Recently, I caught up with Cameron Bertuzzi, a professional photographer and the founder of Capturing Christianity, a ministry aimed at exposing the intellectual side of Christian belief. Cameron is a writer and speaker who uses his ministry to host discussions and interviews on Christian apologetics. Click here for the interview.
Matthew Nelson
Welcome! I like to ponder what St. John Paul II called "the fundamental questions which pervade human life." Sometimes I write my thoughts down. This blog is where you'll find them.
Thank you so much for this post Dr. Nelson. We really do appreciate your interview with Cameron on dialoguing with skeptics. It’s awesome to see Word on Fire engage in high-level philosophy of religion and we hope to see more interaction with these topics in the future. That said, we just want to briefly clarify a few things.
Regarding Dr. Graham Oppy’s views as they were described in the article, Cameron made the following comment:
“Dr. Oppy responds to arguments like this by claiming that the universe has these foundational features because it has to. These features are, in some sense, necessary.”
I think this is a misleading interpretation of Dr. Oppy’s perspective. First, when we step back and look at the epistemology of the philosophy of religion, we will find that Dr. Oppy is notable for his general skepticism of arguments about the existence of God. He has outlined a set of robust standards for what it takes for an argument to succeed and thus this leads him to reject a lot of the standard arguments about the existence of God.
Despite this, Dr. Oppy still believes we can adjudicate disputes on the existence of God, namely by taking an approach that looks at theory choice and world-view comparison. Stated briefly, Dr. Oppy believes that we should take the best model of Naturalism/Atheism and compare it with the best model of Theism and then judge the success of each model by theoretical virtues such as predictive/explanatory power, simplicity, ontological cost, economy, scope, etc.
When we take this approach, Dr. Oppy believes that Naturalism explains all the data that Theism purports to explain and is a much simpler model, thus accounting for more theoretical virtues. It’s also worth clarifying that Dr. Oppy does not take into account facts about evil, hiddenness, or atheistic arguments in his analysis. He specifically looks at the case for what Theism seeks to explain: contingency, morality, consciousness, fine-tuning, etc, and shows that Naturalism can explain all this just as well or better, specifically showing that Theism can be beaten on its grounds. I think Dr. Oppy’s position here can easily be summed up by Laplace’s maxim “I had no need of that hypothesis”.
With this context in mind, we can see why Cameron’s original remarks were misleading. In response to arguments for God’s existence that point out some features of our universe that God is a good explanation for, Dr. Oppy is not claiming that these specific features of the universe are necessary on Naturalism, but that regardless of their modal status, they can be explained just as well on Naturalism compared to Theism. For example, let’s take Bishop Baron’s favorite argument, the Argument from Contingency.
Dr. Kenny Pearce outlines why this argument fails according to Oppy’s account:
“Causal versions of the argument from contingency turn on a particular view about the causal structure of reality: they say that there is a non-physical (divine) cause that precedes all physical causes, and that this generates an explanatory advantage for the theist.
This argument fails, as Graham Oppy convincingly argues, because whatever causal structure for the universe is supposed by the theist can be replicated by the naturalist. The naturalistic philosopher has wide latitude here, since there are many different live models in physical cosmology which exhibit different causal structures. To prefer one live physical hypothesis over another is not to go beyond natural science in the way the naturalist finds objectionable.
Thus if the free action of God is supposed to be the indeterministic action of a necessary being, the naturalist is free to propose that the universe had an initial state which was itself necessary and indeterministically caused the organized cosmos we experience. If the theist introduces an infinite causal chain (perhaps of divine thoughts), the naturalist can introduce an infinite chain of earlier states of the universe (or parent universes).
Finally, if the theist proposes an initial contingent being (rejecting divine necessity), the naturalist is free to accept an initial contingent state of the universe. Whatever advantage the theistic model is supposed to have will also be had by at least some physical models and therefore (at least as long as these models continue to be live options within physics) can be had within the confines of naturalism.”
– Pearce, Kenneth L. (2017) ‘Foundational Grounding and the Argument from Contingency
As we can see here, when we compare like-for-like on the nature of causal reality, the Naturalist has an explanation that is equal to the Theist one. Dr. Oppy himself has stated that he is agnostic on the shape of causal reality (whether there is a necessary foundation or an infinite regress) but emphasizes that whatever option we choose, the hypothesis can explain just as much as theism purports to explain. Hope that clarifies things there.
