Wagering for one's soul and the possibility of Divine Evil

In the previous post, I mentioned that the “God” of the Bible is at least a possible, if not actual being that is very evil. If the description of him is empty, he is a possible being of some possible world (closest to ours with relevant changes) that fits the description. If he is an actual being and “God” of the Bible denotes him, the description may or may not be accurate. The Bible may be wrong about his attributes. He may not be the evil being he is described. In which case it may be that people have mistaken his attributes or it may be that he is actually an omnibenevolent being that has constructed the Bible as a kind of moral test for us. If we resist the Biblical version of him which is on many philosophical accounts is a description of an evil being, we “pass” and if we fall for it by worshiping the Biblical description, we “fail.” What is the consequence of these possibilities?

Consider these four possibilities. Either there is at least one evil being that fits the Biblical bill (henceforth, I will refer to this possible being as "Dog") or there is not. Additionally, either there is at least one omnibenevolent and omnipotent being or there is not (I will call this being just "God" not to be confused, of course, with the Dog which is the Biblical God). There are four total possibilities and they are mutually exclusive: there are at least one Dog that fits the Biblical bill but no God. That both exists. That God exists but Dog does not and that neither exists. In what follows, I will simply ignore the possibility of more than one of each kind of being (it will not affect the argument).

Many philosophers since Augustine have made maltheistic arguments against the Biblical (Abrahamic) God. If we are to interpret the Bible literally, we find that it's inescapable the conclusion, if we are rational, that the being called 'God' there is actually something monstrously evil. His actions in the Bible of causing/inciting/endorsing/ordering genocides, mass murder, "natural" catastrophes, child and wife killings, etc are well known. Even some of our Founding Fathers have remarked how despicable and evil the Abrahamic god is. Jefferson once said (paraphrasing) that a unbiased and reasonable man would have to conclude that the Biblical god is evil or a demon after reading it.

David Lewis in his paper, “Divine Evil” has gone even further in suggesting that the evils perpetrated in these well known examples from the Old and New Testament pale in comparison to the infinite evil of Divine Evil (for all former evils are finite while Divine Evil is infinite). Divine evil is the evil of punishing those to an eternity of suffering (damnation) for facile reasons such as vanity. Yet it is precisely for reasons such as vanity that the Biblical God has given in the Bible (and Koran) for sending people (many of whom presumably lived very virtuous lives) to an eternity of suffering. Making someone suffer infinite torment for an infinite amount of time for facile reasons constitute evil par excellence. It is hard to even imagine what could be more evil. It is infinite Divine Evil. I wholeheartedly agree with this Divine Evil hypothesis, that is, that the being described as the God of the Bible appears to be very evil.

Lewis uses the hypothetical example of a Nazi named "Fritz" to argue his case and who does not act in an evil manner but wholeheartedly supports the Nazi cause of invasion, aggressive wars, and genocide. He admires Hitler very much. Now most of us I think will consider Fritz very evil even if he has not done acts of evil. He is evil simply in virtue of endorsing and advocating those evil acts. He is vicariously evil. That was Lewis's main argument, that people can be vicariously evil in regards to obeying the Biblical commends to worship the evil Biblical being that sends people to torment for eternity for vain reasons much as Fritz can be evil just by admiring and endorsing Hitler. Notice that this vicarious evil need no real object to imbue it with its evil; even if Fritz is a brain-in-the-vat and the Nazi leaders and desired world he endorses is an illusion created by some neuroscientists, he would still seem to be evil in endorsing such evil illusions. Fritz, after all, has no control over whether his world is real or an illusion and if he is guilty of evil in a real world, he is so in a illusory world which is phenomenally identical to that real world. Whether he lives in a real world or an imaginary but phenomenologically identical world is a matter of luck outside of his control and which he presumable is not responsible for.

Assuming that Lewis's argument for the Divine Evil of the Abrahamic God is true, what has this got to do with us? Other than what it has to our moral status there seems to be prudential concerns we must also deal with analogous to Pascal's prudential arguments for believing (or trying to cultivate a belief) in his god.

If the the Abrahamic God is such an infinitely evil being, what prudential arguments analogous to Pascal's wager can we devise to take into account such a conclusion?

