One of the mainstays of atheist rhetoric is the Argument from Evil (AfE), that there exist evils in the world, of such a quality or quantity, that it is irrational to believe in a good Creator.
This post is not directly about the Argument from Evil. Instead, I want to address the Argument from Confusion (AfC). This is the argument that no good God—especially one that wants everybody to believe in some specific religion such as Christianity—would allow the extent of human religious confusion that exists in the world. (Including a plurality of contradictory religions, but also atheism/agnosticism.) True, Christianity is the largest religion in the world, with over 2 billion people claiming to be Christians of some sort or another, but this is still a minority. Why doesn't God reveal himself more clearly? The AfC claims that this is by itself good reason not to believe in God, or at least a specific religion such as Christianity, etc.
The AfC must of course be distinguished from the general AfE. The world includes lots of unpleasant stuff (like cancer etc.), and it might be possible to view religious confusion as just a subset of such evil. It isn't totally obvious—except on some highly specific religious views about the necessary conditions for salvation—that religious confusion is the worst evil in the world. So we could treat the AfC as just a special case of the AfE. Here, I want to instead treat it as a separate argument, and see how it fares when detached from the rest of the AfE. If you think it is overwhelmingly likely that if God exists there would be no evils whatsoever, then you probably don't need an AfC. The AfE suffices. But let's suppose that God might have some reason to permit some evil, and allow human life to be difficult in various ways. Then, let's ask whether the AfC specifically, changes the situation.
It cannot be denied that the AfC has emotional appeal. What I want to argue in this post is that the argument actually has very little rational force. Specifically, it depends crucially on equivocating between different scenarios. Once we specify the scenario more clearly, we find that there is not much reasonable work for the AfC to do.
Specifically, I want to break the AfC into subcases based on the following:
- Is the argument supposed to be about (a) myself and my own confusion? [By the first person pronouns here, I mean whichever individual is considering the AfC as a possible objection to Christianity.] Or, is the argument supposed to be about (b) the confusion of other people besides me?
- Apart from the AfC (let's abbreviate this important concept as AFTAFC) would such persons be (i) rationally justified in believing in Christianity, or (ii) not rationally justified?
To be a little more technical about 2, we could adopt a Bayesian framework where people have credences in various propositions such as Christianity (which are subjective probabilities between 0 and 1, based on the evidence available to that person, and their prior sensibilities).
By contrast, let us consider belief in a religion to be a binary (yes/no) decision. After all, from the point of view of making a decision, I need to either live my life as if God exists (going to Church, praying, asking for forgiveness of sins, taking sacraments etc.) or else not bother to do this stuff. And the simplest way that credences could be related to beliefs, is that that there exists some threshold probability t, with 0 < t < 1, such that if my credence p satisfies p > t, then rationally I should believe, whereas if p < t, then rationally I should not believe. I won't discuss in this post where the threshold t should be set, and why; all that matters is that it exists somewhere.
[We could consider more complicated decision theories, e.g. a range of probability for which either stance is permissible, or belief for-purpose-X but withholding judgment for-purpose-Y. I think that making things more complicated is unlikely to change the final conclusion much, so let's keep things simple.]
(a)(i) Let us start by considering the case (a)(i), when the argument is about me and my own confusion, but I nevertheless think I am AFTAFC-justified in believing in Christianity. By ATAFC-justified, I mean that I would be rationally required to believe when taking into account all arguments except the AfC.
(This of course, includes on the one hand the positive arguments for Christianity, on the other hand, all other arguments against Christianity, including that portion of the AfE that doesn't intersect with the AfC).
Now, what should I conclude in this case? Unless perhaps I am very close to the threshold credence t—it seems to me that the AfC shouldn't make much difference at all in this case. After all, the premise, that God has left me in confusion, isn't really true if I admit that I otherwise have enough evidence to rationally compel me to believe in Christianity. In that case, the premise, that I am religiously confused, isn't sufficiently true to make a convincing argument.
