Eternal, Ultimate Happiness

Many people are often concerned about happiness. “Do what makes you happy,” they will say, or perhaps something like “Follow a path that leads to happiness.” Sometimes, we as Christians will pronounce this as too self-centered, or point out that this is not the main point of existence (that would be to worship God). And while this is correct, especially as it relates to our current culture, there is still something to be said about happiness.

My contention (and this is hardly original to me) is that true, eternal, ultimate happiness is only found in Christianity. That is to say, we are only truly, eternally, and ultimately happy when we are fulfilling our purpose. This purpose is to love and worship God. But notice that a loving relationship between two parties only works when both sides love the other. Thus, we fulfil our purpose by being loved, not just loving. That loving relationship is only found in following our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. He paid the penalty for sin in his life and death on the cross, and God vindicated Jesus by raising him from the dead. If we believe this, and desire to be saved, and trust God for that salvation, we will be forgiven, and we will be saved.

Now I have said that this kind of ultimate, eternal happiness is only found in Christianity. Why do I say that? For two related reasons. First, Christianity is true. If Christianity is true, then its doctrines are true, and this means eternal happiness is found in worshipping God and fellowshipping together for all eternity. Second, other worldviews either do not have a coherent account of eternal, ultimate happiness or else the coherent accounts they do have tend not to reflect eternal or ultimate happiness. For example, in Islam, eternal, ultimate happiness is found in collecting 72 virgins, amongst other things. In Mormonism, it is found in becoming god of your own planet. It’s not wrong to have things to look forward to in Heaven. However, God is the only thing that can be eternal, ultimate happiness. And Christianity fulfils the truth condition. Think about that today.

Culpable in Unbelief?

Most people are in agreement that what is known as doxastic voluntarism is false. This is, in its common and strengthened form, the idea that we choose all of our beliefs. Surely that seems false. However, an interesting challenge (one that I’ve written on before) to Christian belief can be placed by the skeptic:

1.     I cannot choose my beliefs.

2.     If I cannot choose my beliefs, then my belief that Christianity is false or unjustified is not under my control.

3.     Whatever is not under my control is something for which I am not morally responsible.

4.     So I am not responsible for believing that Christianity is false or else unjustified.

The conclusion seems to be an undesirable consequence for the Christian. After all, if she wants to claim that those who reject Christ are morally culpable in doing so (which the Bible seems to indicate, cf. John 3:18-19), then one or more of the premises are going to have to be denied. In the past, I have challenged premise 1. However, for our present purposes, I will let that premise stand.[1]

Instead, I challenge premise 2. Suppose that it is true you cannot choose any of your beliefs. It still seems conceivable that your present beliefs could be under your control—at least to a degree sufficient to confer moral responsibility. This is because you could be in control of at least some of your cognitive attitudes. In other words, how open you are to the Gospel of Christ can be a matter of your attitude concerning God. Suppose you find yourself not wanting to deal with the claims of God (it interferes with your lifestyle, perhaps), and so you simply dismiss it out of mind, never to think about it again (except for in pesky internet debates). Or suppose you choose instead to try to scour the internet to find arguments and evidences that back up your desired conclusion. It may be that the conjunction of your cognitive attitude with your decision to dismiss the claim or engage in confirmation bias against it is enough to result in your present state of unbelief. While that present belief (or lack of belief) is not directly chosen by you, it seems you are responsible after all, since your attitudes and your earlier decisions lead to the present state of unbelief.

There is an analogue in drug addiction. Suppose there is someone so thoroughly addicted to a drug that he cannot will to stop abusing it. It hardly follows necessarily that he is not responsible for his drug addiction. For it is conceivable that he chose to use the drug, knowing it was highly addictive, and that his decision led to his current addiction. So, even though he cannot choose not to be addicted, nonetheless his choices are responsible for his present condition.

This, or something like this, I think is the story with unbelievers. Please feel free to share your thoughts below!

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[1] It’s not at all clear that from the falsehood of doxastic voluntarism it follows that none of our beliefs can be chosen. See Jonathan L. Kvanvig, “Univeralism and Hell,” in Destiny and Deliberation: Essays in Philosophical Theology (Oxford University Press, New York), 2011, 49.

God as the Ideal Observer

I am continuing trying to write something every day. I hadn’t really thought much about what I was going to write until now. So here goes . . . .

