Driving to work yesterday, my local public radio station was talking about a recent incident in which a student at Fullerton Union High School was disqualified from a competition by an assistant principal. The student, asked onstage where he’d like to be in ten years, said he hoped that gay marriage would become legal and he could be married to someone he loved. The assistant principle thought this was outrageous and immediately pulled him from the competition. Most interesting to me were the uniformly astonished reactions from the radio voices — how could it be, in this age of anti-bullying efforts and growing acceptance of homosexuality, that an authority figure could act so callously? You mean to say that there are still grownups out there who are willing to say out loud that homosexuality is immoral?
There are. And if you want to know why, at least part of the answer can be found in several discussions popping up in my newsreader about what Jesus thought about homosexuality. Here’s a Christian mother who travels the difficult road from hatred to acceptance once she learns that her own son is gay. Here’s a theological debate between Ron Dreher and Andrew Sullivan on the precise degree to which sexuality should be considered sinful. And here’s a moving speech by Matthew Vines, a 21-year-old man who tries his best to argue that the traditional understanding of the Bible as strongly anti-homosexuality is mistaken (essentially because that would condemn gay people to being tortured and unloved, and surely the Bible wouldn’t be in favor of that). Personally I think Jesus probably didn’t approve of homosexuality, but since the Gospels were written decades after Jesus died, by people who probably had never met him, I admit the historical record is not exactly definitive. Maybe Jesus was extremely compassionate toward gay people, although that would have been quite out of character for messianic figures from first century A.D. Palestine, so had that been true it would have been worth an explicit mention. It’s an inevitable problem when you are committed to taking your moral cues from two-thousand-year-old semi-mythical stories about a charismatic preacher, rather than trying to found them on reason and reflection.
Which brings me to the Problem of Instructions. This is a challenge to the idea that belief in God is a plausible hypothesis to help us account for the world, much like the Problem of Evil but much less well known, possibly because (as far as I know) I made it up. I mentioned the Problem of Instructions in our recent debate, but I’ve never written it down, so here you go. (I have no doubt that analogous issues have been discussed by real theologians.)
Let’s imagine that we were to take seriously the question of whether the idea of God serves a useful explanatory role in accounting for the reality we experience. What would we do to evaluate this idea? I would argue that we should use the dreaded hypothetico-deductive method. That is, we should try to forget what we actually know of the world, and imagine how the world would most likely be, under the competing hypotheses (1) there exists an extremely powerful, extremely benevolent divine entity who in some sense cares about human beings; and (2) it’s just the laws of physics, without any supernatural guidance or overseer. Then we compare those imaginations to the world we actually see, and decide which is a better fit.
Obviously there will be many aspects of the scenarios we imagine. Let me just focus in on one: the instructions God would give us if he existed, were very powerful, and cared about us here on Earth.
Now, I’ve written textbooks myself. I understand that it is sometimes difficult to write in a way that is perfectly clear to everyone. On the other hand, I’m not God. I would imagine that God’s textbook (if a book were the medium he chose for handing down his instructions, which seems to be the traditional choice) would be fantastically clear. He’s God, he can be as clear as he wants!
If God existed and cared about us human beings down here on Earth acting in the right way, I honestly believe that the very least he could do would be to make it perfectly clear what that right way was. I would expect God’s book of instructions to have several unmistakable characteristics: it would be unique (everyone would know that it was straight from God); it would be crystal clear (no ambiguities of interpretation); it might very well be challenging (no reason to think God’s instructions should be easy to carry out); and it would transcend the petty concerns of particular human places and times, conveying a truly universal perspective. God’s textbook would get nothing but five-star reviews on Amazon.
Now, let’s compare that to what I might expect if God did not exist. I have no trouble believing that there would still be books that claimed to be straight from God; that’s the kind of thing human beings tend to go around claiming. But there would be many such books. Some of them would be monographs from a single purportedly-inspired individual, while some of them would be edited collections of manuscripts collected over the years. In places they would offer good advice, while in other places they would say things that come across as pretty horrible. In parts they would be inspirational, in parts poetic and moving, in parts boring, and very often they would contradict themselves. They would generally reflect the local beliefs and politics of the environment in which they were composed. And, most tellingly, they would be unclear — some vague snippets of wisdom arranged in an unsystematic fashion, often ambiguous and possible to interpret in just about any way you like.
Now that we have our scenarios laid out, we ask ourselves: which of these is more like the real world?
