A redated post.
Book 3 Ch. 9 Mere Christianity
Charity-One of the theological virtues, faith, hope, and love
The seven cardinal virtues are wisdom, courage, temperance, and justice, to which the three theological virtues of faith, hope and love are added.
Today thought of as what used to be called “alms,” giving to the poor.
Earlier would have been regarded as having a wider meaning
Charity means love in the Christian sense
Love in the Christians sense does not mean an emotion
When we love ourselves it does not mean that we like ourselves
If we like other people it is easier to love them
While you should encourage affectionate feeling toward others, it is a mistake to try to manufacture feelings.
Do not waste time bothering whether you “love” your neighbor, act as if you did.
If you treat someone kindly you will find it easier to like him more, unless you’re doing it to show what a good chap you are.
If you treat people well you will like more and more of them as you go along.
If you treat people badly you will end up hating people more. The Germans mistreated the Jews because they hated them, and then hated them because they mistreated them.
The little decisions we make are of great importance. Good acts we perform result in greater charity, bad acts, giving into wrongful desires, result in accumulating harm.
Our feelings come and go, God’s love for us does not.
Book 3 ch. 10
Hope
Thinking about the next world is not a kind of escapism or wishful thinking, but is what a Christian is meant to do.
Your thoughts about the next world are not supposed to make you want to leave this world as it is.
(Lewis is here contradicting the standard Marxist analysis of religion. The Marxist idea was that the oppressors try to persuade the oppressed that there will be a better life in the next world so they won’t be so rebellious in this one.)
If you read history you will find that those who did the most for the present world were those who thought most about the next world.
The Apostles, the men who built the Middle Ages, the English Evangelicals who abolished the slave trade, left their mark on earth because their minds were occupied with heaven.
The Church has been ineffective in our time largely because we have ceased to think of the other world
Aim at heaven and you will get earth “thrown in: aim at earth and you will get neither.
Most of us find it hard to want heaven at all, except for wanting to meet loved ones who have passed away.
The real desire for heaven that we have we ourselves do not recognize.
Most people who look into their own hearts, would know that what we do want, and want acutely, cannot be found in this world.
There are all sorts of things in the world that offer to give it to you, but never quite keep their promise.
“The longings which arise in us when we first fall in love, or first think of some foreign country, or first take up some subject that excites us, are longings which no marriage, no travel, no learning, can really satisfy. I am not now speaking of what would be ordinarily called unsuccessful marriages, or holidays, or learned careers. I am speaking of the best possible ones. There was something we grasped at, in that first moment of longing, which just fades away in the reality. I think everyone knows what I mean. The wife may be a good wife, and the hotels and scenery may have been excellent, and chemistry may have been a very interesting job, but something has evaded us.”
The U2 song “Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” illustrates Lewis’s point perfectly (remember that Bono is a Lewis fan).
I have climbed highest mountain
I have run through the fields
Only to be with you
Only to be with you
I have run
I have crawled
I have scaled these city walls
These city walls
Only to be with you
But I still haven't found what I'm looking for
But I still haven't found what I'm looking for
I have kissed honey lips
Felt the healing in her fingertips
It burned like fire
This burning desire
I have spoke with the tongue of angels
I have held the hand of a devil
It was warm in the night
I was cold as a stone
But I still haven't found what I'm looking for
But I still haven't found what I'm looking for
I believe in the kingdom come
Then all the colors will bleed into one
Bleed into one
Well yes I'm still running
You broke the bonds and you
Loosed the chains
Carried the cross
Of my shame
Of my shame
You know I believed it
But I still haven't found what I'm looking for
But I still haven't found what I'm looking for
But I still haven't found what I'm looking for
But I still haven't found what I'm looking for...
There are three ways of dealing with this kind of desire.
1) The Fool’s Way. Keeps looking for something in this life that will offer ultimate satisfaction. More money, a new woman (or man), a more expensive holiday will do it. Bored discontented people do this. They go through the divorce courts time after time to find the perfect partner who will satisfy them fully.
