Philosophy of Religion 28: 25-34, 1990. 9 1990 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.
On a new argument for the existence of God
MICHAEL MARTIN Department of Philosophy, Boston University, Boston, MA 02215
In a recent article Augustine Shutte presents what he believes is a new argument for the existence of the Christian God. 1 Although I will not in this paper consider if Shutte's argument is really new, I will show that his argument is not sound and thus that he is unsuccessful in demonstrating that the Christian God exists.
The structure of the argument Shutte presents the general structure of his argument in the following way: 1. Human persons depend on other persons to develop as persons. 2. If all persons absolutely were dependent in this way, then no personal growth at all would occur. 3. Personal growth does occur. 4. Hence, there must exist, as the sole sufficient cause, at least one person who is not dependent for personal development on others, an absolutely independent person. 5. This is what Christians recognize as God. Let us consider the key premises in Shutte's argument. In the first premise what does Shutte mean when he says that human persons depend on other persons to develop as persons? The key to understanding Shutte's thesis is his idea of personal growth. Personal growth occurs, he says, when we increase our self-knowledge and self-affirmation. Self-affirmation, in turn, "consists principally in our power of consent. ''2 We increase selfknowledge and self-affirmation only when we know and affirm, that is consent to, our deep desires that are "built into our human nature and preexist any social or cultural conditioning, whether we are aware of them or not."3
26 What are the deep desires knowledge of which is necessary to personal growth? Shutte suggests that the desire for personal growth is one. Thus, since personal growth involves increased self-knowledge and self-affirmation of one's deep desires and there is a deep desire for personal growth, self-knowledge and self-affirmation involve increased self-knowledge of and self-affirmation of this desire. Stated more formally the argument is this: a. b. c.
If personal growth occurs, then there is increased self-knowledge and self-affirmation of all of one's deep desires. The desire for personal growth is a deep desire. Therefore, if personal growth occurs, then there is increased self-knowledge and self-affirmation of the desire for personal growth. 4
The desire for personal growth, Shutte says, is inherent in human nature since it is found universally "across cultures and historical periods" and is "ineradicable.'5 It is clear that Shutte senses that his readers might be skeptical of this claim. He asks: "Do we all in fact desire this? Isn't it really merely the fruit of a particular form of western culture? And even there isn't it rather rare? ''6 He attempts to allay these skeptical questions by saying that the desire for self-knowledge and self-affirmation looked at from the point of view of the growing person is really a desire for understanding and love. "Such a desire," he says, "is surely part of our human nature. ''7 In order to illustrate his thesis Shutte considers an abstract and ideal two person model consisting of person PI and person P2- He argues that in order for P1 who lacks self-knowledge and self-affirmation to acquire them, P1 "must come to know and affirm a person who already has them. ''s That is, P1 must know and affirm P2. But how can knowing and affirming P2 enable P1 to have self-knowledge and self-affirmation? Recall that Shutte maintains that an essential part of self-knowledge consists of knowledge of our deepest desires and that these desires are inherent in human nature. It follows that PI can know Pl's deepest desires by knowing P2's deepest desires since Pl's deepest desires are the same as Pz's. Shutte puts it this way: To the extent that I share in his self-knowledge I come to see myself as he sees me. The self-knowledge that this entails, being primarily a
27 recognition of my own deep desires, opens the way to greater selfaffirmation, and a more whole-hearted consent to his affirmation of me. And thus the transaction continues.9 Shutte argues that the initiative in this transaction must come from the person who already has self-knowledge and is self-affirming. "It is only his realistic and whole-hearted affirmation of me that can 'open him up' to be known by me and encourage me to affirm him. ''10 Thus, Shutte seems to be saying that unless some person P2 affirms P1, P1 cannot know P2 and, unless P1 knows P2, P1 cannot know P1. Recall also that according to Shutte, part of this self-knowledge and self-affirmation is the knowledge of the deep desire for understanding and love. It seems to follow that in order for a person P1 to understand and love PI another person P2 must love P r This will enable P1 to love and understand P2 which in turn will enable PI to love and understand P r This last idea enables us to understand Shutte's second premise, namely: If all persons absolutely were dependent in this way, then no personal growth at all would occur. Shutte says: "Unless someone somewhere is capable of self-knowledge and self-affirmation without the assistance of others who already are, no self-knowledge or self-affirmation will ever be acquired. ''11 Thus, unless at least one person.is not dependent on another person for self-knowledge and self-affirmation, there is no possibility of personal growth. Shutte suggests that his argument has the same logic as the cosmological argument. The person who does not need any help in self-understanding and self-affirmation is similar to the uncaused cause of the cosmological argument. However, Shutte points out a difference between the two arguments. The cosmological argument is based on our experience of causal interaction and dependence and, according to Shutte, this is not something that one can reasonably doubt. But personal growth, Shutte says, is not necessary and it makes sense to doubt whether it occurs at all. This takes us to Shutte's defense of the third premise of his argument, namely, that personal growth does occur. He cites three kinds of experiences that he believes provide evidence for the truth of this premise. Since most readers of Shutte's arguments will concede that personal growth does occur we need not consider this evidence. However, many readers will have questions about the other premises of the argument and about the transition from the intermediate conclusion stated in 4 to the final conclusion stated in 5. I will consider these questions in what follows.
