Graham Oppy's definitions of atheism, naturalism, physicalism, and materialism

Oppy, Graham. Atheism and Agnosticism. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2018.

 

Oppy defines the following terms as such (my paraphrase):

 

Atheist: A person who believes that there are no gods.

 

Note: I take 'gods' to include both lesser gods and God.

 

Atheism: The belief that there are no gods.

 

Note: 'belief', 'view', 'position', and 'stance' are often used interchangeably.

 

Theist: A person who believes that there is at least one god.

 

Theism: The belief that there is at least one god.

 

Agnostic: A person who, having considered the issue, lacks both belief in any god and the belief that there are no gods.

 

Agnosticism: The (considered) suspension of belief as to whether there are any gods.

 

Innocent: A person who has never considered the issue of whether there are gods.

 

Innocence: The (non-considered) suspension of belief as to whether there are any gods.

 

Note: If we consider personhood to exist wherever first-person properties exist, and if we consider animals to have first-person properties, and if we consider those entities that we ascribe first-person properties to to be persons, then we consider animals to be persons. Animals, which presumably have not considered whether there are any gods, would therefore fall under the category of 'innocents'. You could also simply stipulate that any sentient creature that has never considered the issue of whether there are gods is an innocent.

 

Oppy helpfully points out many other different attitudes one can discuss surrounding these terms. Following Oppy's lead, I would put it like so: 

 

Expertise: How well-considered is this person's atheism / agnosticism / theism? How well-informed, educated, smart, intellectually virtuous, rational, or thoughtful is this person's atheism / agnosticism / theism? How many hours has this person spent reading, writing, and thinking about arguments for and against their atheism / agnosticism / theism?

 

Confidence: How confident is this person in the truth (or rationality) of atheism / agnosticism / theism – zero, low, moderate, high, or maximal?

 

Knowledge: Does this person claim to know that atheism / agnosticism / theism is true (and therefore claim to know that the other two positions are false)? 

 

Open-mindedness: How willing is this person to engage with arguments against the truth (or rationality) of their atheism / agnosticism / theism? How willing is this person to change their mind on the truth (or rationality) of their atheism / agnosticism / theism?

 

Interest: Does this person find debates surrounding the existence and nature of God exciting or boring?

 

Conation: Does this person desire for any gods to be real? 

 

Rationality: 

 

(a) Does this person claim that their atheism / agnosticism / theism is rational (whatever they take 'rational' to mean)? (Presumably yes. But what does this rationality consist in?)

 

(b) Does this person claim that their atheism / agnosticism / theism is more rational than the other two positions?

 

Put another way, in Oppy's words, does this person believe that: "all thoughtful, reflective, sufficiently intelligent, sufficiently well-informed people who give serious attention to the matter" believe in atheism / agnosticism / theism? Or can there be reasonable disagreement?

 

(c) Does this person claim that the other two positions are irrational – that being a thoughtful, reflective, sufficiently intelligent, sufficiently well-informed person who has given serious attention to the matter precludes one from adhering to the other two positions? What does this irrationality consist in, exactly?

 

(d) Does this person claim that while belief in the other two positions is rational, other attitudes are irrational?

 

E.g. An atheist might think that while belief in God is rational, certainty in the existence of God is irrational.

 

An agnostic might think that while atheism is rational, wanting God to not exist, or even lacking a want for God, is irrational.

 

Someone might have no opinion on whether atheism / agnosticism / theism is rational because they have no interest in these discussions and view interest in these discussions to be irrational.

 

Oppy says on pgs 9-10:

 

"Naturalism is the view that (a) there are none but natural entities with none but natural causal powers, and (b) well-established science is the touchstone for identifying causal entities and causal powers. . . .

 

Physicalism is the view that (a) there are none but physical entities with none but physical causal powers, and (b) well-established science is the touchstone for identifying causal entities and causal powers. Materialism is the view that (a) there are none but material entities with none but material causal powers, and (b) well-established science is the touchstone for identifying causal entities and causal powers."

 

I don't find anything objectionable to these definitions, though I do wonder about the meaning of and difference between 'physical' and 'material'. Similarly, this definition of naturalism demands the question of the meaning of 'natural' in contrast to 'non-natural' or 'supernatural'. Before getting into a discussion on the meaning of 'natural', it's faster to say naturalism is the view that all religions are false. This quickly communicates the core idea: "I have a belief system that doesn't include any religious claims."

 

Religious apologists might complain that this definition lacks any positive content – it doesn't say anything about what the naturalist actively believes. But this is silly, and I suspect this comes out of ignorance from not having seen any well-articulated naturalist worldviews. But a good naturalist worldview will have a well-articulated epistemology, metaphysics, and value theory, the same as any good worldview, and that set of epistemic, metaphysical, and value theory claims that makes up that naturalist worldview is the set of positive beliefs of that worldview. So the positivity is there, the apologist just isn't aware of it.

 

Atheists will turn rabid if you call atheism a worldview. I've always found this bizarre. It's obvious to me that when apologists use language like "According to the atheist worldview...", what they mean is something like "According to the worldview apparent of those kinds of people who introduce themselves as atheists...".

 

The trouble is that Christians introduce themselves as Christians and there is a Christian worldview, Muslims introduce themselves as Muslim and there is a Muslim (Islamic) worldview, and so on. And so it's no wonder that people would follow this pattern where terms of identity correspond to terms of worldview. If atheism is not your worldview, then why are you introducing yourself as an atheist? Why is that your identity term of choice? (In fact, that is part of why I would not call myself an atheist, instead calling myself an ex-Christian and naturalist, as those are better identifiers as to where I am coming from.)

 

Certainly, atheists have worldviews, and certainly those worldviews are atheistic. So there's no problem in complaining about atheistic worldviews, which is, charitably, what Christians are doing when they complain about "the atheist worldview". But it's true that if we're being careful, we would instead use the term "atheistic worldview". The problem with calling atheism a worldview is that worldviews are complex sets of many theories, and atheism is just one theory, even if it's a core theory of atheistic worldviews.

The task of self-descriptive metaethics

Part I: Descriptive metaethics

 

The task of descriptive metaethics is to describe what it is that most people think they are doing when they make claims about what is good or bad, better or worse, right or wrong, good or evil, okay or not okay, fair or unfair, deserved or undeserved, justified or unjustified, reasonable or unreasonable, obligatory or prohibited, blameless or blameworthy, supererogatory or non-supererogatory, a duty, a right, a responsibility, a moral failure or success, a moral mistake, faulty or sound moral reasoning, a moral truth or falsity, a moral fact or opinion, a virtue or vice, or what someone should or should not do.

