Many people believe in the existence of God. I once believed — I had this unshakable feeling that God was always there, close by. How do you know that such a feeling reflects reality? Like the appearance of water in the distance above hot asphalt, this feeling of God’s presence may just be an illusion. Unlike familiar optical illusions, illusory feelings can be harder to recognize as false. You can’t just look more closely, measure lengths of lines, or change the angle of your gaze. But people do recognize the feeling of deja vu as an illusion, and we also have the example of paranoia to establish that strong feelings can be illusory.
How can we check if the feeling of God’s presence reflects reality or is an illusion? We could use a thought experiment: if God, as He is usually defined, really existed, what world would we expect to see, and does the actual world we observe match the prediction? If the actual world significantly differs from what’s predicted, that would be evidence that God is an illusion. Such a thought experiment follows.
Imagine that fate has granted you superpowers. Exactly how is unimportant — aliens in a flying saucer gave you a bright red spandex suit with a cape and boots, if you like. Your superpowers include these:
- You are super strong
- You can make yourself invisible
- You can read the surface emotions and thoughts of any nearby person
- You can cause anyone to fall into a deep sleep
- You can fly
In appearance you are normal and unremarkable — if your powers come from the spandex suit, you can wear it under your clothes. You are a good and decent person who affirms the old superhero dictum: “With great power comes great responsibility.”
One day you’re at the supermarket and you notice a man gazing at the day’s newspaper on the rack, the front page displaying a large picture of a little girl who has been abducted and missing for four days. The man, say he’s weary a mock turtleneck sweater, seems a little excited as he skims through the story. As he replaces the paper, you tune in his emotions: he is excited, pleased with himself, and looking forward to something. There’s a little sexual arousal underneath. You scan his thoughts: you see images of this girl — wandering and lost — climbing into a car (from driver‘s point of view) — crying as the car pulls into a garage — bound and gagged on the floor of a closet as the door is closed.
This man with the mock turtleneck is the one who kidnapped the missing girl. You cannot read thoughts well enough to get street names or addresses or a person’s exact future plans, but as the man takes one last glance at the little girl’s picture, you get enough to be sure of this: if you do nothing to prevent it, this man will mutilate and kill this child, and very soon.
What choice do you make? Do you follow Mr. Mock Turtleneck and rescue the girl, or do you do nothing? Suppose you are constrained to keep your presence and abilities secret. This alone should not stop you, since you can invisibly follow our villain to where the girl is hidden, put him to sleep, check that the girl is all right, and call the police anonymously with their location. Who helped the police to rescue the girl can remain a total mystery, if that is what you want.
Perhaps you have some larger plan or purpose that prevents you from taking action: you’ve committed your time to solving an important mathematical problem, researching a cure to cancer, or developing a powerful new source of clean energy. But what possible plan or higher purpose could preclude saving this innocent little girl? What plan or purpose that was compatible with being a superhero — one who could with little effort or risk or loss of time act to save an innocent — what plan or purpose could preclude a true superhero from taking action?
Now in place of yourself with superpowers, imagine God in this situation. This would be God according to the Standard Model: a personal spirit who is omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, supremely good, and deeply concerned with our well-being. Such a God could easily save the little girl from Mr. Mock Turtleneck — many people would in fact be praying that He would do so.
This thought experiment suggests that if God were real and not an illusion, He could and would save little children in such situations, just as you would if you had to power to do so. So the experiment predicts that we should observe a world in which innocent children are never kidnapped and murdered. Yet in the real world we observe that sometimes children, even babies, are indeed abducted and killed. This is evidence that God, as usually conceived above, does not exist.
This does not necessarily mean no God exists at all — this could be taken as evidence that God is either not omnipotent, not omniscient, not omnipresent, not supremely good, and or not deeply concerned with our well-being.
On the other hand, perhaps God of the Standard Model really does exist and there is some other explanation for why we don‘t observe a world where innocent children are always protected. Those anxious to defend the reality of God have come up with a few.
First, God’s defenders claim that if He did not allow us to do evil, we would not have free will. Without free will we would be automatons, like zombies, not really able to choose love or to be fully human.
