Theism and emotional attitudes to adversity

Here are two three possible emotional attitudes towards great adversity:

1. Judaeo-Christian: hope

2. Stoic: calm

3. Russellian: anger/despair.

Now consider this argument:

1. The appropriate attitude towards great adversity is Judaeo-Christian or Stoic.

2. If naturalism is true, the appropriate attitude towards great adversity is Russellian.

3. So, naturalism is false.

The reason for (1) is the obvious attractiveness of the hopeful-to-calm part of the emotional spectrum as a way of dealing with diversity.

The reason for (2) is that emotions should fit with reality. But as Russell argues, a naturalist reality does not care about us: we came from the nebula and we will go back to the nebula, and the darkness of our life makes Greek tragedy the supreme form of human art. The most we can do shake our fist at the injustice of it all.

Closeness and Double Effect

The Principle of Double Effect (PDE) is traditionally a defense against a charge of bringing about an effect that is absolutely wrong to intentionally bring about, a defense that holds that although one foresaw the effect, one did not intend it.

One of the main difficulties for PDE is the closeness problem. Typical examples of the closeness problem are things like dropping bombs on an enemy city in order to make the civilians look dead (Bennett), blowing up the fat man in the mouth of the cave when there is no other way out (Anscombe), etc.

If we think of intentions as arrows and the wrong-to-intend act as a target, one strategy for handling closeness problems is to “broaden intentions”, so that they hit the target more easily. Thus, if you intend something “close enough” to an effect you count as intending (or something similar to intending, say accomplishing) that effect. There are interesting general theories of this (e.g., O’Brien and Koons), but I do not think any of them cover all the cases well.

Another strategy, however, is to broaden the target. This strategy keeps intention very sharp and hyperintensional, but insists that what is forbidden to intend is broader. A number of people have done that (e.g., Quinn). What I want to do in this post is to offer a way of looking at a version of this strategy.

The PDE is correlative to absolute wrongs. There aren’t that many absolute wrongs. For instance, Judaism lists only three kinds of acts as absolute wrongs, things that may not be done no matter the benefits:

• idolatry

• murder

• certain sexual sins (e.g., adultery and incest).

Now, intention enters differently into the definitions of these acts. Arguably, idolatry is very much defined by intentions. The very same physical bending of one’s midriff in the very same physical circumstances (e.g., standing facing an idol) can very easily be an act of idolatry or a back exercise, precisely depending on what one is intending by this bow. Such pairs of cases can be manufactured in the case of murder, but they will involve very odd assumptions. We can imagine a surgeon or an assassin cutting someone’s chest with the same movement, but it is in fact very unlikely that the movement will be the same. In the case of idolatry, we might say that more work is being done by intention and in the case of murder more work is being done by the physical act. And sexual wrongdoing is a very complex topic, but it is likely that intention enters in yet different ways, and differently in the case of different sexual wrongs.

We can think of an absolute prohibition as having the following structure:

1. For all x₁, ..., x_n, when U(x₁, ..., x_n), it is absolutely wrong to intentionally bring it about that I(x₁, ..., x_n).

Here, U(x₁, ..., x_n) is a contextual description which needs to obtain but need not be intended to have a wrong of the given type, and I(x₁, ..., x_n) is a contextual description which needs to be intended. For instance, for murder, prima facie U(x₁, x₂) might specify that x₁ is an act whose patient is known to be a juridically innocent person x₂, while I(x₁, x₂) will specify that, say, x₁ is the killing of x₂. It’s enough that the murderer should know that the victim is an innocent person—the murderer does not need to intend to kill them qua innocent. But the murderer does need to intend something like the killing.

Note that in ordinary speech, when we give absolute prohibitions we speak with scope ambiguity. Thus, we are apt to say things like “It is wrong to intentionally kill an innocent person”, without making clear whether “intentionally” applies just to “kill” or also to “innocent person”, i.e., without making it clear what is in the U part of the prohibition and what is in the I part.

Observe also that in the case of idolatry, more work is being done by I than by U, while in the case of murder, the work done by the two parts of the structure is the same.

So, now, here is a general strategy for handling closeness. We keep intention sharp, but we broaden (i.e., logically weaken) I by shifting some things that we might have thought are in I into U, perhaps introducing “known” or “believed” operators. For instance, in the case of murder, we might say something like this:

2. When x₁ is known to be the imposition of an arrangement x₂ on the parts or aspects of an innocent person that normally and in this particular case precludes life, it is absolutely wrong to bring about x₁ with the intention that it be an imposition of arrangement x₂ on parts or aspects of reality.

