From: Default User
Date: 29-Sep-98

> Hi,
> I'm not a theist. That is to say, I don't believe that there is an
> absolutely perfect (or, more modestly, omnipotent, omniscient,
> omnibenevolent) Creator of the universe. However, I am currently doing
> graduate-level work in analytic philosophy, and I must inform you that
> your criticisms of theism are bad criticisms.

Having never been formally educated in philosophy, I may have to bow to your better judgement. However, you need to remember that the Wasteland is merely the personal webpage of a single atheist, and is in no way intended to be a scholarly exercise representing the views of anyone but myself.

I yam what I yam, as Popeye would say. =)

> In point of fact, I don't
> know of any good criticisms, although there are philosophers who seem to
> think they do. If you are seriously interested in this debate, there
> are three books you might consider reading. They are: Plantinga's God,
> Freedom and Evil, Swinburne's Is there a God?, and Mackie's The Miracle
> of Theism. The first two of these present arguments for the existence
> of God and a detailed defence against the Argument from Evil, and other
> atheologica. The deductive argument from evil - the claim that there is
> an explicit contradiction within theism given the theist's belief that
> evil exists - was decisively laid to rest by Plantinga in The Nature of
> Necessity; God, Freedom and Evil contains a concise account of his
> refutation, usually called the Free Will Defense. Mackie's book is as
> good a defense of atheism as any I have ever seen, though I cannot say I
> find it especially convincing.

You might find the Internet Infidels website quite interesting. They have a number of articles on the philosophy of atheism and theism in their Modern Library section (several devoted entirely to the Free Will and Evil arguments). The URL is
http://www.infidels.org/

>
> To motivate you in your philosophical studies, I will now present a
> criticism of one particular piece of atheologica: the arguments you've
> posted under "Free Will contradicts the idea of an Omniscient God".
> This criticism isn't intended to be exhaustive; it is merely intended to
> show you some errors in your arguments. You begin your piece with the
> following:
>
>> "We are often told that God knows all things throughout the entirety of
>> time and space. Everything that can be known, he knows. Everything in
>> the past, present and future is known to God . . . There's just one
>> small problem...
>
>> Free Will. Religion teaches that God gave us free will, so that we may
>> make our own decisions, decide our own futures, with no coercion from
>> God. If we do good things or bad things it is entirely down to us, God
>> just sits back and watches over us.
>
>> This makes no sense at all. If God knows all things throughout time,
>> then he knows every action I perform, every decision I make throughout
>> my life, before I have done them. If God knows exactly what I am going
>> to do on 10th July, 2030, then how can I do anything other than that?
>
>> God, however, being the Creator, had prior knowledge of your actions at
>> the time of the Creation, billions of years ago. He set the universe in
>> motion, knowing all that would happen throughout time."
>>
> The simplest analysis of your argument would be as follows:
>
> (1) If I am going to do x at a (future) time t, then God knows that I am
> going to do x at t. [Premise]
> (2) If God knows that I am going to do x at t, then it must be the case
> that I will do x at t. [Premise]
> (3) But, if it must be the case that I will do x at t, then I am not
> free not to do x at t. [Premise]
> (4) Therefore, if God knows that I am going to do x at t, then I am not
> free not to do x at t. [from 2, 3]
> (5) Therefore, if I am going to do x at t, then I am not free to do
> otherwise. [from 1, 4]
> (6) Therefore, I am not free with respect to any of my future acts.
> [from 5]
>
> This argument is unsound. The fallacy lies in the fact that (2) is
> ambiguous between
>
> (2a) Necessarily, if God knows that I am going to do x at t, then I will
> do x at t.
>
> and
>
> (2b) If God knows that I am going to do x at t, then it is necessary
> that I will do x at t.

Please don't take this as an insult, but every time I've started to read an explanation that goes into "If P and A then not B, entails C but not not P" my brain turns to cream cheese and I lose all interest (I'm a programmer by trade, not a philosopher).

However, I see your point, but in the case of (2b) it seems to me that it doesn't actually matter whether it is necessary or not, given that God is alleged to have created the universe (time and space) with total knowledge of everything that happens in it. If God knows that I am going to do something, and God sees space-time all at once, then I have in effect, already done it.

