Author: Ophelia Benson

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The Interrogations Archive

A reader alerted me to this article taking issue with Swinburne.

…serious arguments are what the religious believer needs to come up with, rather than evasive appeals to ‘faith’. If belief in God is a matter of ‘faith’ in contrast to reason, there’s nothing to distinguish it from mere wishful thinking.

Just so. And yet ‘faith’ is routinely used as a valor word, a virtue word, a self-righteous word, a self-flattering word. The nimbus around it almost always indicates ‘I have “faith” therefore I am better.’ That’s bad. Wishful thinking should not have an aura of superior virtue or depth. But it does. That’s bad.

Swinburne now offers two new versions of the argument from design, which shift the argument to another level. The first, which he calls the ‘argument from temporal order’, points to the fact that everything in the universe takes place with predictable regularity, in accordance with scientific laws…”To say that such laws govern matter is just to say that every bit of matter, every neutron and proton and electron throughout endless space and time behaves in exactly the same way…How extraordinary that is!”…What exactly is supposed to be ‘extraordinary’ about this regularity?

I’ll clear that up for you. Look, I’ll shuffle this pack of cards, then I’ll deal myself five cards, then I’ll point out how extraordinary it is that I got just those five cards and no others. It’s mind-boggling. God alone can explain it. See?

Our existence seems to call for some special explanation only if we assume that we human beings have a special importance and that a universe without us would be an impoverished universe which would have gone badly wrong. We may like to think that the purpose of the universe is to produce ourselves, but there’s no reason to suppose that that’s true. It’s just a reflection of our human perspective and our inflated ideas of our own importance.

Swinburne seems to have a really bad case of that, and of a surprising inability even to notice that he has it, or at least to acknowledge it. That’s part of what makes his arguments sound so…the way they sound.

Necessarily, if what we want to explain are the facts which science starts from, then science cannot itself explain them. But it doesn’t follow that, because there is no scientific explanation, there must be a personal explanation. The alternative is that there is no explanation at all (that is, we should reject the first premise). Swinburne thinks that this is unacceptable. He says: ‘To suppose these data to be just brute inexplicable facts seems…highly irrational.’ (p. 53) But all explanations have to come to an end somewhere. If you ask theists why there exists an omnipotent, omniscient and benevolent god, there is no further explanation they can give. If God is the explanation of everything else, then the existence of God has to be just a brute inexplicable fact. It seems to me to be a great deal more rational to accept, as our brute fact, the existence of a certain kind of universe. After all, we do have the best possible evidence that this universe, unlike God, actually exists!

Yeah but on the other hand if we’re going to stop with some brute fact or other, we might as well pick the one that loves us and makes us suffer pain so that other people can have sympathy for us – right? That being so much more consoling and all.

Because the question is, what good is sympathy and alleviating suffering if there is no suffering? What is the point of them? There is no point. They’re not needed. They’re not even virtues. The notion is absurd. Suppose a friend bounces up to you, full of bliss and happiness, to tell you some good news. Is it a good thing to clutch her hand damply and say how sorry you are? Is it a good thing to push her down and force morphine down her throat? No. Your sympathy and alleviation aren’t needed or wanted. (Sympathy in the sense of fellow-feeling is probably welcome, but that’s not what Swinburne means here.) And if your friend is never suffering and in pain, they never will be. They’re not needed unless we are in fact suffering and in pain; so why would they be good in and of themselves? They wouldn’t. But Swinburne seems to be assuming they would. Why? Why does he assume that? Other than, of course, sheer desperation to come up with some reason that pain and illness are good things.

And why on earth would it be a good thing that suffering ‘provides society with the opportunity to choose whether or not to invest a lot of money in trying to find a cure for this or that particular kind of suffering’? Why is that opportunity good or desirable if suffering doesn’t exist? It isn’t. Society could go off and think about other things, ponder other choices, seize different opporunities to choose what to invest in. So why does Swinburne say it that way, as if it’s somehow inherently good for society to have an opportunity to choose whether or not to invest a lot of money in trying to find a cure for suffering? Why does he think so back to front? ‘It is good for society to choose whether or not to spend money on cures for suffering, therefore, it is good that people should suffer.’ If he thinks that’s right, does he think war is good because it gives military surgeons lots of practice? If he thinks that, does he then think that the more injuries there are, the better? If he thinks that, then is he depressed on days when the newspapers are slightly less full of injuries? Is he pleased when there are earthquakes and tsunamis and hurricanes? Surely the logic of his peculiar argument entails that he must be. If suffering is good so that people can be sympathetic and society can make budget decisions, then the more of it there is, the better, right? Because the more suffering there is, the more chances to be sympathetic there are, so it must be a case of the more the better. So we’re all being negligent and cruel if we fail to hurt each other at every opportunity? Is that right?

Rhetoric in play in this review of Breaking the Spell.

Thus we read: “If theists would be so kind as to make a short list of all the concepts of God they renounce as balderdash before proceeding further, we atheists would know just which topics were still on the table, but, out of a mixture of caution, loyalty, and unwillingness to offend anyone ‘on their side,’ theists typically decline to do this.” Perhaps so, but then is Dennett prepared to perform a comparable triage for the favorite topics of his fellow atheists? Where do “we atheists” stand, for example, with regard to fellow atheist Howard Stern? We theists would like to know, if Dennett would be so kind, though we fear that out of a mixture of caution, loyalty and unwillingness to offend, he may pass over America’s most influential single atheist in silence.