And in the case of idolatry, perhaps we keep more in I, only moving the difference between God and the false god to the nonintentional portion of the prohibition:

3. When x is known to be a god other than God, it is absolutely wrong to intentionally bring it about that one worships x.

And here is an important point. How we do this—how we shuffle requirements between I and U—will differ from absolute prohibition to absolute prohibition. What we are doing is not a refinement of Double Effect, but a refinement of the (hopefully small) number of absolute prohibitions in our deontological theory. We do not need to have any general things to say across absolute prohibitions how we do this broadening of the intentional target.

There might even be further complexities. It could, for instance, be that we have role-specific absolute prohibitions, coming with other ways for aspects of the action to be apportioned between U and I.

Mystery and religion

Given what we have learned from science and philosophy, fundamental aspects of the world are mysterious and verge on contradiction: photons are waves and particles; light from the headlamp on a fast train goes at the same speed relative to the train and relative to the ground; objects persist while changing; we should not murder but we should redirect trolleys; etc. Basically, when we think deeper, things start looking strange, and that’s not a sign of us going right. There are two explanations of this, both of which are likely a part of the truth: reality is strange and our minds are weak.

It seems not unreasonable to expect that if there were a definitive revelation of God, that revelation would also be mysterious and verge on contradiction. Of the three great monotheistic religions, Christianity with the mystery of the Trinity is the one that fits best with this expectation. At the same time, I doubt that this provides much of an argument for Christianity. For while it is not unreasonable to expect that God’s revelation would be paradoxical, it is a priori a serious possibility that God’s revelation might be so limited that what was revealed would not be paradoxical. And it would also be a priori a serious possibility that while creation is paradoxical, God is not, though this last option is a posteriori unlikely given what we learn from the mystical experience traditions found in all the three monotheistic religions.

So, I am not convinced that there is a strong argument for Christianity and against the other two great monotheistic religions on the grounds that Christianity is more mysterious. But at least there is no argument against Christianity on the basis of its embodying mysteries.

The argument from highly intelligent saints who are Christians

1. There have been many highly intelligent saints who were Christians.

2. If there have been may highly intelligent saints who were Christians, then probably (insofar as the above evidence goes) the central doctrines of Christianity are true.

3. So, probably (insofar as the above evidence goes), the central doctrines of Christianity are true.

(An interesting variant is to replace “are true” in (2) and (3) with “are approximately true”, and then to combine the conclusion with my previous post.)

I do not plan to defend 1. That’s too easy. Note, though, that while easy, it’s not trivial. I am not claiming that there were many highly intelligent people who were canonized “Saints” by the Catholic or Orthodox Church, though that’s true. Nor am I claiming that there were many highly intelligent people who were Christian saints. I am claiming that there are may highly intelligent people who were saints simpliciter, as well as being Christian.

What is a saint like? Saints are deeply morally good people who, insofar as it depends on them, lead a deeply flourishing human life. Their lives are meaningful and when seen closely—which may be difficult, as many saints are very unostentatious—these lives are deeply compelling to others. Saints tightly integrate the important components of their lives. In particular, those saints who are highly intelligent—and not all saints are intelligent, though all are wise—integrate their intellectual life and their moral life. Highly intelligent saints are reflective. They have an active and humble conscience that is on the lookout for correction, and this requires integration between the intellectual life and the moral life.

An intelligent saint who is a Christian is also a Christian saint. For Christianity is not the sort of doctrine that can be held on the peripheries of a well-lived life. Someone who is a Christian but to whose life Christianity is not central is neither a saint simpliciter nor a Christian saint. For a central part of being Christian is believing that Christianity should be central to one’s life, and an intelligent saint—in either sense—will see this and thus either conscientiously act on such a belief, making Christianity be central to her life, or else conclude that Christianity is false.

Now, the existence of a highly intelligent saint who is a Christian is evidence for coherence between central moral truths and the truth of Christianity. For if they were not coherent, the reflectiveness of the highly intelligent saint would likely have seen the incoherence, and her commitment to morality would have led to the rejection of Christianity. But it’s not just that the moral truths and the truth of Christianity cohere: the truths of Christianity support and motivate the moral life. For the saint who is a Christian is, as I just argued, also a Christian saint. And a Christian saint is motivated in the moral life by considerations central to Christianity—the love of God as shown in creation and in the incarnate Son’s sacrificial death on the cross.

It is difficult to have a coherent theory that includes in a highly integrated way deeply metaphysical beliefs and correct moral views in a way where the metaphysical beliefs support the moral ones. That a theory is such is significant evidence for the theory’s truth. More generally and loosely, I think that a person whose life is deeply compelling is likely to be right in those central beliefs of her that are tightly interwoven with what makes her life compelling. But the saint’s moral life is compelling, and if she is a Christian, then her central Christian beliefs are tightly interwoven with her moral life.

