Theistic arguments through a Phenoutilistic lens
Many arguments for and against the existence of a higher authority rely on materialistic assumptions and definitions, and utilize objective concepts such as good, evil, cause, and necessity. I believe that most arguments against the existence of a higher authority still work; in fact, some are amplified if you look at them through a Phenoutilistic lens. Keep in mind that I believe that nothing is as sure to exist as your present experience and its utility, but when we are arguing about a higher authority, the argument is really about whether the existence of a higher authority or a God is accurate to our experiences. For example, a second coming of Jesus would make the existence of a Christian God more accurate to our experiences than being reborn as a cow after death. In this article, I want to go over the most famous arguments for and against the existence of a higher authority.
The argument that suffers the most, perhaps, is the argument from morality. The argument is that without God, there would be no objective moral norms, and, since objective moral norms exist, God exists. And while it is true that if God does not exist, objective moral norms do not exist, that is because objective moral norms do not exist at all. But, even without Phenoutilism, you could make the case that objective morality does not exist, but there exists a faux intuition that points to the contrary, which is hard to dispel.
On the other hand, we have the argument from evil. The idea is that if a benevolent, omnipotent higher authority existed, there would be no evil that we see. Of course, on a Phenoutilistic worldview, there is no evil at all. So, does that argument still make sense? Actually, yes. First of all, we can just claim that even if a Phenoutilist or an atheist does not believe in the existence of objective evil, the theist does. So we can essentially use their own assumptions to make the argument. But what about a theist phenoutilist that believes in the existence of a benevolent omnipotent higher authority, but does not believe in the objectivity of evil? We would have to rephrase the argument slightly; it would sound like this: “Low-utility experiences should not exist, if experiences of an omnipotent, benevolent being are also possible”.
The famous Kalam cosmological argument goes like this. “Everything that began to exist had a cause, and since the universe began to exist, it also had a cause”. I have issues with both premises. I have personally never experienced anything beginning to exist, and I am not sure if the universe began to exist. The beginning of existence would look like a house instantly materializing out of thin air; in fact, we would probably describe that appearance as happening “for no reason”. And there is no reason to believe that the universe began to exist either. But, this argument is not particularly strong anyway, since it does not appeal to experience or to the utility, and arguments have to appeal to at least one of those to be strong.
For that reason, the argument from personal experience is so powerful, but only to people who actually had that personal experience. You can’t convert anyone to your religion by appealing to your experiences. But some anecdotes can be phrased in such a way that they sound less personal, like something major happening inside your village, town, or city, that has no physical explanation. The Bible is, of course, one of the more famous collections of anecdotal evidence.
Perhaps the worst anti-theistic arguments are appeals to the immoral nature of the higher authority, like the pedophilia in the Quran and rape, and slavery in the Bible and the Quran. Like, yeah, all these things that we generally consider immoral are found there, and perhaps the texts are not even antithetical to them, but what does that tell us about the accuracy of descriptive statements found in the texts? Nothing. But perhaps that argument would work on those who are unaware of the endorsement of acts that believers consider immoral or low-utility experiences.
For me, the strongest argument against the existence of a higher authority is the lack of experiences that confirm the accuracy of descriptive statements about a higher authority. You could call it the argument from divine hiddenness, but it’s not quite that. Divine hiddenness refers to the existence of nonresistant nonbelievers, those who don’t believe but would like a sign or proof to start believing. This is more of a lack of experience argument, that could be simply stated, “I believe in descriptive statements that are accurate to my experiences, and since the existence of a higher authority has not been accurate to my experiences so far, I don’t believe it exists”.
There are many more arguments I could have included, but these are the most popular ones and the most relevant to Phenoutilism.
