BIG PHILOSOPHICAL QUESTIONS: GOD, EVIL, and DEATH

By Donald Marvin Borchert

Have you ever pondered whether there is any convincing evidence that could support belief in the existence of God?

Have you ever been puzzled trying to understand why evils, like the COVID-19 virus, have appeared in a world that presumably an all-powerful and all-good God created and continues to manage day by day?

Have you ever wondered what, if anything, you may encounter after you die? When a person dies, does the person continue to live on but only in written records and the memories of future generations?

If you would like to have some well-reasoned responses to such questions prepared by a distinguished philosophy scholar, who also is an ordained Christian minister, then you must read this easy-to-understand small book in which the author addresses these tough, big philosophical questions.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Covenant Books, Inc.
• Release date: Dec 9, 2021
• ISBN: 9781638855316

Book preview

Chapter 1

The Big Question About God

A short time ago, one of my youthful granddaughters asked me out of the blue, Grandpa, how do we know that God exists? Wow! I wondered if my granddaughter had suddenly become a philosopher. The question about the existence of God is a tough question to answer when an adult asks it. And it is even tougher when a grandfather’s youthful granddaughter asks it. I will try to provide an answer to this big question about God at the adult level and will end up with a few comments about my attempt to speak to my young granddaughter about the existence of God.

In responding to the question How do we know that God exists? I invite you to join me on an intellectual journey the goal of which is to reach an answer to that question. Our adventure begins with an exploration of the difference between believing something and knowing something. Next, we will consider an important intellectual virtue called epistemic humility. Then we will examine the possible evidence for the existence of God provided by miracles, by three kinds of philosophical proofs for the existence of God, and by the power of personal experiences.

God’s Existence: How Belief Differs from Knowledge

Consider the following two very short sentences: "I believe x and I know x." The x in these sentences stands for a proposition or a claim. I daresay that most of us would agree that there is a significant difference between saying I believe x and I know x. Both statements involve affirming x. But saying that "I know x" seems to be a stronger affirmation of x than saying "I believe x. That stronger affirmation is evident in the widely accepted philosophical definition that knowledge is justified true belief." This brief definition has inspired a great deal of discussion and debate among philosophers, resulting in the need to add some stipulations to the definition. I think, however, that this basic, brief definition will be sufficient for our purposes. To explore those stipulations, some works cited in the endnotes of this chapter might prove to be helpful.¹

The definition that knowledge is justified true belief shows that belief needs to be supported by evidence that justifies the belief and the belief also needs to be true before the belief can rise to the level of knowledge.

I hope that the following example drawn from my view of the NFL quarterbacks will illustrate the significant difference between the two affirmations "I believe x and I know x."

Suppose I said, "I believe that Tom Brady is the best quarterback the NFL has ever seen." The x feature in that sentence is a claim about Tom Brady. If you asked me why I had such high regard for Brady, I would respond that I have watched him on television many times as he led the New England Patriots to victory after victory, including playing in nine Super Bowls and winning six of them. And I have watched his performance following his move in 2020 to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers where, as quarterback, he led his new team to victory in the 2021 Super Bowl. In his first year with the Buccaneers, Brady raised his Super Bowl record to seven victories out of ten appearances. And once again, he was named the MVP (Most Valuable Player) in a Super Bowl game.

My observation of his performance over the course of many years provides me with some evidence that justifies my belief that he is the best quarterback in the NFL. But more than that justification is needed to warrant the further claim that I know Brady is the best. The additional feature needed is truth. It is quite easy to cite my observations of Brady on TV to justify my belief. But establishing my belief as true is a little more challenging.

To determine the truth of a claim like mine about Brady, let us use the time-honored correspondence theory of truth, which, simply put, tells us that a claim is true if it corresponds to, if it matches the way the world actually is.²

Now my claim about Brady is not about the entire world but just a small portion of the world: the population of more than nine hundred NFL quarterbacks. So what I need is an appropriate set of criteria that can be applied to all those quarterbacks, including Brady, to see what total score each quarterback earns. If Brady has the highest score, then presumably my belief about him would be shown to be true. And presumably, I would be able to say, I know that Brady is the best quarterback the NFL has ever seen. My belief about Brady would be both justified and true.

Fortunately for our purposes, the NFL has statisticians who have already analyzed and rated the performance of those NFL quarterbacks who are in excess of nine hundred individuals. The top group was labelled as excellent and includes in addition to Tom Brady this cluster of outstanding quarterbacks: Peyton Manning and his brother Eli Manning, Drew Brees, John Elway, Aaron Rogers, Joe Flacco, Troy Aikman, Joe Montana, Terry Bradshaw, Joe Namath, and Bart Starr.