2) The disillusioned sensible man. Realizes that whatever it is we are longing for can’t he had, and learns not to give in to “wishful thinking.” This makes him less of a nuisance to society, but is does make him a prig, but nevertheless he “rubs along quite comfortably.” This is the best approach to take if there really were no eternal life. But what if infinite happiness were really offered to us, but our “sensible” attitude had stifled our ability to enjoy it.
3) The Christian way. “Creatures are not born with desires unless the satisfaction for those desires exists. A baby feels hunger, there is such a thing as food. A duckling wants to swim, there is such a thing as water. Men feel sexual desire, well, there is such a thing as sex. I want to fly like a bird, well, there are such things as airplanes. Scratch that last one, Lewis doesn’t mention it. But, he says, if I have within myself a natural desire that cannot be satisfied in this world, so its satisfaction must be in store for me in the next world.
Why should we think that a natural desire within us would not exist unless it was satisfiable? Well, let us suppose that God and evolution are the main two explanations for why we have the desires that we have. We can understand easily why we have those desires if God has outfitted us with the desires that we have. These desires are God’s “calling card” whereby He draws us to Himself. But suppose evolution were the explanation, as it would have to be on naturalistic assumptions. It is possible, of course, that these desires should evolve, but should we expect this? Should we not expect that desires that don’t directly promote survival would be shoved out of the way by desires for food, clothing, and shelter, power, and strength, which do us so much more good from an immediate survival standpoint. If we didn’t know better, we should expect this meme to become extinct. On the face of things, we have something that obviously provides Bayesian confirmation for theism. We have something that is very likely on the theistic hypothesis, and perhaps compatible with atheism, but not very likely given atheism.
See also this old post on the argument from desire.
http://dangerousidea.blogspot.com/2006/01/argument-from-desire.html
Showing posts with label argument from desire. Show all posts
Showing posts with label argument from desire. Show all posts
Thursday, February 23, 2012
Friday, July 15, 2011
Aristotle and Aquinas on the true purpose of life
A redated post.
Aquinas takes Aristotle as far as he can go, but then argues that human life is only really fulfilled in the vision of God. This has relevance to the argument from desire in Lewis.
Some notes from Notre Dame.
Aquinas takes Aristotle as far as he can go, but then argues that human life is only really fulfilled in the vision of God. This has relevance to the argument from desire in Lewis.
Some notes from Notre Dame.
Saturday, February 20, 2010
The end of faith? Not any time soon
Polling data suggests that even religiously unaffiliated younger people have a profound spiritual hunger. I think this supports the claim that C. S. Lewis's Argument from Desire is correct in supposing that our very nature hungers for something that only God can satisfy, and also the claim that there is something deeply unnatural about atheism.
Tuesday, January 05, 2010
A response to Mike on the Argument from Desire
I am wondering what your response is to the Bayesian calculation that I gave would be.
H1) Humans are constructed by God is such a way that they can be fulfilled only in relationship to God.
H2) It is not the case that humans are constructed by God in such a way that they can be fulfilled only in relationship to God. This can be true if atheism is true, or if God doesn't care,
D= the existence of "heavenly" desires
Now, notice I don't need the claim that these desires couldn't arise through evolution. In fact, as I did the calcuations, it's 70% likely that these desire would arise through evolution, and the calculation still works!
Now doesn't it seem to you that D is more likely given H1 than H2?
H1) Humans are constructed by God is such a way that they can be fulfilled only in relationship to God.
H2) It is not the case that humans are constructed by God in such a way that they can be fulfilled only in relationship to God. This can be true if atheism is true, or if God doesn't care,
D= the existence of "heavenly" desires
Now, notice I don't need the claim that these desires couldn't arise through evolution. In fact, as I did the calcuations, it's 70% likely that these desire would arise through evolution, and the calculation still works!
Now doesn't it seem to you that D is more likely given H1 than H2?
Reply to Beversluis on the Argument from Desire
There are three central arguments for the existence of God that Beversluis considers: the argument from desire, the argument from morality, and the argument from reason. The argument from desire has been formulated by Peter Kreeft as follows:
1) Every natural, innate desire in us corresponds to some real object that can satisfy that desire.