Does not omniscience play havoc with logic?

> If (2) is read as (2a), then (2) is true - trivially so, since it is an
> analytic truth that known propositions are true - but of no use to the
> argument, since (4) no longer follows from it and (3) (in order for (4)
> to follows, (2) must be read as (2b)). If it is read as (2b), then (2)
> is false; the fact that a person knows that P does not make P a
> necessary truth (I know that George Washington was our first president;
> "George Washington was our first president" is not a necessary truth).

But if God created the universe with G.W. being first president, doesn't that then make it a necessary truth? "G.W. as first president" becomes a fixed attribute of the universe.

> In philosophical circles, the confusion in your argument would be
> expressed by saying that it confuses necessity de dicto with necessity
> de re (for an account of these terms, see any good text on modal logic;
> I recommend Hughes and Cresswell's New Introduction to Modal Logic).
> The presence of this fallacy, which has been known since the Middle Ages
> (Aquinas refuted this argument in the 13th century) obviates the
> remainder of your discussion. However, since there are additional
> fallacies in the arguments which follow, it will be of interest to
> examine them carefully.

Okey dokey. =)

> You go on to say,
>
>> "One common counter-argument goes like this:
>> God knows what you are going to do, yes. But he does not cause you to do
>> it. He simply observes your actions. His prior knowledge does not cause
>> you take that action.
>
>> A reasonable argument, but quite flawed. Let's say I use a time-machine
>> to travel forwards in time to next week. I write down all your actions
>> on Thursday in a book, seal the book and travel back again. I present
>> you with the sealed book and tell you not to open it until the end of
>> Thursday. When you read it, you see that I had prior knowledge of all
>> your actions. Did I remove your free will? NO, because I simply
>> observed. I did not set in motion all the events leading up to your
>> actions, from the creation of the universe. At the moment God created
>> the universe, surely He knew all that would happen throughout it's
>> entire history. If so, then He is directly responsible for all our
>> actions - we have no more choice in what we do than a clockwork toy
>> does. If not, then we are part of some huge experiment which God set in
>> motion without the faintest idea of what would happen - he sits back and
>> observes as people die in terrible wars and plagues, ticking off boxes
>> on His clipboard and writing notes like some emotionless scientist."
>
> You are drawing a distinction here between human and divine ways of
> knowing. We know what we know by observation; God, on the other hand,
> knows what He knows because every event was pre-arranged by Him through
> the setting up of the appropriate initial conditions at the beginning of
> time.

The idea of God "knowing" anything is in itself an interesting thing. How does God "know" things? Being omniscient, he knows everything already - he cannot learn anything new, he cannot gain new knowledge from experienc, he cannot use reason to work out any solutions (to do so he would have to be lacking in some knowledge, which by definition he cannot be).

Could such a being be said to be in any way intelligent, if it cannot think or reason?

"Is God actually alive" would be quite an interesting thing to think about...

> Your argument for this distinction is that if all events are not
> pre-arranged in this manner, " . . . then we are part of some huge
> experiment which God set in motion without the faintest idea of what
> would happen," etc. This argument is either question-begging (i.e.
> circular) or else it's just a non sequitur. If you assume that the
> only way God can foreknow human action is by causally determining it in
> advance, then you are in effect assuming that God couldn't "simply
> observe" your actions, couldn't foreknow them in some way without
> causally determining them;

Isn't the fact of an omniscient universe-creator foreknowing your actions (within the universe he created) the same as him causally determining them?