I had a brief but interesting conversation today about God and whether or not he has a “view from nowhere.” The idea is that, contrary to modernist suppositions, one really can’t be 100% objective, with absolutely no presuppositions or perspective whatsoever. There really is no view from nowhere, where nothing and no one has any influence whatsoever on how we see things. We all have a worldview, implicit or not. So suppose God is particularly situated and is not perfectly objective, where “perfectly objective” apparently means “without a worldview.” How can God then know for sure that he knows all things? Couldn’t he be mistaken, simply being beholden to his worldview?

I think not, and for two (what I take to be) decent reasons. First, God is not like us. He does not have to gain knowledge as a finite knower. He knows all true propositions innately. Thus, he would not have to worry about whether or not he is mistaken in a given situation; he knows that he is not. Second, I take it that the perfectly objective observer is one where he has access to all the facts, amongst other things. God more than has access to all of the facts concerning a matter. He just is in every possible world, as the necessary being. God could not fail to exist in any circumstance.

Out of any possible scenario, God knows everything about it, including how it might and even would actually turn out. Further, God is the locus of everything good, so he knows and will do what is good, for only good comes from God (that is, God does not perform any acts of “evil,” where “evil” is contrary to God’s nature). So I think God fits this ideal observer in objectivity, and even though he has a nature, it’s not one capable of being shared or limited by context. Instead, it just is the foundation for all reality.

Omniscience, Omnipotence, and God

Suppose that omniscience is God’s knowing all true propositions and believing no false ones. Suppose further that omnipotence is God’s being such that he is able to perform any logically possible action. Now suppose that it is within my power (that is, it is up to me) to know what happened in the world yesterday (via a newspaper or website) or not—that is, it is within my power to know or to refrain from knowing. Suppose finally that God is essentially omniscient (that is, it is a property God must have in order to be who he is). The following paradox is said to hold for these claims:

1.     God is essentially omniscient.

2.     God is omnipotent.

3.     It is logically possible for me to know or to refrain from knowing x about yesterday.

4.     So God is able to know or to refrain from knowing x about yesterday (from 2-3).

5.     So God is not able to refrain from knowing x about yesterday (from 1).

(4) and (5) obviously contradict, and the critic of these attributes can point either to (1) or (2) as the culprit. What are we to do? Should we get rid of omniscience or omnipotence?

I think we should jettison the account given of omnipotence as too simplistic. I’m not saying we should give up omnipotence. Rather, I’m saying the definition doesn’t capture what it needs to; it’s too simplistic. Here’s an example:

6.     It is logically possible for me to know I am Randy.

7.     So, given (2), it is logically possible for God to know he is Randy.

8.     But God is not possibly Randy.

9.     So (2) is false.

(6) seems correct. I am identical to the referent of Randy, after all. (7) is an entailment of the definition we gave. (8) is a consequence of the fact that I am not even possibly God. (9) is just the entailment of (2) joined with (6-8). I find this argument far less objectionable in conclusion than the one above. So what is omnipotence? I don’t have the full account here in a short blog post, but the suggestion is that it’s maximal power (Flint and Freddoso). In this case, logical possibility is a necessary but not sufficient condition in the analysis of omnipotence. It at least has to be curtailed to something like “God can do what it is logically possible for him to do” (even if this can’t be the whole story—there could be other beings who can do everything it is logically possible for them to do, and they would fail spectacularly on the omnipotence scale).

So my final conclusion is to expand the analysis of “omnipotence” so that it captures the biblical data and works within our traditional theology. It then easily avoids the absurd conclusion that omnipotence requires God to know he is me!

My Favorite Apologetic Arguments

The following two arguments are currently my favorite apologetic arguments for the truth of theism, and by way of subsequent inference to the best explanation, Christianity. I have written about them many times, and enjoy both discussion and answering questions about them. I am going to discuss them both briefly and leave it for your consideration.

The first argument is the kalam cosmological argument (KCA). Cosmological arguments for God’s existence reason from the contingent facts of the universe to a transcendent cause of the universe. The kalam is a particular formulation of this idea. Thus, there is no one singular cosmological argument, only a family of arguments that share the basic foundation in common. There are two versions of the KCA that have been presented by its most prominent defender, William Lane Craig. I will give what I call Craig’s classical presentation, then his current presentation, and then discuss them both. Here is the classical presentation of the KCA:

1.      Whatever begins to exist had a cause.

2.      The universe began to exist.

3.      Therefore, the universe had a cause.

And here is the current presentation:

1*. If the universe began to exist, then the universe had a transcendent cause.

