Wednesday afternoon.

Dr. Tostig has been invited to address the     Julien University Secular Humanist Society. A dozen students, including Will and Te’a, have gathered in the campus pub to listen.  

JUNE: I want to thank you for inviting me to speak tonight. I’ve been asked to share why I don’t believe in god, and I will do so; however, when I consider the question, there are at least three different things that come to my mind. I’ll address all three, and I’m sure that will give us plenty to talk about during the time that’s been allotted for questions and discussion. 

The first question is, “Do I believe that there is a being that exists, which meets the description of a god?” Well, it depends on how we define or describe god. If the term ‘god,’ means a conscious, rational agent with the power of volition who is omnipotent, omniscient, and perfectly good, then the answer is “no,” I do not believe such a being exists. And this is because I think there is a good argument and supporting evidence for concluding that the very idea of such a being existing is not just unlikely but impossible. Now, every argument rests on assumptions, which we call premises, so I want to be clear about what my premises are. The argument is known as the problem of evil, and it goes like this:

Premise 1: An all-powerful god would have the ability to create a world in which there was no unnecessary, gratuitous suffering.

Premise 2: A perfectly good, all-loving, omnibenevolent god would want creation to not contain gratuitous suffering. 

Premise 3: An omniscient god would know whether there was gratuitous suffering in the world and how to avoid it. 

Premise 4: There nevertheless is gratuitous suffering in the universe.¹  

This presents a logical contradiction, so the conclusion is that one of the assumptions about god must be false. Either god isn’t omnipotent, all-good, or omniscient. In other words, the god of hegemonic theism is conceptually confused and logically impossible, given what we know about reality. 

June pauses for a moment, letting the argument sink in, before continuing. 

A second question that arises is whether there exists a being that is sort of like the god of hegemonic theism, but which lacks some of its qualities. This being would not fall victim to the logical problem of evil since it would not have the conjunction of qualities that makes that conception of god logically impossible. My answer to this second question  is: I don’t know. Once god is defined in a way that is not logically inconsistent, god is thereby a logical possibility. And so although I might not think it is likely, I ultimately cannot know for sure. 

So, my considered perspective concerning these first two questions is that I am an atheist with respect to the god of hegemonic theism, but I am an agnostic with respect to at least some other conceptions of a god.

I now want to turn to the third and final question that comes to my mind when I’m asked whether I am a believer or an unbeliever. I’ll put it this way: Do I engage with or identify with the Abrahamic religions? My answer to this question is quite a bit longer and more complex than my previous two responses.

To answer this question I need to begin by noting that I do not think that the god of hegemonic theism is the of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, despite the fact that many Christians defend that conception. What I mean is that the character of “God,” as developed in the Jewish and Christian scriptures, doesn’t appear to be “perfect” in the sense that philosophers use that term. Yahweh is powerful, but I don’t think scripture supports the claim that Yahweh is omnipotent.² More importantly, the character of Yahweh is not all-good. He says as much in the Book of Job. 

But here’s the real rub: I don’t think that we should understand scripture as giving us a standard informative account of god. To the contrary, the stories that constitute scripture serve a lot of different purposes, many of which have to do with shoring up the identity of the Chosen People and the Christian community, and to that end, the authors use the character of god to weave fascinating tales. These tales, again, aren’t strictly informative but, instead, they are meant to be formative and transformative.³ To be sure, the idea is that one transforms oneself by properly understanding god, but there isn’t a single, standalone story that gives us an unambiguous account. It’s the gist—the “feels”—that matter. Or, to put it more seriously, the themes are what matters.

Now, the thing about themes is that one can pick and choose. Or to be more charitable, we identify and recognize themes that resonate with us or which address us given whatever anxieties or questions we have. When a jingoistic asshole reads scripture, he’ll probably be able to identify themes that resonate with his perspective and which placate him. The same goes for anyone else—a feminist, a Marxist, a conservative, a liberal, et cetera. 

In light of that, we need to recognize that scripture is ultimately a collection of texts, and here I use that term in a precise sense, as meaning a collection of symbols that has a surplus of meanings. There isn’t a univocal meaning—a single voice—within scripture. Meanings are negotiated, and the surest sign of this is the fact that people claim to have “the” correct interpretation. No one claims they have the correct interpretation of a stop sign or a yield sign precisely because those signs have a univocal meaning. It would be highly peculiar for someone to say, “I understand the meaning of a stop sign.” We would wonder why they were speaking that way! 

A few of the students chuckle. 

