Some people have asked me to continue to write more posts about what I've called my "fictional dialogues" between a materialist and a survivalist, a friendly imaginary dialogue in which the arguments for and against survival of consciousnes (and the materialistic production hypothesis) are addressed in their best, strongest and more charitable formulations (at least I've tried hard to formulate them like that).
I promise to continue this series, but I haven't because currently I have other things in mind and most of my current reading and thinking is not specifically about philosophy of mind or afterlife studies, but about New Testament studies, Jesus scholarphip, philosophy of science, philosophy of religion and martial arts (and each of these fields is, itself, extremely complex, very difficult to master due to the variety of different positions about each topic and the able defenders and critics which exist for each position. You can spend your whole life simply trying to master just one of these fields).
But I promise to come back to the debate between survivalists and materialists. So far, I have 7 posts about it: Enjoy.
Alan Guth is a Victor F. Weisskopf Professor of Physics in the MIT. He remained at MIT from 1964 to 1971, acquiring S.B., S.M., and Ph.D. degrees, all in physics. His Ph.D. thesis, done under the supervision of Francis Low, was an exploration of an early model of how quarks combine to form the elementary particles that we observe.
According to Guth, people who don't accept the Big Bang theory are seen essentially as "crackpots". Obviously, this fact alone is not a reason to think that "Big Bang denialists" are wrong, but Guth is not saying such a thing. His point is that the Big Bang model of the origin of the universe is so good supported by the evidence that, in the scientific community, almost no one denies it.
This point is interesting, because many of the denialists or doubters of the Big Bang theory are hard-core atheists and materialists, who (correctly) regard the absolute origin of the universe as something which supports theism over atheism (the latter typically saw the universe as eternal). The reason is that theism implies at least an "absolute creation event" or "creationism" regarding the cosmos (i.e. the origin of the universe and life), but atheism doesn't implies such a thing (specially, in its naturalistic contemporary version, "absolute creation" is impossible due to the principle of causal closure of the physical world and the principle of conservation of matter/energy, which are essential to naturalism). In fact, atheism is fully compatible with the non-existence of the universe, consciousness or whatever. But theism doesn't (it entails the existence of consciousness and other person-relative phenomena, plus an universe, or many universe, in which conscious spiritual beings could emerge, live, operate and evolve).
Careful atheistic thinkers realize this, and hence they try to avoid the "absolute beginning" regarding the universe (Big Bang), even if their position clash with the scientific evidence and therefore is unscientific. So, Mario Bunge (who's a materialistic and atheistic philosopher of science and physicist and a strong supporter of organized skepticism), comments in his lastest book Matter and Mind that "although relativistic cosmology is nearly one century old, it still has not decided whether there really was an absolute beginning (Big Bang), and if so what if anything exploded, or even whether the universe is spatially finite or infinite." (p. 38)
Obviously, such opinion can only be held if you ignore or disregard the evidence which has convinced most scientists that the Big Bang model is correct (and that, according to Guth, only is denied or doubted by crackpots), including Borde-Guth-Vilenkin theorem published in 2003 (another previous theorem by Hawking and Penrose was instrumental in convincing the scientific community that time was finite):
Faced with this scientific theorem, some atheist thinkers are forced to misrepresented it:
Note that the Big Bang model itself doesn't necessarily implies that this universe alone exists, therefore it doesn't implies that the beginning of this universe was the ultimate original one (it is still logically possible that our universe is one of multiple expanding universes which, each of them, began to exist too... this is why atheists appeal to the unproven "multiverses" hypothesis in order to avoid interpreting the Big Bang as the ultimate origin of the universe). But the theorem shows that even in that hypothetical case (hypothetical, because we have only certain evidence for THIS physical universe, not for others). the problem of an ultimate beginning remains. So, given the theorem, appealing for other universes is not a plausible escape for the problem of the "ultimate beginning" of the physical reality.
So, science supports, in a fundamental level, the "absolute beginning" postulated by theistic hypothesis regarding the cosmos. And the hard-core atheists like Bunge are the ones trying to avoid this scientific conclusion.
Ironically, when people (including agnostics like journalist Richard Milton, or hard-core atheists like Jerry Fodor) cast doubts on Neo-Darwinian theory of evolution, they're accused of being "unscientific" or "pseudoscientifc" creationists and crackpots. But when it comes to scientific cosmology and the evidence for the Big Bang, then the same hard-core atheistic ideologues become "skeptics of science" and accept unscientific positions and absolutely unsupported theories (e.g. the multiverse hypothesis), acting like crackpots.
And note that contrary to the "Big Bang skeptical atheists", the skeptics of Darwinism appeal to positive, actual scientific evidence to reject this theory (see Milton's paper, or Maximo Sandin's paper, Fodor's book). On the contrary, the atheistic "skeptics" of the Big Bang or the absolute origin appeal to speculations and unsupported theories (the multiverse, for example) in order to justify their skepticism.
Clearly, what is operative here is not "respect for science and reason" nor "following the scientific evidence whatever it leads", but an ideological agenda which uses (abuses) science selectively in order to support atheism, materialism and naturalism.
The main and most powerful argument for atheism is the so-called "Problem of Evil": roughly and in its logical version, this argument says that the existence of evil is logically incompatible with God's attributes of omnipotence and perfect goodness, because such a good powerful God could make disappear any evil and suffering if He wanted it. (If He couldn't, He wouldn't be omnipotent. But if He could but he doesn't want it, then his perfect goodness is non-existent).
You have to keep in mind that even if the logical version of the problem of evil were solid, it wouldn't be a proof for atheism. At most, it would be a proof against the traditional theistic understanding of God (as a God who is active in the world). But it left untouched a God as conceived by deists like former atheist philosopher of religion Antony Flew. In this interview, when asked about the problem of evil, the deist Flew answered: "For the deist, the existence of evil does not pose a problem because the deist God does not intervene in the affairs of the world."