 

Humans often perform acts of moral protest, in some cases by literal protesting with picket signs, or by expressing disapproval through speech, behavior, or writing. The question is, what do folks take themselves to be doing when they engage in these acts of moral protest? What do folks take themselves to mean when they claim, for example, that Israeli forces were wrong—profoundly wrong—to kill Hind Rajab, her family, and the paramedics who tried to help her?

 

When making claims of moral protest, do folks in general see themselves as voicing a mere preference they have, similar to food or aesthetic preferences? Or do they see themselves as making truth claims about the way things really are? Or something else, or one in one context and the other in a different context?

 

Part II: Reacting to Lance Bush 

 

Lance Bush left a comment on a YouTube video (youtube.com/watch?v=vhhIzTM9yIY) in response to commenter Nathan. I will put his comments in red and react to them:

 

Original comment by Nathan:

 

While of course most people have never explicitly considered claims that amount to moral realism, they do tend to think (1) moral mistakes are possible: "I used to think doing X was wrong, but I was mistaken about that," (2) that collective mistakes are possible--there's moral progress and decline, not just change, (3) that just because someone, or some group, disapproves of people doing some action X, that doesn't necessarily mean doing X is wrong, and (4) that there can be disagreements in ethics, with one side being mistaken, and with no good reasons for their [views]. Those are just a few things off the top of my head that at least suggest such people tend to be accepting something like realism, although of course not in those terms. That's the most "natural" interpretation of these observations.

 

Hi Nathan. I’m consistently frustrated when philosophers make claims about human psychology without appealing to or conducting the appropriate empirical research. [Agreed.] . . . To my knowledge, you're not a social scientist and have not conducted or engaged in empirical research on how nonphilosophers think about moral realism, nor have you presented or appealed to any empirical evidence to support any of your claims. If you want to know how nonphilosophers think you should consult appropriate research rather than relying on speculation, personal anecdote, or whatever armchair rationale analytic philosophers typically rely on. [Agreed.]

At present, there is no compelling body of empirical evidence to support any of your claims. Worse still, they are all described in a way that would be insufficient as an operationalization of an indication of support for moral realism.

“(1) moral mistakes are possible: "I used to think doing X was wrong, but I was mistaken about that”

A belief in the possibility of moral mistakes is consistent with many forms of moral antirealism, so this would not be especially diagnostic of people being moral realists. [I would want to hear more on this. Spencer Case mentions in the video an example of attitudes of disgust. Eating grubs is gross to me, but I would not consider it a mistake for an aboriginal to eat grubs.] There’s also no compelling body of evidence showing most people think moral mistakes are possible. “Mistake” would also have to be operationalized. For instance, a relativist could believe it’s wrong to steal, and steal anyway, acting against their own moral standards. [I doubt it's possible for someone to act against their own moral standards. Action it seems to me is admission of acceptance of what you are doing. Even in the case of addiction, where people may do things they explicitly hate because they are addicted, the addiction itself is what makes the addictive act worth it for the person addicted despite all the negatives that come with the addictive act.]  Presumably they’d think they were making a moral mistake. [Presumably not, as evidenced by the fact that they acted in the way they did.] But that’s different then being mistaken about whether or not stealing is morally right or wrong in the first place. It’d be challenging to conduct research on this, and I don’t know of any such research. Even if there is some, there won’t be much. There’s no robust cross-cultural body of data showing people think moral mistakes of the relevant kind are possible. [The concept of 'mistake' seems objective to me and nothing said here would convince me otherwise. I can imagine someone defining anti-realism, one layer of anti-realism, as the view that there are only hypothetical imperatives of the form "If you want X, then you should Y." Failing to do Y would be a mistake with respect to the goal over X, and that mistake would be objective (in line with the objectivity of the concept of mistake), but this position would be anti-realist in the sense that it would not admit of a categorical imperative.]

“(2) that collective mistakes are possible--there's moral progress and decline, not just change”

First, progress and decline is consistent with many forms of antirealism. [Agreed, in the goal-relative sense noted above.] It’s even consistent with relativism: there is progress or decline relative to the moral standard in question. The concepts of progress and decline do not require, presuppose, or even hint at realism. People make progress on personal goals, or at becoming better artists, for instance. People can and do already employ the notion of progress and decline relative to self-chosen goals all the time. [Perhaps buried within the intuition that Nathan is getting at is that some goals are obviously better than others. From an Islamic standpoint, more countries being ruled under Sharia would be progress, but from other standpoints it would be a decline. So you might think that progress with respect to an objectively better goal is objective progress, while progress with respect to an objectively lesser goal is objective decline. But this requires one to believe that some goals are objectively better than others, and I don't know of any empirical research suggesting that people in general believe that some goals are objectively better than others. That would be a great question to include in a metaethical survey.]

Second, there is no established body of empirical evidence that supports the claim that most people think moral progress in such a way that is most consistent with realism is possible. On the contrary, the best available study that specifically addresses the question of objective moral progress suggests most people reject this idea. Here is an excerpt from the abstract:

“Our results suggest that, neither abstractly nor concretely, people dominantly believe in the possibility of objective moral progress, knowledge and error. They attribute less objectivity to these phenomena than in the case of science and no more, or only slightly more, than in the cases of social conventions and personal preferences. This finding was obtained for a regular sample as well as for a sample of people who are particularly likely to be reflective and informed (philosophers and philosophy students). Our paper hence contributes to recent empirical challenges to the thesis that people believe in moral objectivity.”

Pölzler, T., Zijlstra, L., & Dijkstra, J. (2024). Moral progress, knowledge and error: Do people believe in moral objectivity?. Philosophical Psychology, 37(8), 2073-2109.

“(3) that just because someone, or some group, disapproves of people doing some action X, that doesn't necessarily mean doing X is wrong,”

This would at best only indicate whether people endorsed agent relativism, so this would not be a good way to ensure that people are not appraiser relativists nor any other form of antirealist. As such, rejecting this notion would not be a strong indicator that a person is a moral realist. I reject this, and I’m the most prolific antirealist there is. [This is confusing. I think Lance is saying that he accepts the idea that just because someone, or some group, disapproves of people doing some action, that doesn't mean doing that action is wrong. But Lance is still an anti-realist. Probably, a more charitable interpretation of what Nathan is saying is that most people believe that individuals and groups can be wrong about what is wrong. But that's the same as point (1).] As such, this is not diagnostic of or strongly indicative of being a moral realist. Furthermore, this once again is an empirical question and at least some studies that use wording consistent with agent relativism not only find that many participants select these response options, but that variations of relativism were the most common response even after participants underwent training in familiarizing themselves with metaethics and were given comprehension checks and detailed response options. And this held up across seven different paradigms. Does this mean most people are moral relativists? No, but it is better than anecdotes and the self-reports of philosophers. See here:

Pölzler, T., & Wright, J. C. (2020). Anti-realist pluralism: A new approach to folk metaethics. Review of Philosophy and Psychology, 11(1), 53-82.

