A Response to Philip Goff’s ‘Limited God Hypothesis’
In his latest book Why? The Purpose of the Universe, and in his defence of a heretical form of Christianity, the philosopher Philip Goff makes a case for the ‘limited God hypothesis’. This is the idea that a god with limited abilities best explains what we observe in the universe. The hypothesis, therefore, challenges the common theistic claim that the omni-God exists — a deity that is omnipotent (all-powerful), omnibenevolent (all-loving), omniscient (all-knowing), and omnipresent (everywhere). As Goff explains, the two first traits — omnipotence and omnibenevolence — leave us with the problem of evil: the sheer amount of suffering in the world. If God were all-powerful and perfectly good, then we would expect they would not allow — among many other natural evils — the process of evolution by natural selection, which has subjected creatures to various pains and agonies for millions of years.
However, Goff argues that if God is loving but has limited powers, then the state of affairs as they are, including evolution by natural selection, may have been their best design option. This limited god created the universe but could not intervene (and prevent evil from occurring) thereafter. Thus, we do not live in ‘the best of all possible worlds’ (it is logically possible for a better world to exist) but ‘the best of all manifestable worlds’. Still, why insert God into the picture at all? Does the assumption of a powerful, loving supernatural being not violate Occam’s razor, by adding an unnecessary entity to explain what we observe?
According to Goff, the limited God hypothesis is the most parsimonious explanation available to us. This is because the simplest theory has to account for all the data we observe, and on an atheistic account, he argues we lack an adequate way to account for two phenomena:
One is the fine-tuning of physics for life, the surprising discovery of recent decades that certain numbers in physics are, against incredible odds, just right for the emergence of life. The second is psycho-physical harmony, the improbable alignment between consciousness and behaviour that is presupposed in any evolutionary story of the character of our conscious experience.
Both of these phenomena are often used as arguments for the existence of God. With respect to psycho-physical harmony leading to this conclusion, Goff has argued this is “a bit of an overreaction.” But he believes, at the very least, both the fine-tuning of physics for life and psycho-physical harmony point to teleology, or purpose in the universe. This purpose, as he argues in his latest book, is the development of life and ever-more complex forms of conscious experience (in other words, things of significant value). He calls this the ‘Value-Selection Hypothesis’. In his book, he offers the limited God hypothesis as one possible ‘limited designer’ hypothesis to account for this goal-directedness in the universe (another is the simulation hypothesis). But Goff himself now sides with the limited God hypothesis. As he writes in Aeon:
I now think the evidence points towards a hypothesis that John Stuart Mill took seriously: a good God of limited abilities. This hypothesis is able to account both for the imperfections of our universe — in terms of God’s limited abilities — and for the things about our universe that are improbably good, such as fine-tuning and psycho-physical harmony. God would have liked to make intelligent life in an instant, or by breathing into the dust as we see depicted in Genesis. But the only way God was able to create life was by bringing into existence a universe with the right physics that would eventually evolve intelligent life. God made the best universe they could.
There are different ways to respond to this form of the limited God hypothesis. First, to what extent is God loving? Is it more parsimonious to claim the existence of a god limited in benevolence than the existence of a perfectly good god? Does the former equally explain what we observe in the universe, without invoking the quality of omnibenevolence? Second, it is not clear why God would be limited in their qualities. Goff addresses this response in an interview with Cameron Bertuzzi on the Capturing Christianity YouTube channel (where he discusses his conversion to Christianity). He points out it would be equally mysterious why the omni-God would possess omni-attributes.
So the limits of God may have to remain a mystery, although this may not sit well with many; these limits seem to call for an explanation, and they invite further questions. Is a limited God the sole or ultimate deity, or does a more powerful (or an all-powerful) deity also exist? Perhaps a limited God created our universe but not all of physical reality, which might refer to the multiverse. Our God could be an aspect of a more powerful (or all-powerful) creator, just as our universe may be an aspect of a much vaster physical reality. Such a god would, therefore, lack the attribute of omnipresence. Furthermore, if a greater being created the limited God, then the latter is not the unmoved mover (or prime mover) that started all of creation.