Surely, the AfC isn't allowed to just exist as a circular self-fulfilling prophecy! As in: "The AfC is sound because the AfC is sound because the AfC is sound..." It can only be valid if it is based, non-circularly, on some other reason to disbelieve, other than the AfC itself. But by stipulation, this is not true in case (a)(i).
The only way I can see that the AfC would still work in this scenario, is if I believe something much stronger about God's actions, then simply that God should give me enough evidence to rationally warrant belief. I would need to believe that God is obligated to make me even more certain than this. In other words, I would need to believe something like the following objection:
Obj 1. God is not allowed to place me in a situation where I have to exercise the virtue of faith.
That is of trusting in God, even in the face of whatever psychological uncertainty remains. And in this case, everyone should concede that such faith would be a virtue, since we are stipulating that AFTAFC there is sufficient evidence to require me to rationally believe in God. (In particular, not believing would be morally wrong, again AFTAFC itself.) But this assumption is quite implausible. Especially if we are conditionally considering a religion like Christianity, where faith is one of the most important theological virtues and something that brings us closer to God.
It follows that we can drop the assumption AFTAFC. In this scenario, faith is simply rationally justified, and the premise of the AfC is simply invalid.
(a)(ii) Now let us consider the scenario where I think I am not AFTAFC-justified in believing in Christianity. In this case, the premise of the AfC now appears to be correct, but now it doesn't seem to be doing any useful work. That is, by stipulation I already have a good reason not to believe. Adding the AfC doesn't change this, so it doesn't change my decision to disbelieve.
You might think, well it at least gives me an additional reason to disbelieve, so as a result I can be more fully confident in my disbelief. But a moment's reflection shows that this isn't really true in any sense that matters for decision making. Suppose that on some grounds g, I disbelieve in Christianity, and then I try to take comfort in that fact that even if g ends up being incorrect, the AfC still works. Well, but if I ever lose my confidence in g, that again will retrospectively invalidate the AfC, putting me back in situation (a)(i)! After all, I would be discovering that I was wrong, and that I do in fact have sufficient rational evidence to believe.
OK, but could I make an argument about how God should have revealed himself to me at an earlier time in my life, while I still thought that the reasons g were good? But that won't fly, unless I believe that:
Obj 2. God is not allowed to wait for the most opportune time to reveal himself to a person.
But this objection also seems highly implausible. Human life is a chronological thing, in which we develop our capacities progressively over time, starting off as a baby who can hardly do anything. And anyone who eventually comes into a relationship with God, has by definition resolved their confusion sufficiently to obtain this relationship. See the discussion here on Just Thomism (especially the 1st comment by St. Brandon).
Furthermore, if salvation implies that we get to live forever with God in the next life, then we get this benefit even if we have a deathbed conversion. Furthermore, the period of time when we were living apart from God, might well have served some sort of educational or other purpose—and by stipulation, it has culminated in coming to see that (AFTAFC) it is rational to believe in God. So in this case again, the AfC should have very little force.
Because of this chronological consideration, I cannot even take the AfC as an additional reason to think it is unlikely that my grounds g for disbelieving in God will later be removed! Because, if they are removed, that would retrospectively invalidate the AfC, making the scenario no less plausible than it would have been otherwise.
Now when we turn to case (b), a new problem presents itself. Specifically, it is very hard for us to know the spiritual state of another human being. For me to look at another person and judge them by saying Deep down, this person secretly knows that God exists but he is intellectually dishonest, and thus suppresses the truth in his heart vs. This other person is totally honest and not resistant to God's grace, is something very difficult for human beings to know (except perhaps in a few, very rare cases, where the behavior of the other person makes it totally obvious). And Christianity itself, at the very least strongly discourages us from judging other people in this way. As if we ourselves could look into their hearts the way that God can.
Furthermore, Christianity also says that we are all sinners, making it clear that no human but Jesus was completely non-resistant to God's grace. So, the category of human adults who are totally non-resistant to God's grace is presumably the empty set.
