Panpsychist philosopher Philip Goff explains his reasons for converting to a form of Christianity; James Fodor and Robin Collins debate fine-tuning

In an entertaining and wide-ranging interview with Christian apologist Cameron Bertuzzi, philosophy professor Philip Goff explains his reasons for converting to a rather unorthodox form of Christianity, characterized by belief in a finite God (allowing him to accept the fine-tuning argument while accounting for the evil we observe in the world by denying that this God possesses unlimited power), panentheism (as opposed to a purely supernatural view of God), a participatory view of the atonement (he rejects penal substitution) and a somewhat unorthodox view of Jesus’ resurrection (like Dale Allison, he thinks Jesus’ body was physical but not tangible). Alternatively, those who prefer reading to watching a video can peruse his recent article in Aeon, “My Leap Across the Chasm”.

In his interview, Goff mentions the fine-tuning argument, so I’ll also include this amicable debate between fine-tuning critic James Fodor and fine-tuning proponent Dr. Robin Collins.

Here are my comments:

Fine-tuning

Professor Goff is a self-declared fan of the fine-tuning argument, and after listening to Dr. Robin Collins defend it against James Fodor, I’ve become more sympathetic to it again. The problem with the argument, as Goff readily admits, is that it doesn’t lead you to God but to something “goddish“. And I couldn’t help noting that Dr. Collins’s argument proceeds on the assumption that the cosmos was designed to be discoverable by intelligent beings: in other words, Collins’ Designer wants his creatures to be able to infer his existence. One could also imagine an omnipotent, omniscient and even omnibenevolent Being that had no such desire, and perhaps no desire to create anything at all. What the fine-tuning argument leads us to, then, is a personal Designer (but not necessarily an ex nihilo Creator) of the cosmos.

The evolution of consciousness

In his interview with Bertuzzi, Goff asks why evolution would produce the phenomenon of consciousness, given that it’s ultimately about behavior, rather than feelings. Why aren’t animals just complex machines that feel nothing?

On an emotional level, I find this argument compelling: it is a source of never-ending wonder to me that I am conscious of anything at all, even for a moment. The only satisfying answer to me is that consciousness has a higher cosmic purpose: Someone wants us to have feelings, and to love one another and our Creator. On an intellectual level, however, I have to acknowledge that the argument is incomplete: the mere fact that we can imagine biological machines that behave in a complex manner but feel nothing does not entail that such machines are actually possible.

Doctrine of God

In his interview with Cameron Bertuzzi, Goff declares that he accepts Divine omniscience but rejects Divine omnipotence: God is all-knowing but not all-powerful. The attraction of this view is that it allows him to recognize the merits of the argument from fine-tuning while accounting for the evil in the world. The problem is particularly acute when we consider the process of evolution. As Goff puts it (7:00), “Why would a good God who can do anything choose to create life through the gruesome, torturous process of evolution by natural selection? But if God is not all-powerful, maybe God didn’t have much choice. Maybe the only way God can create intelligent life is by creating a world, a universe, with the right physics that will eventually evolve intelligent life, and God’s like, ‘I know it’s going to be messy. I’m sorry. I wish it could be another way, but it’s that or nothing.'”

In his interview, Bertuzzi asks Goff whether a limited God could serve as the ultimate explanation for everything. Goff replies that even if there’s a very simple omni-God, one could still ask why it exists. He acknowledges that the traditional omni-God hypothesis is simpler than the limited God hypothesis which he advocates, but he also argues that his hypothesis fits the data much better than the omni-God hypothesis. A good hypothesis has to be true to the facts. In any case, the hypothesis of a limited God is still fairly simple.

One question I would ask, though, is: why does Goff continue to believe that God is omniscient, if he does not consider God to be omnipotent? Why couldn’t God’s knowledge be limited, too? And wouldn’t this alleviate the problem of suffering even further?

Problem of evil

In his article in Aeon, Goff outlines his views on the problem of evil:

If God can do anything, then they could have created us to share in their form of existence from the beginning, rather than subjecting us to millions of painful years of evolution. But if God is not all-powerful, then maybe they are on their way to creating a perfect universe but are only able to do this in two stages. In the first stage, they create an OK universe, one with the right kind of physics to eventually evolve intelligent life. Next, when creation has evolved enough, God begins to bring the universe to perfection by becoming more intimately involved in it, sharing in its nature that it can share in their nature. Perhaps this is a process that is still continuing – and maybe needs a bit of help from us – but which took a radical and decisive step forward in the events surrounding Yeshua.

This is an interesting theory, although it’s hardly Biblical. What makes it problematic for me is its failure to address the problem of horrendous suffering – soul-breaking suffering which ruins your life. The question is: does God have the right to create sentient and sapient individuals, knowing that some of them will likely endure this kind of suffering, even if He intends to put everything right in the end?

The Incarnation

Goff argues that the purpose of life is to enter into a state of deep unity with our Creator, but recognizes that the enormous gulf between creatures and their Creator renders this problematic: as his philosophical mentor Dr. Robin Collins puts it, it’s a bit like trying to graft a branch onto a horse. The solution, Collins argues, is for God to take on a physical nature and enter into our form of existence. This closes the gap between God and creation, allows God and the universe to enter into a state of deep unity.

