Author’s Note: This is not my normal kind of post. It’s super long! It also contains another writer’s blog, but edited to demonstrate how he clarify his points. I will be posting an actual response to his post tomorrow.
Bentham’s Bulldog is the wunderkind of substack. I say this in the most complimentary fashion: he is a prolific poster! If you’re into philosophy on this platform, you can’t avoid him. His posts will pop up on your feed, unless you ignore or block him.
I’ve been a little glib toward his posts in the past, but I wanted to change my approach. To put my cards on the table: I disagree with him on many things, and I dislike that substack promotes him to me so much (hate the game not the player on the latter).
I also think he can improve on his writing style. The main reason I get frustrated with his posts popping up on my feed is not that I get mad reading opinions I don’t share, but that it’s generally hard to parse his words.
I think this problem is mainly due to his explanatory style and writing technique not quite reflecting the level of his intelligence. Now, this is to be expected: he is still an undergraduate and I imagine writing is not his major. I was an English major (and philosophy double major, and religion minor) and didn’t learn how to write well (by being self-taught!) until after graduate school.
I think Bentham is still probably a top 10-to-1 percentile writer for his age and experience. He’s certainly way better than I was at the same age.
What’s Weird About This Post? And Why Do This?
So, instead of vaguely complaining about not understanding what he’s writing about, I’ve taken the proactive step of editing one of his more recent posts.
I don’t want any of this to come off condescendingly or patronizing, but as a way to improve conversation and dialogue on this platform. What’s more, I think being able to communicate clearly and well is the first step to being persuasive or at least to critically examine one’s arguments.
Many people know how to “effort post” on the internet, and think that’s just as good as writing without an editor. It’s not. They could benefit from the editing advice of this post. I’m trying to improve the discourse not by picking on Bentham in particular, but by using him as a case study.
I believe If you compare my version of his words with his original version, you’ll come away with a better understanding of what he was originally trying to say. Bentham may object to how some of his points come across with these edits. That’s okay! I want this to be a learning experience for everyone. If I got the wrong impression of someone’s post and can’t summarize it well, there's an equal chance of a problem with the original content as there is me, the reader.
The Five Main Problems of Bentham’s Post
First, it was too long, as it could have been easily two or three posts instead of one. I’ll be the first to admit that we live in a media environment of brain rot, and shorter is not always better. But internet writing is different from book or academic writing because of the difference of the medium. You have to fit your style to the medium. You would tell a story about a current event differently if it was a literary short story vs. a news article. The same goes for internet writing vs. academic writing.
Second, he should do a better job of dividing his post into sections. And by “section headers” I don’t mean “introduction” and “conclusion,” but sign-posting what direction your post is going. I’m doing it in this post, and I hate it, but it’s definitely necessary for its length.
If you’re starting out by writing a long piece and going into it intentionally using section headers, you’ll realize when a piece becomes unbalanced or content becomes repetitive. It helps you simplify and train your eyes to see the outline of your piece. If you're making the same point twice, or if it fits better in another part of the piece, it’s much easier to cut and paste somewhere else. This preserves a sense of momentum in the piece, which keeps the reader engaged with your points.
I think many posters online would be surprised at how easy it is to repeat a sentiment in a superfluous way or put the sentence in the wrong place (I did this writing this very sentence!).
Third, Bentham writes a stream of consciousness as evident by various small typos, many mid-sentence digressions, and messy syntax throughout his piece.
Sometimes, a well placed adverbial clause can create a sense of rhythm and momentum with words. Like that sentence just did.
Oftentimes - and you really have to trust me on this because I’ve been using “editor eye” for over five years to say nothing of posting for like a decade - these adverbial digressions can halt the momentum of a sentence and bury the important information. Like that sentence just did.
Instead of breaking up your sentences in such a fashion, use footnotes or divide the sentence in two. The only reason I’m not using footnotes in this post is because I want to use them for the revised version of his post below1. Indeed, this post and the next are weird for me and break my own rules, but I think they were worth breaking.
Other recommendations
Make sure the first clause of your sentence has the anchor verb of your sentence. This doesn’t always have to be the case, but if you’re writing complex sentences, it helps to clarify it.