This explanation, however, does not work. Recall when you imagined having superpowers. You had the power to put Mr. Mock Turtleneck into a deep sleep, allowing you to rescue the girl easily and without risk. Would doing so turn Mr. Turtleneck into a zombie? Every night we sleep and every day we awaken without being stripped of our free will, inhuman zombies. Perhaps an omniscient and omnipotent God would allow people to choose evil, but for what reason should He allow an innocent to come to mortal harm? Why, when instead, He could both allow Mr. Turtleneck to choose evil and intervene to prevent harm to the girl? At the point that the villain is about to make the final choice to attack and kill, God could overcome him with sleep and take the girl out of harm’s way. This would not turn anyone into an automaton.
God’s defenders alternatively claim that God has some higher plan or purpose for allowing evil things to happen. For this explanation to work, whatever this plan or purpose is, it must be incompatible with preventing Mr. Turtleneck from harming the girl. Otherwise, He could act to save the girl and still carry out His plan. What plan or purpose could this be, assuming that God is supremely good and deeply concerned with our well-being?
More specifically, what plan or purpose would be compatible with the best interests of the little girl who is about to be murdered if God doesn’t intervene? For the God of the Standard Model is said not just to be deeply concerned with humanity as a whole, but with each of us individually. What higher plan or purpose could forestall such a God from saving a little innocent girl from a horrible death? Or, to put it another way, what plan or purpose would require God to allow her murder? It’s hard to imagine what such a plan might be.
Yet some defenders of God claim that He does have a plan, involving salvation from our sins through belief in an atoning sacrifice carried out in ancient times. But how could this plan require God to allow a little girl’s murder? Perhaps the faith of her parents in the face of this tradgedy will lead others to believe. But why can’t God, infinitely wise, think of some other way to convince people to believe — say by saving little innocent girls from being murdered?
At this point God’s defenders retreat to their last bulwark: even though it is hard for us to understand and accept, this death is part of God’s plan, and we must trust Him and have faith that in the end, it is for the best — and it’s not our place to question God. This explanation sweeps every and any objection away into the darkness and inscrutability of the unknown. That’s just the way it is.
Although there is a virtue in acknowledging what we do not know, remember the purpose of this thought experiment: we want evidence whether the world we observe conforms or not to what would be predicted if God really exists and is not an illusion. If God really exists and really is perfectly good and omnipotent, then He would protect children from being murdered. This last ditch explanation for His failure — that He really does exist and is good and omnipotent, but that He allows such things for some mysterious purpose that we cannot understand and must just accept — is really no explanation at all. A perfectly good person would not sacrifice a child to some “higher” purpose. And an omnipotent and omniscient being could find a way to carry out a “higher” purpose without sacrificing children, unless that purpose actually required it — in which case it would be a very strange kind of “good” for a supposedly perfectly good being to pursue.
Unless a defender of God’s existence can come up with some actual plan or purpose that really explains why God fails to protect children who are kidnapped and murdered, this last explanation, that God does have such a plan and we should not question Him, is just so much hand-waving. It does not explain anything. Our thought experiment, then, leads us to conclude that the real world does not match the world that is predicted if the God of the Standard Model actually existed. This is evidence that God is an illusion.
Your argument against the freewill response is pretty lacking, I feel. How can one be free to do evil if everytime one tries to stab someone, the knife turns into a banana? Or if, when one tries to steal someone’s purse, one’s legs give out? Do you really think the person attempting to do evil will really try and continue their evil ways in such a world? We only have a free will to the degree that we can exercise it.
@ poppies
Thank you for reading my thought experiment and commenting. I’m not sure that we have free will only to the degree that we can exercise it. Imagine that person M is a highly accomplished pianist who commits a major felony and is sent to a maximum security prison. There is no piano at this prison and M spends most of his time in his cell anyway. Does M still have the ability and skill to play the piano, even though he currently has no way to do so?
