One of the fundamental ideas of Christianity and most theistic religions is the idea that God can be understood to some degree. Christianity makes some claims such as God is loving, just, merciful, etc… However, all of these claims presuppose one important thing: The idea that God can be known. Today’s post will be investigating and deconstructing an argument that seeks to prove the very opposite, that an omnipotent being by definition cannot be known. With this background established let’s analytically phrase the argument:
Premise 1: There exists an omnipotent being that we wish to understand.
Premise 2: Any omnipotent being has the power to interfere with any test used to determine its character.
Conclusion 1: The results of any test must be considered contaminated, and thus invalidated.
Conclusion 2: Therefore, one can never be certain when an omnipotent being is telling the truth.
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One obvious implication of this argument is such that any conversation between God and a prophet in many religions is meaningless. After all, if one has a dialogue with no truth involved, what is the merit of the conversation? The simple reaction to this revelation would be to reject almost every religion and supplant them with simple theism. We might even question what kind of religion could survive such epistemological uncertainty. However, such drastic ideological considerations are hasty at best. Herein it will be demonstrated that the argument, while it has merit, is actually false by contradiction, and then counterexample.
Objection 1: The Contradiction
The contradiction of the argument isn’t obvious, but originates from a snuck premise in the first conclusion. For the snuck premise to be illuminated, let us first consider why test results are discarded in the scientific method. Often this occurs when test results are influenced to a significant degree by unintended test conditions which cannot be separated from the designed test conditions. In this case, the only recourse is to redo the test, and to mitigate or eliminate any unwanted influences. For example, if one desired to test the maximum speed of a new car, one would not test the car on a wet race track. The water would reduce the friction of the wheels with the ground, and prevent the test from recording normal driving conditions. When unmitigated, it is within the nature of random forces to influence the result of any test. With this context established, we may return to the objection at hand.
For this objection, we accept Premise 1 that an omnipotent being has the power to freely interfere with any test. However, Conclusion 1 states that the results must be considered contaminated. In doing so, the conclusion inadvertently operates under the premise that it is within God’s nature to interfere. What the argument boils down to, is that we can’t know anything about God because we can’t trust him. This demonstrates that the conclusion of the argument hinges on a contradictory premise. The fundamental problem however, goes deeper still.
Any statement about the degree to which the experimental results can be trusted is an assertion of divine character. One might similarly argue that that we have no reason to trust that God will not interfere as well. This opposing position suffers from a similar paradox as well. It asserts that we can know about God because we can trust him, but why exactly must we trust the deity? This argument fails to meaningfully justify its assumption of God’s trustworthiness, resulting in a tautology that “God is trustworthy because he is trustworthy”. Thus, we are left with an epistemological impasse.
Interestingly, analysis of the presented argument actually suggests we know even less than nothing about God. The test results could be reliable, or they could not be. Rejection or acceptance of the test results contradicts the conclusions, even the well-worded C2. The argument strongly implies that we don’t even know if knowledge about God is possible. Such an argument poses a problem for the premise of the Mechanics of Christianity. If knowledge of God’s nature is not necessarily possible, why would Christianity be a reasonable worldview? Next, it will be shown how the argument (in all forms) is fallacious by counterexample.
Objection 2: The Truthful Deity Experiment
The practical intuition of the argument is quite strong – from a general understanding of ‘omnipotence’, one would expect that an omnipotent being could always change the results of the experiment. However, this expectation is actually incoherent. The counterexample presented here takes cues from the Three Gods Riddle. It asserts that properly designed test can in fact deductively ascertain knowledge about an omnipotent being – if it plays nicely:
P1) All the post-mentioned entities behave logically.
P2) Researchers ask an omnipotent deity to perform action M, so they may know that it exists, and wants them to know that it exists.
P3) M is a specific action that only the deity can perform.
P4) The deity performs an action M’, that is NOT M, but is only distinguishable from M by the deity.
C1) The researchers will record an affirmative to P2.
If we analyze the researchers’ conclusion, we may find initially that their reasoning is invalidated because of M’. The philosophical ‘trick’ here, is that it doesn’t matter whether or not M actually occurred, but that the deity does perform an action taking the appearance of M. In this scenario, both the deity and the investigators know that the mere appearance of M will entail belief in the deity’s existence. If the deity wishes to leave the investigators in the epistemological dark, the deity would simply do nothing. Naturally, the investigators can reason this out as well. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, so inaction would not allow the investigators to ascertain anything. Now there are alternate scenarios we might explore, such as one where a non-deity performs M’. However, the point of the Truthful Deity Experiment is to show that knowledge of an omnipotent deity is not necessarily prevented by omnipotence.
Concluding Thoughts
If it isn’t already apparent, a miracle would certainly be an event that could qualify as M. If Jesus performed actions that contradict the laws of physics, this is behavior that one would expect only an omnipotent being could perform. Therein lies part of the importance of the supernatural events described in the gospels. From the miracles of Jesus, we may derive valuable information which allows us to make arguments and conclusions about the nature of the divine.
Answers to a couple objections:
“What if the deity performs M, but makes the investigators forget that M occurred?”
This is essentially the same action as not performing M at all from the investigators’ standpoint. Logically, the deity would simply not participate in the experiment at all.
“Why must we consider knowledge to be believing in the truth?”
Here, we define knowledge simply as a Justified True Belief. Problems have been raised with that definition, but these are tangential to the key point of this analysis.
Mechanics of Christianity 