“(4) that there can be disagreements in ethics, with one side being mistaken, and with no good reasons for their reviews” [Again, a repeat of point (1).]

Again,you present no evidence that most people think this. The main paradigm in experimental metaethics is, incidentally, the disagreement paradigm. And it in fact finds very high rates of antirealist responses from participants, especially in newer, better-designed studies. Furthermore, disagreement is consistent with antirealism. 

In addition, there is some empirical evidence suggesting folk notions of disagreement differ from the kind that would support the notion that they are implicit realists. See: 

Khoo, J., & Knobe, J. (2018). Moral disagreement and moral semantics. Noûs, 52(1), 109-143.

From the abstract: “We show that there are moral conflict cases in which people are inclined to say both (a) that the two speakers disagree and (b) that it is not the case at least one of them must be saying something incorrect.” [The grubs illustration comes to mind again. Consider the claim, "Grubs are delicious." I disagree with this claim. There's an aboriginal out there that agrees with this claim. Do I think the aboriginal is mistaken in his affirmation of this claim? Nope. But when we remove ambiguity, things become more clear: "Grubs are delicious to everyone." Okay, now this claim is clearly false, and now affirming it would be to make a mistake. So consider: "Killing Hind Rajab, her family, and the paramedics who tried to help her is wrong to everyone." Again, we arrive at a clearly false claim, as the killing was not wrong according to the Israeli soldiers. So we must remove the ambiguity enough so we can see what makes it true or false. Something like: The goal of maximizing goodness is the best goal, and the killing of Hind Rajab, her family, and the paramedics who tried to help her fails to further this goal. So the Israeli soldiers furthered an objectively worse goal, which demonstrates a failure of understanding of the goodness and badness of things.]

In short, not a single one of your four examples, even if it was true, would be good evidence that people are realists, since all such responses are consistent with antirealism. Second, whether most people think anything in particular is an empirical question and you present no empirical evidence to support your claims. At present, there is no good evidence most people are moral realists. 

 

Part III: Self-descriptive metaethics  

 

The Pölzler and Wright (2020) study says the following:

 

"To begin with, we explain the difference between what we call “normative” and “meta-ethical” sentences about morality:
 

Normative sentences about morality express moral judgments. In uttering these sentences we evaluate something morally; we indicate that we regard something as morally right or wrong, good or bad, virtuous or vicious, and so on.

[…]

Meta-ethical sentences about morality do not express moral judgments. In uttering them we remain evaluatively neutral. Instead, we are making claims about the nature of morality itself." (59)

 

"Following these explanations, we test and improve participants’ understanding of the normative/metaethical distinction by two comprehension checks: (1) a theoretical question about what they have just read (right answer: “Normative sentences express moral judgments and meta-ethical sentences make claims about the nature of morality itself”) . . ." (59) 

 

Taking 'judgment' to mean something like: a conclusion reached after a process of reasoning, I don't believe that when I describe something as good or bad that I am making a normative judgment. 

 

I am not making a judgment at all, much less a normative judgment, when reporting on the goodness or badness of my directly experienced intrinsic goods or evils. The goodness or badness of these goods and evils is directly observed, and so statements that amount to pure reports of this goodness or badness do not involve any kind of reasoning process or a conclusion, but just a report of directly accessed data.

 

When it comes to beliefs about extrinsic and depriving evils, then there is a judgment there, but I don't take it to be a normative one. I don't know what work the word 'normative' is meant to be doing here. I don't believe in any kind of categorical imperative or sui-generis, irreducible normative property because a) I have no idea what that would look like and b) it seems to be that positing such a property is poorly motivated, motivated by a misunderstanding of the essence of 'should.'

 

Okay, but the study specifies that normative judgments occur when we evaluate something as morally good or bad, and not (presumably) axiologically good or bad. Fine, but it's not obvious what the distinction between moral goodness and axiological goodness is meant to amount to, and it's easy to imagine a view where there is no such distinction, or where moral goodness is just a subset of axiological goodness. If moral goodness is just a subset of axiological goodness, and axiological goodness is non-normative, then even moral goodness is non-normative in that case.

 

Some philosophers (Steven Mitchell, Against Metaethical Descriptivism (2011), David Copp, (Ethical Naturalism and the Problem of Normativity (2024)) say that normativity is the core question of metaethics. So no surprise, the question of what normativity is, what 'normativity' means, and what normativity is about is a matter of significant debate.

 

Here's where I am at the moment: Normativity is about the concepts referred to by the words 'ought' and 'should'. What does it mean if I ought to do something or ought not believe something? To analyze normativity just is to analyze what it is we are doing when we make claims about what we ought to do or believe.

 

Okay. If that's right, then I do not consider judgments or apprehensions about what is good or bad to be normative. Something can be bad in some sense and yet you ought to do it, and something can be good in some sense and yet you ought not do it. So goodness and badness come apart from ought and ought not.

 

You might think that this is true – that something can be bad and yet you ought to do it – only in cases where the badness is outweighed by goodness in other areas. So if something is pro toto (in total) good, then it ought to be. But if that's right, then something's being pro tanto (to that extent) good is for that thing to ought to be pro tanto.

 

But I reject both the idea that something ought to be (simpliciter) just because it is good pro toto, and I reject the idea that oughtness can come in degrees. Something either ought to be done or not; it's a binary. This is because 'should' is conceptually dependent on the concept of goals; "you should do xyz" is always true or false relative to a goal.

 

Note 1: Degrees of normativity might be like degrees of truth. The belief that the moon is the size of a pea is, in a sense, more wrong than the belief that the moon is the size of Pluto. But in classical logic truth and falsity are binaries; there aren't degrees of truth. Maybe in a similar way some actions are better or worse at furthering a goal, suggesting degrees of what you ought to do (you ought to do the best action over the second best, the second best over the third best, the third over the fourth, and so on), but strictly speaking what you should do relative to a goal simply comes down to what is in fact the action that best furthers that goal.

 

Note 2: In the case of multiple equally best actions, that set is the best action, and not any particular individual. But 1) It's impossible to know whether the actions are truly equal or whether it's just that you can't tell which one's better, except for maybe extremely simple goals, and 2) There may always be an action that is technically ever-so-slightly better than alternatives, even if the difference is subtle or obscured enough that no human could ever have figured it out.

 

This is why it doesn't make sense to say something ought to be simpliciter, as that would suggest of an ought divorced of a goal. The closest you could get to that, as already hinted at, is the idea of a best goal. But even there, if someone fails to have the best goal in mind, then all there is to say at that point is that this person failed to understand the goodness and badness of things. And this is why I reject, in some sense, the existence of irreducible normativity and go for some kind of descriptivism.

