Transcript: Arguing God's Existence

Video Transcript: Arguing God's Existence – Dr Alvin Plantinga 

Host  

There are many arguments that atheists use that seem to show that there is no such being that we call God. Let me give you some of them and see how you react? Start with "The only minds we know are embodied within brains. There is no such thing as a disembodied mind."

Alvin Plantinga  

Well, we don't know that there's no such thing as a disembodied mind. All we know is that the minds we're acquainted with are to be found in brains. That's not a very strong argument, it seems to me. I mean, the only people we are acquainted with, the only rational creatures we're acquainted with, are on earth. Should we think there aren't any minds anywhere else? I mean, this is not much of an argument.

Host  

About the hiddenness of God: If God is so important to us, why shouldn't God make it more obvious that he exists? It's more his fault that we don't believe in him than ours.

Alvin Plantinga  

Well, the fact is, the vast majority of the world's people do believe in God or something like God. So it's not that God is hidden in the sense that nobody knows about him or believes in him. All kinds of people do, the vast majority of the world's people. God isn't as plain to us as other people or as trees and houses and material objects. But why think that he would have to be? There's got to be more to this argument than just that. That's not much of an argument at all. God might have a good reason for being relatively hidden, hidden to the degree that he is, which as I'm suggesting, isn't all that great.

Host  

To an atheist, who maybe is genuine, who really would like to believe, but doesn't see the evidence, the argument is that if God really wanted me to believe, he would make it obvious to me. There's a million different ways he could do that.

Alvin Plantinga  

No doubt there is. But our world is in many ways a fallen world. There are diseases. There are cognitive deficiencies of various kinds, and I'm inclined to think not believing in God is one of those. I mean, the natural human condition would be to believe in God in a totally wholehearted, implicit fashion. Calvin speaks of a sense of divinity, sensus divinitatis. But due to the same sorts of things to which diseases are due, due ultimately to the entrance of sin into the world, sometimes our cognitive faculties, in particular those having to do with God and other people, don't function the way they should.

Host  

Let's go on to the problem of evil.

Alvin Plantinga  

So much has been said about that. And there's so much to be said about it. It's very hard to say very much sensible in very brief compass. But I would say, the basic thing to think about here is the fact that, while it's true that we can't see what God's reasons for permitting evil are, or at least we can't see in many cases what the reasons are, it's hard to see why that's an argument for it's being unlikely that God exists or that God has reasons or that there is a being like God who has reasons. God's circumstances and God's own intrinsic being are so different from ours, he being omniscient and omnipotent and so on, that from the fact that we can't see why a certain thing happens, why he permits a certain thing to happen, not much follows. It certainly doesn't follow that he doesn't have a reason. It doesn't even follow, in my opinion, that it's likely that he doesn't have a reason. It's just not the case that if God actually did have a reason, you and I would be the first to know. We might not know at all.

Host  

How about the alleged contradictions between God's different characteristics?

Alvin Plantinga  

Well, what are we thinking about here?

Host  

How one can be omnipotent, omniscient, all-good. All of these different characteristics seem to have either a contradiction among each other or some unnatural relationship.

Alvin Plantinga  

I don't think there are any contradictions there. At least I haven't ever heard of any. People sometimes have spoken of the paradox of omnipotence. Suppose God is omnipotent. Well, then, there's supposed to be nothing he can't do. Well, can God create a stone so heavy that he can't lift it? If he can't do that, there's something he can't do. So he's not really omnipotent. But if he can do it, then once he did it, then he wouldn't be omnipotent, because there would be a stone he couldn't lift. It seems to me this is not a very impressive argument. I mean, it's not possible that there be a stone that an omnipotent being can't lift. So God can't create a stone so heavy that he can't lift it. But that's not a problem because to be omnipotent is not to be able to do just any old thing--create married bachelors, let's say, or create stones that an omnipotent being can't lift. It's to be able to do what's logically possible.

Another similar argument: God can't be both omniscient and omnipotent, because if he's omniscient, then he can't change his mind, and if he can't change his mind, he's not omnipotent. Again, I don't think this is much of an argument. I mean, maybe he can't change his mind, but it doesn't follow from that, that he's not omnipotent. Maybe it's not logically possible that his mind be changed. I mean, maybe it's not logically possible that he be wrong, and hence it's not logically possible that he change his mind in order to hold the true or right view.

