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A Response to the Modal Ontological Argument from Divine Justice

April 7, 2014 by  
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Snake Stomp

Patrick Speckamp‎

I’d like to submit a response to your Modal Ontological Argument from Divine Justice, which you published in article III of your Tractatus (https://newapologetics.com/the-tractatus). Although it seems to be a stringent argument for the existence of a justice-making concept I’d like to point out some possible weaknesses. Please feel free to correct me on any misreading of the argument:

 

The first thing I’d like to mention is that this argument only seems to establish the necessity of a justice-making power. It doesn’t comment at all on the character and properties of this justice-making power, except for the conclusion that it is a justice-making power. How can we jump to the conclusion that this power is indeed a god? Why not call it the concept of justice? It will be even more difficult to prove that this power is in fact the Catholic god (which, I know, you announced you would be doing in a later article).

 

Furthermore, is it not the case that we can read this argument in reverse? Meaning, for any instance of justice, there is a logically possible situation in which an unjust state of affairs replaces the just one (Axiom 2 in reverse). Therefore: 2. The property of “being situationally necessary” is not compatible with the property “being a just situation.” [From Axiom 2]; 3. The property of “being situationally necessary” is compatible with “not being a just situation” [from Axiom 1 and premise 2]; 4. If the property of “being situationally necessary” is compatible with “not being a just situation”, then the property of “not being a just situation” is situationally necessary. [from Axiom 3 and premise 3]; 5. The property of “not being a just situation” is situationally necessary. [from 3 and 4 modus ponens]

 

Basically, saying that for any unjust situation there is a possible just situation as an alternative, is precisely as valid as the same claim in reverse. Consequently, using the same logic, we can posit that an injustice-making power necessarily exists.

 
New Apologetics
Thank you for taking the time to critique the argument in terms of reason alone. Your degree of rationality and deliberate suspension of bias is very rare in our day, and we invite others to observe and follow your good example.

You wrote:
The first thing I’d like to mention is that this argument only seems to establish the necessity of a justice-making power. It doesn’t comment at all on the character and properties of this justice-making power, except for the conclusion that it is a justice-making power. How can we jump to the conclusion that this power is indeed a god?

We reply:
The process of deductive inference by which we can conclude that the justice-making power has the classically-conceived divine attributes is a complex one, but seems quite solid. We will go into it in a separate thread and we will subject our inferences to your criticism.
We will dedicate this thread primarily to examining your counterexample to the soundness of the proof, but will address your other concerns in a preliminary way.

You wrote:
Why not call it the concept of justice?

We reply:
We deny that the justice-making power is the concept of justice because an abstraction does not (and cannot) have self-initiated causal efficacy. Whatever the justice-making power is, it has to have the *power* to take an unjust situation and transform it into a just one. This is an action which requires power, intelligence, correct moral judgment, and correct moral action. Consider, for example, the contradiction of asserting that the justice-making power is *not* a power, or that it is a blind force that does not know the difference between justice and injustice. What if the justice making power were *itself* unjust? But how could that be if not by accounting the rightness of its actions, and if it has done something unjust, then it is surely not a power which has made every situation perfectly just. Therefore we know that the justice-making power is perfectly good, and gives no approval to any injustice in any degree.

You wrote:
It will be even more difficult to prove that this power is in fact the Catholic god (which, I know, you announced you would be doing in a later article). 

We reply:
It is actually quite easy, though the proof requires a sustained reasoning effort. The criteria for changing an unjust situation into a just one are quite extreme. Literally every injustice must be made well, and this includes irrevocably past injustices as well as present and future ones. The “wellness” accomplished must be accomplished without the standard of justice being changed, and must not permit of any deprivation of a due good in any measure. At the face of it, it seems logically impossible to right a wrong to such an exacting degree, but there *is* a coherent way of conceiving of how it could be done. The way is only through an event that has the properties of the redemption as described in the teaching of the Catholic Church. All other proposed methods can be ruled out a priori. We will explain this radical statement at length according to the degree of your interest. Your questions will be helpful in the development of the next set of Tractatus articles. 

We now go on to examine the counterexample proffered to infirm the proof…

 

New Apologetics


You wrote: Furthermore, is it not the case that we can read this argument in reverse? Meaning, for any instance of justice, there is a logically possible situation in which an unjust state of affairs replaces the just one (Axiom 2 in reverse).

We reply:

Forgive the length of the response, but we wanted to explore the logic of your objection thoroughly…

We can read the argument in reverse only if we deny certain premises. Our response to your critique is to say that the “new” premises would be both counterintuitive and provably false. Because the original premises are coherent and plausible, but their negations are not, we conclude that the original premises stand, and the rest of the proof follows necessarily. 