2) But there exists in us a desire which nothing in time, nothing on earth, no creature can satisfy.
3) Therefore there must exist something more than time, earth and creatures, which can satisfy this desire.
4) This something is what people call "God" and "life with God forever."
Beversluis makes four points in response to this line of argument. First, are we really talking about a well-defined desire? When it comes to our ordinary desires, we know what they are desires for. According to an analysis of “X desires that Y” X must desire Y under a description. That is, X must have some description of Y in mind. So can it be described as a desire for God at all, indeed can it be described as a desire at all? Second, even if there is such a desire, do we have good reason to suppose, apart from the bald assertions of argument defenders, that this desire is widespread or even close to universal? Third, if there is such a desire, is the desire a natural desire? Beversluis says that the desire is ethnocentric, not shared cross-culturally, but rather confined to Western culture. Finally, he maintains that we have no reason to suppose, even if the desire were widespread or even universal, that it has an object that satisfies it.
In response, it seems to me that the defender of the argument from desire does have some things to say. First, the argument’s defender can begin by hypothesizing about what we should expect to find if humans were created for fellowship with God, but that fellowship was broken. If that were the case, then we might expect to find that we are often not satisfied even when our earthly desires are satisfied. We would expect not to feel at home in the material world in which we find ourselves. As Lewis once asked,
”If you are really a product of a material universe, how is it that you don’t feel at home there? Do fish complain of the sea for being wet? Or if they did, would that fact itself not strongly suggest that they had not always been, or would not always be, purely aquatic creatures?”
We could have the sorts of desires that only God could satisfy if God exists, and be designed to have those desires, even if we often fail to recognize our desires as desires that can be satisfied only by God. Is the desire universal? As Beversluis indicates, this would be very difficult to prove. Is it widespread? Well, it is certainly pervasive in literature. Corbin Scott Carnell says that it “may be said to represent just as much a basic theme in literature as love.” Is it ethnocentric? Hindus tell people who are concerned with sex, wealth, power, and even family relations that these are acceptable goals, but that they are not ultimately satisfying. They seem convinced that sooner or later people will turn from these pursuits to the pursuit of moksha, or release. Are their powers of psychological observation faulty?
In 1992 the Forbes magazine commemorated its seventy-fifth anniversary by inviting eleven distinguished writers and scholars to contribute articles addressing the question “Why are we so unhappy?” But why ask that question if ordinary human satisfactions did not leave us with a dissatisfaction, or if it were clear just what material satisfactions would make us all happy?
Yet I am inclined to suppose that Beversluis may be right in supposing that what Lewis is talking about when he talks about Heavenly Desire is not something that would emerge from an analysis of “X desires that Y.” That is, I don’t think, at least from the perspective, let’s say, the teenage atheist Lewis, it makes sense to say “C. S. Lewis desires fellowship with God.” But we can look at the young Lewis’s desires another way. If we think that there is a design plan for C. S. Lewis, it may be that he has been designed in such a way that his desires can only be satisfied through communion with God and that God has created him so that he can be satisfied only in this way. Someone, it seems to me, can have a desire for God from the standpoint of their design plan, even if they do not themselves recognize the desire as a desire for God.
Pascal once wrote:
All men seek happiness. There are no exceptions … Yet for very many years no one without faith has ever reached the goal at which everyone is continually aiming. All men complain: princes, subjects, nobles, commoners, old, young, strong, weak, learned, ignorant, healthy, sick, in every country, at every time, of all ages, and all conditions. A test which has gone on so long, without pause or change, really ought to convince us that we are incapable of attaining the good by ourselves. … This [craving, man] tries in vain to fill with everything around him, seeking in things that are not there the help he cannot find in those that are, though none can help, since the infinite abyss can be filled only with an infinite and immutable object; in other words by God himself.
Now in order to meet Beversluis’s challenge we have to have a fairly broad conception how this desire might be manifested in persons. Adam Barkman points out that Lewis uses several concepts to talk about the desire in question: Platonic Eros, Romanticism, the numinous, Sehnsucht, Joy, and hope. If we assume from the beginning that something like the Christian God exists, then we can explain a range of human phenomena in terms of the fact that we are made for fellowship with God, and are bound to have a sense that something is missing unless we are in fellowship with God.