Of course there’s no question that religious believers can wriggle out of the predictions of this thought experiment; wriggling out of the straightforward implications of belief in God is one of the primary activities of believers. It’s not hard to come up with reasons why God’s word might seem unclear to us mere humans, or be distorted over the years. And many will claim that God’s word is perfectly unambiguous to them — it’s just everyone else that has trouble understanding.
All of these apologetics carry with them the implication that God doesn’t really care that much about us down here on Earth. If he did, it would be the snap of his divine fingers to set us straight — absolutely everyone — on all possible issues of interpretation. Part of being omnipotent is the ability to be perfectly clear if he chooses. We can concoct reasons why God might want us to be challenged by the vicissitudes of life, or face an ongoing struggle to be better people; but there’s no reason at all for God to want to keep us in the dark about what being better people actually entails. Religion requires that we believe in a God who wants us to behave in certain ways, but refuses to be clear about what those ways actually are.
Interesting. But I feel there is at least one assumption in that argument that doesn’t really track.
For you “cares about humans” seems to imply “has clear advice” (right?). That, to me, is a non-sequitur. I don’t know how to clarify, but I don’t see why “instructions” are necessarily a means to express concern for his creation.
Also, from what I understand, humans were created “imperfect”. They were well capable of making mistakes (hence the whole ordeal with the expulsion from Awesomeland for ingesting a piece of fruit). So it may even be that the instructions are perfectly clear, but not to us. And not because of some oversight on the part of the deity, but by design.
This whole thing where when people argue about Gods by imposing some restrictions on them, and then argue the unlikeliness that arise from these restrictions, never works for me. You define something arbitrary and then you show that the arbitrary thing is somehow problematic. Which is fun and all, but I don’t see it accomplishing anything.
Is it so difficult to believe the idea of God serves no useful explanatory role in accounting for the reality we experience, but still offers comfort and the strength to seek out those explanations on our own? Perhaps God is too sophisticated to think transcendent clarity is possible or desirable and that caring is best shown by letting us figure it out on our own even if that leads to doubt in him or to the equivalence of him with nature. {That, and he already tried this approach in heaven with the limited success of subservience or rebellion.) Omniscience implies he already knows the best way.
Heaven is what religious people think the world would look like if God existed.
Absolutely fool proof. The human ego knows no bounds. Religion is straightforward sales technique aimed at the not very bright to make them feel good about themselves. Doesn’t cost very much. Promises to do a lot and ultimately doomed with your money back guarantee only effective after death. Brilliant!
The right-wing, Christian gay haters aren’t concerned with being hypocritical. They quote passages from the Old Testament (Torah) that prohibit homosexuality, but they simultaneously ignore other passages of what’s forbidden, like shellfish and using fabrics of mixed fibers, like cotton and wool (shatnis). Though curiously, the Bible doesn’t say anything about polyester.
Whenever I ask one of these people why they eat shellfish, they tell me that as Christians, they don’t have to follow the original 613 commandments. So they pick and choose what they scream about and what they ignore. I tell them to go to http://www.GodHatesShrimp.com. Or I tell them to go somewhere else.
But as an atheist, I just shake my head, wondering why adults still think there’s a bogeyman in the closet and monsters under the bed.
This is a waste of time and efforts, religion is INSANITY, a mild form of paranoia (fear of a hidden agency) there is no way you can argue with paranoiacs about their fears.
If Jesus was intolerant of anyone except exploitative dicks it would have been out of character, no?
I skipped the rest. Sean, when you talk about God you turn a respected physicist into a sophomoric berk.
Great argument!
it is always telling when people boast about not reading the blog posts they leave comments on.
The whole idea of God, as expressed in Biblical terms, is a philosophical paradox in itself. If you accept the premise, for argument’s sake, that the Bible is fundamentally true, a book of divine instructions, stories, and poems that are directly from God sent through an inspired human, as the Bible claims to be, then the idea of God cannot be logically argued into or out of existence. The very nature of God defined by the Bible is impossible to prove or disprove because belief in such a god is solely based on faith. “Do not test thy God.”
Personally, this is where Occam’s razor comes into play (whether Occam intended to or not) and rules in favor of such a god being nonexistent because of the sheer complexity and number of unsupported assumptions required to logically believe the Biblical God exists.
I believe this same logic can be applied to the question of whether a set of divine instructions exists to be strictly applied to human life. Therefore, the usefulness and, hence clarity, of such instructions and guides is arbitrary.
I’m glad that Discover magazine and Carroll gave attention to this line of questions and problems because I feel that it is a subject easily glossed over, if not downright ignored my many major publications.