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Evaluation of the argument Independent persons and God Shutte admits that his new argument is "lacking in logical rigor. ''12 This is apparent from a mere inspection of the basic structure of the argument. He infers from: .
Hence, there must exist, as the sole sufficient cause, at least one person who is not dependent for personal development on others, an absolutely independent person.
to 5.
This is what Christians recognize as God.
Presumably, the force of 5 is captured by: 5'.
Hence, the Christian God exists.
But surely the inference from 4 to 5' is fallacious. The Christian God is a unique person. If He exists, then there is no other person with His attributes. Premise 4 says only that there is at least one person with a certain attribute; it does not say that there is exactly one person with this attribute. One cannot infer from a proposition that asserts that there is at least X with a certain property to the proposition that there is exactly X with this property. Of course, if one assumes that the following premise is true, then the argument would go through: 4a.
If there is at least one person who is not dependent for personal development on others, then there is at most one such person.
However, I see no reason to suppose that 4a is true and, as far as I can determine, Shutte supplies no reason for-accepting 4a. Although this problem is enough to undermine Shutte's argument, there are other problems. Let us grant 4a. The only thing that follows from 4 and 4a is: 5a.
Therefore, there is exactly one person who is not dependent for personal development on others.
29 In order to infer 5' one must assume b.
If there is exactly one person who is not dependent for personal development on others, this person has all the attributes of the Christian God.
That is, one must assume: 4b'. If there is exactly one person who is not dependent for personal development on others, this person is all good, all powerful, all knowing and the creator of heaven and earth. 4b seems implausible on its face. It seems logically possible, for example, for a person not to be dependent for personal development on others and not to be either all knowing or all good. Yet despite its initial implausibility 4b' may be true. Can it be supported? The closest Shutte comes to grappling with this problem is to consider an objection of an imaginary critic who maintains that the "first cause" of personal growth does not have to be perfect. :3 Shutte offers two retorts to such a critic. First, he says that if this were true, my personal development would have a "ceiling," namely the level of development of the person with the highest development that I know. But this he says is implausible. Second, he argues that this would leave unaccounted the finite level of development of the first cause of personal growth. 14 It is clear that in making these replies Shutte has shifted the argument. In his original argument he attempted to show that a person could not achieve personal growth without self-knowledge and self-aff'trrnation and that these were dependent on another person who had already achieved them. Shutte did not say nor was it part of the logic of his argument to maintain that a person's level of personal development was dependent on the level of the personal development of someone else. Putting this point aside, let us explicitly introduce levels of personal development into Shutte's scheme even though he did not do so. Interpreted in this way, in order for a person to develop to level x there would have to be another person already at level x. Since according to Shutte, personal development is in terms of increased self-knowledge and self-affirmation, in order for a person to have no ceiling on his or her personal development, there would have to be another person who has infinite self-knowledge and self-affirmation. But it does not follow that this other person would have all the attributes of the Christian God. Even
30 if this person has infinite se/f-knowledge, it does not follow that he or she has inf'mite knowledge let alone infmite power or goodness. Thus, we should conclude that whatever else can be said against Shutte's argument, the transition from 4 to 5' is at least prima facie fallacious.