Obviously, the peculiarity wouldn’t be a function of them being wrong. Presumably, they do understand the meaning. The peculiarity arises because stop signs are the sorts of things about which their meaning is uncontested. In ordinary circumstances, it isn’t a genuine and open question what they mean. 

When it comes to contested texts, meaning is an open question. And so, intellectually lazy people just assert their interpretation is correct. The less lazy and more ambitious give arguments in defense of their interpretations.

Let’s dwell for a moment on an important question that this raises. If meaning from scripture is negotiated and there isn’t a single voice of the text, then how do we set out trying to negotiate meaning? I think the answer is very obvious, and it is the answer that I would provide in regards to any text: we approach it with our own commitments, values, assumptions, and concerns—and then we let ourselves be provoked by what we read. Such provocations usually amount to the text opening up a way in which we can pivot. A text rarely, if ever, totally undermines our prejudices and assumptions, but it does allow us to turn, so to speak. It’s like we have one foot planted in our original position but the voices within the text draw us to them and we move our other foot in their direction. Over time, of course, this can result in ending up in a very different position than we started. We say that scripture is “truthful” when it helps us overcome tensions, contradictions, worries, anxieties, and so forth, or when it moves us. And since the authorial voices in a text are not one’s own—we relate to them as external voices—when we find them affecting us, it feels as if someone is teaching us something. It is very reasonable, then, that people will think of the text as a source of authority. After all, it has told them something new and valuable. It has provided them with their footing.

At bottom, though, the authoritativeness of scripture and the truths people find in it, are relative. They are relative to the individual, to their social milieu, and—more importantly—to the human condition, or at least our condition as we consciously experience it. All this is to say, we find meanings in scriptures and traditions because of who we are and what we are like. 

Now, here’s why this is relevant to the third question. Recall, the question was whether I engage with or identify with the Abrahamic religions. My answer is “yes,” though I affirm that in the same way I would affirm the question of whether I engage and identify with other traditions, like Buddhism, the Hindu religions, the Enlightenment, Romanticism, Marxism, and so on. Every tradition is a testament to ways in which people have negotiated the difficulties of human existence, and they all, in various different ways, surprise me, jostle me, and open up pivot points. 

I don’t mean to suggest that all traditions are ultimately the same. They aren’t, and in some sense, they often contradict each other. And that is precisely why I am, so to speak, poly-amorous with respect to them. I love them all, in their own unique way, and I don’t try to reduce them into one master narrative or to elevate one to a hegemonic status. 

I think I will end there for now since I’m sure, or at least hope, you have plenty of questions. Thank you.

The students clap politely. 

TYLER: Thank you, Dr. Tostig, for providing such an intellectually provocative speech. We will now open the floor to questions, comments, and discussions. 

Will’s hand shoots up and Tyler gestures, indicating he can go first. 

WILL: You said you’re agnostic when it comes to the existence of the Abrahamic God. Does Pascal’s wager have any influence on you? Even if we grant that we can’t intellectually know for certain whether God does or does not exist, Pascal argued that we have pragmatic reasons to believe in God.

JUNE: That’s a good question, thank you. For those of you who don’t know, Pascal’s wager is an argument to the effect that it is pragmatically rational to believe in god and cultivate oneself into a Christian disciple.⁴ The basic argument is this: 

There are two choices I face, subjectively. I can either believe and act as if god exists or I can believe and act as if god doesn’t exist. There are also two metaphysical possibilities: either god does, in fact, exist or god does not, in fact, exist. In light of these two different axis, there are four possible states of affairs.

First, I believe in god and god does not exist. In that case, my believing would have, at best, only finite rewards and finite losses.

Second, I don’t believe in god and god does not exist. Here, again, the rewards and losses would only be finite.

Third, I could believe in god and god does exist. In that case, if the tradition is  correct, it seems that I stand to potentially gain an infinite reward.

And finally, the fourth option is that I don’t believe in god but god does, in fact, exist. Here, we aren’t really sure what the consequences would be. It could be that I receive infinite loss or pain, or it could be that the mercy of god nevertheless provides infinite bliss.

Now, from the perspective of self-interested practical reasoning, the mere possibility of infinite reward swamps all the other options. So, Pascal concludes I should cultivated belief in god and learn to act as if god exists.