Use more paragraph spacing. In school and in books, we are taught that a paragraph is a complete thought, and that’s mostly true. But our brains need stops in thoughts, similar to how we need to take stops between exercise reps. I don’t recommend any internet paragraph extending longer than 3 or 4 sentences or 5 or 6 lines on substack, even if the thought is technically longer.
Strategic use of bolding also helps. For an example, just look at this post without reading it, and you’ll get my main points.
Fourth, I would not lean so heavily on specific scientific findings in quantum physics to make a point, pretty much ever. It may sound persuasive to physicists, but I honestly don't know anything about how background radiation would imply about the existence of God, let alone if it does. I imagine most people don’t either.
Lastly, Bentham sneakily uses adverbs too much, both grammatically (adverbial clauses) and in syntax (actual adverbs). Adverbs weaken the effect of any claim. To get rid of these, simply press control + F “ly” and delete. You don’t need to delete every adverb. But the ones that end in -ly can usually go unless they are pivotal to the meaning of the sentence.
On His Piece Best Being Two to Three Pieces
If I were to give Bentham content strategy advice, I’d say the post below is actually two or three posts: one is about how it doesn’t make sense to understand the world under atheism, another is about the persuasiveness of cumulative arguments, and then another post contrasting alleged cumulative arguments for atheism and cumulative arguments for theism.
The first section seems like a great starting point at the beginning of writing the essay, but when you zoom out at the whole piece, it doesn’t fit as well with the whole when reading it. As someone who disagrees with the first section, it’s frustrating to read because he just says his argument on atheists not being able to make sense of the universe and doesn’t elaborate, while moving on.
The three parts definitely “fit” together as a single post, but the execution failed. Again, I’m not saying this to be a snobby critic. Style, in many ways, is subjective. But when it comes to communicating complex ideas, there is a science of optimal communication, and when we fall short of it, it creates frustration and charges of obfuscation. Just think of how Jordan Peterson can’t say if he believes in God because for some reason every word in the questioning sentence apparently needs days of elaboration - come on!
In all, this exercise helped me understand Bentham’s argument better. Maybe chatgpt could have done this faster. But I invite anyone to do the exercise when you feel like someone isn't communicating their point optimally when you also disagree with them. You find yourself agreeing with them in some ways.
For my next post, I will try my best to respond to Bentham. Without further ado, here is the edited post!
Following The Converging Lines of Evidence
Ross Douthat recently wrote about me in the New York Times. That’s not a sentence I expected to write. Hello to the roughly 200 of you who subscribed after reading Ross’s article!
I’m pleased to have Ross writing about me because I’ve always found him quite impressive; most journalists make an ass out of themselves when they talk about philosophy, but Ross doesn’t. On philosophy of religion, he’s consistently extremely sharp—and usually right!
In his article, he briefly mentions a few arguments that he was fond of (fine-tuning, the argument from religious experience, arguments from miracles) and settled down on the one he liked most: the argument from the discoverability of the universe.
It’s A Miracle We Understand Anything Under Atheism
Under theism, we have some reason to expect to be able to discover the universe; if the universe was made for us and creatures like us, it’s not unlikely it would be the sort of thing we could figure out.
This is in contrast to naturalism, where the world is just the blind unfolding of physical laws; there’s no reason to expect that we’d be able to figure out the detailed and complex inner workings of the universe. As Einstein famously said “The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible.”
I think this is a pretty good argument. It has even more force in light of the following four considerations:
Many of the things that we can understand by their very nature are not the sorts of things that can move around atoms. It would be shocking if our beliefs were correct, after coming from an unguided movement of atoms in our brain, without some being making sure they track the truth.
There’s no reason an atheist would expect we’d be able to discover the universe, even if it was discoverable. If we are bipedal apes that evolved purely by chance, there’s no reason to expect us to be the sorts of creatures that could figure out the universe. It’s surprising that the cognitive abilities that allowed us to survive and reproduce on the savanna also allow us to carry out the highly advanced mathematics needed to discover the universe.
If you grant atheism, it’s surprising that the universe would be the kind of thing that could be deeply investigated. Even with perfect brains, there are some things we’ll never know; how many grains of rice were eaten in 1102, for instance. Most human languages that are lost will likely never be discovered, so long as they didn’t leave behind any writing. Mark Steiner has written in some detail about the surprising connections between our mathematical practice and the universe; if he’s right, the universe’s mathematical structure was discoverable by us to an almost miraculous degree.