You could counter that he would maintain the skill for a time, but without practice it would eventully deteriorate. That’s likely true, but it would not disappear all at once and not all together. Even after years in prison, he would be able to sit down and play something. And after a little practice, he would quickly improve. So I’m not sure that it’s always necessary to exercise an ability to have it.
You could answer that free will is not like other abilities — by its nature it must be exercised to exist. That could very well be true. Then I’ll reply, by all means exercise it. Suppose God did intervene whenever someone made that final choice to kill another and He prevented it. And suppose He did it in the way I suggested — the would be murderer simply falls asleep. If the world were this way, you would not be able to murder someone.
But there would still be all sorts of other actions you could take. You could still walk your dog, see a movie with friends, go out on a date, or vote in an election. You could still make those choices and thus exercise your free will. You could even do bad things, like kick your dog, steal a movie, grope your date, or pack a ballot box. You just wouldn’t be able to murder.
If you re-read my post, you’ll notice it concerned saving a little child from kidnapping and murder, not preventing all acts of evil. There’s a whole lot of room for being a bad person without actually killing anyone. So even if it was somehow metaphysically necessary that people be able to commit evil in order to have free will, God could still set limits on the harm we could do.
For the free will response to work as an explanation for why God does not intervene, you need to establish that any intervention at all, no matter how slight or rare, destroys a person’s free will. My thought experiment shows how difficult that will be.
Your points are all very well taken. I just have 3 quick comments:
- As a musician, I can tell you first hand that abilities do go away, and rather quickly, if not exercised. And yes, you anticipated my counter about the unique nature of will most accurately.
- I think God does sometimes intervene; religious texts are filled with divine intervention. This intervention tends to come only after a person has set their course fairly unalterably, however.
- Any universal limitations on moral action whatsoever would mean a humanity which isn’t totally free, and such freedom is at the heart of what it means to be human. Why stop at murder? Why not limit all negative moral choices to simply thinking of evil? But when one imagines such a world, it quickly becomes clear that it cannot be described as free in any real sense
poppies:
You state that “any universal limitations on moral action whatsoever” would mean that we are not “totally free.” But are we “totally free?” Could you explain what you mean by “totally free?” Perhaps by “totally free” you mean “without any universal limitations on moral actions.”
If you had said, “any limitations on [our] action[s] whatsoever would mean a humanity which isn’t totally free,” I could respond immediately that then we are definitely not “totally free”, whatever that means. As you must realize, as social beings our actions are constrained by the laws and norms of society, and as physical beings our actions are constrained by the physical laws of the universe.
So then, how do the qualifiers “universal” and “moral” change what this sentance means? First, by “universal” you could mean “applying to everyone equally” or maybe “placed by God.” But both of those qualities are true of the physical laws of the universe, so I don’t see how that qualifier changes anything. Second, by “moral” you could mean to restrict your statement to actions that have moral consequences. You would then be saying that any limitations on what moral choices we could make would negate our “total freedom,” whereas any limitations on morally neutral choices would not negate our freedom.
However, our nature as material beings subject to the physical laws of the universe limits the actions we can take, irrespective of any moral consequences they might have. That means that if you admit that the laws of nature limit our actions, then they also limit moral actions.
This is what it comes down to: there are actions each of us would take if we could, but we cannot. Some of those desired actions have moral consequences. Thus, it seems we are not totally free. And if we are not totally free, then having God place one more limitation (by preventing the murder of children) doesn’t change the situation. We weren’t totally free before God intervened, we still aren’t totally free afterward.
Do you think that having any limitations on our freedom means that we do not have free will at all? Do you think that even the slightest intervention by God would destroy whatever free will we have? You ask, “Why stop at murder?” Why not limit our capacity to do evil to just “thinking about it?” Well, speaking hypothetically and trying to be charitable to this idea of a omnimax benevolent God, could He not choose to intervene to stop the very worst acts (like murdering children) in order to limit grave harm, but allow lesser (but still serious) acts of evil precisely in order to preserve some space for free will? Is that really so hard to imagine?