This is a powerful argument that many people to this day find persuasive. The problem is that it is too simplistic. Pascal assumes there are only the two subjective and the two objective options. In fact, there are innumerable more along each dimension. He doesn’t take into account all of the different possible gods that could exist and the correlative subjective states. To name just a few, what if the god that exists isn’t the Abrahamic god, but rather Odin? Or Marduk? Or what if no tradition has actually hit on the true nature and desires of god, and it turns out that god is a bit like a scientist who only rewards people who believe based on intellectual evidence, not pragmatic self-interest?⁵

When these considerations are plugged into the decision matrix, the argument fails. It can’t tell me which god offers the possibility of infinite reward and it can’t determine whether that infinite reward hinges on willful self-interested belief or its opposite: namely, trying hard to believe only what is objectively and intellectually warranted. So, in other words, we are left without guidance and must simply choose, and our choice is unconstrained, even in pragmatic terms.

WILL: But isn’t it more likely that God is like the tradition teaches than not? So, even if we grant that there are other logical possibilities, one of those possibilities is more likely than the others.

JUNE: I suspect that the only reason you think that one is more likely than the others is because you have already convinced yourself of the legitimacy of that particular conception. Or, to be more precise, you were probably convinced of this by other people: your family and the wider community in which you were raised. For example, you probably assume Yahweh or Elohim is identical to God the Father, the first person of the Trinity. But, of course, our Jewish  and Muslim friends don’t think of god as triune. Even if we just focus on god as conceived within the dominant forms of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, I don’t see how we could objectively determining the probability of one conception being more likely to obtain than another. 

JOE: Isn’t it relevant that all religious traditions have basically hit on conceptions of god that are very similar? Doesn’t that suggest that it is more likely than not that god is at least roughly like what they agree on?

JUNE: No. I understand the psychological appeal of that way of thinking, but that is a fallacious form of reasoning. It’s what we call an appeal to the masses. The fact that most people think something or agree on some condition doesn’t entail that what they think is true. 

JOE: But why, then, do they agree? Isn’t it likely that they agree because there is probably some truth to the matter?

JUNE: That’s a good question, and it is related to what I said in response to that third point I addressed. I think we construct conceptions of gods that work for us. And since all human beings share a condition and perhaps even what we call a “nature” or “essence,” we can expect that the gods various peoples have constructed are going to be very similar. Think of it in social functionalist and evolutionary terms: a people would not survive if its conception of god led them to act in ways that spelled their demise. We would expect only those conceptions of god to survive that helped a people reproduce itself as a society. 

TE’A: That’s a really interesting point that I hadn’t considered before. I take it that you mean religions are like other social institutions: if they work, or at least don’t actively work against social stability, they will survive, but if they are anti-social or impede social stability, they will be selected against in favor of more adaptive institutions.

JUNE: Exactly. And we could add that a plausible explanation for why conceptions of god tend to converge is a function of what we are looking for in a god. We look for gods that affirm how we understand ourselves. If some oddball offered up a conception of god that was deeply at odds with what we knew to be good and beautiful about ourselves, I suspect he’d be ostracized. Any conception of god that is going to take hold in a society has to comport with that society’s understanding of themselves. 

WILL: Couldn’t that just be one of the ways God let’s himself be known? Perhaps not fully, but at least in part? 

JUNE: I’m not sure what you mean.

WILL: I mean, couldn’t the Creator set up the world so that people would come to a partial awareness and understanding of him by reflecting on their own nature? Couldn’t part of his divine plan be to have human civilizations progress through stages of religious consciousness?

JUNE: Ah, I see. Yes. If you’re looking for a way to vindicate your priors, that is an ad hoc adjustment that would fit the bill. 

Will, not recognizing the dig, leans back and looks pleased. 

TYLER: I’d like to return to the problem of evil. That’s an argument we often make, and religious people tend to respond by saying that evil has to exist in order to accommodate free will. (He consults his notes.) I believe that means that they reject the fourth premise, as you presented it. How would you respond?

JUNE: That’s right, very good. Theists who want to offer a theodicy—that is, a response to the problem of evil—usually have two routes open to them. As you said, Tyler, they can deny that there is gratuitous suffering in the world, or they can try to explain why the “omni-god” can allow gratuitous suffering without this leading to a contradiction. You are asking about the easier of the two routes: simply rejecting the claim that some suffering is gratuitous. 

I say it is the “easier” route because it is the laziest one. It is also the most abhorrent response, to my mind. 

Basically, to deny that any suffering is gratuitous is to say that all suffering is necessary. After all, when we say that some suffering is gratuitous, we mean that it serves no purpose, has no good consequences, and is ultimately meaningless. 