But if we are talking about an argument for God, then, of course, we can’t assume that God exists. A naturalistic atheist would no doubt explain these facts of human experience in terms of Darwinian psychology. Is it possible that we have desires that could only be satisfied by God, but there is no God? Lewis once used the statement that “nature does nothing in vain” to support his claim that these desires must be satisfiable. But isn’t that, as Beversluis suggests, a question-begging assumption? Doesn’t it presume that nature is under the control of a conscious agent who makes sure nothing is done in vain? After all, nature has given us appendixes, which these days serve no purpose but to give doctors something to remove (and charge us for).
Yet even on Darwinian assumptions there is usually some reason why we have certain characteristics. Our heart is in the right place, because it wouldn’t help up to survive if it were in the wrong place. Human beings with desires that don’t seem in any way to promote survival, as these “heavenly” desires do, does seem a little surprising in a naturalistic universe. I have suggested, following Thomas V. Morris, that the argument be developed as a confirmation-theoretic argument. If you have two hypotheses, A, and B, and you have a phenomenon C which is experienced, A is confirmed relative to B if C is more likely to exist if A that it is to exist if B. If A is theism and B is atheism, it seems to me that these desires are very likely given theism, but not especially likely given atheism. They could arise in an atheist universe, but we wouldn’t expect it. So, on the face of things, it looks as if the argument from desire confirms theism.
There is a great deal more to be said on this issue, both pro and con, as the linked discussion indicates. But I think I have said enough to have shown that Beversluis’s criticisms do not constitute a final refutation of the Argument from Desire.
1) Every natural, innate desire in us corresponds to some real object that can satisfy that desire.
2) But there exists in us a desire which nothing in time, nothing on earth, no creature can satisfy.
3) Therefore there must exist something more than time, earth and creatures, which can satisfy this desire.
4) This something is what people call "God" and "life with God forever."
Beversluis makes four points in response to this line of argument. First, are we really talking about a well-defined desire? When it comes to our ordinary desires, we know what they are desires for. According to an analysis of “X desires that Y” X must desire Y under a description. That is, X must have some description of Y in mind. So can it be described as a desire for God at all, indeed can it be described as a desire at all? Second, even if there is such a desire, do we have good reason to suppose, apart from the bald assertions of argument defenders, that this desire is widespread or even close to universal? Third, if there is such a desire, is the desire a natural desire? Beversluis says that the desire is ethnocentric, not shared cross-culturally, but rather confined to Western culture. Finally, he maintains that we have no reason to suppose, even if the desire were widespread or even universal, that it has an object that satisfies it.
In response, it seems to me that the defender of the argument from desire does have some things to say. First, the argument’s defender can begin by hypothesizing about what we should expect to find if humans were created for fellowship with God, but that fellowship was broken. If that were the case, then we might expect to find that we are often not satisfied even when our earthly desires are satisfied. We would expect not to feel at home in the material world in which we find ourselves. As Lewis once asked,
”If you are really a product of a material universe, how is it that you don’t feel at home there? Do fish complain of the sea for being wet? Or if they did, would that fact itself not strongly suggest that they had not always been, or would not always be, purely aquatic creatures?”
We could have the sorts of desires that only God could satisfy if God exists, and be designed to have those desires, even if we often fail to recognize our desires as desires that can be satisfied only by God. Is the desire universal? As Beversluis indicates, this would be very difficult to prove. Is it widespread? Well, it is certainly pervasive in literature. Corbin Scott Carnell says that it “may be said to represent just as much a basic theme in literature as love.” Is it ethnocentric? Hindus tell people who are concerned with sex, wealth, power, and even family relations that these are acceptable goals, but that they are not ultimately satisfying. They seem convinced that sooner or later people will turn from these pursuits to the pursuit of moksha, or release. Are their powers of psychological observation faulty?