Nevertheless, we can still abstractly consider the 2 possible cases:
(b)(i) The argument involves other people, and they are rationally obliged to believe in God—they just irrationally (and perhaps culpably) don't do so. This case is thus resolved the same way as (a)(i). By definition these people aren't sufficiently confused here, they are making a willful decision not to believe in God even though they have enough evidence. Only if you buy something like Obj 1, is the AfC convincing in this case.
To be sure, this isn't the end of the story for people in this class. "All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" (Rom 3:23), and resisting grace is indeed one of the ways that this sin manifests, both in the lives of non-Christians and Christians. But, "Christ came into the world to save sinners" (1 Tim 1:15). Most Christians have stories about how once they were once running away from God, but God came and saved them anyway.
So, I am not saying that all such individuals will be condemned in the end. My point is only that, by the definition of class (b)(i), their present disbelief is their own fault and choice. So it has an adequate moral explanation, in terms of human freedom.
It is certainly true that God could have appeared with such dramatic and undeniable miracles so as to force everyone to believe. But apparently he doesn't (yet) want to do that. St. Pascal wrote somewhere that God,
...wishing to appear openly to those who seek him with all their heart, and hidden from those who shun him with all their heart, he has qualified our knowledge of him by giving signs which can be seen by those who seek him and not by those who do not. There is enough light for those who desire only to see, and enough darkness for those of a contrary disposition.
Pascal thought that God hid himself in order to condemn those who were unworthy of his mercy. But in my view, on the contrary, God hiding himself from those who don't want to believe in him is itself an act of mercy and compassion.
If God revealed his holiness to us with total clarity, our only choices would be to accept him as he is, or rebel like Satan and become utterly wicked. But instead God gives us enough space that we don't have to believe, in this life. (The same applies, of course, to the various ways in which Christians are still faithless—the point here isn't just about atheists.) This allows even atheists to still seek out a good life in earthly terms, one that still allows for the pursuit of ideals like truth and justice and benevolence. Perhaps eventually, some day, they will come to realize how these qualities point to God. But in the meantime, they don't have to think of themselves as rebels defying God. Instead they can live what they think of as a normal human life, in friendship with other people, trying to follow whatever they perceive as good.
So, if God gives to people who really don't want to believe in him, sufficient space to live their lives without such belief, I don't feel that such people are in a position to complain. They are getting what they wanted! And—conditional on them not wanting to believe—it is quite plausibly spiritually better for them than the alternative (being forced to believe by overwhelming evidence) would be, as I don't think this is the sort of belief that God is looking for.
(b)(ii) The argument involves other people, and they do not in fact have sufficient evidence to rationally believe in God.
Except in some cases involving young children, and/or people-groups who have never heard the gospel, it is difficult to know for sure who belongs to this category. But I don't doubt that there are some people in it.
A person might then without logical absurdity say, well I myself have AFTAFC-justified belief, but I see that other people do not have enough evidence to believe. And all things considered, I think that tells against Christianity enough that—by taking into consideration the AfC—in the end, I don't believe. Thus, here at last we have a case where the AfC could logically have some force.
But I don't think it is a lot of force. The reason is simple: how are we in a position know that God will not form a saving relationship with such persons at some time in the future? If we have good reason to think benevolent God would always do so, why then that is a good argument that he will. We simply aren't in a position to know that he won't. If the main obstruction to a person's relationship with God, is simply a lack of evidence, then we have every reason to believe that (when Christ eventually makes his existence obvious through his Second Coming in glory) this lack will be remedied.
So again, this is only a problem if we think that 1) there are intellectually honest people who sincerely would want to seek God, but 2) they do not have enough evidence to rationally believe, and yet 3) God will never reach out to them in the future. I can see how we might come to believe (1) or even (2) about someone specific, but how could we ever come to be confident in (3), which involves a blanket statement about all future time?
