One of my favorite philosophical atheists on twitter, Ben Watkins, has recently posted several intriguing arguments for atheism. Ben is a super intelligent guy and very charitable as well. He is a part of the Real Atheology team and bears influence from several of the all-time greats such as Oppy, Draper, and Mackie. Each argument is quite concise and compelling, and one of them piqued my interest in particular (and has provoked fascinating responses thus far), so I thought I’d give a response and articulate some of my thoughts about the argument.
Just for a quick disclaimer, I am very much a layman when it comes to philosophy of religion, and I may be mistaken in many of my views. This article is a personal analysis of the argument, and I am not attempting to “debunk” or decisively defeat anything. I will instead offer my personal thoughts as to some strengths and challenges of the argument as best I can, and hopefully will inspire further conversation.
The “Argument from Imperfection” is stated as follows:
A) A perfect creator can't create anything less than a perfect world
B) The world is imperfect
Therefore,
C) The world was not created by a perfect creator
D) Theism implies the world was created by a perfect creator
Therefore,
E) Theism is false
Randal Rauser pointed out that premise D can be tightened by instead stating “perfect being theism implies…” as opposed to just “theism implies.” I won’t quarrel too much over the language, but throughout this article I’ll be referring to strictly perfect being theism, as that is the primary philosophy against which the argument is arguing.
The argument is valid, of course, with the conclusions C, D, and E following from the premises A and B. So, as long as those first two premises are sound, the conclusion E (perfect being theism is false) does indeed logically follow. Therefore, the proponent of perfect being theism must argue against the soundness of at least one of the first two premises in order to avoid the conclusion. I’ll go over each premise individually.
Premise A)
Premise A posits that “a perfect creator can’t create anything less than a perfect world.” This is (in my opinion) the more controversial premise. I’m going to attempt to undercut the premise and argue that it lacks sufficient support.
First, it may be tempting to tentatively accept the premise just based off intuition. After all, how could a creator truly be perfect if its creations are themselves imperfect (let alone filled with seemingly gratuitous suffering and natural evils)? However, I’d like to pose a hypothetical argument to put our intuitions to question here:
The Hypothetical “Imperfect Creations” Argument
A) (Under perfect being theism), creations of a perfect being must also be perfect
B) (Under perfect being theism), human beings are creations of a perfect being
C) Some human beings are imperfect
Therefore,
D) Perfect being theism is false
This argument (apart from premise A, of course) seems far more modest than the Argument from Imperfection. After all, it only posits that ‘some’ human beings are imperfect, which is practically impossible to deny, especially given the intensely morality-based nature of (more or less) all perfect being theism-based belief. Perhaps premise B could plausibly be denied, and I’d be interested to hear an argument against B, but it (at least at first glance) to me appears quite sound. At the very least, living creatures are a part of all creation, and thus they are themselves created as a result of the action of the perfect being. If premises B and C are sound, as well as premise A, it seems that this argument would be a far stronger and more modest form of the Argument from Imperfection. After all, the premise “some human beings are imperfect” appears far more modest than “the world is imperfect,” which makes a far grander statement involving knowledge of which we are not entirely certain.
But the hypothetical argument is quite flawed. The problems stem from the key premise A, which represents the intuitive thought that creations of a perfect being must also be perfect. We can plausibly conceive of a perfect being creating imperfect things, such as humans, for several reasons. The main reason would be that a perfect being would plausibly seek to create beings that are in control of their own free will, and thus are able to commit moral evils and contribute to imperfection through their own free choice. This wouldn’t be the fault of the perfect being, since plausibly it was most morally good for the perfect being to allow creatures control over their own actions and choices. Since we can certainly reason that a perfect being can in fact create imperfect beings, premise A (and thus the hypothetical argument) fails. Thus, we have good reason to doubt the soundness of the all-encompassing statement, “creations of a perfect being must also be perfect,” and we require additional support for the first premise of the Argument from Imperfection (A perfect creator can't create anything less than a perfect world) as to why a perfect creator cannot create an overall imperfect world, despite there being plausible reasons that a perfect being may have in creating imperfect beings.
Premise B)
Premise B posits that “The world is imperfect.” I won’t spend too much time evaluating this premise, since I have far less problems accepting it than I do accepting premise A (of which I am very skeptical). Indeed, given my prior arguments it actually appears that premise B is true, given that our world is undeniably inhabited with imperfect beings who inflict all sorts of moral evils on other creatures and the very world itself. Some theists have trouble with the very notion of a “perfect world,” (Catholic apologist Trent Horn likened the term to the incoherent notion of a “highest number”), but I won’t go too far down that road, since I’m not even convinced myself that the notion of a “perfect world” is inherently incoherent. Some theists also retreat into skepticism, positing that we don’t have enough knowledge to know whether the world is imperfect, or that there exist gratuitous moral evils. I will also remain agnostic on such positions. Indeed, this response is quite unsatisfying to the agnostic observer and doesn’t pose too much of a direct challenge to the atheist who is convinced through intuitive or probabilistic means. Instead, I will admit that premise B doesn’t seem too implausible to me at first blush. Certainly, the possibility of the world being imperfect doesn’t seem so crazy to me, though if I were to take up the argument I would appeal to pre-human and natural evils to avoid appeals to free will.
In fact, I find the argument from evolutionary suffering (as very convincingly implemented by Ben in his debate against Fr. Gregory Pine). I think such arguments from natural evils (and especially moral critiques of the evolutionary process) are quite difficult to respond to. But perhaps that’s a response for another time.
To reiterate my response to the Argument from Imperfection, I have put the intuitive soundness of the first premise to question, arguing for the plausibility of a perfect being’s ability to create imperfect beings, and have implied that we need further justification for the first premise if we want to accept the conclusion. In addition, I have gone over some brief objections to the second premise but have not explicitly agreed with any such objections. Further books could be written on that one premise alone, and I haven’t done enough research to confidently take a position on the premise. Maybe I will take it on in the future.
