¶1Sup dogs. Welcome back to the Majesty of Reason. I'm Joe Schmid, a philosophy PhD candidate at Princeton University. And today I'm presenting a comprehensive case for Catholicism. You may have seen my recent video in which I announced my conversion to Catholicism.
¶2After losing the faith of my youth and becoming an atheist, I studied these topics for about a decade before giving my life to Christ and his church. My aim here is to take you on a similar journey. Specifically, my goal is to take you all the way from atheism to Catholicism. I'd encourage you to watch the whole thing, even if you need to break it up into chunks. There's going to be a lot of awesome evidence for theism and Catholicism that you've probably never heard of.
¶3And later on, I'll issue a challenge directly to you. So, hear me out because this video might just set you on a beautiful new path. God. All of the To give you a sense of where we're going and what you're in for, here is an overview of our journey together. So, first I'll talk about my Catholic upbringing, after which I will talk about my deconversion from Catholicism and my turn towards atheism.
¶4Then I'll talk about my turn towards agnosticism and what induced that. after which I'll talk about my turn towards theism. What sorts of considerations led me to start taking theism a lot more seriously. After that I'll talk about my shift towards theism. And there I'm going to be giving my comprehensive philosophical case for theism.
¶5So that'll be a very substantive and very fun part. After that we get to even stronger evidence for God's existence and for Christianity and for Catholicism than even my philosophical case for theism in part five. There we're going to be talking about miracles and the evidence not just for miracles but for miracles that seem to vindicate distinctive Catholic doctrines. Miracles that only seem to make sense if Catholicism is true. After talking about miracles, I'll go through my biggest objections to Catholicism.
¶6Almost certainly some of your biggest objections to Catholicism too are going to be contained therein. That'll be in part six, barrier removal. After that, I'll just talk about some key realizations that I had throughout my conversion process that ultimately culminated in my conversion. But of course, conversion is not just a change of mind. It is also a change in heart.
¶7So, in part eight, I will be talking about the various factors about Catholicism and Christianity that kind of resonated with me on an existential level. The sorts of considerations that led my heart to change and not just my mind to change. In part nine, I will relatively briefly talk about the metaninoia, the complete turning, the complete 180, my my conversion itself. In part 10, I will give my challenge to you. And finally, in part 11, I shall conclude.
¶8Okay, y'all. This is Joe postrecording. It turns out I recorded the entire comprehensive case video, and it was 25 hours long. So, what that means is that I've got to break it down into three separate videos. So that outline that I just went through, that's not going to be the outline of this particular video.
¶9The outline of this particular video is just going to be my comprehensive cumulative case for God's existence from philosophy alone. So I'll be going through the Catholic upbringing, my decon conversion, my turn toward agnosticism, and then my shift towards theism. And so this will just be the the comprehensive case for theism. This is my natural theology part of my comprehensive case. That's going to be in this video.
¶10My second video, which should be coming out tomorrow, is going to be my comprehensive case for the Catholic miracles. It's going to be around 11 hours, and I'm just going to systematically comb through all the miracles and the vindicatory implications thereof. So, that's a second video in this comprehensive case. And then the third video, which should hopefully come out by Friday, is just going to be me going through firstly alternative explanations of the miraculous data and explaining why they don't work. So, I'll look at demonic explanations that some Protestants profer.
¶11I'll look at some kind of accommodationist approaches, appeals to a selection effect, and various other puditive explanations that ultimately fail. And then I'll just go through all the different barriers that I had to Catholicism like hell and my moral problems and my magisterial problems and my theological problems and various other problems. I'll then go through some key realizations that I had and then the existential resonance, my actual conversion, my challenge to you guys that I'll be issuing. And then finally, I will conclude in that third video. So, this is going to be a three video series and that means the burden's on you guys to share the videos with everyone.
¶12Now, before we embark on our journey, note that I put together a comprehensive resource document containing links to papers and books and videos and articles and some of my own notes on the arguments I'll be covering in this video. Definitely check the link in the description and pinned comment to that document that'll contain ample links to resources that explain and defend in more detail parts of the video. Trust me, check it out. Oh, and of course, patrons have access to my videos over 300page long script. So, if you'd like that or if you'd like to support my work, my Patreon is in the description.
¶13Thank you from my uh certified grifter heart. So, I grew up devoutly Catholic. I was totally on board with the faith. I prayed very regularly. I read the Bible.
¶14I frequented the sacraments. I had theology classes almost every day at Catholic school. My dad played Catholic radio every day on the rides to and from school. And I've been extensively debating people online about ethics and theology and philosophy ever since I got my iPod touch in fourth grade. I was uh totally locked in as the youths say.
¶15But when I learned about evolution in seventh or eighth grade at my Catholic school, I started to wonder how it was compatible with Catholicism. Catholics seem committed to some primordial fall by which our first parents disobeyed God, lost friendship with him, and passed on various effects of that fall to the subsequent generations. For some time, I was struggling to coherently combine these views with a historical picture given to us by science. Soon enough, though, I was introduced to several reasonable models for harmonizing the truths of faith and science. Thanks to the Bologos Institute and Francis Collins, I learned about theistic evolution.
¶16The view that God used the evolutionary process to create biological diversity in general and humans in particular, there different models for understanding Adam and Eve. For instance, maybe God chose two of our ancestral organisms within a larger population and specially infused them with rational immortal souls enjoying various supernatural gifts or graces. And there are lots of other more liberal proposals to boot. Um, but all in all, I had survived the first wobble in my faith. I could see reasonable ways to maintain both evolution and Catholicism, but that survival didn't last very long.
¶17Near the end of my freshman year in high school, my faith began to deteriorate. I started reflecting more deeply on the evolutionary process and its brutality really troubled me. For hundreds of millions of years, animals have been ripping each other to shreds and predation, parasetizing one another and languishing from starvation, dehydration, disease, and natural disaster. It seemed like the very mechanism, the very engine of God's creative process was eons upon eons of suffering and death and languishing on the part of innocent animals. animals who didn't deserve that suffering, many of whom didn't seem to benefit from it, at least at first glance, and where God easily could have created through much less gruesome means.
¶18How could this be the creative choice of a perfectly good, perfectly loving, all powerful God, I wondered. At the time, I didn't find satisfactory answers, and the data here seemed much better explained by naturalism or naturalistic atheism, the view that the natural world is all that exists. And fundamentally or ultimately, it's purposeless. As Richard Dawkins puts it, there is at bottom no design, no purpose, nothing but blind, pitiles indifference. If naturalism is true, ultimate reality is not aimed or directed towards any end or goal.
¶19And so, in particular, it doesn't care about the flourishing and languishing of sensient creatures, making it seem to me unsurprising that reality would basically be a bloodbath. By contrast, that seemed way more surprising to me if theism is true and there's a perfectly good God providentially orchestrating reality. Evolutionary animal suffering then seemed to me at the time at least to be very strong evidence for atheism. So the problem of evolutionary animal suffering deeply disturbed my faith. And soon enough I was just voraciously consuming articles and books and videos and blogs and podcasts about God's existence and religion and everything in that neighborhood.
¶20I came across Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins who emphasized the disorienting contingency in my religious beliefs, right? Like had I been born a few blocks down, I would have been Protestant and had I been born in Saudi Arabia, I would have been a Muslim. You know, I started to think that I didn't have particularly good grounds to accept Catholicism. I graduated from the New Atheists in sophomore year after watching a debate between Frank Turk and Jeff Louderder on God's existence. I was impressed at the time with Jeff Louderder's case for naturalistic atheism which mainly drew inspiration from the work of Paul Draper who was actually one of my letter writers from grad school as I got to study under him in college.
¶21I love you so much Paul. So I then read a bunch of Draper stuff uh in high school. I listened to a lot of philosophy podcasts and soon enough the problems for theism and Catholicism were mounting. I worried about the problem of evil more generally. You know, if God exists, why is there so much seemingly pointless suffering and evil in the world?
¶22Why is there such horrendous suffering and atrocious evil like the Holocaust or torture chambers or a fawn being burned to death in a forest fire? And why does the distribution of suffering seem kind of random? I worried about the problem of religious confusion. If God exists, why is there massive religious diversity and confusion, especially if God wants a relationship with us? The world contains thousands of religions with competing claims about God's existence, nature, character, desires for our lives and the appropriate ways of relating to God and achieving salvation.
¶23God seemed inept at conveying matters of dire and eternal significance. Relatedly, I worried about divine hiddenness. I and others seemed open to God's existence. We didn't seem resistant to God, and we didn't seem culpable for being persuaded by the various arguments for atheism. But if God is perfectly loving, he'd want a personal relationship with his beloved creatures.
¶24And so, he would ensure that there's no one who doesn't meet the necessary conditions for a relationship with him through no fault of their own. But then we would expect God to ensure that there are no non-resistant or non-culpable non-believers. But it seemed to me like there were at least some people like that. During this process, I also lost most of my positive grounds for thinking God exists. It didn't seem like we needed God to explain anything and it seemed simpler to do away with God in our theorizing about the world.
¶25And finally, I started to accumulate difficulties for Christianity specifically. You know, apparent contradictions in the Bible, seeming atrocities in the Old Testament like genocide and slavery and so on and so on and and so on, etc., right? I put all my research and argumentation about this stuff in a Google doc that I worked on near the end of nth grade and throughout 10th grade which I still have by the way. Um near the end of 10th grade it was 456 pages long. Uh suffice it to say that uh by the end of this process after accumulating all these objections and losing my grounds for belief I lost my faith in Catholicism and at some point around the end of 10th grade I became a naturalistic atheist.
¶26I thought God didn't exist and that the cosmos was all that ever was, is, and will be. I thought this view made the best sense of the evidence. The world seemed too cruel, indifferent, and arbitrary to be the product of a perfectly good, all powerful, all- knowing being. Religions seemed like socioultural byproducts, burped up for evolutionary reasons and maintained by indoctrination and the need for belonging, community, and social cohesion. Religious texts felt all too human, and the world didn't look anything like I would expect a perfect being to make.
¶27It looked at bottom blind, pitiles, and indifferent. But in the summer before my senior year of high school, things started to change. I stumbled across a YouTube channel called Worldview Design and watched a few of its videos. I was fascinated by what I found. I mean, the creator was like forwarding genuinely novel arguments for God's existence, defending them exceptionally well, anticipating my objections in the videos and cogently but lovingly responding to them.
¶28I mean, I mean, I landed on a gold mine, it seems. After binge watching his videos for a couple days, I formulated several objections to the arguments contained therein. And, you know, I figured that the creator might be willing to talk about them. So, I decided to send him an email. And as you can see on screen, this is the actual email that I sent him with my old email account naturalistically inclined.
¶29So you can see my views at the time. Wow, look at that date. Summer of 2018. Wow. Hello, Dr.
¶30Rasmmanson. Oh yes, indeed. Oh yes. I have spent the last two days binge watch. See, you guys, I'm not lying to you.
¶31I still I got the receipts. I spent I spent the last two days binge watching your YouTube channel videos and I found them very valuable and provocative. That being said, I have some, you know, questions regarding some of your work and I really hope you can answer them or provide some clarity for me. Okay. So, you know, what followed were several detailed paragraphs outlining my central misgivings for the arguments Josh presented on his channel.
¶32And to my delight, I soon received Josh's extensive and modest answers to my various questions. Naturally enough, I had follow-up questions, and Josh had follow-up answers. And by the end of the year, we were just extensively corresponding on a very regular basis. He introduced me to his book, Necessary Existence with Alex Puce, which in turn introduced me to Alex Puce's work more generally, and Alex was just like a huge intellectual influence on me. You know, I read his book on the principle of sufficient reason.
¶33I read his book about the metaphysics of modality. I read his book on infinity paradoxes. I I I basically couldn't get enough of of his work. Josh was also starting to make appearances on capturing Christianity and other channels. And so, you know, I was definitely keeping up with YouTube philosophy religion during this time as well.
¶34And, you know, combing through all this material by Puce and Rasmuson in my senior year, it kind of just like awakened me from my dogmatic naturalist slumbers, I started to find their arguments for a foundational or ultimate or fundamental necessarily existing being quite compelling. You can learn more about these in my contingency arguments playlist as I continued to be sympathetic with them past high school and of course still now. But here's a basic simplified version of one of their contingency arguments. A contingent thing is something that can fail to exist. It doesn't have to be in reality.
¶35There's some possible way that reality could be such that it doesn't exist. So for instance, you and me are contingent things, right? Like had our parents never met, we wouldn't have existed. My water bottle is a contingent thing. You know, it's not like my water bottle must exist.
¶36In fact, there was a time when it didn't exist and it'll eventually be destroyed. Contrast these with something like, you know, 1 plus 1 equals 2. This is a necessary truth. It couldn't fail to be true. It must be true.
¶37There's no possible world in which it's false. In which, you know, 1 plus 1 equals like 7,812. In other words, there's no comprehensive way that reality could be such that that claim is false. Likewise, a necessarily existing thing or a necessary thing is something that cannot fail to exist. It's its non-existence is impossible.
¶38It must be in reality. You can think of it as something whose nature almost like demands that it exist. Just like the very nature of the number one and addition and equality guarantees or demands that 1 plus 1 equals 2. Well, for any contingent things, it seems plausible that there is an explanation of their existence. You know, suppose you and a friend are hiking in the forest and come across a group of shiny spheres on the ground.
¶39Naturally, you'd wonder how they came to be there. If your friend said, "Well, hey, like, listen, there's no reason or explanation for why they're here. You know, their existence is just an unexplained or brute fact. Like, you just stop wondering. Like, they just are.
¶40They just exist." I mean, if he said that, you you'd probably think that, you know, he's lost the plot or, you know, he's pulling a trick or he's gone insane or something, right? Like, it seems like their existence needs explaining. They didn't have to exist, and they certainly didn't have to be in the forest or be shiny or be spherical or have that exact size. It seems like these facts need explanation. And that spheres would still need explanation if they were larger, for example, the size of a stadium or even the size of the whole universe.
¶41In fact, they'd call out for explanation even more if they were like that. And even if they were produced by earlier shiny spheres, we would be left none the wiser since we would rightly wonder where those spheres came from. Even an infinite regress of shiny spheres replicating for all eternity wouldn't remove the need for explanation since the whole infinite series of shiny spheres would call out for explanation, right? Like why is there that series when there easily could have been a different series of dole spheres or shiny cubes or marshmallows or no infinite series at all? So positing that the shiny spheres are the size of the universe or produce each other one after another for all eternity doesn't seem to remove the need for an explanation of their existence.
¶42And there doesn't seem to be a relevant difference between the spheres and other sorts of contingent things that could account for why the former but not the latter need explanation. Plausibly then for any contingent things there's an explanation for their existence. And this makes intuitive sense, you know, like both the existence and non-existence of a given contingent thing or plurality of contingent things are real genuine possibilities. And yet only one of those genuine possibilities is actual as opposed to the other. And that seems to demand some account, some reason as to why it does exist when reality easily could have been such that it didn't.
¶43This explanatory principle is also just like abundantly confirmed by our universal experience, right? Like when we encounter contingent things in our experience, every which way we look, they uniformly have explanations, including quantum particles that indeterministically fluctuate into existence in a law governed way from causally prior conditions. And this offers strong inductive support for the principle too. And you know, just more generally, the principle just very nicely accounts for our observations. You know, like if this explanatory principle is false, like why on earth do we consistently and repeatedly find that contingent things have explanations and never stumble across violations of the principle?
¶44Like if contingent things really could exist without any deeper explanation, why don't we witness chaos? Like like bunches of photons, say popping into existence inexplicably on my front porch or all manner of contingent chaos inexplicably existing from eternity past. The explanatory principle provides a nice account of why inexplicable chaos doesn't pervade reality which otherwise seem to me to be a mystery. Flusters like Alex Puce and Rob Coons have also argued that denying the explanatory principle has disastrous skeptical implications that undermine our empirical knowledge. Uh, one reason beyond those they give uh is that you know if it really were a live possibility that contingent things exist inexplicably then it would also be a live possibility that inexplicably there exist universes causally disconnected from our own which are filled with brains that duplicate your brain structure and dynamics for a very short period of time before fizzling out of existence.
¶45But if that's a live possibility, then it's a live possibility we have no empirical knowledge and no knowledge of the future, which is absurd. Because if it's a live possibility that a large proportion of observers who are indistinguishable from you from a first-p person perspective are radically deceived, then that would just undermine your knowledge of the empirical world. But of course, we do have lots of knowledge of the empirical world. So it can't be a live possibility that contingent things exist inexplicably. And in that case we can be highly confident that the explanatory principle behind the contingency argument is true.
¶46Now there are lots of other arguments for the explanatory principle besides you know you can see the books and papers on screen for more and together the arguments made it really plausible to me that contingent things both individuals and groups thereof have explanations. But considering all the contingent things that exist if there's an explanation of their existence it seemed that some necessary thing must exist. After all, nothing contingent could explain why anything contingent exists. It would invoke as part of our explanation the very thing for which we're seeking an explanation to begin with. It would be like appealing to a penguin to explain why all the penguins exist.
¶47Like no, like that fails to explain why all the penguins exist since it simply assumes rather than explains the existence of the penguin cited in the explanation. From these premises, it follows that some necessary thing exists which explains contingent things. So that's the first stage of reasoning of a simplified form of one of Puce and Rasmuson's arguments. They have lots of other contingency arguments with more modest premises that introduce possibility operators and use modal logic. And I also found those super interesting and quite reasonable too.
¶48But even if there's a necessary thing which explains contingent things, it doesn't follow that such a thing is God. That's where the second stage of contingency arguments comes in, which tries to identify such a thing with God. In high school and college, I found the second stage reasoning interesting and thoughtprovoking, but ultimately not fully convincing. Still, I could see some plausibility to it. So, it was getting harder to maintain my confident naturalism.
¶49I could see why people think the necessary thing would have to be non-physical or immaterial, right? Like physical and material things seem contingent and no physical thing seems relevantly dissimilar to contingent physical things that could account for why one would be necessary while the others are contingent. I could see why one should posit only one necessary entity since that's much simpler and less arbitrary than other numbers and only one seems needed to explain contingency. And while I wasn't fully convinced at the time, I could definitely see where Josh was coming from when he argued that the necessary thing would be unlimited in value. According to Josh, it had at least some value given that it has various valuable powers to produce lots of good things.
¶50And any finite cutoff in value would seem to be an arbitrary unexplained cutoff. That alone seemed somewhat problematic. But it also just seems problematic to posit brute unexplained necessary features of things, especially ones that seem highly arbitrary and could conceivably be different in hordes of ways. The same reasoning would motivate thinking this reality has unlimited power, too. I mean, after all, it has some power.
¶51You know, it made contingent things after all. And a finite arbitrary cut off in power seemed problematic for the reasons already noted. More generally, it just didn't seem plausible that the necessary foundation could be say, you know, like a turtle or the shape of a Disney princess or a football. Like all these things have arbitrary seeming limits in shape and size and location and duration and power and whatnot. But arbitrary limits like that seem to call out for deeper explanation.
¶52Like why does the limit have that value? Like why that shape or size? Why that precise duration or location? And if arbitrary limits have further explanations, then the basic attributes of this necessary foundation precisely because they have no further explanation because this is the ultimate explanatory stopping point of reality must be unlimited. And this meshes far better with theism than standard alternative hypothesis as theism posits a being of unlimited perfection at the foundation of reality.
¶53And there are still other reasons for thinking the necessary foundation is God. You know, like given that this foundation necessarily exists and is the ultimate source of contingency in the actual world, it's very natural to think that in any other possible world contingent things, it would also be the source of contingency therein. Especially if we grant that contingent things in any world have an explanation and there's only one necessary foundational thing. But then the foundation not only necessarily exists, but is necessarily the ultimate source of every contingent thing. That alone rules out most views incompatible with God's existence and is exceptionally well predicted by theism.
¶54What's more, if this foundation has the ability to bring about any possible state of affairs, that's at least very good evidence of omnipotence. I also had sympathies with combining stage one of the contingency argument with an inference to the best explanation of various observed features of the cosmos, as you can see in my devil's advocate debate on capturing Christianity from 2020. The second reason is that um this immaterial non-physical necessary being is what is explaining the wonderful world of contingent things we find ourselves in. In itself, this is a core tenate of theism. But more importantly, given that the world is intelligible, orderly, regular, consistent, rationally investigable and contains massive amounts of stunning beauty, we have reason to think that this non-physical necessary being that accounts for such a world is more like a craftsman or an artist than some impersonal chancy process.
¶55The inference can in fact be put in basian terms. On the craftsman hypothesis, the type of contingent world we see is expected or at least not very improbable. Uh but under the negation of the craftsman hypothesis, it's quite unexpected. So all in all, I felt some pressure to accept that there was a single necessarily existing non-physical immaterial foundational entity with unlimited value and unlimited power which is the ultimate source of contingency not only in this world but in any world in which contingency exists and which may very well be intelligent and might even be perfect. Again, at the time in high school while I was coming across this stuff and, you know, early on in college, I wasn't fully convinced by this stage 2 reasoning, but I thought there's like a decent chance that these or other stage two arguments worked.
¶56And that admission naturally pushed me to take theism a lot more seriously to the point that it was starting to become a live option again and not something I could confidently rule out. Other new arguments for theism that I came across had this effect on me as well. For example, in his 2018 book, Alexander Prof developed various arguments for causal finitism, the view that nothing can have infinitely many causes, which pretty swiftly delivers the conclusion that there's a first cause, after which we can run various stage two arguments for thinking that such a cause is God. Rob Coons was also working on arguments to the same effect, and Josh Rasmmanson has made further developments since. We have here the three gigachads of new theism.
¶57There's multiple other gigachads to add to the list, but those will come on later. to take just one example of some of these new and interesting arguments that I was coming across. Um, Kun and Rasmmanson argued that infinite causal regresses lead to viciously circular explanations. If we imagine for example an infinite regress of alternating black and white dominoes knocking each other over, we might find it plausible that the explanation for why there are fallen white dominoes is that the black dominoes fell and knocked them over, right? And yet the explanation moreover for why there are fallen black dominoes is that the white dominoes fell and knocked them over.
¶58But then the falling of white dominoes at least partially explains itself, right? Because it partially explains why the black dominoes fell, which in turn partially explains why the white dominoes fell. And it seems like explanation is transitive. In other words, if A explains B and B explains C, then A explains C. But then the falling of white dominoes at least partly explains itself which is absurd.
¶59And this viciously circular explanatory structure is shared by any infinite causal regress since we can imagine labeling the alternative nodes of the regress with black and white labels and you know the white nodes will partially explain the black nodes which will partially explain the white nodes. So again like late in high school early college I was starting to see reasons for thinking there's some first cause. Again, I wasn't fully convinced of stage two of these arguments at the time, which tries to identify the first cause with God or anything like that. But again, I thought that there were some reasons for identifying the first cause with God, which had to be weighed against my reasons for thinking that no God exists. I also read Puce's book on modality, and therein he made a reasonable case that a distinctively theistic account of metaphysical modality has lots of advantages over rival theories of metaphysical modality.
¶60And so my reasons for theism were really starting to mount. Of course, you know, there were lots of other arguments for theism that started weighing on my mind. For instance, in my why am I agnostic video, I covered both an opori fine-tuning argument as well as an argument from moral knowledge for theism that kind of pulled on me at the time. But I'll talk more about these in the next part of the video since, you know, a greater appreciation of their force in grad school played a role in my shift towards theism. And again, right now, recall, we're only talking about the considerations that pushed me towards agnosticism from a state of naturalistic atheism.
¶61And importantly, it wasn't just the first order arguments that decreased my confidence in atheism. It was also the fact that I literally stumbled upon like a halfozen arguments for theism that I had never come across, that lots of professional philosophers and scientists were rigorously defending, and that I found reasonable. And this indicated that I hadn't taken into account lots of pieces of evidence that bear on the question of God's existence. And so I was premature in judging that God didn't exist. I was also extensively interacting with theists who are obviously much smarter and more well read than me.
¶62Indeed, these were esteemed professional philosophers who could eat my arguments for lunch. So I figured that maybe they're seeing something that I'm not. These higher order realizations solidified my turn to agnosticism. I could no longer confidently maintain that God does not exist. Partly because there were reasonably plausible arguments for theism that started pulling on my mind.
¶63Partly because I realized I had prematurely judged the question of God's existence without taking into account vast swaths of potential evidence. I mean, like, after all, there was this whole world of arguments and considerations that I was previously completely unaware of. And partly because I was interacting with brilliant theist scholars who might be seeing something I'm not. These considerations percolated in my mind throughout senior year of high school. And by the beginning of freshman year in college, I was thoroughly agnostic.
¶64In other words, I suspended judgment on whether God exists. I neither believed God exists nor believed God does not exist. I thought the evidence was roughly counterbalanced, or at least it was too unclear to tell which way it pointed. I remained agnostic throughout college and my first year of grad school, and for reference, I'm about to begin my fourth year in the fall. Near the end of my first year of grad school though, I started coming across some thorns in my side.
¶65So, three things prompted me to start reconsidering theism, and boy, they nagged at me. First, I started to lose my major objections to the standard fine-tuning argument for God's existence. Second, I was introduced to the argument from psychophysical harmony, which noded at me for a very long time before I eventually relented. And finally, I was introduced to some empirical evidence for supernatural phenomena that I just didn't have a satisfactory atheistic explanation of. And while this section comprises my comprehensive philosophical case for theism, even if you're not convinced by anything in this section, the miraculous case alone should convince you both that God exists and that Catholicism is true.
¶66So my case for Catholicism doesn't ultimately stand or fall on the merits of my philosophical arguments. So don't worry too much if you come away from my philosophical case for theism unconvinced. Uh, it's still important though because seeing a robust case for theism can make you more receptive to the miraculous evidence. And I do indeed think that the philosophical case for theism is exceptionally robust. But anyway, these three prompings kickstarted a renewed inquiry into theism around the end of my first year of grad school.
¶67And the main fruit of that inquiry was a serious shift towards theism. So, allow me to walk you through what I discovered over the next year or two. And again, definitely check out the resource document in the description and pin comment for more on these discoveries. Yes, I know you're cringing and I I revel in your cringe. I love your cringe.
¶68I embrace the cringe. I am the cringe. So, here's like here Okay, so here's like my master argument that I'm going to be defending in this section. I eventually realized that theism is a reasonably simple, non-arbitrary, coherent, and elegant hypothesis that offers a unifying explanation of a vast and diverse array of otherwise highly striking data. There is a lot of evidence for theism from its ability to explain or predict suspiciously fortunate facts about the universe.
¶69Facts that other hypotheses only explain peace meal or take to be brute lucky coincidences. And if there's a lot of evidence for something, it's very likely true unless it's super improbable prior to taking the evidence into account. But theism isn't like that since it can be relatively compactly stated in fundamental or joint carving terms. It's highly uniform and non-arbitrary and its various claims fit together or cohhere quite well. These features of simplicity, non-arbitrariness, uniformity, and coherence make theism a credible contender for the true worldview before taking evidence into account.
¶70In which case, theism is very probably true if it does much better than its competitors in unifying a large constellation of otherwise remarkably striking data. And it does. Okay, so that in a nutshell is what convinced me of theism. But if you want this master argument in premise by premise form, it's something like this. Premise one, theism is not very improbable prior to taking into account any empirical evidence.
¶71Premise two, theism predicts the data much better than atheism. Premise three, if theism is not very improbable prior to taking into account any empirical evidence and predicts the data far better than atheism, then theism is probably true. This follows from BA theorem, which we needn't get into. If you want to learn more about it, you can watch my video here. But from those three premises, it follows that theism is probably true.
¶72And you know like depending on how much better it predicts the evidence and how like the extent to which there's a disparity in the prior probabilities the probabilities prior to taking into account the empirical evidence like it'll get the conclusion that theism is very very probably true. That's kind of the conclusion that I'm going to be going for in what follows. By the way, this is actually the central argument of a new book that I'm currently co-authoring with Brian Cutter, Dustin Kummit, Philip Swenson, Matthew Adelstein, and Amos Woolen. It's tentatively titled God, an argument, and we're going to be giving the best comprehensive case for theism on the planet. Well, okay, the best comprehensive case after my current video, you know, cuz this video is clearly the best on the planet.
¶73So, in fact, the following defense of the first premise draws from a part that I co-authored with Brian Cutter. So, I'm going to shout out Brian Cutter and give him a lot of credit for what's contained in the following. So, let's look at the first premise in more detail. According to this premise, theism is not very improbable prior to taking into account any empirical evidence. In other words, theism's intrinsic probability or prior is not very low.
¶74The intrinsic probability of a hypothesis or its prior is its probability independently of any empirical evidence or before taking any empirical evidence into account. But why do we even need to attend to theism's intrinsic probability to begin with, right? Like why can't we just look at the evidence? Well, consider the following two hypotheses. Hypothesis one is spatial uniformity.
¶75The basic physical laws that govern the behavior of matter, you know, like massive bodies attract, like charged particles repel, etc. These these basic physical laws that govern the behavior of matter hold all throughout the universe. Compare that with the second hypothesis. We can call that anomalous patch. Those basic physical laws hold everywhere except for one tiny anomalous patch where for no reason at all the usual laws are suspended and that obeys a completely different set of rules.
¶76So those are two hypotheses that we should consider. Now most would agree that it's more reasonable to accept the first theory than the second. But our scientific evidence is about equally good for both. Right? If there's just one tiny patch, minuscule patch governed by different equations, then it's astronomically unlikely that we would have found it.
¶77So the two theories predict our observations about equally well. If we really are justified in thinking spatial uniformity is much more probable than anomalous patch, then there must be something about the former hypothesis that makes it more probable in itself. In other words, spatial uniformity's advantage is primarily due to a higher prior probability before taking into account any empirical evidence. The same can be seen through the examples of these two hypotheses. Temporal uniformity says that the fundamental laws of nature hold at all times.
¶78And then the second hypothesis here is induction failure. That says that the fundamental laws of nature hold all the way up until 2050 and then for no reason stop holding at some point in 2050. Again, both of these hypotheses predict our data equally well. And yet, we all recognize that temporal uniformity is far more likely than induction failure. So, there must be something about temporal uniformity that makes it more likely independently of the empirical evidence.
¶79Something gives temporal uniformity a greater intrinsic probability or prior. And notice that even if there's lots of evidence and notice that even though there's lots of evidence for induction failure, you know, because it like predicts our predicts the data that we currently have pretty well, it still doesn't warrant our belief since it's just too prohibitively improbable from the get- go. And this shows that we need to attend to theism's intrinsic probability if we want to mount an evidential case for theism, since even if we have a lot of evidence for something, that won't matter if it's prohibitively improbable from the get-go. So we need to attend to various factors that affect the intrinsic probability of a hypothesis. One factor is modesty.
¶80A hypothesis is modest to the extent that it's unspecific or true in a wide range of possible scenarios. For example, the claim that someone died is more modest than the claim that Ethan Muse died, which is more modest than the claim that Ethan Muse was murdered, which is more modest still than the claim that Ethan Muse was murdered after 8 a.m. mass by a Fatima skeptic. Another factor is simplicity. Prior should encode a preference for simpler theories.
¶81Most philosophers agree that simplicity has something to do with how many fundamental that is unexplained kinds of entities the theory posits and also something to do with the elegance or brevity of the theory's basic laws or principles. The preference for simpler theories is a standard diagnosis of what's wrong with conspiracy theories. Right? Like to fit all the data, the conspiracy theory needs to get extremely complicated and this complexity makes it less probable. Curve fitting is another example.
¶82Suppose the observed data approximately fit the hypothesis that Y is a simple linear function of X. Scientists will typically prefer the linear model to a more complicated model that zigs and zags to hit every data point. The latter theory might achieve an even better fit with the data, but it has extra parameters that make it more complex, and this complexity makes it less probable. Return also to our examples of spatial uniformity and anomalous patch. We saw that spatial uniformity, the hypothesis that the same physical equations hold throughout the universe, has a higher intrinsic probability than the theory that those equations hold everywhere except for one small anomalous patch.
¶83Plausibly, that's because the uniform hypothesis is simpler in some sense. The relevant kind of simplicity has to do with how succinctly one can completely describe the fundamental elements of the theory. And again, by the way, like the fundamental elements of a theory are those taken as given by the theory rather than explained by other elements of it. Describing physics on the uniform theory requires just one set of physical equations. But describing physics on the anomalous patch theory requires describing the set of laws posited by the uniform theory plus another set of laws describing the patterns in the special patch plus a specification of which laws govern which parts of space.
¶84This kind of simplicity might be called compressibility. Now the anomalous patch world is harder to compactly describe without information loss. Notice also that the spatial uniformity hypothesis is far less modest than the anomalous patch hypothesis since there are many many many more ways that the latter could be true than that the former could be true. Right? Like there's only one way that the spatial uniformity hypothesis can be true.
¶85Namely, the relevant set of equations hold everywhere. Whereas there's an infinite number of ways the anomalous patch hypothesis could be true. One for every candidate location of the anomalous region. And this shows that an advantage with respect to simplicity can overcome a disadvantage with respect to modesty. And the same is true of temporal uniformity and induction failure.
¶86Right? There's only one way for the laws of physics to hold at all times. But infinitely many ways for the laws of physics to randomly stop at some time in 2050. Like they could conceivably stop 1 second past New Year's or 1.1 seconds past New Year's or 1.11 seconds past New Year's and so on. Add infinitum.
¶87Yet the temporal uniformity hypothesis is overwhelmingly more probable than the induction failure hypothesis. Hypothesis which posit fundamental uniformities just massively mog hypotheses which posit limits or breaks in those uniformities. Another related factor that may account for spatial uniformities higher intrinsic probability is that it does a better job of minimizing unexplained arbitrariness. If there were a small patch where the usual physical equations break down, we would naturally expect some kind of explanation for the anomaly. If instead they just arbitrarily failed to hold under a hypothesis, that detracts from the intrinsic plausibility of the hypothesis.
¶88And this point is illustrated in science with inverse square laws. Right? Like for hundreds of years, scientists justifiably held that the gravitational attraction between two bodies was inversely proportional to the square of their distance rather than their distance to the power of say 2.0000. 00000000000000000000129. Even though both of those hypotheses, you know, with enough zeros, both of those hypotheses fit the observational data equally well.
¶89Both two exactly and 2.00129 are equally precise and equally modest. And yet an inverse square law is plausibly much more intrinsically probable because much less arbitrary than an inverse 2.0000129 law. Similar points apply to the speed of light. Before we had any empirical evidence about its speed, scientists assumed that it was infinite, which is distinctly non-arbitrary in a way that finite cutoffs aren't leading to a bias in the priors for the infinite value. A final factor affecting the intrinsic probability of a hypothesis is coherence which is which is roughly how well the various parts or entailments of hypothesis fit together.
¶90A hypothesis is more coherent to the extent that the propositions that follow from it support each other. And a hypothesis is less coherent to the extent that the propositions that follow from it disisconfirm or count against each other. All else being equal, more coherent hypotheses are more probable than less coherent hypotheses. Note that coherence comes in degrees. A maximally incoherent hypothesis is one that's you know like logically inconsistent or contradicts other things we can know a priori from the armchair independently of sense experience.
¶91But other hypotheses suffer from a degree of incoherence even though they're not maximally incoherent. For example, a theory which says that Jones is generally very honest and reputable and stole $1,000 worth of veggie burgers from the local eery suffers from some incoherence and is therefore quite intrinsically improbable. After all, the fact that Jones is very honest and reputable makes it very unlikely that he would commit such a heinous unforgivable crime. And you know, it's not just a crime. And you know, it's not just and you know, the unforgivable crime here is is not just stealing $1,000 worth of veggie burgers, but it's also, you know, like the wrong of like visiating my beloved vegan community.
¶92But again, like the hypothesis that Jones is generally very honest and reputable and also stole $1,000 worth of veggie burgers. Like that's going to suffer some incoherence and it's it's going to be quite intrinsically improbable as a result, you know, like because the fact that Jones is very honest and reputable makes it very unlikely that he would commit that crime. But even still, right, like the two components of this theory are compatible since occasionally, you know, honest and reputable people do heinous things. And when we apply these various criteria affecting the intrinsic probability of hypothesis to theism, we see that premise one in my master argument is spoton. Theism does not have a super low intrinsic probability.
¶93We can formulate theism roughly as the claim that there exists a fundamental mind that is unlimited in power, knowledge, and goodness. In other words, a fundamental mind characterized by the three traditional omni attributes. Omnipotence or being all powerful, omniscience or being all knowing, and omni benevolence or being all good. Granted, this claim is immodest because it rules out many possibilities. But recall the spatial uniformity versus anomalous patch example.
¶94The simplicity and nonarbitrariness of spatial uniformity is more than enough to far outweigh its relative immodesty. Crucially, theism is simple and non-arbit in a similar way. Right? Like it posits a single being with a few basic attributes, power, knowledge, and goodness had to an unlimited and therefore distinctly non-arbitrary extent. We can imagine instead a foundational mind with like arbitrary gaps in its knowledge or power.
¶95for example, a being that knows every truth except the number of blades of grass on some particular lawn or arbitrary finite limits in other respects. But these theories would be far less intrinsically probable in much the same way as the anomalous patch scenario is far less intrinsically probable than the spatial uniformity scenario. And this point bears emphasis like I want to bang my gongs very very loud here so that you get it right. Part of what makes spatial uniformity and a temporal uniformity so attractive is that their fundamental posit is a simple, elegant, compactly describable universal generalization. Right?
¶96Like the basic laws of physics hold everywhere or at all times. Likewise, part of what makes theism attractive is that it characterizes fundamental reality with a small number of simple, elegant, and compactly describable universal generalizations. Right? Right? Like to say that God is omnisient is to say roughly that God knows everything.
¶97To say that God is omnipotent is to say roughly that he can bring about any possible state of affairs and whatever he wills comes to pass. To say that God is omnibent is to say roughly that God is wholly good and always acts for the sake of the good, including the good of any creatures he creates. Theism is also coherent in much the same way that spatial uniformity is. Right? Like in the case of spatial uniformity, the very fact that the basic laws hold everywhere apart from a spatial patch gives us reason to expect that they hold everywhere.
¶98Positing a limit or break in the universal applicability of the laws would introduce some incoherence into one's hypothesis. The same holds true for theism. Positing a divine being with great but limited power or expansive but limited knowledge or significant but limited goodness introduces incoherence into one's hypothesis. The very fact that a being has large quantities of power, knowledge, and goodness gives us reason to expect that it has all power, knowledge, and goodness. In fact, theism is not only highly coherent with respect to individual divine attributes, but also with respect to the collection of divine attributes.
¶99That's because all of God's attributes are or follow from perfections, right? That is valuable attributes that it would be better to have than lack, at least other things being equal. For instance, quite plausibly, it's good to be knowledgeable, powerful, and benevolent. Theism, therefore, exhibits a striking uniformity across the various divine attributes, which further strengthens its coherence. Now, so far, I've formulated theism in terms of the three traditional omni attributes.
¶100But this actually understates theism's simplicity, coherence, and non-arbitiness. Since these specific attributes aren't a miscellaneous hodgepodge, they can likely be subsumed under a unifying principle or derived from a more basic attribute. Indeed, even if the omni attributes can't be logically deduced from a more basic attribute or principle, the possession of the omni properties might be probable or at least not very improbable conditional on that more basic principle or the possession of that more basic attribute. If so, then theism will not be super intrinsically improbable so long as it is not super unlikely that the more basic principle holds or the more basic attribute is possessed. And this condition is very plausibly met in the case of theism since candidates for the basic principle or attribute from which God's other attributes are derived or rendered probable are compactly describable in reasonably elegant and coherent terms.
¶101Swinburn, for example, takes omnipotence or pure limitless intentional power as theoretically basic and aims to derive or at least probabilify or make probable other attributes there from. A second approach formulates theism as the view that the fundamental reality is a being that possesses all perfections to an unlimited extent and from there derives the various specific perfections of omnipotence, omniscience and so forth. As Alexander Pruce highlights in one of my interviews with him, this is a highly simple fundamental posit. My my preferred take is that uh there is an X such that for all P if P is a perfection X says P. >> How do you define perfection?
¶102>> Oh, I don't that's a that's an undefined primitive. >> Oh, you could say it's like a great making property. Something that necessarily makes it possessor greater. >> What about this? Um it entails value but doesn't entail this value.
¶103>> That's going that's probably a necessary condition. Yeah, it may not be sufficient but then it could have all those properties all the properties that entail value >> that any property that entails this value. >> Yeah, but I mean then which still comes down to what the value is, >> right? Which can be liked for its own sake. >> Okay, so we've got this perfect theory according to which there's this perfect being with all the perfections.
¶104That's a rough gloss at least. Um why should we accept this view? Because Alexander Pruce >> relatedly some conrue theism as positing a being with a single essential attribute perfection or supreme value from which the various specific attributes follow. You know this is the route that you know Josh Rasmmanson takes in his book how reason wait no god to lead can reason out. No no no how reason can lead to god.
¶105Okay. Another approach constru theism as the claim that the fundamental reality is a mind without limits or an unlimited mind. The omni attributes arguably fall out from this simple postulate. Like philosophical tradition, yes indeed regards mind or spirit as a coin with two sides, intellect and will. That by which the mind apprehends reality and that by which it affects reality.
¶106On the side of intellect, an unlimited mind would not apprehend a limited portion of reality, but all of reality and would therefore be omnisient. On the side of will, an unlimited mind would have no limits and no limits on what it can affect aside from being unable to do the impossible and would therefore be omnipotent. It's also plausible, or at least not highly implausible, to suppose that being free of internal limitations, its will would be unconstrained by any irrational or irrational preferences that would prevent it from simply desiring and willing, that which its intellect perceives as worthy to be desired and willed, that which it sees by its omniscience to be good. It would therefore be omni benevolent. Moreover, the simplest and least arbitrary proposal about what the foundational mind values, or at least a highly simple and non-arbitrary proposal, is that it values value itself.
¶107Its basic teological orientation is toward the good. It wants what is good to the extent that it's good. It does all that it does for the sake of the good. In other words, it's omni benevolent. All right.
¶108So let's take stuck because things have gotten a little bit abstract as indeed a substance as properties that is to say. So stepping back theism is the view that there's a fundamental omnipotent omnisient and omni benevolent mind. Theism therefore posits a single fundamental being with a small number of attributes that are compactly stable in elegant coherent non-arbitrary terms. Moreover, there are several reasonable approaches to theism on which these attributes are not probabilistically independent from one another, but instead follow from a simple unifying principle or attribute such as omnipotence or perfection or limitless mentality. The upshot is that theism is a simple, coherent, and non-arbitrary view in ways that very plausibly outweigh its relative immodesty.
¶109Its intrinsic probability is therefore not super low, giving us the first premise of my master argument. And there are other paths to the first premise too. So for instance, even if you're skeptical of the various accounts I gave for why theism is a relatively simple and elegant hypothesis, as long as you think there's like some non-negligible chance, maybe like a 5% chance that one of those accounts is right according to which theism is a simple and elegant hypothesis. And as long as you also think that conditional ontheism being a simple and elegant hypothesis, theism is not very improbable before looking at the evidence, then you should simply multiply that not very low probability by 5% to get a not very low and minimal bound for how probable you should think theism is before taking into account any evidence. And that alone suffices to motivate the first premise of my argument.
¶110So notice that even if you're pretty confident that all the accounts I gave on which theism is a relatively simple hypothesis are false and that theism is instead a hopelessly complicated hypothesis that we shouldn't take seriously so long as it's not super unlikely that you're mistaken and theism is simple as lots of professional philosophers think and argue that suffices for the purposes of my argument. Another path to the first premise of my argument is that there's at least some pretty small but not prohibitively low chance that some present or even future a priori argument for God's existence succeeds. For example, some Gordelian ontological argument defended by very capable philosophers like Puce and Rasmusen, Cesar Bernstein, Gustafson and others. This too should arguably lead to a non-negligible prior in God's existence. And just more generally, it seems bizarre to start out inquiry with a grotesqually prohibitively low probability in something that the vast majority of humanity has believed in and finds pre theoretically plausible, including absolute towering intellects of the past and present.
¶111So I think everyone should accept the first premise of my master argument. Now before turning to the second premise, I want to address an objection. One of theism's main competitors is naturalism. the view roughly that you know the natural world is all that exists and is fundamentally purposeless. The objection is that naturalism is bound to be simpler than theism because naturalism posits only the natural universe together with a specification of its basic laws, initial conditions and stock of fundamental natural features.