 

The point in all this is that if someone comes to me and asks me to fill out a survey describing my metaethical commitments, I might disagree with the way terminology is used by the survey and I might use key terms under a different understanding. If answers are constrained to multiple choice, I might not be able to honestly select any answer. If answers are open, then my response might be misinterpreted by the study, and the data I provide would be useless. If the premise of the study is to see whether the subject is a realist or anti-realist, and if I have a problem with this dichotomy – because there are multiple layers of the concepts 'realist' and 'anti-realist' and I'm convinced that it's possible to mix and match layers – then I will disagree with the premise of the survey itself. So if the survey takes my answer and puts me into the oversimplified 'realist' or 'anti-realist' box, then I will have given the survey bad data.

 

This is why the task of descriptive metaethics is less interesting to me compared to the task of self-descriptive metaethics. 

 

In the following section I will try to peel back some of those layers of realism and anti-realism. 

 

Part IV: Realism and Anti-realism

 

On the question of normativity, someone could say that normativity is about prescription in contrast to description (i.e. what you should do is what is prescribed to you), and that prescription is categorically separate from description. Prescription is conceptually connected to ought, so this isn't necessarily a separate view from the view that says normativity is about the concept of oughtness. The point here is that the default view in philosophy is that description is categorically separate from prescription and that one cannot be reduced to the other, and so the question of normativity is the question of the nature of this irreducible normative category. Anti-realism is the view that denies the existence of this irreducible normative category while realism is the view that accepts the existence of this irreducible normative category – so says one way to characterize the anti-realist / realist divide.

 

I mentioned that I go for some form of descriptivism. That means I depart from the default view and believe that prescriptions can be reduced to descriptions; there are no irreducible oughts, only is, and oughts are a species of is. 

 

So I'm convinced of the following anti-realist views:

 

(a) There is no irreducible normative property. There is a normative property, but it reduces to properties related to goal-furthering, which are descriptive and non-normative.

 

(b) There is no categorical imperative, only hypothetical imperatives.

 

(c) There is no irreducible prescription. Oughts reduce to is. To say someone ought to do xyz is just to describe xyz as the best and/or necessary actions to further a goal, and thus to describe whether someone succeeded or failed to further that goal. 

 

But I'm convinced of the following realist views:

 

(d) There are true and false 'should' and 'ought' statements, and the truth or falsity of these statements is judgment-independent.

 

(e) There are intrinsically good and intrinsically bad things and the goodness and badness of these things is there regardless of anyone's judgment (but not regardless of anyone's experience; goodness and badness are experience-dependent, but judgment-independent). Therefore, I believe in judgment-independent value facts, i.e. axiological realism.

 

(f) Because there are true value facts about some things being good, bad, better, or worse, there are true facts about some goals being better or worse than other goals.

 

(g) So there are true facts about which actions further better or worse goals, and true facts about which actions further or fail to further the best goal of maximizing goodness.

  

(h) A person who was all-knowing, privy to all knowable facts about all things, who only believes what's true and acts according to those true beliefs, has perfect understanding, is perfectly rational, is maximally intelligent, is perfectly intellectually virtuous, and is perfectly morally virtuous – such a person would not be capable of [insert horribly evil action here].

 

(i) Failing to have a goal of maximizing goodness is to fail to have the best goal.

 

(j) Actions that depend on objectively false (wrong) beliefs are themselves, in a sense, objectively false (wrong). That is, if you have a goal to believe what's true, then you will, if consistent, have a goal to not perform those actions that depend on false beliefs.

 

(k) There is objectively good and bad reasoning. There is objectively good and bad reasoning over issues of morality. There are mistakes and false beliefs. There are mistakes with respect to moral goals (i.e. the goal to make the world better, to be virtuous, to avoid committing agent-restricted actions, or to act with a good will) and false beliefs about morality, e.g. about which actions are or are not mistakes with respect to moral goals. 

 

(l) There are true facts about whether an action, attitude, habit, state of mind, or person is virtuous or vicious.

 

(m) Normative pressure is real and falls out naturally from the objectivity of mistakes.  

 

I agree that descriptive metaethics is an empirical study requiring empirical work best suited for experimental philosophy. My point in all of this is that if someone comes to me and asks me to fill out a survey about my metaethical beliefs, I won't be able to do it, because I don't have my beliefs fleshed out. And if I have to fill out the survey under a pretense I disagree with, like, "Claims about axiological goodness and badness are normative claims", or if I'm working with a different understanding of key terms and my answers are misinterpreted, then my answers will be bad data. Depending on how the survey defines anti-realism and realism, I might be crudely placed under either the 'realist' or 'anti-realist' category while holding to metaethical beliefs that some would consider to belong to the opposite category. In theory, two separate, independent surveys could place my views under opposing categories!

 

In response to being prompted by the survey, I would want to first spend time figuring out what I believe and why. And so the task of self-descriptive metaethics comes before descriptive metaethics. Certainly, the task of self-descriptive metaethics is dialectical like the rest of philosophy, so the 'self' in self-descriptive metaethics does not imply that this is a solo task. The point is that if you ask someone what their metaethical views are, and they haven't yet engaged in the task of self-descriptive metaethics (which includes dialogue) to any degree, then they won't have an answer, or their answer will be contradictory, confused, or too vague. But after engaging in the task of self-descriptive metaethics for some time, not only might the subject's answer be well-articulated, consistent, systematic, and so on, the subject might disagree with assumptions of the survey such that their answer cannot be used to answer the question the survey was trying to answer (e.g. if the survey is trying to answer the question of whether this subject is a realist or anti-realist, the subject might disagree with this simplistic dichotomy and find themselves having both realist and anti-realist beliefs).

But if philosophy requires of me to go to others and inquire about their beliefs, what if they too must, at my prompting, go away to first figure out what they believe and why? The difference is that dialectic is done through reading and writing, so when reading you are reading the thought-out, comprehensive and articulated views of someone who has themselves been reading, writing, and thinking about that particular topic for years. That's very different from asking a random person their metaethical views.

 

Part V: Ordinary Language Objection to my view

 

Someone might say that because morality is constructed, like language, the idea of someone going off on their own to figure out what moral terms mean is nonsense. That would be like someone going off on their own to figure out the meaning of other English words. Just as language in general is a construct and fundamentally dependent on the social group, moral language in particular is a construct and fundamentally dependent on the understanding of the social group. So if you want to know what moral terms mean, descriptive metaethics is the only viable approach to answer those questions, and "self-descriptive" metaethics is a non-starter.