All good points. For the record, I’ll state that I think we have total freedom within the range afforded us by physical and social limitations. There are inherent rules based on our condition. If one is playing a baseball game, no one cries injustice if an umpire calls “out” after three strikes. If he does after only one, however, there is a sense of unfairness. In the same way, if God “breaks” one of his prior “rules” in such a way that a person is forced to do a certain something which they would not have chosen, there is impropriety.
And yes, I do believe that even the slightest divine disrespect of human autonomy destroys free will (notwithstanding the “set course” interventions I’ve previously mentioned). Note this doesn’t mean God can’t work through strongly encouraging humans to pursue justice, limit evil, etc.
Thanks for the interesting ideas, this is a very important topic that isn’t discussed enough.
poppies,
Thank you for your reply. You state that “we have total freedom within the range afforded us by physical and social limitations.” To me that sounds equivalent to saying that we are not totally free, for we are free only “within the range afforded us by physical and social limitations.” Since in comment 3 above your objection against God intervening was that “[a]ny universal limitations on moral action whatsoever” would mean that we are not really totally free, I thought that “limitations” were the stumbling block. But now you admit physical and social limitations, but still claim that we have total freedom. Again I ask you to please explain, what do you mean by total freedom?
If you force me to guess what you mean, I’ll hazard you mean by “total freedom” the choice to obey or disobey God. Thus, God preventing a child’s murder would be an unacceptable limitation on the murderer’s choice to disobey God. Is that what you believe?
Also, I wish you would explain how it is that the “slightest divine disrespect of human autonomy destroys free will.” For example, would God causing someone to fall into a deep sleep destroy that person’s free will? How?
Good points, again.
Your guess as to my belief is very accurate. I apologize for any perceived lack of clarity; it’s a result of my taking it for granted that certain limits are taken for granted in these types of discussions.
As for the mechanism of how any divine disrespect of human autonomy destroys free will: Let’s say people did fall asleep upon intending to kill children. If this were always the case, 100% repeatable under all conditions, such a situation would basically be fairly infallible proof of God. I say “fairly” because there will always be people for whom nothing is convincing due to a mindset utterly against God, but since most people in our current world believe in God I would have to imagine this child-murder-avoiding-sleep world would cause most people to feel as if they had no choice but to obey God’s commands. The reality of God’s 3-O existence would be incredibly palpable. It’s an important aspect of free will that God remain subtle, not particularly easily accessed, and dismissable. Hopefully that’s clear, I’ve made some assumptions that I think most people would find reasonable, but if you feel I should drill down further, I’m happy to do so.
poppies,
I find your explanation of how any divine intervention would destroy free will unsatisfactory. Take the story of Adam and Eve. Certainly, they were quite sure that God exists — they were on speaking terms after all. Yet, they were obviously free to disobey. Also, consider Moses. He came upon God in the burning bush. He heard His voice. He saw the glory of God “from behind” after God passed by. Sounds to me like Moses would have been quite sure that God exists. Do you think that destroyed his free will? And there are many more examples of individuals portrayed in the Bible as knowing that God exists, yet appearing to still have free will.
How can you be sure that strong evidence of God’s existence would prevent people from disobeying? Most people agree that they have an obligation to obey the laws of the state, and they certainly believe that the state exists. They also know that if they are caught they will be punished. Yet, many still break laws. Now, if you replace “state” with “God” in the above, why would people not still be free to obey or disobey?
And let me point out to you — in ancient Israel as portrayed in the Old Testament, the state was headed by God. If what you are saying were true (and the events in the Old Testament really happened as written), then Adam, Abraham, Noah, Moses, the prophets, and the whole generation that witnessed the Exodus, would have had their free will destroyed. You’re theory may make sense (to you) philosophically, but it doesn’t fit with the stories told in the Bible. Unless you take all that stuff as metaphorical, I don’t see how you can believe such a theory as a Christian.
To be perfectly honest, I hadn’t thought about it in those terms before. I now see I can’t hold the theory I previously held. I’ll have to think about it more, because your thought experiment now takes on new meaning for me.
poppies:
Now you’ve gone and done it! You’ve suprised me. I look forward to reading what you come up with.
