An Atheist and a Christian Walk into a Bar

by Randal Rauser

  Randal: I see. A “hands-off” parent, eh?

  Justin: Arguably, a neglectful parent. A parent who perhaps has no business being a parent.

  Randal: Uh oh, I see where this is going!

  Justin: The question I'm interested in is whether or not this disagreement and confusion among the children counts as evidence for them against the idea that their parent is loving. Of course, in the case of God—who is defined as essentially morally perfect—we are questioning God's very existence, rather than just her moral character.

  Randal: Once again, I find it important to point out that one must be very careful about drawing overly facile connections between religious disagreement and violence or conflict. In your familial analogy you refer to two siblings who disagree about their parent's instructions, a disagreement that in turn gives rise to conflicts between the two siblings.

  But rarely are matters this simple.

  Justin: Fair enough.

  Randal: I often find myself disagreeing with others over various matters (as we are doing right now). But mere disagreement is not, in itself, warrant for conflict, let alone violence. Consequently, if two siblings (or any other two individuals) do get into a conflict that descends into mistrust, anger, and perhaps even violence, it doesn't follow that the initial disagreement caused the conflict. Perhaps those in disagreement resorted to conflict because of other, preexisting factors. It could be, for example, that each individual already harbored a brooding hostility toward the other, and this disagreement merely provided the occasion for those hostilities to become visible.

  Justin: Point taken. I'm simply pointing to the fact that disagreement, and the certainty often associated with metaphysical disagreement in particular, can contribute to these tensions.

  Randal: With that in mind, let's consider again our siblings, Mike and Tom. Occasionally they find themselves at odds over what their parent has commanded or requested. Disagreement like this could lead to all sorts of outcomes, including puzzlement, doubt, and a more thoughtful reflection on one's evidence for their own view. Conflict, such as that which gives rise to physical altercations, is only one possible outcome.

  Justin: Yes, but I fail to see how this undermines the argument in a significant way. It's not merely an argument about disagreements that lead to fights.

  Randal: The point is that if Mike and Tom respond to disagreement with fisticuffs rather than friendly reflection and dialogue, we must ask what it is about Mike and Tom as persons and their relationship that leads to this particularly violent outcome. In short, a significant degree of culpability for the conflict must rest on their shoulders. You can't attribute it all to the parent.

  Justin: Perhaps that's true with regard to some of their fights but certainly not all. Some may genuinely be partially the result of clashing and equally certain convictions about what they should be doing or who knows their parent best.

  Randal: Sure, but the higher our initial estimation of the parent's fitness, the less likely we would be to conclude the parent was inept in allowing the conflict.

  Justin: That's true. However, I’ve never claimed that the children should conclude their parent is a poor parent on this one piece of evidence. The conclusion here was simply that their disagreement provides them some evidence for that conclusion or that the disagreement supports the idea of a poor parent over a loving parent.

  Randal: Okay, well, we can enrich the story a bit more. Imagine that the parent was aware of the poor, festering relationship between Mike and Tom, and so that parent purposefully allowed disagreement to arise precisely to provide a catalyst for conflict.

  Now you might be wondering: why would a parent do that? Obviously a good parent wouldn't seek to instigate conflict as an end in itself. But a good parent certainly could allow conflict to arise in order to reveal the deep, ongoing problems in the relationship between Mike and Tom, so that these problems might finally be dealt with. The conflict could be painful but also therapeutic, like lancing a boil.

  Justin: I don't know of any decent parent who would allow their children to come to blows over a disagreement, simply so that they could all sit down and reflect on the situation afterward, like the ending of some half-hour sitcom. A parent who implants disagreement and then knowingly does nothing to prevent the violence that flows from it should be reported to Child Protective Services.

  Randal: Wow, strong words.

  Justin: More importantly, violence arising from differences in religious beliefs—as with most other conflicts—hardly ever ends in anything other than further zealous confidence in their respective religious beliefs.

  Oh, and sometimes a body count.

  Randal: A body count?!

  Is it just me or is the rhetoric starting to get a bit heated in here?

  Justin: Well, you’re an open-minded religious person who finds the benefit in calm discourse. Not everybody is this way. Fervent zealotry does exist, and sometimes it can be expressed in damaging ways.

  Randal: Amen to that! I appreciate your brave takedown of the new atheists!

  Justin: Oh, I see what you did there.

  Randal: My point is that a good parent could purposefully allow some degree of disagreement among his/her children for the ultimate good of the children. And until we know this isn't the case, the mere existence of disagreement and resulting conflict is not in itself a reason to question the goodness or capability of the parent.

  Nor is the kind of scenario I’ve described implausible or contrived. Indeed, I think parents often do things like this. Based on their knowledge of their children and their desire to ensure that their children grow and develop in their character, parents may allow states of affairs to exist that might appear to the casual observer to be inept or improper. But one should simply withhold such judgments until one has a better grasp of the background of the situation and the intentions of the parent, and all the more so if one believes at the outset that the parent is knowledgeable and wise.

