Theism and Natural Theology

Why theism predicts that there are many successful arguments for the existence of God

Natural theology is the area of philosophy concerned with developing and evaluating arguments for the existence of God (i.e., an unlimited mind) that are based purely on reason and observation, as opposed to special revelation. It’s an area of inquiry with origins in the ancient world. There has been something of a revival of natural theology in recent years within certain philosophical circles. While it’s true that most contemporary professional philosophers are atheists or agnostics, it’s also true that some of the most rigorous arguments for God’s existence have been developed in recent decades, thanks to the work of professional scholars who have benefited from the work of past philosophers and the logical and linguistic rigor imposed by the constraints of analytic philosophy.

Sometimes, religious apologists are mocked for being far too eager to employ arguments from natural theology. From the perspective of a skeptic, it can easily appear that such people are so committed to defending theism that they’ll uncritically latch onto anything resembling an argument for it that they can find. Sometimes, no doubt, this is indeed the case (if you’re reading this, you can likely think of some examples). Popular apologists do tend to promote less than rigorous versions of serious arguments for God in a way that suggests a lack of familiarity with, or concern for, objections that thoughtful critics have raised. I think that clearly does their cause more harm than good in the long-run.

However, critics of these unscrupulous apologists often, I think, fail to appreciate something important, which is that theism in fact predicts the existence of many strong arguments for God’s existence. Here, I’ll explain why, considering both why God would desire for his existence to be known at all and why he would desire for it to be knowable by way of an array of arguments. Then, I’ll respond to the primary objections that I can foresee a serious skeptic raising.

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1. Why God would desire for his existence to be known

If God exists, then God would desire rational creatures, like ourselves, to know of his existence; this means, in turn, that God would be intent on structuring the world so as to make his existence knowable — at least by those with the necessary capacities, who have sufficient knowledge, and are in the correct circumstances. God would desire this for two primary reasons: (a) because God would be concerned that his rational creatures should at least have the ability know important truths, and God’s existence (if God exists) is an important truth, and (b) because God would desire a meaningful relationship with his rational creatures, and knowledge of his existence is a prerequisite for this.

If God exists, the fact of his existence is perhaps the most significant of all facts, insofar as it has major implications for our understanding of the cosmos, our place within it, and how we should live our lives. It entails, for example, that reality is fundamentally personal and loving, rather than cold and indifferent; that we are for a reason, rather than by accident; that there is a perfect being who loves us and desires our ultimate good; and that there is very likely an afterlife, such that our acts in this life have consequences that extend far beyond it. God would care that rational creatures have access to the most significant of all truths because he would desire what is good for them, and it’s good for rational creatures know important truths. We are, of our nature, properly oriented towards the truth in general, and important truths in particular.

God would desire a meaningful relationship with his rational creatures because, given his perfection, he would love them. Loving a being entails willing that being’s good and desiring a some kind of connection with that being; given theism, knowing of God’s existence conduces strongly to our good (given that God is our creator and loves us) — and, given God’s unlimited perfection, he would desire the most perfect sort of connection with us. Being in a meaningful relationship with God requires awareness of his existence, given that two parties cannot meaningfully relate to one another if one is unaware of the other’s existence.

Likely there are other reasons why God would desire us to know of him, but the above two more than suffice to constitute strong reasons for God to make his existence knowable.

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2. Why God’s existence predicts many successful theistic arguments

God could make his existence known in all sorts of ways. So, why would he care about seeing to it that strong arguments can be made for his existence? Isn’t this overly “rationalistic” of me? Am I not just being one of those silly syllogism-obsessed philosophers?

The first thing to say here is that I’m very open to the idea that many people have non-inferential knowledge of God, experiencing the divine reality in an immediate way. Many people certainly do say things that suggesting that they think they know of God by such means — and I think it makes sense that God would give some people this sort of knowledge (given that many people may be unable, for various reasons, to acquire inferential knowledge of God).