In 1992 the Forbes magazine commemorated its seventy-fifth anniversary by inviting eleven distinguished writers and scholars to contribute articles addressing the question “Why are we so unhappy?” But why ask that question if ordinary human satisfactions did not leave us with a dissatisfaction, or if it were clear just what material satisfactions would make us all happy?
Yet I am inclined to suppose that Beversluis may be right in supposing that what Lewis is talking about when he talks about Heavenly Desire is not something that would emerge from an analysis of “X desires that Y.” That is, I don’t think, at least from the perspective, let’s say, the teenage atheist Lewis, it makes sense to say “C. S. Lewis desires fellowship with God.” But we can look at the young Lewis’s desires another way. If we think that there is a design plan for C. S. Lewis, it may be that he has been designed in such a way that his desires can only be satisfied through communion with God and that God has created him so that he can be satisfied only in this way. Someone, it seems to me, can have a desire for God from the standpoint of their design plan, even if they do not themselves recognize the desire as a desire for God.
Pascal once wrote:
All men seek happiness. There are no exceptions … Yet for very many years no one without faith has ever reached the goal at which everyone is continually aiming. All men complain: princes, subjects, nobles, commoners, old, young, strong, weak, learned, ignorant, healthy, sick, in every country, at every time, of all ages, and all conditions. A test which has gone on so long, without pause or change, really ought to convince us that we are incapable of attaining the good by ourselves. … This [craving, man] tries in vain to fill with everything around him, seeking in things that are not there the help he cannot find in those that are, though none can help, since the infinite abyss can be filled only with an infinite and immutable object; in other words by God himself.
Now in order to meet Beversluis’s challenge we have to have a fairly broad conception how this desire might be manifested in persons. Adam Barkman points out that Lewis uses several concepts to talk about the desire in question: Platonic Eros, Romanticism, the numinous, Sehnsucht, Joy, and hope. If we assume from the beginning that something like the Christian God exists, then we can explain a range of human phenomena in terms of the fact that we are made for fellowship with God, and are bound to have a sense that something is missing unless we are in fellowship with God.
But if we are talking about an argument for God, then, of course, we can’t assume that God exists. A naturalistic atheist would no doubt explain these facts of human experience in terms of Darwinian psychology. Is it possible that we have desires that could only be satisfied by God, but there is no God? Lewis once used the statement that “nature does nothing in vain” to support his claim that these desires must be satisfiable. But isn’t that, as Beversluis suggests, a question-begging assumption? Doesn’t it presume that nature is under the control of a conscious agent who makes sure nothing is done in vain? After all, nature has given us appendixes, which these days serve no purpose but to give doctors something to remove (and charge us for).
Yet even on Darwinian assumptions there is usually some reason why we have certain characteristics. Our heart is in the right place, because it wouldn’t help up to survive if it were in the wrong place. Human beings with desires that don’t seem in any way to promote survival, as these “heavenly” desires do, does seem a little surprising in a naturalistic universe. I have suggested, following Thomas V. Morris, that the argument be developed as a confirmation-theoretic argument. If you have two hypotheses, A, and B, and you have a phenomenon C which is experienced, A is confirmed relative to B if C is more likely to exist if A that it is to exist if B. If A is theism and B is atheism, it seems to me that these desires are very likely given theism, but not especially likely given atheism. They could arise in an atheist universe, but we wouldn’t expect it. So, on the face of things, it looks as if the argument from desire confirms theism.
There is a great deal more to be said on this issue, both pro and con, as the linked discussion indicates. But I think I have said enough to have shown that Beversluis’s criticisms do not constitute a final refutation of the Argument from Desire.
Thursday, November 19, 2009
A critique of the Argument from Desire
Which includes an analysis of a Bayesian version of the argument that I tried to develop.
Monday, September 14, 2009
The Bayesian Argument from Desire
A redated post.
A good place to start in making sense of the argument from desire is Peter Kreeft’s formulation.
1) Every natural, innate desire in us corresponds to some real object that can satisfy that desire.
2) But there exists in us a desire which nothing in time, nothing on earth, no creature can satisfy.
3) Therefore there must exist something more than time, earth and creatures, which can satisfy this desire.