Personal growth and the necessity of another person So far I have questioned the step in Shutte's argument from 4 to 5. But what about the other premises of the argument? In order for the argument to be sound 1 must be interpreted to mean: 1'.
Human persons must depend on other persons to develop as persons.
Otherwise, one could argue that although as a matter fact people depend on others to develop as persons, there is no necessity in this. They could develop as persons on their own. Let us assume that Shutte is correct in supposing that the personal growth of P1 consists in large part in an increase in Pl'S knowledge and increase in consent to certain deep desires that are built into Pl'S nature. Let us suppose further that Shutte is correct in supposing that these deep desires are built into human nature and that consequently it would be possible for P1 to come to know and to consent to these deep desires in PI by fn'st coming to know and consent to them in P2. It still does not follow that in order for P1 to know and consent to these deep desires P1 must first know and consent to P2's deepest desires. Is there any good reason, then, to suppose that 1' is true? Might there not be alternative ways of achieving knowledge of and affirming these deep desires? For example, is it not possible that I could come to know my deepest desires directly by some form of self-analysis related to psychoanalysis and that I would not have to achieve self-knowledge through someone else? To be sure, psycho-analysis is usually practiced by someone who has already undergone analysis. But it had a beginning which was not supernatural; the first psychoanalysis was performed by Freud when he analyzed himself. If he could perform self-analysis, why not others? Further, the way someone achieves self-knowledge according to a two
31 person psychoanalytic model differs significantly from the way it is achieved according to Shutte's two-person model. A psychoanalyst helps the patient to bring repressed unconscious material to consciousness and to deal with it in a realistic manner. Moreover, the repressed material when brought to consciousness is often not afftrmed, that is consented to. The desire may be something that is ethically unacceptable and the patient with the analyst's help may have to learn to sublimate it. The patient does not achieve self-knowledge by seeing deep unconscious desires manifested in the analyst and then affirming them. Thus, even if one were to argue that Freud's self-analysis is a myth and that it is necessary for there to be two people, an analyst and a patient, it does not follow that self-understanding proceeds as Shutte's model suggests. Of course, one can allow that some psychological insight and self-understanding might be achieved in this way and even that some nonpsychoanalytic psychotherapists proceed in this way. But is there any good reason to suppose that it is the only possible way? To make his case Shutte must show that all alternatives methods - Freudian, Adlerian, Jungian, Rogerian and so on - do not achieve self-knowledge and personal growth unless they can be understood in terns of his method. Surprisingly, not only does he not attempt to do this, he does not seem to see the need to even try. One searches his paper in vain for any proffered reasons why one must achieve selfknowledge only in the way he suggests. Indeed, his model leaves us with an unresolved puzzle about how selfunderstanding can occur at all. Suppose some person affn'ms me and in so "opening up" allows me to understand him. It is unclear tlow this enables me to understand myself. To be sure, I now know this person's deep desires. But what reason do I have to suppose that they are also mine. To be sure, if I know that they are inherent in human nature, then I know indirectly that I have them too. But how can I know this? The deep desires of the other person do not come marked "universal." On the other hand, if I can known that they are universal on independent grounds, then I do not need to know another person's deep desire in order to know what mine are. So either self-knowledge is impossible on Shutte's theory or else it can be achieved in ways he does not recognize.
