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Books

Nonbelief and Evil: Two Arguments for the Nonexistence of God by Theodore Drange

Charles Echelbarger explains the atheistic arguments of Theodore Drange.

Theodore Drange is one of a relatively small number of academic philosophers who have devoted a large part of their intellectual efforts over the last thirty-some years to systematically opposing theism. Other philosophers in this group include Michael Martin, Richard Gale, Paul Kurtz, Kai Nielsen and J.L. Mackie. The writings of all of them deserve attention from readers with some background in philosophy, both because of the generally high quality of their work and because the number of philosophers who have published in defense of theism is much larger than the number of non-theist philosophers. Those who are swimming against strong currents ought not to be ignored, even by those who are sure that they are moving in the wrong direction.

Drange hasn’t published as many books as some of these nontheists but he deserves far more attention from both theists and nontheists than he has so far received. Readers of this book will be impressed by the author’s high degree of technical skill and rigorous argumentation.

It is easily verified that there is a vast outpouring of theistic apologetic literature both in print and on the internet. I have so far spoken of Drange as a professional academic philosopher and it is quite clear that he is addressing other philosophers, both theists and nontheists, in this book.

Anyone who is familiar with the works of such theist philosophers as William P. Alston, Richard Swinburne, Alvin Plantinga or Peter Van Inwagen will find that Drange is closely familiar with their work and that he has many important criticisms of their opinions. Drange also clearly distinguishes his views from those of certain other nontheists. For example, he disagrees with those who reject theism as cognitively meaningless on the grounds of its not being empirically verifiable. He also criticises such philosophers as Antony Flew who call themselves negative atheists, in the sense that they simply have no belief in God as opposed to positive atheists who deny the existence of God. Indeed, he is critical to a certain extent of Kai Nielsen and Michael Martin for their position that theism is so deeply incoherent that it can only be rejected as unintelligible rather than declared false.

Drange makes the strategically crucial move of pointing out that the issue of theism vs. nontheism cannot be usefully discussed without recognizing that a variety of gods are referred to by different theists. While one may speak of something that might be called ‘God-in-general’, Drange argues that a nontheist must proceed by considering different versions of theism, one at a time. Thus, he discusses what he describes as the god of Evangelical Christianity, the god of Liberal Christianity and the god of Orthodox Judaism. Because of the theological differences between these traditions, he maintains, it is necessary and proper to formulate somewhat different versions of his main arguments. He handles this large task systematically and clearly.

However, this book is by no means written only about the opinions of professional philosophers. Drange reminds us of the very important distinction between the God of the Philosophers’ and ‘the God of the people’. The main distinction he makes between these two gods is that the god of the people is quite anthropomorphic. He creates the universe by a deliberate act, is closely involved with the universe throughout history, especially with human beings, has emotions and feelings, manifests himself at specific places to particular human beings and so on. Drange finds a very close similarity between the god of the people, thus described, and the god of the Bible. The god of the philosophers is eternal, nontemporal, immutable, nonspatial, omniscient, omnipotent, and perfectly good as well as creator and ruler over all.

Drange has considerable sympathy with the view of such nontheists as Michael Martin and Kai Nielsen that the concept of the god of the philosophers is deeply problematical, possibly contradictory or incoherent to the point of unintelligibility. He does not so regard the concept of the god of the people. In particular, he devotes a large share of his attention in this book to the god of evangelical Christianity, a god he considers to be essentially the same as the god of the Bible. However, Drange finds that there is a substantial similarity between the god of the Bible and the god of the philosophers. Thus, he maintains it would be wise for those whose theism aspires to greater sophistication than that of biblical theism to take his criticisms of the latter seriously. This reviewer would like to point out that both Nielsen and Martin acknowledge more and less sophisticated versions of theism and both admit that the less sophisticated, more anthropomorphic (Zeus-like) types of theism are coherent and generally intelligible, but may be shown to be false beyond a reasonable doubt.

