Probabilities, Atheism, Agnosticism, & Hope

What should we say of a person who assigns a low, but non-zero, probability for the existence of God, or a high, but non-one probability? Are they agnostics? Can one responsibly hope that God exists while believing the probability is very low?

If pressed we can assign probability figures to nearly anything. Sometimes we have a good basis for our assignment, and we would stick to the figure. For example, asked for the probability of an unremarkable coin’s landing heads if tossed well into the air to land on a flat surface after somersaulting a few times, I would respond “.5”, and I would give the same answer whenever asked the same or a similar question.

It is a very different case, however, if I am asked what the probability is that our solar system (and perhaps everything else) will go out of existence before tomorrow morning. Having spent much of my life around people who ask such questions seriously, if more for the sake of argument than any practical purpose, I would respond that the probability was very small. I would resist putting any figure on it, but if pushed at metaphorical gunpoint, I would give some number with several zeroes following the decimal point. If I were asked the same question a week later, still the same crowd you know, I would almost surely give a number with a few more zeroes or a few fewer, there still being many of them. My probability judgment would have low stability because I would have had such a poor basis for making it. I would have, I think, grounds for saying that the probability was low, but for deciding between the tenth and eleventh or the twentieth or twenty first zero, I would have no basis at all.  

I find myself in very much the same circumstance when it comes to the existence of God. I think that existence has a non-zero, but very low, probability. My judgment is stable that it is low, but it would not be at all stable as to the number of zeros to follow the decimal point before a significant digit pops up. I could easily imagine giving five or ten zeros more or fewer than I had the previous time asked, and that, of course, would be a very big difference. That is the reason that I say in Hope to God (https://scribl.com/books/E9HZ8/hope-to-god),  that I take the probability of God’s existence to be low but imponderable. I am without the resources responsibly to set the number of zeros.

 

I think that many reflective theists are in a symmetrical position. They would admit that there is some possibility, if a distant and theoretical one, that they are wrong about God’s existence. It is a possibility, however, consistent with God’s existence being very, very probable. The decimal point is followed by a string of nines, although just how long that string might be they would be reluctant to say. If forced they might propose several more nines on one occasion than on another.

How does this recognition that I have put in the mouths of most of my fellow atheists and of at least some theists sit with the traditional tripartite division: theist, agnostic, atheist?  Some agnostics insist that I should call myself an agnostic too unless the zeros after my decimal point run all the way out to infinity. This would turn nearly everyone into an agnostic. There would be almost no atheists, at least reflective atheists. 

There are, to be sure, some atheists who believe that they have a proof of mathematical solidity against the existence of God. Put aside that this will depend upon some controversial properties of God, for example omnipotence. Even if the atheists in question are unwilling to concede that their proof could possibly be fallacious, they will, I would hope, admit that there is more room for them to be wrong on that point than there is with respect to their confidence that five plus seven equals twelve. That should be enough for a significant figure before the millionth zero I would think.

Less noticed is that the agnostics of an imperialist temper will lay claim to many self-described theists as well. Those theists, the majority I suspect, whose belief is supported primarily by their religious experience broadly defined will have to admit that psychological phenomena and coincidences might conceivably have affected the conclusion that she was in contact with God or that his life could only be explained with reference to the influence of God.  

 I do not say that these theists will take this to be a real, practical possibility – one that might have an effect on the strength of their beliefs or the way they lead their lives. Everyone recognizes, however, that conclusions based on empirical evidence, no matter how strong, are always subject to revision on new evidence. For very good evidence this will only be a concern after a number of post-decimal 9s.  My confidence that I will not be struck by a meteor when I walk out of my house is only a matter of some number of 9s, but that doesn’t and shouldn’t keep me shut in.

 

Theistic partisans of demonstrative arguments, either from a priori premises (e.g. the ontological argument) or from uncontroversial empirical premises (e.g. the cosmological argument from the existence of something), may be less ready to grant that there is an end to the 9s. 