In addition, those statisticians ranked all those quarterbacks in descending order. Here is their ranking. At the top with the highest rating is Peyton Manning with 271 points. Tied for second place, just below Manning, are Tom Brady and Brett Favre, each with 255 points. Below them is Drew Brees with 239 points. Below him are hundreds of others whose ratings move downward through the 200s and the 100s to the ratings that are less than 100 until the list ends with the rating of 0, which was assigned to quite a few NFL quarterbacks. Those ratings and rankings are listed on the NFL website.³

Does this ranking falsify my belief that Brady is the best NFL quarterback? Perhaps. But consider the caution expressed by the statisticians who rated and ranked these more than nine hundred quarterbacks. Those statisticians indicated that their ratings were only approximate values. By labeling their work product as only approximations, they were acknowledging the presence of uncertainty, an element of iffiness that is present in their conclusions. Accordingly, we must be cautious when we judge my belief about Tom Brady to be false on the basis of human-created approximations that ranked him as tied for second place among more than nine hundred people in the relevant population.

Additionally, it is important that we consider the fact that the rankings from the NFL statisticians we now have are based on the data from the season ending in January 2020 and do not as yet take into account Brady’s fantastic performance for one season with the Buccaneers ending with the Super Bowl in January 2021. The absence of the data from that season reinforces the uncertainty built into the approximations that we now have from the statisticians. Such uncertainty will continue to be present in their future approximate rankings. When Brady’s performance for the Buccaneers is taken into account, perhaps Brady will stand alone as the second best. Or perhaps he will even appear as tied with Peyton Manning as the best. And uncertainty, no doubt, will be present in those judgments.

I think it is clear now what the difference is between saying "I believe x and I know x. And the difference would also be clear between saying, I believe that God exists, and saying, I know that God exists." Belief needs evidence to justify it. Knowledge needs that justifying evidence for the belief under consideration, but knowledge also needs that belief to be true.

In addition, I think we can learn something very important from these NFL statisticians. In labeling their conclusions as approximations, they were admitting that there was an element of uncertainty in their calculations and claims. I would add that there is a measure of uncertainty in all the knowledge claims we make.

Consider the advice of the esteemed philosopher of science Herbert Feigl (1902–1988), who claimed that modern science does not achieve knowledge that is absolutely certain. Instead, to use his now famous words, Warranted assertibility or probability is all that we can conceivably secure in the sciences that deal with the facts of experience.⁴

God’s Existence: Epistemic Humility—An Intellectual Virtue

A good number of years ago, I accepted the epistemic uncertainty that is embedded in the words warranted assertibility or probability, which Professor Feigl used to characterize the knowledge that science can achieve. Accordingly in one of my recent books, Embracing Epistemic Humility, I discussed the need for humans to acknowledge the uncertainty that is present not just in the domain of nature that science examines but also in the domains of morality and God—domains in which many scholars strive to discern moral knowledge and spiritual knowledge. When humans recognize and respect the presence of uncertainty in any of those three very important domains of knowledge, they are exhibiting an intellectual virtue called epistemic humility.

The word epistemic is derived from the Greek word epistēmē, which means knowledge. When people embrace epistemic humility, they do not regard their knowledge claims to be perfect and never in need of modification. People who hold their knowledge claims to be absolutely perfect seem to be practicing epistemic arrogance, which could be considered an intellectual vice because that arrogance can blind them to fresh information that could enrich and even modify their current knowledge claims.⁵

Let us reiterate the uncertainty in our knowledge claims by noting again the definition of knowledge as justified true belief. The two features that a belief needs in order to rise to the level of knowledge are justification and truth. Uncertainty is present in the evidence we use to justify our belief. Uncertainty is also present in the strategy we use to determine the truth of our belief—that is to say, in how we determine if the belief corresponds to the way the world actually is. Such uncertainty regarding the justification and the truth of our knowledge claims ought to inspire us to embrace epistemic humility.

Now these questions arise. Does the presence of some uncertainty in our knowledge claims mean that knowledge is actually beyond our reach? Does embracing epistemic humility lead to embracing epistemic skepticism? Accordingly, must I use only claims that follow the pattern "I believe x? Must I refrain from using the pattern I know x"?

My answer to all those questions is simply No. The lesson to be learned from the preceding review of Brady is that when I say that my belief is justified and true and thus rises to the level of knowledge, I must acknowledge that the justification and the truth of my belief are approximations and subject to possible correction. My belief then about Brady is infused with epistemic humility, which implies that my belief about Brady might need