Lastly, Robin Collins argues that certain parameter values in physics fall in an extremely narrow range ideal for scientific discoverability. For example, the baryon to photon ratio determines the value of the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMB)—the higher the CMB, the more discoverable the universe. The baryon to photon ratio is about 1:1 billion, which happens to be within the margin of error of the ideal value for maximizing the CMB. If he’s right, this is very impressive.
Cumulative Cases Are Better Than Single Arguments.
I agree with Ross that the fact that we can figure out the deepest level goings-on in the universe—is strong evidence for theism. But Ross made a different point:
I think that the most compelling case for being religious — for a default view, before you get to the specifics of creeds and doctrines, that the universe was made for a reason and we’re part of that reason — is found at the convergence of multiple different lines of argument, the analysis of multiple different aspects of the existence in which we find ourselves.
This is important to emphasize: when it comes to arguments, cumulative cases are almost always better than single arguments.
To explain why, let’s talk about my friend who is a young earth creationist. He’s an interesting guy; very posh and British, but with the most batshit insane views of American evangelicals2.
I was recently arguing with him about evolution. He could explain away each of the many lines of evidence favoring evolution. Each of his explanations added an epicycle, none was plausible, but he had some response to each of the kinds of evidence for evolution.
What makes his view so implausible isn’t that any single argument decisively killed it, but that it is opposed by a broad convergence of considerations each pointing in the same direction. Just to name a few things he had to explain away:
Nested hierarchies.
Atavisms.
Transitional fossils.
Molecular evidence.
Embryological evidence.
Radiometric dating.
Ice cores.
Distant starlight.
When a view about how the world came to be is false, usually there are lots of bits of evidence that point against it.
If evolution happened and explains the development of every life-form, we should expect there to be very clear remnants of that—we should expect there to be perhaps a hundred different lines of evidence for evolution. We should expect, in the words of Dobzhansky, “Nothing in Biology [to] Make Sense Except in the Light of Evolution.”
If a view purports to explain a lot about what the world is like, and it is false, we should expect many things about the world to testify to its falsity. If there is no God, therefore, we should expect there to be many converging lines of evidence against God’s existence. If God does exist, however, we should expect many converging lines of evidence to point in the direction of a God.
Converging Lines of Evidence Are Not The Same As Multiple Data Points For An Argument
But we have to be very careful in looking at converging lines of evidence. People often overestimate the converging lines of evidence for a conclusion, and confuse it with having multiple data points supporting a single argument.
One arguing for a global flood could claim that there are many converging lines of evidence from all the ancient flood myths, but really this is just one kind of evidence being counted multiple times—whatever explains why the first four civilizations had flood myths will likely explain why the other ones did.
In this way, I don’t count arguments for the complexity or incoherence of God as converging lines of evidence. While I think these have some force, it would also be quite strange if ultimate reality is just a set of lawful, physical equations. Whether atheism or theism is true, fundamental reality is weird as heck!
I don’t think you should think either viewpoint starts out more likelier than an order of magnitude or two likelier than the other before you look at the evidence. Taking this into account, in my view, there’s really only one strong piece of evidence for atheism: evil.
The Problem of Evil is Not a Cumulative Case
The world sucks in numerous ways. Tsunamis sweep innocent grandmothers into the ocean; earthquakes leave young children trapped under rubble; the evolutionary process has resulted in quadrillions of animals suffering horrendously for almost a billion years!
There are other bits of evidence people give for atheism—widespread religious confusion, divine hiddenness, and so on—but in my view, these are broadly just variants on the wider theme of “things suck in lots of ways.”
I think this argument has a lot of force. Under theism, if you weren’t told what the world was like, you’d expect it to look like this.
Instead, it looks like this:
Obviously I’m oversimplifying. But the general point is that much about the world is very bad, and this is surprising if there’s a perfect God.
Crucially, I don’t think there’s much of a cumulative case against theism from all the world’s evils. Much like the flood example, whatever it is that explains why the first nine things about the world suck will probably also explain why the next 500 things suck; whatever explains why God permits a world with bone cancer in children will likely also explain why he permits a world with floods, hurricanes, and people being ignorant of his existence.