¶112Whereas theism posits both that natural universe and God. And so theism is going to include all the stuff that naturalism accepts plus more. And so isn't then naturalism bound to explain the character of the natural world at least as well as theism while being simpler than theism and if so isn't naturalism bound to be more probable than theism in light of the total evidence. Uh no. Uh so this objection firstly we know it goes wrong somewhere because it implies that we should favor naturalism over theism no matter what the natural world turns out to be like at the physically fundamental level.
¶113Even if say we discovered that the initial conditions of the universe spelled out in some atomic soup made by God with love as you can see on screen here in every human language. After all, naturalism takes those initial conditions as fundamental or unexplained and uses them to explain subsequent states of the universe. And theism posits the exact same initial conditions and a natural universe plus God. But that objection would rightly fall on deaf ears if we had observed this datim. So we know that the objection must go wrong somewhere.
¶114And here's where in neglects that the simplicity of a theory's fundamental posits matters most in comparing theories. To see this, consider two hypotheses. Solopsism says that I alone exist. There is nothing but my mind and my conscious experiences. There's no external world, no other people or anything like that.
¶115Just me, myself and I. The short past hypothesis says that the universe sprang into existence uncaused a 100 years ago. Everything simply, you know, popped into existence fully formed in the 1920s with a misleading appearance of age. Fully formed human beings sprang into existence with brain structures encoding false memories of the past. And apparently ancient artifacts and fossils are just, you know, deceptive novelties.
¶116Proponents of these theories might champion their allegedly superior simplicity. You like, after all, opponents of solopism posit both me and lots of other things, right? and opponents of the short past hypothesis add many years of cosmic history before the 1920s. But none of us should find this convincing. What the proponents of these two hypotheses are missing here is that their bedrock truths that is the fundamental or unexplained truths according to their theory form a hopelessly complicated unsistatizable mess with loads of striking unexplained coincidences under soypism.
¶117Like why are my experiences intricately coordinated in ways that exactly simulate a stable independent environment? And why do my experiences exceptionally and intelligably cohhere with each other both at a time and across time? Solopsism just treats like whole swaths of my mental life as brute posits of its theory without any deeper unifying explanation that is simpler and less arbitrary than my complex mental life. And for you know for the short past hypothesis why do written records and physical records and memories that the initial conditions cohhere so nicely if they aren't linked to a common cause like these theories are just highly complex and suspiciously coincidental at the fundamental level. A simpler theory at the fundamental level which explains those complex and coincidental phenomena even if the theory posits strictly more entities is preferable.
¶118What primarily matters in assessing the simplicity of a theory is the simplicity of its fundamental posits. And you know this approach to simplicity and theory comparison explains why scientists rightly prefer larger visions of reality that simplify the fundamental level. For instance, cosmologists prefer a long past with a much simpler set of initial conditions and laws than that posited by the short past hypothesis. Physicists posit a few basic kinds of fundamental particles like electrons and quarks to explain the diverse and complicated behavior of macroscopic objects. Biologists explain the rich biodiversity and complex biological systems that we see in terms of a few basic principles like natural selection operating on simple primordial substrates.
¶119And here's the kicker. Theism accomplishes something similar. Unlike naturalism, as we'll see, theism offers a unifying explanation of a large constellation of otherwise remarkably fortunate data in compact fundamental terms. Unlike theism, naturalism posits hordes of striking coincidences that they have to write in by hand that that aren't predicted by more fundamental simple non-arbitrary coherent theoretical posits. Finally, one might object that, you know, although theism may be compactly stable, it's not compactly stable in fundamental terms since, you know, for example, knowledge is seems like a highly derivative property in all the cases that we're familiar with.
¶120And you know, what determines the simplicity of a theory is the simplicity of its most compact statement in fundamental terms. But this objection fails. In order for theism to have a not super low intrinsic probability, it need not be likely that the omni properties are relatively fundamental. As long as it's not super unlikely that they're relatively fundamental, the intrinsic probability of theism won't be super low. That's all that matters.
¶121And in fact, you know, there are lots of reasonable views on which knowledge, power, and goodness are fundamental. You know, there are knowledge firsters in epistemology. There are dispositionalists and neoaristilians who posit fundamental causal powers. There are non-naturalist realists who posit fundamental moral properties and so on. Right?
¶122Besides, like the theist does not need to claim that all of these are fundamental since again there are plausible candidates for a single unifying principle or attribute from which God's other attributes flow. And for many of those candidate principles or attributes, it's like totally reasonable that the attributes or the notions employed therein are fundamental or at least relatively natural. For example, you know, the notion of limits or minds or perfection or value or awareness or you know, whatever. So stepping back, I think the first premise of my master argument is on extremely solid footing and I've canvased a bunch of different ways of motivating it. So let's turn to the second premise.
¶123Let's now turn to the second premise of the master argument. Theism predicts the dator. The dator theism predicts the dator much better than naturalism. I'm telling you those darn two naturalists. The second premise of the argument says that theism predicts the data much better than atheism.
¶124In other words, there's very strong evidence for theism. Now, a fact is evidence for theism or raises the probability of theism if the odds of it are higher given theism than atheism. My friend Matthew, my good friend Matthew Adlesene gives a helpful analogy here. If your DNA is at the crime scene, that's evidence for your guilt because the likelihood that your DNA would be at the crime scene is higher if you actually committed the crime than if you didn't. The guilt hypothesis makes that fact more likely than the innocence hypothesis.
¶125In other words, the fact is better predicted or less surprising on the guilt hypothesis than on the innocence hypothesis. More generally, a fact is evidence for one hypothesis over another or a fact favors one hypothesis over another. just in case that fact is more likely or more to be expected or less surprising or better predicted on the first hypothesis than the second. And the strength of the evidence for the first hypothesis is proportional to how much more likely the fact in question is under the first hypothesis than under the second. And the notion of probability at play here is epistemic probability or the degree to which one proposition is supported by another.
¶126With all that in hand, we can now examine the evidence. I'll start by pitting theism against naturalistic atheism, after which I'll return to theism's non-naturalistic competitors like axiarchcism. So, you can see here on the screen a bird's eye overview of the various pieces of theistic evidence that I'll be canvasing. I'll be going over contingency, laws of nature, nomological harmony, fine-tuning, and various different aspects of finetuning, psychophysical luck, so the seemingly lucky and fortunate ways in which consciousness is paired with the physical world. I'll be going through non-skeepticism, moral nuruy knowledge, beauty and aesthetic experience and finally religious experience and then of course all of this is just a preamble to the just like overwhelming evidence for miracles that we will be covering.
¶127So uh stay tuned for that. But onwards we march to the first piece of evidence for theism and it's one that I already covered. The fact that there are any contingent things at all. I outlined one version of one contingency argument earlier which alone may deliver the result that theism is at least probably true. But we can even make the argument more modest.
¶128We don't need to claim that any contingent things must have an explanation. We can simply operate with the weaker principle that for any contingent things, there's at least a defasible presumption that they have an explanation. In other words, we should expect there to be an explanation of them and we should think an explanation probably exists in the absence of positive reasons to think the contingent things in question are unexplained. To put it differently, for any contingent things, an explanation of them probably exists, at least other things being equal. With this principle in hand, we can run the rest of the argument as before, reaching the conclusion that a necessary foundational thing which explains contingent things probably exists, at least other things being equal.
¶129If so, then we've made a good deal of probabilistic headway in motivating this core tenant of theism, and we've diminished the probability of lots of views incompatible with theism, which deny the existence of any necessary foundational reality. It's noteworthy, too, that theism offers a distinctly plausible account of the nature of the necessary foundation, one that's more intrinsically plausible than views which posit a limited foundation, like a limited god or an initial singularity with highly arbitrary, finitely degreged values. as philosopher Brian Cutter explains on the uncertainty podcast. >> So suppose you think that the metaphysical foundation uh is is metaphysically necessary. So here wheel out some off-the-shelf cosmological argument that says that the the universe has its source in some like metaphysically necessary being.
¶130Uh and maybe you do some argument that like the whatever the designer is that's responsible for psychophysical harmony is also going to be this necessary foundation. Now I think it looks a lot more attractive to go in for the traditional god than limited deities. And this is because of the connection between necessity and non-arbituariness. So it's it's one thing to say that like the speed of light has a has some or other arbitrary finite value. >> But you know that that should be contingent, right?
¶131Like where there is arbitrariness there should be contingent. It could have been light or light star that had a a slightly different speed. But where you have necessity, it seems like necessity is repugnant to arbitrariness. So, so once you're convinced maybe on the basis of other cosmological arguments that the found that the like foundation of reality is this necessary concrete gain, I think that um that gives more boost to the idea that it would be without arbitrary limits. As a result of all the preceding, theism takes up a pretty decent chunk of the probability space even before looking at other pieces of evidence.
¶132And the same result holds even if you aren't convinced of these or any other contingency arguments. So long as you think they have at least some force or some plausibility. The more force or plausibility is accorded to these arguments, the more prior probability space will be taken up by the view that the foundation is necessary and the better theism is going to look before taking into account other pieces of evidence. Before moving on, allow me to address one of the biggest objections to contingency arguments. Some people worry that contingent things can't be explained by a necessary thing since whatever is explained by something necessary would itself be necessary.
¶133But this objection fails. It assumes that the explanatory connection between the necessary thing and contingent things is deterministic or necessitating. But the explanation need not be like that. Right? It might be indeterministic if, for example, the necessary thing has free will to choose among a variety of outcomes, each of which has adequate but non-coercive reasons favoring its actualization.
¶134Anyway, if you want to look into contingency arguments in more detail, check out the resource document for more. But let's turn to our next piece of evidence. Suppose we hold fixed as part of our background knowledge that there are contingent realities. Even so, there's no guarantee that among them would be laws of nature that govern or specify the behavior of the universe rather than universe with lawless initial conditions which don't evolve forward in time. A universe with unevolved initial conditions without the addition of laws seems far simpler than a universe with initial conditions and laws.
¶135So, it's quite surprising under naturalism that we obtained the latter. By contrast, it doesn't seem as surprising under theism since the orderly lawful development of initial conditions is needed for interesting and valuable things to occur in the universe, such as the existence and development of conscious beings capable of love and enjoyment and knowledge and virtue and rational agency and relationships with one another and God. And God being omnisient and omni benevolent would recognize those values and be motivated to some extent to realize them. To further compound the improbability of the data under naturalism, there's also no guarantee that laws would exist rather than a universe with lawless initial conditions that do evolve forward in time in a totally chaotic lawless fashion. For these reasons, I think laws of nature favor theism over naturalism.
¶136Now, admittedly, my reasoning here assumes the falsity of humanism about laws of nature, which says that laws are just simple and informative summaries of the mosaic or pattern of qualities in spaceime. Because you know if laws are merely summaries of the pattern of qualities in spacetime then any spaceime is guaranteed to contain laws. So I grant that my argument here is powerless if humanism is true. I'll say more about why we should reject humanism in the next section. Uh and I'll also say more there about other views of laws.
¶137The point to note for now is that under most of the plausible non-human views of laws, which in my view are the most plausible views of laws by a wide margin, lawless initial conditions are totally conceivable. And that includes powers theory, by the way, since you know, even if laws are summaries of powers or dispositions, the initial conditions might have been populated only with dispositionless categorical qualities. Okay, but let's go on to some bigger guns like nomological harmony. Suppose there are laws of nature and contingency. Even then, it's very surprising under naturalism that those laws of nature match or apply to the contents of the universe so as to make the universe evolve through time.
¶138Of course, here I'm adverting to the problem of nomological harmony. Brian Cutter and Brad Sod nicely illustrate the problem as follows. Our universe is governed by laws that match its contents. There are laws about the behavior of massive bodies and there exist massive bodies for those laws to govern. There are charged particles and there exist laws specifying how charged particles are to behave.
¶139The point can be put somewhat more precisely in terms of a harmonious match between the states of our universe and its laws. There exist states such that applying those laws to those states yields other states. Matters might conceivably have been otherwise. The world might have been still born with our universe's non-Newtonian initial conditions and Newtonian laws that do not apply to them. Or the world might have had our universe's laws but Newtonian initial conditions.
¶140Or the world might have had any of countless other kinds of law state mismatches. You know, like laws dictating the behavior of smarged particles with states consisting only of charged particles or laws dictating the behavior of massive bodies with states containing only massive bodies and so on for countless conceivable uninstantiated physical properties like schmass and smarge and uninstantiated physical kinds like huons and benons which are possible kinds of fundamental particle that don't actually exist. As a useful analogy, we might think of the universe as akin to a game. The states of the universe correspond to configurations of pieces on the board, and the set of laws corresponds to the rule book, specifying how game piece configurations can or must change over time. Rule books and gamepiece configurations can be mismatched.
¶141A rulebook for Monopoly will provide no guidance for how states of a go board are to evolve. A rule book for chess would have nothing to say about how checkers pieces should move. A universe with mismatched laws and states would be like a game whose rule book and peace configurations are mismatched in this way. So nomological harmony consists in the fact that the fundamental laws of nature match the contents of the universe in a way that results in temporal evolution. When you apply the basic laws of nature to the contents of the universe, it generates subsequent states.
¶142It results in the evolution of the universe through time. This datim is quite striking since a match between laws and initial conditions is a special outcome that would be very unlikely absent some further explanation. Nomological harmony is special in the sense that it's you know all but required for anything interesting to happen in the universe like cosmic evolution, life, knowledge, meaningful relationships and whatnot. Nomological harmony is unlikely in the sense that it's surprising or improbable without any deeper explanation. After all, if you're choosing at random out of all possible rule books and game pieces, it would be incredibly surprising if you picked a rulebook and game pieces that actually match.
¶143In much the same way, if it's just a matter of chance or just a brute fact without any deeper explanation which among all possible laws and initial conditions obtain, then it would be incredibly surprising if the laws matched the initial conditions. There are literally infinitely many conceivable fundamental properties and relations. So if as we ordinarily suppose the initial conditions and the fundamental laws only involve a small set of fundamental properties and relations it seems extremely unlikely that there would be a match without some further story. You know like if the universe is filled with A's at the most fundamental level we hit the nomological jackpot when the laws actually specify how A's are to behave instead of you know talking only about B's or C's or D's or any of infinally any other uninstantiated physical conditions. Theism of course makes nomological harmony not particularly surprising.
¶144Again, a match between laws and initial conditions is needed for just about anything interesting or valuable to occur in the universe. So, it wouldn't be surprising that a god sensitive to and motivated by facts about value would realize nomological harmony. But under naturalism, nomological harmony looks like a cosmic coincidence. Meaning that nomological harmony is significant evidence for theism. Now to appreciate the force of this argument, we should distinguish among the three main competing conceptions of laws in the philosophical literature.
¶145First, there's humanism about laws which says that laws are just simple and informative summaries or descriptions of regularities in spaceime. A bit more precisely, laws are the axioms or theorems in the best systematization of the mosaic of particular qualities in spaceime where the best systematization is the one which best balances simplicity, informiveness, and fit with data. But if that's what laws are, and if we're holding fix that there are laws of nature, then isn't it totally unsurprising that the laws match the contents of the universe in a way that results in temporal evolution? And if that's right, then can't the naturalist just adopt humanism to predict nomological harmony just as well, if not better, than theism? No.
¶146For starters, there are very strong grounds for thinking that humanism is false. There's the supervenience problem. Lots of philosophers find it plausible that there could be two universes which have the same mosaic of non-dispositional qualities in spaceime, but which differ in which laws of nature hold in those universes. Say because one contains an extra law specifying how a particle which never in fact exists would behave if it came to exist. Or because two kinds of particle never interact in either world, but if they did interact, they'd interact differently in each world.
¶147But the best systematization of the mosaic of qualities would be the same in both worlds. And so the laws of nature must be the same if humanism is true. And that seems to be the wrong verdict. And so humanism cannot capture this intuitive desitter. There's also the vicious circularity problem.
¶148Humanism seems to land in a vicious explanatory circularity since it seems like the laws of nature together with the initial conditions explain later occurrences in spaceime even though according to humanism the laws of nature are themselves partially explained by those very later occurrences. So it's like the qualities in spaceime seem partially explained by the laws but the laws seem partially explained by the qualities in the mosaic. So we got a kind of vicious circularity. A explained by B, but B explained by A. There's the inductive skepticism problem.
¶149Philosophers like David Wules and Aaron Seagull have argued that humanism leads to inductive skepticism. I can put some links to their papers in the resource document if you're curious on reading those. There's the subjective laws problem, right? So Coons, Bonavac and others have argued that humanism implausibly implies that which laws exist depend on our practical interests since they depend on our interest relative theoretical preferences. There's the problem of making consciousness exttrinsic.
¶150So John Hawthorne argues that humanism implausibly implies that whether you and I are conscious depends on facts about what happens in billions of years. Since consciousness depends on various causal relations and humanism implies that which causal relations hold depends on the global pattern of qualities in spaceime. There's also the the famous cosmic coincidence objection which says that humanism just makes it a cosmic fluke that spacetime itself is highly regular. You know, if all that fundamentally exist are just loose and separate qualities pixelating the space-time mosaic, then it's extremely surprising that the resulting mosaic is an orderly, coherent, reasonably intricate, intelligible hole rather than just like a jumbled, chaotic mess. You know, like if which pixels populate a screen had no deeper explanation, the screen would almost certainly display a chaotic or jumbled image, not an orderly, coherent, intricate, intelligible picture.
¶151So, so this is just like one general reason why I don't think going in for humanism will help the naturalist all that much. just because like humanism is just like beset with massive problems. But even if the naturalist wants to embrace humanism despite its manifold costs, nomological harmony is still pretty surprising. Even under humanism, it's totally possible for the human mosaic of qualities in spaceime to last only a single instant. In fact, there are infinitely many of those one-instant long human mosaics, one for every conceivable way of arranging qualities.
¶152Moreover, hordes of these one-in-l long human mosaics, indeed infinitely many of them, are basically maximally simple, uniform, elegant, and compactly describable since they don't include any other time slices the laws need to capture. And if, as seems to be the only plausible way to avoid the cosmic coincidence objection, the human recognizes a truly overwhelming bias in the priors towards simpler mosaics, then it's then it's surprising under naturalism that we didn't get one of these infinitely many maximally simple one-instant long human mosaics. In which case, it remains surprising under naturalism that the laws match the universe in a way that results in temporal evolution. And hence, nomological harmony remains a mystery. So, not only is humanism deeply problematic, but it also leaves a good deal of force to the argument for nomological harmony.
¶153Let's turn now to the powers theory of laws. On this view, laws simply describe the powers things have. You might think this view like relatively easily explains nomological harmony since if we're holding fix that there are laws, well, then, you know, the laws must match the contents of the universe on the powers theory since laws are nothing but descriptions of the powers of the things in the universe. But alas, things are not so easy for the naturalist because the powers theory just raises an exactly analogous problem of powers harmony, right? Like why do the powerful properties and relations featuring in the initial conditions harmoniously align so as to induce temporal evolution, right?
¶154Like this is an utterly fortuitous occurrence since it's entirely conceivable that the initial conditions feature powerful properties none of whose stimulus conditions are met, right? Like the initial conditions might have only featured X's with the sole ability to interact with Y's or to interact with Y's when X's and Y's stand in some Newtonian spatial relation. If however the initial conditions feature no Y's or only feature relativistic spatial relations well then temporal evolution won't ensue. And we can likewise imagine many sets of initial conditions involving properties all of which are either non-dispositional properties or passive powers in which case nothing would do or change anything. As Matthew Adlesene puts the problem of powers harmony like why do bzzons have the power to interact with firmians rather than x's where x's are some type of fundamental particle that doesn't exist.
¶155It's thoroughly surprising that the fundamental things have the powers to interact with other things that happen to exist rather than one of the infinitely many non-existent things. And likewise, it's thoroughly surprising that the fundamental things have the powers to interact under certain conditions that happen to exist rather than one of the infinitely many non-existent conditions. So the powers theory ultimately just relocates the mystery of nomological harmony to the mystery of powers harmony. Like why do the powerful properties and relations featuring in the initial conditions harmonize with one another in such a way that they do in fact induce temporal evolution rather than remaining stillborn? Because we can imagine hordes of different combinations of powers and things and conditions in the initial conditions which are mismatched in a way that doesn't lead to temporal evolution.
¶156The third main theory of laws is the governing view which takes laws to be a unique kind of thing which governs or constrains the conditions of the universe. Such laws exist over and above the mosaic of qualities and or powers in spaceime so as to influence or constrain them. This view or more accurately collection of views certainly faces the problem of nomological harmony in full force right because it's just positing these like unique sui generous entities that are kind of like existing kind of independently of spaceime and which kind of like you know exert their force over spacetime so by itself you know this governing view of laws will definitely not help the naturalist. Finally, the naturalist might posit a vast and diverse ensemble of laws, initial conditions, or both in order to explain nomological harmony. Like, after all, if there's a huge paniply of laws or initial conditions or both, then it's unsurprising that some law matches some initial conditions and results in temporal evolution.
¶157But admitting a paniply of fundamental laws is just scandalously nomically unparimious. So any theory which posits as much takes a massive hit to its probability. Numological parsimony by the way is a particularly important theoretical virtue. One which concerns the number and complexity of fundamental or unexplained laws posited by a theory. It's also scandalously unparimious to posit a huge paniply of initial conditions each differing in which fundamental properties it features so as to make it unsurprising that somewhere a match will occur.
¶158Right? like doing so massively proliferates the the theory's fundamental ontology, the fundamental kinds it posits and its fundamental ideology which again will seriously detract from the theory's probability. Now regarding the ensemble of laws, I do think some of these costs can be mitigated by positing an additional fundamental planitudinous metal law which says that a maximal consistent set of first order laws exist from which we can then derive that there you know would be this enormous ensemble of laws. But that view is still nomologically unparimious in positing a radically new kind of additional fundamental law. It still massively proliferates the theory's basic ideology and it suffers from some of the problems I'll mention next including a variant of the skepticism problem.
¶159A further problem for these ensemble solutions is that these ensembles aren't recognized anywhere in science. So positing them grates against the spirit of naturalism which aims to hue closely to the posits of the natural sciences. Again like consider the sort of multiverse posited by ensemble solutions which proliferate initial conditions. Such a multiverse needs to include universes that differ with respect to the fundamental physical properties instantiated in their initial conditions with some including mass others including schmass others including schmarge others including like benons or whatever non-existent particles that there could be but crucially this is not the sort of multiverse taken seriously in certain quarters of physics. So arguments in physics and cosmology for the multiverse don't actually support these ensemble solutions.
¶160There are three further problems with ensemble solutions that proliferate universes with different initial conditions. I think the first one is very serious, though I'm I'm a bit less confident about the other two, but I I do think they still deserve a mention. So, first, these ensemble solutions threaten radical skepticism. In the absence of striking coincidences concerning which sorts of initial conditions populate the ensemble, duplicate realizers of your current experiences likely figure in countless initial conditions that evolve in accordance with the laws. In other words, there are going to be countless universes with initial conditions that feature brains which exactly duplicate down to every last microfysical detail.
¶161your brain at the present moment and that evolve forward according to the laws the same way your brain will evolve forward over some short duration in the future. These brains will be temporarily experientially indistinguishable from you from a first person perspective. Assuming that a significant portion of beings sharing your current experiences figure in initial conditions, which by the way is pretty likely since such brains require only small localized pockets of relatively low entropy compared to the gigantic pocket of low entropy needed to sustain you and the solar system in all of history. These ensemble solutions will imply radical skepticism. For then you should think that there's a significant chance that you're one of these radically deceived brains which share your current experiences.
¶162And recall that planitudinous metal law approach that I mentioned earlier as a kind of aside in passing. That approach likewise threatens skepticism since there are tons of maximal compossible sets of laws which include laws generating an abundance of localized brains in skeptical scenarios. For example, there could be laws that create or employ additional fields, dimensions, stochastic processes, vacuum transitions, or particle interaction channels to assemble large numbers of localized brains in skeptical scenarios. Given that there are so many more ways to have localized short-lived brains in skeptical scenarios than brains enjoying a long evolutionary history and vertical contact with their environments, there will plausibly be many more conceivable maximal compossible sets of laws which result in a large proportion of skeptical observers than sets of laws which result in a small proportion. Heck, if we're even in the dark about which such sets a planitudinist metal law would be likely to choose by chance, then we're in the dark about whether the actual law set generates a large proportion of skeptical observers.
¶163And that's enough to defeat our empirical knowledge. So we need a pretty coincidental maximal composible set of laws to avert skepticism. Okay. A second problem for you know these ensemble solutions that proliferate universes with different initial conditions is that arguably they only explain why some universe's laws match its initial conditions. But we know more than that, right?
¶164We know that this universe's laws, that is our universe's laws match its initial conditions. Positing a multitude of universes with varying initial conditions doesn't appear to substantially raise the probability that our universe, this universe, would be among the privileged elite whose laws and initial conditions match. So the data might simply remain extremely improbable under naturalism, even assuming that one of these ensembles exists. Third, and relatedly, arguably theism is supported by nomological harmony, even if there's an ensemble of universes varying in initial conditions. Given the it doesn't seem like super unlikely that God would give rise to a vast multiverse with an abundant assortment of valuable creatures, especially now that we have the existence of at least one universe in our background.
¶165Moreover, it may be that the expected number and proportion of nomologically harmonious universes is much higher in theistic multiveres than atheistic ones. For again, nomological harmony is all but required for anything interesting or valuable to happen in a universe. If this is right, and again I'm I'm less certain about these second and third responses than the first response, then any given universe is much more likely to exhibit nomological harmony under the theistic multiverse hypothesis compared to the atheistic multiverse hypothesis. In which case, nomological harmony in our universe favors the former over the latter. But anyway, I think nomological harmony provides pretty good evidence for theism.
¶166And up next is an even stronger evidential chip favoring theism. And that evidential chip is finetuning. Sup babe, you're looking mighty fine. I hope we're in tune about wanting to go on a date. Please clap.
¶167So let's let's suppose that there is contingency. There are laws of nature and the laws of nature match the initial conditions of the universe so as to induce temporal evolution. Even granting all of that in the background, it's still then extremely surprising under naturalism that the matching laws of nature are strikingly fine-tuned to allow for life and really anything interesting or valuable to occur. Yet, this is far less surprising under theism. Holding fix that God creates a contingent universe which evolves forward in time according to laws of nature.
¶168It wouldn't be hopelessly unlikely that he'd select members of the tiniest sliver of conceivable law structures and constant values which actually allow for super valuable things like significant beauty and various cosmic and biological structures. a coherent developing narrative arc to reality's unfolding. Conscious embodied creatures who can experience joy, love one another, build relationships with each other and with God, cultivate and manifest virtue, display rational agency, inquire and gain knowledge about the world, manifest their agency in the material world in valuable ways. By contrast, it is hopelessly unlikely under naturalism that the law structures and constant values would fall within the exceedingly narrow ranges that enable these valuable results. Consequently, fine-tuning provides exceptionally strong evidence for theism.
¶169Now, there are four different kinds of fine-tuning that I want to focus on. Finely tuned law structures, finely tuned constants and initial conditions, fine-tuning for discoverability, and opriori fine-tuning. Let's start with finely tuned law structures. Here we need to distinguish between the structure of laws and the constants within those laws. As an example, here's the general structure or form of Newton's gravitational law.
¶170The magnitude of the gravitational force between two bodies equals G times the product of their masses divided by the square of the distance between their centers. G here is a constant, which is basically just a quantity whose value stays fixed within the equation. In this case, G fixes the overall strength of gravity. A different value of G would preserve the same structure of the law while making gravitational forces uniformly stronger or weaker. Now, traditional presentations of the fine-tuning argument simply hold the actual law structures fixed as part of the background information for running the argument.
¶171As Luke Barnes notes, the reason why we restrict our focus to universes with the same law structures as ours is that assigning precise probabilities and investigating life permitting outcomes over the entire space of possible universes, including those with different law structures, is too difficult. By contrast, when we hold the law structures fixed, we can get a purchase on the precise probabilities that the constants would fall within the lifeping ranges. But it's worth noting that we don't actually need precise probabilities to run a successful basian argument for a hypothesis. We can apply basian reasoning to lots of messy real life cases as long as we can make rough and ready comparative judgments. Judgments to the effect that you know two assumptions are roughly equally plausible or that one is a bit more plausible than another or that some observation is much more surprising on one assumption than another.
¶172The evidence in a court case is almost never quantified using exact precise probabilities or even ballpark estimates. Instead, judges and juries rightly make rough but highly plausible comparative judgments about how expected or how surprising certain pieces of data are on the guilt hypothesis relative to the innocence hypothesis. Moreover, even if we can't assign precise probabilities here, obviously it would be fantastically strong evidence for theism if the fundamental law structure is somehow encoded in binary the entire Bible, right? Like, and that's because this is an overwhelmingly, grotesqually unlikely structure to obtain by chance. It's a highly specific, intricate, and coincidental law structure.
¶173And intuitively, only the tiniest fraction of conceivable law structures encode meaningful messages. And while this law structure would also be super improbable under theism since there are, you know, lots of other law structures God could have made and lots of other messages God could have written, it wouldn't be as grotesqually improbable as it is by chance, right? And so it would represent super powerful evidence for theism even in the absence of precise probability estimates. Now, as it happens, the actual law structures we got are compatible with life in the sense that the actual law structures contain life permitting parameter ranges. But if you sit down and think about it, this is fantastically fortunate.
¶174A vast space of conceivable law structures generate worlds that are too simple, too homogeneous, too low-dimensional, too short-lived, too static, too periodic, or too chaotic to contain anything like stable complexity or embodied conscious agency. Intuitively, only a tiny fraction of the total space of conceivable law structures is compatible with life. And to make matters worse for the naturalist, the simplest law structures seem life precluding. To make this vivid, consider how easily we can describe possible law structures that are far simpler than the actual laws, but plainly incompatible with life and more generally anything particularly interesting and valuable. The fundamental law might have specified that no concrete objects exist.
¶175That's an extremely simple law with only one quantifier, a negation sign, and a single predicate. Or the law might have said that exactly one space-time point exists or exactly two or exactly three or whatever. The fundamental law might have said that only one particle exists and its position at t is given by the sign of t. This law is far simpler than the actual laws and the resulting world contains only one simple thing moving back and forth forever. Or the fundamental law might have specified that this one particle moves in a straight line forever or moves in a circle or stays at rest or moves along a triangle or square.
¶176Or the fundamental law might have specified that a simple fundamental particle exists and periodically enters an excited state for all eternity or periodically emits bursts of very low energy for all eternity or whatever. Or the law might have said that exactly two particles exist and orbit their common center forever. Or the fundamental law might have specified that a single one-dimensional point exists with its trajectory given by a simple linear equation among infinitely many such simple equations or a simple quadratic equation and so on for infinitely many other totally uninteresting and barren laws that are far simpler than the actual laws. Or the fundamental law might have specified that a single simple two-dimensional shape persists eternally for each of infinitely many compactly specifiable shapes like different sizes of triangles, different sizes of octagons, etc. Or the fundamental law might have specified that the shape moves periodically or rotates in place or does any other extremely simple movement.
¶177Or the fundamental law might have specified that there is exactly one scalar field such that all spacetime points have the same constant scalar value. The resulting world is extremely uniform and therefore highly coherent and super compactly specifiable in fundamental terms. Yet it's completely undifferiated and totally devoid of interesting or valuable phenomena. Or the law might specify that the scalar values are uniform across all of space but just oscillate between two scalar values for all eternity back and forth. Or the fundamental law might have specified that the universe is an all zero cellular automaton with every cell in an infinite two-dimensional grid taking on a zero value.
¶178or that every cell might have taken on a one value or that the infinite grid might have been a checkerboard or that each cell might simply copy the cell to its left or to its right or whatever. Or that a cell takes on a one value if and only if exactly zero of its neighbors take on a one value and a zero otherwise. Or the fundamental law might have been a pure expansion law specifying that all distances between fundamental things simply increase uniformly forever with no attractive or binding forces in which case no complex objects would ever form. Or the law might be a pure repulsion law stating that every object repels every other object with no attractive or binding interactions. This law too would never result in stable complexity.
¶179Listen dude, I could do this forever. Each of these infinitely many law structures totally precludes basically anything interesting and valuable from occurring. Yet reality suspiciously sailed over this vast sea of extremely simple, elegant, and uniform laws to instead actualize much more complicated ones that allow for life. Moreover, intuitively, most of the complicated law structures would just result in chaos. So, reality also suspiciously avoided them, too.
¶180Like, come on, dude. Like, you know something's up. Like it's clearly not a matter of chance or brute unexplained fact that we got the law structures we did. Yet naturalism says precisely that. Right?
¶181According to naturalism, the fundamental law structures in nature are at the bedrock of reality and don't admit of deeper explanation in terms of anything beyond nature. This is not credible. To put the argument in basian form, because I'm a basian babe, it's far more surprising under naturalism than theism that the universe landed on the actual law structures which are at least compatible with life, which at least have ranges for parameter values that are life permitting rather than law structures from the unfathomable infinite abyss of lifehitting law structures. Consequently, the actual law structures are very powerful evidence for theism over naturalism, and we haven't even gotten to the science yet. Let's now turn to finely tuned constants and initial conditions.
¶182Suppose we did hit the cosmic jackpot by getting the particular law structures we did. It's still then shockingly unlikely under naturalism that the constants within those laws would fall within their exceedingly narrow life permitting ranges and did over various initial conditions of the universe. To take just one example, the cosmological constant governs the rate of expansion of the universe. If the cosmological constant had been larger by a factor of one part in 10 the^ of 120 then the universe would have flown apart so fast that no stable complex structures could have formed. If the cosmological constant had been smaller by one part in 10 to the 120 then the universe would have collapsed back in on itself immediately after the big bang.
¶183And there are other constants in initial conditions with exceedingly narrow life from ridding ranges too. Taking these and the cosmological constant into account, physicist Luke Barnes estimates that the likelihood of a life permitting universe on naturalism is less than one in 10 ^ of 136. Now, because this is a bit abstract, Philip Goff gives a helpful analogy to make the numbers here more vivid. Imagine you rolled a die 70 times in a row and got a six every single time. Nobody who saw a die come up six 70 times in a row would happily say, "Ah, well, you know, it's just a fluke or there's no deeper explanation for this." You know, it's just like a basic or fundamental or brute fact.
¶184Like, no, we think there's something fishy going on. You know, perhaps a loaded die, something that explains why the number six comes up each time. Well, how does this compare with fine-tuning? Well, the odds of getting six 70 times in a row with a fair die is 1 in 10 the^ of 55. On a conservative estimate, the odds of getting a universe finally tuned for life are 1 in 10 the^ of 136.
¶185So, if it's irrational to put 70 optimal rolls of a die down to chance, then it's certainly irrational to put the finetuning of our universe down to chance as well. To take another example, there are around a 10 to the^ of 89 particles in the observable universe. So the odds of like the constants falling within their life permitting ranges under naturalism are far worse than picking out a single particle at random from the entire universe. But let's turn to the light side, not the dark side of naturalism. The light side of theism.
¶186God being perfectly good would be aware of and motivated by facts about value. So it doesn't seem nearly as improbable as like 1 in 10 to the^ of 136 under theism that the constants would actually allow for conscious living beings with rich mental lives, stable environments in which they can act and learn in a cosmos that is mathematically elegant and beautiful and at least potentially useful to those beings. Indeed, even if this were hopelessly, ludicrously, pathetically improbable given theism and our background on the order of say 1 and 10 the^ of 100, that would still confirm theism by a factor of 10 the^ of 36, which is, you know, almost decisive evidence for theism. But suppose we hit the jackpot not once but twice. Not only do our law structures miraculously contain a life-permitting range that constant values could fall in, but the constant values actually miraculously fall in those exceedingly narrow life permitting ranges.
¶187Even then, a still further kind of fine-tuning offers yet more support for theism over naturalism, namely fine-tuning for discoverability. This kind of fine tuning was discovered by Robin Collins, and a number of physicists have double-cheed his calculations. You know, granted, this is cutting edge work, right? So, so we should definitely have some higher order uncertainty about whether the physics checks out. But if it does and the preliminary findings suggest as much, then we have yet more powerful evidence for theism on our hands.
¶188And here I'll be drawing from two excellent posts linked in the resource document by Matthew Adelstein and Dustin Crummit. It turns out that certain physical parameters need to fall in a very narrow range for the universe to be discoverable to us to a significant degree. If the parameters fell outside that range, living creatures could still exist, but they couldn't do science or develop technology anywhere near as well. To take just one example, Collins calculates that the baron to photon ratio could have had any of a wide range of values without compromising the ability of the universe to support life, but that within this range, it's finely tuned to maximize the intensity of the cosmic microwave background radiation, the feature of the universe which allowed us to discover the Big Bang. Collins estimates that the odds of fine-tuning for discoverability by chance are on the order of one in a trillion trillion.
¶189And as Matthew Alstein points out, while you sometimes should think and probable things happen, you should never never never assume a one in a trillion trillion coincidence happen when there is an alternative viable theory believed independently by a number of smart people. That's about the odds that if a present human was selected at random, you'd be selected, then selected again, then that you'd enter a lottery where your odds of winning were one in 100,000 and then win that, too. Like, we easily could have existed in a much less discoverable universe. And if Collins is correct, we should strongly expect to be in such a universe under naturalism. On the other hand, writes Crmit, "We can see why a good God would have reason to favor the intellectual goods involved in learning and comprehending the fundamental workings of the world along with the ability to appreciate the beauty God had instilled in the deepest workings of creation, so that we have more reason to expect these features if the universe is created by God.
¶190Discoverability too therefore provides powerful evidence for theism. And this evidence goes beyond the fact that the constants fall within their exceedingly narrow life permitting ranges, further compounding the evidential case for theism. The final kind of finetuning I'll focus on is a priority fine-tuning. And admittedly, this is actually super similar to the finetuning of the law structures. So, I'm not saying that this is another, you know, largely independent piece of evidence for theism.
¶191Still, I think it illustrates that we don't actually need fancy math or science to see that finetuning is very powerful evidence for theism. So, I'm I'm keeping it in nonetheless. The basic idea is that the universe conceivably might have been chaotic, barren, or trivially simple. That it instead contains complex, coherent, and value supporting structures cries out for explanation. This is extremely unlikely on naturalism but not extremely unlikely on theism and therefore constitutes strong evidence for theism over naturalism.
¶192Right? Like take a flip book. I I had I had chatbt try to generate this image and you know it looks kind of silly because like look look where the apple is falling in the second image there but then somehow it like shifts to the left and falls on it's a mess. AI is still a mess. I I can't if you if any of you know how to use how to use this stuff like please hit me up.
¶193Tell me like out of the space of all conceivable drawings on a given page, only a tiny fraction form coherent scenes rather than random scribbles. And of the space of all conceivable sequences of pages, only a minuscule fraction form coherent stories. As the number of pages increases, the proportion of coherent story books shrinks exponentially. So, if we encountered a long flip book depicting a smooth, intelligible animation, say Newton discovering gravity after an apple bonks his head, we would be virtually certain that it was produced by an agent aiming at that result rather than by random assembly. Likewise, out of the space of all conceivable universe histories, only a hopelessly minuscule fraction unfold in a coherent extended lawned way with embodied conscious agents living in intelligible environments.
¶194A purposeless, value indifferent stitching together of conceivable states would almost certainly yield either chaos or trivial and uninteresting simplicity, not interesting structures that support valuable beings with intelligent and coherent life stories. And appeals to laws of nature, uniformity or simplicity don't solve the problem. For every chaotic universe history, there's some conceivable set of laws and initial conditions that would produce it. the proportion of law conditions combinations yielding valuable universes appears just as tiny as the proportion of valuable universe histories themselves. Nor will it do to suggest that simpler or more uniform laws or mosaics of qualities in spaceime are intrinsically more probable.
¶195Since the simplest and most uniform epistemic possibilities, say a fundamental law specifying that no concreta exists, or any of the infinitely many varieties of trivially boring universes in which a single fundamental particle or field or whatever behaves in an extremely simple uniform way, are vastly simpler and more uniform than our rich and delicately ordered cosmos. Our universe exhibits a fine balance between uniformity and disun as well as simplicity and complexity that enables value without collapsing into utter chaos or trivial monotony. Opriori. This is incredibly surprising and theism predicts it much better than naturalistic atheism. Brian Cutter gives a really nice summary of the Apriori fine-tuning argument in his interview here.
¶196There there's a variant on the finetuning argument that maybe for me I find a bit bit more powerful which is a kind of more opriori version of the fine-tuning argument. The thought being like you can just know a priori that the fundamental ingredients and structures and laws of the universe have to be fine-tuned to a considerable degree in order to get any kind of interesting organized complexity at all. Because a priori we can just see that a very wide range of possible laws and structures and basic setups for the universe would just not lead to anything interesting or any kind of organized complexity at all. I mean setting aside like the details of what what we know our physical universe is like and the structure of its laws. So, you know, the the universe could have just been like an empty three-dimensional uklidian space, or it could have been just like a space with a bunch of particles where the only law was everything moves in a straight line forever.
¶197Or it could have been like a an arena where things just move in circles forever. Or it could have been just like a one-dimensional cellular automaton that just develops according to simple rules. And I mean, actually thinking about cellular automata like the game of life is kind of instructive here. So mathematicians have investigated kind of a class of mathemat mathematically possible worlds called cellular automa. So you can think of like the game of life is the most famous one.
¶198It's a two dimensional grid that evolves according to simple deterministic laws. And actually we've discovered that like most most possible laws governing these two dimensional cellular automata they don't lead to anything interesting at all. They either lead to just like simple repetitive loops or everything dying out really fast or just utter chaos. Now, the game of life is famous because it's like one of the very few sets of possible rules that lead to kind of interesting emergent complexity and like interesting structures at various scales and so on. But even then, you need to significantly fine-tune the initial conditions.
¶199So, if you've ever played around with like a game of life simulator on online, you know that like if you just kind of randomly populate the cells, most of the time it either dies out or just gives you like like repetitive blinking structures. It's only a very small range of possible initial conditions that leads to like interesting novel kind of on the edge of chaos kind of like this nice mix of like chaos versus order that we find in our world. And so I think just kind of thinking through the range of like possible ways that a reality could be, it's very clear that like a lot needs to be tuned just right in order to get a world where like that's not completely lame and boring. a world where there's like interesting structures and organized complexity and interesting narrative structure like most most possible ways for a physical universe to be just considering the point opriori and not learning anything about like the the structure of our laws are just like not hospitable to life and not hospitable to like anything interesting at all. So I think it's just like a very striking fact that it's not at all to be expected given a fundamentally purposeless universe that there would be kind of cool and interesting stuff at all.
¶200So that that's like a I I I could go on, but considerations along those lines, just how hard and demanding and fine-tuned fundamental reality needs to be in order to get anything cool and interesting happening in reality at all makes it particularly surprising that our world is kind of cool and interesting to say the least and I think much more expected on theism than on on atheism. So that that that's a a family of arguments that I find pretty compelling. >> Of course, there are lots of objections to the fine-tuning argument, but I don't think they work. I'll rebut 17 of them, as you can see on screen here. Hopefully, your your pet objection is on the screen here.
¶201And rebutting all 17 should provide good higher order evidence that objections not on the list are problematic, too. And by the way, there are just like lots of more general points about philosophical theorizing that you can learn from going through these objections and seeing the ways in which they're mistaken. Uh and these points also just like apply to lots of other basian arguments for theism. Uh like the same sorts of problems uh with the objections arise again and again. So going through these objections is hopefully going to be uh super helpful in uh combating the manifold errors that I see on the internets uh about these arguments.
¶202And you know what? You know what? The gloves are coming off. We're going to the script to respond to these objections. You know, it's not a Majesty or Reason video without me sharing my screen and reading along while doing impressions.
¶203So, here we go. You're not going to stop us today. Ride. Okay. Sweet.
¶204Um, okay. So, first up is the puddle analogy objection. Douglas Adams asks us to imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, "Ah, this is an interesting world I find myself in. An interesting hole I find myself in. Fits me rather neatly, doesn't it?" In fact, it it fits me staggeringly well.
¶205It must have been made to have me in it. You know, the puddle, we think, is here reasoning faciously. The hole wasn't fine-tuned for the puddle, but instead the puddle was adapted to the hole. But likewise, the universe wasn't fine-tuned for us. We simply adapted to the universe.
¶206Okay, now first this is just you know a clearly false analogy. The puddle would fit the hole no matter the shape of the hole since puddles always conformed to the shapes of the holes therein. The same obviously can't be said for life. Life would not exist no matter the values of the constants. I mean right just like think about it like while a puddle can adapt to any hole life can't adapt to any set of constants or initial conditions.
¶207In non-fineetuned worlds there isn't any life around it to adapt. So Adams is just confused if he thinks the existence of life can be explained by adaptation in the same way as the fit between a puddle and the hole it's in. In order for there to be any life around to adapt to anything, you need the constants to fall within an exceedingly narrow life range. And they need not have done that. So like this is this is just like not getting the fine-tuning argument.