Reply 1: The value of systems

 

Basic words have clear and easy meanings, and it would be silly to go off on one's own to try to understand the meaning of those basic words. But words like good, bad, right, wrong, normative, should, etc. – these are way more polysemous, abstract, and ambiguous, and when we try to disambiguate these terms and situate them in a consistent, comprehension, and coherent framework that shows how all these terms relate to each and relate to other philosophical terms like 'truth' and 'fact', it's a lot of work to build out that system. Ordinary folks will not have done this work, and even for folks who have attempted to create such a system, there will be objections to their system. 

 

Reply 2: Expert opinion

This leads to the additional point that because there is skill involved in systematizing one's moral language, experts who are especially trained and gifted in this skill will have better answers to questions pertaining to the meaning of metaethical terms compared to non-experts. 

 

Just as we shouldn't put much stock into the typical non-philosopher's views about knowledge or metaphysics, we shouldn't put much stock into the typical non-philosopher's views about metaphysics either.

 

There is something to be said about the value of defending "common sense" beliefs. I tend to think of common sense as something like: the ease of which it is to get folks to understand the appeal of your view. The more commonsensical your views, the easier it is to get folks to understand your views and to understand why someone would find them likely to be true.

 

But the common sense view is that common sense has its limitations. Common sense-ness is a theoretical virtue, but it's not the end all be all theoretical virtue. Other theoretical virtues take precedent. Historically, germ theory was not common sensical (with folks of the past believing in things like "balancing the humors" and miasma), and neither was the evilness of slavery and racism.

A point in favor of the importance of common sense-ness comes out of the theoretical virtue of simplicity. All else being equal, simpler theories are more likely to be true, and simpler theories tend to be easier to get the common person to understand and see the appeal of. Indeed, perhaps common sense-ness is a theoretical virtue just because simplicity is a theoretical virtue. But problems like the Monty Hall problem show that even simple truths can be counterintuitive.

So even if it's difficult to get the common person to understand your metaethical views or understand their intellectual appeal, that wouldn't by itself count for much against your views.

Glen Scrivener points us toward arguments against Christianity

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3UfZ8WGwWY

 

Ironically, this points to a powerful argument against Christian belief in a number of ways.

1) Evolution and Christian failure. I grew up believing in creationism because that is what I was taught, according to the beginning of Genesis. But nowadays even Christians cannot deny the certainty of aspects of evolutionary theory, and Christian scholars like William Lane Craig even go so far as to say that Genesis 1-11 is "mytho history."

Why does this matter? Because Christians (in my tradition at least) were confidently wrong about evolution! If they were confidently wrong about evolution, then what else are they confidently wrong about? Christians and churches are not an infallible source of truth. The Holy Spirit is supposed to be a guide in truth, right? So what gives? Why are Christians, endowed with the Holy Spirit, so bad at reliably arriving at true beliefs?

This points to the more general point—one I credit to Graham Oppy—that Christians aren’t products of an evolutionary process designed by God to generate highly reliably true religious beliefs. How can we tell? Because of all the religious disagreement within Christianity! If God guided evolution so that humans would arrive with a strong sensus divinitatis, then why is there so little belief in the right God? Why is there so much disagreement over what God is? And at the very least, among Christians who are supposed to be products of a guided evolution aimed for truth AND endowed with the Holy Spirit who is meant to guide believers in truth, wouldn’t we expect to see a convergence onto a single denomination? Instead we find schisms, schisms, and more schisms—exactly what you would expect if naturalism were true.

2) If Christians admit that it’s likely we descended from ancestral species a hundred or so thousand years ago as a product of millions of years of evolution, then Christians admit that millions of years’ worth of starvation, predation, parasitism, and all manner of horrors were used by God to create us. Why? Why not create us in a better way?

3) Evolutionarily convenient beliefs (ECBs) are a problem for Christians too if evolution is true. If Christians admit that evolution is true, then they admit that they may believe in Christianity not because it’s true, but because religious belief is selected for. It is correct that we ought to be suspicious of ECBs, and that includes religious beliefs!

Indeed, thanks to evolution, naturalism has access to a beautifully simple theory that unites all religious belief under one explanation. Humans are religious for reasons such as the following:

a) Humans are fundamentally biological;

b) So humans are fundamentally sexual;

c) So humans are fundamentally social;

d) Humans need resources to survive and obtaining those resources alone is difficult if not impossible in most cases, so for this reason too humans are fundamentally social;

e) So social success is a massively valuable commodity;
 

f) Religions provide social success in a number of ways, including:

f1) A common worldview,
f2) A common way of speaking and thinking,
f3) Common rituals and social activities,
f4) A way to congregate and meet spouses and for one’s children to find future spouses,
f5) Motivations for helping the less fortunate,
f6) A favorable view of those less fortunate (this doesn’t always apply, as Christians will look down on those they view to be recipients of God’s judgment),
f7) A favorable view of human nature (Imago Dei, salvation, love of God for the world), warding off misanthropy,
f8) Emphasis on forgiveness, empathy, love, and other attitudes that help interpersonal relationships;

 

g) Confidence leads to reproduction. So anything that threatens our confidence will be selected against. Ways religious belief wards off a loss of confidence in oneself and one’s future:

g1) God loves me, so I’m pretty great,
g2) God loves the world, so the world is worth fighting for,
g3) Great Commission — I have a higher purpose, smoothing over the common frustrations of life,
g4) Death is not the end — hope for the future prevents despair, depression, and pessimism,
g5) There is ultimate justice — God will judge and set the record straight. If this weren’t the case, then it might be overwhelming how unjust our world is, promoting misanthropy and pessimism,
g6) There are spiritual rewards for your struggling and perseverance. Without that promise, the pains of life might not seem worth it.
g7) God is watching over you and protecting you supernaturally — you will be successful. If instead you believe you could die at any moment for no reason, then you might feel anxious, paranoid, and dread the future.
g8) Giving up on life is not an option, as that would mean facing God’s wrath.

Not only is this theory plausible in its own right (and I’d say undeniably true at least in some respects), it explains all religions in a unified way.

If Christians go for this explanation to explain the existence of competing religions, but not their own, then they risk committing special pleading.

So Christians are motivated to reject this theory of religion and lose out on all its theoretical advantages to opt for something far more crude and ad hoc, like that other religions are caused by demons or by Molinism and God’s providence.

In my own personal journey, waking up to the fact that Christian beliefs were evolutionarily convenient was a major moment leading up to my loss of faith.

4) The argument from reason says that the naturalist has no reason for thinking that his beliefs aim toward truth, only survival. 

The alleged advantage of the Christian view is that if God guided evolution then he could aim our beliefs toward survival and truth. But naturalists do not have access to this divine guidance, and so naturalists have no reason to think that their beliefs are formed by a reliable truth-preserving mechanism.

