At The Philosopher’s Magazine (TPM) web site there is a fun games and activities section, and one of the available games is called “The Philosophical Health Check” which is supposed to evaluate whether one’s answers to pre-selected pairs of world view questions demonstrate any contradictions or tensions. While not exactly serious it can nevertheless be somewhat interesting. I took the test and was pleased to discover that my world view is remarkably self-consistent and contains zero contradictions.

But it did identify two opposing answer pairs that apparently generate tension amongst themselves. But as the site itself admits, that tension can be removed by finding “some rationally coherent way of reconciling them.” The tension was found between my answers to the following two pairs of pre-selected questions. (For example, they ask you a pair of questions concerning morality that are worded quite differently, then compare them for consistency.)

First Answer Pair Tension

I agreed with the statement that “there exists an all-powerful, loving and good God.” But then I also agreed with the statement that “to allow an innocent child to suffer needlessly when one could easily prevent it is morally reprehensible.” Agreeing with both of those statements generates a tension, I was informed, a philosophical paradox known as the Problem of Evil.

The problem is simple: If God is all-powerful, loving and good, that means he can do what he wants and will do what is morally right. But surely this means that he would not allow an innocent child to suffer needlessly (as he could easily prevent it). Yet he does. Much infant suffering is the result of human action, but much is also due to natural causes such as disease, flood or famine. In both cases, God could stop it. Yet he does not.

It is sheer irony that TPM would be found committing such a basic question-begging fallacy. In reality there is no tension at all between my answers. Notwithstanding my agreement that there exists a God with the above described attributes, I had agreed that it is morally reprehensible to “allow an innocent child to suffer needlessly when one could easily prevent it.” Notice that emphasized word, for it is critically important. If there exists a God who is omnipotent, omniscient, and benevolent then there cannot exist gratuitous evil or suffering, for the two are mutually exclusive in the same way that an Irresistible Force and an Immovable Object are. One can posit that my two answers are incompatible only by begging the question (fallacy) that some humans suffer needlessly; to assert that gratuitous evil or suffering exists shoulders an enormous burden of proof in a critical evaluation of the God of Christianity.

Second Answer Pair Tension

The idea that it is “reasonable to believe in the existence of a thing without even the possibility of evidence for its existence” was something I confidently disagreed with. But then I agreed that “atheism is a faith just like any other, because it is not possible to prove the non-existence of God.” That creates a tension, they told me.

In disagreeing with the first statement you are acting consistently with the general principle which states that in the absence of good grounds for believing something it is not rational to believe it. … This is not to be thought of as a matter of faith but of sound reasoning. But asserting that atheism is a faith just like any other, because it is not possible to prove the non-existence of God, contradicts this principle.

Not, it does not. I wonder if anyone else has ever noticed the bait-and-switch employed here. The first statement said that it is reasonable to affirm P (e.g., “God exists”) even when there is no possibility of evidence for it. I disagreed with that statement, for I think there is nothing reasonable about that. If there are no good grounds nor even the possibility thereof for believing P, then doing so is actually contrary to reason.

The second statement said that atheism is a matter of faith (which TPM interprets as belief without good grounds) because it is not possible to show that P is false (or that ¬P is true). And I agreed with that statement, having in mind the agnostic or ‘weak’ atheist who readily admits that God might exist but does not himself believe it. When we look past the epistemological component to the metaphysical structure of his world view, we observe that he must take it on faith that P is false (or that ¬P is true) precisely because it is not possible to show that it is. (There are those who say that atheism is the negation of a belief, not the assertion of a belief. They are simply wrong, for atheism is the positive belief that “no deity required,” that no feature of our world requires deity to account for it.)

But I want you to notice the bait-and-switch that TPM engages in. In their criticism they assert that it is not rational to affirm a proposition (whether P or ¬P) in the absence of good grounds for doing so, but it cannot escape our notice that this is a very different sort of beast. The clever switch they pulled may not be obvious but it is certainly clear. Their criticism regarded believing some X exists without good grounds for doing so, but the original question they asked regarded believing some X exists for which it is not even possible to have good grounds, which is a very different sort of thing. Additionally, and perhaps more importantly, the question of whether or not John has proper warrant to believe some X exists is a very different question from whether or not that warrant is appropriate for Peter’s belief that some X exists. (For example, if an alien is before John then he has proper warrant to believe it exists, but for Peter that evidence is anecdotal and may not be appropriate for his belief that it exists.)

At any rate, according to TPM it is not reasonable to believe some X exists when there is not even the possibility of good grounds for doing so. And I agree. But if by pairing this with a question about atheism they wish to suggest that such is the case for belief in the existence of God, they shoulder a heavy burden of proving that said belief is beyond even the possibility of having good grounds.

(The ‘strong’ atheist is in a worse position, for he draws a metaphysical conclusion from an epistemological argument, that is, he claims to know that P is false because it has not been shown to be true, or that ¬P is true because it has not been shown to be false, which commits the fallacy of argumentum ad ignorantiam.)

Third Answer Pair Tension

This alleged tension was so erroneous it barely deserves attention, but I am mentioning it for its comedic value. On the one hand I agreed that “judgements about works of art are purely matters of taste,” while on the other hand I agreed that “Michelangelo is one of history’s finest artists.”

The tension here is the result of the fact that you probably don’t believe the status of Michelangelo is seriously in doubt. One can disagree about who is the best artist of all time, but surely Michelangelo is on the short list. Yet if this is true, how can judgements about works of art be purely matters of taste? If someone unskilled were to claim that they were as good an artist as Michelangelo, you would probably think that they were wrong, and not just because your tastes differ. You would probably think Michelangelo’s superiority to be not just a matter of personal opinion. The tension here is between a belief that works of art can be judged, in certain respects, by some reasonably objective standards and the belief that, nonetheless, the final arbiter of taste is something subjective. This is not a contradiction, but a tension nonetheless.

The problem, of course, is that my answer to the second question was a matter of personal taste! I did not pretend that my agreement was somehow an objective judgment. I could either agree or disagree with the statement, but to disagree would have been false. So I had to agree, aware of the weak and obvious trap they were laying.

(And notice the “you would probably think” statements they impose on me in their criticism. No, I would not probably think that, because I had just said that judgments about art are purely a matter of taste.)