Divine Hiddenness: Starting Over

The first few conversations we had here on Divine Hiddenness didn't meet the real question that was raised. Ron now says he thinks Paul's original statement of the problem is a good one for our purposes here:

"The majority of atheists, if asked why they did not believe in God, would probably respond that it is because they see no credible evidence for the existence of such a being. The argument from divine hiddenness is merely a formalized version of that stance. In brief, it states that the lack of obvious manifestations of God is better explained by assuming that God does not exist than by assuming that God does exist but chooses to remain hidden."

The formal version of the argument by Schellenberg, Drange, etc. was proposed as a deductive argument proving the non-existence of God. This version takes the evidence at hand and treats it by "inference to the best explanation." IBE arguments do not have formal logic--airtight rules, in a sense--by which they can be proved or disproved. There are nevertheless standards we can use to treat the matter, and this representative list is as easy to find on the web as any.

Argument to the best explanation

C. Behan McCullagh lays down seven conditions for a successful argument to the best explanation (Justifying Historical Descriptions, 19):

1. The statement, together with other statements already held to be true, must imply yet other statements describing present, observable data. (We will henceforth call the first statement 'the hypothesis', and the statements describing observable data, 'observation statements'.)

2. The hypothesis must be of greater explanatory scope than any other incompatible hypothesis about the same subject; that is, it must imply a greater variety of observation statements.

3. The hypothesis must be of greater explanatory power than any other incompatible hypothesis about the same subject; that is, it must make the observation statements it implies more probable than any other.

4. The hypothesis must be more plausible than any other incompatible hypothesis about the same subject; that is, it must be implied to some degree by a greater variety of accepted truths than any other, and be implied more strongly than any other; and its probable negation must be implied by fewer beliefs, and implied less strongly than any other.

5. The hypothesis must be less ad hoc than any other incompatible hypothesis about the same subject; that is, it must include fewer new suppositions about the past which are not already implied to some extent by existing beliefs.

6. It must be disconfirmed by fewer accepted beliefs than any other incompatible hypothesis about the same subject; that is, when conjoined with accepted truths it must imply fewer observation statements and other statements which are believed to be false.

7. It must exceed other incompatible hypotheses about the same subject by so much, in characteristics 2 to 6, that there is little chance of an incompatible hypothesis, after further investigation, soon exceeding it in these respects.

McCullagh sums up, "if the scope and strength of an explanation are very great, so that it explains a large number and variety of facts, many more than any competing explanation, then it is likely to be true." (Justifying Historical Descriptions, 26)

This gives us some serious work to do, for

• From (1), which "other statements already held to be true" will we combine with the proposed explanations to use for making predictions? Theism is "already held to be true" by a very large number of people. And what predictions will we consider valid?

• From (2), we must define how far we'll go in including observation statements. Shall we include the millions of observations by Christians of encounters with God, or not? (For it seems to be a minority, at least in many parts of the world, who report God as being "hidden.") Shall we include credibly attested reports of miracles or not? Shall we include the historically well-attested facts of Jesus' death, his burial by Joseph of Arimathea, the reports of the empty tomb by the women, the appearances to the disciples? Shall we include reports of answered prayers? Shall we include the beauty of creation, and its fine-tuning for complex life that can not only live in it but appreciate it? Shall we include all the evidences showing that persons with spiritual orientations toward life are typically happier, healthier, better-adjusted, more productive than others?

• From (3), we must weigh the explanatory power of the explanations. And shall we also include the explanatory power of theism in regard to the origin and ontology of evil, in regard to perceived free will and human meaning, in regard to our sense of actual right and wrong in the world, in regard to the strong appearance of design in the universe?

• From (4), shall we admit theism as a plausible alternative? Not to admit it would certainly be begging the question; but that seems to be the approach often taken.

• From (6), which body of "accepted beliefs" or "accepted truths" are we going to compare our proposed explanations to? For millions of us accept theism; millions of others do not. How will we decide?

These are difficult to sort through and come to agreement on. But I'm not saying there is no body of evidence that speaks to this issue. I'm saying it all does. All the evidence that relates to God, humanity, and creation, that is. In fact, the current statement of the problem is just another way of saying what has constantly been said: "Please show us the evidence." We've been addressing that request all along, post by post and comment by comment.

So I suggest that if we're not going to deal with the argument a la Drange and Schellenberg, we just let it go in this form. We can instead just agree and acknowledge that every time we discuss evidences, we're working on this at the same time. Otherwise this discussion will turn into an attempt to cover everything, which is hardly helpful.

That's been my impression of the discussion on the previous posts in this series, by the way. It's been interesting and thought-provoking, but extremely difficult to focus. That's partly because I took it down one direction while commenters had another direction in mind; but I think it's also because the field we try to cover, when we leave the deductive form of the argument behind, is just too broad.

Part of a Series
Divine Hiddenness

1. Divine Hiddenness
2. Direction-Setting
3. The Demand for a Sign
4. Course Correction
5. Deus Absconditus
6. Starting Over
7. Epilogue

Posted: Tue - May 1, 2007 at 12:55 PM |

Thinking Christian by Tom Gilson getCategoryName("<$CategoryUUID$>");

Divine Hiddenness: Starting Over

Thinking Christian by Tom Gilson