Does Inequality Make God Improbable?

most problems of inequality are man made




On secular outpost Jeff Lowder makes an F inductive argument using the new problem of increased microcephaly to argue for the improbability of God. It really just boils down to saying that God is less likely because if God was moral and loving he would not distribute gifts unequally. The argument is about probability not proof. Children with microcephaly are examples of a larger problem of inequality of distribution of gits. The augment is made by Moti Mizrahi. Lowder is just amplifying the argument.[1]

Lowder statres:

The key point of Mizrahi’s argument, which he credits to an insight of John Rawls, is this:

… natural endowments are undeserved.Now, if natural endowments are undeserved, then the fact that one person is more innately endowed than another is arbitrary from a moral point of view. In that case, if one person has more natural talents or is more talented than another person, then that is an unequal distribution of natural talents. From a moral point of view, it is not fair that one person is taller, healthier, faster, thinner, more intelligent, more beautiful, more agile, and otherwise more naturally endowed than another person. Both did not deserve their shares of natural talents (or lack of natural talents, for that matter). The talented do not deserve to be talented just as the untalented do not deserve to be untalented. More generally, the haves do not deserve to have just the have-nots do not deserve not to have. (p. 6) [2]

First of all I disagree that this has anything to do with morality. There is no "distribution" there is natural evolutionary disposition,All God is doing is letting it ride. There may be certain people who are given gits because they are give the opportunity to serve God in some great way . Not all people could be the leader of the civil rights movement, Not all people were given the gifts of Martin Luther King., It's not unfair or immoral that God raises up a Martin Luther King, not everyone is willing to make the sacrifices that go with the gifts. Since gifts are part of certain aspect of the Christian tradition there is a theology of gifts. Now if God was willing to let the distribution of gifts ride so to speak, letting nature distribute them why would that be unfair. The recipients would not be receiving them out of any kind of special favor but by accident, except in rare cases where more is demanded of the person being given them.

The argument is based upon probability it's not proof. It's about likelihood. A concept of God that posits a loving God who makes unloving universe is less likely to be the case because of the inconstancy. Yet, the probabilistic nature of the argument does not negate the for sound premises I the distribution of gifts is not a moral failing the argument is not sound. That will soon be demonstrated.

Mizrahi frames the natural inequality version :

Now, since moral arbitrariness in the distribution of natural endowments gives rise to unequal distributions, which are unfair because they are undeserved, as when some (e.g., Albert Einstein) get all the cognitive goods, whereas others (e.g., microcephalics) get nothing, the problem is to say how could God—who is supposed to be omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent—allow for this sort of natural inequality. In other words, if God is morally perfect, why is the distribution of natural endowments so unequal? How could an all-good God be so unfair in distributing natural endowments? This is the problem of natural inequality, which is a new evidential (not logical or incompatibility) problem of evil, or so I argue. (pp. 6-7) [3]

I think the issue of microcephalics is is mis-categorized. It's not a matter of gift distribution, Normal endowments are not gits in the conventional sense, it's a matter of impediment acruel. That may seem like splitting hairs but I think it matters. There's a reason why we have to take the risk of nature with everything in life. That is based upon my concept I call soetriological drama. The purpose of creation (according to my theory--speculative only) is so that free moral agents will willingly choose the good. Choosing the good means primarily giving our lives to Christ but it also includes all aspects of being good, This requires a search for truth because of God just announced his presence we would resent it, we only seek to be good when we seek truth and find it ourselves. The most important thing therefore is the viability of the search. If nothing bad every happened to us and we were all equal inabilities we would not seek we would not need to seek truth. We would know God was real and we would resent God's commands. That may seem unrealistic to some but if one just thinks about the attitudes of people how many o us really want to be denied our own way? So the bottom line is we have to play out this search for truth amide a real world which is neutral in terms of God evidence. There are clues but leap of faith is always necessary. Read more about my theory. [4]


He sums up the issue:

But if theism is true, God is neither indifferent nor incapable of distributing natural endowments evenly. God is capable of distributing natural endowments evenly because God is by definition all-powerful. God is interested in the distribution of natural endowments because God is both loving and morally perfect. God’s love for his creatures, as well as his moral perfection, entails that God allows a state of affairs to obtain only if he has a good moral justification for doing so. But, as noted by both Rawls and Mizrahi, natural endowments are not morally justified. For example, there is nothing Michael Phelps did to deserve to be born with the kind of physiology which made his athletic achievements possible, just as there is nothing Nick Vujicic did to deserve to be born with no limbs.

That is not a reason why God should make everyone equal in ability. I can see the problem in abnormality like disease but interments of normal endowments there is no  nature should be Standa clause or why god should equalize all gifts. Natural endowments are a matter of random chance and they have to be to have a neutral world and maintain the search. It's nat a matter of salvation but...


Mizrahi connects it to salvation:

Furthermore, as Mizrahi notes, the lack or minimal presence of natural endowments relating to intellectual ability, such as microcephaly, can prevent people from responding to God appropriately. So the distribution of natural endowments, in some cases, also causes important restrictions on people’s ability to have a relationship with God. Again, blind nature is both indifferent to (and incapable of) taking such factors into account while conducting what Rawls calls the “natural lottery,” but God has no such limitations.[5]

That does not make it a matter of salvation, We do not need to be great theologians to be saved, Anyone can be saved anyone can have a Revelations with God, all relationships do not have to be the same. We are only accountable for the light we are given, We don't have to live up to more than we conceive of. Relationships with God can be extremely simple as long as they are honest, to the best of one's ability. Thinking that salvation is affected by one's intellectual ability makes salvation a meritocracy. Theological no no in Christianity,

God is not rendered less probable because the theory for the argument is wrong,

God wants free moral agents who willingly choose the good to live in amoral universe (one in which they are free to seek the good). Just sticking people in life and directly mandating the search would only result in resentment on the part of the creature. WE have to have free will to truly desire the good (and to love) but having free will means resenting the imposition of other minds.