2. The universe began to exist.

3*. Therefore, the universe had a transcendent cause.

The first thing to notice is that (2) appears in both arguments. This is a great premise because it enjoys both philosophical and scientific support. On the philosophical side, of the several arguments given, I like the argument against traversing an actually infinite amount of time. It doesn’t appear possible. Think about it this way: if you pick an infinitely distant “starting point” (any arbitrary point will do) in the past, an infinite number of moments would have to pass for you to arrive at the present moment. But before the present moment could arrive, the moment prior would have to arrive; and before that moment, the one prior to it would have to arrive, and so on and so forth ad infinitum. But then the present moment could not arrive, since the infinite series could never be traversed! It’s like encountering a man who claims he has just finished counting all the negative numbers from infinity down to zero; it doesn’t make any sense!

Further, there are scientific reasons to think the universe began to exist. In pop culture, even today, it is not uncommon to hear things like, “The universe is eternal and infinite.” But this is just scientifically outdated (by about a hundred years!). Scientists have discovered the universe is expanding. Extrapolating the rate of expansion backward into the past, they have postulated there is a point in the past where all matter is condensed into a single miniscule point. They further postulate that this point “burst” to spread out and form the universe over a long period of time. They call this the Big Bang Theory, and it implies a beginning to space. Regardless of what one thinks of this theory, you cannot have both the old model of endless, eternal space and the Big Bang. You must have one or the other, or neither. The point is just that current scientific models suggest one cannot avoid an absolute beginning to the universe.

(1)   is good, in that it is both intuitive and constantly confirmed by our experience. Some people have thought that a counterexample to (1) would be quantum events. However, this is confused. (1) does not say, “whatever event transpires has a cause,” but whatever begins to exist had a cause. The difference means that in order for quantum events to be a counterexample, the virtual particles would have to come from nothing. But they do not come from nothing; they come from a sea of energy.

However, Craig reformulated (1) into (1*) perhaps in part to avoid this whole confusion in the first place. (1*) seems eminently plausible; the alternative is to think that the universe both came into existence and had no cause whatsoever, which seems very, very counterintuitive, to say the least! But then it follows that the universe had a transcendent cause. This transcendent cause, then, must be timeless, spaceless, immaterial, extremely powerful, personal, beginningless, changeless, and uncaused! That sure sounds a lot like God—specifically, the God of the Abrahamic tradition.

Now here is the version of the moral argument that I prefer:

1.      If God does not exist, then objective moral values and duties do not exist.

2.      Evil exists.

3.      Therefore, objective moral values and duties do exist.

4.      Therefore, God exists.

I prefer the extra step (3) provides for reasons I shall explain in a moment. (1), I think, should be placed in probabilistic terms: probably, God is the best explanation for objective morality. Think about it this way: in the absence of God, why should we be good? To whom do we owe that obligation? It cannot be merely other humans, for humans did not always exist, and there could be other sentient moral agents that exist or could possibly have existed, and presumably morality could apply to them. So, without such a ground, it looks like moral obligations wouldn’t be around at all.

Now, as it turns out, all you need at this point is for someone to agree that objective moral values and duties do exist. However, some people resist this point initially. It is here I like to remind the objector of what his favorite (likely) argument against God is: the problem of evil. The problem of evil works only in cases where, in fact, there is evil. Beheading people for the faith, calculated genocide as ethnic cleansing, imprisonment for thought crimes—these people take to be evil deeds, not just deeds we happen not to like. You can provide myriad examples, and usually people grant that at least some things are objectively evil. If they do not, however, do not lose heart: you have shown a cost—a very, very great cost—of accepting their view: you must stand firm in the counterintuition that nothing is really wrong, deep down: it’s all preference.

In any case, once one accept (2), it entails (3), and (1) and (3) entail (4), that God exists. Now this God is plausibly a necessary being, since it looks like moral truths are necessary, and God grounds these.

So take these two arguments alone and combine their conclusions: there exists a being who is plausibly necessary, transcends the universe, brought it into existence, grounds objective morality, is omnibenevolent, beginningless, changeless, uncaused, timeless, spaceless, immaterial, enormously powerful, and personal. For a variety of reasons, I think this is best represented by the Christian God. What do you think?