscient—‖he knows of all truths that they are true, and of all falsehoods that they are false, whether they pertain to past, present or future.‖83 But how can this divine foreknowledge be reconciled with libertarian free will? If God infallibly knows beforehand which way Caleb is going to turn at a fork in the road, it is hard to
81 See, for example: Robert Kane, ―Libertarianism,‖ in Four Views on Free Will (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2007), 31–33.
82 See, for example: Benjamin Libet, ―Consciousness, Free Action and the Brain,‖ Journal of Consciousness Studies 8 (2001): 59–65. Also see: Benjamin Libet, Mind Time (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2004).
83 Hugh J. McCann, ―Divine Providence,‖ The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, spring 2009 edition, edited by Edward N. Zalta. http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2009/entries/providence-divine/.
50 conceive of Caleb‘s choice as being truly free in the libertarian sense.84 Isn‘t it impossible for God to know infallibly at time t1 the outcome of Caleb‘s libertarian-free choice at a later time t2?
―No,‖ some theists might reply; ―since God is timeless, He doesn‘t have any problematic beliefs about the future that would call into question the truth of libertarianism.‖ Eleonore Stump and Norman Kretzmann expand on this view. They claim that God
is aware of all temporal events, including those which are future with respect to
our current temporal viewpoint; but, because the times at which those future
events will be present events are ET-simultaneous with the whole of eternity, an
omniscient eternal entity is aware of them as they are present.85
Stump and Kretzmann, like many other proponents of divine timelessness, see divine timelessness as a way to preserve humanity‘s enjoyment of libertarian freedom while
84 According to many libertarian theories, we exercise libertarian freedom only in a small percentage of the choices we make. Robert Kane explains that all ―free acts do not have to be undetermined on the libertarian view, but only those acts by which we made ourselves into the kinds of persons we are, namely the ‗will-setting‘ or ‗self-forming actions‘ (SFAs) that are required for ultimate responsibility.‖ So, if my example of choosing which way to turn is too trivial to be a libertarian-free choice, it can simply be replaced with a more momentous choice. Kane, ―Libertarianism,‖ 26.
85 Eleonore Stump and Norman Kretzmann, ―Eternity,‖ The Journal of Philosophy 78, no. 8 (1981): 453. Though Stump and Kretzmann provide an extensive definition of ET-simultaneity throughout their article, they also give a somewhat condensed version: ―if x and y are ET-simultaneous, then x is neither earlier nor later than, neither past nor future with respect to, y—a feature essential to any relationship that can be considered a species of simultaneity. Further, if x and y are ET-simultaneous, x and y are not temporally simultaneous; since either x or y must be eternal, it cannot be the case that x and y both exist at one and the same time within a given observer‘s reference frame. ET-simultaneity is symmetric, of course, but, since no temporal or eternal entity or event is ET-simultaneous with itself, the relationship is not reflexive; and the fact that there are different domains for its relata means that it is not transitive‖ (439–440, italics in original).
51 maintaining God‘s infallible omniscience. They go on to compare God‘s ability, despite his eternal nature, to respond to temporal events to that of a mother who prepares a snack in anticipation of her son being hungry and requesting food upon his return home. They claim that it is reasonable to describe the mother as preparing the food because of the child‘s request, even though the response precedes the request.86
There are serious problems with this view, however. First, their claim that it is reasonable to describe the mother as preparing the food because of the child‘s request even though the response precedes the request seems misguided. Surely the mother prepares the food because she believes that her son will ask for a snack, not because of his actual request, for she would prepare the snack even if her belief should prove false and her son not end up requesting a snack on this occasion. Second, the view has been questioned even from within the theistic tradition. Nicholas Wolterstorff advocates this view:
Indeed, so basic to the biblical writings is their speaking of God as an agent
within history that if one viewed God as only an impassive factor in reality, or as
one whose agency does not occur within human history, one would have to regard
the biblical speech about God as at best one long sequence of metaphors pointing
to a reality for which they are singularly inapt, and as at worst one long sequence
of falsehoods.87
86 Ibid., 450.
87 Nicholas Wolterstorff, ―God is Everlasting,‖ in Philosophy of Religion: Selected Readings, edited by M. Peterson et al (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 125.