¶208Second, I agree with Miles Donghue from our discussion that, you know, so long as theism makes fine-tuning for life more likely than naturalism or chance, fine-tuning is evidence for theism that follows just by, you know, the application of the likelihood principle in Baze theorem. There's no comparable design hypothesis in the whole case. You like there's nothing especially valuable about puddles. Puddles are totally mundane and easily obtainable phenomena given Earth's existence as we find it. And puddles can exist again in pretty much any hole shape.
¶209So the whole designer hypothesis doesn't predict the hole's shape any better than chance. I mean this is like obviously relevantly different from fine-tuning. There is something especially valuable about conscious creatures like us and those creatures are extremely unlikely to obtain since they can only exist given a small slice of the physical parameters bait. A more apt analogy would be a key finding itself fitting perfectly inside a lock. The key should infer design in that case since a strikingly tuned lock that fits it exactly is highly unlikely to arise by chance.
¶210And we can see why a designer might be interested in producing such a lock for the key to fit in. And third, and finally, you know, the puddle analogy doesn't even touch fine-tuning for discoverability. So, so it's it's just a mess. We're moving on to the anthropic principle objection. Listen, Joe, we shouldn't be at all surprised that the constants fall within the narrow life permitting range.
¶211Like, after all, we couldn't have observed a universe in which the values fall outside that range. And consequently, fine-tuning is no evidence for theism over naturalism. But this is just bad reasoning. Suppose you're brought before a firing squad and there are a hundred professional marksmen pointing their rifles at you. Someone shouts three, two, one, fire.
¶212The shots ring out. Astonishingly though, you survive. The fact that they all missed obviously favors some sort of conspiracy or intentional missing hypothesis, even though you couldn't have observed a world in which they don't miss, right? And also like listen, my existence is evidence that my parents didn't use infallibly effective contraception even though I couldn't have observed a situation in which they did. And more generally, even if we could only exist given that the relevant evidence obtains, that evidence could still be far more likely given some hypotheses than others and hence could still strongly favor some hypotheses over others.
¶213So, so the anthropic principal objection is just confused and also of course it doesn't touch fine-tuning for discoverability since we since we could have existed in a much less discoverable universe. Okay, third objection, other life forms. I know we're starting with uh some doozies here. Doesn't the fine-tuning argument neglect that there might be other very strange life forms, like ones that aren't carbon based or maybe are made up of complex glass clouds or something? Uh, no, it doesn't.
¶214The examples of finetuning that I canvased have nothing to do with carbon, but instead with the very possibility of any complex or stable structures at all. As Philip Goff notes, whatever kind of life you're envvisaging, it's not going to be able to exist if the universe collapses back in on itself after a split second, which would have been the result of a negative cosmological constant. And it's also just manifest that this doesn't touch law structure fine-tuning or opriori fine-tuning or fine-tuning for discoverability. So, so again, it's just it's just a mess. Onwards we march to frequentism as an objection is the fourth objection.
¶215Well, hey, listen Joe, we've only observed one universe. We have no frequency data about proportions of life permitting universes and our sample size is literally just one. So we have no grounds to think life permitting constants are extremely improbable under naturalism. How do I respond to this? Well, first we know that this objection must be wrong since it problematically overgeneralizes.
¶216It faces the awesome theistic evidence parody which will be a recurring theme. Imagine that the initial conditions sit spelled out in some atomic soup made by God with love in every known human language. Clearly, that would be awesome evidence for theism. But the objection at hand would absurdly imply otherwise. Like, oh, after all, we've only observed one set of initial conditions.
¶217We have no frequency data about proportions of message containing initial conditions of universes. And our sample size here is literally just one. So, you know, we have no grounds to think that these initial conditions are extremely improbable under naturals. Like, no, be quiet. Stop talking.
¶218Second, the objection at hand assumes a frequentist account of probability on which the probability of an event is identical to or grounded in how often it occurs in a relevant class. But as Goff points out, the plain fact of the matter is that it's impossible to do science with only recourse to a frequentist conception of probability as it renders us unable to theorize regarding one-off events such as continental drift, the evolution of humanity, or indeed the origin of the universe. One major source of evidence for continental drift was the similarity between animal and plant life on Africa and South America millions of years ago. As we know through fossils, scientists made the plausible judgment that this kind of similarity would be very unlikely if the continental drift hypothesis were false, but very likely if the continental drift hypothesis were true. By the likelihood principle or B theorem, this fact of similarity supports the continental drift hypothesis.
¶219But how did scientists reach this probability judgment? I mean on a frequentist account of probability they would have to have observed many earths with continental drift and many earths without continental drift and then note that like a greater proportion of those with continental drift had similar animal and plant life on Africa and South America. But of course, you know, that's not something that we're able to do. And so scientists must have formed this probability judgment in some nonfrequentist way. And third, we actually can get a purchase on frequencies here by performing cosmological simulations and altering the constant values therein.
¶220Um, and when physicists actually do this, you know, we find that lifeing conditions are extremely rare. So the objection here is just a mess. Okay, the fifth objection. Hey, the fine-tuning argument rests on an unjustified assumption. Doesn't it just like assume without good reason that the constants really could have been otherwise?
¶221But like, you know, how do we know that? Well, first, the fine-tuning argument doesn't actually assume that it's really or objectively or metaphysically possible that the constants could have been otherwise. All the argument needs is that it's conceivable that they be otherwise. In other words, them being otherwise is compatible with what we can know a priori or from the armchair by rational reflection. For then it will still be extremely epistemically improbable that the constants would happen to fall in the narrow life permitting range.
¶222As Brian Cutter notes in our co-authored book, when we engage in basian reasoning, we distribute probabilities across conceptual possibilities, including conceptual possibilities that may for all we know turn out to be metaphysically impossible. When we say that a certain observation is likely or unlikely given a hypothesis, we aren't commenting on their metaphysical compatibility. We're describing the degree to which the hypothesis rationally supports or makes it reasonable to expect the observation. As long as alternative constant values are conceptual possibilities, and they are, it makes sense to say that it's surprising or unlikely or not to be expected that they'd be life permitting under naturalism. To illustrate, consider another case where conceptual possibility may come apart from metaphysical possibility.
¶223Many philosophers would say that your specific DNA sequence is essential to you in the sense that you could not have existed without it. You know, of course, your parents might have had a baby with a different DNA sequence and there might be alien life forms with no DNA at all, but you know, no such being could have been you. That just that would have been a different child, for instance. Now, according to this view, it's not possible metaphysically for you to exist with a different DNA sequence or no DNA at all. But even if these scenarios are metaphysically impossible, they obviously aren't conceptually impossible.
¶224You can't like deduce by pure reason that you'd have such and such specific DNA sequence or that you know you'd have DNA at all from the fact that you exist because there are conceptually possible scenarios in which you have any of a number of different DNA sequences or no DNA at all. Like we need we needed empirical investigation in order to find out that you have DNA and which DNA you have. And if we want to reason in a basian way about say your ancestry, right, we'll do so by distributing probabilities over various conceptual possibilities that may turn out to be metaphysically impossible. So for example, we might reason like the following. You know, it's to be expected that you'd have such and such genetic marker on the assumption that you have Italian ancestry.
¶225But on the opposite assumption, you'd likely have a different genetic marker. So the fact that you have this genetic marker is evidence that you have Italian ancestry. And notice that like here according to the operative view we're like we're reasoning we're doing basian reasoning about these metaphysical impossibilities. It's totally listenit makes total sense. We do this all the time.
¶226You like when scientists were investigating the microchemical structure and composition of uh water. They formulated various hypotheses and then generated predictions about you know what they'd expect to obtain in various experiments under those hypotheses. So under the assumption that water is in fact H2O, then we'd expect when we hydrayze water to get two moles of hydrogen for every one mole of oxygen. But by contrast, under the hypothesis, even though as as we now know, it's metaphysically impossible for this to be the case. Under the hypothesis that water is H30, what would we expect when water is hydrayed?
¶227Well, we'd expect to obtain three moles of hydrogen for every one mole of oxygen. Okay? And then we go and perform the experiment and we see that we get actually two moles of hydrogen for every one mole of oxygen. Okay, that very strongly confirms that water is H2O even though you know a lot a lot of these hypotheses some of them were even metaphysically impossible but still we were distributing our credences over them and we could generate epistemic probabilities here over this space of you know metaphysical metaphysical impossibilities and necessities and it's that sort of epistemic reasoning that reasoning in the fine tuning argument and my later argument from psychophysical luck and so again like my first response to this objection is that like we don't actually need to claim to run the fine-tuning argument that it's really or objectively or metaphysically possible that the constants be otherwise because we're using epistemic probabilities here. Second, the objection at hand just faces the awesome theistic evidence problem.
¶228Again, imagine that the initial conditions had spelled out made by God with love. Clearly, that would be powerful evidence for theism. But the objection at hand would absurdly imply otherwise. Like, oh, after all, like how do you know that those initial conditions could have been otherwise? You know, like isn't that just an unjustified assumption?
¶229Third, I'll touch on this in response to the next objection, but actually fine-tuning is simply evidence for the conjunction of theism together with the claim that the constants could have been otherwise since that conjunctive hypothesis, that combo predicts the data far better than alternative hypothesis. And fourth, and finally, in any case, we arguably do have good reason to think the constants really could have been otherwise, since, you know, they're extremely arbitrary and highly precise numbers. They seem like they could be otherwise and it's totally conceivable that they be otherwise. And you know these considerations plausibly give us reason to think that they're contingent rather than necessary. Okay.
¶230Onwards we march to the sixth objection uh the necessary constants objection. But what if what if the constants are metaphysically necessary? Then isn't the probability one that they'd fall in the lip printing range? And doesn't this adequately explain them? So you know the naturalist can just say that the constants are necessary and the argument loses its force like the constants are necessary.
¶231Boom. Fine-tuning argument debunked. Uh, no, that that's not how this works. That's not how any of this works. So, first, this objection also faces the awesome theistic evidence problem.
¶232Again, imagine that the initial conditions had spelled out made by God with love in every known human language. Clearly, that would be powerful evidence for theism, but the objection at hand would absurdly imply otherwise. Like, after all, maybe it's just metaphysically necessary that the initial conditions be that way. Well, then the probability is one that they'd spell out this message. And you know, wouldn't their necessity adequately explain them?
¶233So, you know, the naturalist can just say that the initial conditions aren't necessary and this argument from the initial conditions loses its force like like no, that that's silly. Yet, if the objection at hand worked against the fine-tuning argument, it would also work against this argument from the initial conditions. And since it doesn't, it also doesn't work against the fine-tuning argument. Second, remember that we're working with epistemic probabilities in the fine-tuning argument. Now the hypothesis that the values of the constants are metaphysically necessary is ambiguous.
¶234It could be either the general hypothesis that wherever the constants fall it's metaphysically necessary that they fall that way or it could be the specific hypothesis that it's metaphysically necessary that the constants fall specifically within the narrow life permitting range. Now the general hypothesis here doesn't do anything to affect the epistemic probability that the values of the constants would fall within the narrow life permitting range, right? Like it literally gives us no information about where they would fall. So it's still overwhelmingly unlikely that they'd fall within the narrow life permitting range and hence theism is still going to get massively favored over naturalism. Again like the general hypothesis just says like well wherever they fall it's necessary that they fall there.
¶235That doesn't tell you where they fall. It doesn't give you any information. So this so this hypothesis doesn't affect the epistemic probability that the values of the constants would fall specifically within the narrow life peritting range. By contrast, if you're just building into your hypothesis from the get-go that it's necessary that the values would fall specifically within the narrow life peritting range, then what you gain in predictive power, you lose out on intrinsic probability. the naturalistic hypothesis is then just like hopeless on the priors because it's equally conceivable that the constants would necessarily take on any other value in this massive range.
¶236So you're just predicting purchasing so you're just like purchasing predictive power at the cost of correspondingly lowering your intrinsic probability. And in fact like we can show this mathematically right let C be the generic hypothesis that the constants wherever they fall necessarily have the values they do and let L be the specific hypothesis that the constants fall within the exceedingly narrow life breeding range. If the hypothesis that the constants are necessary is just the generic hypothesis C then the probability of L given naturalism and C is still exceptionally small. In fact C doesn't even raise the probability of L at all. And in that case, theism is still monstrously favored over naturalism.
¶237By contrast, if the hypothesis that the constants are necessary is the conjunction of L and C, in other words, the claim that the constants necessarily fall within the exceedingly life-mitting range, then the conjunction of naturalism together with L and C is just ludicrously unlikely on the priors. That's because the probability of this conjunction is actually equal to the probability of L given C and naturalism times the probability of C and naturalism. And as we've seen, the first value here is exceptionally small. Right? Merely given naturalism and the generic hypothesis does not make any probabilistic headway in making L more likely.
¶238And so the naturalist has then simply decreased the prior of her overall theory to exactly the same extent that L was initially surprising on naturalism. And heck, it's actually worse than that for the naturalist here because C itself is pretty implausible conditional on naturalism. It's pretty implausible that the constants would be necessary given those various reasons that I mentioned. So, so the naturalist has actually decreased the prior of naturalism even beyond the extent to which L was initially surprising on naturalism. And so the necessary constants objection is just a mess.
¶239And so as with the other objections, the necessary constant objection is just a mess. And there's and there's a third problem with it too. So third, fine-tuning is simply very powerful evidence for the conjunction of theism together with the claim that the constant values are contingent. Brian Cutter and Dustin Kummit give the Boulder Island analogy to illustrate why. You're about to visit the island of boulders.
¶240You don't know whether anyone has been there before. You're fairly but not extremely confident that the boulders are not humanly movable. And so even if there were previous visitors, they couldn't have controlled the arrangement of boulders on the island. You know, boulders are very heavy after all. When you arrive at the island though, you observe the boulders arranged in a beautiful circular pattern like Stonehenge.
¶241Intuitively, you should now be fairly confident in the following conjunction. There were previous visitors and they could control the arrangement of the boulders. Similarly, even if we were initially pretty confident that the constant values were metaphysically necessary, upon observing the highly striking fact that they take on lifebitting values, we should simply conclude both that theism is true and that God controls the contingent values of the constants. Okay. What about the seventh objection?
¶242Divine fine-tuning. Like who fine-tuned the finetuner, huh? Isn't God just as complex as the universe? And so, doesn't he need just as much fine-tuning as the universe? Uh, no.
¶243Well, uh, God doesn't have highly specific parameter values that need to be set in exceedingly narrow ranges in order for him to exist. More generally, God is not beset by highly arbitrary coincidental features that call out for explanation. In fact, God isn't built up out of any parts at all. He's the ultimate fundamental reality. And so, he doesn't depend on parts that make up his being or that need to strikingly align in fortunate ways to exist.
¶244Moreover, as we saw in my defense of premise one of my master argument, theism is actually a very simple, elegant, non-arbitrary, uniform, coherent hypothesis. As a result, God is much more plausibly the sort of thing which is fundamental or ultimate than, you know, complex, inelegant, highly arbitrary, coincidental constants in physics. Finally, this objection also faces the awesome theistic evidence problem. You know, like if the objection worked against fine-tuning, it would also work against the awesome theistic evidence argument. You know, like after all, uh, who designed the designer of the initial conditions?
¶245Like, isn't God just as complex as the initial conditions? So, doesn't he need just as much fine-tuning as them? Like, no. Again, stop talking. Objection number eight, life ain't special.
¶246Hey, Joe. Uh, there's nothing special about life or consciousness or rationality or virtue or love or agency or beautiful cosmic and biological structures. Sure, we prefer these things. We think they're valuable. We value them, but they're not valuable or good in any absolute or objective sense.
¶247Yet, the fine-tuning argument mistakenly assumes otherwise. Okay, so how do I respond to this? Well, first, this is just wrong. There are indeed objective facts about what's good and bad and right and wrong and whatnot. You know, it's clearly wrong to rape, torture, and dismember children to death just for fun.
¶248And it would still be wrong even if we all thought that that was okay and preferred to do it on weekends. So, there are moral truths, and they're not fixed by our preferences or our beliefs. uh and if so clearly virtue and love and enjoyment and rationality and whatnot are good. Second, suppose you don't accept that. That's fine because fine-tuning is almost overwhelming evidence for the conjunction of theism together with the view that there are facts about value.
¶249So, we can simply build into our theistic hypothesis from the get-go that there are indeed such moral facts. And fine-tuning simply massively confirms this package deal. After all, that package predicts fine-tuning overwhelmingly better than naturalism. And even if you think it's extremely implausible that there are moral facts, it's not hopelessly unlikely given theism. At the very least, you clearly shouldn't think there's only like a one in 10 to the^ of 100 chance that a moral realist theism would turn out true.
¶250Moral realism is at least a serious view defended by the majority of philosophers for which there are lots of non-silly arguments. Like a moral realist brand of theism is just like obviously not as improbable as say rolling a fair die and getting six 70 times in a row on your first try and then entering a lottery with every human who has ever existed, winning it, then entering it again, winning it again, then entering it two more times and winning both times and then getting struck by lightning. And even that is only about 1 in 10 the^ of 105 chance, which is still overwhelmingly more likely than getting the constants to fall in the life range by chance. And that's and that's even and dude that's even setting aside fine-tuning for discoverability and fine-tuning of the law structures and opriori fine tuning etc etc right and all the other evidence for theism. And my third response is the following like listen suppose you're still in the grip of the objection and not convinced by my first two replies.
¶251No worries because we can generate theistic predictions without drawing on God's sensitivity to objective value. We can appeal for example to God's love. It wouldn't be hopelessly surprising that an allloving being might want to create other beings capable of love with whom he can share his love. And that and that alone suffices for the fine-tuning argument. We don't even need moral realism.
¶252Okay. Ninth objection, the epistemically illuminated range objection. Listen, we don't know the probability of life under naturalism and theism since we can't put a measure on the space of possible law structures. We simply have to hold those fixed. And then okay, maybe holding those fixed.
¶253Yeah, the constants seems to fall within an air life burning range. But we're totally in the dark about the probability of life as such under naturalism alone and theism alone since we can't put any measure on the space of possible law structures and so we don't know how probable it is that we'd get the exact law structures that we in fact got. Okay, this objection fails. First, we can simply put the law structures in our background knowledge when evaluating how likely the constants are to fall within the life permitting range conditional ontheism and naturalism. We should simply we should simply update on the character of the law structures first.
¶254That is we treat them as data and take into account their evidential impact on the hypothesis and after we update on them the proper basian procedure is to then put them in our background knowledge from which we then go on to assess the probability of other pieces of evidence given theism together with that background knowledge and compare that with the probability of those pieces of evidence given naturalism together with that background knowledge. That's the proper basing procedure. So there's nothing illicit here. So there's nothing illicit here. We can just put the law structures in our background knowledge actually up first update on them.
¶255So you know to make this a little bit more mathematical is indeed mathematics. Yes. Uh if the fact that our law structures exist is L, theism is T and naturalism is N. We first compare the probability of L given N with the probability of L given T. That is we compare how likely it is that we'd get our law structures given naturalism and theism.
¶256We then update our confidence levels in naturalism and theism proportional to the ratio between those likelihoods. Now, for reasons already given, L will be very powerful evidence for theism, even if we can't put a precise probability measure on the space of conceivable law structures. But even if you disagree with that and think that L is a wash between the hypothesis, the proper basian procedure is to then put L in our background knowledge. And when we go on to consider the evidential import of the fact that the constants fall in their life pering ranges, call that fact f, we then simply compare the probability of f given n and l with the probability of f given t and l. In other words, we hold l fixed when assessing how probable f is under naturalism and theism.
¶257F will then massively favor theism over naturalism. And the fine-tuning argument survives the objection unscathed. My second response to the objection is that like I just think it can be reduced to absurdity. I think it succumbs to a reductio. Suppose the constants had to fall within the most absurdly small range like imaginable to permit life like one in Google to the power of a Google to the power of a Google to the power of Google to the power of Graham's number to the power of Graham's number.
¶258There's no way that happened by chance and it would just manifestly call out for a divine explanation. But you know, we can imagine the objector here coming to us and saying,"Well, actually, you know, we have to hold fixed the law structures." So really, we naturalists don't have to worry about this. Like that would be ridiculous. Okay, nine dead. Let's kill the 10th.
¶259Uh the measure problem. The range of lots of these purportedly fine-tuned constants is infinitely large. You know, maybe like negative infinity to positive infinity. And there's no plausible way to assign probabilities over an infinite possibility space such that all the probabilities add up to one. But that just means we can't put any probabilities on the space at all since probabilities of a space of mutually exclusive and jointly exhaustive outcomes must add up to one.
¶260So the fine-tuning argument just rests on illicit probability assignments. Okay, so first my understanding is that this objection plausibly misstates the physics at least for the cosmological constant. There's subtle math in figuring out the probabilities for the constants falling in the relevant ranges. With the cosmological constant for instance, it's basically affected by massively large values of lots of other parameters which add and subtract together in ways that lead to an extremely tiny number just slightly above zero uh which results in the universe expanding in life peritting rays. For the cosmological constant for instance, it's basically affected by massively large values of lots of other parameters which add and subtract together in ways that lead to an extremely tiny number just slightly above zero which results in the universe expanding in life permitting ways.
¶261And we can give a reasonable answer to the question of how probable it is that all these different values that go into the cosmological constant would line up in exactly this way. Or at least that's my understanding based on what like physicists say. Second, the objection here faces the awesome theistic evidence problem. Once again, imagine that the initial conditions spelled out made by God with love. This would clearly be powerful evidence for theism, but it wouldn't be if the objection here worked against the fine-tuning argument.
¶262After all, the total range of possible initial conditions is infinitely large, right? There are infinitely many different messages, strings of messages that could have been written in there. And you know, according to the objection, that would prevent these hypothetical initial conditions from confirming theism. But that's obviously absurd. And my third response, if you're aware that there's at least some finite range R of values that a constant falls in and only a hopelessly small slice of R allows for life and the value falls within that small slice, that still seems like very powerful evidence for theism because we can first update on the fact that the value falls in R, which is arguably a wash between theism and naturalism, and then after that update on the constant falling within the tiny slice given R, right?
¶263And that'll strongly favor theism. Right? So to give an analogy, imagine a gigantic, infinitely long white wall in an infinitely large warehouse. A truly gigantic portion of this white wall is illuminated for millions of miles, but the rest is dark. In the illuminated region, the wall is entirely blank and featureless except for a single fly.
¶264You then hear a shot ring out from somewhere in the warehouse and it hits the fly. This seems like a very good evidence that someone was intentionally aiming at the fly even though technically the whole space is infinite. And that's because we can first update on the fact that there is this very large finite region in which the bullet fell. And then conditional on the bullet falling within the finite region, it's much more likely under the intentional direction hypothesis than the chance hypothesis that the bullet would specifically hit the fly. And as always, Brian Cutter has good things to say about measure theoretic objections.
¶265This this kind of objection doesn't trouble me. It it strikes me as a merely technical issue for yeah regimenting the argument within a basian framework >> that doesn't undercut at all the >> intuitive force of the argument. So maybe a way of pushing this point is to note that you can basically run a version of this concern for any abductive argument for more or less anything. But I um >> I I maybe it'll be clearest to think about like other hypothetical abductive arguments that you might run for for theism that intuitively seem really really good given certain sets of data but where these technical challenges would arise. So, um, you know, you see you you you do some physics, you find out that in the interior of the atom, there's, uh, the the prologue to the Gospel of John spelled out in in in New Testament Greek.
¶266Um, intuitively, this is just massively strong evidence for theism. Um, and if you wanted to be kind of rigorous and write a philosophy paper about it, you might couch it in a basian framework and you might say, "Look, the probability of the gospel of John being in the interior of the atom conditional on theism is higher than the probability of this conditional on atheism." And then someone could raise the same technical challenge like there's infinitely many things we might have found in the interior of the atom. this this space of possibilities is is kind of unruly. We can't put a natural measure on it. So, how can you say that finding the prologue of the Gospel of John in the interior of the atom is is is more likely.
¶267We can't assign probabilities here at all. I think this this is purely 100% a a technical challenge for dealing with probabilities in infinite probability spaces, but it doesn't at all undercut the the force of the argument. And I I I guess I'm inclined to say the same thing with the the similar technical challenges to both fine-tuning and to psychophysical harmony. Um there there are tricky issues that arise in the infinite case, but we shouldn't we we shouldn't confuse uh kind of technical challenges for a certain kind of mathematical apparatus for thinking about abductive reasoning with problems for just the the abductive reasoning itself. >> Okay.
¶268Okay, objection number 11, the principle of indifference. Does the fine-tuning argument assume the principle of indifference, which roughly says that we should by default assign equal probabilities to all the possibilities unless there is some reason not to do so, as humor put it. For the fine-tuning argument seems to treat each value of the constants as equiprobable under naturalism, precisely because there's no reason under naturalism why we should expect them to take on certain values as opposed to others. But there are famous puditive counterexamples to the principle of indifference. So, it's a problem if the argument assumes it.
¶269Well, first, there's surely at least some correct principle in the vicinity of the principle of indifference, which in turn will plausibly legitimate the fine-tuning argument. The reason is that there are lots of intuitively impeccable inferences that seem to require something like the principle of indifference to go through. Michael Hume gives the following example. I show you two envelopes and tell you that one of them contains $100 and the other contains nothing. The two envelopes are indistinguishable to you.
¶270One of them isn't fatter than the other. I'm not holding one of them closer than the other, etc. They're just completely indistinguishable in all relevant respects. What probability should you assign to each envelope containing $100? Well, it seems really plausible that the correct epistemic probability to assign here is 50%.
¶271And as Miles Donny, who has shared with me in private correspondence, we can even imagine that instead of me giving the envelope, an alien brought it to you, right? So, you can't like appeal the frequency data here. Uh, and even if you could, like the point would just be that even if you had no frequency data, it's still intuitively plausible that the probability is 50%. And it's hard to deliver this verdict in the absence of at least something like a principle of indifference that would also enable the fine-tuning argument. Second, it's just false that the fine-tuning argument rests on the principle of indifference.
¶272We might think that her priors are determined exclusively by other considerations like modesty, coherence, simplicity, and non-arbitiness. Or the priors might encode biases toward hypotheses that score well on these desitter. But on naturalism, the actual constant values don't appear any simpler, less arbitrary, or more coherent than values outside the lifepermitting range. So even if the principle of indifference plays no role in determining our priors, we can still justify the equal probability assignments. Yet another reason the argument doesn't assume the principle of indifference is that many of the constants in the argument are fundamental constants that don't admit of deeper explanation, at least under naturalism.
¶273The argument could then simply be run with a principle of indifference restricted to the fundamental level which humor argues is immune to the standard counter examples to an unrestricted principle of indifference. And finally, Brian Cutter once again nicely addresses this objection. >> I don't think we appeal to anything quite so strong as like a spelled out version of the principal indifference from which you could derive the usual problematic results. So I agree that it's you know the the principle of indifference it it it initially strikes you as pretty plausible but then you can look at these like cube factory cases and see that it gets you contradictory results and you know one one response is to say um there's something true in the vicinity and we just need to qualify it to avoid these problematic results. That's what I'd be inclined to say by the way.
¶274Another is to say is to just chuck it entirely. Um, I so while I am inclined to think that there's there's got to be some truth in the vicinity of the principle of indifference that I don't quite know how to spell out precisely, I don't think we need to rely on anything quite so strong. I mean, it's it's true that we rely on something that looks a bit like indifference reasoning, but a couple points. So first we we do think that there's going to be a we we we allow that there will be a strong bias towards uh simple laws. So it's not merely that we enumerate all the conceivable laws and then go for a uniform distribution over all of them.
¶275So we we allow for biases towards simplicity which is maybe against the spirit of of the indifference principle. Um, and secondly, I guess this returns to my essentially the same point I made in response to the infinity worry. Um, it it seems to me that there there are many cases of just clearly good reasoning that have to appeal to something that looks kind of like indifference in the way that our reasoning looks kind of like indifference, but where the reasoning is just clearly pro clearly problematic in where it would be just very confused to try to say the the reasoning was bad because it appeals to something like indifference. So again, uh you you see uh well, you know, you you go into your yard and you see the the leaves spelled out to form a message like hello, hello, Miles. Um and and you reason in a basian way that it was it was very unlikely that the the leaves would spell out a message given that no one was there to visit you and comparatively more likely that they would spell out a message if someone did come to visit.
¶276So you think very likely in the posteriors someone someone intentionally arranged these leaves to to spell out a message. And you know, I looking over your shoulder point out, oh, did you just appeal to an a principle of indifference? It looked like you did because you were saying you like implicitly you were thinking like the vast majority of ways in which leaves could be arranged would not spell out a message. It's just a very small measure of the the possible arrangements of leaves that correspond to a message. Ah, that looks like elicit uh indifference style reasoning.
¶277You can't reason that way. Okay, so clearly I'm the one who's confused in this case. I mean, it's true that your reasoning is relying on something in the vicinity of indifference reasoning, but it's also just completely entirely legitimate. Like, this is the correct way to reason in this case. I know guys, I keep playing Brian Cutter, but he's just like serially correct about things.
¶278Like, what am I supposed to do? All right, objection 12. Mostly lifeless. So, listen, the universe is mostly barren and even hostile to life. Doesn't this show that our universe wasn't designed with life in mind?
¶279At the very least, it seems very surprising on the hypothesis that the designer is interested in life that the designer basically produced a universe 99.9999999% of which is lifeless. Well, in response, first, as Miles Donu pointed out prepping for our video on fine-tuning for his channel, the fine-tuning argument only requires the premise that a life-pitting universe is non-negligibly likely given theism. since actualizing all the goods enabled by a life- permitting universe is not a ludicrously absurd motive that God might have. But notice that this reasoning doesn't at all commit the fine-tuning proponent to thinking that the probability of a lifeabundant universe would be ludicrously high under theism such that our failure to observe life abundance would be huge evidence for naturalism over theism. Nothing in the fine-tuning argument implies or justifies that probability judgment.
¶280In fact, the exact opposite is true. Right? If, as fine-tuning proponents often urge, a modest amount of epistemic humility is called for in making judgments about what God would or wouldn't do, that actually motivates the thought that even if the likelihood of a lifeabundant universe given theism is very high, it wouldn't be astronomically high, like on the order of 99.99999% likely, right? That's just an implausibly inflated probability assignment under theism. And more generally, we just have two different pieces of data on our hands.
¶281First that the constants are lifepermitting and second that life is rare in the universe. We first update unlifermitting constants. This datim massively favors theism over naturalism. We then put that datim in our background knowledge. Next we consider how well the conjunction of theism and life permitting constants predicts the rarity of life compared to the conjunction of naturalism and lifeing constants.
¶282Even if the rarity of life favors the latter over the former, it won't be anywhere near as good evidence as life permitting constants in the first place. Second, there are just lots of non-negligibly likely reasons God might have for making life relatively rare in the universe that we've observed. A vast and mostly lifeless universe gives us a sense of precariousness and radical dependence and insignificance, which in turn can cultivate profound humility and awe and reverence. Maybe there are aesthetic reasons for a large and mostly lifeless universe. Like I don't know, deep space and deep time are super cool.
¶283Maybe a large and mostly lifeless universe is required in order for the universe itself to cooperate with God in producing life. Right? Just think like you need a lot of time and space to forge the chemical elements needed for life in the guts of stars and then for those guts to be spewed throughout the universe as a result of supernova. And maybe it's good that God's creation itself cooperates with God in bringing about valuable results. At the very least, a lot of empty time and space seems to be needed for the universe to cooperate with God in producing life.
¶284Conditional on are law structures and initial conditions. And those law structures or initial conditions themselves don't seem better predicted by naturalism than theism. In fact, as we've seen, the opposite is true. Robin Collins notes in an interview with Matthew Adelstein that a truly vast universe is also needed for discoverability. And if that's true, then even if God intended to populate just a few galaxies or even just one, he could still have good reason to create many more galaxies.
¶285A large and mostly lifeless universe gives life forms therein opportunities for colonization and interstellar or even intergalactic travel eventually. In fact, the difficulties introduced by deep space is part of what would make this such an awesome achievement. And also, you know, like we need lots of empty lifeless places to potentially colonize, right? Also, maybe a universe more jam-packed with life would lead to a far greater potential for disastrous consequences like far worse catastrophes, subjugation, slavery, war, factory farming, etc. And listen, like I could go on, but together these various reasons significantly dent the evidential force of life's rarity.
¶286And I'm not saying that these are definitely God's reasons. I'm just trying to identify not to implausible reasons God might have for making the world like this. Uh so as to blunt the force of the datim of life's rarity pretty I mean it just seems manifest clear to me that its force just utterly pales in comparison to the force of fine-tuning. So that's my second response. Third, is there anything especially valuable about packing the universe tightly at all moments with life as opposed to creating say infinitely many conscious creatures throughout an endless future or a spatially infinite cosmos or an infinite multiverse.
¶287Regardless of how locally rare life is at any given moment in cosmic history, both the high density of life strategy here and these various low density of life strategies allow the same number of conscious creatures to exist. So it's unclear why God would prefer the former over the latter. But so long as that's unclear, then it's not going to be too surprising that God might opt for the latter over the former. In which case, we shouldn't be too surprised to find a low density of life in the universe conditional on theism. As a result, the datim of life's rarity is basically a complete nothing burger.
¶288It's not good evidence against theism. Just deal with it. And like all we can reasonably conclude from our empirical evidence is that the local density of life is low. But there's no good reason to think that if theism were true, the the local density of life would be high. Like I mean at best, one could argue that if theism were true, the absolute number of people would be high.
¶289But many if not most of the ways that God could create an absolutely large population would not involve creating a highly dense population. So that's so that's my third response. Here's my fourth response. The objection succumbs to the awesome theistic evidence parody. Imagine that you wake up and start making coffee.
¶290Since you're distracted watching Majesty of Reason, you spill your coffee on your dining table. And since you're emotionally fragile, you start crying. But as your tears begin to fade, you notice that the coffee on the table starts rearranging itself seemingly of its own accord to spell out the entire Gospel of John with John 16:22 underlined, which reads, "So you also are now in anguish, but I will see you again and your hearts will rejoice and no one will take your joy away from you." Finally, suppose this only happens to you. No one else receives any messages. I mean, listen, clearly this would be good evidence for theism, but the objector could equally reason that the environment around every other person is messageless and even hostile to messages.
¶291So, like, doesn't this show that there isn't a designer who had this message in mind? Like, at the very least, it seems very surprising on the hypothesis that the designer is interested in writing messages that the designer basically produced a world where 99.99999% of people don't get messages. So for these four reasons, I think the mostly lifeless universe objection fails. Onwards we march to the electrons in love objection. Sorry.
¶292Even under theism, it's monstrously improbable that the constants would fall within the narrow life permitting range. Indeed, it's just as improbable as under naturalism. Because no matter where the constants fell, even if they fell outside the narrow biological life permitting range, God could still have created valuable embodied conscious creatures. How could God do that if for example the closest particles were light years away? Well, just by creating different psychophysical laws, which are laws that specify which conscious states are paired or correlated or associated with which physical states.
¶293In particular, God could just pair consciousness with different physical entities like electrons and protons so that they can engage in heartfelt communication and love and whatnot. And there doesn't seem to be any particular reason to opt for a biological organisms in love world as opposed to an electrons in love world. And so we should be indifferent under theism across the full range of constant values. So theism does not better predict the fine-tuning data than naturalism. Okay.
¶294Uh this is not a good objection. First we can simply put the actual psychophysical laws in the background when evaluating the fine-tuning argument. To do that, we first treat the actual psychophysical laws as a datim and evaluate the bearing of this datim on theism and naturalism. As I'll explain in the next section, the actual psychophysical laws will almost certainly just like massively confirm theism given how harmonious and coherent and intelligible they are. And then after taking their evidential effect into account, we then simply put them in our background information when evaluating other pieces of data like fine-tuning.
¶295And then we get yet further evidence for fine-tuning. Sorry. And then we get yet further evidence for theism from fine-tuning holding the actual psychophysical laws fixed. Now, as it happens, I know I chose a different order to update on things for this video since I think it's the easiest way to present the evidence, but it's mathematically provable that the order in which you update on different pieces of evidence doesn't matter. It doesn't make a difference to the probabilities of hypothesis after taking all the evidence into account.
¶296So, my presentational choice here is totally compatible with my first response. And I think that's response alone just suffices to put this objection to bed. Second of all, we can grant that the odds that God would make a conscious organism world as opposed to an electrons in love world is low. But it seems manifestly wrong to say that the odds here are on the order of like 1 in 10 the^ of 136. A plausible upper bound on the probability of getting a life permitting universe.
¶297A plausible upper bound on the probability of getting a life permitting universe by chance. Sure, there are lots and lots and lots and lots of ways you can have electrons in love by setting the constants to any of the values outside the biological life permitting range, but these are basically just like lots of different ways of doing broadly the same thing, namely making an electrons and love world. And it's not like hopelessly unlikely that God might attend to and be relatively indifferent across the broad kinds of embodied conscious creatures he could make rather than being indifferent across the particular instances of all the kinds. So long as that choice procedure on God's part isn't hopelessly unlikely and so long as it isn't hopelessly unlikely conditional on God's adopting that choice procedure that he opts for biologically embodied conscious agents. Both of which strike me as like eminently plausible claims.
¶298The probability of biologically embodied conscious agents under theism won't be anywhere near 1 in 10 the^ of 136. To put it in other terms, suppose it's like a one in octillion chance that's like 1 in 10 the^ of 127 that God would attend to these broad kinds of embodied conscious creatures in choosing what to create. And suppose also that conditional on God attending to these broad kinds of creatures, it's then a one inctilian chance that God would opt for this sort of world containing biologically embodied creatures. Well, then theism will assign fine-tuning a one in octillian octillian chance. And that will still result in basically decisive confirmation of theism over naturalism.
¶299And listen, just like take taking a step back, here's an analogy that illustrates where the electrons in love objection goes wrong. Suppose I'm a painter. I could make an abstract expressionist piece or a painting of your mother. Now, because abstract expressionist artworks have so many more degrees of freedom than a painting of your mother, it turns out that there are like, let's say, 10 the^ of 100 more ways of making an abstract expressionist piece than a painting of your mother. But quite clearly, we shouldn't be 10 the^ of 100 times more confident that I would make the former over the latter.
¶300And that's because it's at least not terribly unlikely that as an agent, I might first and foremost attend to the choiceworthy kinds of artwork available to me rather than specific instances of those kinds. But the same is true of God. It's at least not hopelessly improbable that as an agent, God might first and foremost attend to the choiceworthy kinds of embodied conscious creatures available to him rather than specific instances of those kinds. Oh, and by the way, this analogy also illustrates that just as the atheist can say, "Oh, like God could have created an electrons in love world, which wouldn't have required fine-tuning, the a painterist can say, ah, you know, like a painter could have painted an abstract expressionist painting, which wouldn't have required extremely intricate brush work." But like clearly, the fact that the painting you're looking at contains extremely intricate brush work is extremely powerful evidence that it was painted by a painter. Similarly, the fact that the universe is fine-tuned for life is extremely powerful evidence that it was designed.
¶301The possibility of electrons in love notwithstanding. Here's my third response to the electrons in love objection. Uh it isn't hopelessly improbable under theism that God would make a multiverse containing universes with different sorts of conscious entities. Some of which are, you know, hydrogen soup universes full of conscious electrons and love. Some of which are universes like ours with conscious organisms, etc.
¶302And plausibly we couldn't have been electrons. So, it's not surprising that we find ourselves in one of the conscious organism universes. Given all this, it's nowhere near as unlikely under theism compared to naturalism that we'd find constants of our universe to be biologically life permitting. Fourth, there are plausible reasons favoring conscious biological organisms over conscious particles. And it isn't hopelessly, grotesqually, ludicrously unlikely that God might act on those reasons.
¶303After all, after all, being biological organisms enables us to manifest or embody our agency in the physical world in lots of ways that electrons can't. You know, think of the arts, significantly instrumentalizing the environment and so on. A fifth response to the objection is inspired by the amazing Amos Woolen, fantastic young philosopher there. Um, aesthetic objectivism, so the view that there are objective aesthetic values, is a serious view which shouldn't be assigned a negligible probability, conditional ontheism. And together with theism, it much better predicts richly structured, complex, and interesting cosmic and biological evolution over the hydrogen soup world because there's lots more beauty in our kind of world.
¶304Oh, and again, like we're only looking for numbers here that aren't as low as like 10 the^ of -36 here, right? So, oh, and finally, this is my sixth point. Man, the failure of these objections is just like multiply overdetermined. Um, the electrons in love objection grants the conceivability. This I guess this isn't quite response to the objection.
¶305My other five points were direct responses, but this one is just a fun interesting thing to note. Finally, the electrons in love objection grants the conceivability of alternative psychophysical laws, right? Because it requires us to be able to like understand them and do the do reasoning about them and like compare the probabilities of various hypotheses um with these alternative psychophysical mappings. Um, but that is a key premise in the psychophysical harmony argument which I think is unassailable once that premise is granted. But you know, we'll get to that argument later.
¶306Stay tuned. Stay finely tuned as I say. Okay. So, onwards we march to the stalking horse objection. Right.
¶307So, here's that objection. Merely positing that there's a designer does not actually predict fine-tuning better than naturalism. Absent some specification of the desires of a designer. A designer could want anything including any value of the fundamental constants and any law structures. So fine-tuning is not evidence for design over naturalism.
¶308Of course, in order to predict the data, the theist might posit that the designer wants life permitting values. But then the naturalist can also predict the data by positing a fundamental disposition of natural reality towards life permitting values. So once again, it's a wash between the hypothesis. Okay, so there are many problems with the stalking horse objection. First, the stocking horse objection faces the awesome theistic evidence problem.
¶309Again, imagine that the initial conditions spelled out made by God with love. That would clearly be powerful evidence for God. But it wouldn't be if we accepted the stalking horse objection to the fine-tuning argument. For the stalking horse objection would also afflict the reasoning in the awesome theistic evidence argument. Oh, like merely positing that there's a designer doesn't actually predict that message better than naturalism.
¶310Absent some specification of the desires of a designer, a designer could want anything, including any initial conditions. So that message in the initial conditions is not evidence for design over naturalism. Of course, in order to predict that message in the initial conditions, the theist might posit that the designer wants this message there. But then the naturalist can also just predict the data by positing a fundamental brute disposition of natural reality towards this message. Listen guys, clearly something must have gone wrong somewhere here because that would obviously be evidence for theism, but it wouldn't be if the stalking horse objection succeeded.
¶311And Miles Donghue actually has a nice clip making the same point. In my opening statement, I'm going to set the stage by explaining in more detail what awesome theistic evidence or like the at response is and defend one instance of it against a prominent objection, my favorite skeptical objection, the stalking horse objection. And specifically, I'll talk about it as an objection to the fine-tuning argument for theism, but my reply will generalize to other theistic arguments as well. So some terminology um awesome theistic evidence at evidence no just at evidence is already in there is commonly cited cases um as they're they're ostensibly extreme and obvious possible empirical observations that would be evidence for God's existence if we had them. So for example the stars realigning to spell out the first 12 verses of the Gospel of John in Greek uh peering into a microscope and seeing made by God etched into the side of every molecule.
¶312However the physics works out on a molecule having something etched into it. Um or one that I will add is the second return of Christ of Jesus Christ and his subsequent millennial reign on earth. If the idea here is that in each of these cases if you were party to these observations you would have evidence for theism for God's existence. So then theistic arguments the the resolution makes mention of standard or main theistic arguments which I will probably I'll refer to as fine-tuning at al as a catch-all term. Uh these would be things like the fine-tuning argument, the psychophysical harmony argument, the nomological argument which is the idea that the order inherent in the laws of nature is evidence for God's existence.
¶313the argument from the applicability of mathematics that the rich mathematical structure of the universe is evidence for God's existence and and other empirical arguments for theism. So against these arguments there are actually um overlapping objections. There are a few family of families of objections that seem to apply to all of them. So for example take the stocking horse objection here. The idea is that just as theism is a specific version of the general design hypothesis that there there is a designer of the universe um so too we should compare theism against a specific version of naturalism.
¶314So Alex Malpass for instance has proposed augmented naturalism the hypothesis that the universe has a disposition to incline towards constants that are life permitting. So this would arise in the context of the fine-tuning argument for theism. that hypothesis, augmented naturalism, does seem to make fine-tuning for life just as likely as theism. Um, and so the idea is that if the theist can opt for a specific version of the design hypothesis, namely theism, an all powerful, all- knowing god, then so can the naturalist. But then fine-tuning is evidentially inert.
