On the Divine Psychology Objection

I indicated in the video that many of Craig's arguments are susceptible to the divine psychology objection. This objection is based on the Christian rejection of the problem of evil, which I agree with. The problem of evil, the problem of hiddenness, and the problem of evolutionary inefficiency all depend on the NONTHEIST making assumptions about God's psychology. A Christian response is that there is absolutely no basis for making those assumptions about God's mind, which is infinite and so mostly inscrutable. I agree. So each of these atheistic objections should be abandoned. Of course, that means the theist cannot make the same sorts of assumptions about God's psychology that are made illicitly by the atheist in the abandoned atheistic objections. I claim that these assumptions are found in several of Craig's arguments including:
Kalam
Contingency
Mathematics
Intentionality
Fine Tuning
Resurrection

iwpoe asked explicitly about the Kalam.

The conclusion is that the universe has a transcendent cause.

The argument is obviously valid.

For this to be an argument in natural theology, one has to get from the claim that the universe has a transcendent cause to the claim that it was God. Now this is a bit tricky because people aren't as careful with the word 'God' as they should be. I'm following standard English grammar by using 'god' as a count noun (it takes modifiers -- a god, the god, no god -- and has a plural -- 'gods') and using 'God' as a name for the god worshiped by the Jews and Christians and described in the Old Testament (any version) and the New Testament. Perhaps God shows up elsewhere too (Qur'an?), but this is good enough for our purposes.

Now, the move from the valid conclusion of the Kalam (the universe has a transcendent cause) to the ultimate conclusion desired by natural theology and apologetics (God is the transcendent cause of the universe) is where the divine psychology objection comes in.

Often the Kalam is followed up in one of two ways. Either it is just assumed that the transcendent cause of the universe is God or it is argued that the transcendent cause of the universe is personal and then it is just assumed that it is God. It doesn't really matter which version we consider, so let's go with the harder one.

I'm not taking issue with the Kalam itself or this post-Kalam argument that the transcendent cause of the universe must be personal. I think each of these is full of holes, but that's not relevant to the divine psychology objection. I'm assuming for the sake of argument that the Kalam is sound (i.e., valid with true premises) and that the post-Kalam is sound. 

Even still, we need to move from the claim that transcendent cause of the universe is personal to the claim that God is the transcendent cause of the universe.

Sometimes this is done by stipulation: let the name of the cause of the universe be 'God'; therefore God is the cause of the universe. If that's the move, then then conclusion is true, but it doesn't mean what the Christian means by it. That is, 'God' is a different name in that conclusion. So this version is a dead end.

Instead, it is just assumed that God is the most obvious culprit and so God must have been the transcendent cause of the universe. It's this version that is susceptible to the divine psychology objection. In order for God to be the best candidate for the personal transcendent cause of the universe, it has to at least be plausible that God WOULD create the universe (and create it with the particular features that are appealed to in the Kalam premises). That, however, is a bit of divine psychology. In particular, Craig admits that we have absolutely no reason to think that God, prior to creating the universe, would create the universe.

Therefore, if the Kalam is to be evidence for the existence of God, then assumptions about divine psychology are needed. Since these assumptions are forbidden, the Kalam isn't evidence for the existence of God.

Okay. Let me have it.


 

KevinScharp wrote:

Jason wrote:

KevinScharp wrote:

So he has a material body -- and it ended up in heaven, which I'm assuming is not a location in spacetime. So some mass/energy disappeared.
 

All we can do here is speculate but the whole point of the Resurrection and Ascension is not to see "how" it happened but "why" it happened. It does not matter that God used so and so principle or so and so law or stopped certain principles / law or override it etc that is at the end of the day just process, the real question is God's purpose and reason behind it.

Actually, I don't think you have a good explanation for either. God doesn't explain anything for us unless we can appeal to God's psychology. And we can't.
 

If you are talking about how the miracle happened (i.e the processed used in it) then yes I do not have a good explanation (neither do I claim to) but if you are talking about why the miracle happened then we do have very good reasons for them. God explains a lot in terms of the miracles themselves, I think I would not believe a "miracle" story if a supernatural cause was not involved in it, that would just amount to a plain old mystery.

At the end of the day even if we were ever able to find out what processes were used or not used for the miracles they don't really tell us the significance of the Resurrection and the role it plays in transforming people's heart. 

iwpoe wrote:

I asked about the cosmological and teleological arguments which you also mention briefly The Kalam is craig's baby but probably the least interesting to us, since it depends on independent evidence for the temporal beginning of the universe.

The Kalam is a version of the cosmological argument. I'll do writeups for contingency and fine-tuning next.

iwpoe wrote:

I do hope you're not relying merely on the set of objections that were following from your construal of 'God' as God in Christianity. None of the arguments from natural theology establish the Christian tradition. I obviously couldn't be here talking about them if they were meant to.

I'm a philosophical theist. What's it matter to me if I can't argue my way to the body and the blood?

Well, I wasn't giving the presentation to you!
Still, as a Classical Theist, you think that there is a god. Which of the following attributes does it have:
all-knowing,
all-powerful,
completely good,
transcendent,
simple,
immutable, 
timeless?

iwpoe wrote:

I'm also fairly sure that your objections won't be troubling to careful Christian thinkers insofar as they rely on revealed sources of God's psychology. They generally avoid appeals to his phycology in cases where they have no information- say evolutionary inefficiency. Who knows why god cooses that creative path.

Not when moving from his general arguments to God in particular. Craig uses abduction (inference to the best explanation). And abduction arguments are about the best explanation. Saying "God did it" is rarely the best explanation unless we have some positive to reason to think God would do it. And we don't have that.

Relying on revealed texts to go from "some god exists" to "God exists" is obviously circular unless you can show that the god shown to exist is also the author of those texts.
 

@Iwpoe, how goes the summary? I'm eager to get to grips with some of these arguments (out all tomorrow but will watch the debate again if I can on Friday).

KevinScharp wrote:

Well, I wasn't giving the presentation to you!
Still, as a Classical Theist, you think that there is a god. Which of the following attributes does it have:
all-knowing,
all-powerful,
completely good,
transcendent,
simple,
immutable, 
timeless? 

With the usual qualification i.e. 'within camp' debates about what each of these attributes contributes, yes save for the case of 'completely good', in which case many classical theists would deny that God is a moral agent.

DanielCC wrote:

@Iwpoe, how goes the summary? I'm eager to get to grips with some of these arguments (out all tomorrow but will watch the debate again if I can on Friday).

I'm thinking I'll post it this evening. I had a tenant struck by a tree this week, so I've been distracted, but I want to go ahead and get that up. To reduce time until posting, I'm just going to posted in its rough form, and make corrections as per especially Kevin's objections.

DanielCC wrote:

KevinScharp wrote:

Well, I wasn't giving the presentation to you!
Still, as a Classical Theist, you think that there is a god. Which of the following attributes does it have:
all-knowing,
all-powerful,
completely good,
transcendent,
simple,
immutable, 
timeless? 

With the usual qualification i.e. 'within camp' debates about what each of these attributes contributes, yes save for the case of 'completely good', in which case many classical theists would deny that God is a moral agent.

More or less I agree with Daniel, and I'm probably in the "not a moral agent" camp.

I don't think God is a being amid beings either.