52
According to Wolterstorff, God‘s temporal nature is essential to the plausibility of the biblical account of God‘s conduct; if God isn‘t active, even within human history, then the Bible is radically misleading. Wolterstorff also points out the limitations with which timelessness would saddle God:
If God were eternal he could not be aware, concerning any temporal event, that it
is occurring nor aware that it was occurring nor aware that it will be occurring;
nor could he remember that it has occurred; nor could he plan to bring it about
and do so. But all of such actions are presupposed by, and essential to, the
biblical presentation of God as a redeeming God.88
Thus, theists who want to assert divine timelessness in order to preserve libertarianism must reconcile their views with the scripture‘s presentation of God as redeemer, a task that Wolterstorff argues will be difficult in the extreme.
But divine timelessness doesn‘t just make problems for the biblical presentation of God as redeemer; it also makes problems for the notion of God as the creator of the universe. Immanuel Kant describes creation as a two-part temporal process. In expressing his view, Kant writes, ―the concept of alteration ... is only possible through and in the representation of time.‖89 He adds later:
88 Ibid., 131. Wolterstorff elucidates his argument much more extensively throughout the rest of his article.
89 Immanuel Kant, ―Critique of Pure Reason,‖ edited and translated by Paul Guyer and Allen W. Wood (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 179–180.
53
Thus every transition from one state into another happens in a time that is
contained between two instants, of which the former determines the state from
which the thing proceeds and the second the state at which it arrives. Both are
therefore boundaries of the time of an alteration, consequently of the intermediate
state between two states, and as such they belong to the whole alteration.90
So, creation can‘t occur outside of time since it requires an initial state (before creation) and a finished state (after creation). For x to be created at time t, it must be the case, at some time prior to t, that x does not exist; therefore creation must take place within time.
Since ―every alteration has a cause, which manifests its causality in the entire time during which the alteration proceeds,‖ God‘s act of creating the universe must span the entire act of creation, thereby making God a temporal being in at least that regard.91 So, despite the fact that divine timelessness is initially appealing for theists who wish to reconcile libertarian freedom with God‘s infallible omniscience, asserting divine timelessness has the unwanted implication that theists must reject scripture that reports that God created the world.92
VI. Another Conflict between Theism and Ordinary Morality
In virtue of its inclination towards libertarianism, theism comes into conflict with ordinary morality once again. We ordinarily hold individuals morally responsible for
90 Ibid., 315.
91 Ibid.
92 Divine timelessness might also make it impossible for God to interact with the universe in the first place if interaction is also a two-part temporal process.
54 their actions even if we admit the possibility that their actions were determined. The public often cries out for retribution against murderers and rapists, despite the fact that (to cite social determinism rather than physical determinism) the criminal in question may have been conditioned by his horrific childhood in such a manner that made his actions inevitable. But consistent libertarians can‘t properly hold a person responsible for a particular action until they‘re satisfied that the action wasn‘t causally determined by the prior state of the universe. Indeed, if libertarianism is correct then you would expect juries to consider whether the defendant was determined to act the way he did. But in reality courts don‘t allow defences that appeal to determinism.93 And it isn‘t just that libertarianism is so obvious that the courts don‘t need to make this restriction explicit, for courts often make obvious things explicit, such as the fact that witnesses might lie under oath. Consequently, since theism favours libertarianism and libertarianism conflicts with ordinary morality, theism comes into conflict with ordinary morality once again.
93 Stephen Maitzen points out that ―when the issue of causal determinism does come up in the criminal law, appellate courts are apt to remind trial courts that the issue isn‘t relevant to criminal responsibility.‖ The frequently cited holding in State v. Sikora, 44 N.J. 453, 210 A.2d 193 (1965), 202–203, lends support to his claim: ―Criminal responsibility must be judged at the level of the conscious. If a person thinks, plans, and executes the plan at that level, the criminality of his act cannot be denied, wholly or partially, because, although he did not realize it, his conscious [mind] was influenced to think, to plan and to execute the plan by unconscious influences which were the product of his genes and his lifelong environment. [C]riminal guilt cannot be denied or confined ... because [the defendant] was unaware that his decisions and conduct were mechanistically directed by unconscious influences.‖ Stephen Maitzen, ―Ordinary Morality Implies Atheism,‖ European Journal for Philosophy of Religion 1 no. 2 (2009b): 122. It should be noted that I‘m not arguing for the commonly held belief that legal procedures and rulings are sometimes opposed to OM. Instead, I‘m arguing that our criminal courts would be fundamentally unjust if libertarianism were true, since the judges and juries who punish defendants never ask (let alone establish) that the defendants acted with contracausal freedom. We don‘t actually accept libertarianism as a matter of common sense, for if we did we‘d be outraged by the injustice of a legal system that convicts and sentences people without ever asking if they‘re responsible for their conduct.