But the search for good results in internalizing the values of the good then we don't resent God's rules. As Jesus said he who is forgiven much loves much. When we seek the truth and find it ourselves we have no problem with God's laws. But if the world is constructed such that we all know up front God is real then we have no search and we resent the rules.

so we need a neutral world in which one searches for truth

Sources

[1] Jeffery Jay Lowder, "An Evidential Argument from Evil: Natural Inequality," Augst 21,2016. Blog URL: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/secularoutpost/2016/08/21/an-evidential-argument-from-evil-natural-inequality/

[2] Ibid
[3] Ibid


[4] two articles on religious a priori
Soteriological drama: http://religiousapriori.blogspot.com/2011/04/answer-to-theodicy-soteriological-drama.html

12 angry Stereotypes  http://religiousapriori.blogspot.com/2011/04/twelve-angry-sterio-typesanswering-mark.html



[5]the rest of Lowder's argument is as follows:

I find Mizrahi’s paper very convincing, but I think it is also incomplete, since it never actually states the logical form of his evidential argument. But this problem is easily solved. Using the generic structure for F-inductive arguments, this passage (and the paper as a whole) inspire the following F-inductive version of the problem of natural inequality.
Let E = a statement about known facts about natural inequality: the unequal distribution of natural endowments (such as height, health, speed, weight, intelligence, beauty, agility, and so forth).
(1) E is known to be true.
(2) Theism is not much more probable intrinsically than naturalism, i.e., Pr(|T|) is not >! Pr(|N|).
(3) E is much more likely on the assumption that naturalism is true than on the assumption that theism is true, i.e., Pr(E | N) >! Pr(E | T).
So, (4) Other evidence held equal, theism is probably false, i.e., Pr(T | E) < 0.5.
Assessment
Premise (1) is beyond reasonable doubt.
Premise (2) is eminently plausible, for reasons which I have discussed on this blog many times before. (See the recent guest post by Paul Draper for a primer.)
This leaves premise (3). The justification for (3) may be summed up as follows:
On naturalism, E is just what we would expect. If naturalism is true, all animals are the byproducts of unguided evolution by natural selection, which is both indifferent to the distribution of natural endowments and incapable of distributing them fairly. Everything else held equal, on naturalism, we would expect natural endowments to be distributed randomly (such as in the shape of a bell curve)....



This leaves (4), which is the inference drawn from (1)-(3). 4 follows deductively from (1)-(3) as a natural consequence of Bayes’ Theorem.
I conclude that the problem of natural inequality, especially as manifested in individuals with microcephaly or other severe intellectual disabilities which prevent a relationship with God, is strong, prima facie evidence against God’s existence
-

 Jeff Lowder,"F inductive Arguments a New Type of Argument," The Secular Outpost , blog, March 21, 2014

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/secularoutpost/2014/03/21/f-inductive-arguments-a-new-type-of-inductive-argument/  (aacess 8/27/16)

“F-inductive argument”: an argument in which the evidence to be explained favors one explanatory hypothesis over one or more of its rivals, i.e., P(E | H1 & B) > P(E | H2 & B). Explanatory arguments are F-inductive arguments and have the following structure.1. E is known to be true, i.e., Pr(E) is close to 1.2. H1 is not intrinsically much more probable than H2, i.e., Pr(|H1|) is not much greater than Pr(|H2|).3. Pr(E | H2 & B) > Pr(E | H1 & B).4. Other evidence held equal, H1 is probably false, i.e., Pr(H1 | B & E) < 0.5.Good F-inductive arguments show that E is prima facie evidence — that is why (4) begins with the phrase, “Other evidence held equal.” They leave open the possibility that there may be other evidence which favors H1 over H2; indeed, they are compatible with the situation where the total evidence favors H1 over H2.F-inductive arguments are “stronger” than C-inductive arguments insofar as they show E not only adds to the probability of H2, but that E is more probable on the assumption that H2 is true than on the assumption that H1 is true. They are weaker than P-inductive arguments, however, because they don’t show that E is ultima facie evidence — they don’t show that E makes H2 probable.One final point. Although I believe I am the first to give F-inductive argument a name and place within Swinburne’s taxonomy of inductive arguments, the structure for such arguments is not mine. Paul Draper deserves the credit for that.
what may be more instructive is in an argument he makes "a good indiuctive argument for theism"

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/secularoutpost/2014/03/22/a-good-f-inductive-argument-for-theism-based-on-consciousness/

that would bevF inductive argument for theism naturalism. Supposedly naturalism is more inductive of secular thought and so the existence of natural world makes God less probable. But another argument forThwism of the kind would say consciousness makes God more probable because consciousnesses is inconsistent with naturalism.

The standards he's setting are arbitrary. There's no reason to think that nature is not indicative of God. It's a cultural constrict to think that spirit and nature are opposed. The whole problem with his method is that the standardanswers fortheodisy still line up agaisjnt his arguments,