In the following table, I will argue in similar decision theoretic terms for what we should believe or disbelieve and maybe be against (that is, cultivate a antipathy or something like it) so that we may avoid eternal damnation and end up with the best chances at getting into heaven.

I have also avoided tricky technical issues with interpretation of the wager and with issues between infinite and finitary decision theory. Alan Hajek employs interesting methods using kinds of ordinal infinite numbers called surreals to remedy the usual problems associated with infinitary decision theory such as problems with mixed strategies (i.e., since run of the mill infinity is reflexive under multiplication of finite probabilities, any mixed strategy will yield infinite utility thereby making a mockery of Pascal's wager), and infinitesimal degrees of beliefs and Roy Sorensen uses more traditional conceptions of (cardinal) infinity to make the wager as fitting as possible to the tasks at hand.

One may also employ very large finite utilities to stand for heaven (and inversely, large negative utilities for hell) but I prefer the infinite strategies as it is closer to our religious and philosophical notion of the utility of heaven and hell but other problems with the nature of non standard uses of infinite numbers inevitably rear their heads making trouble for Pascal's interpretation of the wager as Hajek shows. Since juggling infinite utilities seems to cause technical trouble (tractable or intractable is a matter of dispute) so I will try to avoid such technical issues with the ambiguous utilities of -H (which is hell and may or may not be infinite negative utility) and +H will mean heaven (which may or may not be infinitely positive utility). I think the wager can still be analyzed rationally using just the notion of dominance from decision theory.

-H and +H, even if finite, will likely be under any plausible interpretation, very, very large utilities in opposite directions. One is to be avoided at nearly all costs and the other, desired at equally far reaching costs. I will use “Indeterminate” to be somewhere between these utilities as it is indeterminate what our reward/punishment will be under some such scenario. However, indeterminate leaning towards some direction (such as -H or +H) as it may be will lean towards that direction. So we have the current utility spectrum from least desirable to most (for us).

(-H) is less than (Indeterminate) is less than (+H)

I will use the palindrome "Dog" to denote the Biblical god and assuming that Lewis's argument for its evil is true (and in fact, it may be a sort of analytical truth that a being displaying those qualities are evil as I think Lewis would agree). I will also use "God" to denote a possibly existing being who really is omnibenevolent, omnipotent, omniscient, etc; this is the being with the properties traditionally thought to belong to God's. Thus my terms are:

Dog=Abrahamic/Biblical god=Devil

God=Omnibenevolent, creator...etc

I have assumed (much as Pascal and Hajek's versions of the wager) that your subjective probability for all these possibilities are positive (or all >0). The first three columns of this table denotes the possible situation when God is all powerful with ability to send people to heaven/hell but Dog does not have such powers, and this would correspond with many of our understanding of God and the devil. Dog may claim to hold such powers to be able to send people to heaven/hell as he does in the Bible (if the Divine Evil conclusion is true as we are assuming). The fourth and fifth columns represents possible scenarios where both God and Dog have powers to send us to -H or +H. We have the following 2 by 6 decision matrix:

	God & Dog exists	Dog only	God only	God & Dog exists (both equally powerful)	Dog only (Dog has power to send people to -H)	Neither exists
Wager for Dog	-H	Indeterminate	-H	Indeterminate (but leans towards -H)	Indeterminate (lean towards -H)	Indeterminate
Against Dog	+H	Indeterminate	+H	indeterminate	-H	Indeterminate

The columns represent these exhaustive possibilities. Either both God and Dog exists, or Dog exists but God does not or God does and Dog does not or neither exists (last column).

When God and Dog exists but Dog lacks powers to send us to -H (first column), it is prudent to wager against Dog. When Dog exists without God but Dog lacks the requisite powers to send us to -H (merely bluffing to, e.g.) as is the case in the second column, the results are indeterminate much as what happens when we die in an atheist's world. When both God and Dog exists and both are equally powerful, it is indeterminate who will get our souls but I am leaning towards -H for those who wager for Dog as both God may want to punish us for our vicarious evil in wagering for Dog and Dog may want to punish us just because he is Dog. He may repay our good turn for our wagering for him with an evil turn. He is evil after all! In that case, both God and Dog will agree on our fate. But he may also wish to reward us for our wagering for him but God may have other ideas as he may wish to punish us. Anyway, I am leaning towards Against Dog as the rational choice in this scenario even though I have labeled it indeterminate what our fate is if we so choose for that reason.