¶315It doesn't give us any reason to prefer theism to naturalism. Now, the at response goes like this. The general form is something like this. Premise one, if objection X works in the case of fine-tuning at al, it would also imply that there is no possible evidence for theism. Two, there is possible evidence for theism.
¶316And here enters the awesome theistic evidence that I delineated earlier. Three, therefore, objection X does not work in the case of fine-tuning at al these standard arguments. So, in the case of the stalking horse, I contend that it overgeneralizes. It proves too much. Imagine standing outside of Jesus's tomb in 33 CE and seeing the stone roll away of its own accord seemingly and a radiant beaming figure walk out from the tomb dressed in white.
¶317You speak with him, walk with him, eat with him, go with him into town where he meets others as well. Clearly, this would be at least some evidence for theism over naturalism. You ought to increase your credence in theism compared with naturalism just even a little bit. But it would seem that one could press with equal force the stocking horse maneuver as we did in the case of fine-tuning, namely with this hypothesis. The universe has a disposition to allow for spontaneous spontaneous resurrections of crucified victims in the year 33 CE in Jerusalem.
¶318But this would obviously do nothing to undermine the rationality of your inference to theism. And so the objection proves too much. If it if it undermines the inference here, it seems parallel. it undermines the inference in the case of fine-tuning or or vice versa. And so if it if we still do have evidence here for theism, then it can't work in the case of fine-tuning is the idea.
¶319Now, in my debate with Alex, he replied by biting the bullet and at least implying that witnessing the resurrection of Jesus wouldn't be any evidence at all for theism over naturalism. Instead, it might be evidence, say, for aliens or some other exotic but still natural hypothesis. Um, but you can, if you'd like, believe in aliens if you witness the resurrection of Jesus. But I think that most of us concede that that would be a wildly implausible imprint. Um, but I won't repeat what I said in my debate with Malpass.
¶320Instead, we can just shift to talking about any other possible empirical observations. Pick anything. Miraculous healings when we pray to God to have our prayers answered. Ancient prophecies being fulfilled. Visions from God, for example, telling us how future events will unfold and then they do unfold in exactly the detail in which they were conveyed.
¶321Um the point is the stocking horse objection seems to imply that we can have no possible empirical evidence for theism over naturalism um for any logically possible observation. There will always be parody between theism and naturalism if you grant the machinery and the logic of the stocking horse objection. But that's a radical and deeply implausible thesis. Oh, and by the way, if you're curious, I've put some further stages of the dialectic on screen. You can pause the screen on these three slides.
¶322So here's slide number one. Here is slide number two that you can pause. And then here is slide number three that you can pause if you want to read them. Um or you can read them in the stalking horse document linked in the resource document in the description. But let's move on.
¶323These are just like further stages in the dialectic of you know people will try to respond to the uh awesome theistic evidence response to the stalking horse objection and I don't think that their responses uh succeed. So one two three and we shall move on. A second problem for the stalking horse objection is that some designers are much more probable than others because they're simpler, more compactly describable in fundamental terms, less arbitrary, more coherent, etc. Theism has a lot of these theoretical virtues that give it a much higher prior than most other forms of the design hypothesis. And it's not terribly unlikely that a theistic designer would value life permitting constants since they enable lots of profound goods and God being a perfect being would be motivated by the good.
¶324Put differently, some specific design hypotheses are way more probable than others and lead to nonuniform, non-indifferent probabilities over the space of possible constant values. As I've argued, theism is a very simple, elegant, uniform, coherent design hypothesis, and it biases toward life permitting values. And theism is obviously much more intrinsically probable than some random, arbitrarily limited designer with some arbitrary brute preference for the constant value 0.00000000395291701. 39529171486561. Like come on, dude.
¶325More generally, there are characterizations of the designer which one take up a decent chunk of the design probability space since they characterize the designer with only one or a few fundamental features held to a very natural, uniform, elegant, non-arbitrary extent, as in perfect being theism, and which too render it not particularly surprising that fine-tuning would obtain since there are reasonable, intelligible motives that the aforementioned designer so characterized may possess. Given one and two, their bare design hypothesis renders fine-tuning not terribly surprising. By contrast, naturalism does not have similarly plausible sub hypotheses which similarly well predict the data. By far the most intrinsically plausible versions of naturalism, like the ones with the extremely simple life precluding law structures, I canvased predict fine-tuning horrifically. And even the most intrinsically plausible versions of naturalism which share our law structures, such as single universe naturalism, also predict fine-tuning horrifically.
¶326Other salient versions of naturalism tend to either have prohibitively low priors, very poorly predict the data, or be very strikingly coincidental in lots of other ways, or all these. All in all, the objection is just wrong that the predictions of the bare design hypothesis are equivalent to those of naturalism since the predictions of the bare design hypothesis are a weighted average of how expected life permitting constants are on the various specific designer hypotheses. And some specific designer hypotheses like theism are not very intrinsically unlikely and render the life permitting constants not terribly improbable. By contrast, I'm unaware of any similarly elegant, compactly describable, non-arbitrary, coherent, and uniform specific naturalistic hypothesis which renders lifemitting constants not terribly improbable and which doesn't face other insupable difficulties. Here's my third response to the stalking horse objection.
¶327Proponents of the stocking horse objection sometimes want to push stalking horse type objections to all or most theistic arguments, but in doing so they make an important probabilistic mistake. Specifically, they neglect the snowball probabilistic effects of successive confirmations of theism. Suppose we first apply the stocking horse objection to the fine-tuning argument. Then after updating on fine-tuning, we can even spot the stalking horse objection proponent that the posterior probability of the bare design hypothesis is not greater than the posterior probability of naturalism. Crucially though, we will then have significantly raised the probability of subhypotheses of bare design and naturalism which predict fine-tuning and theism and other valued directed design hypotheses will be foremost among these sub hypotheses of bare design.
¶328This means that by the time we investigate our next piece of data, say psychophysical luck, much more of the bare design probability space is assigned to such valued directed design subhypotheses. And since these subhypotheses decently predict psychophysical luck, it will then turn out that bare design will decently predict psychophysical luck much better than naturalism does. Granted, naturalistic s hypothesis which nicely predict fine-tuning will be taking up a much larger proportion of the naturalism probability space after our first update on fine-tuning. Grant that. So going into our assessment of the psychophysical luck data, the degree to which naturalism predicts psychophysical luck will largely be a function of how well the fine-tuning predicting subotheses of naturalism also predict psychophysical luck.
¶329Yet I see no good reason to think that such subothesis would predict psychophysical luck particularly well. If anything, I see reasons to think that that wouldn't be the case since merely securing fine-tuning is perfectly compatible with these psychophysical principles or laws being radically disharmonious and unlucky and simple or boring in any which way. And so the broader pointer behind my third response to the stocking horse objection is that as we successfively update on more and more data, theism and other valued directed design hypotheses will be taking up more and more of the bearer design probability space and hence will lead to bare design predicting subsequent data much better than it predicted earlier data and importantly much better than naturalism. Since there does not seem to be a comparably intrinsically plausible naturalistic subhypothesis which unifyingly predicts each successive piece of strikingly fortunate data in our successive updating. Okay, so I don't think Stocking objections work.
¶330Let's turn to objections from divine psychology. Hey Joe, we need to be able to predict what God would or wouldn't do in order to run the fine-tuning argument since the argument assumes that fine-tuning the universe is something God would do. But we can make no such predictions, right? Like God is totally beyond our ken. He's infinitely more cognitively sophisticated than us.
¶331And we've got no good reason to think that the range of divine reasons of which we're aware is representative of the full range of divine reasons that there are. So the fine-tuning argument fails. Uh oh, contrary, the divine psychology objection fails. First, the objection overgeneralizes. I know at this point I'm just like uh a resounding gong or a clinging symbol, right?
¶332I'm just going on and on and on about like the same problem because these objections face the same problem. Imagine that the initial conditions of the universe spelled out made by God with love in every human language. Clearly, that would be good evidence for God's existence. But the divine psychology objection absurdly implies otherwise. After all, well, we need to be able to predict what God would or wouldn't do in order to run the initial conditions argument since the argument assumes that writing into the initial conditions is something that God would do.
¶333But we can make no such predictions, right? God is totally beyond our ken. He's infinitely more cognitively sophisticated than us and we've got no good reason to think that the range of divine reasons of which we're aware like no stop bad. Like I'm spraying you with water. Second, it's just false that we need to be able to predict what God would or wouldn't do in order to run the fine-tuning argument.
¶334All we need is the highly plausible claim that God is not overwhelmingly, absurdly, ludicrously, pathetically unlikely to make a life permitting universe, at least conditional on there being a universe with our law structures. If anything, epistemic humility should lead us to assign a non-extreme probability here, thereby vindicating the fine-tuning argument. To avoid the argument, you need to be overwhelmingly confident, seemingly irrationally, that God definitely wouldn't do this. And that of course just runs contrary to the very objection that that's being posed. Alternatively, you might say that the probability is inscrutable.
¶335But as Nevin Kleinhagga has shown, that means theism's probability given our evidence is also inscrutable. And hence so is atheisms. In which case, atheism is not probable given our evidence. And so the atheist who wants to say that the probability is inscrutable is just like shooting themselves in the foot. Also, if the probability that god exists and would fine-tune things or prevent evils is inscrutable, then it seems like the probability that God exists and would prevent the universe from persisting in existence tomorrow is also inscrutable.
¶336But that of course undermines our inductive knowledge leading to an absurd inductive skepticism. Also just a more general point. We don't need data to be expected under a hypothesis to be extremely powerful evidence for that hypothesis. Right? The data simply needs to be much more expected on the truth of the hypothesis than its falsity.
¶337Right? That's compatible with the probability of the data conditional on the hypothesis being super low. Right? So for instance, if I'm on a deserted island with a friend and I wake up one morning to see written in the sand, I went for a swim. That would be extremely powerful evidence that my friend wrote me a message, even though it could still be extremely surprising under that hypothesis that he would write this in the sand.
¶338Like, I might know that he hates swimming. I might know that he's actually very bad at it and recognizes that it's dangerous to him. I might also know that he only ever posts written messages on my door, like he's never done it in sand. And maybe also just like I know that he really doesn't like sand. So given these stipulations, the datim here is actually extremely surprising on the hypothesis that my friend wrote me a message.
¶339Even still, the datim is overwhelming evidence in favor of that hypothesis since the datim is far more surprising on the falsity of the hypothesis since you know like the random forces of nature would be far more unlikely to produce that linguistic display. And then my third and final response to the divine psychology objection is that listen, the objection would just completely destroy all the best arguments for atheism. If you want to justify atheism by appealing to evil or hiddenenness or religious diversity or basically anything pertaining to the character of the world around us, then according to the objection, you're making unjustifiable assumptions about what God would or wouldn't do. So if the objection worked, it would also be a massive blow to atheism. All right, 15 objections down.
¶340Let's let's move to the 16th objection. Come on, stay with me, guys. Wake up. Wake up. Come on.
¶341Wake up. I need that. I need that uh spray can of water back so I can spray you again. Okay. So, the 16th objection is the deeper laws objection.
¶342Hey, there might be deeper laws or some deeper physical theory that predicts the finely tuned values of the constants or that even requires all the constants to take on their particular values thereby removing the need for the constants to fall within an exceedingly narrow range of possible values in order for life to exist. First, I think the objection probably faces the awesome theistic evidence problem, right? Like imagine that every subatomic particle contained a tiny inscription of the first 14 verses of the book of John in perfect coin a Greek. This would clearly be strong evidence for theism. But like if the deeper laws objection worked against the fine-tuning argument, it seems like it would also work against, you know, the design argument based on the coin a Greek inscription, right?
¶343Right? For there might be, oh, there might be deeper laws or some deeper physical theory that predicts or even requires this inscription on subatomic particles, thereby removing the need for the particles to possess features within an exceedingly narrow range of possible features in order for the inscription to exist. Like that would rightly fall on deaf years. Second, we can conceive of all different sorts of deeper laws and only a tiny fraction would lead to the values of the constants falling in the narrow life permitting ranges. Epistemically speaking, there could be deeper laws or physical theories resulting in any of the values that the parameters might conceivably take on.
¶344Absent reason to think those deeper laws or physical theories are significantly more likely to produce constants within the narrow life permitting ranges, it seems monstrously improbable that they'd produce finely tuned values rather than the overwhelmingly more numerous non-finely tuned values. And by the way, this is like roughly the same problem afflicting the necessary constant subjection to the fine-tuning argument. Recall that problem. The generic hypothesis that whatever the laws are, it's metaphysically necessary that they have those values doesn't raise the probability of the data. Namely, that the constants fall in the life permitting range.
¶345Whereas the specific hypothesis that it's metaphysically necessary that the values take on such and such exact numerical values within the life permitting range that entails the data, but you know, only at the cost of having a correspondingly low prior. The same dilemma plagues the deeper laws objection. The generic hypothesis that whatever the values are, deeper laws result in them doesn't actually raise the probability that the constants fall in the life permitting range. Whereas the specific hypothesis that deeper physics results in such and such exact numerical values entails the data but you know only at the cost of having a correspondingly low prior given that there's no antecedent reason to think laws resulting in these values as opposed to others would be you know simpler, more uniform, more elegant, more modest, etc. Although you know I grant that if such an anticcedent reason can be supplied then that would undercut to some extent the force of the argument from finally tuned constant values the extent of undercutting would be proportional to the probability that there are deeper laws uh as well as how probable it is conditional and there being deeper laws that the constant values would fall in their specifically in their narrow electroning ranges.
¶346My third response to the objection at hand is that it doesn't even touch the argument from finely tuned law structures or a priority fine-tuning. Even granting that there are deeper laws that entail or predict life permitting constant values, those laws won't be nearly as simple as the extremely simple and elegant laws that preclude anything interesting or valuable occurring. Fourth, my limited intent of understanding is that there are scientific grounds to at least think the finetuning of the cosmological constant will survive potential deeper physics. Luke Barnes covers these in some of his work. You can see, for example, his paper here and his dialogue here.
¶347And also note that we can't discount our best physical theories simply because they have free parameters that can take on a very large range of values. After all, it can turn out that the universe itself has basic features that could have taken on a wide range of values. That doesn't seem like hopelessly unlikely. Uh and my limited understanding is that our current physical theories which involve fine-tuning are indeed very well confirmed. Moreover, it is in absolute terms non-negligibly likely that the parameters would take on the actual values conditional on our physical theories since that probability is a weighted average of the probability that they would do so given our physical theories together with theism and then together with naturalism.
¶348And even if the second probability is extremely low, the former isn't. And this is a point that my friend Nolan Mccay makes in a post that I've linked in the resource document as well. Okay, onwards we march to the 17th and final objection to fine-tuning, which is the multiverse response. So, according to the multiverse hypothesis, there's a vast and diverse array of universes, each varying randomly in the values of its physical constants and initial conditions. Given this hypothesis, it's totally unsurprising that some universe would be life permitting.
¶349And of course, it's not at all surprising that we would find ourselves in one of those universes because those are the only ones we could find ourselves in, right? So fine-tuning is not evidence for theism over and against multiverse naturalism at least. Okay, first even if we grant that fine-tuning is not evidence for theism over and against a particular version of naturalism, fine-tuning can still be very good evidence for theism. Like after all, it's a totally mundane occurrence that one piece of data can be good evidence for multiple incompatible hypotheses, right? Like if we're guessing a randomly drawn card from a fairly shuffled deck, uh, and I guess the four of hearts, while you guess the ace of spades, our hypotheses each start out about like 2% probable.
¶350If a machine draws the card and then informs us that the card is either the four of hearts or the ace of spades, the probability of each of our hypotheses is now 50%. So the new information here is good evidence for two competing hypotheses. Both of hypotheses just went up in probability like 25fold. And with respect to finetuning, like listen, my primary aim here is to establish that fine-tuning is powerful evidence for theism. Not necessarily that it favors theism over like specifically multiverse naturalism.
¶351But of course, but but of course that's just my first response. And and I do think we can make an even stronger case against the multiverse objection. So let's turn to my other responses. So my second response is that the multiverse hypothesis certainly doesn't explain fine-tuning for discoverability since we could have existed in a far less discoverable universe. So you know theism still mogs.
¶352Third, the multiverse hypothesis doesn't significantly dent the force of the argument from finely tuned law structures or the more a priori fine-tuning argument, right? Like even getting a multiverse with law structures containing life permitting ranges would itself be a highly fortuitous result given the vast abyss of extremely simple lifecluding law structures that could have reigned across the multiverse or that could have existed instead of a multiverse. So I think fine-tuning still very significantly favors theism even over multiverse naturalism. My fourth response to the multiverse hypothesis is that it faces a very serious Boltzman brain problem. Even in universes that are a diffuse soup of hydrogen and helium for all eternity, which will far outnumber universes like ours in the multiverse, random events will rarely occur in which a fully functioning human brain fluctuates into existence, briefly persists, and then snaps out of existence.
¶353These Boltzmon brains will tend to predominate the class of observers within a multiverse. Since Boltzman brains only require small localized pockets of order or low entropy to exist, whereas long and drawn out evolutionary processes in large complex structured orderly universes like ours require gargantuan pockets of order or low entropy. So as an analogy, like the multiverse explanation of fine-tuning is kind of like positing hordes of monkeys randomly typing on typewriters to explain why an entire work of Shakespeare was typed. Like sure if there are zillions upon zillions of monkeys randomly typing somewhere one will type up an entire work of Shakespeare but like way more often than typing up an entire work of Shakespeare they'll type up like a sentence or a paragraph of Shakespeare right so if you think of your current experiences like a sentence from Shakespeare you should be shocked under the multiverse hypothesis that you find yourself in a complete work of Shakespeare that is a massive region of order rather than a tiny one In other words, you should be shocked to find out that you're not a Boltzman brain. And this also means that the multiverse hypothesis threatens radical skepticism since most of the beings experientially indistinguishable from you are going to be Boltzman brains under that hypothesis.
¶354So you can't be confident that you're not one of them, which is an absurdly skeptical result. My fifth response to the multiverse response, and you know, I'm less confident in this response, but you know, it may work. You can see my back and forth with Miles Donahghue on this particular response to the multiverse objection to fine-tuning. Um the multiverse hypothesis only makes it likely that some universe would be life permitting. But we know that this universe that is our universe is life permitting.
¶355Positing a multitude of universes with varying constants and initial conditions doesn't actually make it more likely that this universe's constants and initial conditions which were still determined by a chance process would happen to fall in the narrow life permitting range. So contrary to the multiverse objection, our most specific data concerning fine-tuning isn't at all predicted by the multiverse hypothesis. Sixth, and finally, and relatedly, Michael Roa argues that theism is still confirmed by fine-tuning even assuming that there's a multiverse since theism much better predicts the naturalism that a non-negligible proportion of universes within a multiverse would be life permitting and hence much better predicts that this very universe would be life would be fine-tuned. To put it differently, almost certainly on naturalism, only a hopelessly small fraction of the universes will be fine-tuned. And so, it's still extremely surprising that this universe in particular will be fine-tuned.
¶356By contrast, on theism, it wouldn't be particularly surprising that a sizable fraction of universes would be finely tuned given how valuable life is. And so, theism much better predicts that this particular universe would be fine-tuned. All right? So, like I spent so much time on fine-tuning because I want you guys to really feel its force. I want you guys to see its resilience in the face of objections.
¶357This was one of the first considerations that started pulling me away from agnosticism and toward theism and I hope it pushes you in the same direction. Suppose we now include in our background knowledge the two-fold miracle. Not only do the fundamental laws of nature possess life permitting ranges for their constant values, but the constants actually fall within those precise ranges. Even then, it's very surprising under naturalism that the life forms which develop would be conscious. And even if conscious life does develop, it's still profoundly unlikely under naturalism that the conscious experiences of those life forms would be incredibly orderly, coherent, intelligible, and rational in light of their physical states and behavior.
¶358By contrast, neither of these facts is nearly as surprising under theism. In fact, there's actually a collection of facts here that together comprise astoundingly powerful evidence for God's existence. These facts are all kinds of psychophysical luck, which is the general fact that consciousness is integrated with physical reality in striking and suspiciously fortunate ways, ways that would be incredibly unlikely in the absence of design. In what follows, I'll proceed through each fact in turn, drawing heavily and directly at various points from one of Brian Cutter's chapters in our book. So, fact number one, there are psychophysical laws.
¶359So, this is the only fact on the list whose evidential force presupposes the truth of dualism. I mean, technically non-reductive forms of pansychism also make this fact evidential, but I'm going to set those aside. I mean, everything I say in this section could easily be reformulated to accommodate that. Now, dualism is the view that consciousness and matter are fundamentally distinct kinds of realities. Here, consciousness refers to subjective experience.
¶360Something is conscious if it has experiences. Or as philosophers like to say, something is conscious if there's something it's like to be that thing. There's some way it feels from the inside or from the subject's perspective. On the dualist picture, consciousness and matter are not reducible to each other, and neither is reducible to some secret third thing. Consciousness or mentality is a metaphysically basic category that's not explainable in more fundamental terms.
¶361Minds are not built up out of or constructed from more basic ingredients like mindless particles. The same is true of matter. It's a basic category. Not built up out of or constructed from minds or consciousness. Consciousness is consciousness is fundamental.
¶362particles are aware. Sorry. Again, it's not it's not it's not a Majesty reason video without like an impression of Philip Goth. Okay. Dualism contrasts with physicalism or materialism, which is the view that ultimately at bottom everything is physical or material.
¶363Consciousness is then nothing over and above matter moving or combining or functioning in a certain way. That's just what consciousness is. Now, one motivation for dualism is that consciousness just seems like radically different from material configurations and processing. Like, it's utterly mysterious why atoms bumping into one another in certain ways would be associated with subjective experience. Like, it seems like all this processing could have gone on in the dark with like no one home inside to experience any of it.
¶364Yet, somehow the storm of electrical and chemical activity in your brain is associated with a rich stream of consciousness, right? like vivid experiences of colors, smells, tastes, sounds, emotions, and thoughts. These subjective, privately accessible experiences have a conscious character or feel that just seems completely different from the objective, publicly accessible physical aspects of brains like their shape or their size or, you know, their velocity. Even if we knew every physical fact about the brain's composition and functioning, including all the positions of its atoms, the rate at which its neurons fire, the amount of acetylcholine traversing each synaptic gap, there would remain the question of why these physical processes are associated with any subjective experience at all and why they're associated with one kind of experience rather than another. We can imagine a robot performing the same behaviors and processing information in the same ways without experiencing anything.
¶365Indeed, it seems that we can coherently imagine someone physically like you down to the finest molecular detail with no interior subjective experience whatsoever. We can also coherently imagine a physical duplicate of you with different experiences. So for example, you know, someone with inverted color sensations experiencing green where you would experience red and you know vice versa. So like when this physical duplicate of you sees a stop sign, the experience that they have subjectively, the way it feels is the way that you feel subjectively, the way things seem to you when you see, for instance, like a green light. That's totally imaginable.
¶366You know, kids wonder about this all the time. Like, oh yeah, I wonder if my red is like the same as your red. You know, to put the motivation here for dualism differently, even if we had a complete understanding of the physical objective aspects of a bat's brain and behavior, we still wouldn't know what it's like from the bat's inner perspective to echolocate. That's just a different kind of fact from all the physical facts that we can investigate with the tools of science. Similarly, even if a neuroscientist blind from birth has never seen color and comprehensively knows down to every microfysical detail all the brain processes implicated in visual experience, she still wouldn't know what it's like to see red.
¶367And you know, if you presented to her something which was red and something which was green, she wouldn't she wouldn't know like, oh man, which one of these is the red one? Which one of these is the green one? And yeah, like if she gains her sight and sees an apple for the first time, she'll learn something that goes beyond all the physical information that she already had access to. In particular, she'll learn something about conscious experience, which is different from brain processing and behavior. Now, I've been gesturing towards some reasons to accept dualism, but I'm not interested here in giving anything approaching a comprehensive case for dualism.
¶368uh that you know that would be its own like 12-hour video and I've already done content covering arguments for and against dualism. Moreover, only this first fact about consciousness, only this first like facet of the problem of psychophysical luck presupposes dualism to have evidential force. So dualism doesn't like significantly affect the strength of my case here. And for that reason, I'm just going to sort of take it for granted in the remaining discussion of the first fact that the fact that there are psychophysical laws. If you're interested in the many quite powerful arguments for dualism, you can see the subsection of the resource document linked in the description and pinned comment on dualism for a small sampling.
¶369But even if consciousness is distinct from matter, conscious experiences clearly depend in some way on what happens in your brain, right? Like there are robust correlations between brain activity and conscious experiences. And you know, we can alter your conscious experiences by altering your brain activity. like we've known for quite a long time that if you bonk someone on the head their conscious experiences are going to change. So under dualism then there are going to be principles or laws by which consciousness is linked to physical states of material systems like brains.
¶370So the final theory of the universe will include not only fundamental physical laws but also fundamental psychophysical laws which just specify how consciousness is linked to physical states of matter. These fundamental psychophysical laws would provide answers to questions like you know what kinds of physical systems are associated with consciousness. I mean like we know that some physical systems are associated with consciousness like human brains and presumably some aren't you know like rocks. The ultimate psychophysical laws would tell us which physical things belong in each camp. And among physical systems that are conscious the psychophysical laws will specify which specific physical states are associated with which states of consciousness.
¶371You know like in the human case we know that some brain states are associated with red experiences others with coffee taste experiences others with you know experiences of laughing at my jokes which are you know profoundly funny you know etc. The psychophysical laws would provide a general mapping from physical states onto states of consciousness that is an assignment of conscious states to physical states which takes physical states as input and delivers as output the conscious states associated or correlated with them. In other words, the psychophysical laws describe the pairings or the correlations between physical states and conscious states. But wait a second, like isn't it a bit like suspicious that there are these additional fundamental laws that make provision for consciousness? Like in addition to the fundamental physical laws governing the movements of matter, our universe's catalog of fundamental laws includes laws for the generation of consciousness.
¶372But that's kind of whack if you think about it, right? Like consciousness is required for most if not all forms of value in the universe. It's needed for there to be love and meaningful relationships and enjoyment and virtuous rational agency and valuable knowledge and pretty much anything else of significant value. Instead of a universe like ours, there could have been a far simpler universe with only physical laws. It would be very surprising for a fundamentally purposeless universe to have extra fundamental laws concerning the key ingredient required for significant value.
¶373Under naturalism, there's no reason to expect things to be set up this way and actually good reason to expect them not to be since the universe without these extra fundamental laws would be far simpler and therefore much more intrinsically probable. By contrast, it's not at all surprising that our universe would include psychophysical laws if God exists. Like it's not unreasonable to expect that a perfect being, you know, a being who aims at the good would create laws securing the key ingredient consciousness required for significant value in the universe. So since it's much more likely that the universe would contain psychophysical laws under theism than under naturalism, the fact that there are psychophysical laws is significant evidence for theism over naturalism. The second fact involved in psychophysical luck is psychonomic harmony.
¶374In order to get a universe that includes consciousness, it's not enough for it to have fundamental laws specifying that consciousness arises under certain conditions. Those laws also need to be harmonized with the physics of the universe. Specifically, they need to link consciousness to physical states that actually occur in the universe. Even if there are laws specifying that a physical system generates consciousness when its parts are arranged in a certain way, we won't get consciousness if this material arrangement never occurs. So even if there are psychophysical laws, it's a separate question whether they actually match the physical contents of the universe in the sense that they assign consciousness to physical states that actually exist.
¶375Explaining this fortuitous match is the problem of psychonomic harmony which is developed in a forthcoming article of mine that you can see on screen which you can read in the resource document. But before explaining psychonomic harmony in more detail, allow me to introduce and use the term psychophysical principles rather than psychophysical laws. Here I will treat psychophysical principles as descriptions of which physical states are paired or associated or correlated with which conscious states leaving it open whether these principles correspond to identity relations, grounding relations or causal relations. I opt for the term psychophysical principles because I want to be neutral going forward on whether dualism is true. So I'm not going to presuppose that there are extra fundamental psychophysical laws in what follows.
¶376As I'll explain, all the remaining facts are significant evidence for theism even if we reject dualism. Everyone should grant that there are conscious states associated or connected in some way with physical states even if you think they're identical or one is reducible to the other. And the psychophysical principles are just, you know, descriptions of which conscious states are paired or associated with which physical states. And that's neutral as to whether they're paired with them or associated with them because they're identical or because they're reducible or whatever. So psychonomic harmony consists in the fact that the psychophysical principles pair consciousness with physical states that actually exist.
¶377And as it turns out, this is pretty striking. The psychophysical principles might have said that a physical system only gets to be conscious when its parts exhibit a certain five-dimensional spatial pattern that can't occur within our four-dimensional spaceime or when its parts exhibit an arrangement so complex or so specific that it never occurs in the history of the universe. For example, a galaxy sized brain or when it has a certain degree of integrated information that is larger than any degree that ever comes to exist. Alternatively, the psychophysical principles might have said that a physical system only gets to be conscious when its parts have a brain-like functional organization realized in a different material substrate like iron or helium that would never evolve naturally in a world with our physics. Or the psychophysical principles might have specified that only certain kinds of non-existent matter support consciousness.
¶378For instance, the principles might have paired consciousness only with schmassive bodies where again you know schmass if you recall from nomological harmony refers to a possible physical property similar to mass but which doesn't actually exist or the psychophysical principles might have beared consciousness only with unrealized functional states that say emit x-rays in the direction of and proportional to the strength of incoming gravitational influences. In fact, many of these psychophysical principles are overwhelmingly simpler than the actual psychophysical principles. For instance, the psychophysical principles might have uniformly mapped every massive particle onto the sensation of redness. That principle is far more uniform, elegant, and compactly expressable than the actual psychophysical principles that pair highly complex patterns of a rich array of conscious qualities to highly specific, extremely complicated brain structures. Now there are infinitely many conceivable configurations, substrates and functions and the vast majority of them never come to exist.
¶379You know, including non-existent ones that figure in extremely simple and elegant psychophysical principles. And so even holding fixed that there are psychophysical principles and a life permitting universe, it's still extremely surprising under naturalism that the psychophysical principles pair consciousness with physical configurations, substrates, or functions that actually exist. But but this is nowhere near as surprising under theism. Psychonomic harmony is required for a universe to include consciousness and hence the most significant forms of value. Given that God creates a life-pitting universe with psychophysical principles in the first place, it's therefore utterly unsurprising that those psychophysical principles would match the contents of the universe so as to result in conscious subjects.
¶380Importantly, adopting physicalism won't help the naturalist with the problem of psychonomic harmony. Suppose you think that the psychophysical principles are metaphysically necessary either because they're ultimately psychophysical identities, in other words, identities between conscious states and physical states, or because they're ultimately grounding laws. That doesn't affect the argument because alternative psychophysical identities or grounding laws are still perfectly conceivable. Even if we had a complete physical description of the world, we can't logically or conceptually deduce from the armchair which conscious states would be paired with which physical states. You know, otherwise we'd be able to know what it's like to be a bat just from getting an exhaustive description of its brain, which isn't plausible.
¶381And we also wouldn't be able to coherently imagine beings just like us physically, but who don't enjoy conscious experiences or where their, you know, visual experiences are swapped like red and green or whatever. Yet, we can make sense of that. We can form it into coherent sentences and understand the sentences and we can reason about such worlds. So there's still an epistemic gap between the physical world and consciousness. For all we could know a priori or from the armchair by rational reflection, consciousness might have turned out to be identical to or grounded in any of a number of different material configurations, including configurations that don't physically occur in our universe, such as a five-dimensional spatial pattern or type of information processing that would require a galaxyized brain or whatever.
¶382Thus, it's still extremely epistemically improbable that the psychophysical identities or grounding laws would be psychonomically harmonious, even if we assume physicalism. Indeed, just about any conceivable disharmonious causal law corresponds to a conceivable disharmonious grounding law or psychophysical identity. So, embracing physicalism won't make any headway in solving the problem of psychonomic harmony for the naturalist. on any plausible view in the philosophy of mind. Psychonomic harmony is powerful evidence for theism over naturalism.
¶383Let's turn to fact number three. Consciousness involving goods. This third and final collection of facts is inspired by Brian Cutter and Dustin Kit's fantastic article on psychophysical harmony. Suppose we got psychonomic harmony, right? So suppose that the psychophysical principles do miraculously match the physical world.
¶384That only means that consciousness exists in the universe. But that leaves us completely in the dark about the precise ways in which consciousness is paired with the physical world. If naturalism is true, it's yet another mostly independent miracle that the psychophysical principles link mind and matter in a way that gives rise to a wide range of significant consciousness involving goods. Things like enjoyment, love, interpersonal relationships, aesthetic experiences, virtuous rational agency, conscious thought, accurate conscious perceptions, true conscious beliefs about the world, and so on and so on. naturalist.
¶385Again, this doesn't come for free given psychonomic harmony. Just as there could conceivably have been a universe physically like ours without any conscious experiences, there could conceivably have been a universe physically like ours in which conscious experiences are linked to physical states in very different ways. In fact, the overwhelming majority of these alternative psychophysical principles, including the simplest ones, would not have enabled those consciousness involving goods. And this makes it astronomically surprising under naturalism that the psychophysical principles are sufficiently orderly and complicated to enable those goods. By contrast, this is nowhere near as surprising under theism given that God might plausibly be interested in securing those goods.
¶386Hence, we have extremely powerful evidence for theism over naturalism on our hands. To see the force of this argument, let's run through the manifold different psychophysical principles that might have held, as well as the resulting ways in which the world could have been devoid of significant forms of value. First, the psychophysical principles might have been contemptably simple and boring. We can imagine a universe physically like ours with a single simple psychophysical principle assigning boring gray sensations to every physical state. Or they could have assigned any one of continuum many conceivable color sensations to every physical state.
¶387Or they could have assigned simple color sensations only to electrons or only to protons or only to quarks or only to nutrinos or only to butane or only to neon atoms or only to copper. Or the psychophysical principles could have paired every physical object with a conscious experience of a ringing sound with a constant pitch or a ringing sound with a pitch proportional to the object's mass proportional to its Shannon entropy or proportional to its density. Or the principles could have assigned to every physical object a sensation of tepid bathwater or the taste of chocolate or the smell of lilacs or warmth or pain or desire to move or the sound of C major or any of infinitely many simple visual tactile auditory gusts factory cognitive affective or hedonic states. Or there could have been a principle that assigns to each physical object a slightly different TV static-like experience that mirrors the object's chaotic micro structure or the microructure of one of its parts. Or there could have been a principle that assigns simple brightness sensations to material bodies, where the sensation's intensity is proportioned to the object's temperature.
¶388Or there could have been a principle that only assigns experiences to elementary particles, say a simple hot or cold sensation depending on whether the particle has positive or negative charge, leaving macroscopic physical systems like human bodies, bereft of consciousness. A universe with these principles would be devoid of basically all the significant consciousness involving goods we find in our world. Right? Like just as a universe with intricate configurations of matter but no consciousness would be devoid of significant value. The same goes for universe with intricate configurations of matter plus a sea of super added ringing sensations or TV static perceptions or tepid bathwater experiences or sensations of brightness or red or whatever.
¶389Right? Like in these alternative universes there's no one who experiences beauty or pleasure. There's no one who enjoys rich conscious awareness of their environment. There's no one who experiences any sort of conscious understanding of what their world is like. There's no one who has the sorts of experiences required for conscious agency such as the experience of weighing different options and making conscious choices in light of reasons.
¶390There's no one who has the sorts of conscious states required for friendship or love or meaningful relationships such as, you know, the experience of concern for another's well-being or even the conscious awareness of the existence of other selves. In the fine-tuning part of the video, I noted that countless conceivable physical laws, including more or less, you know, all the very simplest ones, would yield boring worlds where nothing interesting happens. Notice that the same point holds for these psychophysical principles. Like many, plausibly most conceivable sets of psychophysical principles would make for experientially boring worlds devoid of significant value. To get the significant consciousness involving goods we find in our world, it's not enough to have principles that link consciousness to matter in some way or other.
¶391Right? Like the principles need to be finely tuned to result in the right forms of consciousness and link these to matter in the right way. This would be extremely surprising under naturalism as there's literally a vast infinite sea of different kinds of psychophysical principles yielding experientially boring worlds devoid of significant value. And to make matters even worse for the naturalist, the simplest psychophysical principles seem to be pathetically boring. Right?
¶392Like all the laws listed earlier look vastly simpler than the actual psychophysical principles. Right? like they all involve a straightforward mapping from simple physical magnitudes to a simple pallet of conscious qualities. By contrast, the actual psychophysical principles are way more complicated. Right?
¶393So, first their physical inputs are super complicated. They don't map simple physical magnitudes like mass or charge on conscious states. Instead, they actually map complex information processing structures or neural configurations involving billions of brain cells and trillions of particles onto conscious states. any description of the physical basis of consciousness in fundamental physical terms would likely be extremely complex. Second of all, the conscious outputs of the actual psychophysical laws are way more complex than these alternative simple boring psychophysical laws, right?
¶394Like the actual principles don't just yield a single type of conscious state or a single unified family of conscious states. Instead, they produce conscious states belonging to many distinct families like sensory, emotional, cognitive, etc. each of which features in turn many distinct families of conscious qualities, right? Like colors and tastes and sounds and echolocative qualities and so on. Under naturalism, we would very strongly expect to get one or more of these extremely elegant, simple and uniform psychophysical principles since her pyrus plausibly include biases towards simplicity and elegance and uniformity.
¶395But this just makes it all the more striking that we have the kinds of psychophysical principles that we have. The very simplest psychophysical principles would link simple physical magnitudes onto a limited pallet of conscious states, yielding experientially boring worlds like those that I described earlier. Fortunately, those aren't the principles we got, right? It's as if the universe is going out of its way to select complex psychophysical principles that make significant experiential goods possible, passing over just like an infinite field of far simpler psychophysical principles that would preclude significant conscious value. Like that's so sus.
¶396Like how do you not see? Oh, this is overwhelmingly sus. And while it's hard to believe that a fundamentally purposeless universe would be set up that way, none of this is especially surprising under theism, right? Like it wouldn't be hugely surprising for God to prefer complex psychophysical principles that make significant value possible over simpler ones that preclude the most valuable forms of consciousness. Okay, so again like recall that we're going through like a litany of different ways that the psychophysical principles might have been that would not have resulted in like the kinds of significant forms of value that we see uh in the world around us.
¶397So like we're just we're going through the manifold different psychophysical principles that you know conceivably could have held and you know the resulting ways in which the world could have been devoid of you know significant value. So that was the first way just like pathetically contemptably simple and boring laws. The second way is if you know the psychophysical principles make our perceptual experiences radically discordant with external reality. Think about our actual perceptual experiences, right? Like generally speaking, they correspond to external reality.
¶398So for example, changes in the spatial layout of objects in your environment produce corresponding changes in the qualitative character of your perceptual experiences. Your perceptions thereby mirror the external world in a way that allows you to be consciously aware of your environment which in turn enables you to rationally form many true beliefs about the world. Of course, there are exceptions like hallucinations and dreams and so forth. But this is the general pattern. This pattern is very fortunate if you think about it since there are countless conceivable psychophysical principles that don't correspond to the external world in a way that enables perceptual knowledge.
¶399Of course, you know, evolution can explain why we have physical structures that mirror our environments and produce appropriate behaviors in response to environmental stimuli. But the point is that in order for us to enjoy perceptual knowledge about the environment, not only do we need those physical structures, but we also need psychophysical principles that are sensitive in very specific ways to those highly specific brain structures. While that first fact can be explained by evolution, you know that we have internal physical states that mirror our environments and produce appropriate behaviors in response to environmental stimuli. The second fact that I mentioned can't be explained by evolution. You know that the psychophysical principles are the right way to enable perceptual knowledge.
¶400Like evolution only explains the development of physical states and behavior. It doesn't control which conscious states are mapped on to which physical states. I'll talk about evol I'll talk about evolution more later, but let's just continue on with the train of thought here. The fact that psychophysical principles are sensitive to highly specific brain structures in ways that enable perceptual knowledge requires very finely tuned psychophysical laws. Right?
¶401So like first it requires principles that associate our experiences with activity in the brain rather than other organs. Right? Like if our experiences were sensitive to physical states of the liver, we we would not be consciously aware of our environments. You know, since the liver doesn't contain physical structures that richly mirror our environments. Second of all, it requires principles that associate our experiences with certain parts of the brain, right?
¶402Namely, the part whose activity systematically co-varies with features of the external world. If our experiences were instead sensitive to like activity and different parts of the brain, you know, such as the cerebellum or the brain stem, we would not be consciously aware of our environments because again like those different parts of the brain don't contain the right sorts of physical structures that you know at least approximately mirror the external world. Third, it requires principles that associate our experiences with the right physical properties of the relevant brain regions, such as patterns of neural spikes. If our experiences were sensitive to other physical properties, such as the temperature or mass of the relevant brain regions, we would not be consciously aware of our environments since those brain regions don't use temperature or mass to model the world. Fourth, it requires principles that assign conscious states that themselves structurally correspond in the right way to the right physical properties of the right structures of the right organ.
¶403Right? Like if instead the principles assigned like randomized conscious states to those physical properties or assigned a single simple conscious quality like a sensation of brightness to them again we wouldn't be significantly consciously aware of our environments. Like it's almost impossible to believe that a fundamentally purposeless universe would be so sensitively fine-tuned to enable knowledge of and rational engagement with the environment in these compounding ways. Here's like maybe a little bit more of like an formal way of seeing the argument that I'm developing here. Like if you think of your visual field like a TV screen, like there are bajillions of different ways of filling in the pixels with color, brightness, and saturation.
¶404The overwhelming majority of pixel arrangements are just like, you know, like a chaotic jumbled mess. So if it were up to chance which pixels fill a TV screen, you know, it would be extremely improbable that the pixels would form a coherent, orderly, intelligible image that corresponds to some, you know, facet of the environment. If we saw such a pixel arrangement, we would immediately infer design, right? But the psychophysical principles connecting brain states with perceptual experiences could conceivably have pixelated our visual field in any which way, right? With any combinations of, you know, colors and brightness and saturation.
¶405And so we should similarly infer design given that the pixels form a coherent, orderly, intelligible image that corresponds to the environment. But anyway, we've just canvased a second class of ways in which the psychophysical principles could have resulted in a world, you know, devoid of significant forms of value or at least, you know, a world devoid of like knowledge and awareness of our environment. Let's move on to a third way. So third, the psychophysical principles might have resulted in irrational responses to the character of our experiences. All right.
¶406All right. So a third way that the psychophysical principles might have been such that the world would have been devoid of at least a lot of the significant forms of value that we do in fact have is normative disharmony. In other words, the psychophysical principles might have resulted in irrational responses to the character of our experiences. When you feel pain, so consider that when you feel pain, this tends to be followed by avoidance behavior. Conversely, when you feel pleasure, this tends to lead to pursuit behavior.
¶407Of course, you know, there are exceptions, but this is the general pattern. What's notable here is that there's a kind of normative harmony between your experiences and your behavior. Your experiences are correlated with behaviors that are rationally appropriate in light of those very experiences, right? Like pain is bad. It's an intrinsically sucky experience.
¶408All else being equal, the more of it you have in your life, the worse off you are. So, all else being equal, you have reason to avoid and eliminate pain. Lo and behold, that's what you tend to do, right? You tend to avoid and eliminate pain. So like pain gives you reason to avoid it.
¶409And lo and behold, the sorts of behavior that pain is correlated with is avoidance behavior, right? So what pain rationalizes, the sort of behavior that pain rationalizes, namely avoidance behavior, is precisely the actual behavior that pain leads to. Right? So there's a kind of harmonious mesh between the normative role of pain, what it gives you reason to do, and the kind of causal role of pain, what it leads you to do. On the flip side, pleasure is good.
¶410But it's an intrinsically nice experience. And all else being equal, the more of it you have in your life, the better off you are. So again, all else being equal, you have reason to pursue pleasure. And lo and behold, that's what you tend to do. And this fits a more general pattern.
¶411By and large, there's a rationally coherent connection between your consciousness and your behavior, right? Like your spoken words reflect your conscious thoughts. Your spoken arguments reflect your conscious reasoning. Your spoken descriptions of your feelings match your actual feelings. Your outward behavior corresponds to what you consciously want and choose to do.