> and then your objection begs the question
> against the argument you're supposed to be refuting. If, on the other
> hand, you don't make that assumption, then your conclusion doesn't
> follow. Either way, the argument stands.
> >> "Another counter-argument, again flawed:
>> God exists throughout all time, yes, but he does not actually know what
>> action you will perform until you perform it. He knows what choices you
>> might take, but not the precise one itself.
> >> This is quite absurd. It limits God within time. God, who is supposed be
>> unlimited, existing outside of time, surely cannot be restricted by his
>> own creation - time.
> >> It also suggests that God's mind is filled with all the possible actions
>> of all humans (and, presumably, all other life) throughout all of time.
>> There is a portion of the mind of God devoted to whether or not I am
>> going to pick my nose during every nanosecond of time, which possible
>> objects your eyes could focus on at any particular instant, and which
>> possible routes, to the nearest billionth of a millimeter you could
>> travel on your work way to work. There are an infinite number of
>> possible actions that each one of us could perform during our lifetime.
>> God cannot, by definition, know an infinite number of things. (For the
>> same reason that he cannot make a rock to heavy for him to lift, or
>> create a square circle - it's a logical impossibility; meaningless
>> word-play)."
> > I suspect you don't know what a "logical impossibility" is. A statement
> is logically impossible iff it entails an explicit contradiction (a
> statement of the form "P & not-P"); a state of affairs is logically
> impossible iff a logically impossible statement would be true if that
> state of affairs were to obtain. A logically impossible statement is
> not "meaningless word-play"; it is clearly meaningful, since it has a
> true-value (namely, F).

I could have probably made it a little clearer there. I agree that a logical impossibility is not meaningless word-play. I was referring to the use of such statements as being meaningless because they are logically impossible. To argue whether or not a God can do something logically impossible doesn't really advance the debate very much.

> A real example of "meaningless word-play" would
> be a sentence which is not well-formed ("The if at so is lightly."), a
> sentence which uses meaningless words ("'Twas brillig, and the slithy
> toves . . ."), or improper semantics (like Chomsky's "Colorless green
> ideas sleep furiously."). That being said, it is not even the case that
> "God knows an infinite number of things (propositions)" is necessarily
> false, let alone logically impossible. It is not even logically
> impossible that I know an infinite number of things. It is plausible to
> suppose that, if I know that P, and P entails a number of distinct
> propositions, and I know that P entails those propositions, then I know
> the propositions which P entails. For instance, I know that there is no
> largest natural number. That is to say, there is no natural number
> which is greater than every other natural number. Now this entails that
>
> (i) 1 is not the largest natural number,
> (ii) 2 is not the largest natural number,
> (iii) 3 is not the largest natural number, etc.
>
> Since I know that this is the case, it is plausible to suppose that I
> know each member of this (infinite) series of statements. To be sure, I
> don't have all of them simultaneously present to conscious attention,
> but that is scarcely necessary for knowledge. Given any natural number,
> I can tell you instantly that that number isn't the largest, with
> impeccable justification - and knowledge (without prejudice to Gettier's
> problem) is simply justified true belief. In the case of God, since His
> mental capacities are unlimited, there is no reason to suppose that He
> could not only know an infinite number of propositions, but could in
> fact entertain them simultaneously.

But in order to know a set of propositions, doesn't the set have to be finite? If a set is infinite (if such a thing is logically possible), isn't it, by definition, unknowable?

> There is no appearance of
> contradiction in this. You have failed to give any argument which so
> much as suggests otherwise. If you could give such an argument, I would
> be interested to know how you propose to account for the fact that
> mathematicians know plenty of things about the individual properties of
> the elements of infinite sets (numbers, shapes, algebraic structures,
> etc.).

Well, mathematicians make no claims of omniscience. There are an infinite number of possible triangles, but mathematicians don't need to know the exact dimensions of all possible triangles in order to understand the rules that apply to all possible triangles. God, on the other hand, would be required to know the dimensions of all (infinite) possible triangles as well as the rules that apply to them.

> As to the remark about God's being limited by time, there is no reason
> to suppose that the argument you are trying to refute requires this.
> Supposing that God exists omnitemporally - i.e. at all times
> simultaneously - it could be argued by the theist that no tensed
> predicates can be applied to God, absolutely speaking, but only relative
> to us.

"Tensed predicates"? You've lost me there (being a philosophy layman).

> That is to say, for God there is no "before" or "after". So, no
> times are future times to God. Thus, to say that He doesn't know your
> action until you perform it is simply to say that, from His perspective,
> He doesn't know your action at a time before it occurs, since there is
> no "before" for Him.

But that seems to imply that he also wouldn't know your action *after* you have performed it either. And, as mentioned above, an omniscient being could not actually gain knowledge anyway. To do so would require him to be less than omniscient.

> Rather, all times are simultaneous for Him, and so
> He simultaneously observes your action at t and the possibilities of
> action open to you at times prior to t (and the consequences at times
> later than t).