Let’s see whether or not we’re just making up nonsense:

You wrote
“Therefore: 
2. The property of “being situationally necessary” is not compatible with the property “being a just situation.” [From Axiom 2]; 

3. The property of “being situationally necessary” is compatible with “not being a just situation” [from Axiom 1 and premise 2]; 

4. If the property of “being situationally necessary” is compatible with “not being a just situation”, then the property of “not being a just situation” is situationally necessary. [from Axiom 3 and premise 3]; 

5. The property of “not being a just situation” is situationally necessary. [from 3 and 4 modus ponens]”

We reply:
The above inferences are all valid, but they require that we deny Axiom 2 as it was originally stated. Axiom 2 reads: “No unjust situation can be logically necessary.” Now, it seems intuitively that the negation is equally plausible (otherwise, why would you have made your objection?). And, of course, freedom of speech permits you to deny Axiom 2. But let’s remember that from Axiom 1 we know that there is no way that the property of “being situationally necessary” can be incompatible with *both* “being a just situation” and “not being a just situation.” It has to be compatible with one property or the other. Now, as the “devil’s advocate,” your aim is to argue that it is not compatible with “being a just situation.” And once one has made that commitment, then it follows that literally every situation is unconditionally unjust: Not only do we contingently *happen* to be in an unjust situation, but the very concept of “being a just situation” is a *meaningless* concept because of its logical impossibility.

So, now that we have that down, we can look again at the original argument in which there is a crucial premise which leads us to the conclusion of a necessary justice-making power:

Premise 7 is integral to the proof:

7) It is not the case that there is no sense to the concept of injustice.

If one were to deny premise 7, then the proof fails. However, speaking plainly, we all know quite well that there is a sense to *both* the concept of justice and the concept of injustice. Almost everyone (especially the atheists, to their credit) believe that there is something wrong with the world by at least their standard of “wrong.”

Now, here’s where we slay the first dragon (there are two dragons in total):

The parody proof you’ve brought forward, while very smart, requires, as we argued above, a commitment to the notion that there is no sense to the concept of justice. The original proof does not entail any commitment to the denial of the coherence of *either* the concept of justice or injustice. Both can be considered coherent, and that’s good because both are coherent.
New Apologetics

The second dragon to be slain is this:

A critic may come back and say that there is a sense to both the concepts of justice and injustice, but that in the same way that we supposedly get away with saying “The action of this (justice-making) power ‘redeems’ and transforms unjust situations reconciling them to perfect justice.” The critic says that the injustice-making power does the same thing, viz., it afflicts everything broadly, does so with matchless ill will, and that it happens by logical *necessity*. There are at least four problems with that:

1) If we believe that the hope within ourselves for justice is worth anything at all, then we have already rejected the “necessary injustice-making power.” You have hope, otherwise you would not be able to argue so well. Those who have lost all hope do not appeal to anything outside of themselves, nor can they understand what is being said when someone else does.

2) The necessary injustice making power has a problem with never being able to do enough. What do we mean? Consider that it is coherent to say that the mission of a necessary justice-making power is possibly accomplished in the act of making all things well. [Let’s temporarily suspend judgment on the prima facie impossibility of this option (just for the sake of argument) until we have opportunity for explaining the logic of the redemption.] In contrast, the mission of a necessary injustice-making power is not accomplished by making things just a little bit drab, but must not be considered accomplished until all things are maximally ruined. However, maximal ruination is not a coherent concept because it is always possible to find *some* surviving good which has not been destroyed. Even the beauty of math and logic would bespeak of justice, and this power could not touch those. Notwithstanding their invincibility, the only indicator of the success of a necessary injustice-making power is sheer annihilation of all good. But we exist, and experience some good, we dialogue in terms of elegant and beautiful logic, and have a resilient love of justice.

3) For any property or its complement, one of them is more metaphysically basic than the other. For example, “being a non-dog” is more metaphysically basic than “being a dog.” If there are dogs, they depend on some non-dog reality. But non-dog reality, as such, does not require the reality of dogs. The same goes for any property of its complement. Test it out, and see if there is a counterexample. One is always more metaphysically basic than the other. Consider, now, that the property of “being a just situation” does not rely metaphysically on the property of “not being a just situation” Rather, the opposite is true. Things had to be *right* before they went wrong. There had to be a standard before things deviated from the standard. Simply looking at the nature of the concepts is enough to show this: “in-justice” is a modification of the logically (and metaphysically) prior concept of justice.

4) It is possible to describe a perfect theodicy and redemption theory in which it can be coherently explained how every phenomenon of injustice is reconciled to a standard of perfect justice. But if this is so, then we know that it is logically possible that a justice-making power is capable of countering any injustice whatsoever. [We know that we have not expressed this perfect theodicy or redemption theory in this response, but our point is that **if** it can be expressed, then it defeats the necessity that there is a kind of injustice that cannot be countered. So, if it is possible to redeem the world completely, then it is **necessarily** redeemed. This will be an interesting discussion, and we hope you will question us thoroughly.