As for Cameron’s Argument from Limits, I would recommend this excellent blog post here:
https://hughjidiette.wordpress.com/2020/09/22/786/
Thank you again for this interview, and we look forward to more content pertaining to sophisticated Atheist philosophy.
Thank you so much for this post Dr. Nelson. We really do appreciate your interview with Cameron on dialoguing with skeptics. It’s awesome to see Word on Fire engage in high-level philosophy of religion and we hope to see more interaction with these topics in the future. That said, we just want to briefly clarify a few things.
Regarding Dr. Graham Oppy’s views as they were described in the article, Cameron made the following comment:
“Dr. Oppy responds to arguments like this by claiming that the universe has these foundational features because it has to. These features are, in some sense, necessary.”
I think this is a misleading interpretation of Dr. Oppy’s perspective. First, when we step back and look at the epistemology of the philosophy of religion, we will find that Dr. Oppy is notable for his general skepticism of arguments about the existence of God. He has outlined a set of robust standards for what it takes for an argument to succeed and thus this leads him to reject a lot of the standard arguments about the existence of God.
Despite this, Dr. Oppy still believes we can adjudicate disputes on the existence of God, namely by taking an approach that looks at theory choice and world-view comparison. Stated briefly, Dr. Oppy believes that we should take the best model of Naturalism/Atheism and compare it with the best model of Theism and then judge the success of each model by theoretical virtues such as predictive/explanatory power, simplicity, ontological cost, economy, scope, etc.
When we take this approach, Dr. Oppy believes that Naturalism explains all the data that Theism purports to explain and is a much simpler model, thus accounting for more theoretical virtues. It’s also worth clarifying that Dr. Oppy does not take into account facts about evil, hiddenness, or atheistic arguments in his analysis. He specifically looks at the case for what Theism seeks to explain: contingency, morality, consciousness, fine-tuning, etc, and shows that Naturalism can explain all this just as well or better, specifically showing that Theism can be beaten on its grounds. I think Oppy’s position here can easily be summed up by Laplace’s maxim “I had no need of that hypothesis”.
With this context in mind, we can see why Cameron’s original remarks were misleading. In response to arguments for God’s existence that point out some features of our universe that God is a good explanation for, Dr. Oppy is not claiming that these specific features of the universe are necessary on Naturalism, but that regardless of their modal status, they can be explained just as well on Naturalism compared to Theism. For example, let’s take Bishop Baron’s favorite argument, the Argument from Contingency.
Dr. Kenny Pearce outlines why this argument fails according to Oppy’s account:
“Causal versions of the argument from contingency turn on a particular view about the causal structure of reality: they say that there is a non-physical (divine) cause that precedes all physical causes, and that this generates an explanatory advantage for the theist.
This argument fails, as Graham Oppy convincingly argues, because whatever causal structure for the universe is supposed by the theist can be replicated by the naturalist. The naturalistic philosopher has wide latitude here, since there are many different live models in physical cosmology which exhibit different causal structures. To prefer one live physical hypothesis over another is not to go beyond natural science in the way the naturalist finds objectionable.
Thus if the free action of God is supposed to be the indeterministic action of a necessary being, the naturalist is free to propose that the universe had an initial state which was itself necessary and indeterministically caused the organized cosmos we experience. If the theist introduces an infinite causal chain (perhaps of divine thoughts), the naturalist can introduce an infinite chain of earlier states of the universe (or parent universes).
Finally, if the theist proposes an initial contingent being (rejecting divine necessity), the naturalist is free to accept an initial contingent state of the universe. Whatever advantage the theistic model is supposed to have will also be had by at least some physical models and therefore (at least as long as these models continue to be live options within physics) can be had within the confines of naturalism.”
– Pearce, Kenneth L. (2017) ‘Foundational Grounding and the Argument from Contingency
As we can see here, when we compare like-for-like on the nature of causal reality, the Naturalist has an explanation that is equal to the Theist one. Dr. Oppy himself has stated that he is agnostic on the shape of causal reality (whether there is a necessary foundation or an infinite regress) but emphasizes that whatever option we choose, the hypothesis can explain just as much as theism purports to explain. Hope that clarifies things there.
As for Cameron’s Argument from Limits, I would recommend this excellent blog post here:
https://hughjidiette.wordpress.com/2020/09/22/786/
Thank you again for this interview, and we look forward to more content pertaining to sophisticated Atheist philosophy.