In the fifth column, only Dog exists and he has the power to send us to -H. If we wager for him, he may show us some good will and not send us to -H. But he may also lie (again, he is evil after all!) and decide to send us there anyway against his promises in the Bible to send all faithful to +H. If we wager against him he will certainly send us there.

The last column is where neither God nor Dog exists and in which case we just die and what happens to us is indeterminate or likely we just get a utility of nothing.

Notice the asymmetry. If we ignore the fifth column where Dog has the power to send people to -H and there is no God to check his powers, we have a decision matrix that is dominant for “Against Dog”. That is, if we ignore the possibility that Dog is the only power in the heavens without God to check his evil ways, we would be irrational not to wager against Dog. Even if that columns is true, we may only have little prudential reason to choose to wager for Dog as he might deceive us and send us to -H anyway. It makes sense that the devil pays a good turn with a bad one so given this there is little reason we should decide to wager for him even if this column is in fact the case. This (especially combined with the moral reasons) suggests we should wager against Dog.

What does 'god' denote?

I will look at this term through the lens of rigid designation. Proper names are often rigid (though not all). Causally grounded terms are often rigid (though not all). Some descriptions are also often rigid (though not all). 'God' is a proper name for some supernatural being. Is it rigid? If it is causally grounded through an initial baptism then it is almost certainly rigid. But if it is an empty term, it can't be causally grounded. As an atheist, I think it's a empty term but what of the description of this being given in the Bible? Is there not a possible being some some world fitting such a description? Of course.

There are instances of "reference fixing" where a proper name is attached to a description and so that the proper name is rigid. Consider "'Hesperas' shall be the name of the brightest non lunar object in the evening sky." Hesperas is a rigid designator.

There are also cases of the use of descriptions to fix non rigid references to proper names such as the example given here.

You find an old painting. After engaging in some convoluted discussion about legal ownership, you decide to clarify your terms: “Let the expression ‘Originalowner’ designate, for any possible world w, the original owner in w of that painting” (you point at the painting). You have causally grounded ‘Originalowner’ by means of a baptismal ceremony; but the referent varies from world to world, depending on who first owned the painting. The term is not rigid.

If 'God' is empty in this world, there is a possible world (it seems to me, the closest possible world to our's with only the relevant differences) where the description of him given in the Bible holds. The name will attach to that being through the description. It may be a weighted description of conjuncts. His leading of Moses and the Jews out of Egypt, being the Creator, being very powerful etc may all be taken into account as the description describing him in that world.

So if 'God' is an empty term, it will still refer to a non rigid possibilum in that ceteris paribus world. Talk of him will be like talk of Santa Claus, etc, meaningful in some sense but strictly speaking, empty. All subsequent talk causally related to the term and through intention ("Allah" e.g.) will designate such a possibilum. This is how we can talk about possibilia and make meaningful distinctions between fictional "truths" and "falsehoods" (Santa Claus has a beard and Santa Claus is a mouse, respectively, for example) and how we know we are "talking about the same thing" in conversations about possibilia. I will talk about the implications of this talk of possibilia as it relates to the (actual) status of our souls and to Pascal's wager in my next post.

The parable of Jesus

Many secular people who admire the story of Jesus will point out that it is a moral parable. It is the story of someone that gave his life for the sins of others and was kind despite the huge costs incurred to himself. It is about redemption. But can our sins be redeemed by punishing someone else, even someone who is purely good? It seems immoral top punish innocent people on behalf of the guilty. Sins don't seem to be transferable. Sometimes some minor sins are for example, fines can usually be paid by the friends and family of the guilty and thus, the guilty incur no harm as a result of the punishment. We seem to have no problem with that kind of transferability of punishment. David Lewis wrote an interesting paper on the topic called Do We Believe in Penal Substitution?. I personally find the redemption parable uninteresting and quite morally barbaric. Punishing a good man for the sins of the sinful seem to be a immoral act.

