The Praxeological Argument

(From some writings back in 2013)

The praxeological argument against God´s existence. I stumbled upon this idea first by way if an article by the conservative Catholic newspaper The Remnant, called Fury in the Cult of Rothbard which asked whether Austro-Libertatianism which is very popular among certain high profile traditionalist Catholics like Tom Woods and Lew Rockwell is compatible with traditional Catholic ethics regarding social responsibility. The answer was a clear no: a belief in the absolute moral authority of the individual is not reconcilable with social responsibility. There was one part of the article which intrigued me since the major point was already obvious before I read it which related to the overall theme of why libertarianism is not compatible with Catholic social teaching, but did so in a very theologically profound way.

̈Mises’s “praxeology,” a kooky, mechanistic reduction of human action to the relief of “uneasiness” according to a personal subjective value scale of unsatisfied wants and needs, led him (quite logically under his premise) to deny the existence of God. As Mises would have it, an almighty God cannot exist, for such a being would experience no “uneasiness” and thus no impulse to act. (Cf. TCTL , pp. 57-59) ̈

The above quote refers to a passage from the book The Church and the Libertarian published by the folks who bring you The Remnant in the fourth chapter discussing Murray Rothbard ́s guru Ludwig Von Mises ́s hatred of Christianity as a result of his free market views. The paraphrase of the book in the article made a claim about the inherent atheistic or anti-christian parts of his philosophy which changed my theological views forever. The article said that since Mises claimed that a rational being cannot act without a reason, then this means that a perfect being, God, would being perfect have no reason to act and therefore wouldn ́t exist or interfere with the world. Upon reading this I was still open to theistic views and shelved it in my thoughts as interesting but conflicting with the value set I was trying to hold. 

It wasn ́t until later when I started to regain my natural skepticism that I began going over arguments against God again. I started arguing with creationist Republicans, first bringing it up to Karen in a series of texts and an intense facebook argument with that bitch who used to work at WPR whatserface, and brought it up for the first time publicly at the worldview meeting. In the book we were reading, How Now Shall We Live? there was a passage which really made me mad. It had a quote from Oliver Wendell Holmes claiming that man is no more important than a rock or something, to which I objected that not all non religious folks believe. The book was arguing that rationality cannot exist in a world without God. I then unveiled my argument that God cannot be the origin of order in the universe because He would have no reason to create it being all perfect, having all wants fulfilled. I can ́t remember exactly when but before or after this I read on a wikipedia page about arguments against the existence of God on the deductive arguments called the No Reason argument which laid out the praxeological argument based of Mises ́s Human Action. It also mentioned the book God ́s Debris by Scott Adams which takes the exact same ideas of Mises and argues the opposite, that there is a God but that it is not a theistic personal kind of God that created the world. God became the world by destroying itself and so is one with the world.

̈Praxeology revolves around the 'axiom of action,' which serves as the foundation of a rationalist epistemology. The axiom simply states that conscious beings display intentional behavior. It's a fundamental axiom because any attempt to refute it is, in fact, a display of intentional behavior and is therefore self-contradictory. Implied by this axiom is the realization that any action (or intentional inaction) by a conscious being is pursued in an attempt to achieve a goal, and this goal must necessarily be intended to improve things for the actor, or else he would not have chosen such an action (or inaction). That is, every action by a conscious, thinking being is intended to move the being from a less satisfactory to a more satisfactory state.
So what happens when we apply this irrefutable axiom to the idea of a god? Well, monotheistic religions often define their deity, in part, as a perfect being, not lacking in any way. They also claim their deity created reality, and that ' ̃he' created it specifically for the purpose of subsequently creating us mortals.
Interesting.

Perhaps you see the conundrum now. If their god is perfect, then there (by definition) cannot be a state more preferable to him than the one in which he finds himself. If the god was in a less than preferable state, then he would not be perfect in that respect. In fact, a perfect being could not sensibly take any action at all. Any action such a being might take would necessarily be random, thoughtless, non-goal-directed. So it seems that theists are left with two options: either a perfect being created reality but did so entirely by accident, or their god is not so perfect after all (perhaps just a really advanced alien). 

Since it appears that we necessitate a creator, the creator must have had a reason to make us, but a perfect being would have to destroy itself and deny its power to make us. We are then God, the highest part of God which is reason.and are developed over time as part of a process of God realizing its true power and trying to reconcile its power while maintaining a world of limits to allow for free will. This is presented in the Scott Adams (of Dilbert fame) book God´s Debris, which is really an old school philosophical dialogue. The perspective presented is Pan-Deism, God created the universe by becoming the universe. Adams does not argue that Pan-deism is the truth but that it sounds the most logical. Adam´s point is that the simplest explanation, Occam ́s Razor, is not really the most accurate, but sounds the most convincing because humans have such a limited understanding of the world and can only think of delusions, and hold those which are most useful. He subscribes to linguist George Lakoff ́s view that there is no such thing as value free knowledge, and that everything we think we know is framed in what we feel is right. He wants to show us how we can believe in crazy, possibly false ideas like this because they fit our pre-conceived notions of what reality is.

I don´t think the praxeological argument is really an argument against god or gods, but an argument against a certain kind of god(s). It is definitely opposed to Abrahamic theism of an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent creator god who intervenes in the world. Now when I came across God´s Debris and Pan-Deism, I thought it was an ingenious solution. I still basically accepted the cosmological argument, that the universe requires a first cause which is uncaused itself in space and time. This all-powerful being purposely committing suicide and becoming the finite world (which is actually infinite as a whole but finite in its particulars) seemed to reconcile a need for a creator god (deism) having the motivation to do so and not interfering in creation.