September 19, 2009

• Vox Day and "The Argument from Evil"

  Intro:

  To put it simply, Vox Day advocates a rather heretical definition of God in order to solve the problem of evil.  His God is just bigger, not biggest.  Gooder, not goodest.  Smarter, not smartest.  So the argument from evil is not even directed as his tribal deity he's resurrected from the pages of an eclectic garbage dump of half-baked theological ideas found frozen in the Bible.  The following are selected quotes from his "penultimate chapter" of his book, The Irrational Atheist, which claims to deal with the argument from evil. 

  Note, Luke Muehlhauser over at Common Sense Atheism has recently started a friendly dialog with Vox (link), so I thought I would go ahead and finish up my review that I started a few weeks ago.

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  I find this first selection most interesting, because it lays out the case quite eloquently for what the Bible actually says about the knowledge of God at face value minus the interpretative framework of mainstream theologians:

  "First, it is important to note that the Christian God, the god towards whom Dawkins directs the great majority of his attacks, makes no broad claims to omniscience. Although there are eighty-seven references to the things that the biblical God knows, only a single example could potentially be interpreted as a universal claim to complete knowledge.  Among the things that God claims to know are the following:

  He knows the way to wisdom and where it dwells, he knows the day of the wicked is coming, he knows the secrets of men’s hearts, he knows the thoughts of men and their futility. He knows the proud from afar, he knows what lies in darkness, and he knows what you need before you ask him. He knows the Son, he knows the day and the hour that the heavens and the earth shall pass away, he knows the mind of the Spirit and that the Apostle Paul loved the Corinthians.  He knows who are his, he knows how to rescue godly men from trials, and perhaps most importantly, he knows that the thoughts of the wise are futile. 

  The only straightforward claim to omniscience is made on God’s behalf by the Apostle John, who clearly states “he knows everything.”  However, the context in which the statement is made also indicates that this particular “everything” is not intended to encompass life and the universe, but rather everything about human hearts. Not only does this interpretation make more sense in light of the verse than with an inexplicable revelation of a divine quality that appears nowhere else in the Bible, but it is also in keeping with many previous statements made about God’s knowledge. 

  After all, when Hercule Poirot confronts the murderer in an Agatha Christie novel and informs the killer that he knows everything, the educated reader does not usually interpret this as a statement that the Belgian detective is confessing that he is the physical manifestation of Hermes Trismegistus, but rather that he knows everything about the crime he has been detecting.

  In keeping with this interpretation, Dr. Greg Boyd, the pastor at Woodland Hills Church and the author of Letters to a Skeptic, has written a book laying out a convincing case for the Open View of God, which among other things chronicles the many biblical examples of God being surprised, changing His mind, and even being thwarted. Moreover, it would be very, very strange for a presumably intelligent being such as Satan to place a bet with God if he believed that God knew with certainty what Job’s reaction to his torments would be."

  I don't take Dawkins' argument against the existence of God from contradictory attributes any more seriously than Vox does, so there's no problem there.  I am wondering how a council of Nicaea would address his heresies.  I recall thinking about how difficult it would be to make that case myself years ago when I wanted to make sure I could use my arguments against modern theology when Christians try to wiggle out of the mainstream positions.  The Bible is not a philosophy book so even when it does seem to spell out some absolute characteristics of God one is hard pressed to tell the difference between hyperbole and doctrinal proof text.  Then you have to make sense of (or just flat out disown at the expense of coherency) all the anthropomorphisms once you've gone all the way the other direction which may be an equal stretch for critical theologians.   I'd love to see that Bible on Bible debate though. 

  "Regardless, a God who stands outside of space and time and who possesses all knowledge as well as all power is not bound to make use of his full capacities, indeed, who is going to shake his finger at him for failing to live up to his potential?"

  In other words the "penultimate" "solution" to the argument from evil, is that God is a lazy a$$h*le. (Finally, a Christian listened to George Carlin! link)   

  "Moreover, from the human perspective, this logically acceptable tantiscient God would be completely indistinguishable from the omniscient one."

  Naturally I agree that someone that's a whole lot smarter than you is indistinguishable from someone that is absolutely smart from our perspective.  If only the Biblical tribal deity of Vox's was actually showing impressive brains, this might matter, but more often than not, it's just an assertion with lots of good reasons to doubt it. 

  When it’s time to feed my Viszla, I don’t magically summon food from the mysterious bag of plenty. But my dog doesn’t know that. 
  Likewise, we are incapable of perceiving the difference between a god who knows everything and a god who merely knows a whole lot more than we do, moreover, the latter is the god that more closely fits the description of the biblical God.

  Yes, but in this case, as humans with teh bigga brainsa, we have some idea that our world isn't well morally managed even if we can't tell you exactly how to make it perfect.

  There are two possibilities. Either evil is part of God’s plan and has been from the beginning, or God is somehow constrained in his ability to unleash his power upon this Earth. The biblical account describing how God gave Man dominion over the Earth, a dominion which the Scriptures explain was subsequently handed over in turn to Satan, strongly suggests the latter.