¶412All of this too is very surprising under naturalism because we can imagine all different sorts of alternative psychophysical principles that don't result in these rationally appropriate psychophysical connections. So for instance we can imagine a hedonically inverted world a world physically just like ours but with different psychophysical principles that swap pleasure and pain. So in this hedonically inverted world pleasure is associated with tissue damage and avoidance behavior whereas pain is associated with fitness enhancing stimuli like eating and having sex and pursuit behavior. In such a world where you know the conscious states of pleasure and pain are swapped, we we still would have pursued sex and food and drink and we still would have avoided fire and predators and illness and disease, right? Because again like tissue damage is associated with pleasure and pleasure leads you to engage in a engage in avoidance behavior, right?
¶413So when you stub your toe, you're going to avoid doing that in the future even though it causes you pleasure. Similarly, when you know you put your hand in a fire, it causes pleasure. But the pleasure in this world kind of wackily leads you to pull your hand out of the fire. So evolution would have unfolded in exactly the same way in this world as it did in our world. But on the inside, in that world, we would have been miserable wretches, right?
¶414Like we would have systematically avoided pleasure and pursued pain. We would systematically inflict unpleasant experiences on friends and loved ones while preventing and eliminating pleasant experiences. There is a radical disharmony in this world between what our experiences give us reason to do and what we actually do. And our our lives in that kind of world are just like a pathetic farce. And you know, hedonic inversion is just an extreme case involving like active disharmony between experience and behavior.
¶415But almost every imaginable alternative set of psychophysical principles would have resulted in at least a lack of harmony between experience and behavior. The harmonious alignment between mind and matter is therefore cosmically surprising under naturalism but not under theism. Right? Like if God goes through the trouble of making conscious beings because you know again we're we're backgrounding the fact of psychonomic harmony. If God goes through the trouble of making conscious beings, it's not especially surprising that he would generally make their experiences rationally align with their behavior so that their lives aren't pathetic farsces.
¶416Finally, even if the psychophysical principles endow us with rich mental lives that rationally align with our behavior and enable rational agency and knowledge of the world, it's quite striking that the psychophysical principles result in only one conscious subject in my immediate vicinity. So, conscious subjects are bearers of conscious properties. They're the things which are conscious. And we can easily imagine psychophysical principles that assign consciousness to hordes of massively overlapping things in the immediate vicinity of my brain and body which share a lot of the matter of my brain and body. For example, as Patrick McKe points out, if the psychophysical principles assign consciousness to the intrinsic physical properties of a system, that is those physical properties that characterize it as it is in itself independently of its relations or lack thereof to things in its environment, then there will end up being hordes of conscious beings in my vicinity.
¶417since tons of distinct physical entities in my vicinity share those intrinsic properties. Right? So for example, if consciousness is paired with the intrinsic functional architecture of certain parts of the cerebrum, well, it turns out that many overlapping distinct physical entities share that functional architecture, right? Like the organism shares that functional architecture as as a part, right? The brain shares that functional architecture.
¶418The cerebrum as a whole shares that architecture. The relevant parts of the cereum share that architecture. The brain as a whole minus an electron in its periphery shares that architecture and literally zillions of other such entities share that intrinsic architecture. So then the psychophysical laws will be assigning consciousness to like all different sorts of conscious entities in my vicinity. And so there are going to be all different sorts of subjects in my immediate vicinity.
¶419It's also conceivable, of course, that a planitude of psychophysical principles obtain with some psychophysical principles assigning consciousness to brains, others assigning consciousness to cerebra, others assigning consciousness to cortices, others assigning consciousness to brains minus an electron, still others assigning consciousness to organisms, and so on down the list of physical things that overlap each of us. If there had been such an ensemble of psychophysical principles, we would each be accompanied by boatloads of conscious subjects that massively overlap our brains and bodies. To avoid overlapping subjects, the psychophysical principles need to be strikingly fine-tuned. For example, maybe they need to incorporate certain highly specific exttrinsic conditions for being conscious in addition to intrinsic conditions. But not only does this complicate the principles and thereby make them far less likely under naturalism, it also requires a remarkable degree of fine-tuning to get the right sorts of extrinsic conditions.
¶420Thus, it's quite striking that psychophysical principles pair consciousness with physical things in ways that vindicate our common sense beliefs about the number of conscious subjects in our vicinity. It's also pretty valuable that we don't contain massively overlapping subjects since that would imply highly revisionary normative consequences. For example, that larger people or people who live longer in expectation should be given preferential treatment since they contain more overlapping conscious subjects for simple combinatorial reasons, right? Like they got way more parts. Once again, theism has a neat explanation of this lucky seeming feature of the psychophysical principles, whereas it's much more surprising under naturalism.
¶421So like all in all, we hit the psychophysical jackpot, my dudes. Like if dualism is true, we first got really lucky that there are psychophysical laws to begin with. But even setting dualism aside, we got very lucky that the psychophysical principles pair consciousness with physical states that actually exist. And we then got even luckier that the precise way in which consciousness is paired with matter enables significant consciousness involving goods. Our mental lives aren't simple and boring.
¶422Our perceptual experiences tend to match or mirror or correspond to the environment in ways that enable knowledge about the world. We tend to respond rationally to the character of our experiences and our speech and actions. And we don't overlap hordes of other conscious subjects in ways that undermine our common sense beliefs and induce radically revisionary ethical consequences. The naturalist is faced with positing one extreme coincidence a top another here. Whereas the theist has a wonderfully elegant unifying explanation of data that are totally unsurprising if God exists.
¶423And as a result, psychophysical luck is extremely strong evidence for theism. Naturally enough, there are objections. Uh I'll be covering eight objections to the argument from psychophysical luck, beginning with natural selection. So like this is one of the main criticisms that like Graham Mappy has forwarded against the argument. Uh the objection is that evolution by natural selection explains psychophysical luck.
¶424You know like creatures whose experiences don't match the world or rationally coher with their behavior would be at a selective disadvantage, right? Like you know if you can't accurately perceive a predator, you know, like you're cooked, right? Uh uh no. Uh this just fundamentally misunderstands the argument from psychophysisical luck. I mean for starters, right?
¶425Like natural selection clearly isn't responsible for fundamental laws of nature. It can't explain the first fact under the banner of psychophysical luck which you recall was the fact that there are any psychophysical laws to begin with which you know again assumed dualism or at least non-reductive panychism. Nor can natural selection explain psychonomic harmony. Natural selection favors the development of conscious experience only if conscious states are already paired with behavior relevant physical states in which case puditive evolutionary explanations of psychonomic harmony simply presuppose psychonomic harmony. Right?
¶426like to see this thing like if the psychophysical principles had instead paired a phenomenal states with states of say massive particles these kinds of particles that don't even exist then natural selection couldn't have favored the development of consciousness because natural selection can only operate on you like the pregiven stock of physical things that we have namely like massive particles and things composed of them which per the psychophysical principles under this conceivable regime and boatloads of other regimes might not have paired consciousness with right they might have instead paired consciousness with like unrealized functional states or unrealized substrates or unrealized configurations etc. Natural selection also can't explain any of the other facets of psychophysical luck. As Philip Goff writes, "The most common response I've had when explaining the mystery of psychophysical harmony, that's kind of like a subset of psychophysical luck, by the way, is, you know, natural selection solves it." But if you think natural selection is the answer to psychophysical harmony, you haven't understood the problem. This is because any evolutionary explanation of the character of our conscious experience already assumes a solution to the problem of psychophysical harmony and therefore cannot also solve the problem on pain of circularity. Natural selection will be motivated to make us feel repulsed by eating excrement only if we are generally going to respond rationally to that conscious aversion by avoiding eating excrement.
¶427But the fact that we tend to respond rationally to our experiences is the very thing we're trying to explain, right? And also recall that all the alternative psychophysical mappings that we considered held fix the physical facts about the universe. These conceivable worlds are physically identical to our world. So, so evolution proceeds in exactly the same way. The same physical stimuli are associated with the same physical processing which has the same physical effects.
¶428All we're imagining to be different about these worlds is which conscious states are associated with which physical states. But then evolution is unable to explain psychophysical luck since evolution proceeds in exactly the same way in these psychophysically unlucky worlds. So evolution can't be sort of like the decider among these worlds. Brian Cutter Brian Cutter combines both of these points quite nicely. Um natural selection is only going to be sensitive to the physical behavior and functioning of organisms.
¶429like what determines which which organisms live and which ones die and which ones reproduce and which ones don't reproduce. That's simply a matter of the physical behavior and functioning of those organisms. Um but you know it's you know so but you know under all these alternative psychophysical mappings the behavior would have been exactly the same. So evolution wouldn't have been sensitive to uh differences in in the the mind matter mapping principles. So you know if if the psychophysical map if the psychophysical laws had been different in all these ways that we've been talking about evolution would proceed in exactly the same way because again evolution is only sensitive to like the the physical structures the physical behavior and functioning of of organisms.
¶430Um and so we would get physically speaking the same results under these alternative psychophysical laws but since the the experiences would be different we would get psychophysical disharmony. So that's that's the basic reason why an evolutionary explanation is not going to account for the basic fact of of psychophysical harmony. Now here's what an evolutionary explanation can do. Um, if we presuppose that pain is kind of lawfully linked to avoidance behavior and and other similar behaviors, then we have a good explanation for why we would feel pain in response to bodily injury because there's a good evolutionary explanation uh for for why we would exhibit avoidance behaviors in response to bodily injury. So that would lead us to expect that we should experience pain in in addition in response to a bodily injury on the assumption that pain is lawfully connected.
¶431Now that's a perfectly fine explanation of why we feel pain in response to bodily injury. But that's an explanation that presupposes the basic datim of normative harmony. Namely that pain is lawfully linked to things like avoidance behavior, elimination behavior, and the like. So that's a perfectly fine evolutionary explanation of why would why we would feel pain in response to bodily injury. But it's not an explanation that explains psychophysical harmony.
¶432It's an explanation that presupposes psychophysical harmony. >> And you know what? Because this is the most common response to psychophysical luck. And because it's been like a main response of the foremost atheist philosopher in the world, and because people still don't see that it fails, I'm just going to play a litany of people explaining why it fails. This explanation it doesn't explain psychophysical harmony.
¶433It doesn't explain why pain is associated with avoidance behavior. It presupposes psychophysical harmony. So it it presupposes that pain is going to be associated with avoidance behavior. So given that pain has this this like nomically robust association with avoidance behavior, you can see why evolution would want to give us pain would select for creatures that have pain in response to bodily damage because that's going to lead to the avoidance behavior. um but and and wouldn't want to have us experience pain in response to like eating nutritious berries because the the the the creatures that exhibit avoidance behavior in response to nutritious berries are not going to survive very long.
¶434They're not going to pass on their genes. So that that explanation for why we tend to experience pain in response to you know potentially harmful maladaptive stimul stimuli uh it looks like it it presupposes psychophysical harmony. It doesn't explain it. I think it's fine to presuppose this this general fact about how pain is associated with avoidance behavior in explaining why we tend to feel pain in response to bodily damage. Um that's a perfectly good explanation, but it's not an explanation of psychophysical harmony.
¶435It's an explanation for why we tend to feel pain in response to bodily damage, not why we tend to exhibit avoidance behavior in response to pain. >> Right? I guess one way so I fully agree with that of course and one way that uh I like to think about this is suppose that the psychophysical mappings had been different. Suppose that uh pleasure had been mapped on to the various brain states that uh cause avoidance behavior instead of pursuance behavior and suppose that um you know the experience of pleasure also was did I say pain originally? I meant pleasure.
¶436Whatever pleasure suppose that pleasure is associated with the various brain states that cause avoidance behavior. Suppose also that pleasure is in fact associated with um the bodily states which are typically you know tissue damage other noxious stimuli cause that suppose that that was the psychophysical map. Well then evolution actually would have selected the organisms which feel pleasure in response to the tissue damage and what because that would that's what's actually associated with avoidance behavior. So the these organisms are going to be systematically avoiding what causes tissue damage and noxious stimuli and other sorts of things. So given that it seems like evolution really isn't explaining psychophysical harmony.
¶437It's comes early in the explanatory chain in their work. >> Okay. I >> also think that evolution uh doesn't explain psychophysical harmony. Um maybe I'll comment briefly on this. I think this is most obvious if we assume causal closure of the physical.
¶438So this is the kind of picture that David Schalmer's defends in his book the conscious mind. So we've got fundamental uh conscious conscious properties over and above the physical states but um they they don't kind of make a nonredundant causal difference to to to what happens in the physical world. So in that case uh if if we assume causal closure then if the psychopysical mappings had been different uh the physical world would have preceded just the same physical evolution would have preceded just the same. Um, so you know, if the laws had ex instead mapped the actual physical basis of pain onto pleasure, physical evolution would go in just the same way, but with the disharmonious result that now we're systematically uh avoiding pleasure. Um, you might think interactionism will help with this.
¶439Actually, I think on reflection it doesn't. Uh, really briefly, given interactionism where we assume that experiences have some kind of top- down causal influence on physical processes like physical processes in the brain. Uh given this view we should say that the the psychophysical laws they assign experiences a certain nomological role. That role is going to include both physical causes and physical effects. Um but if the laws had uh swapped the nomological roles of pleasure and pain uh the overall physical facts would be unchanged but we would get the disharmonious result that again we're systematically avoiding pleasure and pursuing pain.
¶440Uh similarly, if if an evaluatively neutral experience had been slotted into the actual nomological role of pain, then we would be systematically avoiding experiences uh that we have no objective reason to avoid. So again, we'd have a mild form of disharmony or at least a lack of harmony where the actual world features a striking harmony. Um it's true that given that pain is lawfully linked to avoidance behavior and and and the like. Uh there's a good evolutionary explanation for why we would feel pain in response to things like bodily injury rather than in response to things like nutritious berries. Uh but this explanation presupposes normative harmony.
¶441In particular, it presupposes the instance of normative harmony that you know pain is lawfully linked to uh avoidance behavior. the very kinds of avoidance the very kind of a a behavior that it justifies or rationalizes that evolutionary explanation doesn't uh explain psychophysical harmony now I want you to imagine the following hypothetical world in this world we get some very strange psychophysical laws every physical state is connected with experiencing the taste of strawberry that is whenever sea fibers fire the taste of strawberry is experienced rather than pain whenever dope Damine receptors fire, the taste of strawberries is experienced rather than pleasure. Whenever anything in your brain happens, the taste of strawberries is experienced. There are no other mental experiences ever produced at all. No sounds, no smells.
¶442People's minds are just filled with experiencing the taste of strawberries all the time, no matter what their brains look like. Obviously, if these were the psychophysical laws that were true, evolution could not actually ensure that we feel pain when our bodies get damaged. Evolution can only make it so that we experience the taste of strawberries when our bodies get damaged. Hopefully, through this thought experiment, you're starting to understand something important about psychophysical harmony. Evolution can only give you accurate mental experiences if it's been dealt the right psychophysical laws.
¶443If you give evolution garbage psychophysical laws, then evolution can only give you garbage mental experiences. But you might be thinking, fine, you could come up with a contrived set of psychophysical laws that make it impossible for us to evolve an appropriate mental response to our bodies getting damaged. But this is just one really weird example. Well, actually, this example involves a set of psychophysical laws that's much simpler than our own psychophysical laws that we actually have. So arguably the strawberry world is more intrinsically probable than our own.
¶444So given atheism, we should be surprised we don't live in something like the strawberry world. If you don't understand what I'm getting at here, then once again, I urge you to check out my original video if you haven't already. Anyways, setting aside the strawberry world, even a world like the one we're considering earlier where pleasure is the result of stubbing your toe, even that cannot be ruled out by evolution due to the fact that evolution needs to work with the psychophysical laws that it's been given. Why is this? Well, before answering, we need to briefly get back to discussing theories of the relationship between physical things and mental things.
¶445We need to ask the question of whether or not mental things cause stuff to happen in the physical world. Let's assume first that they don't. This view is called epiphenomenalism. Some philosophers take this stance because they don't want the laws of physics being violated by mysterious mental things. Now, if epiphenomenalism is true, then no matter what psychophysical laws obtain, evolution would act in exactly the same way.
¶446Whether pain or pleasure or the taste of strawberries was the outcome of stubbing your toe, there would be no physical difference in the world. So evolution would have no reason to select for one rather than the other. Thus, if epiphenomenalism is true and there is no god, this is what the history of our world looked like. Once upon a time, evolution started blindly chugging along, producing increasingly complex organisms, not caring about the mental lives these creatures had because their mental lives didn't do anything in the physical world. We could be experiencing literally anything, and evolution couldn't care less.
¶447And then one day, evolution produced us creatures who experience negative things when something negative happens, like our bodies getting damaged. And we experience positive things when something positive happens like eating good food. Since evolution wasn't trying to produce this result and there is no God tinkering with the psychophysical laws, this was just one big coincidence. The end. Now, if the psychophysical laws were different, no part of that history would change except that our mental lives would stop making sense.
¶448If pleasure were the result of C fibers firing, then evolution would not care at all. it would still make sea fibers fire when you stubbed your toe because mental experiences don't affect the physical world given epiphenomenalism. And so your physical body would act the same way when those sea fibers fired. Your physical body would still protect its toe and it would still yell out, "Ow, my toe." And it would still move that annoying chair that it kept stubbing its toe on. This is because given epiphenomenalism, your body is only governed by the laws of physics.
¶449And those actions are what the laws of physics make your body do when you stub your toe and see fibers fire. So under epiphenomenalism, if there is no god, it's actually incredibly surprising that we do feel pain when we stub our toes given that there is absolutely no reason this should be the case. Okay, but what if we reject epiphenomenalism? What if mental things can causally affect physical things? Well, then pain has some sort of influence on physical things.
¶450What is this influence? Let's assume for illustrative purposes that pain somehow activates the motor neurons that make you pull your limbs toward yourself. So, if you touch your hand to a hot stove, then sea fibers fire, which leads to the experience of pain. And then this mental thing, the pain, activates the physical motor neurons that pull your hand away from the stove. This is why evolution has ensured that when you stub your toe or touch a hot stove, you feel pain because it protects your body by activating the correct motor neurons.
¶451Coolio. However, we can imagine a world where pleasure rather than pain does the exact same thing. It activates those particular motor neurons. In that world, if you touched a hot stove, sea fibers would fire, which leads to the experience of pleasure because the psychophysical laws are different in this world. And this mental thing, the pleasure activates the motor neurons that pull your hand away from the stove.
¶452These two worlds, the one where pain activates such and such motor neurons and the world where pleasure activates those motor neurons are equally intrinsically probable on the assumption that there is no God. So on atheism, we're actually just lucky that we feel pain rather than pleasure when we touch a hot stove. Now all these points generalize. If the mental thing pain does something else than activating motor neurons, we can still imagine pleasure doing the exact same thing. Whatever physical effects are brought about by the experience of pain, we can just as easily imagine pleasure bringing about those physical effects.
¶453So if you respond, well, forget activating motor neurons. That's not what pain does. Actually, pain affects our brains in such a way. It activates all the right neurons that it causes us to have the thought process, hey, I should avoid that harmful action in the future. And because pain causes us to have this thought process, evolution would promote it when we damage our bodies.
¶454Well, we can imagine a world where pleasure has this effect. it activates those particular neurons and leads us to have this exact thought process. This world is just as intrinsically probable. I think people have difficulty with this point because they can't imagine liking pain and disliking pleasure. However, as long as pain actually does something to the world and as long as pleasure actually does something to the world, we can imagine swapping what they do.
¶455And as long as the mental experience of liking something actually does something to the world, and as long as the mental experience of disliking something actually does something to the world, we can imagine swapping what they do as well. To put all this another way, if you want to posit that pain has some mysterious and very specific physical effect on the world, and that's the real reason evolution selected for it to be the mental thing produced when you stub your toe. Well, it's just as easy to posit that pleasure has that mysterious physical effect. Both of these hypotheses would have the same prior probability. Now, here's another point that generalizes.
¶456We've been discussing a hypothetical world where pain is replaced by pleasure, but we can run the same logic with other experiences, too. Like a world where pain is replaced by the visual experience of the color green, or a world where pain is replaced by the smell of cheese or any other experience. Almost all of these would be really bizarre mental responses to something negative happening. So we're actually super duper lucky that we feel anything remotely coherent like pain when we damage our bodies. So in conclusion, evolution can only bring about psychophysical harmony if the psychophysical laws are first designed very precisely to bring about psychophysical harmony.
¶457This is easily shown with the strawberry world. Now if epiphenomenalism is true then evolution has no tendency to bring about mental experiences that make any sense whatsoever. But if epiphenomenalism is false evolution would only bring about the right mental experiences in a given set of circumstances if those mental experiences had the proper physical effects. But we can just as easily imagine assigning those same physical effects to the wrong mental experiences. So we have no reason to assign a high prior probability to the proposition that we would experience the proper mental experience in a given set of circumstances.
¶458In fact, given just how many mental experiences would be inappropriate in response to a given circumstance, we should overwhelmingly expect our mental lives to be utterly incoherent if there is no God. Anyways, that's the end of this video. Thank you for watching. I'll see you in the next one. You know, natural selection seems like it would be the easiest way to explain psychophysical harmony because surely selection would favor harmonious minds over disharmonious minds.
¶459>> That certainly won't work on dualist a phenomenalism, right? >> Because there the conscious states are making no difference to anything. And so, um, the evolutionary story would have played out in exactly the same way regardless of whether our qualia were absent or were inverted or were screwed up in some weird way or whatever, right? It can't make any difference to anything that happens in the physical world. And of course, evolution is about what happens in the physical world.
¶460So, that wouldn't work. So, maybe maybe it will be helpful to just run through the different sorts of views one might have. Suppose that you were um an interactionist dualist. So you think well you have conscious states but they can affect what happens in the physical world. Wouldn't that solve the problem there?
¶461We say no because what that does is sort of push the problem back into the question of the laws governing causal relations between the physical and uh the mental. So it seems perfectly conceivable if you already agree with the duelist that you know pain and pleasure could have been inverted or whatever. It also seems perfectly conceivable that their causal roles could have been inverted, that having pleasure states caused aversion behavior, right? Or vice versa. So, uh merely merely introducing causal interaction doesn't doesn't help.
¶462Sorry, my cat is here trying to get uh merely introducing interaction as dualism, we say, would be a little bit like this. Suppose that there's a a machine uh and the machine makes noises and then there's another machine and the other machine um prints out uh something every time the first machine makes a noise and um the uh it turns out that there's semantic correspondence between these two things. So the first machine will uh play a rising tone and then the second machine writes out rising tone or it makes a beep boop sound and the second machine prints out beep boop and we wonder why is there this match? Merely suggesting the first machine is causing the second machine to do this does not solve the problem of the match. Right?
¶463it if it it could it could have been that the first machine makes a noise and the second machine that causes the second machine to just print out some unrelated thing, right? Uh in order to explain the correspondence, you need to say not only is the first machine causing the second machine to print this thing out, but it's presumably been designed in the right way that what it prints out is a description of the noise that the first machine made, right? Um and in a similar way we suggest uh if our mental states are non-physical and are causing physical states then we need um a certain sort of fine-tuning of the causal laws in order for that to produce rationally and semantically uh appropriate behavior. >> So the the causal laws could have been different and that's what you're honing in on. >> Yeah, it seems it seems so.
¶464Yeah, it seem um so that's the the thing to say to duelist interactionists. What might we say to say a pansychist? Well, uh, pansychists often will agree that, uh, you could have had like the same structural properties, what people usually think of as physical properties while varying the uh, the internal intrinsic character, the quiddities of of the entities here, the the what the panzy identify with the conscious with the qualia, right? So they'll say, look, we can agree with all these dualist conceivability arguments and stuff because we'll say, look, yeah, it could have been that what we ordinarily think of as the physical could have been the same, but uh conscious experiences were inverted or whatever. And then you get the exactly the same problem you had with with dualism because why how is it that we got the the right set of quiddities, right?
¶465Now, when it comes to physicalism, this is the hardest case, right? So um we have to distinguish op priori and apoststeriori physicalism. So the a priori physicalist thinks there's some sort of like conceptual connection. There's some sort of a priori connection between the mental and the physical. Uh you can just tell by reflecting on the concept of pain and the concept of uh avoidance behavior that those things had to be linked in the way that they are or something like that.
¶466That view would solve the problem. that view. Okay, so nothing else is even conceivable, right? Uh nothing psychophysically disharmonious is even conceivable. That solves the problem.
¶467Okay, that view is false though, right? Um and and most physicalists reject that view. Most physicalists say, look, obviously we can conceive of philosophical zombies or inverts or whatever. We can conceive of all the scenarios I've been describing. I don't think anybody watching has been hearing me talk about these scenarios.
¶468They're like, "What?" Like, >> I literally can't even conceive of any. >> Clearly, it's not like a round circle or something. What they say is, "Yes, these things are conceivable, but they're not metaphysically possible." Uh, it's an aoststeriori truth that actually mental states and physical states are the same thing. There's this synthetic identity between them just like water and H2O or whatever. Um, and so it's it's necessary.
¶469These these scenarios I've been describing are metaphysically impossible even though they're conceived. Here's what we say about that. So the aposteriori physicist, which again is the significant majority of physicalists, all the same all the same physicalists, right? The aposterior or I physicalist says all these things that the duelist thought or at least most of these things that the duelist thought were metaphysical possibilities there's still a priori epistemic possibilities and what that means is going in apostasteri physicalism does not predict epistemically psychophysical harmony and uh we suggest what matters here are the epistemic probabilities and so because theism the the epistic probability of harmony is much higher than on a posterior physicalism. It's good evidence for theism.
¶470So an analogy suppose we're talking about the the cosmic fine-tuning problem and suppose someone comes along and they say okay I I've got the solution for you. I'm a spinist. I think that there the universe is necessary. There was just this universe and it's just necessary and it just had to have uh these constants. the constants had to have these values.
¶471Okay, is that a satisfying answer to the psychophysical or to the the cosmic fine-tuning problem? And we're inclined to think no because okay, but spinism itself doesn't predict I mean it could you could anything was the necessary set of values for the constants, right? Spinism itself doesn't predict fine-tuning. What predicts fine-tuning is in fact one very specific version of spinism. the version that says not only are the constants necessary but this set of constants is necessary and of course the op priori probability of that version is correspondingly small I mean it buys its predictive power by just selecting you know this one little bit at the the epistemic probability space in this case uh it looks like theism predicts psychopysical harmony we can say okay well maybe this was necessary but that's you know a post hawk uh okay we're we're going to endorse this one very specific version of physicalism, the one that says that the harmony is what's necessary.
¶472Um, but that requires rejecting all of these a priori possible uh other alternatives. I mean, this is this is the hardest part of the argument. Did that make sense? >> Yeah. I mean, let's just uh like go through that again.
¶473So, it's like physicalism. We said earlier, you know, you don't need to reject physicalism to to like, you know, take this as a good argument. But there is one caveat there which is you do have to reject a priori physicalism. But the thing is most physicalists reject a priori physicalism. you know, it's it's not um the favored version and it's um that would entail that like these aren't even epistemic possibilities that we're talking about like disharmony is not like you know they're they're saying I can't even conceive of qualia inversion which seems slightly disingenuous because of course you can but um yeah so so like we're >> could you try could you try it again?
¶474>> Yeah. Yeah. This might be due to a lack of imagination on on your part, but um but yeah, so a posteriori physicalism which is more popular, this argument does apply to to that form. So that's where the conceivability point still kicks in because the aposteriori identities could have been different. Um >> they epistemically they could have been different.
¶475They couldn't have been, but epistemically they could have been a priori they could have been. >> Right? If you're if you're an aposterior or a physicist, um you still think that these are like metaphysical necessities, like the connection between the functional state and the phenomenal state, like yeah, they're they're um you know, identical or realized by one another or something. They're like connected by necessity in some way, but the point is they're epistemically possible. So we can still say, you know, we can assign some kind of probability to them.
¶476And the analogy that you gave was with, you know, say that you're a necessitarian. And you know in the paper you mentioned like the you know the arrangement of the stars in the sky. Um okay so that's metaphysically necessary but that doesn't mean that like your theory predicts this exact arrangement of stars in the sky and like say that that there's a message in the stars that says I'm the alpha and the omega you know. So necessitarianism doesn't make that go away like just because it's necessary that things would have turned out this way that there would have been that arrangement >> or or at least it only makes it go away if it just makes everything go you know like we we walk in on on Donald Trump holding a big bag of money that says from Vladimir Putin and we say isn't this so much more likely if Vladimir Putin and he says no it's metaphysically necessary it's it just had to happen it just appeared here you know like if if you go this route you just destroy all all ability to reason empirically, >> right? Yeah.
¶477Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. So, so like the odds of that of that message in the stars, you know, or whatever example you choose, like obviously that is evidence favoring some hypotheses over others, even though you know, the way that things turned out is like necessary somehow. Um, so like the difference between like metaphysical and epistemic possibility like it does open up the way for this kind of argument.
¶478And if you want to say that like, oh well, aposteriori physicalism actually answers this or or I'm a necessitarian or a determinist or something, so this isn't a problem for me. Like then that would also commit you to saying, you know, like a message in the stars would not be evidence because determinism is true. >> Yeah. Yeah. Which of course would it would be an absurd an absurd position.
¶479>> Correct. >> Um so the reason we initially got all into all that is because I brought up natural selection. >> So ah yes yes. Okay. Okay.
¶480Very good. Very good. Very good. So point being um a natural selection will um select for harmony assuming that certain preconditions obtain. Right?
¶481So we said epopenomenalism you know the mental states don't affect natural selection whatsoever. On views where mental causation occurs, where mental the physical causation occurs, then natural selection is going to select for harmonious, it's going to select for harmonious behavior and so forth only assuming that the causal connections run the right way. So if it's the case that pain causes avoidance behavior say then uh or you know causes whatever the preconditions for avoidance behavior are pain causes some behavior that is uh evolutionarily advantageous and is harmonious then natural selection will select for the harmonious course of action right um but not otherwise if you imagine the world where pain and pleasure are inverted and their causal profiles are inverted. So, not only does pain occur under the conditions where pleasure currently occurs, but it has the same impact, causal impact on the physical that pleasure currently has, then that's not going to make any difference to natural selection, right? That's going to produce all the same behaviors even though it's it's disharmonious.
¶482So, uh natural selection ultimately is not really going to help. A lot of people think that it does, but we think ultimately it's not really going to help because you have to get um you know harmonious sets of causal relations in place uh before um natural selection is is going to lead to harmonious behavior and judgments and that sort of thing. So I I don't think that any controversial question about the ontology of natural laws or psychophysical laws should make any difference here. We we could even replace maybe the term law with like correlation pattern or something like that. Correlation description.
¶483Um so I mean the psychophysical laws you know there are different views about what laws of nature are. Are they mere descriptions? Are they uh statements about relations between universals? Are they divine decrees? Are they blah blah blah blah blah?
¶484Right? But I think uh for our purposes the the things I'm calling psychophysical laws which we could call correlation patterns or whatever uh there'll be statements of the form you know when such and such physical state occurs such and such mental state occurs if there is mental to physical causation maybe we could include also statements of the form and when such and such mental state occurs such and such physical state will will occur right or it will have this causal input on the physical state or whatever. All we really need is is that you can just think about all these statements like that and what are those reflecting ontologically or is it a mere human mosaic? Is there something else to it? Uh that shouldn't really matter.
¶485I don't think the trick is when it comes to the natural selection point. I mean, of course, if it's the case that avoidance behavior in in the presence of pain and pursuit behavior in in the presence of pleasure, if it's the case that those things are evolutionarily advantageous, then of course natural selection will be able to explain why you do the one and are disposed to do the one and and to do the other and not to do the inverse, right? But if pain and pleasure had been inverted, including their their causal roles, if it had been the case that every time the damaging stimulus occurs, you felt pleasure and then the pleasure caused you uh to engage in avoidance behavior, then that would be just as good from the perspect from from the perspective of natural selection. And if the inverse was true for pain, that would be just as good. And this would be like conceivable on aposterior physicalism or recelian monism like the idea that the physical >> so it gets a little tricky because the talk about laws maybe seems particularly inapt on aosterior physicalism on aosterior physicalism what is a priori conceivable is that pain turns out to be this physical state that results in pursuit behaviors.
¶486>> Oh I see. Okay. And yeah, and pleasure turns out to be this physical state that results in avoidance behavior. Um, in fact, they're the other things. And we've learned this austeriori.
¶487So the apostasori physicalist things, but had they been the had it been the other way, of course, we would behave the exact same way. The physical states would be the same. They would just be different mental states. Um, and that would be just as good from the perspective of natural selection. If if the identities had been inverted, counterpossibly if the identities had been inverted, then we would behave in exactly the same way.
¶488>> So whatever makes it the case that you know the identities are what they are like natural selection doesn't affect those. It's just acting on like adaptive behavior and like that sort of thing. >> Yeah. Natural selection, if it's correct to talk about psychophysical laws or psychophysical identities or whatever, natural selection is not selecting between those. Natural selection selects with those in place.
¶489And so unless you have those finely tuned in the right way, natural selection is not going to lead to harmonious behavior. >> So it's sort of like, you know, natural selection is not affecting the mass of the electron. It's just kind of working with whatever mass it was given. >> Let me be clear. I'm not denying that there is say an evolutionary explanation in some sense of why you know sex feels good or whatever right it's just that had the psychophysical laws been wildly different then there would be an equally good evolutionary explanation about why it feels bad or you know what right >> you know like natural selection it still does do all this explanatory work but you're just saying that like the thing in question really are these laws of nature you know and natural selection can't affect that >> yeah yeah and had and had they been different then uh natural selection could have played out in the same way with disharmonious disharmonious states instead.
¶490>> He says how do you answer the objection that evolution tunes the connection between mental and physical states to produce harmony based on natural selection. For example, liking pain could be fatal. >> Yeah. So this this is an objection that comes up very often. Uh I mean it's an objection people often have.
¶491I I don't think that it has any real force. Um I mean it's easiest to see if if we just suppose up a phenomenalist dualism again, right? So uh mental states are distinct and they have no causal influence. Um it's true obviously liking if you like pain and like given which things are actually painful uh then um you're you're gonna uh have a bad time in terms of reproductive fitness. Um but the suggestion here is suppose that different things were painful but this made no causal impact on your behavior.
¶492Um suppose that uh reproduction is extremely painful here uh but like the fact that we switched around the pain and pleasure states that doesn't have any causal impact on your behavior. Um then uh in that world liking pain is extremely extremely beneficial to you, right? Um the the thought is you're if the physical is causally closed, you're going to behave the same way no matter whether your pain states and your pleasure states are inverted, no matter whether uh uh you have no conscious states, no matter whether your conscious states are only white noise. Um and so really what matters is that you be like uh behaviorally disposed to pursue the reproductively fitness-enhancing things. Um but it doesn't actually matter whether those are pleasurable or painful on or nothing uh on epiphenomenalism because that doesn't have any causal impact.
¶493Um now when it comes to other views um you know suppose we we're interactionists you know I said in order for things to be for that to produce harmony you have to have the right sorts of causal connections um we can say the same thing interactionism solves the problem if it's the case that pleasure is causally related to the physical in such a way as to produce pursuit behavior and pain is causally related to the physical in such a way as to produce avoidance behavior and blah blah blah. Um but again that requires a kind of fine-tuning. So um basically yes given the actual correlation beings that pursue the things that are actually painful uh will not be reproductively fit. But uh there's a kind of harmony that has to happen in terms of the correlations and the causal connections if there are any um in order for that to be the case. Okay.
¶494So I mean I hope that gives you guys a sense of why this objection is not good. If you think evolution explains psychophysical luck, you don't understand the argument from psychophysical luck. Okay. The second objection, physicalism with a twist. So for reasons already explained, everyone should grant that the argument from psychophysical luck does not assume that physicalism is false from the get-go.
¶495Again, all the argument requires is that alternative psychophysical mappings are at least conceivable. They make coherent conceptual sense. Once we grant that, it's going to be extremely epistemically improbable under naturalism that conscious states align with physical states and behavior in the ways described, whereas it isn't nearly as improbable under theism. This is true even if conscious states are identical to or grounded in physical states since we can conceive of psychophysical identities or grounding connections being different in just about all the ways described. Still, there might be a lingering worry here, right?
¶496Like if physicalism is true, then the psychophysical principles are necessary, but then wouldn't they be beyond God's control? And if so, then it's hard to see how they could be evidence for theism since God isn't responsible for their character in that case. So maybe the argument does assume non-physicalism after all. Well, this objection is wrong-headed. First, it overlooks that psychophysical luck is simply exceptionally strong evidence for the conjunction of theism and the claim that the psychophysical principles are contingent.
¶497If theism is true, and if the psychophysical principles are contingent, then God can control them, and he has good reason to make them psychophysically lucky in all the canvased ways. By contrast, denying this conjunction by saying that either naturalism is true or even if theism is true, the psychophysical principles are necessary. That denial of the conjunction makes the psychophysical luck data fantastically unlikely. And thus, the psychophysical luck data is just fantastic evidence both that God exists and can control the psychophysical principles. Right?
¶498Like return to Cutter and Kermit's Boulder Island analogy. Suppose we've heard of, you know, large boulders on Boulder Island. We don't know for sure whether they're movable as no one has ever been there to confirm with certainty. We you know we've just heard various like testimonial reports of varying quality and you know we know that they're huge so they're pretty hard to move and you know so some philosophers hypothesize that the boulders are really just like large outgrowths of a mountain underneath and so they are immovable by humans. Other philosophers though hypothesized that the boulders could be moved by humans cooperating to push them around.
¶499Now, you are the foremost philosophical proponent of the immovable boulder hypothesis, pointing to the solid testimony in its favor from several reputable sources. But suppose you accompany me as we travel for the first time to Boulder Island. As we're about to land, we see from our helicopter those boulders arranged to spell out, "Welcome to Boulder Island. Enjoy your stay." Now I exclaim like, "Wow, this place must have been colonized and by English speakers, no less, as you know, they've evidently designed these boulders to form that message." You, however, remain unconvinced, retorting, "Well, actually, if the boulders are immovable, well then, you know, this message arrangement of boulders is not evidence for the human design hypothesis since if they're immovable, well, then their arrangement is outside the control of human designers." And so, Joe, you're you're just assuming that the boulders are immovable in your argument here. So, you know, like listen, this response is confused because it neglects the fact that the boulder arrangement is simply overwhelming evidence for the conjunction of human design and the movability of boulders.
¶500And likewise, psychophysical luck is simply overwhelming evidence for the conjunction of divine design and the movability of the psychophysical principles. Second, I actually think it's false that the necessity of the psychophysical principles voids the psychophysical luck argument of force and for two reasons. First, even if God doesn't have control over the psychophysical laws due to their necessity, their rational, orderly, and harmonious character can still significantly favor theism over naturalism. And the rough reason is that on theism, it's not super unlikely that even many necessary truths are somehow grounded in, dependent on, or explained ultimately by God's perfect essence. Many theists in the tradition have held that the various creaturely essences for instance which would include the essences of neurological systems and structures as well as the essences of conscious qualities are somehow variegated reflections or imitations of the divine in some way.
¶501They somehow manifest aspects of God's perfection and partially capture his character. conditional on this being so and granting the objector that the psychophysical principles are necessary. It's not super unlikely that the psychophysical principles would somehow be grounded and dependent on or explained ultimately by God's perfect essence which in turn makes it not so unlikely that they would exhibit a generally benevolent harmonious orderly intelligible character in partial imitation of the perfect essence in which they're sourced. Even if these claims have a pretty low probability conditional antheism, which will result in a pretty low probability of psychophysical luck, conditional entheism, their probability won't be overwhelmingly, fantastically, grotesqually low, which is how likely psychophysical luck is going to be on naturalism. And so even if the psychophysical principles are necessary, psychophysical luck can still be significant evidence for theism.
¶502And you know, like here's an analogy for this. Like suppose we examine the initial conditions of the universe and again see they spell out made by God with love. If the initial conditions are necessary, we might initially think this fact provides no evidence for theism over naturalism since the initial conditions are then by supposition beyond God's control. But that seems wrong, right? Like even if the initial conditions are necessary, the necessary initial conditions saying made by God with love is serious evidence for theism.
¶503And that's because maybe something about God's nature somehow necessitates this striking display of his power in the initial conditions. Or like you know maybe we could use the same just so story I gave earlier about imitating or manifesting or reflecting God's nature. And again like while that story is not very likely on theism it's actually going to be very improbable under theism it's not going to be as absurdly unlikely as we are to get that arrangement under naturalism. So that's like the first reason why I don't think even the necessity of the psychophysical principles would void the argument from psychophysical luck of its force. Here's the second reason.
¶504Even if the necessary psychophysical principles are in no way dependent on God, the following conjunction is not super improbable conditional on theism. First, God can still influence which necessary and independent psychophysical identities or grounding connections are actually instantiated in the physical world. And second, somewhere in the infinite space of all possible psychophysical identities or grounding relations, there are compossible physical states of creatures which systematically harmonize with their associated conscious states. So long as this conjunction is not super improbable under theism and right, that seems right. It won't be super improbable under theism that God would actualize those composible physical states of creatures which systematically harmonize with their associated conscious states and hence psychophysical luck won't be super improbable under theism.
¶505By contrast, it remains super improbable under naturalism and so it remains significant evidence for theism. All right. The third objection is the phenomenal powers view. This view sets that conscious qualities necessitate their characteristic effects in virtue of how they feel. Moreover, this necessitation is knowable a priori in the sense that it's inconceivable that conscious qualities exist without having or exercising those powers.
¶506Like pain is an intrinsically repulsive and sucky experience by its very nature. And this nature is transparent to those who have the concept of pain. It therefore seems inconceivable that pain could exist without avoidance behavior. And so the alternative psychophysical principles envisioned in the psychophysical luck argument are not conceivable after all. Okay, so this is totally wrong-headed.
¶507First, even when defenders of the phenomenal powers view are introducing it, they say it's inconceivable that a subject would feel pain and not try to avoid it. But even if that's right, trying is just another conscious state. Right? So all we've concluded is that there's an opriori necessary connection between certain conscious states. That clearly doesn't mean that there's an opiori necessary connection between conscious states and physical states.
¶508So alternative psychophysical mappings remain entirely conceivable and that alone suffices to put the objection to bed. But I've got a bunch of other responses. So second, as articulated, the objection here is just like manifestly false. Like it's just clearly conceivable that a subject feel pain and not engage in avoidance behavior, right? Right?
¶509So for instance, like disembodied minds in pain are like obviously conceivable, right? Like we can make coherent conceptual sense of them. Likewise, it's at least conceivable that you're in a cartisian skeptical scenario with, you know, a demon just feeding your mind sense impressions that delude you into thinking that there's a physical world or, you know, just like locked in syndrome, right? Where some people can be consciously aware and in pain without engaging in any avoidance behavior. Third, most of the alternative psychophysical mappings are just plainly conceivable.
¶510Even if you think hedonic inversion specifically is inconceivable. So for instance, it's just like plainly conceivable that creatures have chaotic TV static experiences that mirror the microfysical goings on in their brains or bodies. Fourth, I actually think it's totally conceivable that one experience pain and not even try to avoid it. I mean that just makes like complete conceptual sense to me. Like I I what are you talking about that that doesn't make conceptual sense to you?
¶511In fact, it's literally happened in my own life, right? Like I felt pain and I haven't I haven't even tried to avoid it. uh and there are many people in history such as martyrs to whom this has happened as well. Okay, so like I don't know I just think like the fundamental powers view is false on independent grounds. And fifth and finally you know the fundamental powers view clearly doesn't explain the existence of psychophysical laws.
¶512So it won't explain the first fact under the banner of psychophysical luck and nor does it explain psychonomic harmony like even granting that if there are any phenomenal qualities instantiated in the physical world at all then they will operate their characteristic effects. The antecedent of that conditional remains deeply surprising on naturalism and the phenomenal powers view doesn't explain why the antecedent there is met. Why phenomenal qualities are indeed instantiated in the physical world to begin with. For that you need psychonomic harmony and to get psychonomic harmony you need striking coincidences. Okay.
¶513Next up is the contingent normative roles response. This view says that conscious states have their normative properties in virtue of the contingent causal roles that they play. So for example, pain is bad precisely because we tend to avoid it. Whereas pleasure is good precisely because we tend to pursue it. And if conscious qualities are good or bad in virtue of our pursuit or avoidance of them, it's totally unsurprising that conscious states rationally align with behavior.
¶514No matter what conscious states we pursued or avoided, we would have acted rationally, right? Since pursuing some conscious state is precisely what makes it good, and avoiding it is precisely what makes it bad. Okay. So, uh, in response, this seems ridiculous, undeserved, excruciating, torturous agony is bad and it would remain bad even if it were experienced by a disembodied mind causally unrelated to physical behavioral states. And so, that just shows that pain is not bad in virtue of, you know, leading to, you know, avoidance behavior or something.