Host  

But that technically would make him less omnipotent than if he could.

Alvin Plantinga  

Only in the sense that if he could, then he could do something that's logically impossible. But omnipotence doesn't cover that. To say he's omnipotent is not to say that he can do what's logically impossible, but only what's logically possible.

Host  

Other views that atheists would take would look at the physical universe and say, what does it look like? It's violent. It seems pointless, certainly physically. It's wasteful: all these comets and asteroids floating around. And there's a lack of efficiency. It's just a cauldron of chance.

Alvin Plantinga  

A lot here depends on what kind of being you think God is, or would be. It might be that you think God would have to be like a classical artist, very efficient, everything in its place and the like. Well, maybe, but why think that? Why think God would have to be like that? Efficiency is something for creatures who are limited. If you're limited, you have to be efficient so you can accomplish as much as possible with your limited properties and capabilities and resources. But if you're not limited in this way, if you're omnipotent, what's so great about efficiency?

Maybe God is more like extremely creative, romantic artists. He delights in having things of as many different kinds as possible. I mean, the main point here is that all of these arguments of that sort all presume that the arguer knows what God would like, or what God would want to be the case, what God would think, what God is aiming at in these conditions. And, as I was saying earlier with respect to evil, there's no reason to think that we know those things. I don't see that the fact that there's this sort of wild, prodigious variation of things across the universe--I can't see why that suggests for a moment that there isn't any such person as God.

Host  

It just seems like all those inefficiencies are not only inefficient, but they're pointless.

Alvin Plantinga  

We can't see the point, maybe. But again, that's exactly as with respect to God's reasons for permitting evil. From the fact that we can't see what the point of that would be, it doesn't follow for a minute that an omniscient being, an omnipotent being, wouldn't have a point in permitting it.

Host  

Other arguments bring anthropology or psychology into it, wish fulfillment or just the development of group coherence that explains the need for God.

Alvin Plantinga  

Wish fulfillment-- I think that's more serious in a way. I don't think it's a powerful argument against the existence of God, but it's got more depth to it than some of the other arguments you've just been mentioning. For example, Freud thought that belief in God was a matter of wish fulfillment. We find ourselves in this world where, as he says, nature demands from us suffering and pain and anxiety, and in the end, she demands our death. And if we looked this situation full in the face, we would fall into despair and into depression, apathy. We probably wouldn't be able to function at all. So we subconsciously--everything in Freud that's important goes on subconsciously--invent this heavenly Father, who we say is in the heavens and is really operating things, really causing things to happen the way they do, and he really does love us. So that's where belief in God comes from.

Well, this is interesting. If in fact there is such a person as God, then belief in God will, in fact, have warrant. That is, it will in fact come from a source with positive epistemic status, because he would create us in such a way that we would be able to know about him. He would want us to know about him. According to theism, he has created us in his image. Part of that involves knowing, and the most important thing to know about would be God himself. It could be that God uses wish fulfillment as his means of getting us to know about him. So it could be that Freud's right--this belief comes from wish fulfillment--but it need not be anything against it. It did not follow from that, that it's not reality-directed, so to speak. If you insist that it isn't reality directed, then you've got to have some independent argument against God's existence. If God does exist, our belief in God will undoubtedly, or at least very probably, be reality-directed. So if you say it isn't, then you've got to first give an argument for the proposition that there isn't any such person. It's not an independent argument at all.

Host  

So at the end of the day, if you sum all of these arguments against the existence of God together, do you ever have any doubts?

Alvin Plantinga  

I don't think any of these argument--except for evil, I think that's a real concern for believers in God--I don't think any of these other arguments have any force at all. I would say they have no force at all. At least they don't have any force to move me at all. With respect to evil, that's another matter. That can be deeply disturbing to believers in God such as myself. It can lead one to be suspicious of God, to wonder why he does all these things, and to distrust him, and to be angry with him, and to be inclined to shake your fist in God's face--except you know that's just a totally hopeless and stupid gesture. But it can give you real problems. I don't think, though, that, at least as far as I'm concerned, it inclines me to wonder whether there is such a person as God. It's more than it could make me suspicious, distrustful, not willing to commit myself to him and the like of that.