Atheism vs Theism according to McCloskey

Responding to McCloskey McCloskey conflates argument with proof because theists take the argument as proof—i.e., as something that cannot be refuted. For McCloskey just because they cannot be refuted does not mean that one has to accept that a deity is responsible for all creation. It is a leap of faith, in other words, that McCloskey is unwilling to take.

For Foreman in “Approaching the Question of God’s Existence,” it is a leap of faith that one must take because it is reasonable, for instance in the face of the existence of evil, to surmise an opposite force of good that is the ultimate source of all goodness, including all of creation. Foreman’s faith is based on reason. McCloskey, however, would also argue that his atheism is based on reason.

The difference in outcomes is that the proposition upon which each bases his rational argument is different. Foreman’s proposition is that goodness is a spiritual quality that must have a spiritual source. McCloskey’s proposition is that goodness is merely a matter of perception and that all people really know is what empirical science tells us, which eliminates any speculation about a spiritual realm as this cannot be quantifiably measured or ascertained in any empirical manner.

Faith in God, it must be understood, is an act—not a proof. Faith comes from the will but it is also a gift from God that one must be willing to accept. It can come by way of reason—i.e., one can reason one’s way to God, as Foreman and Martin (n.d.) do in their discussion of good and evil.

But McCloskey is not viewing God in this same sense: he is not open to a relationship with a divine being because he refuses to consent to the idea that such a being exists since said being has not revealed itself directly to McCloskey. On the Cosmological Argument, McCloskey refuses to accept the notion that the existence of the world is proof of a divine creator. He rejects the notion that a deity is the source of all things.

This he calls the uncaused cause—which Evans and Manis (2009) recognize as God. McCloskey is more willing to accept that the origins of the universe are a mystery that may never be solved than he is to accept that the universe began because a deity willed it into being.

However, even Shakespeare understood that something cannot come from nothing—a proposition that he puts forward in a number of his dramatic works during a period when empiricism was certainly coming into vogue and doubts about the world and the earth’s (and people’s) place in it were rising. Evans and Manis (2009) follow Shakespeare’s tack and assert that indeed the universe cannot have come into existence from nothing because such would be a violation of first principles.

Every cause has an effect and every effect has at its root a cause. What caused existence to come into being? The only answer, according to Evans and Manis (2009), is a God Who exists forever. As it is impossible to really wrap one’s mind around this concept of eternity (God must be eternal for Him to be the First Cause of all cosmology), McCloskey rejects it. He views the uncaused cause as irrational.

However, Evans and Manis (2009) recognize that there are limits to man’s reason and that just because man cannot fully comprehend the mystery of eternity does not mean it cannot be so. In fact, it must be so for there is no other rational explanation for the existence of the world: it had to be caused by something that had no beginning and has no eternal—i.e., by an eternal being—a deity—a God.

But McCloskey will not consent: he refuses to embrace the idea that the cosmological argument permits belief in an eternal being—i.e., an uncaused cause. However, as Evans and Manis (2009) point out, the cosmological argument not only permits it, but also it demands it by necessity of the fact that one views the world, life, and existence as good.

If these things are good and we value them as good, there must be an objective standard—some ideal—outside of ourselves by which we are able to judge, measure, or ascertain goodness. God serves as the ideal: He is the source of all goodness, and all that is evil serves as the absence of God—the absence of goodness. McCloskey rejects the idea of God because he rejects the idea that goodness is universal or objectively definable.

Underlying his rejection of belief in God is his subjectivism. He refuses to believe that what he calls good might justly be considered bad by an objective standard outside himself. One who is willing to admit that goodness exists will be willing to follow the thread of goodness back to its source, which is God. McCloskey, though, will not admit of any proofs of such objective goodness. He wants mathematical proofs. He wants facts, like one of Charles Dickens’ characters.

He wants a blueprint, left behind by God, which shows His exact intentions. He wants to lay his hands on an artifact that can be tested and verified by science. He wants a sign. The proof is all around, however. It is just not the kind of proof McCloskey wants: he does not count the stars, the sky, the grass, the wind, life, breath, beauty or goodness as proof.

His standard of indisputability is only reasonable insofar as he is basing his proposition on the idea that God owes man an explanation. McCloskey is unwilling to humble himself to accept the mystery of God’s plan or, for that matter, to possibly hear or see what God is very likely telling him if he would only stop to listen and open his heart to what the concept of beauty, truth and goodness really mean.

These things are indisputable in a way that the heart can understand even if the head does not. But McCloskey wants hard facts and figures: he wants the head, not the heart—and as Melville pointed out to Hawthorne, God is definitely composed of heart. Evans and Manis (2009), though, point to the experience of evil as an example of design that that points to a designer. Evil is like a flaw in the design or, rather, a flaw in our implementation of the design.

Evil indicates that something somewhere has gone wrong—that things are not what they should be. The experience of evil, for Evans and Manis (2009) at least, is a good argument for a good designer being behind all creation. Evil represents a lack of good, which is why it is so horrific to experience it: we want to be in the good, in possession of the good, and in turn possessed by the good. McCloskey would not necessarily view this argument as any better, however.

McCloskey points to evolution as evidence that nature is its own designer. He uses the concept of evolution as an argument against God. Evans and Manis (2009), however, easily reconcile evolution with God by arguing that evolution is simply part of God’s design—the process by which life in the universe develops. Going back to the experience of evil, McCloskey would take the argument of Evans and Manis (2009) as proof that in fact a good God did not exist.

He would argue like Ivan Karamazov that a God who allowed evil to exist was not a good God at all. However, he like Ivan lacks faith. Faith is necessary as it is the bridge between reason and God. Just like the cosmological argument is limited in the sense that it is not a proof but rather a reason for faith, the teleological argument is not a proof but rather a reason for faith. McCloskey rejects faith and rejects God.

Faith is necessary: without it, one will not admit of God. McCloskey sees evil as a problem for theists. He sees it as a hole in their argument that a good God is behind all things. Theists, like Evans and Manis (2009) argue, on the other hand, that God has His reasons and that we do not know what they are.

He lets evil go on for a reason—perhaps because of what comes out of the experience of evil: people can draw nearer to God, realizing they want the good—though of course some may draw away from God as McCloskey does because he hates that God would permit evil, suffering, and so on. God allows both reactions because He gave people the freedom of their own will, which is a reflection of His free will.

God freely chose to create the world out of his own free will, and the creatures he created (mankind) have also been created with this same free will: they are free to love as God has loved or they are free to hate and to reject the good, which is what explains the experience of evil in essentially generic terms. Evil and suffering cannot be removed from life. Everyone experiences them, but people still manage to love, to be good, to believe in God.

If so many people were being irrational, one would think that society would collapse and that communities would turn against themselves—and yet life goes on, people still continue to have families in spite of the evil. They believe in the good as a force that lives above the evil and is greater than the evil. McCloskey does not seem to understand this contest between good and evil, which many authors—like Dostoevsky and Solzhenitsyn—have explained as being a contest that exists in all hearts.

McCloskey does not seem to understand the contest because he does not like the idea of free will. He argues that God should have programmed mankind to be biased towards virtue—i.e., to have made mankind to be more like robots that act virtuously at all times rather than as creatures who must choose whether they will pursue the good or reject it. Evans and Manis (2009) vindicate the divine goodness, which is the essence of theodicy, in their discussion of the existence of evil.

Plantinga indicates that it is in the nature of divine goodness to grant the freedom of will, the freedom to choose goodness and love. Good does not force but rather attracts. God is good and thus attracts by the strength and merit of His own goodness. However, He does not force and every soul has the ability to reject or resist God’s attraction. No one is forced to.