We might be in such a position to know (3) with high probability, if we additionally subscribe to the following doctrines about salvation, commonly held by many Evangelicals:
Doct I. It is impossible for any adult to be saved, without an explicit and conscious faith in Christ, of a sort that (apart from rare cases, like e.g. last-minute deathbed conversions) is usually clearly observable from the outside.
Doct II. This faith must come before death; there is no possible chance to be saved after death. All those who die without such faith necessarily go to Hell.
I do, in fact, concede that doctrines (I) and (II) would together make the AfC very concerning, as it does seem to be an empirical fact that the majority of people on Earth are not saved if (I) and (II) are the criteria. But I don't believe that the Bible in fact teaches these doctrines, when it is properly understood.
In particular, (I) implies that we are often in a position to negatively judge the spiritual state of (those who are not in any obvious way) Christians. But the Bible specifically says we aren't in a good position to judge other people's hearts: "Who are you to judge another man's servant? By his own master he will stand or fall." (Romans 14:4). In some cases I think we can be reasonably confident in a positive view of another Christian's salvation, but in this life I don't think we can ever look at a non-Christian and say, God has given up on this person.
Secondly, there is surprisingly little support for (II) in the Bible, and some passages (such as 1 Peter 3:18-4:6) appear to say the opposite.
My view is that, while salvation does come through faith in Christ, we should reject (I) and (II) in the specific form that they are stated above. Then it seems like the AfC is only a major concern if we have something like the following objection:
Obj 3. God has to reveal himself to everyone (of a given generation, I suppose) at the same time. He isn't allowed to reveal himself to humans in some particular order, so that some persons have sufficient reason to believe before other persons do.
But I also don't see a good reason to subscribe to this. Why should it be true? Revealing himself to some people before others, would be fully compatible even with a Universalist scenario where all are saved! (Indeed, the very notion of "generations" already implies that some people come to God before others are even born.)
It will be noted that all three of Obj 1-3 involve thinking we know better than God how to construct a world, and that he is obligated to conform to our expectations. But a God who has to conform to our expectations isn't a God at all. In fact, the notion of a crucified Messiah, the central paradox of Christianity, would not even be possible in a world with no religious confusion! If there were no such thing religious confusion, there could be no Christianity!
Furthermore, by revealing himself first to the prophets and apostles, who in turn evangelize others, God makes Christians into a community (the Church). This is a great good, that would not so obviously occur if we all received our understanding from God in a direct way from heaven, that was totally disconnected with the witness of others.
Speaking of witnessing, if it is our Christian responsibility to share the good news, and make it credible by our lives, then it seems inevitable that our (many) failures to do so will result there being some people who don't yet have good reasons to believe. You could imagine God making a world where our actions couldn't affect anyone else spiritually, but I don't think such a world would be better than the one we live in. (Indeed it would be less of a "world", in the sense of a system of interacting persons and things...)
Again, this is not the end of the story. But it is a reason for things not to be 100% clear right here and now.
To summarize: If there is enough evidence for me to rationally believe, the Argument from Confusion is unsound and thus should be rejected. But if there isn't enough evidence for me to rationally believe, the argument is redundant with my other reasons to disbelieve, and thus serves no purpose.
Or suppose I think there is enough evidence for me, but not enough evidence for other people. In this case, the Argument from Confusion only speaks against Christianity if I put myself in a role of a judge and say that I know who is intellectually honest, and I also put myself in the role of a prophet and say that I know that God will nevertheless reject such people. But in fact, I am not in a good position to know that God does indeed ultimately reject such people! Instead, I should pay attention to the insight that I do have, and follow it as best I can. Without getting sidetracked by saying to God: "What about this other person?" Why should God reveal to me his plans about somebody else? What matters is if I myself have enough light to come to Christ.
Therefore, in none of these configurations is the AfC particularly convincing. And of course, if the subcases (a) and (b) are unconvincing when considered separately, they will also be unconvincing when combined together into a single argument.