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VII. Conclusion
Theism has wide-ranging implications for the nature of the universe. I‘ve argued that the truth of theism guarantees that either soft determinism or libertarianism describes the universe, since theism requires that humans enjoy free will. But I‘ve shown that this guarantee creates a dilemma. Theism is inhospitable to soft determinism, while libertarianism, which theism must adopt, conflicts with ordinary morality. Thus, in order to retain their beliefs, theists must accept that theism again clashes with ordinary morality. In addition to having unwelcome implications for morality, theism also threatens the ability of theists to claim knowledge, for themselves or others, of even the most basic propositions, like ―I have hands.‖ The next chapter argues for this sceptical upshot of theism.
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Chapter Four
From Contextualism and Theism to Scepticism
I. Introduction
Early in his Meditations, Descartes identifies his belief in God as a sceptical threat to his knowledge of the external world before quickly proceeding to dismiss it as a threat.
Since that time, and particularly throughout the last two decades, many epistemologists have come to regard epistemic contextualism (EC) as the most promising solution to
Cartesian scepticism. EC holds that whether one can correctly attribute, to oneself or to others, knowledge of the external world—for instance, whether I can accurately claim to know that I have hands—depends on whether doubt-inducing sceptical possibilities
(Cartesian demons, the brain-in-a-vat (BIV) hypothesis, and the like) are salient in one‘s circumstances. According to EC, whenever these possibilities are salient in a particular context, they tend to raise the standards for knowledge-attribution to such a height that no one occupying the context can correctly attribute external-world knowledge to anyone at all. However, EC allows that whenever one occupies a low-standards context because no sceptical possibility is salient, one can truly claim for oneself and others a great deal of knowledge about the external world.94 Non-theists can therefore relax because EC allows them to truly claim and attribute knowledge in practically every context they occupy. I
94 Patrick Rysiew, ―Epistemic Contextualism,‖ Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, spring 2009 edition, edited by Edward N. Zalta. http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2009/entries/contextualism-epistemology/. Rather than overly complicating the issue, I‘m taking the widely-discussed ―attributor‖ version of EC that Rysiew focuses on to be the model of contextualism. I recognize that other versions of contextualism exist; treatment of their implications must await another occasion.
57 will argue, though, that theists remain vulnerable to scepticism because of the uneliminated sceptical possibility introduced by their belief in an omnipotent God.95
II. The Sceptical Possibility of a Deceptive God
According to EC, in any context in which sceptical possibilities become salient the standards for accurate ascription of knowledge tend to be so high that the context‘s occupants can‘t truly claim external-world knowledge for themselves or for anyone else.
By contrast, according to EC, when no sceptical scenarios become salient in a context, the standards for accurate ascription of knowledge remain low enough that occupants of that context can correctly claim to know all manner of empirical propositions.
Interestingly, as I‘ll argue, sceptical scenarios involving a deceptive God are frequently salient for theists and thus bring about high-standards contexts that bar theists from correctly attributing, to themselves or to anyone else, knowledge of even the most basic empirical propositions.
Descartes does little to eliminate the possibility of divine deception when he takes up the issue in Meditation III, offering instead an abrupt treatment of it:
God ... the possessor of all the perfections which I cannot grasp, ... who is subject
to no defects whatsoever ... cannot be a deceiver, since it is manifest by the
natural light that all fraud and deception depend on some defect.96
95 Published sources on the topic of this chapter appear to be very limited. Thus, I hope that readers will understand that this chapter‘s lack of sources is not due to lack of research effort on my part.
96 Descartes, Mediations, 35. 58
Descartes‘ confidence in the truth of his premise—that deception is necessarily an imperfection—makes his conclusion—that God cannot be a deceiver—obvious, since
God is a perfect being. Sensing that Descartes papers over the issue, Hobbes argues that, contrary to Descartes‘ position, God might in fact deceive humanity for the species‘ own good, just as doctors may deceive their patients and parents may deceive their own children:
It is the common belief that no fault is committed by medical men who deceive
sick people for health‘s sake, nor by parents who mislead their children for their
good … M. Descartes must therefore look to this proposition, God can in no case
deceive us, taken universally, and see whether it is true.97
Essentially, Hobbes suggests that God might treat humanity paternalistically in a manner that we might resent if we knew of it, but which ultimately produces the greatest good.98
Although Descartes‘ contention that all fraud and deception depend on some defect is initially plausible, the issue is not simple. Two primary possible explanations of divine deception remain. First, it is plausible that the defect in question may not reside in
God. Because, according to traditional theism, God imbues humans with libertarian
97 Rene Descartes, The Philosophical Works of Descartes, vol. 2, translated by Elizabeth S. Haldane and G. R. T. Ross (London: Cambridge University Press, 1967), 78.