  Needless to say, if caution is recommended in judging a mere human's parenting skills, how much more is caution warranted when considering the skills of an infinitely good, wise, and powerful being?

  Justin: Okay, but remember my argument doesn't claim that a parent or God would prevent any and all disagreement. I'm particularly interested in disagreements on important relational and moral matters.

  In the parent/child analogy, a parent would prevent disagreement on important issues like how the children should behave, what their parent wants from them, or how best to have a relationship with their parent. This is compatible with the parents also allowing a large array of disagreement in other aspects of their child's life.

  In the case of theism, God might understandably allow deep disagreement over various trivial things. But when it comes to questions of what view of God is correct, what God wishes for us, and how to enter relationship and/or reconcile with God, that's another thing entirely. And so, this too is compatible with allowing a large array of disagreement in every other area of life.

  Randal: I see what you’re saying. However, it seems arbitrary to concede my general point but then insist that there is this one area where a parent would never allow disagreement among their children.

  Justin: I think the distinction is justified by the fact that these more important disagreements have negative effects on both the relationship with the parent and each child's perception of the other's relationship with the parent. It breeds jealousy and conflicting certainty. Moreover, it's so easily resolved.

  Randal: Negative consequences certainly could occur in a case like this. But I don't think you’ve given a good reason to believe such negative consequences are an inevitability in this kind of disagreement.

  THE ARGUMENT FROM MASSIVE THEOLOGICAL DISAGREEMENT (MTD)

  Justin: It might be helpful if I was a bit more explicit in my presentation of the argument. As I’ve said earlier, this argument is an attempt to provide evidence against the existence of God. It might be valuable th
en to get a bit more explicit in how the argument is supposed to work. So, what exactly do I mean by the observation of massive theological disagreement (MTD)?

  Randal: You took the words right out of my mouth! What do you mean?

  Justin: I suppose great minds think alike.

  Randal: Or it could just be that Caucasian North American males think alike.

  Justin: That too.

  Well, first of all, we are talking about theological disagreement among those who believe that God, as we’ve defined here, does in fact exist. There are many such persons in the actual world—most of which identify with one of the three Western religious traditions.

  Secondly, we aren't talking about just any theological disagreement. Some theological disagreements are relatively trivial when compared to the kinds of disagreement I want to bring attention to. The theological disagreements I'm after are those dealing with key issues, such as the nature of God, her revelation to us, how we are supposed to live, and how best to enter into/maintain a meaningful relationship with God.

  Randal: Right-o, a lot of good things there. But can you pull this all together into an argument?

  Justin: I sure hope so. The argument I'm attempting to unpack seems simple enough. It consists of a mere two premises and a conclusion.

  Randal: Short and sweet; I like it.

  Justin: The first premise states that, on the denial of theism, MTD is likely to be true. On the denial of theism, humans were not created by an omnipotent, omniscient, and perfectly moral being. Therefore, if beliefs in such a being still arise in such an atheistic world, then they are not the result of God making herself available for personal relationship. If there exists no God and therefore no profound religious truth toward which a God could properly guide willing persons, then we would expect a variety of contradictory religious traditions to bubble up by way of the variety in personalities, cultures, etc.

  Randal: I’ll grant you that this is a plausible scenario, at least at first blush.

  Justin: The second premise is that, on the truth of theism, MTD is unlikely to be true. On theism, our expectations unfold in a profoundly different way. If God exists, she would want every one of her willing and open creatures to have the truth about her nature, revelation, and how they can best live. Only then will they be able to live out the purpose for which they were created. Anyone who believed in and submitted to her willingly would then have this information provided to them.

  Contrary to the religiously divided world we see, theism gives us strong reason to expect a single world religion or set of doctrines—at least with respect to the most important issues.

  Randal: Got it. I can certainly see why you believe God would secure religious agreement.

  Justin: Now that I’ve stated the two premises, I should probably show what conclusion follows from them. To do that, I have to introduce something called the Likelihood Principle. Elliott Sober writes, “Observation O supports hypothesis H1 more than it supports H2 if and only if the probability of the observation on H1 is greater than the probability of the observation on H2.”4

  Randal: Sounds technical. Perhaps I could apply the Likelihood Principle to a practical example to make sure we’re on the same page.

  Justin: Yeah, that might be helpful.

  Randal: So let's say the observation is “The pavement is wet,” hypothesis H1 is “It's raining,” while H2 is “It isn't raining.” All things being equal, the observation better accords with H1 than H2. Is that what you’re thinking?

  Justin: Yes, that's exactly right. The observation better fits H1 because a hypothesis that states that it is raining would make wet pavement likely, while a hypothesis like H2 does nothing by way of predicting wet pavement.

