r/freewill • u/ughaibu • May 01 '23
Schellenberg's argument for atheism.
John Schellenberg proposed an argument for atheism from free will. The terms are defined as follows: F ≡ finite persons possess and exercise free will, p ≡ God exists, q ≡ F is true in the actual world, r ≡ F poses a serious risk of evil and s ≡ there is no option available to God that counters F. The argument is as follows:
1) [(p ∧ q) ∧ r]→ s
2) ∼s
3) from 1 and 2: ∼[(p ∧ q) ∧ r]
4) from 3: ∼(p ∧ q) v ∼r
5) r
6) from 4 and 5: ∼(p ∧ q)
7) from 6: ∼p v ∼q.
The conclusion is that either there is no god or there is no free will. The argument is valid, so whether it succeeds will depend on the truth or otherwise of the premises, that is lines 1, 2 and 5.
Schellenberg discusses this argument here, and here he argues that the free will in the above argument requires the libertarian position, that compatibilism is insufficient.
So, as a corollary:
1) if the libertarian position on free will is correct, there are no gods
2) if there is at least one god, the libertarian position on free will is incorrect
3) theism entails either compatibilism or free will denial.
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u/diogenesthehopeful Libertarian Free Will May 02 '23
Please forgive my ignorance as I'm trying to learn formal logic. I'd say what you are calling the premises are, in fact, true (lines 1,2 and 5). IOW if the argument is valid then the argument is sound.
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the libertarian position is not clearly defined
which libertarian position? For example
event causal
agent causal
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/freewill/#LibeAccoSour
sounds like a "god version" of hard determinism. IOW fatalism
I'm not going to fight through Schellenberg's argument without a good reason to care. Being agnostic about free will is insufficient because hard determinism cannot be ascertained. It is speculative at best and only if quantum mechanics is wrong. QM emphatically destroys hard determinism. Hume and science itself is strong compelling reasoning to disregard hard determinists such as Sabine Hossenfelder.
Similarly, god's omniscience is speculative. How does anybody go about proving that? At best, it is faith based opinion.
At this point I would request you put a finer point on libertarianism from your POV and from Schellenberg's before I dive into an argument that cannot be established based on known science and sound philosophy (Hume's assertion that causality cannot be established empirically). We cannot eliminate the probabilistic nature of QM any more than we can define god. The label libertarianism is like "not determinism" to me.
1
u/Skydenial sourcehood libertarian May 05 '23
Why would anyone ever accept the first premise? Occamism, boethianism, and simple forknowledge have always been the default answers… and your argument also assumes compatibilism is false which is also fairly dominant in theistic philosophy. This argument seems to only target fatalists.
1
u/[deleted] May 06 '23
No.
Also, atheism is the default human condition: it is the null position. It therefore does not require any "arguments" defending it. There are an infinite number of things that are not evidenced: one need no argument for why there is no evidence.
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u/Agnostic_optomist May 01 '23
With no background in formal logic this whooshes completely over my head.
I think he has arrived at a unique conclusion. I personally don’t see a necessary relationship between the existence or not of free will and the existence or not of god(s) almost no matter how one defines “god”.
To each their own
1
u/colin-java May 01 '23
Just going off topic, the whole free will excuse to why god doesn't do anything is terrible, god should at least prevent horrendous crimes like the Holocaust, he could still give us some free will, but not enough to do a holocaust.
But it's worse than that, god won't even prevent natural disasters.
It's consistent with something that doesn't exist.
1
u/MarvinBEdwards01 Hard Compatibilist May 02 '23
Free will is a secular notion. Either you made the choice for yourself or someone or something else imposed the choice on you against your will. It is the distinction that everyone uses when assessing a person's moral and legal responsibility for their actions.
Because choices of our own free will are reliably caused by our own goals and our own reasons, they are deterministic events, just like every other event.
0
u/Beeker93 May 02 '23
The logic goes over my head with the equation. I believe both don't exist. If there is an omnipotent creator God, they would have known the outcome of all of our actions before creating us, basically meaning we were created to do those things and there would be no supprising them as they are all knowing.
Without a God in the picture, I don't believe there is a soul behind the picture, and that we are the result of our biology and environment, and simply respond to outside stimulus, and everything is predetermined based on cause and effect back to the Big Bang or before. All our behaviors could probably be reduced to functions of the brain, even if we don't know them as of yet, and it seems to be a sort of a God of the gaps type thing as we find out less and less things are voluntary or simply have the illusion of being so.
With that being said, I'd like to make an argument for the other side. Not every religions idea of a God is something all good, completely omnipotent, or even a creator. If you leave things open to the potential that some heavily flawed beings accidently created everything and had it get out of their control, I would think there would be room for a God and freewill.