4) This something is what people call "God" and "life with God forever."
A good deal of poetry and literature seem to support the second premise. Human beings are deeply dissatisfied even when all of their earthly needs are satisfied. On the face of things, the most difficult premise to defend is 1). How could we, without first knowing that Joy can be satisfied?
Kreeft responds: This is very easy to refute. We can and do come to a knowledge of universal truths, like "all humans are mortal," not by sense experience alone (for we can never sense all humans) but through abstracting the common universal essence or nature of humanity from the few specimens we do experience by our senses. We know that all humans are mortal because humanity, as such, involves mortality, it is the nature of a human being to be mortal; mortality follows necessarily from its having an animal body. We can understand that. We have the power of understanding, or intellectual intuition, or insight, in addition to the mental powers of sensation and calculation, which are the only two the nominalist and empiricist give us. (We share sensation with animals and calculation with computers; where is the distinctively human way of knowing for the empiricist and nominalist?)
But doesn’t this just mean “We just know?” Why shouldn’t natural unsatisfiable desires arise? This difficulty is especially acute when you look at the naturalistic world-view to which theism is opposed. The naturalistic atheist is prepared to accept a substantial amount of absurdity in human existence, at least if it is measured by the standards of expectations conditioned by theism. Consider the following comments by Keith Parsons here.
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/keith_parsons/misconceptions.html#absurd
Bertrand Russell said that a soul’s habitation must be built on a firm foundation of unyielding despair. However, Parsons, in his debate with William Lane Craig, maintained that the despair is a despair from a theistically conditioned set of expectations concerning life’s meaningfulness.
The question I am asking is this: Is there any reason why a nontheist should be surprised that human beings have desires that are doomed to permanent frustration?
John Beversluis, in his critique of Lewis’s apologetics, suggests that in preface to The Pilgrim’s Regress Lewis offers a justification for 1 in the principle that nature does nothing in vain, but then offers no good reason why we should believe that nature does nothing in vain. In fact, it might be argued that the very principle itself presupposes a teleological understanding of the universe that presupposes theism, thus reducing the argument from desire to begging the question.
But I wonder if some version of the principle that nature does nothing in vain might be accepted by both parties in the debate. Beversluis says that the fact that we are hungry is no evidence that food exists, the actual discovery of food is the only thing that would suffice. But if we were to find creatures with, say, sexual desires, but no way of having sex, and which reproduced asexually, wouldn’t that conflict with out expectations? Wouldn’t biologists he shocked to find such a creature? Wouldn’t the existence of sexual desires be evidence that sex was at least possible or surely of some biological use, even if we did not see any actual mates for these creatures? To argue thus we would not need creationism; even evolutionary biologists would have to agree.
In an earlier post I wrote:
Why should we think that a natural desire within us would not exist unless it was satisfiable? Well, let us suppose that God and evolution are the main two explanations for why we have the desires that we have. We can understand easily why we have those desires if God has outfitted us with the desires that we have. These desires are God’s “calling card” whereby He draws us to Himself. But suppose evolution were the explanation, as it would have to be on naturalistic assumptions. It is possible, of course, that these desires should evolve, but should we expect this? Should we not expect that desires that don’t directly promote survival would be shoved out of the way by desires for food, clothing, and shelter, power, and strength, which do us so much more good from an immediate survival standpoint. If we didn’t know better, we should expect this meme to become extinct. On the face of things, we have something that obviously provides Bayesian confirmation for theism. We have something that is very likely on the theistic hypothesis, and perhaps compatible with atheism, but not very likely given atheism.
At least that’s what I’d like to think. But I do know that evolution is not perfectly efficient. If nature does nothing in vain, how do we account for the human appendix, an organ which now has no use other than to get infected and make money for doctors? In one sense, it is something nature did in vain, in that it doesn’t do anything for us now. On the other hand, I am told that it was used by our ancestors to digest raw meat, back before we learned how to cook. Should we expect human creatures in an atheistic world to desire an object that nothing on earth can satisfy?