First, there is no such advantage of Christian belief for reasons mentioned. Second, evolution does NOT provide any tension with naturalism in this way.

Why not? Because 

 

1) Accurate beliefs are selected for on a basic level (credit again to Graham Oppy for this point). If we didn’t have highly accurate beliefs about what is food and what is not, what is a predator and what is not, how to obtain the necessities of food, clothing, shelter, medicine, and so on, then we would have died off. Intelligence is required for these basically accurate beliefs, and so intelligence is selected for (and you could argue that humans in particular, due to their extreme dependence on socialization for survival, adapted a higher intelligence for language). Then, as the theory goes, once intelligence reaches a certain point, abstract thinking and critical thinking skills are unlocked.

 

So 2) with this comes self-evident beliefs. Because of my self-evident beliefs, I have certainty—direct sight—that my belief-forming processes are somewhat reliable at arriving at the truth, even abstract truths of logic, argument, and math. If they weren’t, then self-evident beliefs like that there are no married bachelors wouldn’t be possible.

But God and the resurrection of Jesus are not among those self-evident beliefs. So the starting point does not lie—cannot lie—with God and the heavy metaphysical commitments of any religion. A better starting point is with these self-evident beliefs, like: "The belief that none of our beliefs are reliably true cannot itself be reliably true." More basic principles of critical thinking—that’s where we start, and so trying to start with God and other religious commitments and from there build these basic building blocks of critical thinking is backwards. 

There are many secular ECBs. Racism, tribalism, emotionally convenient beliefs, the ignoring of uncomfortable truths that might erode one’s confidence, and delusional levels of confidence are all selected for by evolution. All ECBs absolutely should be subjected to scrutiny, regardless if they are religious or not. ECBs can be rational, but only after subjecting them to appropriate scrutiny and discovering independent reasons to believe in their truth.

To be an atheist, you don’t have to believe all atheists are right about all things all the time. Quite the contrary: an atheist can believe most atheists are dreadfully mistaken about a great many things! Christians are in the same boat. Catholics and Protestants believe the other’s side is mistaken despite being Christian. 

Seven Questions for Christians

1) Are you certain that Christianity is true?

2) If not, why not?

3) Do you believe that if someone has anything less than certainty in Christianity, then that implies they are not regenerate / born again / saved / baptized in the Holy Spirit (or whatever your description of a "true Christian" is)? Why or why not?

4) If you are certain Christianity is true, then do you feel intellectually satisfied with your answers to questions pertaining to the following doctrines:

a) The Doctrine of Divine Revelation and God's Covenants

b) The Doctrines of the Inerrancy, Infallibility, and Historicity of Scripture

c) The Doctrines of Biblical Canon, Sola Scriptura, and Hermeneutics

d) The Doctrines of Faith, Truth, the Rationality of Faith, Christian Epistemology, and Christian Methods for Discerning Truth

e) Doctrines surrounding God and God's attributes, including

i) God's existence and natural theology (arguments for God's existence),
ii) God's relationship to perfection,
iii) goodness (especially, God's goodness in light of the problems of evil, suffering, and divine hiddenness),
iv) transcendence vs immanence,
v) incorporeality,
vi) aseity,
vii) necessity,
viii) omnipotence,
ix) omniscience,
x) omnipresence,
xi) simplicity,
xii) impassibility,
xiii) immutability,
xiv) and time.

f) The Doctrines of the Trinity and the Holy Spirit

g) The Doctrines of the Incarnation and Christology

h) The Doctrine of Creation and Soli Deo Gloria

i) The Doctrine of Angels, Demons, Satan, and the Divine Council

j) The Doctrine of Man, the Imago Dei, and the Historical Adam

k) The Doctrine of Divine Providence and Free Will

l) The Doctrine of Sin, the Fall, and Original Sin

m) The Doctrine of Salvation and Sola Fide, Sola Gratia, Solus Christus

n) The Doctrine of the Atonement

o) The Doctrine of Eschatology ("The Last Things", including judgment, heaven, and hell)

p) The Doctrine of Ecclesiology (the authority and nature of the church, denominations, and church creeds)

q) The Doctrine of Sanctification, the Christian Life, and the Sacraments

5) If you are intellectually satisfied with your answers to all reasonable questions that could be asked about the above doctrines, then: 

 

5a) How could this be possible? How could you possibly be satisfied with your answers to all reasonable questions that could be asked about the above doctrines given the sheer complexity – the breadth and depth – of these questions? Have you comprehensively surveyed all alternative answers to yours and do you have principled reasons for preferring your answers to these alternatives? Have you had space in your life and the training, access to books, and time needed to think, read, and write enough to accomplish this?

 

5b) Where are these answers of yours? Have you written them down?

 

5c) Do others trained in philosophy or theology also find your answers to be satisfying? Do they have any critiques of your answers or penetrating questions about your answers? Have you addressed these critiques or questions?

 

6) On the other hand, if you are not intellectually satisfied with your answers to all reasonable questions that could be asked about the above doctrines, and indeed if you feel unsure about your position on some or all of these doctrines, then why are you certain that Christianity is true, or that Christianity makes sense or that Christianity is a coherent worldview?

 

Scratch that—why have the slightest bit of confidence at all that Christianity is true or that Christianity makes sense or that Christianity is a coherent worldview if you don't know that your best attempt to make sense of each of the above doctrines—and of how they coherently fit together—would result in success? For all you know, attempting to make sense of each of the above doctrines—and of how they coherently fit together—would result in your concluding that Christianity does not make sense – or even that Christianity is likely false. So until you have completed an investigation with such success, why not adopt a more cautious, agnostic, and open-minded mentality?

 

7) If you are certain that Christianity is true, are you willing to change your mind and have that certainty overturned?

 

Let's say there's a Muslim who is certain that Islam is true. You preach the Gospel to them, but they respond, "I'm certain that Islam is true; I have no need to read the Bible." In your mind, the Muslim is stuck in their false beliefs because of their certainty. Are you worried that you could be stuck in your false beliefs in the same way? What should the Muslim do to guarantee that they are not stuck in their false beliefs in this way? Perhaps they should adopt an open-minded way of thinking and be willing to change their mind, even their deepest beliefs about their own identity, heritage, and community—even their most cherished beliefs that they want more than anything to be true.

 

If you think the Muslim should adopt this radically open-minded attitude, do you adopt this same attitude? Have you read the Quran, or Hadith, or Sira? Have you read books written by naturalists defending naturalism (i.e. the view that there are no supernatural things) or challenging theism or Christianity? Wouldn't it be hypocritical to hold others to a standard of open-mindedness, investigative rigor, and internal scrutiny that you don't hold to yourself?