  Notice this is true even if the defender of H2 asserts additional claims in an effort to make the wet pavement consistent with or less surprising on H2. For example, the defender of H2 could assert that, even though it wasn't raining, a nearby fire hydrant had recently sprayed water all over the pavement. However, unless we have good, independent reasons for thinking that such an event occurred (like signs that someone has tampered with the hydrant), the additional claim does little to undermine the inductive inference at work.

  Now that we have a better grasp of how the Likelihood Principle functions, we can plug in the information from the first two premises defended above. When we do that, we get the following conclusion:

  The fact of MTD supports atheism more than it supports theism.

  Now we can put the pieces together to see how the argument works:

  Premise one: On the denial of theism, the observation MTD is likely.

  Premise two: On the affirmation of theism, the observation MTD is unlikely (or less likely).

  Conclusion (by way of LP): The fact of MTD supports atheism more than it supports theism.

  Okay, now that I’ve presented the basic argument and some of the reasons in support of it, I want to hand it over to you, Randal. Perhaps we can start with the first premise? I take it you have some comments.

  DEBATING PREMISE ONE

  Randal: Excellent. So let's go back to your assertion that if there is no God then we should expect, as you said, “contradictory religious traditions to bubble up by way of the variety in personalities, cultures, etc.” And if there is a God then we should expect “a single world religion or set of doctrines—at least with respect to the most important issues.”

  Justin: Yes, I think that's what we should expect given those two hypotheses.

  Randal: And I'm thinking to myself, who is this we of which you speak? It sure doesn't include me.

  Justin: Oh?

  Randal: So I'm going to aim to reply with an undercutting defeater. For our readers who may not be familiar with the concept, a defeater is a line of evidence against a particular claim. There are two types of defeater. A rebutting defeater seeks to show that a claim is false while an undercutting defeater seeks to undermine our basis for thinking a claim is true.

  Justin: That's an important distinction. Perhaps you could unpack it a bit more though.

  Randal: Sure, let me give an example of an undercutting defeater. Imagine that Mrs. Jones is found dead in her home after a violent struggle. The crime scene investigators then discover her husband's DNA underneath two fingernails. That discovery would seem to suggest a struggle and thus provide evidence supportive of Mr. Jones's guilt. However, when the detectives confront Mr. Jones with this evidence, Mr. Jones explains that the night before her murder, Mrs. Jones had scraped a fleck of food off her husband's cheek at dinner. This claim is later corroborated by other eyewitnesses. Since this scenario would account for the presence of Mr. Jones's DNA being under Mrs. Jones's fingernails, it undercuts the strength of that evidence. To be clear, it doesn't show Mr. Jones is innocent: it only undermines the basis to think he is guilty. But that point is nonetheless very important. So that's how an undercutting defeater works.

  In like manner, if I show that you have failed to demonstrate that MTD is more likely on atheism than theism, I thereby undercut your basis to conclude that MTD is supportive of atheism.

  Justin: Okay. I think I follow.

  Randal: Good enough for me. So let's take your first claim. If God doesn't exist, it is certainly possible that religious diversity could emerge through a variety of personalities, cultures, etc. But I'm going to add that it is also possible that without God the force of particular personalities, social conditions, and other variables could result in widespread religious agreement on core issues.

  Justin: Okay. So we have identified at least two possibilities…

  Randal: But note that this isn't just wild speculation. There could well be a logic to the emergence of this kind of agreement that makes it more likely than not that it will emerge in time. Perhaps, for example, blind selective pressures are more often than not sufficient to weed out substantial religious disagreement in a population, thereby eventually securing commonality in religious belief as the norm. Just as the wel
l-established process of convergent evolution allows for similar biological traits to evolve independently in similar environments (e.g., marsupial and placental animals), so it could be with the evolution of religious ideas.

  And that brings us to the pivotal question you need to address: how much more likely is it on naturalism that substantial religious disagreement will emerge as opposed to broad religious commonality? I don't see that you have provided any hard evidence to support your claim that religious disagreement really is substantially more likely to emerge on naturalism. And as a result, it seems to me that this leg of your argument rests on little more than your subjective intuitions that it's so.

  Justin: Just as a quick note, my statement was that MTD is more to be expected on atheism than it is on theism. My argument is a defense of atheism and says nothing about naturalism. That said, the conclusion of the argument is surely consistent with naturalism and the argument could be run that way as well.

  Randal: Ack! You’re right. Sorry about that. Pardon me while I self-flagellate as punishment.

  Justin: No problem. I can wait.

  Randal: Ouch! Ouch!

  Justin: Okay, now to your objection. You’ve challenged my justification for premise one by highlighting a possibility. You’ve argued for the possibility that, on atheism, varied cultures and personalities would eventually lead us to theological unity after a period of massive disagreement such as we observe today.

  I think that's an interesting approach to the argument, but I'm not without a response.