Hence, 2 is true.

Of course, the above is not all the evidence there is. What about highly intelligent saints who are not Christians? The existence of such may well weaken the argument. But at least, I think, the argument makes Christianity an intellectually serious option.

And there may be something we can say more specifically on a case by case basis about saints outside of Christianity. Crucial to my argument was that one cannot be a saint and a Christian and have the Christianity be peripheral to one’s moral life. But one can be a saint and an atheist and have the atheism be peripheral to one’s moral life. Atheism is a negative doctrine, after all. If one turns it into a positive motivational doctrine, one gets something like Russell’s “A Free Man’s Worship”. But that is too proud, too haughty, too cold, too dark to be the central motivational doctrine of a saint. A saint who is an atheist is, I suspect, not as likely to be an atheist saint as a saint who is a Christian is to be a Christian saint.

Eastern religions have their saints, but there is an obvious tension between the irrealism to which Eastern religions tend and moral truths about the importance of love of others, of corporal care for the needs of others. One can adhere to an irrealist philosophy and despite this live a life of service to others, but it is unlikely that the service to others be central to one’s life in the way that moral sainthood requires.

What about Jewish and Muslim saints? Well, it may be that many of the motivationally central parts of Judaism and Islam are shared by Christianity—though the converse is not true, given the motivational centrality of the Incarnation to Christianity. One might object that the transcendence and simplicitly of God as taught in Judaism and Islam is motivationally central. But classical Christian theism embraces the transcendence and simplicity of God—and the Incarnation and Trinity, too.

Aquinas and God

It just occurred to me, while grading a comprehensive exam question on Aquinas, how deeply Jewish Aquinas’s approach to God is. In the structure of the Summa Theologiae, the primary attribute of God, the one on which the derivation of all the others depends, is God’s oneness or simplicity.

Life

Accounts of biological life characterize it by lists of features such as “reproduction, metabolism, functional organization, growth, responsiveness to the environment, movement, and short- and long-term adaptations” (SEP s.v. life). But Jewish, Christian and Muslim theists have reason to worry about such accounts of life in the light of the fact that our scriptures present God as the paradigm of a living being.

Here are some options:

Option 1: Modify one’s theology to make God fit with something pretty close to one of the biological accounts of life. Mormonism is a fairly radical example of this. A more moderate version might be some version of process theology, though one may need to jettison some features, like metabolism and growth.

Option 2: Trinitarians have this option available: The Son proceeds from the Father and the Spirit from the Father and/through the Son and these processions could count as reproduction. Moreover, because Trinitarian processions multiply persons but the resulting persons are one God, Trinitarian reproduction has an internality that might count as a kind of growth—not that the divine essence grows, but that the number of persons of the one God grows. This solution would have the important consequence that the Old Testament texts that present God as living are proto-Trinitarian. Obviously, this solution is unlikely to be attractive to Jews and Muslims, though there may be some Kabbalistic analogue that might appeal to some Jews. Moreover, unless one adopts some version of process theology, this solution still requires one to drop a number of the features in traditional accounts of biological life, such as metabolism, movement and adaptation.

Option 3: Replace the biological accounts of life with something radically different which makes God a paradigm instance of life. Here are three such possibilities for characterizing life:

A. Living things are ones that have some mental property like consciousness or purposefulness.

B. Living things have teleology.

C. Living things are ones that have a well-being, that are capable of being well.

Suboption A is pretty radical: it requires either saying that plants have a mental life or that plants aren’t alive. I think it’s not that crazy to say that plants have something like mental life. Maybe they are aware of their environment in a way that goes robustly beyond the mere data processing of a digital thermometer. And it seems plausible that one can ascribe a certain kind of purposefulness to plant processes.

Suboption B is pretty close to the purposefulness variant of suboption A, but teleology is a more general concept than mental purposefulness. For me, the main difficulty with suboption B is that I think all substances have teleology. And I don’t want to extend life to elementary particles. But those who do not think that teleology extends to all substances might like Suboption B.

Suboption C is, of course, related to Suboption B. I have the same worry about C as about B: I think all substances that have teleology have a well-being. Elementary particles have well-being—the only difference between them and organic substances is that as far as we can tell, elementary particles are always well. This is of course very controversial, and those who do not accept it may like C.

There are, no doubt, other options and suboptions. I am attracted to Options 2 and 3A.