It is a great thought expirement. Thanks Sean. It is nice to see you dive into the world of us scientists who argue with everyone else over the existence of god, and you picked a much clearer one than my usual argument that that goes “are you serious? you think that bread actually turned into the body of your god?” You will though never win with this argument of course, as the claim that God works in mysterious ways will always be invoked, as you mention here. Still good one…
Oh, and wldmr, as far as you claim of non sequitur, I believe the statement, “God loves us therefore give us clear advice on life” can be safely derived from the Bile itself (that being the premise on which we’re basing these arguments) in which the Bible defines a loving and caring God (in parts, at least) whom which has strict preferences about the way humans live, hence the use of terms like “The 10 Commandments”. I believe commandments by definition are written, at least in part, with a purpose of clarity in mind. Therefore, the Ten Commandments and previous 160+ in the Old Testament can safely be assumed to be written at least partly for the purpose of clarity as well.
If humans are by design imperfect and the directions from God are perfectly clear, but impossible to understand by us mere humans, any attempt to make sense of such instructions would become a
Then what’s the point in praying to him, following the instructions in holy books or paying any attention to him to begin with??
This is the core issue here – believers claim not only that there is God but that we should believe in him, modify our lives following the holy book, pray to him, etc. But this only makes sense if that God is of precisely the nature described in the original post, which, however, is inconsistent with the facts…
Oh, and wldmr, as far as you claim of non sequitur, I believe the statement, “God loves us therefore give us clear advice on life” can be safely derived from the Bile itself (that being the premise on which we’re basing these arguments) in which the Bible defines a loving and caring God (in parts, at least) whom which has strict preferences about the way humans live, hence the use of terms like “The 10 Commandments”. I believe commandments by definition are written, at least in part, with a purpose of clarity in mind. Therefore, the Ten Commandments and previous 160+ in the Old Testament can safely be assumed to be written at least partly for the purpose of clarity as well.
If you believe that humans are by design imperfect and the directions from God are perfectly clear, but impossible to understand by us mere humans, then you are also making a paradox of any attempt to make sense of those instructions.
Furthermore, these discussions are anything but arbitrary considering the implications and consequences of the application of these divine rules have on other people, especially the people that do not subscribe to them. The case Carroll mentions about the boy being pulled from a school competition because he obviously doesn’t believe that homosexuality is a sin, is just one of many, if not moderate consequences of nonbelief in the Bible’s literal or fundamental usefulness. The consequences of the literal application of the Bible’s guides for living can and have been anything from personal guilt to murder. I think that deems discussion on this topic relevant and necessary.
There exist some truly interesting questions about God. It’s been shown that atheists with Aspergers don’t refer to God at all, while nonautistic atheists are still reasoning teleologically but they consciously reject God. So there’s a biological, societal need for God. Then there’s the psychological need for comfort; defense mechanisms and such. Then there’s the energy field created by all living things: surrounding us, penetrating us, binding the galaxy together.
These are deep, distinct questions. When I see otherwise smart people wade in with “Yes but The Bible says…” I shake my head.
“Part of being omnipotent is the ability to be perfectly clear if he chooses.” That is exactly what has happened! But such clearity has not come from the theological obfuscations which characterize religious tradition, but from outside the existing religious milieu, to differentiate itself from all other claims. For what science and religion thought impossible has now happened. History has its first literal, testable and fully demonstrable proof for faith.
The first wholly new interpretation for two thousand years of the moral teachings of Christ is published on the web. Radically different from anything else we know of from history, this new teaching is predicated upon a precise, predefined and predictable experience and called ‘the first Resurrection’ in the sense that the Resurrection of Jesus was intended to demonstrate Gods’ willingness to real Himself and intervene directly into the natural world for those obedient to His will, paving the way for access, by faith, to the power of divine transcendence. Ultimate proof!
Thus ‘faith’ is the path, the search and discovery of this direct individual intervention into the natural world by omnipotent power to confirm divine will, Law, command and covenant, while at the same time realigning our human moral compass with the divine, and “correcting human nature by a change in natural law, altering biology, consciousness and human ethical perception beyond all natural evolutionary boundaries.” So like it or no, a new religious teaching, testable by faith, meeting all Enlightenment criteria of evidence based causation and definitive proof now exists. To test or not to test, that is the question?
More info at http://www.energon.org.uk,
http://soulgineering.com/2011/05/22/the-final-freedoms/
Hypothesis (1) is incomplete; it doesn’t accurately represent Christian dogma. Moreover, it doesn’t follow that “care[ing] about human beings” means clarity of instruction.