98 One might object that my argument in this section is unfairly strengthened by a problematic interpretation of the word ―defectus‖ (translated into English as ―defect‖). According to this line, by interpreting ―defect‖ in a specifically moral sense, I‘m ignoring the fact that this word usually implies the more general sense of ―failing‖ and thus often simply means ―lack of ability.‖ A more general translation of ―defect‖ might entail that Descartes‘ thesis would be this: a God who needs recourse to deceit in governing the universe shows lack of ability. However, even if I interpret the meaning of ―defect‖ in the general sense, Descartes‘ thesis embodies a fallacy that I will discuss later in this chapter: it alleges that I‘m claiming that God needs to deceive. As I point out below, I never make this claim. Instead, I advance only the weaker claim that deception may for all we know be the best (although not strictly necessary) means at God‘s disposal. 59 agency, human fallibility could produce problems to which divine deception is the best solution. As Hobbes opines, the doctor isn‘t defective because he deceives patients to best treat them; instead, the patients‘ defective health necessitates deception. As such,
God‘s perfection would remain uncompromised. God‘s deception—although, like any deception, presumptively wrong—is justified as the best solution to a problem caused by human vice. Granting that all fraud and deception rest on some defect doesn‘t entail that the defect necessarily resides in the deceiver—it can instead reside in the situation to which the deceiver responds. Divine deception needn‘t spring from a defective component of God‘s nature; instead defective human behaviour can necessitate divine deception.
Second, while deception may be necessarily defective when sought as an end, it isn‘t clear that it‘s necessarily defective when used as a means. In fact, it often sheds its prima facie defective nature when used to achieve some ultimate good. If God intends to use deception as the best possible method of attaining a maximally good state of affairs in the universe, then His action stems from perfection rather than from a defect, for He is using the best possible means to attain the best possible end. Libertarian agency can explain God‘s interference in the affairs of the universe in such a prima facie evil or defective manner. Fundamentally, we don‘t know that God can‘t deceive us about the external world because we don‘t know that such deception isn‘t sometimes for the best.
Of course, one way to rule out divine deception remains: accepting Kant‘s line about the absolute impermissibility of lying.99 However, taking this line comes at an extremely heavy, and familiar, cost. Harkening back to Hobbes‘ example, it doesn‘t
99 Immanuel Kant, The Moral Law: Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals, translated by H. J. Paton (New York: Routledge, 1991), 67–69. 60 seem morally impermissible for doctors to deceive their patients in order to treat them as effectively as possible. Nor does it seem morally impermissible for parents to deceive their children in order to secure optimal futures for their children. A plethora of cases in which deception is the best means to bring about the maximal possible good under the circumstances are conceivable. Surely, when one is defenceless, misleading an SS commander into believing that no Jews are hiding in the attic is preferable to handing the innocent Jews over or taking any other available action. Therefore, the possibility of divine deception should be plausible for anyone who rejects Kant‘s line about the absolute impermissibility of lying.
Even the Bible includes examples of God‘s using deception to intervene in the world. Jeremiah reports two instances of God‘s deception, one in which God deceived a community100 and another in which God deceived Jeremiah himself. 101 Divine deception also occurs when God sends disbelievers a ―strong delusion, that they should believe a lie.‖102 Importantly, the Bible also repeatedly reports that God deceived prophets into giving false prophecy.103 These instances of deception in the Bible force theists to admit that either scriptural reports of God‘s deception are true, in which case divine deception does sometimes occur, or they are false, in which case He‘s currently allowing those who believe those scriptural reports to be deceived by way of scripture.
Indeed, common theistic sentiments also seem to at least tolerate the possibility that divine deception might occur in order to bring about the greatest good. Familiar
100 Jeremiah 4:10.
101 Jeremiah 4:27.
102 Thessalonians 2:11.
103 Ezekiel 14:9, Chronicles 18:22 and Kings 22:23. 61 proverbs like ―God works in mysterious ways‖ suggest that theists are aware that human beings‘ limited minds cannot always know the means by which an omnipotent God achieves ultimate ends. Of course, those who utter this type of proverb might not intend to allow for the possibility of divine deception. Nothing turns on this, however, since the at least occasional inscrutability of God‘s ways commits theists to the epistemic possibility of divine deception, regardless of their semantic intentions. It remains eminently possible that God uses deception for reasons unbeknownst to humans.104 Thus, belief in God strands theists with an uneliminated sceptical possibility.