This is Bayes’ theorem. H is the hypothesis, K is background knowledge and e is the evidence.
p(h/e & k) = p(h/k) x p(e/h & k)/p(e/k)
Suppose we haven’t considered the evidence concerning the human desire for the infinite, and so we consider this data as e. In using Bayes’ theorem, we begin by considering the probability of the hypothesis, in this case theism, on background knowledge alone. To see if the Bayesian argument from desire has any weight at all, let’s assume that we have a person who thinks that theism and atheism are equally likely. Bayesian theorists have tried in vain to find a method of determining objective antecedent probabilities. So let’s assume that p (h/k) = .5. The next question is how probability is the desire evidence to arise if theism is true. It seems that theism gives us a reason to suppose that these desires would be likely to arise in a theistic universe, especially if that universe were a Christian universe. On Christian theism God’s intention in creating humans is to fit them for eternity in God’s presence. As such, it stands to reason that we should find ourselves dissatisfied with worldly satisfactions. Let’s put the likelihood that we should long for the infinite given theism at .9. Now, what is the likelihood that infinite longings should arise on background knowledge alone. This is the hard part. If we don’t know whether theism is true or not, how likely are we to have desires like Lewis is talking about? I wouldn’t say that such desires couldn’t possibly arise in an atheistic world. Even though such desires seem to have limited evolutionary use, they could well be byproducts of features of human existence that do. But how likely would they arise in such a world? So long as the answer is “less likely than in a theistic world,” the presence of these desires confirms theism. Let’s say that, if we don’t know whether theism is true or not, the likelihood that these desires should arise is .7. Plugging these values into Bayes’ theorem, we go from .5 likelihood that theism is true to a .643 likelihood that theism is true. Thus, if these figures are correct, the argument from desire confirms theism.
I can see Bart Ehrman throwing a fit already. And I will admit that I don’t have supreme confidence in this argument. But I can’t help thinking that there must be something to the argument from desire, especially if the argument is presented in Bayesian terms.
A good place to start in making sense of the argument from desire is Peter Kreeft’s formulation.
1) Every natural, innate desire in us corresponds to some real object that can satisfy that desire.
2) But there exists in us a desire which nothing in time, nothing on earth, no creature can satisfy.
3) Therefore there must exist something more than time, earth and creatures, which can satisfy this desire.
4) This something is what people call "God" and "life with God forever."
A good deal of poetry and literature seem to support the second premise. Human beings are deeply dissatisfied even when all of their earthly needs are satisfied. On the face of things, the most difficult premise to defend is 1). How could we, without first knowing that Joy can be satisfied?
Kreeft responds: This is very easy to refute. We can and do come to a knowledge of universal truths, like "all humans are mortal," not by sense experience alone (for we can never sense all humans) but through abstracting the common universal essence or nature of humanity from the few specimens we do experience by our senses. We know that all humans are mortal because humanity, as such, involves mortality, it is the nature of a human being to be mortal; mortality follows necessarily from its having an animal body. We can understand that. We have the power of understanding, or intellectual intuition, or insight, in addition to the mental powers of sensation and calculation, which are the only two the nominalist and empiricist give us. (We share sensation with animals and calculation with computers; where is the distinctively human way of knowing for the empiricist and nominalist?)
But doesn’t this just mean “We just know?” Why shouldn’t natural unsatisfiable desires arise? This difficulty is especially acute when you look at the naturalistic world-view to which theism is opposed. The naturalistic atheist is prepared to accept a substantial amount of absurdity in human existence, at least if it is measured by the standards of expectations conditioned by theism. Consider the following comments by Keith Parsons here.
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/keith_parsons/misconceptions.html#absurd
Bertrand Russell said that a soul’s habitation must be built on a firm foundation of unyielding despair. However, Parsons, in his debate with William Lane Craig, maintained that the despair is a despair from a theistically conditioned set of expectations concerning life’s meaningfulness.
The question I am asking is this: Is there any reason why a nontheist should be surprised that human beings have desires that are doomed to permanent frustration?
