So I'm guessing that whatever differences we have, we agree that, if the God of classical theism exists, then that would be an extraordinary fact.
Justin: Indeed. It's always nice to start with some common footing.
Randal: Yes sirree. But not only is the question of God important, I think it also follows that we ought to hope that God exists.
Justin: Ah, but Randal, that's not immediately obvious to many.
Randal: You’re right about that. In the last decade, I’ve found it increasingly common to find atheists stating not just that they don't believe in God but that they hope there is no God. Ironic, eh? At the same time that some atheists are yawning their way into apatheism, others are raising a closed fist to the very idea of God.
Justin: Yes, that's certainly a view that's found some footing. Philosopher Thomas Nagel famously wrote, “I hope there is no God! I don't want there to be a God; I don't want the universe to be like that.”8
These atheists who hope there is no God often refer to themselves as antitheists.
Randal: Yes, not to be confused with the Auntie theist you visit every Thanksgiving. (Sorry, bad joke.) But seriously, antitheism is quite common these days. Indeed, in some camps it seems like atheism and antitheism are pretty much considered one and the same thing, so that atheism involves hoping God doesn't exist as much as it involves believing God doesn't exist.
Christopher Hitchens (may he rest in peace) used to love comparing God to a despot like Kim Jong-il of North Korea. For Hitchens, living under God would be living under cosmic tyranny. So, not only did he believe God didn't exist, he also hoped he was right, and he was prepared to rebel against any God that should appear on the scene.
Justin: Very true. For Hitchens, the wish for God to exist was the wish to be a slave.
In a 2008 debate with his brother, Peter Hitchens, Christopher proclaimed the following:
It [a desire for God to exist] is the desire for an unalterable, unchallengeable, tyrannical authority who can convict you of thoughtcrime while you are asleep…who must indeed subject you to total surveillance around the clock, every waking and sleeping minute of your life, before you are born and even worse, and where the real fun begins, after you’re dead. A celestial North Korea. Who wishes this to be true? Who but a slave desires such a ghastly fate?9
Beyond the master/slave rhetoric, which I think is without merit,10 there exists, I think, a legitimate concern about theism. If theism is true, it does rob us of any sense of privacy. Our thoughts are not our own. So, while I agree that, all things considered, we have more to gain if theism is true and so should prefer that be the case, this is one issue that seems to bring at least some support for the opposite conclusion. Would you agree, Randal?
Randal: That reminds me of the story of average guy Alex Moss. When he was remodeling his bedroom, Mr. Moss found the following note hidden in the fireplace: “Hello, welcome to my room. It's 2001 and I am decorating this room. Hope you enjoy your life. Remember that I will always be watching you.”11
Always watching?! Brrr. Moss thought that was sufficiently weird to share the story online. And it quickly went viral, as people reflected on how creepy it would be to have somebody always watching you. So I get where you’re coming from.
Having said that, let me answer your question. No, I don't agree with the objection as applied to God, because it seems to be based on a crude anthropomorphism. That is, it arises from the error of uncritically thinking of God in human terms, as someone like the mysterious voyeur who formerly lived in Alex's bedroom.
An invasion of privacy occurs when another agent surveils your actions, as in a peeping Tom peering through your blinds or a secretive government agency listening to your phone calls or reading your emails. But God's knowledge of us is nothing like that. God doesn't surveil your actions. That is, God doesn't gain new information about his creatures by surreptitiously observing them. Rather, as a necessarily omniscient being, God simply knows all true statements from eternity. Since God's knowledge of us has no relation to the peeping Tom or secretive government agency, the suggestion that God invades our privacy just strikes me as confused.
Justin: Hmm. I can agree with you that you’ve identified a difference between God's knowledge of all events and typical cases of human knowledge. But why should we think that distinction is of any relevance? For it seems to me that, however the knowledge is gained, the fact that our thoughts are not ours alone still remains and that fact should at least count for something.
Randal: What do you mean “our thoughts are not ours alone”?
Justin: Simply that we cannot be alone with our thoughts. With theism, we lack all privacy of mind.
Randal: It seems that your language gains in poetic panache what it loses in analytic precision. To be frank, I'm still unclear why you believe that a necessarily existent being's knowledge of all true propositions constitutes an invasion of your privacy.
Let me try a different angle: A few years ago, I learned that there are tiny creatures, creatures that are too small to be seen by the human eye, that live on the human forehead.
Justin: Gross.
Randal: That's what I said!
Justin: What are they?
Randal: Unfortunately, finding out the answer didn't make me feel any better. Demodex have eight legs and long chubby bodies, and they live their entire lives crawling around near our eyebrows. At first, this revelation was so repulsive to me that I had to fight the urge to dip a hunk of steel wool in bleach and go to work on my forehead.
But lo, over time I’ve grown accustomed to the idea of those critters living on my forehead. If I can get used to the prospect of something as unsettling as bugs living on my face, I think you can get used to the prospect of a morally perfect, necessary being knowing all true propositions from eternity, including whether you will have pastrami on rye for lunch next Tuesday.