Theists might, even while granting the permissibility of human deception, object that divine deception is absolutely impermissible because God, unlike human beings, can always exercise non-deceptive options. However, along with the seemingly plausible assumption that it‘s never permissible for God to use less than the best means, this objection assumes that deception can‘t ever be the best means, which simply begs the question against my argument that deception sometimes is the best means. My argument doesn‘t assume that God ever strictly needs to deceive in order to achieve anything, for it‘s possible that God needn‘t ever deceive. Nevertheless, deception may sometimes be the best of various strictly unnecessary means of achieving an optimal outcome.
Fundamentally though, the burden of proof is on the theist. Resorting to a Cartesian response that deception is inherently contrary to God‘s perfection is useless, because it doesn‘t take seriously the possibility that deception is only evil when sought as an end, or that it‘s only prima facie evil and not necessarily evil in every case.
104 Indeed, sayings of this sort may actually imply something even more threatening for theists, namely that both the means and the ends that God uses and seeks are likely beyond the scope of human knowledge. However, this issue is beyond the scope of this chapter. 62
Human agency is a plausible candidate for being something that forces God into using deception to achieve maximal good. Theists regularly claim that God granted human beings libertarian free will, despite the risks inherent in granting it, because it alone enables the attainment of the maximal good. Furthermore, theists typically claim that libertarian agency allows us to act in ways that God disapproves of. Libertarian agency makes divine deception plausible as the best way of righting the universe, in some cases anyway.
III. Divine Deception and Epistemic Contexts
When contemplating God, theists frequently enter a high-standards epistemic context that ultimately denies them the ability to correctly ascribe any external-world knowledge. Perhaps the simplest way to see how this standard-raising occurs is to apply
Keith DeRose‘s well-known contextualist ―Rule of Sensitivity.‖105 According to this rule, whenever subjects assert knowledge of the falsity of some sceptical scenario, they thereby enter a context in which they need a sensitive belief of the proposition they‘re claiming to know in order to count as knowing it. A sensitive belief is one that the subject wouldn‘t still hold if it were false. Thus, once a theist says or thinks ―I know that
God isn‘t radically deceiving me‖ or ―I know that God is being basically honest with me,‖106 correctly claiming such knowledge requires the theist to have sensitive belief of
105 Keith DeRose, ―Solving the Skeptical Problem,‖ The Philosophical Review 104, no. 1 (1995): 33–35.
106 This equally applies to ―I know that God isn‘t constantly lying to me,‖ and so on. I am construing all such sentences as presupposing the existence of the God being referred to. An atheist who asserts or thinks ―I know that God isn‘t radically deceiving me‖ would of course be asserting a different proposition by that sentence, one that doesn‘t presuppose God‘s existence. To put it another way, ―God isn‘t radically deceiving me‖ is a narrow-scope negation when asserted by a theist and a wide-scope negation when asserted by an atheist. That being said, even if a non-theist‘s assertion (or thought, or belief) ―I know that God isn‘t radically deceiving me‖ does land the non-theist in a high-standards context, non-theists don‘t 63 the proposition expressed by ―God isn‘t radically deceiving me‖ or by ―God is being basically honest with me.‖ But sensitive belief of such propositions is unattainable, for one would continue to believe such propositions even if they were false. In the nearest possible worlds in which an omnipotent God is radically deceiving you, you believe that no such deception is happening. In the nearest possible worlds in which God isn‘t being even basically honest with you, God‘s dishonesty with you is the best means to some good end, in which case He needs you to remain convinced of His honesty. Therefore, on the Rule of Sensitivity, theists can‘t correctly claim to know the proposition that God isn‘t radically deceiving them (as I am construing the proposition).
Furthermore, DeRose‘s contextualism importantly preserves the closure principle, which (in his use of it) holds that subjects can‘t correctly claim knowledge of a proposition p unless they can correctly claim knowledge of every proposition they know p to entail. All reflective individuals know that their possessing external-world knowledge entails that they aren‘t being radically deceived about the external world.
Hence, theists who claim to know that God isn‘t radically deceiving them can‘t correctly claim such knowledge for themselves or for anyone else, nor can they correctly claim, for themselves or for anyone else, knowledge of the external world in general.
Scripture contains numerous passages that deny the possibility of divine deception. Two prominent examples state that ―Thou art that God, and thy words be true‖107 and ―It was impossible for God to lie‖.108 Theists who claim to know the truth of
commonly make this assertion due to their disbelief in God. The fact that theists frequently contemplate God is what puts them in this epistemological predicament in the first place, so it‘s natural that the sceptical possibility of divine deception doesn‘t affect non-theists in the same way it affects theists.