So, the problem of evil falls short as a proof for atheism.
Moreover, as consequence of the works of philosophers like Alvin Plantinga (see specially his seminal book "God, Freedom and Evil"), the logical version of the problem of evil has been widely rejected by contemporary philosophers of religion.
As William Rowe, who's a prominent atheist philosopher of religion and defender of atheism, comments: "Some philosophers have contended that the existence of evil is logically inconsistent with the existence of the theistic God. No one, I think, has succeeded in establishing such an extravagant claim. Indeed, granted incompatibilism, there is a fairly compelling argument for the view that the existence of evil is logically consistent with the existence of the theistic God." (William L. Rowe, ‘The Problem of Evil and Some Varieties of Atheism’, American Philosophical Quarterly 16 (1979). Emphasis in blue added)
As consequence, atheist philosophers have developed the so-called "evidential" problem of evil, namely, the view that, granted the logical compatibility between God's attributes and the existence of evil, the latter makes improbable the existence of God (i.e. the existence of evil is empirical evidence against God's existence). This is the main argument of atheists today.
An obvious problem with this argument is that, according to classical theism, God's existence is necessary (hence, not a matter of probability calculus which only applies properly to contingent beings and events, i.e. beings and events which could or couldn't fail to exist or occur, and precisely for this reason their existence can be "probable" or "improbable" given a certain background). Therefore, if God's existence is even possible (i.e. logically possible given the existence of evil), then he must to exist (i.e. the notion of a possible necessary being failing to exist is logically incoherent). This is why the atheist concession that evil is compatible with God's existence is a major concession against atheism. In my opinion, this is the primary shortcoming of this version of the problem of evil.
But my purpose in this post is not to discuss the arguments for and against the evidential problem of evil.
Rather, I want to suggest the watching of the movie Sliding Doors, which highlights one of the most common defenses that theists have against the evidential version of the problem of evil, namely, the view that God could have morally sufficient reasons to allow evils in the world.
Many theists (like William Lane Craig, see below), trying to meet the challenge of the evidential version of the problem of evil in its own merits, arguing that God could have moral reasons to allowing evils in the world, but that the theist doesn't need to know them (after all, how could any of us to know God's full reasons for any divine action, decision or permission? Perhaps we can know some things about God, like his existence, main attributes, some of his purposes and so forth, but pretending to know in detail the specific contents, desires and plans of an infinite, omniscient and perfect mind seems to be impossible for infinite and imperfect beings like us).
The movie Sliding Doors doesn't refer to religion, or to the debate of theism and atheism. The movie tells the story of a woman whose life could take different directions depending on whether or not she catches a train.
This movie is relevant for reflections about God allowing evils because, given human beings' free will, each alternative choice by every individual person in a specific set of circunstances could have wholly different effects (individually and above all collectively), and some of these effects could be desired by God as part of his large plan or providence for the humankind. So, a natural tragedy (e.g. as the events occured in Japan some time ago) could trigger human decisions which, in the future, will cause a state of affairs which is part of God's overall plan.
One could still ask why God, being omnipotent, allows such natural disasters in order to reach his desired ends. Couldn't he simply use other, less dramatic or tragic means, to reach his ends? This is what we don't know: onmipotence means the faculty of bringing about any metaphysically possible state of afairs, but it is not clear that, given free will (of human beings and other advanced beings: aliens, afterlife spirits, angels or demons if they exist, inter-dimensional intelligences, etc.) God could bring about his ultimate ends, without violating and destrying the free will of his creations.
For example, some ufologists who accept the existence of extraterrestial beings suggest, based on the evidence of contactees, that some aliens are responsible of certain natural disasters or "casual" tragedies in order to cause pain and suffering on human beings (supposedly, some negative alien races absorb the energy of negative human emotions like hatred, anger, panic, fear, envy, etc.). If this is the case, then even some natural evils are a product of free will (e.g. of advanced non-human beings).
Obviously God could simply destroy everything that exists, including any creature endowed with free will and consciousness; but such a action would seem less "good" than allowing certain finite evils in order to, eventually, cause greater goods and an expansion of consciousness and universal armony.
In any case, it is obvious that we're entering an extremely speculative territory here. We simply don't know why God allows such a thing. The point is that the atheist problem from evil, while convincing for atheists, is hardly convincing for theists or even (I dare to say) agnostics with an open mind about God's existence.
In addition to Plantinga's book recommended above, I've found very useful William Lane Craig's distinction between the "emotional problem of evil" and the "intellectual problem of evil", which he discusses, for example, in the following lecture:
I strongly recommend to think about Craig's arguments, Plantinga's sophisticated treatment of the problem of evil, and watching the movie Sliding Doors with this topic about free will, the evil and God's omnipotence in mind.
Klemens Kappel is an atheist philosopher who has a broad research profile in analytical philosophy and has contributed to research at an international level in epistemology, ethics, bioethics, meta-ethics and political philosophy. In ethics he has published work on consequentialism and egalitarianism, and issues in political philosophy. For several years his research interests have focused on epistemology, in particular externalist theories of knowledge and justification and problems in moral epistemology. He has published work on epistemological naturalism, skepticism, transcendental anti-skeptical arguments, moral intuitionism, moral coherentism and the generality problem. Klemens Kappel’s current research interests are within social epistemology broadly construed, and he is currently working on questions concerning the value of knowledge, the social function of knowledge and knowledge attribution, the semantics of knowledge ascriptions, disagreement, testimony and the political philosophy of knowledge production.