Now, there is a stark disjunctive claim—an either/or proposition—that is unavoidable: either all suffering is necessary or at least some suffering is gratuitous. We are justified in rejecting the first option if we think there is at least one instance in which suffering wasn’t necessary, by which I mean it served no purpose.

She pulls out a small notebook from her jacket pocket and flips through it. 

Many religious people think suffering is good, at least in some sense. Or they think it serves some divine purpose. An evangelical minister by the name of J. Hampton Keathley has made the case in this way:⁶ 

Now, I don’t think all suffering serves such purposes. However, I am not going to give you a specific example because I know from experience people could just say, “Well, you used that instance of suffering for educative purposes, so clearly it wasn’t gratuitous. I’ve caught on to that move! So, instead, I want to direct your attention to an event that we know caused innumerable and yet unaccounted suffering. I could choose just about any natural disaster, but I’ll focus on the 2023 forest fires in Canada.⁷ During that year, over 42,000 acres of forest were consumed by over 6,000 individual fires. Or, if you want an even starker example, consider the Great Fire of 1910 which burned over three million acres in Idaho and Montana in just two days.⁸ In both cases, literally millions of animals suffered and died. We do not know the individual details, so we can’t point to any one of them and say, “It suffered to ‘get our attention’, or ‘to build trust in the Almighty’.” The sufferings of these creatures, big and small, was absolutely devoid of meaning and it served no purpose. And here we’ve only considered two cases of natural disasters. Throughout history, animals have suffered for no purpose. And they did so long before humans were around to “learn” anything from it. 

So, although theists may want to say that all suffering is ultimately necessary, I just don’t buy it. Some suffering is inescapably part of our reality, and it makes no difference to us because we don’t even know about it when it happens. It is therefore gratuitous. 

I said trying to deny the reality of this fact was lazy and abhorrent. It is lazy because saying “all suffering is part of god’s plan” is just a bullshit platitude. We shouldn’t pretend to know what is and what is not part of god’s plan. Here I will once again refer you to the Book of Job. Justifying all pain and suffering by appeal to god’s will is just a way of avoiding the uncomfortable facts and the intellectual problems they raise. It is abhorrent because it evidences a failure to care. When any sentient animal—human or non-human—suffers, a compassionate person cares. Suffering isn’t good, and unnecessary suffering is particularly noxious. I don’t know what to say of someone that is unmoved by this fact other than that they are morally abhorrent. 

Will raises his hand and June nods, inviting him to speak. 

WILL: I would suggest that although it’s true that an individual animal’s suffering during a natural disaster isn’t, on its own, meaningful, God was justified in making his creatures feel pain precisely so they could try to avoid suffering. If creatures weren’t able to feel pain when they were licked by flames, they wouldn’t avoid fires. So, ultimately, that suffering serves a purpose.

JUNE: Right, that’s the next step in the dialectic. I want to respond by posing a question. Could an omnipotent god make it the case that whenever an animal’s suffering has no hope of leading them to safety or saving their life, they could simply become unconscious? In other words, could an omnipotent god build in to all creatures some kind of anesthesia mechanism? 

WILL: I suppose so.

JUNE: Do we have any reason to suppose that god has done so?

WILL: It seems possible.

JUNE: Yes, it is possible—meaning, it is conceivable—but do we have any reason to suppose that such a thing is actualized?

WILL: I don’t know. What I meant is that for all I know, god has done that. How are we supposed to know whether creatures that are being burned alive are actually experiencing pain? Maybe God does, in fact, shut down their consciousness in such moments.

JUNE: Again, I grant that it is logically possible, but I do not think we have reasons to suppose that is actually the case. Animals in house fires, for example, can be seen trying to escape before succumbing to the smoke and flames. They are clearly conscious at those times, so they are suffering. In the absence of a reason for supposing things are different in the cases of natural disasters, we should assume that animals caught in conflagrations are consciously aware of their pain and they try, but fail, to escape. An all-knowing god would be aware of this fact and an all-powerful god would be able to set up the world differently or even miraculously intervene. 

Tyler stands and apologetically interrupts—

TYLER: I’m afraid we are out of time, but I want to thank everyone for coming. Let’s give Dr. Tostig another round of applause to thank her for her time.  

The students clap and June smiles in gratitude. Some students leave, but many stick around and continue to converse.

As Dr. Tostig leaves to walk back to her office, Te’a catches up to her. 

JUNE: Hi, Te’a. I’m glad you came. Thanks for your comment. 