That aside, however, I believe that there is an alternate interpretation of the story that warrants moral attention. I make an analogy to the ubermensch of Nietzsche. The ubermensch is someone that would choose, out of his own will, a life of great challenge and struggle, if only to exercise his strength, courage and engage in a creative life if only for the sake of the challenge. There is triumph in the struggle and it's more important in Nietzsche's scheme of things to live a beautiful but tragic life than a happy or pleasant life if the later life does not offer the opportunity for struggle and greatness. The virtues of strength and courage and creativity are paramount for Nietzsche. Being all powerful might even prevent someone, say a god, from living such a great life because omnipotence forbids the possibility of true struggle and the exhibition of heroic courage which comes in the face of one's own peril when one struggles against something greater than himself. This is why Nietzsche always thought the Roman Stoic philosopher Epictetus's claim that the gods have good reason to be jealous of man to be insightful and true. This is one kind of paradox which I will call a "paradox of omnipotence." Jean-Luc Godard explored another similar theme in his Hélas Pour Moi. In this film, God takes over the body of a man in order to seduce his wife. It seems that only a man, in all his finitude and imperfection can truly win the love of a woman. A god may manipulate her or coerce her into loving him but he cannot win her love the old fashioned way, i.e., through charm, conversation, etc, all the mere mortal appeals.

Now let's imagine a perfectly moral being. He happens to be all powerful as well. Now I suggest that there is a similar paradoxical limiting of one's virtues by being omnipotent in moral virtues as well (instead of the Nietzschean virtues of strength, courage, and creativity which are not traditionally thought of as moral virtues). How does being omnipotent limit oneself here? Well, it seems to me that only the mortal, the finite, are truly capable of things like moral courage, free will, moral responsibility and so on. An all powerful and all good god cannot be truly morally courageous (what has he got to be justifiably afraid of? What can possibly harm him?). Courage is the overcoming of justified fear through strength of character and will. Without the possibility of justifiable fearing anything, courage is impossible. God may only be "courageous" in a irrational sense that he overcomes an irrational fear. God can seem to do no wrong either and may not seem to have a choice in doing evil as he is determined by his omnibenevolence and his other attributes.

Thus it seems to me that God, or any moral ubermensch, if he is truly all powerful and all good, would necessarily choose to limit his powers by some kind of incarnating himself into mortal form and suffer through the (moral) trials and tribulations of someone that is put into dire situations to test and practice his own moral virtues. This would then be a parable to show that the possibility of being truly good and decent necessarily rests on our finitude. I think that this is an extremely far fetched interpretation of the Bible and it is likely not how it was intended to be read by any of its writers. But for me to see any value in the Bible at all, with all its barbarity, I would have to see it this way.

The Free Will card in Theodicies

Traditionally, some people have tried to explain the existence of evil in the world with different theodicies. The most popular of these is the free will excuse. These folks will say that a world with evil allows those living in it to freely choose between doing good and evil. It makes free will possible and they argue that a world with free will is better than a world without it even if the world without it is evil-free. But a world with free will entails that, sometimes, people will choose to do evil.

This is obviously a bad argument for several reasons. The most obvious is that many evils had nothing to do with peoples' willing them into existence; they are natural evils like floods and earthquakes and famine and pestilence. (Additionally, the argument assumes that we have free will which is not at all obvious to contemporary philosophers even though most would agree that we do, they would say that there are tremendous difficulties in explicating a coherent and plausible theory of free will)

But consider these other arguments:

Another reason why the free will card is a bad argument is because of the existence, possible or actual, of moral saints or sages. If these beings are possible (and perhaps the Buddha, Confucius and Jesus were actual historical examples), then God could have made everyone like them. So even if there were evil options like there is in this world, a moral saint or sage would not choose it. It is reasonable (and maybe even an a priori truth) that such a being has free will, like you and me. So why didn't god make everyone a moral saint or sage? It is, I think, reasonable to believe that a moral saint or sage is the way she is due to these and only these reasons: her environment and her innate endowments. So why didn't God give everyone the innate qualities these beings posses and the environment which produces and cultivates their moral rectitude and perfection? The Christian/Islamic apologist cannot answer, I doubt, coherently or persuasively on these issues.