But to know all *possible* actions seems inherently meaningless. What use is such knowledge? God, by this definition, would effectively be a clueless vegetable.

> I will pass over the (mercifully brief) discussion of whether or not God
> cares about finger-wiggles, and the argument that follows that. I
> cannot imagine any intelligent theist responding in this way, but there
> is no shortage of unintelligent people - theistic and atheistic - in the
> world. Finally, you say,

Actually, the finger-wiggling thing probably *could* do with a little more work. =)

>> "I have used this line of reasoning on several occasions when debating
>> religion with theists, and the effect is quite suprising. Theists are
>> quite happy to debate many aspects of their beliefs, but when it comes
>> to free will, the mental barriers slam down into place. People get
>> unreasonably upset by this argument and simply refuse to discuss it any
>> further. It's very odd. I can only suppose that it is because it
>> exposes such a gaping hole in their deeply-held beliefs that they simply
>> refuse to let themselves think about it, because they know that their
>> beliefs will not stand up in the face of this sort of simple logic."
> > The logic involved in your little essay is indeed simple - or should I
> say, simple-minded. If, however, you are honestly interested in
> discussing these issues, and not simply in mocking intellectually
> unsophisticated theists, you would do well to read something of
> contemporary philosophy of religion. A good anthology to start with is
> Contemporary Perspectives on Religious Epistemology. You are likely to
> find a number of things that will surprise you. Theists, in my opinion,
> have as good a basis for their religious/metaphysical beliefs as anybody
> else. The mere fact that the average theist on the street can't resolve
> the philosophical difficulties you raise - amateurish as they are

Thank you, but as I am an amateur anyway, it should be no surprise.

> - is
> not surprising. I guarantee you that you could not do a better job of
> justifying your basic metaphysical beliefs. If you doubt me, read
> Descartes and Hume and try formulating an answer to the skeptical
> problems raised in their works. Descartes spent a large part of his
> career trying to justify such elementary beliefs as:
>
> i) There is a world of external physical objects.
> ii) Our senses are largely reliable sources of information about that
> world.
> iii) Our rational intuitions (of self-evident a priori truths) are
> veridical, and
> iv) Selves exist.

> In this, he failed. I doubt you can do better. If you can, perhaps you
> can also resolve the problem of induction, the problem of other minds,
> the problem of personal identity, the problem of change, and the
> mind-body problem. If not, maybe you ought to exercise a little more
> humility in regard to the philosophical beliefs of others, whatever
> problems they may raise. That, of course, is your choice - assuming, of
> course, that there is a solution to the problem of free will vs
> determinism.

Thank you for your interesting email (I shall add it to my Feedback page to let others ponder it's implications also). However, I have to say that I find your attitude rather arrogant and patronising. You accuse me of raising amatuerish philosophical problems, but what do you expect? I am not a professional philosopher, nor have I been trained in formal philosophy. It would be like me sitting down with a programmer learning BASIC and informing him of his lack of ability to hand-optimise a display-list tree walker (making full use of jargon that I suspect he is likely to be unfamiliar with).

It seems to me that you are saying that unless a person has adequate training in philosophical thought, they have no business asking any sort of question that could be considered philosophical in nature. Well, pardon me for treading on your turf. Perhaps you would care to provide me a list of subjects that I am not allowed to think about? I should point out that I never intended my page to be a philosophical forum, providing formal logical proofs for each statement I dare to make (I don't want to be responsible for turning anyone else's brain to cream cheese by doing so). I get emails from devout theists saying "Ah, but how do you explain such-and-such" and I respond as best I can. I do my best to think things through reasonably and cover several different angles. Which is all I can do. Were I to devote my time to breaking everything down into "If P then not A, but if C and A then D not P" statements my articles would become unreadable to everyone but trained philosophers (which would probably be a fairly small audience).

I try to present my arguments in a reasonable manner, with reasonable people (atheist and theist alike) as the intended audience.

There may well be many flaws in my logic. If you want some *really* juicy flaws to hone your thinking-skills on, why not search out some of the creationist websites and try explaining to them why they are wrong as well?

I think you'll find more fallacies than you could shake a stick at.
Cheers,
Adrian