You wrote:
Basically, saying that for any unjust situation there is a possible just situation as an alternative, is precisely as valid as the same claim in reverse. Consequently, using the same logic, we can posit that an injustice-making power necessarily exists.

We reply:
If there is a coherent theodicy and redemption theory (regardless of whether they are shown to be true beyond the non-contradictory imagining of them), then the fact of their coherence shows the *possibility* of a justice-making power. The possibility of a justice-making power shows the non-necessity of an injustice making power. The non-necessity of an injustice making power entails the unsoundness of your parody argument, and therefore the original argument stands. 

Thank you for the awesome rebuttal. Please keep the questions coming. We’ll try to be faster in writing our responses.
Patrick Speckamp
Thanks for the credit and thanks for taking the time to reply at such length. I think you have done a good job at refuting my objection. What it boils down to, I think, is that we are all in agreement that justice as a concept is not meaningless. If it were, we wouldn’t even know about it and be able to debate it. I’d still like to challenge you on the question of how to arrive at the conclusion of the Catholic God and the inference that his redemption on the cross must be the instance at which ultimate justice was restored. Another problem springs to mind: It ties in with Plato’s Eutyphron Dilemma. Let’s grant the existence of the ultimate just being. Is it the ultimate just being because it makes the rules of justice or because the rules it makes are perfectly just? If the rules of justice spring from this being, what makes us so sure they are just? If it relies on an external standard of justice, do we need the being to establish this standard?
New Apologetics
Thanks for your patience in awaiting our response.

You wrote:
Thanks for the credit and thanks for taking the time to reply at such length. I think you have done a good job at refuting my objection. What it boils down to, I think, is that we are all in agreement that justice as a concept is not meaningless. If it were, we wouldn’t even know about it and be able to debate it. 

We reply:
We are grateful to you for your commitment to the truth. 

You wrote:
I’d still like to challenge you on the question of how to arrive at the conclusion of the Catholic God and the inference that his redemption on the cross must be the instance at which ultimate justice was restored.

We reply:
This is a very rich area of inquiry. The logic is complex, but it seems to follow cleanly from what has already been established in the Article III proof. Please start a new thread for this, as the discussion will probably become lengthy.

You wrote:
Another problem springs to mind: It ties in with Plato’s Eutyphron Dilemma. Let’s grant the existence of the ultimate just being. Is it the ultimate just being because it makes the rules of justice or because the rules it makes are perfectly just? 

We reply:
Neither. The being creates persons and simply wills their well-being (i.e. their happiness). Justice is more about the ultimate “party” than a system of rules. If we are well-satisfied, then he is well-satisfied. Created persons have a definite nature, and the objective rules of justice pertain to the fulfillment of needs and desires vis-à-vis the nature of the persons in question. There is a lot to say here. Ask whatever you want.

You wrote:
If the rules of justice spring from this being, what makes us so sure they are just? 

We reply:
The standard is based on how a perfect host evaluates the party he’s throwing. His “glory” is assured in making sure that it isn’t a drag for anyone. The demands get pretty exacting when you carry this simple standard far enough.

You wrote:
If it relies on an external standard of justice, do we need the being to establish this standard?

We reply:
He gives us our nature. We are a capacity for love and joy. The meaning of life, according to God, is “to have a good time.” Anything diminishing the simplicity of that purpose is the essence of injustice, and it is what God is against. Through the redemption, he’s made a way to make that happiness possible again.
Patrick Speckamp
Thank you for commenting. While I’m waiting on your response on my post about the intellegibility of the Catholic philosophy for the common person I’d like to follow up on some things you said in this thread. You said a just being only creates persons and subsequently wills for them to have the ultimate party. So far so good, I sympathize with such a being regardless of its existence. Now, you say this party is characterized by it being a just party, meaning all participants treat each other justly or at least will partake in ultimate justice after the party is over. If, however, the objective rules of justice need to be established vis-a-vis the party-goer, how can they be objective. Certainly, there is a great overlap in the understanding of justice in most societies. However, when it comes to the nitty-gritty, I would presume my understanding of justice will vary in aspects that are still part of public debate. To give you an example, I’ll cite the much-debated issue of contraception. In my understanding the Catholic Church has a very definite answer to the use of contraceptives, i.e. since its use is morally unacceptable from a Catholic viewpoint it is apparently better to spread AIDS in regions like Africa than to consider the use of condoms. To me, this doesn’t really seem like a just stance being promoted but rather a great injustice that takes no heed of this vis-a-vis assessment of people involved in the party.

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