¶515And besides, like this response would only explain normative harmony and probably only the hedonic subariety thereof. And that's just like an extremely narrow facet of the argument from psychophysical luck. So the argument would remain just about as strong even if we granted the objection. Okay, multiverse response. So hey, you know, the argument from psychophysical law is ultimately a kind of fine-tuning argument just applied to the psychophysical principles.
¶516As we've seen, one response to the cosmological finetuning argument is the multiverse. This response has two components, right? So first it posits a large and varied collection of universes large and varied enough that we would expect it to include at least some life permitting universes. And second of all it invokes an observation selection effect to explain why the universe we observe is one of the life permitting universes. Like even if the vast majority of universes in the multiverse are inhospitable to life, it's unsurprising that we'd find ourselves in one of the lifepitting runs since those are the only ones that contain conscious observers.
¶517But it's just manifestly obvious that standard multiverse hypotheses don't explain psychophysical luck at all. Standard multiverse hypotheses only give us a paniply of physical conditions and laws. They don't touch the psychophysical principles. Right? If the psychophysical principles had been contemptably simple and boring, say assigning a simple gray sensation to all physical states, then the multiverse would just contain a vast sea of physical entities experiencing gray, right?
¶518And just like more generally, the multiverse will only spit out psychophysically lucky creatures if the psychophysical principles are already systematically fortunate in the various ways canvased. And consequently, standard multiverse hypotheses are totally impotent to explain psychophysical luck. Now, of course, like you might try to posit a non-standard multiverse hypothesis on which universes vary randomly in which psychophysical laws obtain therein. Like if the collection is sufficiently vast and varied, it's bound to include at least some universe with lucky psychophysical laws like ours. So wouldn't that undermine the argument from psychophysical luck?
¶519First, such a view is just scandalously unparimmonious. Like now we're just positing gazillions upon gazillions of extra fundamental laws in order to avoid a single argument for theism. Like come on, man. Come on. Come on, man.
¶520Second, an observation selection effect is essential to multiverse explanations, right? Like otherwise we could invoke the multiverse to explain away just about any piece of evidence for anything. Oh. Oh, five students turned in word for word identical papers. Well, you know, before you accuse them of foul play, consider that in a sufficiently large multiverse, this sort of thing was bound to happen somewhere, right?
¶521Like this is ridiculous. Here, the multiverse objection clearly fails. And the reason is that although the multiverse predicts that some group of students somewhere would independently produce identical papers, it doesn't predict that we'd find ourselves in a situation where such an improbable thing occurs. But for exactly the same reason, the non-standard multiverse explanation of psychophysical luck fails. It's just clearly false that conscious observers can only exist in a psychophysically lucky universe.
¶522Right? That conscious observers exist under hordes of alternative psychophysical laws. None of which are anywhere near as lucky as our psychophysical principles. And so multiverse explanations don't predict that we'd find ourselves in a situation where psychophysical luck reigns. And so they don't even explain our actual data.
¶523Also, these like psychophysical law ensemble solutions just like massively proliferate conscious subjects in our vicinity and they undermine our knowledge of other minds and various other things that I talk about in my uh my problem of psychonomic harmony paper that's linked in the conversion video resource document. All right. So the sixth objection is suboptimality and disharmony. Hey Joe, you know the psychophysical principles are suboptimal. They're imperfect and they're disharmonious in lots of ways.
¶524Like human memory is flawed and prone to error. We suffer from addiction and neurological diseases. We experience hallucinations, illusions, and other mistaken perceptual beliefs. And our psychophysical principles make us feel a lot of pain. Right?
¶525Like aren't these facts very surprising under theism but not under naturalism? Well, first it's not actually clear that these are cases of psychophysical disharmony. Like take memory for example. holding fixed my behaviors. If my phenomenal memories were more accurate, there'd be a perverse mismatch between my behaviors and my memories.
¶526Like, so for instance, I'd verically remember leaving my keys on the counter, but that would lead me to irrationally to go look in the cupboard. By contrast, if I'm looking in the cupboard while I misremember my keys being in the cupboard, well, then that memorial state rationalizes my actual behavior. And just like more generally holding fix the physical facts, it's not clear that there could have been much more psychophysical harmony. And this point will recur with many of the other cited cases of you know alleged disharmony. So consider for instance cognitive biases like if my phenomenal judgments were more epistemically rational well then holding fixed my behavior there'd be an irrational mismatch between my judgments and behavior.
¶527Second continuing with the example of memory and you know the point applies to all the other cases. We cannot overlook the staggering degree of accuracy and coherence among our memorial states. Among all the conceivable ways we could populate a mind with memorial states, only a fantastically overwhelmingly small fraction of them have at least as much accuracy and coherence as ours. This general fact is extremely surprising in the absence of theism or some kind of theism adjacent hypothesis. More importantly, the degree to which this general fact confirms theism over naturalism just dwarfs the extent to which the more specific facts about suboptimality confirm naturalism over theism given this general fact.
¶528And this is especially plausible once we notice like lots of not terribly unlikely theodysies that could naturally extend to these suboptimalities and then you know sprinkle in some mild skeptical theism where this mild dose of skeptical theism is just a recognition that it's not like super improbable that God has adequate reasons of which we're unaware for actualizing apparently suboptimal but still very valuable psychophysical principles. Brian Cutter gives a helpful analogy here. So the library of Babel is a fictional library containing every conceivable book formed from every conceivable string of characters. So you know now like the overwhelming majority of books in the Library of Babel are then going to be like extremely low on literary quality. In fact, most of them, you know, you're just going to like open up the pages and it's just going to be like complete gibberish, complete random nonsense.
¶529If you hand me a book and I start out unsure between two hypotheses, randomism, which says that the book was picked randomly from the library of Babel, and then masterism, which says that the book was written by a literary master, then when I open the book and see that it's a comprehensible, readable 200page book with sentences in a rational order and a plot that makes sense, then even if the book seems like a seven out of 10 on like the literary quality scale, comparable to what like an average 9th or tth grader could write, intuitively the select book just conclusively refutes randomism. Of course, you know, we'd probably want to consider the mediocre writer hypothesis instead of like the literary master writer hypothesis, just as we should, you know, consider limited god hypothesis, but it's still true that the data here just like decisively rules out randomism, which is, you know, the analog to the naturalist's hypothesis. And and sure, you know, like if we want to maintain that a literary master was responsible for the book rather than a mediocre writer, we'd have to explain away the apparent defects the Odyssey style. But like a combination of literary theodysy and like skeptical masterism just looks like far better than randomism. You know, for example, like imperfections in a work can make the best passages stand out.
¶530You know, I don't know. Life itself is often disordered and uneven and filled with anti-limaxes and benality. So like books which likewise contain apparent imperfections of disorderliness or chaos or benality often achieve heightened realism. You know, like lols and degressions and repetitions or overdetailed descriptions can slow down the reader and alter pacing in ways that heighten later intensity. And you know, for various literary reasons, authors sometimes intentionally write more poorly precisely to give the impression that a younger author is behind the passenger work in question, etc.
¶531I could go on. And besides, again, you know, this is going back to the kind of like skeptical masterism move. It just wouldn't be too surprising. It might still be surprising, but it wouldn't be like too surprising if a literary master had reasons for the inclusion of apparent literary defects to which we're just not privy given, you know, that we're not masters in in the literary arts or whatever. And you know, given the gulf in knowledge between us and them, even if the apparent defects are like some evidence favoring randomism over masterism, given the fact that we got an orderly comprehensible 200page book to begin with, the fact that we got an orderly comprehensible 200page book in the first place is staggering evidence for masterism over randomism.
¶532It basically just like decisively favors the former over the latter. And you know, the analogy carries over to psychophysical luck. like we miraculously landed on a comprehensible, orderly, systematically rational, non-boring set of psychophysical principles that enable significant consciousness involving goods. Sure, like given this fact, defects in the psychophysical principles might favor naturalism over theism to some extent. But the fact that we got orderly, comprehensible, systematically rational psychophysical principles in the first instance is staggering evidence for theism over naturalism.
¶533Third, these puditive sub-optimalities and disharmonies are not independent of problems already known to confront theism. Like this is just like largely another instance of the problem of evil or the problem of suboptimality. Many of the stories that theists already tell about evil and suboptimality will therefore make psychophysical suboptimality less surprising as well. And the naturalist is largely double counting here if they treat these psychophysical suboptimalities as additional evidence against theism. Like come on.
¶534Like once we've updated on the world's general sub-optimality, we should shift more of our theistic credence toward structural hypotheses on which either God is not an optimizer or if he is an optimizer then like apparent defects or sub-optimalities are somehow required to enable profound goods like you know virtue and freedom and better relationships and us making sign significant differences in lives and welfare of others etc. And like you know ju just stepping back this is a more general problem for lots of responses to theistic arguments. You know like many responses are like oh fine-tuning but the universe is mostly lifeless and hostile. Oh moral knowledge but you know there's moral ignorance or like psychophysical harmony but you know the psychophysical principles could be better. Such objections mistakenly treat these datam specific apparent suboptimalities or defects as independent when in reality they're not.
¶535The naturalist, meanwhile, lacks an equally plausible unifying explanation that would jointly account for fine-tuning, psychophysical harmony, moral knowledge, contingency, religious experiences, miracles, non-skeepticism, and you know, the other relevant data. But anyway, that that's a point that I will return to later. Fourth, there are reasonable theoticies that blunt the evidential force of puditive psychophysical suboptimalities and disharmonies. Take for instance the soulbuilding theodysy. A flawed error-prone memory gives us opportunities to help each other by finding ways to improve our memory or mitigate the negative effects of flawed erroneous memories.
¶536This also helps foster creativity and ingenuity as it pushes us to find pneumonic devices, external aids, and other cool memory hacks. Imperfect memory gives us opportunities to exercise intellectual virtues like intellectual humility. This is especially true because it forces us to recognize that our epistemic life is deeply communal, right? like we have to rely on others for information and this enables goods like trust, fulfilling interpersonal obligations etc. Imperfect memory enables us to cultivate habits of note-taking, careful study and conscientious recordkeeping.
¶537These practices can also hone intellectual virtues like diligence and responsibility. Memory failures, for example, forgetting my promise to take your mother to dinner last night create situations where we have to practice patience and forgiveness toward others, thereby enabling charity and mercy. Like listen like I could go on and on but like both both a soulmaking theodysy and lots of other theodysies like the emission theodysy but you get the point. Theodysies that are already standard fair will handle psychophysical suboptimality and disharmony. So long as the disjunction of the huge paniply of theodysies which render some modest degree of psychophysical suboptimality or disharmony not very unlikely is itself not super improbable conditional untheism then psychophysical suboptimality and disharmony aren't super strong evidence against theism.
¶538And like add in the mild dose of skeptical theism mentioned earlier and the objection at hand is like super weak. So, let's move on to the revenge problem. Isn't God incredibly psychophysically lucky? Like, whenever God wills something, it happens. Like, what a striking coincidence, right?
¶539Like, moreover, God's actions are systematically rational in light of his mental states, and his beliefs systematically accurately correlate with the world. Yet, there are countless conceivable ways that a fundamental mind could be set up such that its mental states don't match the world or its actions in these ways. This means that theism is a poor explanation of psychophysical luck since the intrinsic probability of such a fortunate being is just about as low as the improbability of psychophysical luck on atheism. Okay, so this is not a good objection. The harmony between God's mind and the world is entailed by a simple, elegant, non-arbitrary, and highly uniform divine attribute, namely God's perfection.
¶540Like, are some of God's beliefs false? That's an imperfection. Did God will something to happen, but his will was frustrated like a pathetic toddler? That's an imperfection. Does God systematically seek to create situations that cause him pain and avoid creating situations that cause him pleasure?
¶541That's an imperfection. Does he act systematically irrationally? Again, an obvious imperfection. But since the harmony between God's mind and the world is entailed by a simple and elegant attribute, that harmony cannot be less intrinsically probable than a fundamental mind having that simple and elegant attribute. But as I argued in defense of premise one of my master argument, it's not super intrinsically improbable that a fundamental mind would have that simple and elegant attribute.
¶542And consequently, the revenge problem is neutralized. Like like ultimately this just like saying that the intrinsic probability of theism is not like hopelessly low is just going to solve this problem immediately. So like this is not this is not a particularly serious objection. As Brian Cutter explains, >> harmony within God or the sorts of intra divide harmonies you're discussing are just entailed by theism. They're entailed by the hypothesis that at the foundation of reality is a perfect being.
¶543And so any argument that theism itself has a not super low prior probability would just be an argument that the intra divine harmonies are not super improbable. >> It's also worth noting that other highly compactly describable and non-arbitrary and uniform divine attributes entail the relevant harmonies. So for instance, omnipotence is a simple and elegant feature and any omnipotent being's will is infallibly efficacious, thereby entailing harmony between God's mind and the world, ditto with omniscience. I also think the revenge objection, as well as like a number of other objections to psychophysical luck and psychophysical harmony, faces an analog of the awesome theistic evidence problem. To modify examples from Matthew Adelstein and Amos Woolen, imagine we all constantly consciously experienced microscopic scribbles in the bottom corner of our visual field.
¶544They're too small for any of us to naturally decipher. But in the year 2500, a scientist invents a device that allows us to zoom into those conscious qualities and read them. As it turns out, the entire Bible is written in microscopic font in the corner of everyone's visual field. And we can also imagine that in this hypothetical world, the psychophysical principles are such that when and only when a baptized Catholic intends to summon a rosary, a rosary comes into existence in their hand. Clearly, the character of the psychophysical principles in this world would be extremely powerful evidence for theism.
¶545But the revenge problem absurdly implies otherwise since it could equally be run in this hypothetical world. Oh, like isn't God still incredibly psychophysically lucky? Like, you know, like whenever God wills something, it happens. Like, oh, what a striking coincidence. And moreover, God's actions are systematically rational in light of his mental states and his beliefs systematically accurately correlate with the world.
¶546Yet there are countless conceivable ways that a fundamental mind could be set up such that its mental states don't match the world or its actions in these ways. And this means that theism, you know, it's a poor explanation of this psychophysical datim since, you know, the intrinsic probability of such a fortunate being is just as low, if not lower, as the improbability of this datim on atheism. Like like no, again, stop. I'm spraying you with water. Okay.
¶547Onwards we march to the eighth and final objection that I'll be covering to the argument from psychophysical harmony, which is Gooff's rational panagentialism. And this, as I understand it, is Goff's favorite explanation of psychophysical harmony. And here I'm going to explain why Goff should get rid of his gaff. Okay, sorry. I wanted to have some aliteration.
¶548Sorry. Sorry, Goff Phillip. You know, love you, man. Um, okay. Gooff's rational panagentialism.
¶549So, panagentialism holds roughly that agency is ubiquitous among physical entities, at least at the fundamental level. Goff's solution to the problem of psychophysical harmony, which I term rational panagentialism. And that's why I term his solution combines panagentialism with pansychism and maintains that matter is inherently rational. That is inherently disposed to respond in a rationally appropriate manner to the character of its conscious experience. Under rational panagentialism, the stuff of the world is rational stuff.
¶550As Philip Gooff puts it, even when behaving in a predictable way, its behavior is the result of a rational impulse, albeit of a very crude crude kind. Given rational panagentialism, it's unsurprising that the normative and causal roles of conscious experiences harmoniously align. Consider, for example, hedonic states. Since organisms tend to respond rationally to their hedonic states under rational panagentialism, organisms who experience pleasure in response to noxious stimuli will tend to pursue those stimuli and will thus be disfavored by natural selection. The same goes for pain.
¶551Rational panagentialism therefore renders hedonic harmony entirely unsurprising. and similar points apply you know with requisite modifications to other harmonious psychophysical correlations. Okay, so what goes wrong here? Turns out a lot. So first this solution will inherit problems with pansychism and panagentialism of which there are many most notably the combination problem and also just you know the implausibility of particles being conscious and like desiring to move.
¶552Um second the solution seeks to explain striking coincidences at the macro level by appealing to striking coincidences at the micro level. As Brad Sod notes, harmonious correlations involving experiences of non-biological physical entities would cry out for explanation no less than harmonious correlations involving organisms experiences. Like after all, countless psychophysical principles involving microfysical entities are conceivable and only a minuscule fraction of those are rationally appropriate. Particles or fields might have behaved in ways that are irrational in light of their experiences or their behavior might have borne no interesting rational connections to their experiences. So for instance, particles might have experienced simple hot tid cold sensations depending on their charge or they might have experienced a phenomenal pitch proportional to their mass.
¶553Rational panagentialism then only relocates the mystery of psychophysical luck. Third, rational pangentialism does not explain subject harmony. Micro subjects responding rationally to the character of their experiences could conceivably give rise to one dozens or even trillions of massively overlapping macro subjects. Fourth, assuming that micro subjects persist and remain conscious when they compose or constitute a macro subject, rational panagentialism leaves psychophysical luck at the macro level a mystery. Like rational microbehavioral responses to micro experiences could conceivably give rise to macro behavior and macro experiences that lack any interesting rational connections.
¶554like particles rationally following their basic conscious urges could conceivably result in evolutionarily advantageous macro behavior accompanied by any number of possible macro experiences. So for instance like a blooming buzzing confusion of countless urges reflecting the experiences of the macro subject's constituents or chaotic TV static experiences reflecting the macro subject's physical micro structure or neutral gray sensations or something else entirely to ensure psychophysical luck at the macro level. Rational panagentialism requires a remarkable convergence between rational microbehavioral responses to microexperiences and rational macrobehavioral responses to macro experiences. Once again, rational panagentialism just relocates rather than explains psychophysical luck. It's totally conceivable that microphysical entities responding rationally to the character of their experience nevertheless gives rise to macroscopic entities whose experiences are rationally misaligned with their behavior.
¶555Fifth, the fact that basic microexperiences can combine into the rich array of macro experiences needed to rationalize evolutionarily advantageous macro behavior is itself a priori pretty surprising. And you know like this is a version of the so-called pallet problem for pansychism and it represents yet another way in which rational panagentialism leaves psychophysical luck largely mysterious. So as with fine-tuning the argument from psychophysical luck is remarkably robust to criticism. I rank it among the strongest arguments for theism and it was ultimately psychophysical luck fine-tuning and miracles that influenced me most heavily and you know I hope they influence your journey as well. By the way, if you want to see me flesh out my responses to many of these objections in greater detail and respond to other objections to the argument from psychophysical luck, from naturalism next, check out my 75page document here on screen linked in the resource document.
¶556I'd also strongly encourage checking out the other resources on psychophysical luck in the resource doc. Okay, let's get on to the next argument. Suppose we now include in our background knowledge all the preceding data, right? So there's contingency and laws of nature. The laws match the initial conditions of the universe.
¶557The law structures have life permitting constant ranges. The constants fall within those ranges. The psychophysical principles match the contents of the universe. There are psychophysical laws to begin with. The psychophysical principles result in coherent, orderly, rational, conscious lives that enable lots of significant value and so on.
¶558Even then, it's still quite striking that the conscious life forms which exist systematically avoided basically all skeptical scenarios. that is scenarios in which some basic cognitive faculty of ours is completely and incorraably out of whack with reality. This brings us to the argument from non-skeepticism. And here I'm drawing heavily from an excellent excellent excellent this is an excellent lecture by okay here I'm drawing heavily from an excellent lecture and post by Alexander Puce linked in the resource doc. So people know all sorts of things you know like about science, history, math, logic, morality, the external world, philosophy.
¶559But there are lots of ways the world might conceivably have turned out where people would know almost nothing or alternatively where people would find themselves in quite radical skeptical scenarios of various sorts. Not only are these like very bad states of affairs, but they also undermine the possibility of us living in a moderately flourishing global community. To give you a sense of the many ways we might conceivably have found ourselves in a skeptical scenario, let's go through a list. And these are like different ways in which we could have found ourselves in uh skeptical scenarios. Immaterial spirits deceive most of us about most things.
¶560We are ignorant brains and bats. That is we're brains and bats and ignorant of that fact. We ignorantly exist in a computer simulation. You know, like Cutter and Swenson point out that this is plausibly a skeptical scenario since it undermines our knowledge about the past as well as our inductive knowledge about the future and distant regions of the universe. As they say, there's no reason to think simulators would begin most simulations at the Big Bang rather than just picking an interesting starting point.
¶561Perhaps our simulators were interested in the effects of gunpowder on warfare and thus began the simulation around the time gunpowder was invented. If we can't rule these out, then we we don't have knowledge about the past. or consider the possibility that our simulation is run by a historian interested in the early 21st century who intends to shut off the simulation once we reach 2030 or so. This still seems to be a skeptical hypothesis since it implies the falsity of our ordinary beliefs about you know whether our galaxy will exist in 10 years. Our inductive knowledge of the future is therefore threatened too.
¶562So that's another potential skeptical scenario that we missed that we didn't land in that we ignorantly exist in a computer simulation. A large majority of observers exist in computer simulations. Right. Right. Because as if a large majority of observers exist in computer simulations, it's seems like we can't rule out that we're among them.
¶563We are Boltzman brains who just fluctuated into existence from the buzzing quantum foam in outer space and who will very soon cease to exist. Or a large majority of observers are Boltzman brains or we're disembodied souls having illusions of embodiment. And you know, like just as the icons on an iPhone, like the trash cans and the apps, just as those icons are useful, but don't actually resemble the underlying electronic circuitry in an iPhone, evolution might have given us perceptual experiences of space, time, objects, colors, etc. that are simplified adaptive symbols rather than accurate depictions of the world's underlying structure. So our conscious experiences, you know, could have been pretty radically misaligned with the nature of the world or the universe came into existence fully formed 5 minutes ago or 5 hours ago or 5 years ago or 50 years ago or 500 years ago.
¶564As Bruce points out, this is actually more probable under naturals than you might think. Entropy has been increasing over time. The entropy of the universe 13.8 billion years ago was much lower than it is now. And low entropy states seem to have much lower probability than high entropy states since there are way more high entropy microfysical configurations of a system than low entropy configurations. So under naturalism we might worry that the universe is actually more likely to begin in the higher entropy state that it has now or that it had 5 years ago than the much lower entropy state that it had 13 billion years ago.
¶565or the probability of objects popping into existence for no reason is either high or undefined. Like this is a skeptical hypothesis because if it's true, we don't know pretty much anything about the future since we can't say it's unlikely that say like massive clouds of electrons will soon pop into existence in our rooms annihilating us all. Or everybody apart from me is a philosophical zombie. In other words, I'm the only conscious being and everyone else is basically just like a meat robot with a physical configuration similar to mine but no conscious experience. Or the world is induction unfriendly in other ways.
¶566So like the laws of physics break down at arbitrary points in the future or the laws of physics themselves include a time index of when they'll start making matter behave differently or the unobservable world is unfriendly to our epistemic practices and theoretical preferences such that our epistemic criteria turn out to be poor guides to the truth about the unobservable domain. Now we dodged the bullet on pretty much every way of being quite radically deceived or knowing very little about the world. Indeed, the world seems fortuitously epistemically hospitable. Why? What explains that?
¶567Well, imagine we see a group of five Inuit on the corner of 6th Avenue and 50th Street in New York City to borrow an example from Alexander Puce. And imagine we have individual explanations of why each Inuit is there. It's like Inuit number one is visiting New York to present a paper at a chemistry conference. Number two has read a famous philosophy paper by Edwards which talks about Inuit on the corner of 6th and 50th and wants a selfie. Number three is on the way to 3rd and 70th.
¶568Number four is a teller at a bank at that corner and is out on lunch break. And number five is interviewing candidates for a chemistry professor job. If these individual explanations were the whole story, we'd be a bit dissatisfied, right? Like sure for each individual Inuit we can explain why he or she is on the corner of 6th and 50th but the individual explanations here are disunified. There's no deeper account beyond a disconnected array of individual facts that integrates all the facts together in a single simple unified explanatory story.
¶569Moreover, the individual explanations make no reference to the commonality among the facts needing explained. namely each member of the group at the corner being Inuit. In cases like this, where there is a large and diverse array of facts with some notable feature in common, at least many of which seem pretty coincidental or unlikely, we have reason to think a unified explanation is present, such as that, you know, the five high school friends are from Ikalawit and are meeting up and number two is a philosophy nerd who suggested sixth and fifth so we could get that selfie. The same is true with the various skeptical scenarios we canvased. What explains the striking fact that most people aren't in any skeptical scenario?
¶570For any particular skeptical scenario, the naturalist can try to explain why most people aren't in it. That explanation may or may not be very good. But the theist can explain all at once why most people aren't in any skeptical scenario. Like, God's unlikely to create a world where most people are in skeptical scenarios. Radical skepticism is extremely bad and completely undermines both our individual and collective flourishing.
¶571This is a significant explanatory advantage of theism, especially given that the naturalist's explanation makes no reference to the commonality among the explan, namely that they're all skeptical hypothesis. And here Pruce continues, notice also what happens when a new skeptical scenario is invented, such as my scenario, Pruce's scenario, that all the apparently random processes in our world are probabilistically non-measurable, but look like they were measurable. The theist's explanation automatically extends to cover it, but the naturalist may well need to scramble to create a new explanation or posit yet another brute fact. So just as we have reason to adopt the unifying explanation in the Inuit case, so too do we have reason to accept theism in the case at hand. Or to put the point in basian terms, the probability that most people would be in none of those skeptical scenarios is much higher under theism than naturalism.
¶572And this fact is therefore good evidence for theism over naturalism. But even assuming the psychophysically lucky conscious rational creatures that exist systematically avoid radical skeptical scenarios, that doesn't guarantee that they would enjoy moral knowledge or significant opery knowledge about metaphysics, theory, choice, modality, and mathematics. Yet we enjoy lots of moral knowledge and other forms of opery knowledge too. Like we know, for example, that, you know, it's wrong to humiliate people for fun. That 1 plus 1 equals 2, that nothing could be simultaneously red all over and green all over.
¶573That it's possible for humans never to have evolved. That if particles arranged chair-wise compose a chair, then particles arranged table-wise compose a table, and that other things being equal, simpler theories are more likely than complex theories. As it happens, the fact that we have moral and operary knowledge strongly favors theism over naturalism, even granting all the other facts we've updated on. Okay, so I will give two arguments to this effect. According to the first argument, naturalism completely undermines moral knowledge and lots of opiori knowledge.
¶574In other words, naturalism affords a defeater for moral and various opiori beliefs where a defeater for belief B is some true claim which when added to your beliefs removes your justification for belief B. In other words, it removes your grounds for thinking B is correct and you should give up B on pain of irrationality. It doesn't necessarily mean that B is false, right? But since it's no longer justified, you should still give it up. For instance, if you seem to see a snake, you're justified in thinking there is a snake on the basis of your visual experience.
¶575But if you learn that I slipped into your coffee this morning a pill that makes people hallucinate snakes, you're no longer justified in believing that there is a snake. As it turns out, if naturalism is true, moral and many operary beliefs are defeated in much the same way. And that's because if naturalism is true, you don't actually hold the beliefs because they're true. Rather, you hold them because they're the deliverances of a moral sense which was selected for for its fitness value. It was selectively advantageous in the past.
¶576So, your basic moral sensibilities evolved because they promoted survival and reproduction among our ancestors, not because they're true. To see why this lack of explanatory connection with the facts undermines knowledge, let's take some cases from Dan Corman and Dustin Lockach. Nisha reads a book about Namibia and believes what she has read. Among other things, she reads and believes that there are monarch butterflies there. She then learns that the book's author has never been to Namibia, has never read anything about Namibia, has never spoken with anyone who has been to Namibia, has never seen photos from Namibia, and so on.
¶577In short, Nisha learns that the author has had no contact direct or mediated with Namibia or facts about Namibia and was just making stuff up for the purposes of publishing a book. Okay. In learning that her belief in Namibia lacks an appropriate explanatory connections to the facts about Namibia, it seems like she gains a defeater for her belief. Now, consider three other cases from Corman and Lock. Suppose that Lois finds herself having a powerful intuition that Goldbox conjecture is true.
¶578By the way, Goldbox's conjecture is the currently unproven mathematical claim that every even number above two is the sum of two primes. She believes that it's true and believes moreover that Goldbach's conjecture, like other mathematical truths, is necessarily true. She then remembers though that she was recently hypnotized and after watching a video of her hypnosis, realizes that the intuition that she has here is the result of post-hypnotic suggestion. Further, she's convinced that the hypnotist gave her this intuition for reasons having nothing to do with whether Goldbach's conjecture is in fact true. She sees in the video that he flipped a coin to decide whether to give her a pro Goldbach or anti-Goldbach intuition.
¶579Here it seems that Lois should suspend belief about Goldbach's conjecture after learning this information. Her explanatory concession that she doesn't actually hold the belief because it's true seems to defeat the belief. Now consider Jack. Jack sees a streak in the cloud chamber and believes that the shriek was caused by a proton. But Jack has not received the training of an ordinary physics student.
¶580Rather, he believes it because some Martians, after convincing him of their superior intellect, told him that protons cause those kinds of streaks. Moreover, they decide to tell him this not because they themselves had done any physics, but simply because they liked the sound of the English word proton. We may even suppose, if we like, that there's some deep law of Martian psychology that makes them like the sound of the word proton. And so it could not have easily happened that the Martians told Jack that such streaks were caused by something else. Finally, let's suppose that after forming the belief that protons caused those streaks, Jack learns all these details about the origins of his belief and conceds that his belief that the streaks are caused by protons is not explained in any way by the facts about what causes them.
¶581Once again, it seems like Jack should abandon his belief that protons cause the streaks. It seems like the missing explanatory connection serves as a defeater for his belief. And then here's a final case. On the basis of clear and distinct intuitions, Neora believes in an all powerful deity. Later, Agent Smith convinces her that she's part of a computer simulation.
¶582He tells her that the designers had a terrible time getting consciousness and cognition to arise in the simulation, but through endless trial and error found that they could achieve this result only by programming the inhabitants of the simulation to be strongly disposed to believe in an all powerful deity. Without such beliefs, the simulations would just like break down before they even got going. Nora believes everything he tells her, and she believes that the deity, if it does exist, had nothing to do with her religious intuitions and associated beliefs. Despite having now accepted all this, write Corman and Lockach, she doesn't abandon her belief in an all powerful deity. Surely, they say, and I agree, it is irrational for Neora to retain this belief.
¶583And why is that? Well, because she's conceded that it's not explanatory connected to any facts about the deity. The deity had nothing to do with her religious intuitions and associated beliefs. And that just serves as a defeater once she learns it. What we can glean from all the preceding is a very plausible principle, which we can call the explanatory defeat principle.
¶584If your beliefs in a domain are ultimately based on something that isn't explained by the facts it's about, then your beliefs in that domain are defeated. This principle offers a unifying and intuitive explanation of why the subjects in these various cases receive defeaters upon learning the providence of their beliefs. But here's the problem for naturalists. If naturalism is true, our moral beliefs are missing an appropriate explanatory connection to the moral facts. And yes, I know I'm assuming that there are moral facts which aren't made true by our preferences.
¶585But first, that's extremely plausible, right? Like recreational baby torture seems wrong, and it seems like it would still be wrong even if I and everyone else had preferred it. Uh, and second, even if you disagree, there are definitely facts about mathematics and metaphysics and modality and other opioid domains. Uh, and as I'll explain, my argument here shows that naturalism will also officiate much of our knowledge about those domains. But back to the problem, our moral beliefs are ultimately based on our moral intuitions or our evaluative dispositions.
¶586So intuitions are just like the way things seem to you when considering the claim. You know, for example, when you consider the claim that 1 plus 1 equals 2, that nothing can be read all over and green all over at the same time, and that if a equals b and b equals c, then a equals c. These just strike you as true. They seem or appear to be the case. That seeming or that striking or that sense of plausibility is what philosophers call an intuition.
¶587As for evaluative dispositions, those are just like dispositions to evaluate certain things as good, bad, right or wrong. And if you take your moral beliefs and continually ask why you believe them, you'll eventually reach some bedrock moral intuition or evaluative disposition such as, you know, the intuition that pain is bad or the disposition to judge that pain is bad. Either way, if naturalism is true, our bedrock moral intuitions and evaluative dispositions were instilled in us by unguided evolution. But unguided evolution only cares about survival and reproduction. We evolved our moral intuitions and evaluative dispositions because they're fitness enhancing, right?
¶588Not because they're true. As Matthew Adlesby notes, when explaining the evolution of morality, evolutionary biologists make no reference to moral facts. When explaining why we believe that it's wrong to torture babies, evolutionary biologists explanations never mention that it really is wrong to torture babies. This is for a simple reason, right? Like on the standard naturalist picture, moral facts are not the sorts of things that can move around atoms in our brains.
¶589The fact that slavery is wrong, for example, doesn't shape selection pressures in ways that cause people to believe it. But if our moral beliefs are based on intuitions or dispositions that aren't explained by the facts they're about, namely the moral facts, then by the explanatory defeat principle, our moral beliefs are defeated. And so naturalism undermines our moral knowledge. And we can put this reasoning as follows in the form of a syllogism. Premise one, if our beliefs in a domain are ultimately based on something that isn't explained by the facts it's about, then our beliefs in that domain are defeated.
¶590Premise two, if naturalism is true, our moral beliefs are ultimately based on intuitions or dispositions that aren't explained by the facts they're about. So if naturalism is true, our moral beliefs are defeated. The next premise says that, hey, but we do have moral knowledge, so our moral beliefs are not defeated, and so naturalism is false. Now, importantly, the argument here extends very naturally to lots of our opori beliefs. So even if you just believe in moral facts, again, you've still got a massive problem on your hands as a naturalist.
¶591Under naturalism, facts about, for example, epistemic normativity don't explain our epistemic intuitions. The fact that prior distributions should encode a bias towards simpler theories doesn't explain our intuitions about theory choice under naturalism. If naturalism is true, abstract metaphysical facts about composition don't explain our intuition that if particles arranged chair-wise compose a chair, then particles arranged table-wise compose a table. The fact that a naturally purple cow-like object is metaphysically possible doesn't explain our modal intuition that it is possible. I mean like I could go on but like you get the point right?
¶592Naturalism sinks boatloads of things that we take ourselves to know about epistemology about theory choice about metaphysics about modality about other opioid domains as well and it's disastrously skeptical to give up all of those across the board. In fact radical skepticism looms for the naturalist. Um, one thing that would really defeat my beliefs, as we noted earlier in the abductive section, is if the vast majority of observers who had qualitatively identical beliefs to me, or at least qualitatively similar belief sets to me were deceived, >> right? >> If all of them were in skeptical scenarios. So, the fact that not just that I'm happened not to be in a skeptical scenario, but it would defeat my justification if I believe that the vast majority of people in the universe were in skeptical scenarios, right?
¶593and I was having to posit just that I won the epistemic lottery. Right. >> Right. >> And so then what I want to say is there needs to be um some kind of explanatory connection between the absence of all of those deceived observers and then my belief in that the prepoundonderance of non-deceived observers is greater than the number of deceived observers. Right?
¶594So in order for me to be justified in holding this key antiseptical assumption that the universe is overall or the totality of all reality is mostly epistemically friendly, right? That epistemic friendliness obtains and not just that I won the epistemic lottery and I happen to be in an epistemically friendly >> of a universe that's full of epistemic unfriendliness for people that are all relevantly similar to me. Now, we've seen already how it's hard for naturalists to accommodate just the bare data that the prepundonderance, right? >> But now they need there to be a connection between the proportion of non-deceived versus deceived and my beliefs about the proportion of deceived versus non-deceived. Yes.
¶595Or otherwise I lose my justification for my anti-epticism, for my skepticism. >> And notice how impossibly difficult that is for them to do. Because the reason it's impossibly difficult for them to do that is because regardless of what they say about this universe, there's no explanatory connection between the existence of this universe and the non-existence of a causally isolated alternative universe that plays by different rules. >> Yeah. How could there be?
¶596Right. Yeah. >> There can't be an explanatory connection that correlates those two things. And so therefore, it's impossible for the absence of the deceived observers to explain any observable facts about this universe. Right.
¶597>> Yes. Right. And so therefore, it's impossible for there to be an explanatory connection um between my forming this belief and the absence of the tons and tons of skeptical observers elsewhere in the multiverse. Right. >> Yeah.
¶598>> And so therefore, my justification for that belief is defeated because there's no possible way for the way it was formed to be explanatorily sensitive to its truth. >> Yes. Um because I can only access the facts that are in my local causal network and not all the parallel universes that are sort of causally insulated from this universe. >> Um >> Oh yeah, that's good. That's that's that's tight.
¶599Um No. Yeah. Go ahead. Uhhuh. >> Now, but this is where we start getting more directly to classical theism.
¶600>> Yeah. Good. >> Which is if we think about it, what is required for God in order for him to satisfy that explanationist constraint for us? Mhm. >> Cuz notice initially we could just say there's a designer, right?
¶601And the designer cares about us having accurate mathematical beliefs and somehow has access to the mathematical knowledge or somehow has access to the moral knowledge, right? >> Mhm. >> But in in that case, the it's sort of irrelevant if that designer is finite in his power and finite in his knowledge as long as he covers all the power and knowledge that's necessary to design a universe where all of our epistemic constraints are satisfied. right and cares about us satisfying those epistmic constraints. So you can get a demi urge basically, >> right?
¶602Right >> or any variation on the normal classical theistic god, >> right? >> Um to accommodate the same data. But in this case, the first thing that our guy has to have in order to serve this epistemic bodyguard role to make it to where him wanting us to know that the preponderance of observers are rational. Um basically where he can correlate the truth of that with our believing it involves everything exists. Everything that exists depending upon the consent of this entity to exist.
¶603>> Right. >> So that that gets us first to ultimacy. >> Yes. >> Right. >> Gets us to ultimacy.
¶604>> And why does it get us to ultimacy? Because he has to in order for him to function as the epistemic bodyguard, he has to explain absences. Which means that in he has to consent to the existence of anything. Because if he doesn't if if he doesn't have that power, if there are things that could pop into existence that he would have no causal influence over, >> right? Yeah.
¶605>> Then he wouldn't actually be able to explain the non-existence of observers in those. >> Yes. Great. >> Precisely. He has these motivations and everything that exists outside of him in some way depends upon his existence and its conformity with his goals >> in order to exist.
¶606And so that there's that ultimacy, this priority where he gets to determine what exists. And if he doesn't permit it to exist, if it's not consistent with his objectives that it exists, it doesn't exist. >> It just doesn't ever come about. Right. Good.
¶607>> And so that already gets us from a demiurge, right, from the simulator and the nested loop of simulations or whatever like that, >> right? >> Those guys, none of those guys are equipped to play this role. >> No. Right. >> Only the first cause guy that is ultimate >> is actually equipped to play the role of epistemic bodyguard.
¶608Yeah. >> So that's the first point is ultimacy. there's some kind of onic priority that he has where everything else depends upon his consent for its existence so that he can ensure this prepoundonderance condition is met. Yeah. With a prepoundonderance of observers or rational non-deceived observers.
¶609>> Okay. So having spelled out my first argument in this section, let's turn to objections to that first argument. >> The two biggest objections are third factor responses and constitutivist responses. Now, KB and Swenson in their excellent paper, God and Moral Knowledge, link that in the document, articulate and address third factor responses quite well. So, let's read their discussion.
¶610Suppose a naturalist agrees that nothing in the moral domain explains why we have the moral beliefs we do. Suppose they also agree that our moral beliefs don't explain the moral facts. They might still attempt to reconcile moral knowledge and naturalism by claiming that natural processes, although not aimed directly at moral accuracy, are aimed at some third thing which is roughly correlated with moral accuracy. In this case, even though these processes do not aim at moral accuracy, they could not easily have been wildly inaccurate. One version of this third factor response has been defended by, you know, among others, the philosopher David Enoch, excellent philosopher, by the way.
¶611Evolutionary processes give us more beliefs that promote survival. They tend toward making us think that the things which promote survival are good. Fortunately, promoting survival actually does tend to be good. So, we wind up with beliefs about what's good that are fairly accurate. Accordingly, the story goes, we could not have easily wound up with largely false moral beliefs.
¶612And this is enough to make them non-accal in the way needed for knowledge. Now, one reason Enoch's approach is unsatisfactory is that it doesn't actually account for the full extent of our moral knowledge since it could easily have turned out that like most of the fitness enhancing acts were morally bad even though survival as such is good. Like if we had evolved like bees or gerbles or other animals, our moral senses would have favored fratricside or auto infanticide or egalitarianism, even rape or beastiality. These things easily could have promoted survival among our ancestors had evolution taken a slightly different course. More generally, evolutionary influences could easily have distorted moral intuitions or evaluative dispositions enough that we had much less moral knowledge than we do.
¶613The same is true of much of our oprior knowledge, by the way. So for example, presumably evolution easily could have given us different beliefs about the distribution of composite objects or the conditions under which composition occurs as long as we behave in roughly the same ways. So again, I don't think third factor responses work. But there's a more fundamental problem with these third factor responses. These third factor solutions assume that showing that we don't hold our moral beliefs because of anything in the moral domain is a threat to moral knowledge because this seems to show that we easily could have been mistaken about the the moral domain in question.
¶614And then they attempt to show that well hey hold on a second like we couldn't have easily have been a mistaken. So that there really isn't a skeptical threat here. But our explanatory defeat principle from earlier reveals that third factor solutions are mistaken on this point. Right? The lack of an explanatory connection between the moral domain and our beliefs is itself enough to defeat moral knowledge and once we recognize it to make us unjustified in holding our belief.
¶615Return to the case of Neora, right? She's the one who intuitits that there is an all powerful deity only because this intuition made her simulation stable enough to harbor conscious cognizers like her, but later learns that the deity, if it exists, had literally nothing to do with her intuitions, which were again the basis of her belief in the deity. That Neora cannot justifiably maintain both her belief in the deity and her belief that she ultimately holds it only because the programmers instilled it in her for reasons having nothing to do with anything in the theological domain. And the problem for Enoch and third factor responses is that Neora apparently takes herself to be in a position quite similar to the one that proponents of third factor explanations take themselves to be in. Suppose that like Enoch, she starts out by giving the benefit of the doubt to the sense in question and presumes that the deity exists.
¶616She's then in a position to argue like Enoch, well, hey, you know, I couldn't have easily been wrong. You know, it wouldn't have been easy for an all powerful being not to exist. And it wouldn't have been easy for me not to believe in it given that, you know, the programmers couldn't get simulations running where people don't have such beliefs. So, we might imagine that she, like Enoch, concludes that she can hold her belief despite there being no explanatory connection between it and the theological domain because by her lights, she couldn't have easily been wrong. So like third factor responses would allow Neora to avoid defeat even when she learns that the basis for her belief has nothing to do with the theological domain.
¶617But that just seems completely wrong, right? Like her beliefs are obviously defeated and precisely because of the missing explanatory connection. And so third factor responses fail. Well, what about constituist responses? These maintain that we have some unique faculty by which we directly grasp the moral, metaphysical, modal and mathematical domains.
¶618Thus, facts in these domains partly constitute our intuitions about them, thereby affording a constitutive explanatory connection between the facts and our beliefs. But this response is a hollow victory for the naturalist and for any atheist who doesn't posit that ultimate reality cares about value or epistemic hospitability. for it's extremely surprising under naturalism that evolutionary forces would burp out this exceedingly spooky totally unprecedented sooie genenerous faculty that's neither reducible to the particle arrangements in brains nor posited by any current scientific theory like do you hear what you're saying dear naturalist do you not see how this is like radically discordant with the letter and spirit of your entire worldview so even if this constitutivist responds technically avoids undermining moral and various opriory beliefs. It just amounts to yet another massive probabilistic hit to naturalism. And again, not just naturalism, but like any view on which like fundamental reality is not directed towards value or at least epistemic hospitability.
¶619And also like not only did evolution miraculously puke up this sooie generous faculty, but the faculty also just like happens to be pretty reliable when it could easily instead have been like irreparably plagued with abundant intellectual illusions that were evolutionarily advantageous. Like come on, dude. You're positing two miracles just to avoid this one argument for theism. Like come on. Here's a final point before turning to the second argument of this section.
¶620I have been pushing an explanatory defeater for your moral and various operatory beliefs under naturalism. But suppose you don't accept the explanatory defeat principle. I think you're mistaken. But even still, so long as there's a decent chance that a lack of explanatory connection defeats our moral beliefs, the naturalist is in trouble because we shouldn't merely believe that recreationally torturing children is objectively wrong or that those opery claims are true. We should be highly confident in them.
¶621But since naturalism debars an explanatory connection of the requisite kind and there's a decent chance, the absence of said connection defeats our beliefs, then there's a decent chance under naturalism that our beliefs in these domains are defeated. In which case, we could no longer be highly confident in them. So naturalism still faces a serious problem. If naturalism is true, you should not have high confidence in the relevant beliefs, but you should. So naturalism is false.