 

Christians always misunderstand my point here, so I'll try to spell it out: The question is not about the evidence for Islam versus the evidence for Christianity. The question is not "Why are you not a Muslim?" 

 

The point is about the mentality that the Muslim (who is certain that Islam is true) adopts. The Muslim adopts a mentality of certainty. Therefore, from the Christian point of view, the Muslim is stuck in their false beliefs because of their mentality. But if you are a Christian and you have the same mentality, then you are making the same mistake of being epistemically stuck that the Muslim is making. The Christian would recommend the Muslim—so that the Muslim does not get epistemically stuck—to adopt a mentality of radical open-mindedness. But the Christian who is certain that Christianity is true fails to adopt that same mentality of radical open-mindedness. And so the Christian who is certain that Christianity is true is guilty of epistemic hypocrisy—they expect Muslims (and atheists, etc.) to adopt a mentality that they refuse to adopt themselves.

God and morality in a nutshell

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ew654htG7yg&lc=Ugy6FjPwwYLqcvNTfWN4AaABAg.ANqDmMA9W-sANqLGq_TAnd 

 

In the 2015 Germanwings flight tragedy, the co-pilot deliberately crashed the plane, killing himself and everyone on board. Such an act is bad regardless of anyone's opinion of it being bad (just as the moon is smaller than the sun regardless of anyone's opinion). This badness is easy to see, dissect, and understand, without appealing to God at any point.

 

First, I don't see how God is supposed to solve this puzzle. Let's label the bad / evil act mentioned above E. If I ask: What is the wrong-maker of E, how is God meant to answer this?

 

Maybe: For an act to be wrong is for God to command against it and for an act to be permissible is for God to permit it.

But 1) God hasn't commanded for or against all human acts. So how do we know which are right or wrong?

 

2) It's controversial exactly where God's commands are (the Bible? The Quran?), which ones count as commands for which people at which times (just the Israelites, or us too?), or whether they really came from God and not from humans inventing a God character. (Christians, after all, are committed to the belief that Allah is a fictional character. Or if Allah refers to Yahweh, then Christians are committed to the view that the event of Yahweh sending Muhammad as a prophet is a fictional event.)

So the "God commands it" answer to the wrong-maker question seems pretty useless. Even Christians are forced to use their own judgment when it comes to modern day moral dilemmas; God is of no help to them. The Methodist church recently had a schism over gay marriage.

And 3) Doesn't this open up the Euthyphro Dilemma? If the right-maker is purely God's command, then God could command E and that would make E right. But my intuitions say, like that of Christians, that a good God could never make such a command because the act is wrong prior to any command made for or against it. So it must be something else that acts as the wrong-maker.

 

You might play William Lane Craig's card and say that something is good when it is aligned with God's nature, and God's commands are aligned with God's nature. But this shifts the arbitrariness of God's commands to the arbitrariness of God's nature.

 

a) If God's nature happened to be pro-atrocity, then those atrocities would be good. God could transform into a swan like Zeus and rape a woman named Leda, and because God's nature happens to be pro-rape, this action is good. If God's nature happened to be pro-genocide, then God could command genocide and that command would align with God's nature.

b) If goodness is defined as that which is aligned with God's nature, then saying "God is good" is to say "God is aligned with God's nature", which is a silly thing to say. But Christians don't see themselves as saying something silly when they say "God is good."

c) We call things good all the time – good friends, good food, good movies – without invoking God. These things aren't good because they are aligned with God's nature – they are good because they are intrinsic, extrinsic, or saving goods.

Second, I say again that the badness of E is easy to see, no God required.

1) We can give a phenomenal definition to intrinsic goodness and badness. Intrinsic goods are characterized by their felt experience, same with intrinsic bads (evils).

2) Extrinsic goods are those that lead to intrinsic goods. Extrinsic evils lead to intrinsic evils.

3) Saving goods are those goods that prevent evils. Depriving evils are those evils that prevent goods.
 

4) We also use 'good' as a success term. A good chess move might not be a chess move that is intrinsically, extrinsically, or savingly good, but good because it leads to success with respect to the goal of winning the chess game. A "good" torture device is good for torture.

And so by this analysis we can easily see what the bad makers are of E. The intrinsic evils of the suffering of the victims and victims' families are bad in their essence. The depriving evils of the deaths of the victims are bad too, grounded in the self-evident concept of "better" as used in the sentence: A joy feels better than a pain.

Now the wrong-maker is trickier. A consequentialist approach could be like this: The act that produces the worst outcomes (most badness + least goodness) in a situation is the worst act, and the act that produces the best outcomes (the least badness / most goodness) in that same situation is the best act.

Assumption 1: There is no difference whatsoever between epistemic and value-based wrongness. Both amount to being incorrect or mistaken in some sense.

Assumption 2: Every morally relevant act is caused by a belief or set of beliefs, or something like a belief that could be translated into a proposition.

Idea: The wrong-maker of an act is the falsity of the false belief that grounds the act.

People often (always?) act thinking that their action is the best action they could take, the action that maximizes goodness over badness. If that belief is false, then the wrongness of that belief transmits to the action, making the action wrong too (strictly speaking, there are no wrong actions, only wrong beliefs and bad actions).

He who succeeds in believing what's right will act rightly too. There are no categorical imperatives, only hypothetical imperatives: If you want to believe what's true, and act accordingly, and if you succeed in always believing what's true and acting accordingly, then you will never do wrong. Your actions will always be grounded in true beliefs.

If you want to do what's right, then you should act according to what's true – and there we see the hypothetical imperative. "Should" always applies to goals – given the goal of doing what's right, you ought to believe what's true. If you want to maximize goodness, then you ought not commit acts that fail especially badly to maximize goodness (which we call evil acts).

Of course, we humans are ignorant and stupid, and so we constantly fail to believe what's true. So we constantly act according to false beliefs and do actions that are bad. (And our answers as to why we chose to do these bad actions are always filled with lies, falsehoods, contradictions, confusions, or irrelevancies).

Inseparable subjectivity – Part 1: Bundle theory of personhood

Part 2: https://benstowell.blogspot.com/2025/10/inseparable-subjectivity-part-2.html
 

Part 3: https://benstowell.blogspot.com/2025/11/inseparable-subjectivity-part-3.html

 

Part 4: https://benstowell.blogspot.com/2025/12/inseparable-subjectivity-part-4.html

 

A cool objection to my free will skepticism.

Part 1: Bundle theory of personhood

* The self is real, self-evident, and certain – just as first-person properties are real, self-evident, and certain. So there is a self – the self is not an illusion. We are not eliminating the self but reducing it to first-person properties. Always, anywhere, and only where there are first-person properties, there is personhood. To say "I am" is just to say "Here are some first-person properties" – it is not to say "Here is a mental substance."

