Atheism (Still) Isn't Simpler

One of the reasons atheism is a contender in worldview debates is because many assume atheism is a simple (if not the simplest) theory. Briefly, I would like to challenge this assumption.

First, atheism isn’t much of an explanatory hypothesis (theory). Atheism is just the commitment to there not being some entity in reality – namely, God. But the absence of God offers nothing with respect to ultimate explanations.

From this perspective, atheism is surely an extremely poor worldview hypothesis: in terms of prediction, it leads us to expect just one thing (no God). Apart from telling us that something isn’t there, what else does atheism explain? Again, nothing.

Thus, for atheism to become theoretically interesting, one must develop some version of naturalism. Naturalism says there are only natural entities with natural causal powers. Of course, many of us wonder just what a natural entity is, and here naturalists aren’t always clear. Largely, we’re told a natural entity is whatever is included in an ideal, completed science (which many naturalists admit we don’t have, but will never have). Worse, if the naturalist becomes more specific, and tells us a natural entity is anything marked by properties like spatio-temprorality, mass, etc., they are now going against emerging science (see Bruce Gordon’s work on this).

Set that issue aside, though it is not insignificant. Here is the more critical issue.

First, for naturalism to compete with (that is, exclude) theism, it must posit some fundamental theory with imperfection. Why? Because theism holds fundamental reality is Perfect. God is Perfection Itself (no arbitrary limits on what God can do, know, how good God is, etc.). Further, given that in God there is no real distinction between God’s essence and act of existence, God is ontologically simple. Theism posits just one fundamental entity with either just one or zero properties, depending how one reads it.

Further, when it comes to theoretical simplicity, what seems what matters most is what is happening on the fundamental level with respect to quantitative (how many fundamental entities) and qualitative (how complex the fundamentality entity) simplicity. Here, naturalism likely loses on both accounts, though certainly loses on one. Recall many naturalists are ontological pluralists, positing many fundamental realities. Theism posits just one. Winner winner, chicken dinner, as they say. But even if the naturalist is a priority monist and posits just one fundamentality reality, because of its inherent imperfections and limits, that reality will require more information to explain. Inevitably, it will be less qualitatively simple than classical theism. Worse, it will almost certainly have far less explanatory comprehensiveness. From there, to pick up explanatory power, the atheist must wire more components into the theory, which accrues costs to theoretical simplicity.  

Imagine this: the naturalist says some physical field is the fundamental reality, which has the power to produce just the number of ergs in our universe AND NO MORE (or maybe two more; it doesn’t matter). That is actually a pretty complex theory, and by itself such a theory would not lead us to anticipate the data we experience as much as classical theism does (consciousness, rational agents, moral principles, etc.). Plus, it leaves something unexplained: namely, why that physical field – even if it is deemed necessary – with that much power? Setting that issue aside, if the naturalist doesn’t want to eliminate the remaining data, probably they will begin positing brute facts, either contingent or necessary. But every brute fact is a cost, either to simplicity or explanatory comprehensiveness (depending where one puts them), because brute facts are components being added to the theory which can be offered no deeper, more unified explanation.

For example, there is the physical field but also (brutely) moral principles that human beings eventually link up with, allowing for moral knowledge. Many naturalists are probably happier saying there are no moral principles but then they acquire the cost of having to adopt an error theory with respect to morality, which is deeply dissonant with moral experience. Plus, as I’ve argued elsewhere, unsustainable.

This illustration is crude, but it highlights something important. No atheistic theory can be as simple as classical theism. Maybe classical theism is false because it is incoherent. But as an explanatory hypothesis, it can maximize the explanation of data while minimizing fundamental theoretical commitments. Briefer still, theism can do the most with the least.