¶622But okay, fine. Suppose you're still not convinced by the argument of this section and you think naturalism defeats neither moral nor oporary knowledge nor our high confidence therein. Still the second argument in this section shows that moral and oporary knowledge are strong evidence for theism over naturalism. So let's turn to that second argument from moral and opery knowledge. This is a basian argument.
¶623Basian argument. Yes. It's a basian argument. Just basian. You're going to get the bas.
¶624If naturalism is true, then our basic moral and a priori intuitions are the products of blind evolution and cultural conditioning. But evolution and cultural factors don't care about moral, modal, metaphysical or mathematical truth. They care about genetic or mimedic survival and reproduction, but they're indifferent to the actual truth of our moral and operatory beliefs. But then it would be a shocking coincidence if our moral and operary beliefs were mostly accurate and complete. Like we can imagine evolution proceeding in all sorts of different ways that by our current lights would have led to like massive error about the moral and opioid domain.
¶625Like as Charles Darwin himself noted, if men were reared under precisely the same conditions as hive bees, our unmarried females would like the worker bees think it a sacred duty to kill their brothers and mothers would strive to kill their fertile daughters and no one would think of interfering. We might we might add here that if we evolved like gerbles, you know, mothers would have thought it totally permissible to literally consume their children. Similarly, philosopher Mark Lynville notes that certain pack animals know their place in the social hierarchy. Ah, the social hierarchy with all the lobsters. In fact, there are hierarchies within the hierarchies, right?
¶626The social hierarchies and the lobsters, they're coming for you. Were these pack animals endowed with moral thoughts? The moral sense of these animals would tell them that the interests and value of higherranked members of the pack trumps that of lower ranked members of the pack. These observations led Sharon Street to write the following. Allowing our evaluative judgments to be shaped by evolutionary influences is analogous to setting out for Bermuda and letting the course of your boat be determined by the wind and tides.
¶627Just as the push of the wind and tides on your boat has nothing to do with where you want to go, so the historical push of natural selection on the content of our evaluative judgments has nothing to do with evaluative truth. Of course, it's possible that as a matter of sheer chance, some large portion of our evaluative judgments ended up true due to a happy coincidence between the realists independent evaluative truths and the evaluative directions in which natural selection tended to push us. But this would require a fluke of luck that's not only extremely unlikely in view of the huge universe of logically possible evaluative judgments and truths, but also astoundingly convenient to the realist. Naturalists then are yet again saddled with a highly unlikely happy coincidence. But given theism, it's much less surprising that our moral and operary beliefs would be largely accurate and complete since a good god would have a reason and the means to bias whatever mechanism produced our cognitive faculties towards moral and opery truth.
¶628So the fact that we have moral and operary knowledge is strong evidence for theism over naturalism. And so that concludes my two arguments in this section on moral and operate knowledge. Let's get on to beauty and aesthetic experience. The world is utterly saturated with beauty. Almost anywhere you look, there's beauty, right?
¶629Beauty of proteins. Oh gosh. Stop. Stop sign. Beauty of proteins.
¶630There's a stop sign for all. I didn't mean that. This has a very complex meaning that's like known to me alone. But um I'm keeping that in. There's the beauty of proteins and cells and organs and organ systems and animals and populations and ecospheres.
¶631Animals. Look at these things. I mean, look at that. This is so beautiful. There's beauty of deep space and galaxies and dust clouds.
¶632There's beauty of deep time and the gradual unfolding of the cosmic narrative. There's beauty of nature, right? Like rocks, trees, leaves, flowers, landscapes, mountains, bodies of water, the sun, the moon, clouds. There's beauty of independently converging lines of evidence that fit together like a puzzle piece. There's beauty of laws of nature.
¶633There's beauty of character, beauty in architecture, industrial design, and realistic art. beauty of customs and cultures, abstract visual beauty, cinematic beauty, mathematical beauty like fractal images, which as Puce notes in his excellent lecture on arguments from beauty, are beautiful not only in what they visually present, but also in what they represent, namely a very simple and elegant algorithm. There's auditory beauty of flowing rivers, chirping birds, roaring lines, harmonious songs. There's non-sensory beauty in abstract mathematical objects and structures like the set theoretic hierarchy. There's beauty in proofs, in mathematic, logic, and philosophy.
¶634There's poetic and in narrative beauty. Like I could go on. I could go on for ages. As if our tenant writes, "On the telescopic and on the microscopic scale, from the starry heaven to the salicious skeleton of the diatom, in her inward parts as well as on the surface, in flowers that blush unseen, and gems that the unfathomed caves of ocean bear, nature is sublime or beautiful, and the exceptions do but prove the rule. However various be the taste for beauty and however diverse the levels of its education or the degrees of its refinement, nature elicits aesthetic sentiment from men severally and collectively.
¶635And the more fidious becomes this taste, the more poignantly and the more lavishly does she gratify it. Okay, so like what's going on here? Like does doesn't it seem really sus that the world is just shot through with beauty? Like come on. Like the world obviously didn't have to be this way.
¶636In fact, there are untold hordes of ways that the world might have been drab and dull and boring and lousy and ugly and aesthetically contemptable even if it contained psychophysically lucky conscious rational creatures who systematically avoided skeptical scenarios and to enjoy significant moral and operating knowledge. So even backgrounding all the evidence against naturalism we've canvased so far, beauty comes along and just slaps naturalism in the face with still further counter evidence. Like there are absurdly many conceivable ways natural world could have contained little to no beauty. Indeed, since the intricacy and complexity of the world is part of what makes it so beautiful, many of those alternative beauty deprived worlds will plausibly be much simpler and so more intrinsically probable than beautyfilled worlds like ours. Yet we happen to land upon the aesthetic jackpot of a world saturated with beauty.
¶637This is much more surprising on naturalism than theism and hence strongly favors theism over naturalism. For God would have lots of excellent reasons to actualize a world saturated with beauty. Right? Like beauty is good and so is its appreciation. Beauty points us beyond the mundane can draw us to God.
¶638And a stunningly beautiful world is also just a magnificent display or manifestation of God's intelligence, power, craftsmanship, and awesome majesty. It's also quite striking that we have aesthetic experience. In other words, that we can actually appreciate and enjoy beauty. Even if there are evolutionary explanations of our aesthetic sense, the evolutionary process wasn't at all guaranteed to produce beings with an aesthetic sense, let alone an aesthetic sense directed towards the vast and diverse array of beautiful concrete and abstract structures in the world. Creatures without an aesthetic sense or with a pathetically emaciated aesthetic sense compared to ours easily could have evolved instead.
¶639So, it's still surprising under naturalism that evolution happened to take a course that conferred upon us aesthetic experience. By contrast, that isn't so surprising under theism. Oh, and by the way, this point shows that even if you think beauty is subjective, so that there aren't facts about what's beautiful that hold independently of our perceptions. The argument from the existence and character of aesthetic experience is still good evidence for theism over naturalism. Now, I'll conclude my argument here with a passage from the brilliant non-theist philosopher Paul Draper, whom I mentioned much earlier in the video, who writes that theism is supported by the fact that the universe contains an abundance of beauty.
¶640The fact that the parts of the universe constructed by humans are not, for the most part, beautiful, shows that there's nothing about physical objects that makes them inevitably beautiful. Thus, a beautiful universe, especially one containing beings that can appreciate that beauty, is clearly more likely on theism than on naturalism. And so is evidence favoring theism over naturalism. But what about ugliness, Joe? Like, you know, if beauty is evidence for God's existence, isn't ugliness evidence against God's existence?
¶641I mean, Joe, like, you exist, right? Like, isn't that like a decisive counter example to the argument from beauty? Like, what's going on here? Well, uh, here's how Alexander Puce addresses this objection. >> Augustine had this holistic solution to the problem of evil, which was actually based on aesthetic considerations, and it works a lot better on the aesthetic side.
¶642So the his idea is that ugly things are used by artists as part of a much greater work and the light of the whole the isolated part is not important or even beneficial. So for instance this is I think as far as it goes a really ugly painting of two hands but you know it's we have a very limited view here. Let's zoom out. Now the whole is lovely but it's not just lovely despite the hands the hands are are central to a painting if they were better developed uh better as hands um they would draw our attention because the the you know that we visually sort of look towards the middle and maybe slightly above the middle. It would draw our attention and and keep it there whereas the attention isn't supposed to stay there.
¶643It's supposed to wander away. supposed to wander to the glowing clouds and the the fields of grass and the billowing bits of the dress um and the little boy. And so there's a good reason why the hands are as they are given where they are in the hole. In the moral case, this kind of a story of the of the meaning of the part in terms of the whole has the problem that it seems to treat people who are suffering horrible things as mere means. But it's not a it's on the ugliness side.
¶644It's not as much of a problem. We're not treating people as means. We are maybe treating bits of nature as means or bits of things made by us like the dump like the dump. That seems less of a problem. Also, I think there's an interesting asymmetry.
¶645I I'm almost at the end now. Um so we observe a very tiny part of the universe both in terms of what as what modalities we observe under we have a small number of senses and the physical extent of it and so on. We find some things ugly here. I think it is risky to judge an artist not talented on the basis of a small part. Think of back to the hands in Monet's woman with the umbrella.
¶646And it is more risky to judge an art artist untalented on the basis of a small part than to judge an artist talented on the basis of a small part. So for instance here, this is a small part. I'll tell you this is a small part of a painting, though it could be a standalone painting. Um I think it would be a I think we're right to judge that it is a talented artist on the basis of this small part. But even so the the the part even when it shows talent it it can generate expectations that are then overcome by the whole.
¶647We have this very much in literature surprising plot twists. So if if there's something in the part that we don't like that might well disappear in the whole or it might become transformed in its meaning in the whole. But I think when there's something good in the part, there's a chance that you know that it will not actually be good in the whole. I mean in literature we see these things that events that seem to be good but turn out to be bad. But the talent of the of the writer or the painter in the part is in it can't be judged from just the part if it's talented.
¶648But the lack of talent I think not always. Sometimes there may be a specific reason for why it looks stilt. It's written in a stilted way, in a stilted voice, say um because the whole can overcome it. So here, let me zoom out for this one. I I had fun once in the National Gallery in Washington DC looking at paintings close up and seeing ways that the whole is different from the parts.
¶649Um so the whole is beautiful as is the part, but the the tone is utterly different. And there's good reason for the difference. Again, we have the foreground and the background and it's it there's a theological significance here as to why the the back the thing in the background is dimmer and so on. So I think positive judgments oh I I I should have said can be confidently made based on a small part or with some confidence at least but negative ones not so much and so I think there's an asymmetry which makes the argument from ugliness not a very strong one. Now, I'll add the following.
¶650Um, even though ugliness is, you know, some evidence against theism, for the reasons Puce gives, I don't think it's going to be nearly as strong evidence as beauty is for theism. For we can see lots of entirely reasonable explanations for the inclusion of ugly parts in God's artwork. Like, ugliness creates contrast, induces variety, draws attention to and heightens appreciation of the beautiful parts, contributes to rawness and seriousness and disturbance, all of which can serve salutary aesthetic ends. It can enable a sense of development or struggle or transformation and so much more besides. Moreover, God may have moral reason for the inclusion or permission of ugliness in the cosmic drama.
¶651Like if the cosmic drama was just bursting with the most insanely gorgeous features, that might start to make God's existence much more obvious to many more people to the point of removing the psychological possibility of doubt for them. But that might compromise the various goods associated with a level of obscurity concerning God's existence. You know that obscurity facilitates sincere seeking after God. It preserves the freedom of the ascent of faith. It enables dialogue and love across deep ideological barriers.
¶652It provides opportunities for us to help each other spiritually and intellectually which can reap eternal benefits and go on. Right? So all in all, I don't think the problem of ugliness is a particularly forceful response to the argument from beauty and aesthetic experience. It's it's just a good argument, the argument for beauty and aesthetic experience. All right, so we move on at long last to the final piece of theistic evidence in my philosophical case for theism and that is religious experience.
¶653Right? Like at this point, you know the drill, right? Like even if we put all the preceding data into our background knowledge, if natural is mystery, we still wouldn't expect that millions if not billions of us throughout history would seem to perceptually experience God or a transcendent, very powerful, very good ultimate personal reality. Tons of mystics throughout history have had extremely profound experiences wherein their senses are suspended and they seem to be directly aware of God. More common are felt senses or experiences of God's love and presence, religious visions, hearing God's voice, and seeming to experientially interact with God or a figure like Christ or lesser spiritual beings.
¶654Now, I could go on for many hours quoting people describing their religious experiences, but I just want to take like five cool examples that I came across online. So, the first is actually from the popular YouTuber Jesus and Whatnot. One night I sent them a text and I said, "Hey, I understand a lot of your guys' beliefs now and I think there is some credence to what you're saying, but I will never become Catholic until you guys can show me intercession of the saints in the Bible." Now, obviously, I wasn't thinking to myself, if they show me a verse, then I will become Catholic. It was more an empty offer, but they took it pretty seriously and they started sending me all of these Bible verses, verses from Revelation and from Hebrews 12, all of these verses that really did build up the idea of intercession of the saints. But I was too stubborn.
¶655I told them that it wasn't enough and that I still wasn't going to become Catholic. And they tried really hard. They they really did. So again, sorry guys, but one night they said, "Hey, we're not going to be able to convince you that intercession of the saints is the truth, but we do have an idea. We want you to pray tonight to Mary and another saint of your choice and ask them to pray for you and then afterwards pray to God and ask for forgiveness if this was wrong." Now, I heard this idea and at first I was pretty hesitant, but I decided, you know what?
¶656God knows what my intentions are. He knows where my heart is at and he will forgive me if what I did was wrong. So I asked for their intercession. I asked for them to pray for me. I called upon the intercession of Mary.
¶657I just said a Hail Mary and kind of an awkward chat with her. And then I also asked for the intercession of St. Augustine whose confessions I was reading at the time. After I prayed to these saints, I asked God for forgiveness. And I was expecting to feel really guilty.
¶658But strangely enough, I felt a lot of peace after this intercessory prayer. And then I went to sleep. And while I was sleeping, I had a dream. And the dream, I won't go into the details, was entirely in Latin. I saw all of these golden words flashing in front of my eyes.
¶659And there was a whole plot about, you know, getting home to New Jerusalem. And when I woke up in the morning, I translated the Latin words, which is a language I didn't speak, by the way. So, I couldn't have made this up in my dream, but I translated the Latin words and it was talking about intercession of the saints. And it was talking about how it was good. So, I called my friend and I said, "Hey, I need to become Catholic immediately." Because I truly believe to this day that that was God speaking to me, telling me to come home to Rome.
¶660And so we drove to the church, we talked to the priest, we talked to the director of evangelization, and they told me I was getting ready to become Catholic and that all I need to do is go through OCIA. Now, a super interesting part of this story is there was actually a mini prophecy within my dream. It started telling me about getting confirmed on the Easter Vigil, which is super interesting because OCIA takes 9 months, but the Easter Vigil was only about a month and a half away. So I was kind of confused as to what that could be talking about. But once I started talking with the priest and the director of evangelization, they told me I was going to be confirmed without going through OCIA and on the Easter Vigil, which was very, very interesting.
¶661So again, I truly believe that this was from God and I'm so glad that I became Catholic. I'm not necessarily making this video to convince anyone of my beliefs or convince anyone that um God spoke to me, but rather to explain why I have the beliefs that I do and why I'm so passionate about sharing these beliefs. Beast. All right. So, here's another super fun religious experience that I came across.
¶662Um this guy, uh Rion Swiggelar was the founder of the Satanic Church in South Africa. And there are literally videos of him online, you know, saying things like hail Satan and wearing like uh pentagrams and whatnot. Uh including like very shortly before his conversion and his experience. So um let's let's listen to his experience because it's pretty cool. >> Absolutely.
¶663So in May um 2022, this was um the 24th of May actually 2022 um I was supposed to do a certain ritual and twice a year um there is seven satanic organizations around the world that have like a online type of meeting um where they plan the satanic agenda and they look at how far the satanic agenda is progressed. test at that stage um and what needs to be done next. So at that time um every satanic organization decided that they need to get someone in their organization to perform the same ritual um which involves crying. So to look into the spirit world for certain answers and because of my background as a psychic medium um the church council thought a good that I should be the person to do that ritual. So I booked out um as a part of this church um there there was a lower temple that was under the parking area.
¶664So I booked that out for the specific ritual and um on the evening I was actually preparing for this ritual and um there's a lot of preparation when it comes to satanic rituals like it's not as simple as you light a candle and hail Satan and there you go. Um, so, um, I was busy putting out tools and I was busy lighting candles on the floor. And there's five candles that you're supposed to light at the the point of of a star. So, when I got to the second candle, this whole space lit up as if somebody was shining a light into the space. And I stood up and I turned around and there was this man standing there and I had no idea who he was and I asked him like who are you and like what are you doing here you know like very confrontational >> and he said to me I am Yeshua of Nazareth and I said I'm very sorry like I'm not going to believe that cuz this is obviously a trick or something.
¶665Then you'll have to prove it. And the next minute he flooded me with the most intense beautiful love that I've ever experienced. And it was so overwhelming that I fell to my knees and and as it says in the word, every knee shall bow. That is indeed the truth. >> Wow.
¶666And when I actually looked up, he was gone. So that that experience was probably less than two minutes. >> And I didn't get to do the ritual at all. Um in fact, I was completely um questioning my own sanity at that stage. And I actually locked up the space.
¶667Um I got into my car, I drove home. I also remember for some reason that the it was like the whole world actually went quiet >> like like somebody turned off the sound of the world. So it was like yeah >> the second religious experience that I want to cover is this article in the National Catholic Register on the astonishing power of one Hail Mary. Did you ever think about or realize what the power of one Hail Mary can do? John Petravvic and Father Joe Freriedy have after a recent convincing incident.
¶668When I heard it, I was struck how incredible that story is. Father Freedy, senior parochial vicor at Divine Mercy Parish in Pittsburgh and president of Drybones Ministries said after he listened to Petravich recounting the details to him at the end of the retreat. Shortly before on a Saturday morning, Petravvic was running as usual in a Pittsburgh neighborhood. On his route, he passed a house where there was an ambulance in the driveway. The house's front door and garage doors were open.
¶669Growing up, every time you heard any type of siren, ambulance or police car, you made the sign of the cross and said a prayer for those in need and protection for those involved. That was second nature to me," Petravvic told the register. "One thing different on that occasion was," I always said that prayer, but never felt compelled to say a particular prayer. "That was the one thing that was different than anything else, and the first prayer that came to mind that day was the Hail Mary." Petravich thought of stopping and helping, but since he has no first aid training, he decided to keep running. although he wondered if he was wrong not to stop.
¶670Yet he prayed, "God, if that ambulance is still parked in that driveway, I will stop and see if I can give assistance." On his run back, he reported the ambulance was not there, there were no lights in the house, the garage door was shut, and the front door was shut. The following Thursday, after work, Petravvic was running in the same neighborhood. Approaching the house where he had seen the ambulance, he saw a lady at the edge of the driveway of that house and she started waving her hand. She said, she said, "Stop. Please stop." Petravich recalled.
¶671So I came to the edge of the driveway and she said, "Thank you for stopping, sir. I need to talk to you. I have to thank you because you saved my life." Puzzled, Petravvic asked, "How did I save your life?" Then he related. She tells me, "Let me tell you what happened to me last week." Alone at home, she suddenly started feeling strange and blacked out. She knew she was dying.
¶672She told Pedrovich how before finding herself in a hospital bed and about to regain consciousness, she got a vision of Jesus who came to her and said, "It's okay. Everything is going to be fine. You're going to be fine because this person prayed for you. On the palm of his hand was your face. On Jesus's hand, she told him, recounting what went through her mind.
¶673And I thought, I have to thank you for saving my life. And how do you react to something like that? Petravich told the register. I was speechless. I didn't know what to say except thank you.
¶674This is such a based story. I mean, again, like it's just fun. Like, I'm going through this because it's fun. Like I mean like I'm not going to present this as like a super rigorous comprehensive case for Catholicism. I'm not gonna like I'm not going to present this as sorry Juan.
¶675I'm not going to present this as one of like the miracles in a comprehensive case for Catholicism. The point is just that like it's a cool religious experience story like you know seem like the person is probably telling the truth and like you know. So that's the second example of a religious experience like the sorts of things that happen. Um, let's go on to three other examples from Travis Dumsay's excellent paper, Evidentially Compelling Religious Experiences and the Moral Status of Naturalism. Leanne Hadley is a United Methodist minister and former chaplain at a children's hospital.
¶676In a book on her chapency experiences, she recounts an interaction with a 10-year-old boy who was awaiting surgery to remove a brain tumor. His attendant nurse was concerned that he manifested a fear of death and poor attitude to the surgery, and he asked Hadley to talk to him. Here's Hadley's report. I went into his room expecting to see an upset or angry child. But James was sitting up and smiled as I walked into the room.
¶677We talked for a few minutes and there was nothing abnormal about him. He wasn't upset. He wasn't angry. He wasn't depressed. I asked him how he felt about the surgery and he said fine.
¶678I asked if he was upset because they would have to shave off even more of his hair and he wasn't. I saw no sign of a bad attitude. Finally, I told him that I'd been called in because his nurse was worried that he had a negative attitude about surgery. He had no idea what I was talking about. I decided I needed to ask his nurse what he had said that made her so upset.
¶679As I was leaving the room, James said, Leanne, I need to ask you something. Yes, I replied. Is there time for me to be baptized before my surgery? I think so, I said. But why?
¶680Is there any special reason you want to be baptized? Because God told me to in my dream, he replied nonchalantly. It began to dawn on me that this dream might have been what he had shared with the nurse. He goes on to tell her about meeting Jesus in a dream, who showed him a glimpse of heaven. Jesus asked me if I wanted to cross the bridge with him.
¶681I did. I wanted to go wherever he went. So, he took my hand and we crossed the bridge and he showed me heaven. Leon, heaven is so beautiful. It isn't what you expect because we've never seen anything as beautiful as it is.
¶682I don't know how long I stayed in heaven, but you know, Jesus told me it was time to go home. Then he told me that he showed me heaven because I would be coming here in 3 months and he didn't want me to be worried or afraid. He said my surgery will go fine, but I'll still die in 3 months. He promised to meet me on the bridge again. And he told me that I needed to be baptized before surgery.
¶683So, can I be baptized? This is this is just so based. James and his family were Baptists who delay the administration of that sacrament until the age of reason. So like Christ is going out of his way. I'm so sorry.
¶684This is so funny. Christ is going out of his way to like appear to this child in a dream who's like, "Listen, I know you've got this heretical Protestant theology, this heretical Baptist theology, but like dude, you need to get baptized before you die." Okay. Anyway, um I was speechless. Yes, of course, I said, coming back to reality. I mean, we have to ask your parents, but I can't imagine they won't agree.
¶685I went back to the nurse and told her that James wanted to be baptized before surgery. We had only a few hours until he would be taken to the operating room. She didn't want him to be baptized. He's preparing to die and he needs to have a positive attitude for surgery, she said. He has no fear of dying in surgery, I reminded her.
¶686The nurse reluctantly called his parents. They of course agreed and the surgery was a success. James recovered quickly and was released from the hospital within a few days. About two months after his release from the hospital, he had started having trouble swallowing and speaking. He had been taken into the cancer center for more tests and it was discovered that his brain tumor had some fingers that were embedded deeply in his brain.
¶687They couldn't be removed because doing so would have destroyed his brain and the surgery itself would have killed him. James mother said that he never showed any signs of anxiety or fear. It was 3 months after a surgery when he died. All right, let's go on to another case from Travis's paper. Uh the Religious Experience Research Center, formerly housed at uh Oxford, now at the University of Wales, has for more than 40 years collected and archived reports from the general public, and they periodically published collections of these reports.
¶688Here's one from the anthology edited by Maxwell and Shudin. This happened in the year when Lord Derby was calling for army recruits before conscription for World War I. We were boy and girlfriends and married when the war was behind us. My husband to be knew he would have to enlist and he dreaded the idea, but he didn't want to be a conscript, so decided to join the derby scheme that summer. Maybe it's Darby.
¶689Anyway, it was a Saturday evening, a glorious evening with the most brilliant moon, when he asked my opinion about this joining up, but I refused, as I said, if anything happened to him, I should always blame myself. We were on a country lane near my home, now built up, but then pasture land on both sides, which I knew well on each side of the road. As we walked along, scarcely speaking, as the decision was little nearer, we suddenly saw a brilliance, most unusual, even more than the loveliest moon I have ever seen. There was an opening in the stone wall with much more light than the moon. the width of a farmyard gate, which I knew a gate did not exist for several yards further down the road.
¶690Then a figure emerged, a most brilliant sight. We were both speechless, but not afraid. It was so beautiful. The figure, Jesus Christ, glided on to the center of the road while we were on the rough pavement. We were spellbound as the figure walked up, and we were walking down.
¶691We could see the white gown with a broad twisted girdle around his waist, nodded and falling down his left side. The figure glided along, but we could see no feet. And as it got nearer, we tried to make out his face features, but could not. And as it got level with us, it gradually faded away from the bottom of the gown up to the head, and it had vanished. When we got down to the wall opening, it was the solid wall, as I knew it for many years, further down, and it had got and it had got to near midnight.
¶692But still, we never spoke to each other. We were we were spellbound. When we got to my home, as he was about to leave me, we at last spoke, cross- questioned each other on what we had seen without a hint on the matter. Each and every answer coincided. We still remember every detail, but our views on religion have deepened.
¶693Although still we are not too religious. Okay. A final case study from uh Travis Dunce for her doctoral dissertation anthropology at the University of Birmingham. Emma Heathcoat James decided to study contemporary belief in angels. As part of her research, she solicited reports of encounters with what people took to be angels.
¶694Initially, the requests appeared just in local church newsletters, then circulated much more broadly throughout the UK as public interest in the project mounted. She received more than 800 accounts from across the country. There was actually quite a variety in the reports. Some tell of seeing beings that do accord with biblical and other traditional descriptions. Others relate audible messages, supernatural rescues or warnings, etc.
¶695that are interpreted by the recipients as being of possible angelic origin. Here's an example of the latter kind. Paul Dunwell lost control of his motorbike going around a bend at 70 mph in the dark. Minutes before he had passed a red sports car, also going at speed. Paul wrote, "All I could think of was I'd risked the life of the driver now that my bike lay in his path on the blind bend.
¶696Telling myself that my own idiocy had brought all of this about, I resolved to try to move the bike despite its weight and my hands being a bit pulped. Time was, I knew, running out. Then an odd thing happened. The car appeared on the bend at a snail's pace. His hazard warning lights already on.
¶697He stopped there in randomly and said, "You'll never guess what just happened. There was a light in my car." And I was told, like there was somebody there in the car with me and actually shown that you were lying there in the road. I was told I mustn't hit you. Okay, so those are all, you know, those are all just kind of interesting, kind of cute, kind of cool, you know, they're not part of like my like comprehensive miraculous case, you know, like this is not like I'm not wielding out like the super big guns here, but like so like I'm not I'm not saying that these examples of religious experience like prove God exists or prove that Catholicism is true. That's not the point.
¶698The point is that quite profound, very striking religious experiences are very common. It very often perceptually appears to people that God or Christ or some other lesser spiritual entity exists or that God loves them or that he's sending some religiously significant message. And these experiences are oftenimes accompanied by very surprising external corroborations. These sorts of things happen to millions if not billions of people throughout history. And like listen, just common sensically, if billions of people are claiming to have seen or experienced Fred, interacted with him, and heard his voice, well then probably Fred exists.
¶699And so likewise, if billions of people claim to have seen or experienced God, interacted with him, or heard his voice, then probably God exists. So that's like a a basic common sensical way to put the argument. There are other more sophisticated versions of the argument, too. So one is a basin formulation. It's very surprising under naturalism that like billions of rational creatures would routinely have profound experiences as of the perfect creator of the universe.
¶700But that's not nearly as surprising under theism since relationship with God is the best good available to rational creatures. And a totally reasonable way for God to facilitate such relationship would be to interact with those rational creatures. And consequently, religious experiences provide yet more good evidence for theism. A second version of the argument comes from Richard Swinburn and appeals to two principles. First, if it seems or appears to a subject that P, then that subject is justified in believing P in the absence of defeaters or reasons to doubt their appearance.
¶701This is a very plausible principle. Like, if we weren't justified in trusting our appearances by default, then we wouldn't be able to trust that our perceptions of the external world are accurate or that our basic mathematical and logical appearances are accurate, such as the seeming obviousness of 1 plus 1 being two. So, to avoid radical skepticism, we should accept this principle. The second principle that Swinburn deploys is that when other subjects testify about their experiences as of P, you are also justified in accepting P in the absence of defeaters. In other words, we should trust the contents of others experiences by default.
¶702Once we grant the first principle and like, you know, like once we grant the first principle, there's pressure to grant the second since there doesn't seem to be anything special about you that would justify trusting your appearances but not others. Moreover, this second principle is arguably required to vindicate lots of our beliefs based on testimony. I mean, that's actually like a colossal proportion of our beliefs. Like way more than you might pre theoretically think. Like it includes most of your scientific beliefs, historical beliefs, and everyday beliefs in interpersonal settings.
¶703Okay, so having addressed a few versions of the argument from religious experience, let's address five objections. Okay, so like the biggest objection to the argument is that religious experiences across times and cultures seem to disagree quite heavily, right? Like some people purport to experience the Christian God, others Allah, others Vishnu or Krishna, and still others like Nirvana, right? Like they can't all be right. So why privilege any in particular?
¶704And moreover, the significant disagreement casts doubt on the reliability of these experiences. Well, Swinburn responds that, you know, of course, devotees of different religions describe their religious experiences in the religious vocabulary with which they're familiar. But in itself, this doesn't mean that their different descriptions are in conflict, right? like God may be known under different names to different cultures. Moreover, many differences in reports of religious experiences are plausibly chocked up to differences in the interpretive frameworks that religious adherence bring to their experiences rather than stark incompatibilities in the contents of the experiences themselves.
¶705Adherence across different traditions might experience an awesome and majestic and transcendent and powerful ultimate reality, but superimpose onto that shared content like different background theories about ultimate reality, right? Also, crucially, the objection overstates, I think, the degree to which religious experiences across times and cultures actually disagree, since most theistic worldviews not only include God, but also all sorts of lesser spirits with which humans might commune and whose actual or apparent attributes diverge from gods. As Swinburn writes, religious experiences in non-Christian traditions are experiences apparently of beings who are supposed to have similar properties to those of God or experiences of apparently lesser beings or experiences apparently of states of affairs, but hardly experiences apparently of any person or state whose existence is incompatible with that of God. If there were vastly many experiences apparently of an omnipotent devil, then that sort of evidence would exist. But there are not such experiences.
¶706Okay. Okay, second objection. Unlike sensory experience, religious experiences can't be cross-cheed by the experiencers's other senses, nor are they interubjectively verifiable. They can't be cross-cheed by others. Doesn't this cast out on their reliability or trustworthiness?
¶707Uh, no, it doesn't. So, first, lots of other appearances aren't cross-checkable in this way, and yet they're totally trustworthy. Like, some of our basic moral intuitions like that undeserved torturous pain is bad are clearly trustworthy despite not being cross-checkable by other senses. Some of my memories are only had by me and me alone, and all physical traces of the remembered events may be destroyed. Still, such memories are trustworthy despite not being cross-checkable.
¶708Some of our basic logical and philosophical intuitions, including ones used in this objection, such as that cross-checkabe is required for trustworthiness, are also not cross-checkable by other senses. Of course, you know, like moral, logical, and philosophical intuitions may be cross-checkable in the sense that other people have intuitions with the same content, but like obviously religious experiences are cross-checkable in that sense since other people have religious experiences with the same or similar content, namely an appearance of God. Second of all, many religious experiences can be cross-cheed since they happen in group contexts. In fact, several of the religious experiences I canvased earlier had cross-checkable components, right? Like one of them involved two people seeing the luminous figure of Christ for an extended period of time and they both questioned each other afterwards and found all the details of their experiences to corroborate.
¶709Others involved experiences with associated external corroborations and fulfilled predictions such as a prediction of death at an exact time or a prediction that further down the road someone crash you know like things like that or like Latin that someone doesn't know and has to translate and it's like externally corroborating. So yeah. Okay. Third objection unrep third objection many religious experiences. Third objection, unreplicable religious experiences, Joe, can't be replicated and therefore don't deserve our trust.
¶710Okay, so the same the same two responses to the last objection work here, right? Like first, lots of other experiences are totally trustworthy despite not being replicable. So for instance, like experiences of particular historical events like the invasion of Normandy uh and various experiences in our interpersonal relationships aren't repeatable or replicable, but that doesn't make them untrustworthy. And second, various religious practices like prayer, fasting, meditation do enable people to replicate religious religious experiences. So it's just false that religious experiences are unreplicable.
¶711All right. Fourth objection. Hey, the fact that we have neurological explanations for religious experiences shows that the experiences are illusory. After all, we can induce similar experiences with like psilocybin, right? So of course these religious experiences are illusory.
¶712First, we certainly don't have neurological explanations at hand for all the different sorts of religious experiences. I mean, sure, we have some evidence that some religiously veilance experiences have neurohysiological coralates and can be pharmacologically induced, but to pretend that we found like a neurological explanation for all the different sorts of religious experiences is just wrong. Second, every experience, whatever it source, is accompanied by a corresponding neurological state. Right? Right?
¶713To argue that the experience is elusory because it has a neurological correlate or cause is therefore facious. Right? Like the same reasoning would lead us to conclude that sensory experiences are elusory since those are caused by our neurological states as well. And moreover, we can pharmacologically induce illusory sensory experiences. Does that somehow cast doubt on all our sensory experiences?
¶714Of course not. Finally, as Swinberg notes like the mere fact that a religious experience apparently of God was brought about by natural processes has no tendency to show that it was not vertical. To show this, you need to show that God didn't cause those very processes. And that can be attained only by showing that there is no God. For if he exists as defined, clearly he's responsible both for the normal operation of natural laws and for any occasional violation.
¶715All right. The fifth and final objection to the argument from religious experience that I will cover is uh you know, seeming divine absence. So like you know many people don't experience God and if you know God seems absent then by Swinburn's own principles, doesn't that give us good reason to think that he is absent unless we have defeaters for the seeming? And moreover, isn't a widespread sense of God's absence more expected under atheism than theism? And so, isn't it like evidence against theism?
¶716Well, first, we know this objection must be wrong since it succumbs to an absurd parody. Suppose that while billions of people apparently have seen and interacted with Fred, billions of people haven't. That pattern would be exceptionally strong evidence for Fred's existence. Yet, the objection at hand would imply otherwise, since we could run an exactly similar objection to this argument for Fred's existence, right? Oh, many people don't experience Fred.
¶717And if Fred seems absent, well, then doesn't that give us good reason to think that he is absent? And Morver isn't like a widespread sense of Fred's absence more expected under the hypothesis that Fred doesn't exist than the hypothesis that he does. Listen, this is not a compelling objection to the argument from widespread Fred experiences. So, nor is it a good objection to the argument from widespread God experiences. Second, the objection mistakenly conflates experiencing God's non-existence and not experiencing God's existence.
¶718These are crucially different, right? Like I'm not currently experiencing your mother's existence, but that doesn't mean I'm having an experience as of her non-existence. That is like a positive experience in which it like perceptually appears to me that she's like missing from reality altogether. Those are totally different things. An absence of an experience is different from an experience of absence, right?
¶719And while many people simply fail to have experiences of God, not many people have positive experiences that are accurately characterized as perceptually representing the total complete absence, the total complete non-existence of God from all of reality. Third, and finally, even if God exists, it isn't very surprising that God wouldn't make his presence known to everyone through religious experiences, right? Like there are all sorts of reasons that God might give some religious experiences but refrain from giving them to others. Giving only some people religious experiences gives them the opportunity to make a significant difference in the lives of those who haven't had such experiences by sharing the experiences and spreading knowledge of God. Unequal access to religious experience may create opportunities for perseverance, trust, humility, courage, and faith or hope amidst uncertainty.
¶720Some people might not be spiritually or psychologically prepared to handle a religious experience. Maybe God doesn't want to heighten some people's culpability by giving them an experience of God that they would go on to reject. Maybe at least some people would be psychologically compelled into belief by religious experience. And maybe God wants to preserve the freedom at least of their ascent to faith. Moreover, if some people if some people lack religious experience, they might seek and share other sorts of evidence for theism which is valuable.
¶721Like and so on and so on and so on and so on. There are all sorts of like nonsilly reasons we can glimpse for why God might only give some religious experiences but refrain from giving them to others. All right, so like the argument for religious experience is also surprisingly robust and like pretty good. But you know, like let's let's take a step back. I've canvased around a dozen different lines of evidence that all converge to the same theistic conclusion.
¶722And there's like lots of other considerations and arguments that I didn't include like including ones that are on the cutting edge of research in philosophy of religion such as Coons and Bonavac's forthcoming 600page tome defending renovated versions of Aquinus's five ways. But like let's just get like a general feel of the evidence I've presented. For starters, it's initially mysterious why any contingent things exist at all. And contingent things uniformly have explanations in our experience. It seems quite reasonable that they'd have explanations for their existence given that they might not have existed.
¶723and denying that they have explanations may have untoward skeptical implications. But that pushes us to accept some necessarily existing ultimate reality which explains the contingent world. And not only are there reasons to think a necessary thing would be fundamentally unlimited, but we can also glimpse the character of this necessary thing by examining the world it produced. And when we do, we see that its effect is extremely fortunate and systematically saturated with striking coincidences that need to be just right for anything interesting or valuable to occur. There are laws of nature when unevolved lawless initial conditions would be much simpler.
¶724Those laws of nature almost miraculously apply to the contents of the universe so as to induce temporal evolution. But even if the laws induce temporal evolution, it's then crazy that reality passed over an infinite sea of profoundly simple and elegant laws to select law structures with life-pitting constant ranges. And then the constant values just like happen to land within these exceedingly narrow life permitting ranges when there are vast hordes of alternative possibilities that are far more likely by chance. And then even when life forms go on to develop, we didn't get unconscious zombie creatures. Instead, at least if dualism or non-roductive pans psychicism is true, the universe cared enough to somehow include extra fundamental laws of nature to make provision for like the one feature needed for significant forms of value.
¶725But even if dualism and non-reductive pansychism are false, it's shocking that the psychophysical principles actually match the physical contents of the universe. And even assuming that they do, it's yet more insane that consciousness is linked up with the physical universe in uncannily fortuitous ways. As our mental lives are strikingly orderly, coherent, rational, harmonious, and intelligible in light of our physical states and behavior, these psychophysical principles are also enabling all sorts of profound consciousness involving goods when they easily might not have done so. And then these creatures are just like systematically avoiding radical skeptical scenarios, including ones that seem more likely than non-skeepical scenarios just based on statistical mechanics. And after that they hit the evolutionary jackpot by having mostly accurate and knowledge conferring moral and operatorial intuitions.
¶726And to top all of that the world is just utterly suffused with beauty. And these beings just like happen to be endowed with aesthetic experience so they can appreciate that beauty. And then like billions of these beings are literally having experiences of a transcendent powerful good ultimate personal reality oftentimes with external corroborations to boot. Like come on dude. Come on.
¶727you know that there's something up. Come on, man. My dude, the world is just shot through with crazy coincidences that are conspiring together to realize significant forms of value. There's no way, no way this is all the accidental excretion of a fundamentally indifferent world. Theism offers a beautifully unifying explanation of all these disperate pieces of highly striking data.
¶728data that other views like naturalism very poorly predict and only predict peace meal. It was ultimately this realization that pulled me toward God. I started to see theism kind of like the theory of evolution. Evolution is attractive not merely because it explains any one biological fact but because it offers a single explanatory framework descent with modification that makes sense of an otherwise strikingly disperate range of phenomena. Right?
¶729Like it explains why organisms fall into nested taxonomic hierarchies. The hierarchies. It explains why species possess homologous structures, vestigial organs, shared genetic errors, and similar embryological features. Why the fossil record displays a broadly ordered succession of forms strikingly coinciding with radiocarbon dating. And it explains why species and fossils are distributed geographically in ways that track the historical separation of continents and the isolation of islands.
¶730Like sure, each of these facts might admit of some separate non-evolutionary explanation, but evolution explains them together as different predictions of the one elegant underlying story. Theism offers something similar, a unified explanation of otherwise disperate features of reality that naturalists have to explain independently, coincidentally, or not at all. I'll talk about this more in the next section, but I also started to see an asymmetry between the best theistic and atheistic evidence. Whereas the best pieces of theistic evidence are largely probabilistically independent on naturalism and so constitute massively compounding problems for naturalism, the best pieces of atheistic evidence are largely probabilistically dependent on theism. Second crucial realization was like the probabistic dependence of the best atheistic argument.
¶731So, this isn't something that I went through, but like listen, a lot of the best atheistic arguments are just like, "Hey, look, here's a bad thing. Oh, look, there's another bad thing." Like, "Oh, look, here's another sub-optimal thing." Or like, "Oh, here's something that's really bad." Um, these these aren't independent pieces of evidence. Like, once you condition on like one example of horrendous suffering, it's much less surprising. like you know like the Holocaust for instance it's like much less surprising firstly that you would see undertheism because we know that once you condition on that and put it in your background sure theism might take a hit the will take a hit um but you then have to put that in your background and then it's going to be you know what we will have confirmed is like all the theistic views on which there's like some story to tell for why God allows suffering and so then most of the probability space is taken up by those views and so then it would just be utterly unsurprising if we saw other instances of evil other horrendous evils um you know if if God's allowing the Holocaust Maybe he would allow people temporarily to be non-theists. That's a thought.
¶732Uh so like a lot of the atheistic arguments or and like religious confusion, diversity, they're not independent of one another and like these are the most plausible atheistic arguments in any case. Um so we really just have like one class of anomalies and it's like bad stuff. So I couldn't really treat um I couldn't treat the best arguments for atheism as like independent pieces of evidence against theism in the way that I could treat like arguably like miracles as like independent piece of evidence against naturalism. Um or you know like these seemingly disparate phenomena involving like psychophysical harmony and then like fine-tuning and like moral knowledge and that helped me see that like the case for atheism is not as strong as I thought it was. Finally, in addition to the common sense appeals I've been making, there are probabilistic reasons we should prefer unifying explanations.
¶733To borrow an example from Brian Cutter in a co-authored chapter, suppose you come home and find that the lamp, the TV, the microwave, and the phone charger all aren't working. You would naturally favor a common cause explanation. For example, you know, the power went out over an explanation that posits a coincidence of independent causes. For example, you know, the bulb burned out, the kids unplugged the television, oh the, you know, the dog broke the microwave, you know, there's dust in the charging port. like and basian principles explain why when we conjoin independent explanatory hypotheses their probabilities dwindle fast.
¶734Maybe the common cause explanation had a prior probability you know comparable to each of the separate causes considered individually you know let's say like one in 100. But if the separate causes are independent in the sense that the occurrence of any one cause does not affect the probability that the other causes occur or at least it's not like largely affected. Well then the p probability that all four coincide is the product or almost the product of their individual probabilities. So like one out of 100 to the power of four. So that's like 1 in 100 million.
¶735And so the odds are now actually a million to one in favor of the common cause explanation. Uh and by now it should be straightforward to see how this applies to the case for theism. Okay. But you know it's fine and dandy to talk about all the positive evidence for theism. What about the evidence against theism?
¶736Right? like and especially the more forceful among those pieces of evidence like you know I mean I take like the big three to be like the problem of evil divine hiddenness and religious diversity well I didn't have a satisfactory response and oh and by the way like I know that there are others but again I think just like what the theist says in response to these will very plausibly transfer to most of the other of the best of the atheistic considerations of course they're like you know like oh the stone paradox like hey can create a stone so heavy he can't lift I'll probably actually briefly touch on that later in the video in case you guys are curious. But um you like those more like oh you got incoherent attributes when like I don't really tend to take those seriously and my sense is that like yeah most contemporary philosophers of religion don't tend to do so either. Okay. But yeah like what about the you know the puditive evidence against theism and especially these most forceful considerations among them.
¶737Well, I didn't have a satisfactory response to all these problems until after I was just utterly flooded with overwhelming evidence for miracles. Um, I'll turn to that miracle evidence very soon. And after examining it, I'll return to the main pieces of atheistic evidence. For now, though, I'll give you a sense of how I addressed some of the best lines of atheistic evidence, and I'll postpone some of the details for later. Okay, so let's start with my responses to the problem of evil.