The Atonement

I agree with Goff that penal substitution is a morally hideous theory, but as he rightly points out, it’s merely one of dozens of theories of the Atonement that have been put forward by Christians over the ages. In his interview, Goff makes it clear that he espouses a participatory theory of the Atonement, elaborated by philosopher Robin Collins in his paper, A Defense of Nonviolent Atonement. In his essay, Collins does an excellent job of highlighting what is wrong with penal substitution, on both theoretical and a practical level:

First, the penal theory seems incoherent. As we normally understand it, penal justice consists in persons getting what they deserve. The New Testament, however, teaches that we do not get what we deserve; therefore the requirements of penal justice, as normally understood, are not met. This means that penal theorists cannot appeal to our intuitions in favor of the retributive theory of punishment to support their theory, since their theory violates a central tenet of that theory, namely that justice demands that sinners receive what they deserve. Instead the penal theorist must hypothesize a mysterious divine requirement according to which God must punish or inflict his wrath on someone for our sin, even if that someone is God’s own self…[In addition,] under the penal theory, to give people the gospel requires that one first tell them the bad news that they are so sinful that they are deserving of eternal (or at least substantial) retributive punishment in hell… [I]t is difficult to see how this could possibly be “good news” to severely abused people throughout the world. Ask yourself, does it make sense to tell a twelve-year-old girl who has spent all her life as an abused sex slave in Somalia that because of her (or Adam’s) sins she actually deserves vastly more suffering than she is experiencing in this life, but fortunately Christ has paid the penalty for her?

Collins’ participatory model of the Atonement works in a very different manner: “During his life and death, Jesus fully enacted the sort of spiritual and moral virtues of faith, hope, and love that we need as human beings in our life situation… Through participation in the virtues that Jesus enacted, we are saved from sin and reconciled to God, for sin is incompatible with participating in these virtues.” That sounds like a more loving image of God. My only reservation with Collins’ model is that it appears to require that Jesus die a violent death in order to redeem us. As Collins puts it:

In particular, on the cross, Jesus acted in full faith, hope, and love despite experiencing the full force of unjust victimization and the alienation from God and others that is the result of sin. Without the cross or something like it, God the Son could not have enacted these virtues—it is impossible to enact courage or self-sacrificial love unless you experience your well-being as being in danger.

For that reason, I am drawn more towards Abelard’s Christus Victor model, in which Christ saved the fallen human race by triumphing over the powers of evil. Jesus’ death is the ultimate manifestation of God’s love, which was able to transform the hearts and minds of the sinners, turning them back to God.

Biblical inerrancy

In rejecting the doctrine of Biblical inerrancy, Goff dissociates himself from the more objectionable passages in Scripture – for example, its espousal of slavery and bloody wars of conquest, and its subordination of women. Interestingly, there are conservative Christian apologists such as Lydia McGrew and Michael Jones (of Inspiring Philosophy) who also reject Biblical inerrancy, although William Lane Craig, who is perhaps the most prolific conservative apologist today, continues to defend the doctrine: he argues that while the Bible is not infallible in all that it says, it is infallible in all that it teaches. Craig sees inerrancy as a corollary of Biblical inspiration, but as Bart Ehrman has pointed out, the Biblical word for inspired simply means “God-breathed.” At any rate, Goff’s position is certainly a defensible one for a Christian to hold, although it invites the obvious question of how Christians today are to judge what belongs to the central deposit of their faith and what doesn’t.

The Resurrection

Following Dale Allison, Goff considers the Resurrection of Jesus to have been a physical event but not a bodily event. What the disciples experienced were completely internal visions, rather than tactile experiences. (On Allison’s view, Luke’s account of the risen Jesus’ eating fish with his disciples was intended as a polemic against Docetism and Gnosticism.) At the same time, Allison accepts the reality of the empty tomb as an historical event. Goff hypothesizes that at the Resurrection, Jesus’ body was transformed into another mode of physicality – one which is ineffable to us, but which is still able to break through to us when it wishes to. Had there been a video camera at Jesus’ tomb on Easter Sunday morning, it would not have recorded Jesus’ body walking out, but it might have recorded a flash of energy as Jesus’ body disappeared.

Acknowledging the reality of the Resurrection raises a host of other questions in connection with the problem of evil: why doesn’t God resurrect people more often? And if God can raise people from the dead, then surely He can work miracles and prevent suffering?

Goff is to be commended for facing up to these problems. His tentative answer is that the Resurrection was not a miracle (as it was not a bodily event), and that Jesus is a singular case: he is God’s attempt to break into our cosmos for the first time, by taking on our nature.

Probability of Christianity

Finally, Goff thinks it’s reasonable to believe in Christianity, even if you think there’s only a 30% chance of it being true, but not if there’s only a 1% chance of it being true. (His analogy is that if a family member is dying, it’s reasonable to believe they’ll recover if doctors say there’s a 30% chance of them doing so, but not if they rate the chance of recovery as 1%.) His own evaluation of the likelihood of Christianity being true is somewhere near 50%. He also considers the extraordinary character and teaching of Jesus to be a motivating factor for belief.

There is a lot more I could say, but I’ll stop here. For the benefit of readers, I should mention that Goff will be debating Alex O’Connor in November on the Justin Brierley’s Unbelievable show. That should make for interesting viewing. Anyway, what do readers think of Goff’s conversion?

3 thoughts on “Panpsychist philosopher Philip Goff explains his reasons for converting to a form of Christianity; James Fodor and Robin Collins debate fine-tuning

  1. I’ve completed my review of Goff’s interview with Cameron Bertuzzi. Comments are welcome.

  2. vjtorley:
    I’ve completed my review of Goff’s interview with Cameron Bertuzzi. Comments are welcome.

    Do you expect validation of your great and hard work? What are your expectations?
    I’m kind of confused…

Leave a Reply