[...] Thought Experiment Is Driving Me Mad! I recently commented on a post which began a conversation which has really made me think about my beliefs in a new way. The post [...]
[...] 18th, 2007 by keithwerner Poppies at Digital Reason has blogged about my post God — A Thought Experiment. Apparently I’m driving him mad. I’ll try to bring some sanity later, but now I must [...]
Kieth,
Your analogy is well presented, but I think that it makes one lethal error. And that is, it doesn’t address the concept of causal determination or causal laws associated with free will. Most atheist philosophers use a variation of your argument without the appeal to emotion. They make the comparison with an innocent agent being killed by another agent; while this is happening there is no other agent present that would have the moral responsibility to save the agent being harmed. Thus, because God is a perfect agent he then must be morally responsible. However, this causes two problems (1) it commits a naturalistic fallacy. (2) It ignores causal laws associated with free will. (3) It also is appears to be an Argument from Ignorance, because we have no evidence that God should be the moral agent when there exist free will.
Alvin Plantinga in “God, Freedom and Evil” addressed the idea that you have presented.
He states that if God is to create a world that contains free will, he must also allow instances of Evil. This is because if any causal result (which many times can bring about evil) is limited, then it must be determined. Since evil is the result of a causes, to limit evil you must limit the ability to bring about such causes.
Here is a simplified proof of why evil (or any causal result) cannot be stopped, determined, or prevented if we are to be truly free.
1. If God limits or prevents the result of a cause, he must prevent the occurrence of the cause itself.
2. If god prevents the occurrence of a cause, then he must limit the causal initiator ‘CI’ (Agents).
3. To limit the CI, God must limit the ability of the CI to initiate or act, so that the cause cannot occur.
4. Therefore, the CI (to be limited) is not truly free.
Any event weather you make an agent sleep, turn his bullets into sunflowers, or cause him to not think about the action before he decides to do it, is limiting the ability to bring to pass a free desire or willed action. It thus follows that to limit evil even at the slightest eliminates the true concept of free will.
Best,
John
John:
I’m having a hard time following your arguments. I’d like to be charitable and assume you have valid points to make and I’m just not getting it. Could you help me understand what you are saying?
First, you say that I’m committing a naturalistic fallacy. It would help me if you would explain what you mean by that, since, esp. on the web, terms can have different meanings to different people. Are you referring to the is-ought distinction, or are you saying that just because saving a child is the “natural” thing that we would do doesn’t mean that action is “good” (and thus what we should expect of God)?
Second, you say that I’m am “ignor[ing] causal laws associated with free will.” What causal laws exactly am I ignoring? Please state them simply and directly. Perhaps you’re referring to your subsequent discussion of Alvin Plantinga and free will. I’ll come to that in a moment.
Third, you accuse my thought experiment of being an Argument from Ignorance. I’m not sure what to make of that. When it comes to the (purported) ineffable Source of all creation, we can all reasonable plead ignorance. Should I say nothing then? This charge seems ready made to silence any argument about God you don’t like. Discussing God as if He were an agent who could potentially intervene in the real world is conventional and unremarkable. Nor is it remarkable to take God as omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent. And that last term, “omnibenevolent,” means that we are taking as a given that God is good and a moral agent. It looks like you are faulting my argument for not providing evidence that God is good and should intervene — a strange way for you to defend God, it that’s your intent. Perhaps I’ve misunderstood you.
Finally, you appeal to Alvin Plantinga and give a simplified proof for why evil cannot be stopped. First off, I’m not sure you’re proof is well formed. You state that it is a proof of why evil cannot be stopped if we are to be truly free. Yet, as you’ve written it, it instead concludes that “causal initiators” are not free. You seem to have left some steps out.
Also, I see no reason to accept your first premise that “[i]f God limits or prevents the result of a cause, he must prevent the occurrence of the cause itself.” We can limit or prevent a result without preventing the cause. We just have to interpose our own action[s] into the chain of causation so as to avoid the result we wish to stop.