John Beversluis, in his critique of Lewis’s apologetics, suggests that in preface to The Pilgrim’s Regress Lewis offers a justification for 1 in the principle that nature does nothing in vain, but then offers no good reason why we should believe that nature does nothing in vain. In fact, it might be argued that the very principle itself presupposes a teleological understanding of the universe that presupposes theism, thus reducing the argument from desire to begging the question.
But I wonder if some version of the principle that nature does nothing in vain might be accepted by both parties in the debate. Beversluis says that the fact that we are hungry is no evidence that food exists, the actual discovery of food is the only thing that would suffice. But if we were to find creatures with, say, sexual desires, but no way of having sex, and which reproduced asexually, wouldn’t that conflict with out expectations? Wouldn’t biologists he shocked to find such a creature? Wouldn’t the existence of sexual desires be evidence that sex was at least possible or surely of some biological use, even if we did not see any actual mates for these creatures? To argue thus we would not need creationism; even evolutionary biologists would have to agree.
In an earlier post I wrote:
Why should we think that a natural desire within us would not exist unless it was satisfiable? Well, let us suppose that God and evolution are the main two explanations for why we have the desires that we have. We can understand easily why we have those desires if God has outfitted us with the desires that we have. These desires are God’s “calling card” whereby He draws us to Himself. But suppose evolution were the explanation, as it would have to be on naturalistic assumptions. It is possible, of course, that these desires should evolve, but should we expect this? Should we not expect that desires that don’t directly promote survival would be shoved out of the way by desires for food, clothing, and shelter, power, and strength, which do us so much more good from an immediate survival standpoint. If we didn’t know better, we should expect this meme to become extinct. On the face of things, we have something that obviously provides Bayesian confirmation for theism. We have something that is very likely on the theistic hypothesis, and perhaps compatible with atheism, but not very likely given atheism.
At least that’s what I’d like to think. But I do know that evolution is not perfectly efficient. If nature does nothing in vain, how do we account for the human appendix, an organ which now has no use other than to get infected and make money for doctors? In one sense, it is something nature did in vain, in that it doesn’t do anything for us now. On the other hand, I am told that it was used by our ancestors to digest raw meat, back before we learned how to cook. Should we expect human creatures in an atheistic world to desire an object that nothing on earth can satisfy?
This is Bayes’ theorem. H is the hypothesis, K is background knowledge and e is the evidence.
p(h/e & k) = p(h/k) x p(e/h & k)/p(e/k)
Suppose we haven’t considered the evidence concerning the human desire for the infinite, and so we consider this data as e. In using Bayes’ theorem, we begin by considering the probability of the hypothesis, in this case theism, on background knowledge alone. To see if the Bayesian argument from desire has any weight at all, let’s assume that we have a person who thinks that theism and atheism are equally likely. Bayesian theorists have tried in vain to find a method of determining objective antecedent probabilities. So let’s assume that p (h/k) = .5. The next question is how probability is the desire evidence to arise if theism is true. It seems that theism gives us a reason to suppose that these desires would be likely to arise in a theistic universe, especially if that universe were a Christian universe. On Christian theism God’s intention in creating humans is to fit them for eternity in God’s presence. As such, it stands to reason that we should find ourselves dissatisfied with worldly satisfactions. Let’s put the likelihood that we should long for the infinite given theism at .9. Now, what is the likelihood that infinite longings should arise on background knowledge alone. This is the hard part. If we don’t know whether theism is true or not, how likely are we to have desires like Lewis is talking about? I wouldn’t say that such desires couldn’t possibly arise in an atheistic world. Even though such desires seem to have limited evolutionary use, they could well be byproducts of features of human existence that do. But how likely would they arise in such a world? So long as the answer is “less likely than in a theistic world,” the presence of these desires confirms theism. Let’s say that, if we don’t know whether theism is true or not, the likelihood that these desires should arise is .7. Plugging these values into Bayes’ theorem, we go from .5 likelihood that theism is true to a .643 likelihood that theism is true. Thus, if these figures are correct, the argument from desire confirms theism.
I can see Bart Ehrman throwing a fit already. And I will admit that I don’t have supreme confidence in this argument. But I can’t help thinking that there must be something to the argument from desire, especially if the argument is presented in Bayesian terms.
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