God Explains The Most: Introduction

Preparing for my debate with Peter Millican, part 1 of 11

I have the honor of debating God’s existence with Peter Millican on July 1st (details TBA). To prepare, I would like to externalize my opening case. If Peter happens to see this ahead of time, maybe I will lose the advantage of surprise, but I hope getting these ideas out there will serve the productivity of our exchange.

In this first post, I want to share my overall approach to the debate, how I define ‘God’, and what I hope to accomplish.

My Big Picture Argument

My plan is to argue that theism better explains more things than atheism. My case rests on two main points. First, I will seek to show that theism provides a good explanation of many things (consciousness, fine-tuning, existence, reason, ethical awareness, natural regularities, soul-building experiences, etc.), and second atheism doesn't explain anything nearly as well. I will leave it to Peter to say why he thinks atheism explains anything better. My prediction is that he will need to extract explanatory power by adding to atheism premises that are themselves independently better explained by theism (e.g., the existence of conscious moral agents, natural regularities, etc.). We'll see if I'm wrong about the prediction. I'm sticking my neck out with a prediction to open my ideas to real testing. I'm excited to see what I'll discover in this debate.

My method will be observation-based. Rather than spinning webs of reason unanchored to reality, I will use a scientific method of testing the theistic hypothesis with observations and predictive success.

Defining 'God’

I want to use a definition of ‘God’ that is intuitive to a wide audience, minimal, and also filled in enough to have predictive content.

To help me get an impression from a general, smart audience of people who follow my work, I surveyed social media friends about a few options. Here’s the result of that survey:

In the end, I’m settling on ‘supreme being’. It has some of the advantages of ‘perfect being’ (predictive and simplicity), as I will argue, while I think it might be more intuitive what it means. (I also worry that the term ‘perfect’ is more prone to invite unnecessary distractions about how to understand ‘perfection’ without anthropomorphizing.)

How to Get a Great Probability Out of the Gate

How likely is it that God exists prior to the evidence? Is it like the probability of an invisible flying spaghetti monster, leprechauns, a teapot floating behind Jupiter, or what?

Philosophers and scientists explicitly or implicitly recognize certain identifiable properties of a hypothesis that affect its prior probability. For example, if the hypothesis posits fewer kinds of things (e.g., natural events), then that hypothesis is more likely out of the gate than a hypothesis that posits more kinds of things (e.g., natural events plus supernatural events)—since the more complex hypothesis has more ways of going wrong.

I believe the concept of a supreme being allows us to give a theory of fundamental reality that enjoys a relatively high prior probability on standard measures. As Paul Draper’s argues, modesty (how much the hypothesis says) and coherence (how well the parts of the hypothesis fit together a prior) are key contributors to the prior probability of a hypothesis. The theory that fundamental reality is supreme allows us to have a very modest and coherent theory. It is modest because we don’t need to specify any arbitrary limits and boundaries in our theory of fundamental reality’s basic nature (e.g., that it has a capacity to make precisely10^82 + 7 electrons and no more); we can shave these limits off entirely. It also allows us to conceive of fundamental reality in terms of a uniform nature (rather than as a mixture of many types of aspects, like positive and negative), which reduces the prior probability of incompatibilities between aspects within its fundamental nature. The supreme being hypothesis shaves off complexities, arbitrariness, and sources of incoherence, by implying that fundamental reality is simply purely supreme (without arbitrary limits or boundaries) in its basic nature.

(For more on the prior probability of theism, see IV of “The Best Case for Atheism Online.”)

I will argue that atheism on its own does not explain any of these things (or anything else) nearly as well. This sets the bar higher for myself than necessary, since my main thesis is the more modest proposition that theism better explains more things. However, it is hard to see how atheism on its own explains (or predicts) much of anything. Atheism on its own is a hypothesis about what does not exist. From a hypothesis about what does not exist, I don’t see that we can determine much of anything about what exists. (For sake of modesty, I’m setting aside my argument that atheism entails the existence of God.)

Some Things God Helps Explain

It seems to me that the supreme being hypothesis helps explain (and in some cases is the only possible explanation of) many general features of reality. In my debate (and in this post series), I will focus on these 10 things:

1. Existence

2. Fine-tuning for life

3. Consciousness

4. Mental causation

5. Conceptual space [cf. my counting argument]

6. Moral awareness

7. Rules of reason

8. Natural order

9. Soul-developing experiences

10. Narrative structures.

I will unpack each of these in my next 10 posts. I have 10 minutes to give my opening statement, and so I will seek to provide 1-minute summaries of why I think theism helps explain each of these. In this post series, I will also offer more details on each.

My Purpose in the Debate

Upon reflection, I’ve decided to aim in this debate for the most productive exchange of ideas I can. I have three reasons for setting this aim.

First, this aim allows both Peter and I to win together. Initially (before rewatching Peter’s debates with Richard Swinburne [here] and William Lane Craig [here]), I considered aiming for pure personal victory. But I feel my own strength and interest is more in productive conversations than in mere rhetorical wins. The rhetorical goals distract from clarifying a greater picture of reality together.

Second, it is evident to me from Peter’s work and public engagement that he’s the kind of person I could have a very productive exchange with (not to mention the kind of philosopher I like a lot). In his debate with RS, Peter expressed his points with question marks, curious to see what RS might say in response. He is there to learn and someone I can learn from. In his debate with WLC, he even said, “this is challenging.” Rhetrocially it might not be the best strategy to suggest that your opponent’s case is challenging(!), but to me, that line indicated Peter’s honesty, respect for his interlocutor, and pure interest in the ideas themselves. So, I think aiming for a productive exchange of ideas will be the most fun and natural for us both.

Third, I think the long-term value of the debate for others will be greater if it isn’t centered on rhetorical strength. More lights illuminate more treasures of truth. Rather than seek to defend an isolated package of ideas, I think the time is ripe to bring more perspectives together in the project of illuminating a greater vision of fundamental reality. I look forward to the opportunity to ally with Peter Millican in this greater project, even while I utterly destroy his worldview. :)

Feedback is welcome. Thank you!

Proceed to part 2: God Explains Existence.