For example, say we want to prevent the eight ball from falling into the corner pocket in a game of billiards. The imminent cause of the eight ball falling in the corner pocket is that my friend Paul is about to strike the cue ball with his cue stick. I could knock him down first, thus preventing the result (eight ball sunk) by preventing the cause (Paul strikes the cue ball). Or, I could hold my cue stick across the table between the cue ball and the eight ball, such that the cue ball cannot strike the eight ball. Or I could pluck the cue ball off the table (as it rushes toward the eight ball) and chuck it in the trash. In any case, I’ve prevented the result without preventing the cause, Paul (in the sense of the “causal initiator”).
So right there your proof has run aground before even getting away from the dock. Perhaps now you would like to take the problem of evil seriously.
Keith,
Thank you for the comment.
I would like to press the idea of causes and the association they have with moral evil. Evils exist– both moral and natural (1). Goods exist –both moral and natural (2).
(1) and (2) also contain certain degrees of evil and good. Lets say the situations of evil that are or resemble, vice, jealousy, envy, simple loss, minor physical pain, or simple malicious acts, are considered 1st degree evils. Whereas acts such as: simple hate, murder, rape, genocide, terrible physical pain, sever loss, or terrible emotional pain, are known as 2nd degree evils. So, we have (for arguments sake) 1st degree evils (1E) and second-degree evils (2E) that are present in (1). The same concept applies for (2). There are 1st degree goods (1G) that are brought about by 1st degree evils, and necessarily the same would hold for 2nd degree goods (2G).
Now, before I continue with this line of thought, let me state that the conclusion of your argument, if I am not mistaken, is:
Since God is omnipotent he should be able to prevent the results of evil action by intervening and still allow the occurring cause.
Let assume that that conclusion were possible, and if it were the question that arises is: would the existence of (1G) and (2G) exist if results of evil actions, which brings about (1E) and (2E), were to be eliminated?
The cases (1G) and (2G) are logically made possible by the existence of (1E) and (2E); this is analogous for hot and could or any other counter-dependant. So if God even so much as limits any action or result that is caused, or that will bring about (1E) then he must allow that (1G) not exist. The same follows for (2E)–>(2G). Thus, God cannot result of any evil event without eliminating goods.
Your claim that God ’should’ intercede to stop evil actions from occurring is still an argument from ignorance. Why should he? What reasons would God have to bring that about? Is it because it would be better that the actions of men be determined moderately? Can you provide a reason for why?
However, that is beside that point let us move on to why your conclusion is erred when discussing freedom and causes.
It is actually a very simple concept. Alvin Plantinga in “God, Freedom and Evil” addresses that exact claim, and refutes it. That is why the atheologian is no longer attacking that concept but rather the existence of natural evil or unnecessary evil.
Plantinga states that if God is to make one refrain from bringing about the result of their action then that person is not truly free. Thus God is determining the actions of free agents. If God determines the actions of some free agents then the parts of the whole are not free. Thus logically the whole itself is not free. (This seems to be derived from the logical concept Axiom 5)
To further the idea of Plantinga and Nelson Pike, I assert that if God were to limit evil by divinely interceding, then he would also have to not only limit the result but the cause that is bringing about any evil result because actions that bring about evil are evil themselves, he would therefore have to stop any evil action (I say any because God could not merely chose to limit certain evils and allow others and remain omni benevolent. Thus, if god is to limit any result he must limit all results in ore to remain wholly good).
You have not correctly thought out the causal events that would proceed if God were to limit all evil result. If he were to do so would moral evil exist? The answerer is no. And we know that it is logically impossible to actualize a world containing morally free agents without the existence of moral evil (see: Alvin Plantinga “God, Freedom and Evil”).
[...] while back I posted a thought experiment pertaining to God. In the comments section I got into a discussion with two Christian theist, [...]
[...] 24th, 2007 by keithwerner Here is an outline of the basic argument in a previous post, God — A Thought Experiment. This is bare bones. I’ll clarify some points in [...]
[...] Here’s something a wrote up for my blog (currently not very active) last year. Maybe this will stimulate some discussion. [...]