The character of God in the Bible

The Old Testament has a picture of its central character, God, that is on its surface inconsistent, with apparently contradictory features. But a deeper reading shows a deep consistency: a consistent but from our point of view complex character displayed in a variety of circumstances, from a variety of points of view, and also reflected in the emotions of narrators and interactions of other characters.

I shall not try to defend this reading of the Old Testament here. It cannot be done in a post, and maybe not even in a book, and certainly not by me. One must drink in the texts. Personally, I have found very helpful our Department Bible study in this regard. We are doing Book III of the Psalms (Pss. 73-89), and this has been one of the things that has led to this post.

Now, there come to mind four prima facie plausible explanations for the portrayal of a single character across a large body of literature by a large set of authors.

1. Imitation by a number of authors of a canon of primary texts or stories originally by a single author.
2. Harmonization by selection of texts and/or editorial work on particular texts.
3. Cooperative authorship.
4. A modeling of the character on an actual person with whom the diverse set of authors all interacted "in real life."

If (4) is the right explanation, then the fact that the authors wrote over a period of many centuries, in different social circumstances, together with the essential otherness of central character of the texts, makes it most unlikely that any mere human was the model. And the simplest explanation is that the authors were in fact interacting with the person they claim to be describing—Y*WH, the God of Israel. Therefore, if (4) is true, then we have strong evidence that God exists. Observe that it is not uncommon for the same person to have apparent surface differences as seen in different contexts and by different people—we call this "complexity" in the person and it lends reality to the person (which character complexity in the case of God is, I think, compatible with ontological simplicity, but that's a different question).

Note that the deep consilience not only suggests that the various authors interacted with the same person, but that they did not do so in a shallow way. It is possible to have portrayals of the same person by different people who were acquainted with the subject where there isn't such a consilience—I feel this way in the case of Plato and Xenophon's respective portrayals of Socrates, though I could be wrong (I have not drunk in the Xenophon texts sufficiently).

If (1) were the right explanation, we would expect shallow consistency in the portrayal of the character, and quite likely some deep inconsistencies, whereas we observe the opposite. It is hard for one author to take another author's character and portray that character in a consistent way, and the likely result of an attempt to portray that character is that one will have a similarity of outward mannerisms, but to a careful reader (or viewer) it just won't be the same character but an impostor. For instance, the Sherlock Holmes of the "New Adventures of Sherlock Holmes" TV series from the '50s is a case in point (this is the most absurd example from the seires). But when two authors portray different surface detail with a deep consistency, then we have something quite unexpected on a copying hypothesis. Granted, this could result from literary genius combined with depth of appreciation of another's work on the part of the copyist, but such a combination is rare. Most literary geniuses create characters on their own, often even when the character bears the name of some historical figure. And the Hebrew Scriptures weren't just written by two or three authors, but by a much greater number. Thus, explanation (1) does not fit the phenomena very well.

As for (2), again harmonization might explain doctrinal agreement and agreement as to surface features, but unless the harmonization takes the form of a rewriting of the whole body of texts by a literary genius, it would not produce a deep consilience in the central character. And no such unified rewriting in fact happened: the Hebrew Scriptures retain a great diversity of genres and styles. Another striking feature is that at least as regarding texts from before around the 4th century BC, it does not appear that there was much in the way of centralized selection. It seems that the main criterion for canonicity in the first century—to the extent that the concept of canonicity existed—was not deep consilience in the character of God, but something more extrinsic like Hebrew-language authorship combined with venerable age.

Option (3) could work with a small number of contemporaneous authors—but certainly not with the great number of authors of the Hebrew Scriptures strung out across centuries.

So that leaves option (4), and so we have good reason to think that at least a number of the authors of the Hebrew Scriptures had encountered the character of God in reality.

What does the New Testament add to the argument? I think the deep consilience with apparent surface difference continues. So the argument is strengthened. And another point emerges. Jesus Christ, although typically not explicitly portrayed as God, is portrayed in a way that gives him a deep consilience of character with the Y*WH of the Old Testament. Just to give one example, he appropriates, in a credible way, God's desire to gather the Israelites to himself like a mother hen.

May we be thus gathered to him.

Of course, I do not claim originality for this argument. It is inspired by similar arguments seen in various places. Nor do I promote this argument as a way of convincing atheists. Because the evidence of the deep consilience needs to be gathered over years of drinking in the Scriptures, and maybe this can only be done while living the life of the community that has produced the Scriptures (i.e., the life of the Church or of the Synagogue), this argument, while of significant epistemic weight, may only be evidentially useful to Christians. Yet, God can help someone not living the life of the community to see the consilience, so it could have some value outside the community, too.