107 Samuel 7:18.
108 Hebrews 6:18. 64 assertions of this type become unable to attribute any empirical knowledge at all. Indeed, according to EC statements such as ―I know God isn‘t a deceiver‖ are analogous to statements like ―I know I‘m not a BIV.‖ In both cases the Rule of Sensitivity raises the standards for knowledge-attribution so high that such propositions are impossible to truthfully assert.
What‘s more, EC has the surprising result that theists regularly mean something different by ―knowledge‖ than do non-theists. Because theists frequently claim to know that God isn‘t radically deceiving them, they often occupy a high-standards context in which the verb ―to know‖ means something different from what it means in the low- standards contexts typically occupied by non-theists.
IV. Non-Theists’ Immunity to this Sceptical Threat
Given EC, non-theists are able to correctly attribute knowledge to a much greater extent than theists are. Quite clearly, my argument‘s soundness depends on the contention that often no sceptical possibilities are salient for non-theists. Not only is this contention intuitively correct; it‘s essential if EC is to have any anti-sceptical upside at all. EC‘s defenders portray it as a mostly-good-news diagnosis of the sceptical problem by arguing that EC allows ordinary speakers to accurately attribute knowledge in almost all contexts. Clearly, most non-theists don‘t regularly set out to contemplate sceptical scenarios. Nor do theists. However, the essential difference between the two groups is the fact that God possesses a salience in the lives of theists that other doubt-makers lack in the lives of people in general. A deceptive God is unlike the BIV hypothesis because theists take God seriously in a way that nobody takes seriously the BIV. As long as a
65 deceptive God truly is an uneliminated possibility for theists, they remain unable to correctly ascribe knowledge. No analogous sceptical restriction applies to non-theists: they regularly occupy low-standards contexts, and thus they‘re regularly able to correctly attribute knowledge.
However, this view isn‘t without its detractors. DeRose (in correspondence) contends that it isn‘t merely the salience of God but the salience of a deceiving God that is required for theists to occupy a high-standards context. However, if my argument is sound then belief in traditional monotheism‘s God is sufficient to raise epistemic standards because this belief leaves theists unable to rule out the possibility of divine deception. Furthermore, DeRose claims that if this is the case, then the notion of deceptive evolution109 serves the same role for non-theists. But these objections aren‘t persuasive, because non-theists have independent grounds for believing in non-deceptive evolution, whereas theists must confront scripture that both denies and affirms the possibility of a deceptive God, as I noted earlier.
Other theists might raise Plantinga-style objections in an attempt to wrest epistemic immunity from non-theists. Plantinga suggests that if naturalism and evolution don‘t explain why our belief in them is likely to be true, then we have no good reason to believe them.110 However, the consequent doesn‘t necessarily follow from the antecedent. It remains possible that reasons external to naturalism and evolution could provide good reason to believe in these two doctrines. In this manner, the antecedent of
109 As DeRose referred to it in correspondence, ―evolution-that-proceeds-in-such-a-way-as-to-leave-us- very-often-deceived.‖
110 Alvin Plantinga, introduction to Naturalism Defeated? Essays on Plantinga’s Evolutionary Argument against Naturalism, edited by J. Beilby (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2002), 1–12.
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Plantinga‘s claim can be affirmed, while the consequent can be denied. For example, consider your appendix. Even if naturalism and evolution don‘t explain why you have an appendix (let‘s assume that having one is a maladaptive liability), you can still have good reasons for believing that you have one, such as the results of an ultrasound.
Furthermore, as Plantinga‘s evolutionary argument against naturalism has faced withering criticism in the literature, it‘s unlikely that these objections will land non- theists in the same sceptical predicament.111 Thus, even if DeRose is correct, theists still face a much more serious problem than do non-theists.
V. Avoiding Semantic Descent
DeRose argues that attacks on EC often commit the ―fallacy of semantic descent.‖
These invalid arguments attempt to tease out some unfavourable consequence of EC from its tenets and then argue that the theory itself is untenable:
We might call the mistake of holding it against a theory or view that it has a
certain implication, when in fact its real implication is not what one thinks, but is
rather some related higher-level statement, the ―fallacy of semantic descent.‖
Theories according to which various types of sentences are held to be context-
dependent in meaning are often subject to objections that depend on this
fallacy.112
111 James Beilby, Naturalism Defeated? Essays on Plantinga’s Evolutionary Argument against Naturalism (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2002). Naturalism Defeated? contains 11 critical essays, all of which object to Plantinga‘s argument. I‘m not citing a specific critique of the argument because, significantly, none of the respondents in the volume accepts Plantinga‘s argument.