Theists such as myself have given various explanations of why God permits a world with so much suffering. And while my proposals are all pretty speculative, I think they’re enough to make it so that evil, while a major piece of evidence against God’s existence, doesn’t single-handedly make theism unreasonable.
This is especially true given that there might be all sorts of unknown reasons for God to permit evil. Just as Magnus Carlsen makes chess moves that I can’t see the reason for, God, who has an infinitely long-lasting future plan in mind and knows infinite things I don’t, may have a good reason for allowing the evils of our world.
Thus, I think there is one very good argument for atheism. But there’s not broad convergence of lots of different considerations that all point in the same direction. The evidence for atheism is not like the evidence for evolution; it comes primarily from a single argument.
The Arguments For Theism Are Cumulative
What about the evidence for theism? In my view, theism has a much broader set of cumulative considerations in its favor. Specifically, theism explains:
The fact that you exist specifically out of the infinite array of possible beings.
The discoverability of the universe (see above).
And more! In my view, therefore, the evidence for theism looks a lot more like the evidence for evolution—like the evidence we’d expect for the view that explains fundamental reality.
I won’t discuss the above list of arguments in any detail, but instead I’ll just mention two of them: fine-tuning and consciousness.
The fine-tuning argument proceeds from the observation that the constants of physics fall in an infinitesimal range needed for the formation of complex structures; if the cosmological constant was a bit weaker or stronger, no life or even interacting atoms could ever arise. If there’s a God who sets the values of the constants, this makes perfect sense—a God who cares about life would be expected to set the values of the constants to whatever is needed for life.
From the atheist perspective, there’s no reason at all to expect the constants to take on the values they did—values that were needed for anything valuable to form. And while atheists can explain away the relevant data by invoking a multiverse, the more you have to add epicycles to your theory to explain surprising data, the worse your theory becomes.
The argument from consciousness claims that consciousness is much more expected under theism than atheism. In order to get consciousness, it first must be that—in shocking and almost miraculous fashion—certain arrangements of atoms somehow give rise to subjective experience. It’s very bizarre and surprising that collecting atoms into an arrangement like that of a brain gives rise to experience; a private, qualitative inner life that isn’t even in principle describable in the language of physics.
For the atheist, even if there are certain arrangements of matter that produce consciousness, it’s a coincidence that those arrangements ever arise. The atheistic worldview gives no reason to expect there to be brains. Maybe they can explain this, but it will be at the cost of extra epicycles.
When I was an atheist, I felt as though I was repeatedly explaining away data, rather than accommodating it. While atheism is obviously much more tenable than young earth creationism, I felt like a young earth creationism, in that I had to sweep numerous independent lines of argument under the rug.
While the above list of arguments for God’s existence aren’t totally independent, they are mostly independent. Whatever explains why there’s consciousness won’t obviously explain why there’s fine-tuning or moral knowledge. Analogously, the lines of evidence for evolution aren’t completely independent, but they are mostly independent—they’re independent enough to make the case for evolution unbelievably decisive.
The evidence for theism looks the way we’d expect the evidence to look for the true theory of ultimate reality. If reality has an author, we’d expect traces of the author to show up throughout much of reality. In my view, this is precisely what we observe. Thus, while I take the arguments for atheism seriously, and regard the problem of evil as quite forceful, in my view it cannot match the overwhelming force of the powerful cumulative case for theism. God likely exists.
Actually, I lied and am too lazy to edit this because this whole project was 30 pages worth of editing and writing on my part. If you took out the digressions that could be footnotes altogether, you lost nothing from his post. I kept the footnote below because it added levity. Anyway, if Bentham has gotten this far, I hope you appreciate this as a good faith effort
He thinks evolution didn’t happen, the earth is only 6,000 years old, the Catholic Church is the “Mother Of Harlots And Abominations Of The Earth,” discussed in the Book of Revelation, and that the King James Version is the only inspired English translation).
Benthams main problem isn’t his writing style or arguments. It’s that he is a caricature of philosophy. He takes a few simple axioms, turns them in an elaborate argument for something ridiculous and refuses to deviate from those axioms regardless of how insane the conclusion is. And because he has the arrogance of a guy studying philosophy in his early 20’s, he’s not open to criticism. He prioritizes turning ethics in to a math problem over reality. The map is more important than the territory.
Thanks. Though I like my version better.