A third way to respond to the limited God hypothesis is to question the assumption that such a god would favour the development of conscious, sentient life. As I mentioned in my interview with the philosopher Clifford Sosis, in relation to Goff’s book:
I’m not sure how I feel yet about some of the arguments — for instance, the idea the universe is fine-tuned because this produces value (i.e. conscious life). Many pessimistic philosophers would disagree with the assumption that the existence of sentience is ‘good’ and better than its non-existence.
I think this brings into focus several potential issues with the assumption of a god who is loving (and perhaps all-loving) but not all-powerful. Did this god have a choice when creating the universe or setting the physical constants (e.g. the mass of an electron and the strength of the four fundamental forces: gravity, the weak force, electromagnetism, and the strong force)? Under Goff’s assumption, the limited God includes the ability to set the constants. But this is not a value-neutral choice. Goff also believes this god is loving, and this god tuned the constants with a purpose in mind: the creation of conscious life. This is a value-driven choice. We could also say, given God’s benevolence or omnibenevolence and (I presume) their power to tune the constants differently, this is a moral choice.
I think it is questionable that a good or omnibenevolent god would decide that fine-tuning the universe for life is morally preferable to not doing so. As the arch-pessimist philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer wrote in Studies in Pessimism (1890), “Again, you may look upon life as an unprofitable episode, disturbing the blessed calm of non-existence.” Similarly, he opined in the same work, in antinatalist fashion, “If children were brought into the world by an act of pure reason alone, would the human race continue to exist? Would not a man rather have so much sympathy with the coming generation as to spare it the burden of existence, or at any rate not take it upon himself to impose that burden upon it in cold blood?”
One can, of course, challenge Schoepnahuer’s pessimism (as Nietzsche did), but he does express a belief that other philosophers hold, namely, that coming into existence is a harm. We might not even need to judge that life’s harms outweigh its benefits. Suffering is inevitable, so other philosophers have argued that imposing this condition onto others without their consent is what is morally unjustified. Another moral quandary is the idea that the suffering of wildlife entailed by evolution is a fair price to pay for the existence of life in general, or that miserable human lives are tolerable if they enable the flourishing of other human lives. In any case, the limited God hypothesis presupposes that God, according to their moral sense, decided it better to create a universe that could sustain life rather than one that cannot. How do we know that an omnibenevolent god, or a god whose love is limited, would not hold the same sentiment as Schopenhauer? For Schopenhauer, and other pessimistic and antinatalist philosophers, the truly compassionate stance is to envision a universe free of sentient life, not one teeming with it.
Perhaps a truly loving god would be a negative utilitarian who prioritises the prevention and minimisation of suffering over the creation and maximisation of happiness. In this case, the universe would be tuned in a way that prevents, or at least limits, the development of conscious life. There are undoubtedly issues with negative utilitarianism, including whether it is superior to other normative ethical theories. However, I bring it up to show how the limited God hypothesis rests on an assumption that is not self-evident: the kind of morality and ethical decision-making we expect this limited god to exhibit. It is not obvious or incontrovertible to assume that a loving but limited creator would decide to create a universe hospitable to sentient life.
I imagine, however, there might be some counterarguments to this objection I raise. To steelman Goff’s limited God hypothesis, we could suppose that this god is also limited in knowledge; it knows many things, but not everything, including the trajectory of the universe. So perhaps God knew that conscious life could emerge based on the physical constants they set, but they could not foresee that so much suffering would ensue, as entailed by evolution by natural selection. Perhaps God desired and envisioned the development of valuable conscious experiences but not the amount of suffering that we now observe.
On the other hand, this might not be a strong counterargument: sentience, in and of itself, involves the possibility of suffering, including great suffering. A limited God would have to be quite naive, and very limited in knowledge, to not consider the risk of extreme suffering resulting from the creation of sentient life. This counterargument also does not do away with the possibility of a loving god being a negative utilitarian. So I think supporters of the limited God hypothesis are still left with the challenge of defending the moral superiority of a being that fine-tunes the universe for conscious life.
Originally published at https://www.samwoolfe.com on October 28, 2024.