112 Keith DeRose, The Case for Contextualism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 218. 67
So, one might object to my argument on the grounds that it commits the fallacy of semantic descent. Such an objection would allege that I‘m arguing that EC implies lower-level statements, such as ―I don‘t know I have hands,‖ and taking the implausibility of such statements to imply the falsity of EC. But that isn‘t what I‘m doing: my argument studiously avoids committing the fallacy that DeRose alleges here.
In my descriptions of both EC and its sceptical implications for theists, I have remained at the level of the epistemic metalanguage by describing necessary standards for the accurate ascription of knowledge, for accurately claiming to know, and so on. These meta-level implications for theism pack enough sceptical punch without any need for risky semantic descent. Whenever theists are contemplating God, they occupy a context shaped by an uneliminated and salient sceptical possibility, in which case, according to
EC, they can‘t correctly credit themselves or any other human beings with knowledge of the external world.
VI. Conclusion
If my arguments are sound and EC is true, then theists are importantly unable to ascribe knowledge to anyone, including themselves, in many situations in which they‘re contemplating God. Since committed theists contemplate God a great deal, theists are in a desperate epistemological predicament relative to non-theists, who are regularly able to correctly ascribe knowledge. At a minimum, theists can‘t accurately attribute knowledge in any context in which they‘re considering what God is telling them—situations that frequently arise for committed theists and include many situations that theists will regard
68 as among the most important contexts of all. Indeed, if EC is true then theists frequently can‘t correctly claim that anyone knows any of the empirical facts on which their very faith depends. Theists can‘t correctly ascribe knowledge of the existence of the Bible
(Old or New Testaments) or the Quran, nor of synagogues, churches, or mosques, nor even of their own hands. In short, there is no gospel, or ―good news,‖ for theists in EC.
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Conclusion
As I mentioned at the outset of this thesis, atheists, those who deny the existence of monotheism‘s God, have faced popular and philosophical criticism from theists throughout the ages. I‘ve sought to turn the tables on theists by showing that it‘s actually theism that fails to respect our ordinary moral practice and commitments, as well as our ability to correctly claim knowledge for ourselves and others. Importantly, I‘ve also argued that naturalism succeeds in each of these regards. Throughout my thesis, I‘ve argued that theism‘s implications destroy the familiar edifice of ordinary morality and, given epistemic contextualism, prevent theists from being able ascribe knowledge to themselves and to others in a great many contexts. In the first three chapters, I attempted to show that non-theistic worldviews, like naturalism, fare better than theism in upholding ordinary morality, and in the last chapter, I argued that they‘re also more successful at staving off pervasive scepticism.
In Chapter One, I argued that, despite the fact that theists often regard atheists as morally unreliable, it‘s actually theism that diverges radically from ordinary morality.
Three of the most promising explanations of the wrongness of killing—Harm-to-the-
Victim theories, Bradley‘s Difference-Making Principle, and Justicized Act
Utilitarianism—all fail to account properly for the wrongness of killing given the blissful afterlife promised by theism. They either fail to explain the wrongness of killing heaven- bound people altogether, or they mislocate the wrongness of the act. By contrast, all of these accounts remain plausible given a naturalistic worldview. Furthermore, attempts to account explicitly for the wrongness of killing heaven-bound victims, like those of
Aquinas and Brennan, fail for various reasons, including inconsistencies with influential
70 scripture, mislocations of the wrongness of killing, and the failure to apply to the killing of young children. My argument undermines the common assertion that only theism can uphold morality, since I show that theism is unable to provide anything resembling a plausible account of the wrongness of killing heaven-bound people. Atheistic worldviews like naturalism are much more successful at providing an account of the wrongness of killing, because on these views heaven simply doesn‘t exist; thus, no one is heaven-bound in the first place. My first chapter concluded that theists, in order to be consistent, must either give up their belief in heaven or admit that theism is unable to provide an account of the wrongness of killing that‘s consistent with ordinary morality.