However, given that we’re rational creatures, it’s good for us to reason our way to our beliefs — and to mount rational defenses of even those of our beliefs which are initially justified on non-inferential grounds. These considerations would give God reason to set up a world in which there are many sound inferential pathways to theism.

Why would he desire many pathways, rather than just one, or a few? Because, plausibly, (a) variety has intrinsic value, and (b) given the diversity that exists among human beings with respect to our capacities and personal evidence, different people can be expected to respond different to different arguments (e.g., the ontological argument might be very compelling to some, while completely unpersuasive to others — but some of those others might be quite persuaded by, say, the fine-tuning argument).

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3. Two Objections Considered

I can imagine two general lines of objection that skeptics might pursue: one grounded in skepticism about our ability to form justified beliefs about God’s mind and another grounded in the fact that many people are unpersuaded by, and unable to even understand, arguments for God’s existence.

The Divine Psychologizing Objection

I can imagine that some skeptics will insist that my defense of the thesis that theism predicts that natural theology is a fruitful research program relies too heavily on speculation about God’s mind — specifically, about what would be the concerns of a perfect mind. A perfect mind, such skeptics might say, is so unlike the highly imperfect finite minds of ordinary experience that we should be extremely modest about making substantive claims regarding what such a mind would care about. Perhaps such a mind wouldn’t care rational agents being theists or reasoning well; perhaps such a mind would not in fact desire to be in any kind of relationship with his creatures.

But this sort of skepticism is clearly excessive. Of course a perfect mind would care about good things, and clearly being rational and forming meaningful relationships are good things. There are respects in which God is inevitable mysterious and unknowable to us, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t make some confident claims about God, given our knowledge of the nature of certain of his attributes, such as goodness and lovingness.

Anyone who insists that we’re completely in the dark with respect to God’s mind is either (a) committed to a more general sort of severe skepticism that there is, plausibly, good reason to reject or else (b) being arbitrarily and unjustifiably skeptical about God, specifically.

The Objection From the Weakness of Natural Theology

I can imagine other critics objecting (recycling the requisite Bertrand Russell quote) that if God wanted us to be able to establish sound arguments for his existence, then he could have given us better evidence to work with. Such critics will insist that the extant arguments for God are underwhelming, at best, and certainly fail to persuade many thoughtful, intelligent people when encountered. So, in effect, the objection would be that if my thesis were true, we should expect the existence of much better arguments for God’s existence than we in fact find.

This objection falls flat for three reasons. First, the suggestion that there are not many persuasive arguments for God’s existence is not datum but, rather, a highly tendentious assessment — and one that many (including, perhaps of those who understand the relevant arguments the best) would fervently reject.

Second, that there are many successful arguments for God does not entail that most people are in a position to understand or assess those arguments, which often require a significant amount of technical knowledge in order to assess in their most rigorous form.

Third, the thesis that God would want it to be possible to establish his existence by way of argument does not entail that he would want it to be trivially easy to do so. Clearly, if God exists then he has reasons for making his existence less obvious than it could be; whatever those reasons are would also explain why he does not desire the present existence of more compelling or more widely understood arguments for his existence.

And finally, I think it is plausible that many or most theists — including a good share of those who hold natural theology in very low regard (and there are more than a few of those) — themselves in fact believe in God as a result of a simple kind inference to the best explanation, where God is identified as the best explanation of the reality they encounter.

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Conclusion

In conclusion, I think we can say with confidence that if God exists, then natural theology should be a rich research program. We should find that there is a multitude of strong and potentially compelling arguments for the existence of God. So, theists with either a dim of natural theology as a whole, or of most of the arguments of natural theology, should regard it as quite likely that they’re simply missing something. Additionally, insofar as it seems — as I believe is the case — that there are indeed many successful lines of arguments for God, that is itself further evidence for theism. In this way, the fruitfulness of natural theology is itself evidence for theism!