Another argument is that one can have free will even when their choices are limited to only good options (perhaps, even if there is only one option(!) on a famous Frankfurtian compatibilist conception of freedom). Say you have the option of A. to eat cake, B. To eat pie, or C. to torture babies. By making it impossible to choose C, (either by making it unthinkable to everyone or by taking the means away to make torturing babies possible or by bilking such attempts to torture, etc) we will still have free choice to choose to eat cake or pie. No evil will be permitted if we choose either provided we like both, everyone gets enough of what they want, there are no bad consequences from having a little cake or pie, etc. So having free will is not to be confused with having the actual options to choose. God could have taken evil options away without robbing us of having free will. I am not free to violate the laws of gravitation, that doesn't mean I lack free will.

Theodicy

A theodicy seeks to explain why there's evil in the world. It seems that it is impossible for the existence of both an omnipotent and omnibenevolent God and the existence of evil (of any degree). By evil I mean any kind of suffering or even pain. The traditional justifications of evil in a world with God has been the story of Original Sin in the Bible, the Free Will justifications seen in philosophical and theological debates, the justification from Ignorance and the argument of spiritual or character development. However, there seems to be one theodicy that is even more plausible, at least to me. What if God really is what he purportedly is but that a being of omnipotent and omnibenevolent nature would entail His hating and willing the suffering of evil beings. That making evil beings and making them suffer is an inherent good and moreover, an absolute good. Perhaps we are all evil beings designed by God to be evil and also doomed to suffer his (righteous) wrath. So God has created evil beings just so that punishing them, an inherent good, will be possible. This would also seem to show that God has a kind of poetic aesthetic i.e., making those who are evil suffer directly through the hands of other evil beings for much (but not all) of our suffering is through human created ills. Now this certainly is a vindictive God, but the question is Can He also be omnibenevolent too? If His vengeance is just, does that really mar his goodness?

One of the other obvious objections is that there are many of us that are not evil. Consider innocent children who are made to sometimes suffer horrendously. How could they possibly be evil? Maybe because they have the potential to act evil and it is only some instance of luck (constitutive or circumstantial)that prevents them from eventually committing great evils. It could be argued (though I don't know how plausibly) that their evilness is an inherent aspect of their being or essence (and indeed every person's being) for this possible actualization of great evil to be possible. Their potential or propensity for evil is manifested through traits they posses inherently.

But a further objection that is more plausible is that it seems that the degree of suffering is not commensurate with the evil potential. Some of us are more capable and more likely to commit great evils or greater evils than others and this could be because of some aspect of our innate essences. But it seems like the prima facie best of us are made to suffer the most in the world (perhaps precisely partly because they are better) more than most others. And those that are prima facie worse seems tend to suffer less and enjoy themselves more in this world (perhaps precisely partly because they are worse).

The reply could be that none of us really know how truly evil we are (have the capacity or propensity given the right conditions to commit) and that despite what it seems, everyone does really get their just deserts commensurate with their inherent but not obvious evilness.

Marilyn McCord Adams on god and rational optimism

In this podcast, McCord Adams claims that it is a necessary condition to be a "rational optimist" to believe in god. The first time I heard this podcats, I couldn't help but be impressed with this line of argument as it does have its appeal to me despite the fact that I thought it very much wrong. I was impressed by its originality and its odd perspective on things. I couldn't at first put my finger on specifically what was wrong with it but now I know. It's wrong for several possible reasons. Since I've never read her books or papers, I have to go on what she said in the podcats but it seems to me to be a wholly fallacious argument due to an equivocation on the word "optimism" or because it makes the fatalistic fallacy.

First of all, her argument doesn't purport to argue for the existence of God based on ontological or cosmological or even, strictly speaking, ethical considerations like most traditional theistic arguments (it's a "practical" argument much like Kant's). It seems that her argument is aimed at a charge of irrationality of holding both that one can be optimistic and atheist. So it's only directed at optimistic atheists and will not work against those who are pessimist about the chances for future human goodness and the reduction of evils. She says that it's inconsistent to both be rational and optimistic given the history of horrendous evils in the world. This history is supposed to count as evidence of the future state of things. She claims it's a necessary condition to believe in god if we are rationally optimistic because history has shown that things won't likely turn that much better in terms of evils committed. It will take a supernatural will to right all the wrongs and truly make a better world. That's what I take her argument to consists in. So if it is necessary to believe in god to be rationally optimistic in this world, optimistic atheists must abandon either their optimism or their atheism or else concede that their non belief in god is irrational! Since atheists aren't likely to abandon their optimism, to avoid charges of irrationality, they must bite the bullet and adopt a belief in god to justify that optimism.