My second chapter discussed another of theism‘s unwelcome implications for morality. I argued that because all theists can be accurately described as egoists, they are thus unable to act altruistically. Fortunately, psychological egoism fails, since it doesn‘t accurately describe every member of humanity; however, it‘s useful in a limited sense because groups of people who hold certain beliefs are accurately described as egoists. A great many theists, including preeminent theologians like Craig, fall into this category due to their belief in eschatological moral compensation (EMC)—the claim that perfect moral compensation for one‘s actions on earth will be provided in this life or the next. In other words, their belief in EMC makes it impossible for theists to act truly altruistically by performing the laudable acts of self-sacrifice that theists regularly and rightly praise.
Other forms of theism, including some forms of Protestantism, deny the truth of EMC and instead argue that correct belief alone is required to get into heaven. However, this approach produces grotesque implications that undermine ordinary morality: it allows
71 immoral monsters to reap the eternal rewards of heaven while moral exemplars are denied heaven or even burn in hell.
In my penultimate chapter, I argued that theism clashes with ordinary morality once again because of theism‘s commitment to libertarian free will. Theists are committed to libertarianism because the combination of theism and soft determinism— the only other theory compatible with theism‘s commitment to the existence of free will—is untenable. Soft determinism either undermines theism‘s commitment to human moral responsibility or entails that God isn‘t benevolent. Naturalism doesn‘t face these problems for two reasons: first, being non-theistic it doesn‘t need to preserve God‘s benevolence; second, the Big Bang (assuming it to be the causal origin of all later events) doesn‘t manipulate the universe the same way that God—an intentional agent—does.
Thus, naturalism is hospitable to soft determinism in a way in which theism isn‘t. This leaves theists stuck with libertarianism and its accompanying problems. Libertarians of every worldview need to confront the so-called ―luck problem,‖ while theistic libertarians also need to reconcile their libertarianism with infallible divine foreknowledge. While the luck problem is currently without a widely accepted answer, it‘s possible that theists might be able to reconcile libertarianism and God‘s infallible foreknowledge by positing divine timelessness. However, we saw good reason to conclude that a timeless God isn‘t the God described by scripture—God as our creator and redeemer. Furthermore, libertarianism is problematic for theists because it conflicts with our ordinary moral intuitions about the preconditions for justly punishing or rewarding agents for their conduct. This contradicts theists‘ claim that only theism can explain our ordinary moral practice and commitments.
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Having discussed theism‘s implications for morality in the first three chapters, my final chapter examined theism‘s implications for epistemology. I argued that, given the leading epistemological theory known as ―epistemic contextualism‖ (EC), scepticism results for theists whenever they contemplate God. More precisely, according to EC, whenever sceptical possibilities are salient in a context, they raise the standards for knowledge-attribution to such a height that no one occupying the context can correctly attribute external-world knowledge to anyone at all. However, EC allows that those occupying contexts in which no sceptical possibilities are salient can truly attribute a great deal of such knowledge to themselves and to others. Hence, I argued, non-theists can relax because EC allows them to truly claim and attribute knowledge in practically every context they occupy, but theists remain vulnerable to scepticism because of the uneliminated sceptical possibility their belief in God makes salient.
My argument in that chapter hinged on a deceptive God‘s being an uneliminated sceptical possibility for theists. Scriptural evidence supports the notion of a deceptive
God: the Bible is rife with examples of God‘s using deception to intervene in the world.
Deception is also a resource at the disposal of a perfect being because deception doesn‘t necessarily imply a defect in the deceiver. Additionally, we can‘t rule out the possibility that deception is the best means to some ultimately good end in certain circumstances.
Essentially, theists don‘t know that God can‘t deceive us about the external world because they don‘t know that divine deception isn‘t sometimes for the best. Since a deceptive God represents an uneliminated sceptical possibility for theists, theists are never able to attribute knowledge of God‘s existence, among other things, to themselves or to others.
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The arguments in my thesis call into question the popular assertion that only theism can uphold our ordinary moral practice and commitments. They also challenge the claim, made by thinkers as influential as Descartes and Berkeley, that theism is required and sufficient to ward off scepticism; it is in fact neither required nor sufficient.
By taking a look at the other side of the issue, it seems perhaps fair to suggest, contrary to
Locke—for whom the ―taking away of God, though but even in thought, dissolves all‖— that it‘s theists who ought not to be tolerated due to theism‘s immoral implications.113
Descartes argues that the atheist ―cannot be certain that he is not being deceived on matters which seem to him to be very evident.‖ 114 Instead, perhaps it‘s the theist who, due to her lack of a sensitive belief that God isn‘t radically deceiving her, is unable to correctly ascribe knowledge of even basic truths to herself or to others.
113 Locke, ―Letter Concerning Toleration,‖ 158.
114 Descartes, Mediations, 103.
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