[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

Atheism Undaunted 137
However, determinism has nothing to do with it. That s why I did
not mention determinism when I gave my argument. I didn t need
that assumption. My argument here would not be affected in the
least if quantum mechanics convinced me that some events occur
without any deterministic cause. Indeed, indeterministic quantum
mechanics helps my case by providing a model of how a Big Bang
could arise out of quantum soup. I discussed that issue in Chapter
2. The point here is just that, even if determinism were false, that
would not begin to show that Craig s God could cause anything.
In order to explain how his God could cause changes, Craig ad-
mits that he must depend on a  wholly different account of causa-
tion, which he and others call  agent causation. Craig is right that
 Sinnott-Armstrong has said nothing to show that . . . agent causa-
tion does not exist. (112) Not yet, but now I ll say something: Craig
never explains agent causation in his essay. This lack of explanation
makes it hard to criticize his view, but Craig s idea seems to be that
the cause of an act is the agent as a whole rather than any particu-
lar change in the agent.
If that s what agent causation is, why should we admit it? Craig
gives only this reason for accepting agent causation:  I obviously
cause certain events to occur when they do rather than earlier or
later. (111)  Obviously ! Well, this is not obvious at all once one
thinks about it a bit more deeply. Sure, in common language we say
things like,  Minnesota Fats sank the eight ball. But that is just
shorthand. We all know that it was not Minnesota Fats as a whole
that sank the eight ball. (He didn t literally put everything he had
into the shot. His whole body wasn t up on the table knocking the
ball into the pocket.) That common knowledge makes it unneces-
sary to add obvious qualifications. However, when we are being more
careful and explicit, we say that what sank the eight ball was Min-
nesota Fats s last shot (that is, his action of moving his arms so as to
move the cue stick and knock the cue ball in a certain direction). In
this and all other cases, it is not the agent as a whole who causes
changes. The cause is, instead, a particular act by that agent at a par-
ticular time and place. The only reason why we do not mention this
act in common language is that it is so obvious. The reason why it
is obvious is that Minnesota Fats was in the pool hall all evening,
but he did not sink the eight ball until midnight. His mere existence
138 God?
or presence cannot cause the event at midnight if he was there all
night. It has to be some particular change at or before midnight that
causes the event at midnight. So, if agent causation is causation by
the agent as a whole, it makes no sense.4
Maybe Craig assumes a different notion of agent causation.
Maybe this other notion makes sense. It is hard to tell until Craig
explains what he means. Until then, agent causation remains mys-
terious and dubious at best. So the problem of action still gives an-
other reason to believe that a traditional God does not exist.
The Unsolved Problem of Evil
My final argument, which Craig aptly labels  atheism s killer argu-
ment (112), raises the classic problem of evil. When an argument
is a  killer, opponents often simplify it in order to hide its force. So
Craig reformulates my argument with two simple premises:  If God
exists, gratuitous suffering does not exist. Gratuitous suffering exists.
Therefore, God does not exist. (114) This common reformulation
obscures several important points. First, my argument is not about
suffering alone. Many forms of evil or harm do not involve suffer-
ing. Death and disability are evil or harmful to some extent, even
when they are painless. Second, the term  gratuitous is misleading,
because the problem of evil arises even if evil is never totally gra-
tuitous in the sense that there is no compensation at all for the evil.
Atheists need to claim only that there is no adequate compensation
for some cases of evil or harm. In response, theists cannot simply
point to some small compensation. They need to argue that the com-
pensation is adequate, which means that it must be not only impor-
tant enough but also fair. Third, it is not enough that an evil is  ul-
timately to our or others advantage, (114) as Craig says. To be
justified, the evil must be necessary for that good. Otherwise, God
could bring about the good without the evil. Finally, the argument
targets only a traditional conception of God as all-powerful. Because
God is supposed to be all-powerful, theists cannot argue simply that
an evil brings about good in the world as we know it. Theists need
to deny that there is any logically (or maybe metaphysically) possi-
ble world in which the good occurs without the evil or something
else at least as bad. In response, atheists need to claim only that it
is logically possible to gain the good without the evil, so atheists can
Atheism Undaunted 139
refer to worlds that are very different, even in their basic laws of na-
ture, from the world we live in. After all, an all-powerful God could
have brought about those other possible worlds instead of ours. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]