My first response to her argument for God's existence is for "existential" reasons. She seems to equivocate on "optimism." I understand optimism to be either an affective attitude (or feeling) for a positive outcome or it could be a belief in the likelihood of that positive outcome. So she seems to argue that a rational and realistic atheist is forced to concede that since humans have not improved that much in our basic bad treatment of each other (which is a huge and largely unsubstantiated assumption), we must adopt a negative belief based on our history that we will not be able to improve and that our affective state of positive feelings about improvement and redemption of evils should follow our "pessimist" but wholly justified belief.

Now for the sake of argument, I won't deny that humans have not bettered themselves in regard to the evils we commit.

I also would say that for the most part our attitudes whether positive or negative on life should follow our (rational) beliefs. In other words, normatively, we should have affective states concordant or at least not at tensions with our beliefs. If I know that house cats are safe, tend to be nice, and make good pets, I should not fear them or have negative attitudes (or affective states towards them) regarding potential for harming me. If I know that the president is a mean, nasty and untrustworthy person, I should not still have warm gooey feelings of inspiration regarding his character traits. That much is clear.

But on occasion, we should not have belief concordant affective states associated with our beliefs (or the affective aspect of "aliefs") and in fact we should have discordant affective states.

Consider if your wife or husband had cancer and all the best doctors based on the latest scientific findings on the current state of his/her condition said he/she had little chance of recovery and will die soon. So even though we should, in some sense, have a pessimistic outlook on the chances of survival of our spouse, we should adopt a more roseate affective state towards their full recovery. We should have positive feelings towards their chances of recovery even though we believe (and it is possible that they will rationally believe too) that their chances are slim. We should have these positive feelings towards full recovery despite the justified beliefs. In fact, we wouldn't be good spouses, friends, family members, etc if we didn't adopt these feelings in just these kinds of circumstances.

Consider the concept of hope. I can hope that you, my best friend, will win the lottery the next time you buy a ticket despite the fact that I know you will have little chances of winning and I can be fully wanting you winning it. There's nothing irrational about this. In some sense, that's being optimistic about you winning the lottery. So the concept of hope involves a lot of these optimistic feelings (attitudes or affective states)without there even being a necessity built into the concept for an optimistic belief. Indeed, we hope for things all the time for ourselves and our loved ones without believing they are likely to befall us. We also sometimes hope that the wicked will get their just deserts even on occasions when we believe that there's little chances of it happening. Reality is simply irrelevant to this kind of attitude. The expression of the positive "optimistic" attitudes in hoping for the best is a gesture of good will and required for our being good human beings.

Even when there is no chance of a positive outcome, we may still have good reason to be hopeful. Consider the doctor protagonists in Camus' The Plague. He can work like he does and presumably have the same optimistic attitudes (despite his actual beliefs) as he does as if his situation had not been that dire without being irrational. We may have "existential" reasons to adopt such feelings despite knowing there is no chance of a positive outcome not because we know it will make a difference in the outcome but because we are doing what's required to be worthy of that positive outcome.

So I would argue that an atheist can be rationally optimistic because we can hope for much better even if we believe there's little chances of that happening. I'll call this kind of optimistic atheist the "hopeful atheist". So this shows that McCord Adams is wrong on the necessity part of her claim but maybe she is right that most or many atheists should revise their beliefs on god because most atheists optimism is based not on this kind of reality irrelevant attitude from hope but based on not being able to come to terms with reality? That is, if they fully embraced rational beliefs about reality, they would come to see that their attitudes had been wrong. I'll call these atheists "blinders atheists". Then her argument would only be aimed at these blinders atheists and would be ineffective against hopeful atheists. This then is a much more plausible albeit far less strong a claim (again, assuming that her claim that history shows there is no improvement in the perpetration of evils).

I think that McCord Adams also makes a fatalistic fallacy because we can argue that even though it's unlikely that there will be much less evil in the future, for that possibility to happen, it will be much more likely if we adopt a more optimistic attitude. So that will gives us rational reasons to adopt it because it will raise our chances to improve the world even if that improvement will not make it probable that it will.