Some such theists may want to take into account that there are quite a number of apparently intelligent people who deny the cogency of the argument in question. You might think that would be enough to get them to accept that there is some small probability that it is they themselves who have made a mistake in reasoning. If, however, the demonstrative theist has read many attempts to show his argument fallacious and has found all of them to be flawed, will he not be justified in holding to 9s all the way out?  Well, not by this reasoning, as he will not have examined all of the refutations of his, or Anselm’s or Aquinas’s, proof – at least not all those of the 22^nd century.  

Our imagined proof-oriented theist will probably take a different tack. She will say that reason shows her that there is no conceptual space for a sound objection to her proof. It is completely tight, and so is impregnable to objections whether raised in the 11^th century or the 111^th. It may not be possible to get such a theist to grant that she should recognize something other than a 9 even by her millionth decimal place. We might, however, try to appeal to her humility and ask whether her thinking at some point might be a less than perfect embodiment of reason. How can she be sure on that point?

 

Having used these strong arm tactics to shanghai almost all atheists and nearly as many theists into the agnostic camp by dint of their lacking perfect theoretical certainty, what would the aggressive agnostic have accomplished?  The exercise of working through the steps may be worth something, but the conclusion that nearly everyone is an agnostic is utterly wrongheaded and will lead to nothing but confusion.

We do not treat in the same way the man who thinks the probability is .9999999 that he will be hit by a meteor if he walks out his door as we treat (or do not treat) the woman who thinks such mishap has a probability of .000000001 if she exits hers.  Theists and atheists can have small doubts and still be theists and atheists. 

Agnostics should remember that their home territory is in the immediate neighborhood of .5.  To pretend to the .85s and .15s is aggressive. To claim the .9999s and .00001s is silly. Someone who would bet into a million to one odds that the God of theism exists is a theist and one who would bet against the same odds that there is no such God is an atheist, even if neither of them would wager against googolplex odds. 

The agnostics should enlist those who are sincerely unsure what to believe about the existence of God. In a second wave they may add those with some slight inclination one way or the other but who believe that no decent justification can be given for the positive or the negative proposition on God’s existence. Agnostics should have the grace not to seek to co-opt the believers or non-believers who concede no more than the non-existence of a proof that would give complete and utterly unchallengeable certainty.

So believing that there is a very small, but imponderable, probability that God exists, I resist being cowed into calling myself an agnostic. I say that I believe God does not exist. This is not the only question that can be asked about my attitude towards God, however. Do I wish that God existed? Would I prefer God to exist? Do I hope that he doesn’t? 

I am going to make the wishing question easier by accepting the theist’s definition of God as omnibenevolent, or, in case there is a contradiction hidden in that completed superlative, I assume God to be as good as such a being could possibly be.  Why make this strong assumption? Because we are talking about wishing here, and that is the sort of God for whom we would wish.

 

Wishes, however, are awfully cheap. We really can wish for three impossible things before breakfast. Hope requires more. (Notice that you can wish that it had not stormed yesterday, but cannot hope that it had not stormed yesterday.)  I contend, and argue at length in Hope to God that even atheists of the highest intellectual integrity can, and should, hope that a good God exists. See post of May 5, 2015.

The argument of the book examines, as bearing upon hope, some traditional proofs and disproofs of God’s existence as well as empirical evidence for and against that existence. At a high level of abstraction the very imponderability of the God probability is an opening for hope. Even if all the evidence taken together makes the probability of God low, the instability of our judgment of that probability is an indication that the justification of disbelief only goes so far. Beyond that we are at best in guesswork. 

We run into this territory before hope is foreclosed. Hope does not require strong positive evidence; it can survive so long as there is not decisive negative evidence. Just how decisive the negative evidence need be depends upon the importance of the hope, the relative benefit of the hoped for state of affairs. The hope for good weather for tomorrow’s picnic, might get demoted to a wish by a sufficiently alarming, and sufficiently well evidenced, weather report. Hope for a good God with substantial influence over the future of the universe will only be defeated by much weightier evidence.