This is well-trod theological ground. The dogmatic view of divine benevolence toward humanity includes ensuring moral liberty. A omnipotent, omnipresent God issuing inarguable instructions precludes the possibility of free will; humans would be compelled to obedience by fear. “Clear instructions” from God would be indistinguishable from coercion.
This argument serves equally well to refute biblical literalism 🙂
God’s textbook, short form: 10 Commandments.
My conception of God is a four plus dimensional being who creates a four plus dimensional universe(s) and free will determines our path through it but there exists a quantum overlay of all other paths and possibilities but while it can be said he created it, intercession and intervention, making decisions and changing his mind, existing in time and causing actions, are all attempts to place God into the universe, which while easier for us to contemplate, are fundamentally misguided and the best we can hope for is to tap into what knowledge we can of what should be, control our own thoughts and path, and hope for the best.
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You could argue that the Bible is deliberately unclear. Sometimes figuring the solution out for yourself will provide a greater level of insight than simply having things pointed out to you. Maybe God wants us decode his cryptic instructions in order to gain experiental wisdom in some Zen kind of way.
The problem with that, of course, is that there’s a significant difference between being vague and being self-contradictory. The Bible can’t even agree with itself whether you are saved by faith or by works. As a minimum you’d expect the basic instructions on salvation (which I’d argue ought to be the primary instructive purpose of the Bible) to be consistent.
Shafer, you state that, ” A omnipotent, omnipresent God issuing inarguable instructions precludes the possibility of free will”. I fail to see how giving instructions on how to conduct one’s life negates the possibility of freewill. Because guides or instructions are given does not force one to follow them. There are rules and instructions everywhere for just about everything in life, from the laws of a government to rules of proper social interactions to the rules of grammar, yet an individual is not forced to obey them, pressured perhaps, by society or government, but the fact is people activity and consciously break, ignore, and bend them all the time. If that weren’t true we would have no use for punishment, consequences, or enforcement of said laws and rules. And the conclusion that if such laws from the Biblical God were given, that people would be compelled to obey them out of fear is very true, because the Bible does so happen to issue laws and rules regarding human life (again, reference The Ten Commandments or other 160+ commandments in the Old Testament) and threatens eternal punishment in hell for breaking those laws without believing that Jesus already died for one’s sins and that he is the son of the one true (Biblical) God. Some people ARE compelled to obey them
I would instead call them “semi-literary”, seeing that there is no contemporary historical evidence but the expected texts (romans, sanhedrins) do not mention such a preacher, and that it is expected since this is the state for all pre-Enlightenment religious figure heads from Buddha over Muhammad to K’ung-tzu.
And the stories are hardly describing a charismatic preacher that were a dime a dozen at that time and place, but a miracle worker with a following. The “charismatic preacher” concept is a modern exaptation of old religious texts, and makes the resulting development of a greek syncretic religion hard to understand.
This damn thing keeps sending my comment before I’m finished. What I was trying to say is:
Shafer, you state that, ” A omnipotent, omnipresent God issuing inarguable instructions precludes the possibility of free will”. I fail to see how giving instructions on how to conduct one’s life negates the possibility of freewill. Because guides or instructions are given does not force one to follow them. There are rules and instructions everywhere for just about everything in life, from the laws of a government to rules of proper social interactions to the rules of grammar, yet an individual is not forced to obey them, pressured perhaps, by society or government, but the fact is people activity and consciously break, ignore, and bend them all the time. If that weren’t true we would have no use for punishment, consequences, or enforcement of said laws and rules. And the conclusion that if such laws from the Biblical God were given, that people would be compelled to obey them out of fear is very true, because the Bible does so happen to issue laws and rules regarding human life (again, reference The Ten Commandments or other 160+ commandments in the Old Testament) and threatens eternal punishment in hell for breaking those laws without believing that Jesus already died for one’s sins and that he is the son of the one true (Biblical) God. Some people ARE compelled to obey them and sometimes force their beliefs, or at the the consequences of non-belief, onto others.
The issue here is whether those instructions from the Biblical God are relevant and applicable and whether it is acceptable regardless, to enforce them on non-believers, such as the previously stated case of the boy being pulled from a school competition because he said something that goes against what a lot of Christians believe to be acceptable behavior.
(1) there exists an extremely powerful, extremely benevolent divine entity who in some sense cares about human beings;
I’ll offer a competing hypothesis “there exists an extremely powerful, extremely divine entity who in some sense does not care about human beings.” Then wouldn’t we expect to get exactly what we have? A bunch of competing books which agree in some parts, disagree in others just so this being can see how we puny humans react. Then he’d put all the “evidence” about dinosaurs, big bang… in place just to mess with our heads. God is screwing with us.