Justin: I'm not claiming that it would be perpetually terrible if God were to exist. Remember, I still think it would be a good thing, all things considered, for God to exist. I am simply claiming that this is at least one reason, however small you think it is, to wish that God didn't exist. The fact that I could get used to it after a while doesn't negate the fact that it is one relevant factor.
I might get used to the fact that a neighbor can hear me making love, but I may still think of this as a reason for preferring they didn't live on the other side of the wall!
Randal: Once again, you’re falling into the anthropomorphic trap of envisioning God taking in knowledge about his creatures through some kind of external perception. But it's not like that. God doesn't observe us by hearing or seeing what we’re doing through a wall. God does not surveil us to gain knowledge of us. That's not how omniscience works.
Anyway, the reason I brought up the point of getting used to Demodex living on my forehead is to illustrate that in retrospect my initial revulsion at these creatures was misplaced. In fact, they don't impinge on my enjoyment of life, and it just took some time to realize that fact.
Similarly, I think that once you recognize that God isn't the North Korean despot of Christopher Hitchens's imagination, you can likewise see that a divine being's knowing all true propositions from eternity is not, in itself, ground to worry about an invasion of one's privacy.
Justin: Sure, I'm merely claiming it's one factor but is outweighed by other concerns. So, even though you may think of Hitchens's privacy complaint as irrelevant, I think it carries some weight. That said, Hitchens was wrong to conclude that, all things considered, the wish for theism to be true is no different from the wish to be a slave.
Randal: We definitely agree on that point.
Randal: Now that we’ve got some preliminary points out of the way, perhaps we can dive into a particular topic. I want to come back to the point you raised about unsophisticated defenses of theistic belief leading to ridiculous caricatures like the flying spaghetti monster. So, if it is okay with you, perhaps we can shift gears from tal
king about the concept of God and attitudes toward God to the rationality of belief in God, including the questions of faith and knowledge.
Justin: You’ll get no protest from me.
GOOD AND BAD FAITH
Randal: Cool. You certainly are an obliging chap!
Okay, so you drew an important link between unsophisticated approaches to justifying one's belief and the problem of blind faith. At this point, skeptics often raise an objection to fideism, the belief that faith need not depend on evidence. With that in mind, I want to make two points in response.
First, while fideism can provide a poor or unsophisticated response to the question of justifying belief, that isn't necessarily the case. In other words, appeals to fideism can be sophisticated and worth taking seriously. For example, Christian philosopher Robert Merrihew Adams defends a form of fideism in his essay “The Virtue of Faith.”1 And many other Christian philosophers have done so as well.2 You might not agree with their approaches, and that's fair enough. But hopefully we can agree that fideism can be sophisticated even if we might disagree about whether it is right.
Justin: Sure, I can agree here. It may be fair to call some views of faith sophisticated in the sense that their ideas are clear and complex, even if I ultimately remain unmoved by their efforts.
Randal: Okay, good. And second, I'd want to add that just as fideism can be sophisticated, so the denial of fideism can be unsophisticated. Indeed, in my experience very often it is.
Justin: Hmm, could you elaborate?
Randal: But of course. For example, I can't count the number of times I’ve heard atheists say things like “I always believe based on evidence.” As popular as that mantra may be in some particular circles, it's simply an absurd claim, and it's also demonstrably false.
Justin: That's right. To take a classic example, that individual likely believes that the external world exists—that there is a real, physical world that exists out there that they are indeed perceiving. And yet, what evidence could they possibly bring to the table to demonstrate this?
Randal: Yeah, that's a big problem. As every philosopher knows, providing evidence for a physical world is not as easy as most folks think. After all, much of that so-called evidence is perfectly compatible with the scenario in which there is no external world and we are minds in a matrix being fed sensory data to create the illusion of a physical world.
Evidentialism is the idea that one must have evidence for a claim to be justified in believing it. These days, naive versions of evidentialism are common, according to which this justifying evidence must be scientific or at least empirical. Consider, for example, the person who says, “If I can't experience it with my senses, then I won't believe in it.” In my opinion, the naive evidentialist who believes she can justify all her beliefs with evidence is a fitting complement for the crude fideist who refuses to justify any of his beliefs. Here we have two equal and opposite errors.
Justin: I share your concerns here about some of my fellow atheists or anybody who would venture to assert that all of their beliefs are based on evidence. That's a pretty naive view. My concern lies primarily with fideism in its most egregious form, which I believe we both agree is problematic.
Randal: Not so fast, bub. I agree that some forms of fideism are problematic (just as I suggested that some forms of evidentialism are problematic). But I'm not sure that you and I do agree on exactly what a problematic instance of fideism would be. Can you give an example of what you’re thinking? What does that look like?
Justin: I think we do (or perhaps should) agree that, as a general rule, an attitude or approach to faith that discourages investigation is problematic. I dare say this should be uncontroversial.
Randal: Hmm, I'm not so sure. Can you unpack that some more?