  So Vox falls back on what the Bible actually says rather than all the high brow philosophical notions that have been forced onto a tribalistic deity.  Interesting!

  If evil is from God, then Man must have authority over God, a more fundamentally heretical notion than the idea that God’s hand is somehow constrained.

  So all of the sudden, when Vox needs to justify his position, there's a hierarchy of heresy?  Heresy is sin, right?  Christianity knows no hierarchy of sin according to Vox himself (link)...therefore...Vox is just as much a heretic as everyone else.  I love it when my the gas gauge in my car reads "empty" if one drop is missing!  What a manageable moral arena that must be...

  The problem of evil is not a difficult one, once one is able to accept the notion that God is not a cruel and easily bored puppeteer. Omniderigence leads inevitably to doubt, because it requires accepting the idea that all evil stems from God.  But if everything is in God’s hands and moving according to God’s plan, then what need would there have ever been for Jesus Christ to come to and die on a cross?

  So basically the New Atheists are right on the mark.

  Surprise was possible because the programmer was not choosing to exercise either his knowledge or his power at that particular point where real-time intersected game-time. While he could have easily provided that particular character with a scripted path and prevented the character from being able to depart from it, he had already elected not to do so.

  Because as we all know, all the horrible things Vox has noted before are "all in good fun." 

  If it is not difficult to accept that an omniscient and omnipotent programmer can reject omniderigence, why should it be hard to imagine that an all-powerful God might choose to do the same?

  Intending to be negligent does not somehow make it not morally negligent. 

  Even human lovers know that the lover cannot control the beloved, so it should not be difficult to believe that a loving God would permit His creatures to choose freely how they will live.

  So Vox's tribal god artificially suspends his omniderigence in order to make way for libertarian free will or something?  I'm not sure what Vox's position on free will is. 

  This AI development process is remarkably similar to the biblical description of the harvest of souls, of the separating of the wheat from the chaff.

  Yes, wasteful, immoral, and half-assed if you can just do it right from the beginning. 

  While the “God as game designer” hypothesis might reasonably be described as literally making God in one’s own image, especially when it comes from a game designer, it does offer the potential of explaining the importance of obedience to God’s will as well as the seemingly arbitrary nature of what is in line with that will and what is not. If we are AIs in God’s laboratory, then we cannot expect to have any more understanding of His ultimate purpose for us than the AIs in Big Chilly’s war lab did.

  You know if video game designers today were literally making full fledged people A. I., I wouldn't play video games as they are typically structured since that would be immoral.

  If one combines the concept of the biblical harvest of souls with Bostrom’s ideas about posthuman simulation, one can even develop an interesting and completely heretical concept of theodicy.

  Well, at least he admits it.

  This may be little more than over-caffeinated techno-speculation, but it is, I think, an exciting way to view the universe as well as providing a reasonable solution for those pesky problems of evil and ultimate purpose.

  So Vox advocates some limited fallible god of the wild of cosmic chaos that the argument from evil was never intended to even address.  Atheists tend to love the sci-fi gods of Star Trek and Stargate.  The Q continuum.  The Ancients.  The Ori.  None of this is particularly helpful to Christianity as it has been canonized for the last 2,000 years. 

  If it also happens to be a near mathematical certainty, then so much the better.

  Unfortunately if there are an infinity of real worlds with 10,000 simulated worlds in each one, there are not more simulated worlds than real worlds any more than a pound of lead weighs more than a pound of feathers.  So there's no way to know what the probability is.

  Even if we are immaterial simulations, we are immaterial simulations with a genuine purpose and a future more radical than we can possibly imagine in front of us. Accepting the idea that we are not only the gods of the machine, but also the machines of God, gives us the wherewithal to face the prospect of death with enthusiastic anticipation instead of courage, resignation, or even terror.

  If Vox is willing to settle for a lesser deity, or uber game designer, then why not settle for a favorable transhumanist future where we master our own destiny?  Is Vox just that dead set on not having to think his own moral thoughts?  Most Christian philosophers it seems have their panties in a wad over how non-absolute materialist conventions are at the expense of noticing they are more than solid enough.  I guess it really is all about preference, eh? 
  

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  Outro:

  Of course it is easy to deal with the problem of evil.  Atheists do it all the time.  It's called, rejecting orthodox Christianity.  Surprise, surprise, that's exactly what Vox does.  Rather than refuting all those irrational neo-atheists, Vox ends up validating many of their key claims and criticisms all the while alienating most of the mainstream theology.  While this sidesteps a lot of problems, it still fails to show what exactly is in that mystery box outside of our current range of evidence (link).  I'd have to settle for agnosticism on Vox's god, at least until I know more about his claims than just from this chapter.  Me thinks Vox is going to have about as much trouble convincing mainstream Christianity to take up his definition of god as atheists will have convincing them to disown Christianity all together.  Good luck! 

  Ben

  • 9:24 am
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