¶738First, I grant that evil is some evidence against theism, but I think the evidence for theism just like massively outweighs it. There are so many very powerful lines of independently converging evidence that theism just like takes the cake even after taking facts about evil into account. And even if we grant that evil is very powerful evidence for atheism. Second, there's just lots of nonsilly theotices or accounts of why God permits evil. each of which is not like terribly unlikely conditional antheism and each of which together with theism renders various facts about evil not very surprising.
¶739The entire disjunction of those theodysies is then going to be decently probable conditional antheism and theism together with this disjunction will render the data of evil not extremely unlikely and this in turn significantly dense the evidential force of the problem of evil. So like what are some of the theodysies that I have in mind? Well, you know, there are just like lots of goods that might plausibly justify God and permitting lots of the evils we observe. So, like the existence of creatures enjoying morally significant freedom, which implies or at least makes decently probable the possibility that creatures will misuse that freedom and do evil. Opportunities to make a significant difference to the welfare of other creatures, which requires or at least makes decently probable the existence of sometimes serious suffering that it's up to us or other agents to prevent and whose positive relationship effects can aggregate for all eternity.
¶740Opportunities to build and improve relationships through costly self-sacrificial love, which requires the possibility of significant detractions from well-being. Opportunities to cultivate and manifest significant virtue, which requires significant suffering and evil. You like, after all, courage requires danger. Compassion requires a suffering victim. Mercy and forgiveness require wrongdoing.
¶741Patience requires adversity or trial. Resilience requires loss or the existence of every creation worthy universe, many of which will include a significant amount of suffering. or you know like goods like the incarnation, redemption and atonement which achieve a deeper union between God and humanity and requires a decisive turning away on our part from God which achieves a much deeper union between God and humanity and requires a decisive turning away from God on the part of humanity and on and on and on and on and on. That's just like a small glimpse. Third, God is a smart guy with like an infinite intellect.
¶742I'm a dumb guy with a very puny intellect. And given this and given the mixed character of the world together with the fact that I can at least sometimes see good reasons for allowing a number of evils, it shouldn't be too surprising under theism that God has adequate reasons of which I'm unaware for permitting all the observed evils. Since this epistemic possibility does not have an extremely low probability conditional on theism, evil does not disisconfirm theism to such an extreme degree that theism is neither a live hypothesis nor able to be justified by strong evidence in its favor. The force of the counter evidence afforded by evil is therefore seriously tempered. And by the way, this is like a very modest form of skeptical theism.
¶743It does not destroy natural theology since it does not imply that we're totally in the dark about God's reasons for acting. And nor does it imply that the probability of various data on theism is inscrutable. Nor does it imply that if we had observed millions of years of a torturous, horrific world, that wouldn't be strong evidence against God's existence. That's not what this modest skeptical theism implies. It doesn't have that implication because the modest probability judgment in the actual world that I'm making here is partly based on the world's mixed character together with the epistemic accessibility of god-justifying reasons for at least a number of evils in the world.
¶744As Brian Cutter put it to me, imagine watching someone play some complicated 4D chess game. If you observe what look like many stupid moves, but they're like integrated with many moves of like sublime beauty and brilliance, it's more reasonable to give the modest kind of skeptical theistlike account of the seemingly dumb moves. But if every move just looks like, you know, like the dumbest conceivable move, he wouldn't take the skeptical theist line particularly seriously. And so there's a relevant difference between my modest form of skeptical theism that I'm proposing here and some other forms of skeptical theism when it comes to the horrific world objection. Ah, but Joe, isn't it equally true that given the cognitive chasm between us and God, it shouldn't be too surprising under theism that God would have decisive reasons of which we're unaware to prevent observed evils?
¶745Well, like, yeah, of course. Like, yeah, anticedently, or at least independently of the various pieces of theistic evidence that I've I've canvased and defended, you know, like I yeah, it shouldn't be too surprising under theism that God would have decisive reasons of which are unaware to prevent the observed evils. I grant that. But the fact that there's a non-trivial chunk of theism's prior probability space on which God has decisive reasons to prevent the observed evils is clearly compatible with there also being a non-trivial chunk of theism's probability space on which God has adequate reasons to permit those evils. These don't somehow cancel each other out.
¶746They just both take up non-over overlapping, non-trivial parts of theism's probability space. And once we grant that, we yet again seriously temper the force of the problem of evil. And Dustin Kit adds several perceptive points to this modest form of skeptical theism. So let's turn to him. >> But on the other hand, at least if theism is true, I think there's probably an even greater sense in which we might expect it to to overrate it, our intuitive sense to overrate uh uh the insolubility of the problem.
¶747Um because as you've noted uh on theism like all of this everything we've ever known the whole history of the world everything I've exper the the total story right uh it's an infiniteimally small part of the total story um any goods that might outweigh the evils in the world might be things that uh you know we have no experience of it's kind of hard to appreciate how good they are right now. Might be things that like take a really long time to realize their full value. Um uh you know it could be I mean from a utilitarian perspective like if all the evils in the world like the only purpose is that they make like one guy in the afterlife 1% better off or something that would be worth it right because it's in >> so listen like I'm not obviously I don't agree with utilitarianism guys but like uh the general point that he's making still holds. So continue on >> infinite benefit uh for finite suffering but like people's intuitions definitely don't represent that because they have trouble aggregating you know lots of small goods and small harms or whatever. So like thinking about um if you like really try to take seriously what the world is like on theism um and then you just think about kind of ordinary cognitive biases availability bias scope and sensitivity that sort of stuff.
¶748Um it seems to me that we should sort of expect that our intuition will will maybe not be reliable um on this. And uh that doesn't mean that there is a solution to the problem of evil, but that does mean that maybe um maybe we should be willing to like at least hold open the the possibility even though yeah, sometimes it really does seem like there couldn't be. Um but uh yeah, I guess I mean when you get an error theory for your intuitions, um it's hard to know exactly what the right response is sometimes, but it does seem like uh yeah, if you know that if you know that your intuition uh would be the same even if the thing was false, uh because you can see why a known cognitive bias would produce it. Uh even if the thing that you're intuiting is false. Uh it does seem like that should move you, doesn't it?
¶749I mean if you imagine uh uh you know uh you you like fold a piece of paper and then you fold a piece of paper again and you fold the you know so it's like getting slightly thicker and uh you know it turns out if you fold it like 40 times then it will be it will like reach to the Andromeda galaxy or whatever right just because of how exponential growth works right that's super intuitively surprising um and if you explain to me like well that's because your intuitions don't register exponential growth. It's not rational for me to say like, "Yeah, I I get that, but I still have the intuition." Of course, I still have the intuition because my intuitions don't register exponential growth correctly, right? Um but like uh what that means is just that I should say, "Oh, this is something where something counterintuitive is is the case." Um and it could be that something similar is going on here. um and come back to it if we have time because yeah the the point about you could always just be massively confused. That was another another thought that I had that might I think might support my view.
¶750Um so like when you have so on one on the one hand you have like a very a super strong piece of evidence then on the other hand you have many independently converging lines of like pretty strong evidence or whatever. Um which of those should you favor? Well, of course it depends on the relative strengths in some way, but um there's some there's some degree to which in philosophy like the strength can only ever get too high uh because there's always the possibility that you're just you made a mistake, you're confused somehow, your intuition was wrong, you framed the problem incorrectly, whatever. Um and so like that that leads me to think um and and it's important to get that you know probably uh I mean the the the lines of of evidence for theism really are independently converging right I mean with at least within like a broadly naturalistic framework uh you know probably the solution to psychophysical harmony is not also going to solve the moral knowledge problem is not also going to solve uh the anthropic problem etc. Um, so if you think like what's more likely um that I'm wrong about there the possibility of there being a a reason for evil um you know am I what to get to get a reason for evil you need like God has some reason to allow us to be in a a broadly indifferent universe for the first 0% of our existence or whatever something like that.
¶751Um, even if that seems super implausible, um, when you think, uh, what's more likely that I've made a mistake about the plausibility of that or that I've made a mistake about everything else? Sort of. Um, I think maybe uh maybe uh there are kind of like structural reasons to think it's probably more likely that you've made a mistake about the strength of the one super strong piece of evidence than that you've made a mistake about uh the strength of all of these other independently converging lines of evidence. Um uh so what do you what do you think about and and that is that that's sort of a general I mean my inclination is always to think that the strongest philosophical positions are are ones that have a bunch of independent the converging lines of evidence for them for for that reason. Fourth, and building on Cromit's last point, it's a huge mistake to treat the various aspects of the problem of evil, as well as other bad or sub-optimal things that atheists appeal to like hiddenness and religious confusion as independent, collectively compounding problems for theism.
¶752That's a very big blender, I tell you. Believe me, folks, the uh the atheists, they're sending their worst. Um anyway, uh once we update on one or just a few of the worst forms of horrendous evil, like the Holocaust or natural parasetism, yeah, sure, theism will take a hit, but then the biggest chunk of theism's remaining probability space is going to be taken up by views on which there's some story to tell about how the world got messed up enough for those things to happen. But then once we go on to consider other sorts of bad or sub-optimal things in the world, they're not going to be nearly as surprising under theism. So once we've updated on the worst forms of evil, we shouldn't go on to treat each additional instance of evil or hiddenis or religious confusion as an independently converging line of evidence for atheism.
¶753And this realization just significantly diminishes the collective force of the best atheistic arguments. And it also significantly diminishes the force of the problem of evil since the various kinds and instances of evil in the world can't be treated as compounding independent pieces of evidence against theism. Let's turn to divine hiddenenness and problems in the neighborhood of hiddenness. For example, the fact that theistic belief is geographically lopsided and the fact that there's lots of religious disagreement and confusion. I kind of have like unifying stuff to say with respect to all of them.
¶754Here too, I found plausible things to say in response. First, even if these represent some evidence against theism, they certainly aren't independent to the problem of evil. Like again, if God allows the Holocaust, it wouldn't be too surprising if he allows people to temporarily not believe in him or have mistaken views about him. Moreover, the evidence for atheism just massively outweighs any evidence of the contrary afforded by hiddenness and religious confusion. Second, I think there are totally plausible explanations for why God allows non-belief and religious confusion.
¶755Here's one drawing from Dustin Kermit's paper. We are here to help each other. We're here to help each other come to have knowledge about God and the correct religion. In other words, we've been dignified with difference-making responsibility, the freedom and responsibility to make a significant difference in the lives of others by sharing with them truths about God and the correct religion. Permitting non-belief and religious confusion enables us to enjoy and exercise this difference-making responsibility.
¶756Not only is helping others on their walk with God like super valuable in itself, but it can also forge more valuable relationships that over the course of an infinite afterlife can add in value to outweigh the disval of non-belief and religious discord. Here's another plausible explanation for why God allows non-belief and religious confusion. While non-belief is spiritually perilous, you know, you're not fulfilling your objectively grave obligation to explicitly know, love, and serve God, and you're not availing yourself of the gifts that Christ entrusted to his church to help us on the path of salvation, etc. Non-belief is not necessarily an obstacle to forming some kind of valuable implicit relationship with God. An implicit relationship that could enable an even better explicit relationship down the line.
¶757Like think about the profound beauty of a love story where you desperately seek out a relationship with someone and after an arduous journey come at last to an explicit consciously recognized relationship with them but then realize that all along they were there with you calling you beckoning you guiding you loving you. There is profound grandeur to such a narrative. So much so that enabling it may very well justify God's permission of the spiritual peril. And you know that story kind of sounds kind of sounds familiar. H think about all the profound goods that were enabled by my decade away from the faith.
¶758I'm not saying that, you know, I should have left the faith. That's not what I'm saying. But just like think about that like like my relationship with God now is plausibly strengthened in so many ways that it that might not otherwise have been available to me had I not gone through that process. Right? I can I can now truly empathize with how atheists and agnostics think because I've been in their shoes.
¶759Right? So it makes me more effective in talking with them and loving them. It also g it also gives me a much greater appreciation for what God has saved me from. And it also just made me like aware of all different sorts of rational grounds for belief. And it helped me cultivate various virtues.
¶760And like dude, it just seems so manifestly obvious reflecting on my case that God can be justified in permitting periods of non-belief because they at least enable or allow for the possibility of better relationship goods down the line. not just relationship goods with God, but relationship goods between us and each other. That just seems manifestly obvious to me upon having gone through this whole process. Again, I should also clarify that I'm not saying that this kind of valuable implicit relationship with God is salvific. That's not the sort that that's not the sort of thing that I'm commenting on here one way or another.
¶761I just I just want to emphasize that. And and like listen, there's like a gazillion other potential god-justifying reasons for hiddenness and religious confusion, many of which Blake Juna covers in uh the hiddenness section of his belief map website, which I' I'd highly recommend, right? Like religious diversity and non-belief facilitates loving dialogue across deep ideological barriers among some of the most like tribalism inducing topics that there are. Some non-theists might just form a perpetually improper relationship with God. Hiddenness and religious diversity might enable greater manifestations of both divine justice and mercy.
¶762At least some people's freedom may be compromised by God being more obvious. Hiddenness and religious diversity facilitate sincere seeking after God and on and on and on. I do also think, by the way, that people just like massively overestimate the prevalence of non-resistant non-belief given how common culpable grave sin is, which fundamentally orients the will away from God and is incompatible with love of him. And yes, this also means that people probably significantly underestimate how prevalent resistant belief in God is. that is people who do believe in God but who resist a loving salvific relationship with him.
¶763Note though that I've given lots of other responses to the problem of divine hiddenness that don't rest on any claims about the distribution of resistance. Finally, I think Catholicism nicely handles religious disagreement. Under Catholicism, moral agents are only damned on account of grave sins for which they are seriously culpable. So none of us are damned simply on account of say non-culpably believing Islam. Moreover, we teach that God gives all of us enough graces to be saved, regardless of which religion, if any, we grew up in.
¶764And the precise way in which God does this is known to God alone. Though we can, of course, have models, for example, anti-mortem of opportunity at the moment of death, implicit faith in Catholicism without explicit faith therein, etc. So, in light of the proceeding, I don't find the problems of evil, hiddenist, or religious confusion to be particularly threatening. That's not to say that I don't take them seriously, and nor is it to say that they provide zero evidence against God's existence. Even if for example evil is strong evidence for atheism, if we have like a dozen strong pieces of evidence for theism, then sure the evidential force of like one of those pieces of evidence might get canceled out.
¶765But in terms of the overall probability of theism, that won't do much damage given that the other best atheistic arguments don't provide significant evidence beyond the problem of evil. Whereas the same cannot be said of the theistic arguments. It's like it's like one way to think about this is like okay maybe I'll just like maybe I'll just like grant you that like oh evil and fine-tuning they just cancel each other out or maybe I alternatively we could say like oh evil and psychophysical luck just like they cancel each other out. It's like oh okay now I only have what like oh like 11 very strong like largely independent pieces of evidence instead of 12 and once you know once we've taken into account evil like you don't have many additional pieces of strong independent evidence. So, like, so once again, this is a recurring theme throughout the video.
¶766Theism mogs. You know, I should make like a shirt that just says like theism mogs. That'd be that'd be fun. You guys would probably buy it. Well, some of you would buy it.
¶767Some of you might buy it and like light it on fire. But others of you might buy it and wear it and be very jovial and spread the good news of the majesty of reason and the good news of Christ. Okay, so that's what I have to say about the primary evidence against theism. Before concluding my full defense of the master argument for theism, I do have to examine non-naturalistic alternatives to theism, right? Because like so far I've pinned theism against naturalism and argued that the evidence very strongly favors theism.
¶768But like what about these non-naturalistic alternatives to theism? Well, listen. I can't systematically proceed through each and every one of them, but like I'll give my general strategy for responding to them, and then I'll show the significant inferiority of even the most promising and plausible non-naturalistic competitors to theism. So, I think non-naturalistic alternatives generally suffer from two or more of the following six problems. First, the prediction problem, or predicting some or much of the data much worse than theism.
¶769Second, the unification problem, or offering a far less unifying explanation of the full range of data than theism. Third, the intrinsic probability problem or being much less intrinsically probable than theism due to arbitrariness or probabilistic incoherence or complexity or immodesty or whatever. Fourth, the collapse problem or entailing or probabilifying theism itself. So, not really being alternatives to theism, but instead being something that either entails theism or at least probabilize theism. Fifth, the skepticism problem or implying radical skepticism or maybe more limited but highly implausible forms of skepticism.
¶770And then finally, the miracles problem. Or there's overwhelming evidence for miracles that blow every non-theistic alternative out of the water. I won't explore the miracles problem in any detail in this section, but just keep in the back of your mind that all these non-naturalistic alternatives are like decisively disisconfirmed visav theism, as we'll see in part five of this video. But even setting the miracles problem aside, the non-naturalistic alternatives are far inferior to theism. And so with these general problems covered, we can examine four specific alternatives to theism.
¶771Axarchism, teological laws, the simulation hypothesis, and limited god views. Beginning with axiarchism. Now axiarchism has several different formulations, but like the basic idea is that the world exists and has the character it has because it's good that it exists. So the goodness of things is the bedrock explanation for why they exist or come to be. Uh, and if goodness explains why things exist, then axiarchcism seems to offer a unifying explanation of much of the same data as theism.
¶772It's like what's wrong with axiarchism? Well, first, the explanation axarism offers for the character of the world just seems like manifestly incomplete. As Brian Cutter explains, >> the designer hypothesis, there's still some work to do about like, okay, what about like impersonal axiarchism where you just say like the mere fact that such and such would be good is the bedrock explanation for why the world is this way. You don't need like a god who uses that as their reason to to make the world that way. My feeling about these views is that those kinds of impersonal axiarchic explanations are just manifestly incomplete.
¶773Like if you say the reason why the universe is is life, you know, has constants that are life permitting or whatever is that it's good for there to be life and you don't follow that up with and that's why God chose to bring it about or whatever. You just say no that that's the bedrock explanation. I just feel like that it is not a complete explanation that that value fact not explained. So I I think impersonal axiarchism that's that's my main beef with it. Second, not only is Axarchism's posited explanatory mechanism incomplete, but there are strong inductive grounds to prefer theism's explanatory mechanism instead.
¶774Since Ethan Muse's point in the following clip applies not only to naturalistic stocking horse explanatory mechanisms, but also to this bizarre axaric mechanism whereby goodness itself somehow produces the world and its character or somehat like constrains the world and its character. >> First line response is going to be similar to what I say in fine-tuning. And what I say in fine-tuning is let's just grant for a moment that the theistic hypothesis is similarly complex as the stocking horse candidates, right? That mimic the like um functional predictions that the theistic hypothesis makes, right, for creating this individual universe. Well, one way, even if you have two comp hypotheses that are similarly complex, one way to show that one is far less ad hoc than another is to show that it's an instance of something that you observe frequently in the universe of a type of explanation or a type of mechanistic explanation that you observe frequently.
¶775And therefore, you're extrapolating from that to inflating the probability of that mechanism explaining any particular instance. Right. Right. Mhm. >> And so one thing I like to do in the theistic case is just show that intelligent explanation of agentically relevant desiteratada or goals um is something that we observe with high frequency in the universe.
¶776Now, meanwhile, naturalistic stocking horses that are fine-tuned or tailored to produce agentically relevant goals are basically like a non, >> right? Likewise with like these axiarctic principles like putting their tentacles into the world and like like moving things around or whatever or like conserting things, right? And so in the same way if we observe lots and lots of times rain is associated with clouds in this universe. Even if you came up with a stalking horse called the schme right and schmes and clouds a priori even if you thought both of those were equally plausible given any rain type observation positing a cloud is going to be far more reasonable than positing a sche given that inductive experience that you have. >> Yes.
¶777>> Right. And so we have some broad experience of how intelligent agents behave and the types of goals that they type they like to pursue, right? And we notice that those are highly characteristic of intelligent agents and not at all characteristic of natural processes, right? Of undirected natural processes. And so therefore we extrapolate from that to saying that even if we started out with parody because of this inductive experience, there's way more inductive support for positing an intelligent explanation, a design explanation than there is for positing a natural explanation of the universe satisfying these design constraints like yeah being rational observers with and a high preponderance of non-skeepical to skeptical observers just given typical agentic psychology that we observe in the universe, right?
¶778>> Yeah. And we can see in other contexts basically the fact that something is non-ad hoc so there's some inductive support for this type of mechanism is actually usually very strong evidence for positing that mechanism or something similar >> in cases where the observed output is characteristically similar to the things where you observe that type of mechanism just in our everyday ordinary experience. If you ever see a mechanism produce something like this, the relative probability that that mechanism is responsible for similar things in other instances goes way up compared to any arbitrary novel mechanism that you could invent. >> Yeah. Third, axiarchism either entails or makes probable god's existence.
¶779So it suffers from the collapse problem. Okay. So things exist because they're good. Well, a perfect being is literally the best thing that could possibly exist. So we should strongly expect God to exist if Axarchism is true.
¶780And of course you could always like build into your axaric hypothesis something that precludes God's existence. But then you're just massively lowering the intrinsic probability of axarism since then different parts of the axaric hypothesis are just in strong probabilistic tension with one another. You know so for instance you might like restrict the axaric principle to just say that like oh physical things exist because they're good. Like this just applies to the physical world. Like that's an arbitrary and ad hoc restriction.
¶781And moreover, the very fact that this applies to all physical things gives us inductive grounds to think it also applies to non-physical things. And besides, now this restricted principle is just something that would be good evidence for theism, right? Like there may conceivably been all different manner of basic principles about what produces physical things. And it's quite striking that we just happen to land on this highly valuable one which seems better predicted by theism than atheism. Now, uh I suppose even even this one like restricting it to physical things wouldn't help you with like giving a unifying explanation of the non-skeepticism data because like we can imagine like non-physical minds still existing and proliferating and being in skeptical scenarios.
¶782Um and so like maybe you'll have to be like, "Oh, maybe this only applies to finite things, right? So like finite things exist because they're good." But like come on, dude. Like that's that's your alternative. Um but anyway, fourth, even setting aside miracles, there's a range of data that theism seems to explain much better than atheistic axiarchism. For instance, the vast majority of humanity has believed in God.
¶783And millions of and millions or billions of people have had religious experiences as of God. If atheistic aarchism is true, these are basically like delusive beliefs and experiences that are deceiving people about the fundamental nature of reality. And not just that, but deluding them into giving up their lives and taking on all matter of extremely costly commitments that would be massive wastes of time, resources, energy, and attention if God doesn't exist. Like these are the complete opposite of the sorts of beliefs and experiences that we would predict an atheistic axic principle to guide us toward. Additionally, the arguments for a necessary thing responsible for the contingent world are very strong.
¶784uh and there are good reasons to think such a necessary thing would have divine attributes and these represent yet further reasons to embrace theism over axarism much more could be said but let's turn to teological laws here I'll take Nagel's teological laws as a representative example according to Thomas Nagel there are fundamental teological laws of nature beyond those recognized in physics the word teological basically just means of or relating to goals purposes or ends so teological laws of nature are basically laws of nature that govern or constrain current states of the universe so as to produce a certain end or goal. Now in Nagel's view there exists fundamental teological laws that guide the universe toward value. Specifically they direct the universe toward valuable outcomes that are left open by the already operative indeterministic laws of physics in the already existing physical universe. So you know like these teological laws kind of come in and like use their tentacles to like you know sort of like direct the universe. They kind of operate within the physical world and within the fundamental physical constraints of reality and kind of like direct the indeterminacies.
¶785They do some teological tinkering and like direct them to to realize states of value. Now Nagel's view as stated is just hopeless. Like it can't explain many of the most striking bits of data we covered and theism just systematically mogs Nagel's view on all of those. So Nagel's view it clearly doesn't explain contingency. Uh it isn't supported by the various reasons to think that the necessary foundation is God.
¶786It doesn't explain why there is a necessary foundation. It doesn't explain why there are laws of physics at all in the first place. It certainly doesn't explain the overwhelming amount of fine-tuning needed to get our fundamental physical law structures to begin with. Right? Since again, Nagel's laws explicitly operate only within the backdrop of these fundamental laws already being in place.
¶787It doesn't explain nomological harmony, but rather simply presupposes that the fundamental laws of physics match the initial conditions. Since the teological laws just operate within our universe, they can't explain why there aren't hordes of other universes in which Boltzman brains or simulated beings or various other intolerably benited beings abound and hence can't explain huge swas of our non-skeepticism data. Nagel's laws also don't explain the existence of fundamental psychophysical laws. As I argue in my PPR paper uh on psychonomic harmony, Nagel's laws don't explain psychonomic harmony since the psychophysical principles might conceivably have assigned experiences only to substrates or functions that aren't constructible from the basic stock of physical properties in in the initial conditions which again Nagel's laws are restricted to operate upon. Nagel's laws also don't explain psychophysically lucky consciousness involving goods and harmonies.
¶788Right? Like Nagel's cilological laws only increase the likelihood of psychophysical harmony if the psychophysical principles are already systematically harmonious for nomomenically possible physical creatures. Yet that would be a strikingly fortunate coincidence, right? Like consider again the simple uniform psychophysical mappings which pair a single relatively simple phenomenal state like a gray sensation with every physical state. If the psychophysical principles had this character or countless other characters, no amount of teological tinkering with the universe would engender psychophysical harmony.
¶789Like no matter which way these laws operated within the indeterministic laws of physics, no matter which way they push the universe, if the psychophysical laws pair every physical state with like a brightness sensation, that's not going to that's not going to like help with psychophysical law or anything like that. You're just going to have a completely simple and boring psychophysical regime. and and Nagel's teological laws just are going to be utterly hopeless and helpless in you know solving that problem and again like the inductive point that Ethan Muse was making counts against this view and counts against its intrinsic probability in relation to theism and also as with axiarchism if God doesn't exist the teological laws guided the universe in various ways that that are like the exact opposite of what we'd expect basically diluting billions of creatures into you know wasting their time and resources and ultimately giving their lives over to like a non-existent being of of course the way to solve most of these problems is to make the teological law or laws prior in the order of explanation to basically all other facts about the world you know to the laws of physics the psychophysical laws etc but then this view just collapses into axiarchism right like it's literally just positing a fundamental principle on which things happen precisely because they're valuable but in that case you know this view will just face all the preceding problems for axiarchism so I think like the teological law approach just like either is utterly hopeless or just collapses into aarchism and we've already seen why theism logs axiarchism. Okay, what about the simulation hypothesis? Uh this is likewise completely hopeless in explaining most of the data.
¶790It doesn't explain contingency, why there are any laws of physics in base reality or why the laws of physics in base reality match the conditions of base reality. It doesn't explain the finetuning of the law structures that any base reality would need for like its universe to evolve to the point of harboring simulators and simulations. It doesn't explain why there aren't hordes of Bolspawn brains in base reality or in universes causally disconnected from the base reality universe harboring our simulation. So, it doesn't explain our non-skeepticism data. Heck, the simulation hypothesis itself is plausibly a skeptical scenario.
¶791>> Wayne, uh, that sort of thing. >> Turning to the simulation hypothesis um or the sim simulation theodysy, the main worry there is that um it threatens skepticism. So, um, if you think we're living in a simulation, the question is how big is that simulation? Is it, you know, are the simulators really simulating the whole universe and all of the history we think we know about, right? Did Abraham Lincoln actually exist?
¶792Was he actually part of the simulation? Or could they be just simulated simulating the room I'm in right now? We think it's just not so clear that most of the simulations would be like really big simulations. So you'd have I think we think the simulation hypothesis would raise the worry that yeah maybe you know there's a good chance that the world is very different than I think it is. Lots of things I think are real and really out there might not be because they're not really part of the simulation.
¶793So that's the main word we have there. >> Well, I guess that might bring up an objection. What's the problem there? It just turns out that what's fundamental is just very we it's a very different sort of thing than we initially thought. But it's still still there.
¶794Just has a different nature than we thought. Like would that would that get you out of this one? Yeah. So we we actually don't push that worry. We don't push the worry like oh this is skeptical hypothesis because it's it tends turns out that things are fundamentally different than we thought.
¶795rather we we're worried about like even if we grant that just in virtue of being in a simulation that doesn't follow that you're in a skeptical scenario. um you know we still think but how do you know the simulation is as big as we think the universe is right so you believe lots of things like you believe you have friends in the a few houses down or a few towns over and even if you know Chalmer's is right about there not being a pro a skeptical problem just in virtue of us being digital or something there's still a problem if like your friend doesn't really exist because he's not really part of the simulation so that's what we're we're more worried about >> okay yeah so Grant that a simulated X is a real X for relevant values of X. So a simulated chair would count as a real chair as Chmer's would argue. The the issue here is maybe fewer things are actually simulated than than we think exists in reality. So if if the distant past wasn't part of the simulation, maybe they tried to save computing power by not not including that in the simulation.
¶796Well, then it would turn out that Abraham Lincoln never existed or the Cambrian explosion never happened or or what have you. Uh maybe, you know, galaxies outside our own aren't actually simulated. They they just simulate like the twinkle in the sky in order to save on compute. Well, then there aren't actually galaxies outside of our ours. And so you you you you get skepticism about all the things that aren't actually simulated, which could be a large fraction of the things that we actually >> Okay.
¶797Also, if atheism is true, our simulators in base reality probably developed gradually over time by some naturalistic process. And since the moral and various opori facts don't move around bits of physical stuff, their moral and opori beliefs are plausibly defeated. And so, even if they intended to give us mostly accurate and complete moral beliefs, which would itself be a highly fortuitous occurrence for us, uh we would also lack moral and much operary knowledge. Theism also, you know, better explain theism also better explains religious experiences and miracles. And you know, we haven't even gotten to some of the main objections to the simulation hypothesis in the literature, like objections according to which merely simulated beings couldn't be conscious.
¶798Oh, and also like one thing I didn't even mention on the screen here is just that like, you know, presumably our simulators in base reality have psychophysically harmonious experiences. Like presumably they enjoy, you know, psychophysically lucky experiences. Uh but then, you know, the simulation hypothesis just like pushes back the problem of psychophysical luck. So like dude, all in all, this is not a remotely plausible rival to theism. Um, and so like let's just move on.
¶799So finally, what about limited god views? Well, these views posit a deity who is responsible for our world and limited in some way. You know, maybe limited in knowledge, limited in power, limited in goodness, or limited in all three. And here I'm treating a maximally evil being as a being which is limited with respect to how good it is. So Steven Law's hypothetical evil god is a limited god view.
¶800Well, uh, the main problem here is that, uh, limited god views just suffer from intrinsic probability problems galore. Like, they're out the wazoo. They're they're coming out of ears. They're everywhere. Uh, so to give you a sense of these, let's play a clip from one of my best videos.
¶801So, here's the first problem that we're going to be covering for limited god hypothesis. The problem is that most prominent versions of limited god hypotheses are too imprecise to generate predictions and hence too imprecise to assimilate the standard and most powerful pieces of evidence favoring omnitheism. Unlimited god hypotheses are often articulated in such a way that for at least one of the triomni properties, God simply doesn't have that property. Instead, he's limited in that respect. But merely being told that God is limited in power, for instance, leaves us hopelessly in the dark about what his power level is and hence about what he can and can't accomplish.
¶802This in turn leaves us considerably hampered in generating predictions. You could specify that he's still very powerful, but this too is extremely vague and it monstrously hampers predictive power. Of course, a natural way to solve this problem is to specify some precise cut off in level of power or level of knowledge or level of goodness. For instance, to specify what exactly God can and can't do in more detail. But that brings us to the second problem for limited God hypotheses, namely arbitrariness.
¶803As soon as you posit a specific cut off in degree of power or knowledge or goodness or whatever, you're going to considerably lower the probability of your hypothesis by virtue of its significant arbitrariness. Why that cutoff specifically as opposed to any of the countless conceivable other cutoffs? None of the cutoffs seem more natural or more principled or less arbitrary than the others. And so it seems like we should treat them equally in terms of the probability we assign to a god having any one of the cutoffs. But since there are vastly many such cutoffs, this means the prior probability of a limited god hypothesis that's sufficiently specific to enjoy predictive power is going to be extraordinarily small.
¶804In fact, limited god hypothesis might have vanishingly small prior probabilities. To see why, consider two theories. The no limit theory says that the fundamental laws of physics apply everywhere in the universe. There is no limit to their application. By contrast, the limit theory says that the fundamental laws of physics apply everywhere in the universe except for some extremely tiny region at the outskirts of a galaxy on the outskirts of the observable universe.
¶805Now, most of us, including physicists, think that the no limit theory is far more likely than the limit theory. But notice that our empirical evidence is about equally good for both of them. If there's just one astronomically small and far out region governed by different equations or no equations at all, then it's overwhelmingly unlikely that we would have found it. And so our observations of the uniform applicability of the fundamental laws of physics are only overwhelmingly weak evidence for the no- limit theory over the limit theory. So then if we really are justified in thinking the no limit theory is far more probable than the limit theory, it's because of something about the no limit theory compared to the limit theory prior to taking any empirical evidence into account.
¶806Since the empirical evidence only negligibly favors the no limit theory. In other words, the prior or more accurately intrinsic probability of the no limit theory must be far greater than that of the limit theory. By the way, a prior probability of hypothesis is just the probability of the hypothesis prior to looking at a particular piece of evidence. The intrinsic probability of hypothesis is just the probability of the hypothesis prior to looking at any empirical evidence whatsoever. So again, the intrinsic probability of the no limit theory, it seems, must be far greater than that of the limit theory.
¶807And that's plausibly for two reasons. First, the limit theory is extremely arbitrary in making a seemingly unprincipled exception to an otherwise unlimited application. And second, the very fact that the fundamental laws apply everywhere apart from the tiny exceptional region gives us strong inductive reason to think that the laws also apply to that region. And so the different components or conjuncts of the limit theory suffer from probabilistic tension. In other words, one of the parts of the theory gives us strong reason to think that another part of the theory is false.
¶808And this in turn drastically lowers the overall probability of the theory. This incidentally is the third problem for limited god hypothesis. They suffer from probabilistic tension. Notice also that quite plausibly even the general class of limit theories is still significantly less intrinsically probable than the no limit theory. So not only does each individual limit theory suffer from an extremely low intrinsic probability, but so does the general class of limit theories.
¶809And the overarching point here in the second and third problems for limited god hypotheses is that the same lessons from the limit theory and no limit theory seem to apply with full force to unlimited and limited god hypothesis. Limited god hypotheses not only individually but collectively suffer from a very low intrinsic probability. This is a very serious mark against these hypotheses from the outset and it's not at all clear that they explain evil and hiddenenness etc so well to recuperate their drastic probabilistic losses from the outset. At the very least I think the view that they don't is worth taking seriously. Oh, also another probabilistic tension afflicting most limited god hypothesis is that they posit a being with all sorts of greatmaking features or perfections held to their intrinsic maxima or their you know greatest extent except for one or a select few greatmaking features like power which aren't held to their maximal extent.
¶810But the very fact that a being has all other maxed out greatmaking features gives us inductive reason to think that it has all maxed out greatmaking features. So once again most limited god hypotheses are going to suffer from still further probabilistic tension. The very fact that God has a lot a lot a lot of power gives us inductive reason to think that he has all power. So if you specify that he has a lot a lot a lot of power but not all power your hypothesis suffers from probabistic tension. And moreover these hypotheses often posit that all of God's other properties are greatmaking properties had to their maxed out extent which also gives us strong inductive reason to think that this property power in particular is also a greatmaking feature had by God to a maxed out extent.
¶811And so any hypothesis which posits the former but rejects the latter is going to be suffering from probabilistic tension. different parts of the hypothesis count against one another. There's a kind of internal conflict within the hypothesis. >> Oh, and by the way, like you know, the same kind of internal tension or you can have proistic incoherence is true of the evil god. Um, he has lots of perfections or greatmaking features like power and knowledge and a degree of rationality, etc., which are good things, but then he's got like a badm feature sprinkled in.
¶812And that lack of coherence or harmony among the evil god's attributes makes the evil god hypothesis much less intrinsically probable than theism. But like don't worry we'll get to the evil god hypothesis soon. Now one of the central motivations for positing a limited god is that it allegedly helps with the problem of evil. Like after all if god's knowledge or power or goodness are limited you know maybe he can't stop the various evils or you know he just doesn't know about them or you know maybe he's not good enough to care about them. Um but this is just like not a credible motivation given the full range of theistic evidence that needs explaining.
¶813Right? Like if limited God hypothesis are to predict the data anywhere near as well as theism, the limited god needs to be able to explain contingency. The existence of the universe, the existence of physical laws, the fine-tuning of law structures, the fine-tuning of constants, the existence and character of the psychophysical principles, the fact that we systematically avoided skeptical scenarios, the fact that evolution took a highly precise and fortuitous course that ensures moral and opioid knowledge and aesthetic experience, the amount of beauty in the world and religious experiences. But the level of power, knowledge and goodness required of God in order for these data to be like remotely well predicted by limited God hypotheses is enough knowledge, power and goodness to significantly reduce the amount, kinds and intensity of evil in the world to establish meaningful rel reciprocal relationships with every non-resistant finite person and to remove religious diversity. So any limited god hypothesis which can even like approximate theism's explanatory power is also going to face the biggest objections to theism.
¶814And so I don't and so I don't think this like motivation is at all credible for going in for limited god hypothesis. Like think about what the limited god or gods need to be like for these bits of data to support limited god hypothesis. Like needs to have literally created the entire universe. He needs to have control over the form of the laws of nature so as to ensure that the law structures allow for interesting valuable phenomena to unfold. He needs to have control over the concepts of the laws of nature so as to fine-tune them.
¶815He needs to have control over the initial conditions of the universe so as to fine-tune them. He needs to be able to guide evolution so that our basic moral and operary beliefs and dispositions are largely truth tracking so as to ensure that we avoid all the other directions evolution could have taken under which we're irreparably in error about the moral and opery domains. He needs to be able to control the psychophysical laws so as to design them to be largely harmonious and so as to ensure that conscious creatures even come about in the first place as opposed to unconscious automata. He needs to be able to induce religious experiences in some manner or else design the psychophysical laws in such a way that under certain highly specified physical conditions religious experiences occur and so on. Like it's overwhelmingly plausible that if a limited god can do all or most of that then clearly the limited god can also reduce suffering establish again like the alleged doxastic preconditions for relationship with non-resistant persons provide greater clarity about his existence and desires for humanity.
¶816So the limited god hypothesis is ultimately in a bind. uh it must have the limited god must have enough knowledge power and goodness to predict the theistic evidence approximately equally well as theism. But then the limited god hypothesis is about equally disisconfirmed by the standard atheistic evidence. And in that case since you know the limited god hypothesis and theism share approximately the same predictions the winner is going to come down to the intrinsic probabilities. And we've already seen that theism is much more coherent, simpler, more elegant and less arbitrary.
¶817So theism comes out far ahead. Of course, you know, like the limited god a proponent could just posit like the most like insanely fine-tuned degree or kinds of knowledge, power, and goodness had by the limited god so as to predict both the standard theistic and atheistic evidence. But like the resulting hypothesis is just going to be like hopelessly ad hoc in the sense that it's specifically designed to accommodate precisely the data we observe. like the resulting hypothesis just like strikingly fine-tunes God's attributes or desires or whatever so that he wants and has the ability to produce precisely the valuable things that we observe but is simply unable to prevent or you know isn't good or knowledgeable enough to prevent precisely the disvaluable things we observe and needless to say you know this hypothesis is hopeless since while it predicts the data exceptionally well it does so at the cost of correspondingly lowering the intrinsic probability of the hypothesis finally there are lots of other problems for limited god hypotheses you know like as we've seen contingency arguments get us a necessary being at the foundation of reality, but there's strong evidential tension between necessity and arbitrary seeming limits. Like the necessary is very plausibly the realm of the non-arbit.
¶818It's like a badmaking feature of a theory if there's some parameter which happens to take on some necessary arbitrary seeming finite value among a vast horde of conceivable equally simple and arbitrary seeming finite values. Moreover, our priors should plausibly encode biases toward what, like the vast majority of humans are pre-reflectively inclined to endorse or find plausible. But it seems like the vast majority of humans are pre-reflectively inclined to endorse or find theism plausible or at least much more plausible than an evil god or, you know, candidate limit gods that philosophers have concocted to compete with theism's predictive success and unifying power. So, our prize should plausibly encode a significant bias favoring theism over relevant limited god alternatives. Also, under theism, God's various attributes plausibly follow from a simple, elegant, compactly describable attribute like perfection or omnipotence or limitlessness.
¶819And the same can't be said for limited god hypotheses, which gives theism yet another massive advantage on the priors. And you know, we've already seen why limited god views suffer visav theism on coherence and arbitrariness, both of which affect prior. Matthew Adelstein argues that theism has a significant advantage over limited God views with respect to psychophysical luck since theism has a simple and natural explanation of the harmonious pairing between God's mind and the world in terms of God's perfection. But limited God hypotheses don't seem to enjoy a comparably simple and natural explanation of the harmonious pairing between the limited God's mind and the world. And it may then be a pretty striking coincidence that this limited being's mind matches the world so fortuitously, thereby significantly hampering its intrinsic probability visav theism.
¶820The evil god hypothesis threatens radical forms of skepticism. Like radical skeptical scenarios, after all, are very bad. And so whereas under theism, we positively expect that we'd systematically avoid all the skeptical scenarios, the exact opposite prediction is made by the evil god hypothesis. If ultimate reality is ordered towards the bad and is literally like a maximally vicious being where one of the foremost vices is deceptiveness, we positively expect that we or at least hordes of other beings will be radically deceived in some way. Not only does this mean the variegated non-skeepical data support theism over the evil god hypothesis, but it also means that the evil god hypothesis leads to a pretty radical skeptical scenario.
¶821Of course, you know, like you can always build into the hypothesis that the evil god, although maximally vicious, just happened to care about epistemic flourishing that he systematically avoided putting both us and the vast vast vast majority of beings in any skeptical scenario. But that just introduces pretty serious probabilistic tension into the hypothesis, making it lose out to theism on the priors, in addition, of course, to all the other ways in which it loses out to theism. Moreover, some non-negligible chunk of our prior probability space should be taken up by motivational internalism. according to which any agent is motivated at least to some extent to act on known reasons. But theism takes up more of this non-negligible chunk of our prior probability space than the evil god hypothesis.
¶822That's because the evil god hypothesis posits a deity who knows its decisive moral reasons and therefore has some motivation to act in accordance with them. But since the evil god flaunts those, the hypothesis must posit extra desires to act contrary to the moral law which are stronger than the desires to act in accordance with it. By contrast, under this chunk of the probability space, theism doesn't need to posit anything beyond its commitment to omniscience, which is shared with the evil god hypothesis. And this gives theism yet another advantage over the evil god hypothesis on the priors. And you know, maybe you could say that like, oh, the the evil god is uh yes, maximally vicious, but but it's not omnisient, right?
¶823So like it doesn't actually know the moral facts, and that's how we avoid this problem. Um, okay. So, you know, that's just like, okay, so now this being just also has like arbitrary limits in its knowledge as well. So, you know, it's like, oh, it knows everything else, but just like not the moral facts. Really odd, but also say goodbye to the argument from moral knowledge, right?
¶824Say goodbye to that. So, oh, we're just getting, oh, yet more very strong evidence for theism over and against this evil god hypothesis from that if you want to go that route. Um, but anyway, Callum Miller argues that religious experiences favor theism over the evil god hypothesis. um since religious experiences tend overwhelmingly to represent the divine as good rather than perfectly evil. You know, of course, one might retort that the evil god is just like systematically deceiving everyone.
¶825But this massively intensifies the worry from radical skepticism, right? Since we're now literally admitting that an unlimitedly powerful being is actively going around deceiving millions or billions of people about the basic nature of the world and who they're interacting with. I could go on and on and on and on. Here's like a good paper on the evil god challenge by Ben Paige and Max Baker Hitch. At least I think it's by both of them.
¶826Um but you know you get the point. Theism mogs limited goalies and it's not close. Okay. So stepping back I have argued in this section that theism is far superior to non-naturalistic versions of atheism. Theism either predicts the data much better than non-naturalistic alternatives or else has a much higher intrinsic probability such that even if these versions of atheism predict the data approximately well as theism they significantly lose out to theism in the final analysis.
¶827Yay. We're going back to uh the slides. Okay, deep breath. That, my friends, is my comprehensive philosophical case for theism. Recall my master argument which you can see on the screen.
¶828Theism is not especially improbable prior to taking any empirical evidence into account since it's a reasonably simple, non-arbit, coherent, and elegant hypothesis. Moreover, theism predicts our total evidence far better than the most anticedently likely versions of atheism. And the remaining versions of atheism which predict the data about as well as theism are just massively less probable on the priors. And consequently, theism is probably true. But trust me, you haven't even seen the best evidence yet.
¶829As we're about to see, there is truly overwhelming evidence for miracles. And not just any miracles, but miracles that only make sense if Catholicism is