 

* Definition of personhood:

 

Take Alice and Bob. 

 

* Person(1) = Public person = Alice's public person is that thing that generates within Bob certain experiences, such as visual experiences of a certain shape or auditory experiences of a certain sound (like the sound of Alice's voice).

 

* Person(2) = Private person = A subjective / experiential / first-person / phenomenological property.

 

That is, a singular subjective property or a single bundle of subjective properties closely related by time, event, cause, or something else.

 

E.g. Alice burns herself on accident when pulling cookies out of the oven by pulling at too steep an angle, causing the top of her forearm to touch the inner ceiling of her oven. You have a bundle of first-person properties here: The pain of the burn, the right-forearm-i-ness of the pain, the smell of the cookies, the weight of the oven door, the soothing feeling of aloe vera gel on the burn. When we speak of these experiences of Alice, we speak of Alice qua Person(2).

 

* Person(3) = Total private person = The collective phenomenological properties of Alice, i.e., all the experiences Alice has over her lifetime, or has had over her lifetime thus far.

 

* Person(4) = Total public person = The collective phenomenological properties of people other than Alice who've had experiences of Alice's public person.

 

* Person(5) = Total person = The combined sets of Person(3) and Person(4). 

 

* Your accidental properties are things you have or are associated with, but are not identical to you. Your essential properties are you.

 

* Because your accidental properties (like the sound of your voice) are responsible for the experiences generated within me (like the experience of hearing your voice), these properties are essential with respect to you qua person(1) but accidental with respect to you qua person(2). So what counts as accidental / essential depends on which definition of 'person' we are working with. It's contextual.

 

* This explains why it often feels like our accidental properties are identical to us. When folks talk about us, they are talking about that thing that generates within me xyz experiences. That is you qua public person, and in that context properties that would be accidental to you qua private person are essential.

 

To give a concrete example, let's say group G talks about person P. Group G says that P can sing well. What they mean is that when P sings, certain good feelings are produced within them. But linguistically this comes out as (if they were to speak to P): "You are a good singer." If we were to take 'are' as one of identity, then: You = good singer. Personhood solved! Who is P as a person? Why, P is good singer! And so we can see how people in general can and often do attach their sense of self-worth to their public self rather than to their private self—the public self is the self that is, unsurprisingly, accessible to the public and thus the cause of one's praise, fame, hirability, employment, good reputation, money, career, and survival. If it's my public self upon which my survival hangs, and if xyz properties are essential to that public self, then xyz properties are essential to me in a highly relevant sense, i.e. the sense of survival.

 

* (This also explains a deep-seated loneliness that we all feel. When I'm talking about you, I'm really talking about me!—about my experiences of what I take to be you. And vice versa: When you talk about me, you're really talking about your experiences of this thing that you have labeled under my name, but from my point of view that thing isn't me at all but something accidental to me. We never get to access each other's true selves, only our public selves.) 

 

But it's obvious that these xyz properties are not at all essential to the sense of Person(2). It's also obvious that from my perspective, who I am essentially is not what other people see but what I see directly within me. But again, it's contextual. Someone who thinks personhood is more context- / social- / narrative-based would be more inclined to think of Person(4) as what it really means to be a person at the end of the day – you are the experiences you cause others.

 

But because our own experiences of ourselves are so certain and undeniable, surely we'd want to include those, arriving at Person(5) as a more full sense of what it means to be a person. You are the experiences you have and the experiences you cause others. Because public properties = essential with respect to the public person and private properties = essential with respect to the private person, whether certain properties of yours are essential to you is a matter of context.

 

* However, clearly, if no one else existed but me, I would not only still exist, but exist with certainty! Because my own subjective properties are still certainly there. So it makes sense to favor Person(2) as the true self. Person(3) includes experiences of my past and future—experiences I am not currently having—and so is not relevant to the me in the present. Perhaps therefore we ought to build into Person(2) this sense of the present person, while Person(3) covers the whole person, past, present and future.

Brandon Ambrosino admits that suffering cannot be solved

Ambrosino, Brandon. Is it God's Will? New York: Morehouse Publishing, 2025.

 

Here's a recent book on the problem of evil I spotted in a Barnes & Noble. The author Brandon Ambrosino is addressing the problem of evil from a Christian perspective. So the book is a work of apologetics. I read the first few pages and was surprised at how conceding they were to the problem of evil. Consider:

 

“Still, I couldn’t help but wonder what would happen if my goddaughter were to grow up believing that God took her dad because he wanted to be with him. Does that mean God is selfish? Doesn’t God know that Carl’s [the dad] family also wants to be with him? Did God send the heart attack [at age 44] to get him to heaven quickly? Could he not have found a less horrific way to do it? Could he have given Rusty [Carl’s wife] some advanced notice? Or maybe my goddaughter will start to wonder why God doesn’t take all of us to heaven right now—does he not love us as much as he loves Carl?” (3) 

 

Good questions! 

 

“How, then, ought we think about God’s relationship to our world, a world that continues to go wrong, to spin off course, to wound us daily?

     We might not be able to construct an answer, as in the answer, as in the one and only answer. Anyone who’s suffered knows on a gut level that this kind of answer doesn’t exist. Suffering is unanswerable.” (6)

 

What a confession! I totally agree. On a gut level we know that evils are apparently unjustified. And until that changes, say, by a compelling theodicy, God apparently does not exist. But is there any hope of a compelling theodicy? Not so, says Ambrosino. "Suffering is unanswerable." And: 

 

“There is no system, theological or otherwise, within which suffering makes sense. . . . We cannot solve suffering, and attempting to do so only discounts the suffering and degrades the sufferers.” (7)
 

Taken out of context, I would think that this author is about to give a defense of an argument from evil!

 

Question: If the author thinks there is no answer to suffering, and that even attempting to give an answer to suffering betrays a misunderstanding of suffering and insults victims of suffering, then what exactly is his book for? It's not for answering the question of suffering, because, per the author, there is no answer. It's not for solving suffering, because, per the author, suffering cannot be solved. It's not for providing a theological system in which suffering makes sense, because, per the author, there is no such system. So by the author's own admission in the first few pages, the book is not providing an answer, a solution, or a systematic account of suffering. How then is this meant to be a defense of Christian belief? Only an answer to suffering or a solution to the problem of evil or a systematic account of suffering can act as a defense of Christian belief. So if none of these things are possible, then that is just to admit that it's not possible to defend Christian belief against arguments from evil.

 

There is a system in which suffering makes perfect sense, and it's called naturalism. There is an answer – a very simple, elegant, and obvious answer – to the problem of evil: evils are apparently unjustified because they are unjustified.