But that’s a bad analogy, because atheists don’t posit anything qua atheists. There is no atheist equivalent of a concept of God. We can’t make a list of our concepts of non-belief in God (much less of our concepts of noGod, because we don’t believe in noGod, we just don’t believe in God, which is quite different) because there’s nothing to list. I don’t play squash; I can’t round up a lot of (or all?) non-squashplayers and compile a list of the ways we don’t play squash, can I. It would take too long, and wouldn’t tell us anything. Furthermore, Miles has done a very brazen slide there, from theists’ views of concepts of God to atheists’ opinions of – Howard Stern? In what way is that a ‘comparable triage’? It isn’t, obviously; it’s ludicrous. That ridiculous suggestion would be ‘comparable triage’ to asking theists where they stand, for example, with regard to James Dobson or Pat Robertson. That, as I am sure you will appreciate, is a quite different thing from asking theists to make a short list of all the concepts of God they renounce as balderdash. There ought to be a journalistic law against sloppy non-analogous analogies. There ought to be a strict rule, enforceable by a trip to northern Manitoba, against using the word ‘comparable’ to refer to something very different. Journalists ought to be accurate and careful; they have a responsibility and a duty to be those things; that includes book reviewers.

[T]hough Dennett pays lip service to the need for Darwinian theorists of religion to acquaint themselves with actual religion as patiently as Darwin acquainted himself with actual animal breeding, in practice he rarely does so. He defines religion, for example, in a parochially Western way as “social systems whose participants avow belief in a supernatural agent or agents whose approval is to be sought.” A religion without gods, he adds, is “like a vertebrate without a backbone.” But this is a definition that does not begin to cope with Buddhism…

That’s a mistake (or piece of rhetoric) we see a lot, and it’s pretty irritating. A ‘parochially Western way’? That definition (obviously) includes Islam, which is hardly exclusively ‘Western’, in fact is often used (mistakenly) as an antonym of ‘Western’. That’s stupid, for a lot of reasons (mixing of kinds; ‘Western’ influence on Islam; presence of Islam in the West; etc), but pretending Dennett’s definition is purely ‘Western’ is equally stupid, especially since it includes Hinduism and other ‘Eastern’ religions as well as Islam, so the fact that it doesn’t deal with Buddhism is hardly enough to make it ‘parochially Western’.

Miles may have valid points, but those two items are enough to make me suspect everything he says.

Richard Swinburne is interesting. I’ve said so before. So has Mark Fournier at Tachyphrenia. And now it’s time to say it some more. Because the things Swinburne says here are truly revolting, and yet they are, of course, what you get if you try to reconcile the omnipotent omnibenevolent God with the existence and abundance of suffering in the world – just what Darwin couldn’t manage to reconcile himself to. There’s an irony of sorts in the fact that it’s Swinburne’s view that is considered by many – by surprisingly many – to be the ‘devout’ and ‘holy’ and therefore (why? why therefore?) ‘good’ one, and Darwin’s that is considered the impious and wicked one. The approval of the deliberate causing and continuance of pain and suffering to billions of sentient beings is considered good, and the disapproval and rejection of that is considered wicked. That’s interesting, and it is, if you ask me, a sign of something badly corrupt at the heart of the whole swindle.

Theodicy provides good explanations of why God sometimes — for some or all of the short period of our earthly lives — allows us to suffer pain and disability.

Good? Good explanations? Good in what sense?

Although intrinsically bad states, these difficult times often serve good purposes for the sufferers and for others. My suffering provides me with the opportunity to show courage and patience. It provides you with the opportunity to show sympathy and to help alleviate my suffering. And it provides society with the opportunity to choose whether or not to invest a lot of money in trying to find a cure for this or that particular kind of suffering.

Well why stop there? It also provides pharmaceutical companies with the opportunity to develop pain medications, and nurses with the opportunity to apologize for the fact that the pain can’t be alleviated, and vicars and priests with the opportunity to pray that it will be alleviated, and God with the opportunity to refuse to alleviate it, and the funeral people with the opportunity to dispose of the corpse after the victim has committed suicide. Lots and lots of opportunities. Good. So – we should all act accordingly? We should all rush outside with our carving knives and soldering irons and distribute injuries generously around the neighborhood so that there will be further abundance of such opportunities? Suffering is a good thing because it creates these good opportunities so there should be lots more of it so we should all bend every nerve to create more of it?

No. We don’t actually think that’s the case. So why does Swinburne get to claim that it is the case, and that that’s a ‘good’ explanation? Why doesn’t everybody for miles around just tell him ‘That’s disgusting’ until he’s so embarrassed he stops saying it?

That’s a real question. I find it baffling.

Although a good God regrets our suffering, his greatest concern is surely that each of us shall show patience, sympathy and generosity and, thereby, form a holy character. Some people badly need to be ill for their own sake, and some people badly need to be ill to provide important choices for others. Only in that way can some people be encouraged to make serious choices about the sort of person they are to be. For other people, illness is not so valuable.

Oh, godalmighty. That is such crap, and such transparent crap – so carefully arranged to get the conclusion he wants (God is okay really even though it seems to be an awful shit) with that last little escape hatch – for other people, illness not so useful. Give me a break. Swinburne looks at the world: sees that some people get ill and suffer, others don’t; needs to make this harmonize with ‘a good God’; explains that suffering is good for some people and not for others; job done.

An analogy will show that what I have written is not an ad hoc hypothesis postulated to save theism from disconfirmation.

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha. Oh, that’s a good one. He’s not only interesting, he’s also a comedian. A sadistic comedian, but a comedian.