Justin: Consider a young man picked up by the police late one night for allegedly committing some heinous crime or other. His family is notified of his arrest, but their faith in their son is so great that they confidently conclude there must have been some mistake.
A short while later, the family members of the accused show up to the trial proceedings for support. However, when it comes time for the prosecution to make their case, the family dons earplugs and eye-covers to preserve the strength of their trust in him. Despite the evidence piling up, they choose to stay headstrong in their faith. Once the defense begins their case, the family promptly removes their headgear and listens intently.
Randal: What? That's outrageous!
Justin: To be sure, this is an extreme example for illustrative purposes, but I’ve had my fair share of conversations with people who pridefully and unapologetically view their faith in an analogous way. It's quite common actually.
Randal: That may be as you say, an extreme example, but things like that do happen. In my book You’re Not as Crazy as I Think, I give a real-life example along those lines.3 In that case, two brothers were plotting to kill their parents for the life insurance money. The FBI was tipped off to the conspiracy and launched an investigation. As part of that investigation, an undercover agent posing as a hitman had a conversation with one of the brothers about planning the hit. The exchange was recorded and later played at trial, but the parents refused to listen to the recording. In short, they popped in those ear plugs you described. All the while they resolutely maintained that their beloved boys were set up.
As a parent, my sympathies are with those parents. I can't imagine how painful it would be to learn that your children wanted to kill you! But from a rational perspective, their refusal to consider the evidence before them was indefensible. Theirs was a bald case of choosing to maintain comforting self-deception over the cold, hard truth. And I agree that this is fundamentally irrational.
Justin: They were certainly guilty of the crime of irrationality, but, wow, that must have been tough to hear.
Randal: Tell me about it. The ultimate betrayal!
I guess the additional point I'd like to make is that I see people across the spectrum engaging in this kind of behavior. It certainly isn't limited to those who would describe themselves as religious. Self-described skeptics, atheists, and humanists can also act this way.
Justin: Your addendum is noted and appreciated. In my experience, the community of those who self-identify as atheists or skeptics are very fond of and very skilled at communicating and promoting the values of skepticism and critical thinking. However, communicating those values is one thing and putting them into practice is quite another. Like any other community united around some core ideas or beliefs, we too can quite often fail to embody those values—especially in our interactions with outside groups or individuals.
Randal: I appreciate you saying that. It reminds me of the unfortunate relationship Christians frequently have with grace. While we Christians talk a lot about grace, it's one thing to talk grace and quite another to embody the values of grace in one's life. When it comes to matching our behavior to our beliefs, we’re all works in progress to some degree.
DEFINING FAITH
Randal: Okay, that's enough mea culpas for now. Perhaps we can switch gears at this point and turn to defining faith. Just as there are many different definitions of God, so there are many different definitions of faith. In particular, there are two basic ways the word faith is defined, and they are often conflated in discussions like this. So it's probably worthwhile to be clear on the distinction.
Justin: That's a good point. That word gets thrown around a lot, and it's not always clear what usage is intended.
Randal: In the first sense, faith is roughly equivalent to religion. Insofar as we are working with that definition of faith, it's clear that some people have faith and some don't because some people are adherents to a particular religion, while others have no religious affiliation.
Justin: Right. As with the phrase, the Abrahamic Faiths.
Randal: Yup. In this sense I’ve got a faith (Christianity), but you don't.
And in the second sense, faith is roughly equivalent to
trust. In other words, to have faith in something is to trust in that thing. If I have faith in the truth of a proposition, then I trust that the proposition is true. If I have faith in a person, then I am inclined to trust what this person says as being true. If I have faith in my cognitive faculties, like sense perception and memory, then I trust that the deliverances of these faculties are generally reliable.
Justin: That makes sense.
Randal: I think it's important to make this distinction clear because I often hear those without a religious faith (the first definition) insist that they don't have faith in something like the second sense. But this is simply false. Whether you have a religious affiliation or not, everybody must still trust in some truth claims, in particular persons, and in the very cognitive faculties that mediate information about the world to us. There is no view-from-nowhere that allows us to test our beliefs apart from faith. So only some of us have faith in the first sense but everybody has faith in the second sense.
Justin: I suspect that the nonreligious community would rather use trust than faith when speaking of confidence in some proposition or person because of faith's religious connotations. But it's certainly the case that the word can be used in both senses.
Randal: While some folks may feel better about using the word trust, the truth is that there is nothing especially religious about the term faith. Just listen to George Michael's 1987 hit song “Faith,” in which the pop star's call to have faith is focused on a lowbrow desire for sexual contact with a woman. Needless to say, there are no lofty religious convictions in that use of the word.
The lesson is that the very common tendency to pit faith against reason is wholly mistaken, for reason always begins in faith or trust.
This reality goes straight back to our earliest formation as infants and toddlers, as we extended trust to our caregivers to mediate information about the world to us. Indeed, I like to describe faith and reason as the two oars of a boat. If you only row on one side of the boat, you go in circles. You need faith and reason together to advance in your understanding of the world.
An Atheist and a Christian Walk into a Bar Page 4