TE’A: Oh, well, thank you! It was really nice hearing your perspective. My friend Mick and I have been discussing religion a bit, and she will be very interested to hear all about the talk. I wish she could’ve joined me. 

JUNE: I’m always glad to hear that students are talking about big questions. 

TE’A: Mick was telling me that I should read a book called The Essence of Christianity. Do you have other recommendations?

JUNE: Well, that is certainly a good one! I would be really interested in hearing what you make of it. As for other suggestions—I think my two favorite books, at least when it comes to religion, are David Hume’s Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion and Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov. After reading Feuerbach, they shouldn’t be too bad! 

TE’A: I’ve read Hume’s work in epistemology, but I’ve never read those Dialogues. And I have to admit that I haven’t even started Feuerbach’s book. Is it difficult?

JUNE: It is, but it is worth grappling with. Don’t shy away from difficult texts. 

TE’A: Don’t worry; I don’t. 

They arrive at June’s office. 

JUNE: Here, come on in for a minute. I can lend you my copies of those books.

She pulls the first book off a shelf and hands it to Te’a. 

Hume’s book is nice and short. The problem of evil, which I discussed, is addressed in the tenth dialogue. You can read it in less than an hour. 

She steps back and looks at the shelves, most of which are double-stacked. After a moment she finds what she’s looking for. 

And here’s the Dostoevsky. 

She hands Te’a a thick volume. 

TE’A: Oh my, that’s huge! It might take me awhile. 

June laughs.

JUNE: No rush. There’s a story embedded within it that is really fascinating, which I think everyone should read. 

TE’A: Oh?

JUNE: It’s titled “The Grand Inquisitor.” Here, let me show you. 

She flips through the book. 

Actually, all of book five is good, but chapters four and five are particularly worth reading. The fourth is titled “Rebellion,” and the fifth is the “Grand Inquisitor.”

TE’A: Thanks! Do you think they’d make sense on their own?

JUNE: Oh, for sure. They are often excerpted, especially “The Grand Inquisitor.” All you really need to know is that the brothers have different perspectives on religion. Rebellion is most directly relevant to what I was speaking about. Ivan talks extensively about the suffering of children and how it bears on how he thinks about god and creation. “The Grand Inquisitor” is a bit odd since it is a story within the broader story. The whole chapter is devoted to Ivan recounting a story that he developed. He’s telling it to Alyosha, who is a novice monk. Ivan is pretty cagey about the ultimate meaning of the story, but the reason I like it is that it raises the difficult question of whether there might be a distinction between the will of Jesus and the will of the Church. It also presents a stark existential question about freedom. 

TE’A: Cool. I look forward to reading them. Thanks again!

JUNE: No problem at all. Let me know what you think. 

June settles into her office and Te’a heads back to her dorm. As she walks, she flips through Hume’s dialogues, landing on Dialogue X.

Notes

1.  The classical formulation of the argument comes from Epicurus (341–270 BCE), and it was famously popularized by David Hume. See selection from Dialogues on Natural Religion, included in the Companion Readings. 

2.  Oord examines three words that are often translated to express God’s omnipotence: ‘shaddai’, ‘sabaoth’, and ‘pantokrator’. Each, he argues, is not properly translated to mean omnipotent. Thomas Jay Oord, The Death of Omnipotence and Birth of Amipotence (SacraSage Press, 2023),  Chapter 1. 

3.  For a philosophical meditation on the differences between informative and transformative discourse, as well as how transformative discourse is inappropriately treated as informative, see Bruno Latour, Rejoicing: Or the Torments of Religious Speech, trans., Rose (Polity, 2013). See also Latour, “‘Thou Shall Not Freeze-Frame’ or How Not to Misunderstand the Science and Religion Debate,” in Science, Religion, and the Human Experience, ed., Proctor (Oxford University Press, 2005), 27–48.

4.  Blaise Pascal, Pensées (1670), trans., Trotter (Dent, 1910).

5.  For a summary account of various ways to criticize the decision matrix, see Alan Hájek, “Pascal’s Wager,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2022 Edition), ed., Zalta and Nodelman (eds.), plato.stanford.edu/archives/ win2022/entries/pascal-wager/.

6.  J. Hampton Keathley III, “Why Christians Suffer.” bible.org/article/why-christians-suffer.

7.  Government of Canada, National Wildland Fire Situation Report, “Weekly Graphs as of November 2, 2023.” bit.ly/canadian-fires.

8.  Jim Petersen, “The 1910 Fire,” Evergreen Magazine (Winter Edition, 1994-1995).