Most of the book develops and defends two arguments against the existence of God: the Argument from Evil (AE) and the Argument from Nonbelief (ANB). The first is essentially the ‘problem of evil’ that has been defended and attacked since ancient times. Drange has his own formulation of it, more sophisticated than any of the ancient or modern versions with which I am familiar. Arguments similar to ANB have been advanced, in particular by J.L. Schellenberg, but they have generally been conceived as having to do with the problem of ‘divine hiddenness’. Drange rejects this way of characterizing the problem on the ground that it implies that there is a divine being that is hiding. By characterizing the problem as one of widespread, long-standing, nonculpable nonbelief, he tries to make it evident that nonbelief is powerful evidence for atheism rather than just a problem for theism. One of the many important points Drange makes about ANB is that it is not simply a specific form of AE, though its structure is parallel to that of AE. Indeed, if one defines Evil as Drange does (massive suffering and premature death) it is not plausible to classify nonbelief as a type of evil without begging the question in favor of evangelical Christianity.

Nontheists have a considerable burden to show that the existence of even the god of evangelical Christianity is highly improbable, given the existence of evil, though Drange does think that AE is capable of doing so. In spite of the efforts of nontheists like the late J.L. Mackie, it takes considerable work to show that even an omnipotent being could create a world in which no suffering or premature death are possible. By contrast, it is the theist whose burden is enormous if he wishes to show that God could not have made his existence known to more people than he has.

Drange distinguishes between deductive an inductive versions of AE and ANB. He makes it clear that he does not think that the deductive versions are successful. The inductive versions he maintains are highly successful, especially against the god of evangelical Christianity. However, he thinks that ANB is even stronger than AE. In his discussions of AE and ANB, Drange systematically formulates many defenses against each argument and then states objections to each of the defenses. He maintains that nearly all of the objections to the defenses are completely successful. If he is right, these arguments provide more than enough evidence that the gods of many traditions do not exist. Interestingly, he does not think that ANB has any force whatever against what he terms ‘God-in-general’. I hope that this last bit of unadorned information about Drange’s book will serve to arouse even more interest in reading it. I believe that readers will find that the effort is extraordinarily worthwhile.

Charles Echelbarger is Professor of Philosophy at the State University of New York at Oswego and is a US editor of Philosophy Now.

• Nonbelief and Evil: Two Arguments for the Nonexistence of God by Theodore Drange, $51.00/ £24.99 hb (Prometheus) ISBN: 1573922285.

The Argument From Evil (AE)

Let L be the situation of the amount of suffering and premature death experienced by humans in the world at the present time being significantly less than what it actually is at present.

(A) If the God of evangelical Christianity were to exist, then he would be able to bring about situation L, all things considered; want to bring about situation L; not want anything else that necessarily conflicts with his desire to bring about situation L as strongly as he wants to bring about situation L; be rational (which implies always acting in accord with his own highest purposes).

(B) If a being who has all four properties listed above were to exist, then situation L would have to obtain.

(C) But situation L does not obtain. The amount of suffering and unfairness in the world at the present time is not significantly less than what it actually is at present.

(D) Therefore, there does not exist a being who has all four properties listed in premise (A).

(E) Hence, the God of evangelical Christianity does not exist.

The Argument From Nonbelief (ANB)

Let the gospel message consist of the following three propositions: (a) There exists a being who rules the entire universe.(b) That being has a son.(c) The ruler of the universe has sent his son to be the savior of humanity.

Let situation S be the situation (or situation type) of all, or almost all, humans since the time of Jesus of Nazareth coming to believe all three propositions of the gospel message by the time of their physical death.

(A) If the God of evangelical Christianity were to exist, then he would be able to bring about situation S, all things considered; want to bring about situation S, i.e., have it among his desires; not want anything else that necessarily conflicts with his desire to bring about situation S as strongly as he wants to bring about situation S; be rational (which implies always acting in accord with his own highest purposes).

(B) If a being who has all four properties listed above were to exist, then situation S would have to obtain.

(C) But situation S does not obtain. It is not the case that all, or almost all, humans since the time of Jesus of Nazareth have come to believe all the propositions of the gospel message by the time of their physical death.

(D) Therefore, there does not exist a being who has all four properties listed in premise (A).

(E) Hence, the God of evangelical Christianity does not exist.