Rebecca Goldstein - 36 Arguments for the Existence of God

FLAW 2: The fatal flaw in The Argument from Miracles was masterfully exposed by David Hume in An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding , chapter 10, “On Miracles.” Human testimony may often be accurate, but it is very far from infallible. People are sometimes mistaken; people are sometimes dishonest; people are sometimes gullible-indeed, more than sometimes. Since, in order to believe that a miracle has occurred, we must believe a law of nature has been violated (something for which we otherwise have the maximum of empirical evidence), and we can only believe it on the basis of the truthfulness of human testimony (which we already know is often inaccurate), then even if we knew nothing else about the event, and had no particular reason to distrust the witness, we would have to conclude that it is more likely that the miracle has not occurred, and that there is an error in the testimony, than that the miracle has occurred. (Hume strengthens his argument, already strong, by observing that religion creates situations in which there are particular reasons to distrust the reports of witnesses. “But if the spirit of religion join itself to the love of wonder, there is an end of common sense.”)

COMMENT: The Argument from Miracles covers more specific arguments, such as The Argument from Prophets, The Arguments from Messiahs, and The Argument from Individuals with Miraculous Powers.

The Hard Problem of Consciousness consists in our difficulty in explaining why it subjectively feels like something to be a functioning brain. (This is to be distinguished from the so-called Easy Problem of Consciousness, which is to explain why some brain processes are unconscious and others are conscious.)

Consciousness (in the Hard-Problem sense) is not a complex phenomenon built out of simpler ones; it can consist of irreducible “raw feels” like seeing red or tasting salt.

Science explains complex phenomena by reducing them to simpler ones, and reducing them to still simpler ones, until the simplest ones are explained by the basic laws of physics.

The basic laws of physics describe the properties of the elementary constituents of matter and energy, like quarks and quanta, which are not conscious.

Science cannot derive consciousness by reducing it to basic physical laws about the elementary constituents of matter and energy (from 2, 3, and 4).

Science will never solve the Hard Problem of Consciousness (from 3 and 5).

The explanation for consciousness must lie beyond physical laws (from 6).

Consciousness, lying outside physical laws, must itself be immaterial (from 7).

God is immaterial.

Consciousness and God both consist of the same immaterial kind of being (from 8 and 9).

God has not only the means to impart consciousness to us, but also the motive-namely, to allow us to enjoy a good life, and to make it possible for our choices to cause or prevent suffering in others, thereby allowing for morality and meaning.

Consciousness can only be explained by positing that God inserted a spark of the divine into us (from 7, 10, and 11).

God exists.

FLAW 1. Premise 3 is dubious. Science often shows that properties can be emergent: they arise from complex interactions of simpler elements, even if they cannot be found in any of the elements themselves. (Water is wet, but that does not mean that every H 2O molecule it is made of is also wet.) Granted, we do not have a theory of neuroscience that explains how consciousness emerges from patterns of neural activity, but to draw theological conclusions from the currently incomplete state of scientific knowledge is to commit the Fallacy of Arguing from Ignorance.

FLAW 2: Alternatively, the theory of panpsychism posits that consciousness in a low-grade form, what is often called “proto-consciousness,” is inherent in matter. Our physical theories, with their mathematical methodology, have not yet been able to capture this aspect of matter, but that may just be a limitation on our mathematical physical theories. Some physicists have hypothesized that contemporary malaise about the foundations of quantum mechanics arises because physics is here confronting the intrinsic consciousness of matter, which has not yet been adequately formalized within physical theories.

FLAW 3: It has become clear that every measurable manifestation of consciousness, like our ability to describe what we feel, or let our feelings guide our behavior (the “Easy Problem” of consciousness), has been, or will be, explained in terms of neural activity (that is, every thought, feeling, and intention has a neural correlate). Only the existence of consciousness itself (the “Hard Problem”) remains mysterious. But perhaps the hardness of the Hard Problem says more about what we find hard- the limitations of the brains of Homo sapiens when it tries to think scientifically-than about the hardness of the problem itself. Just as our brains do not allow us to visualize four-dimensional objects, perhaps our brains do not allow us to understand how subjective experience arises from complex neural activity.

FLAW 4: Premise 12 is entirely unclear. How does invoking the spark of the divine explain the existence of consciousness? It is the Fallacy of Using One Mystery to Explain Another.

COMMENT: Premise 11 is also dubious, because our capacity to suffer is far in excess of what it would take to make moral choices possible. This will be discussed in connection with The Argument from Suffering, #25, below.

I exist in all my particularity and contingency: not as a generic example of personhood, not as any old member of Homo sapiens , but as that unique conscious entity that I know as me .

I can step outside myself and view my own contingent particularity with astonishment.

This astonishment reveals that there must be something that accounts for why, of all the particular things that I could have been, I am just this- namely, me (from 1 and 2).

Nothing within the world can account for why I am just this , since the laws of the world are generic: they can explain why certain kinds of things come to be, even (let’s assume) why human beings with conscious brains come to be. But nothing in the world can explain why one of those human beings should be me .

Only something outside the world, who cares about me, can therefore account for why I am just this (from 4).

God is the only thing outside the world who cares about each and every one of us.

God exists.

FLAW: Premise 5 is a blatant example of the Fallacy of Using One Mystery to Explain Another. Granted that the problem boggles the mind, but waving one’s hands in the direction of God is no solution. It gives us no sense of how God can account for why I am this thing and not another.

COMMENT: In one way, this argument is reminiscent of the Anthropic Principle. There are a vast number of people who could have been born. One’s own parents alone could have given birth to a vast number of alternatives to oneself. Granted, one gropes for a reason for why it was, against these terrific odds, that oneself came to be born. But there may be no reason; it just happened. By the time you ask this question, you already are existing in a world in which you were born. Another analogy: The odds that the phone company would have given you your exact number (if you could have wished for exactly that number beforehand) are minuscule. But it had to give you some number, so asking after the fact why it should be that number is silly. Likewise, the child your parents conceived had to be someone . Now that you’re born, it’s no mystery why it should be you; you’re the one asking the question.