Personal growth and deep dark desires According to Shutte a necessary condition for personal growth is self-
32 knowledge and self-affirrnation of the deep desires that are inherent in human nature. He also maintains that the desire for personal growth is one of our deep desires. In order to allay skeptical questions of whether such a desire is really inherent in human nature, he argues that from the point of view of the growing person this desire is identical with the desire for understanding and love. To Shutte it seems beyond question that the desire for love and understanding is inherent in our nature but this identification of the desire for self-knowledge and self-affirmation with the desire for understanding and love should not allay skeptical questions. One may still well wonder how Shutte could possibly know that a desire for love and understanding is found across cultures and historical periods and that it is ineradicable. Was it found universally in Germany during World War II? The claim of universality is a factual one yet Shutte provides no factual evidence for its support. Given alternative claims about human nature such as that we have an inherent desire to dominate others or to destroy life surely some evidence is needed. Furthermore, it could be plausibly argued that the hypothesis that postulates an inherent desire to dominate and destroy explains much more of the course of human history than the hypothesis postulating the desire for love and understanding. It is important to see that Shutte must deny that these alternative accounts of human nature are correct. Otherwise, by the logic of his argument one could infer that in order to have personal growth one would have to have knowledge of one's deep desire to dominate others or to destroy life. But this knowledge would be dependent on at least one person P having knowledge of these deep desires and P's knowledge not being dependent on anyone else. In order for P to have self-knowledge of P's deep desire to dominate or destroy, P would have to have a deep desire to dominate or to destroy. Presumably if P had such a desire, P could not be the Christian God. Indeed, this point can be generalized. It would seem that Shutte must deny all theories of human nature that postulate evil, dark and sinister deep desires. If he does not, these can be used to demonstrate the existence of a person that could not be God. Since God, by definition, could not have deep desires that are evil, dark and sinister, He could not have selfknowledge of them. There is another related reason why Shutte must deny that deep, dark and sinister desires are inherent in human nature. In his view personal growth involves not only self-knowledge of our deep desires but an affirmation of them. This, in turn, involves a value judgment that the deep
33 desires inherent in human nature are good. But if some of them are evil, they should not be affirmed. Is there any easy way for Shutte to overcome this problem? Could he admit that there are deep evil desires in human nature and argue that personal growth involves affirmation of only good desires? Perhaps. But this would involve a much more complicated theory of personal growth than the one he has offered, and in any case it would not answer the question posed above: How could God have self-knowledge of such desires? For even if not all deep desires are affirmed, they surely must be known to be responded to appropriately and they can only be known, according to Shutte, through the self-knowledge of a person who is not dependent on others for self-knowledge, one Shutte identifies with God. Thus, in order not to be forced into saying that God has evil desires, Shutte would have to revise his theory still further. He would have to allow that we could have self-knowledge of deep evil desires in a way that is different from the way in which we have self-knowledge of deep good desires. But if we can have knowledge of our evil desires without God's self-knowledge, it is unclear why God's self-knowledge is necessary for our self-knowledge of deep good desires.
Conclusions
The conclusion of Shutte's argument that the Christian God exists does not follow from his premises without additional dubious premises. Furthermore, the first premise of the argument, namely that human persons depend on other persons to develop as persons is an empirical premise that cries out for empirical support that Shutte fails to supply. Alternative schemes of personal development are available but he does not show that they are mistaken. Moreover, Shutte's scheme generates a puzzle about how personal development is ever possible. Finally, the theory of human nature underlying his argument is unsupported. On the other hand, the substitution of more sinister theories of human nature in his scheme would result in the conclusion that the "first cause" of personal development is a being with some attributes that conflict with the attributes of the Christian God and would involve a complete revamping of his theory of personal growth.
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Notes 1. Augustine Shutte, "A New Argument For the Existence of God," Modern Theology 3, (1987): pp. 157-177. 2. Ibid., p. 161. 3. Ibid.,p. 160. 4. Stated in terms of formal logic the argument is this: (1) P --> (x)(Dx --->Ix) (2) Dg (3) P ~ Ig where P = Person growth occurs D = is a deep desire I = is known and affirmed g = the desire for personal growth 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14.
Ibid.,p. 167. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid., p. 162. Ibid., p. 163. Ibid. Ibid.,p. 164. Ibid., p. 171. Ibid., p. 166. Shutte says "as we shall see there are other grounds for believing that a transcendent person is fully developed as a person, possessed of full selfknowledge and fully self-affirming" (p. 166). It is unclear to me whether Shutte has supplied these other grounds but even if he has, it is not obvious that this would show that such a person is God. Shutte must demonstrate that a person who has complete self-knowledge and is fully self-affirming must be all knowing, all powerful, and morally perfect. Unfortunately, he does not seem to see the need of doing so.
