Monthly Archives: July 2019

Silver-Bullet Arguments Against Christianity

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Do you remember the series of posts titled, “25 Reasons We Don’t Live in a World with a God”? I had been challenged by a Christian to characterize the evidence he would need to provide to show that God existed. After the typical unfruitful conversation, I realized that I had underestimated what I would need.

For starters, I would need a crowdsourced revelation of God. This is orders of magnitude more than any religious apologist can provide, but it’s still not enough. Non-God explanations for this apparent revelation are still more plausible—for example, that aliens are tricking us. (Imagine taking our technology just 200 years into the past to overawe the populace, rather like Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. Now imagine aliens a thousand years more advanced than us. Or a million years.)

I realized that I couldn’t accept that God exists given certain facts in our world. Our world looks like a world without the supernatural, and I’d need the apologist to first change those fundamental facts about our world. That is, show me that I don’t live in the world I’m living in. Only then I could consider his arguments.

For example, some Christians want the government to help support their religion with Creationism in science class or prayers before the city council meeting. If God existed, Christians wouldn’t do this, because God and his demands/needs would be obvious.

For example, there are natural disasters. If God existed, the actions of his world wouldn’t be so destructive.

For example, the Bible story keeps rebooting. If God existed, the Bible would be unambiguous, noncontradictory, and simple.

Thirteen posts later, I realized a couple of things. First, that getting to 25 reasons wasn’t that hard. I have notes for dozens more. And second, I realized that the category I was exploring was a little confusing.

Reboot

I want to relabel these arguments “silver-bullet arguments.”* Silver bullets were thought to have magical powers and be able to kill supernatural creatures like werewolves that were invulnerable to other weapons. The idea is that a single one of these arguments should be enough to defeat Christianity’s supernatural claims.

End of story, game over, mic drop.

How this works in practice

The way debates often work is that the Christian apologist offers a Christian argument they find compelling. Then the atheist points out flaws in that argument, and the Christian responds as best they can (often confusing a rebuttal with an effective rebuttal) and then offers another. The Christian is typically trying to make a cumulative case. They don’t claim that any of their arguments by itself will be enough. Rather, they hope that each provokes a “Hmm, I hadn’t thought of that” reaction that will eventually create enough evidence to tip the scale in their favor.

The atheist’s position is different. We do have single arguments that should shut down the debate, lots of them. The Christian might want to return to their game plan of gradually adding weight to their side of the balance (in their mind, anyway), but by cooperating, the atheist lets them off the hook. The atheist is entitled to continue hammering on just the one argument, which can’t be left standing if the Christian is to claim any reasonable victory.

It’s these silver-bullet arguments that I want to highlight. I think recasting these arguments this way will have several benefits.

  • “Silver-bullet arguments” is easier to understand that the God World argument.
  • There will be just one argument per post, with the argument name in the title (instead of “Part 14,” for example), which will make it more obvious to readers what the post is about.
  • The Dark Lord to whom I pledge allegiance (I speak of Google, of course) will more clearly understand what each post is about if each sticks to just one argument.

What’s not a silver-bullet argument

Lots of topics that I like to talk about won’t be silver-bullet arguments: a rebuttal to a Christian apologetic argument, commentary on social or civil issues (same-sex marriage, abortion, church/state separation), stupid things Christian leaders say, how the brain works (or doesn’t), and so on.

Silver-bullet arguments must be (1) pro-atheism arguments that (2) are broad enough that Christianity as it is understood by most Christians can’t coexist with it.

Christian response

I’m certain that pretty much zero Christians will agree that any of these are indeed silver-bullet arguments, but I can’t be constrained by them. I think I’m much closer to being an objective observer than they are. I’ll do my best to be fair as I invite Christians to point out errors in the arguments or loopholes in which the Christian god could still exist. Of course, I encourage the same of atheist readers.

Are there silver-bullet Christian arguments as well? Bring those up as well.

I apologize for the long introduction, but with that in place, we can continue our list of arguments.

On to part 26.

As was said of the Puritans,
they love religious liberty so much
that they want to keep it all to themselves.
— Freedom From Religion Foundation

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Appendix: Silver-bullet arguments so far

  1. Because we’ve seen what Christian society looks like
  2. Because religious beliefs reflect culture
  3. Because God needs praise and worship
  4. Because there’s a map of world religions
  5. Because nothing distinguishes those who follow god from everyone else
  6. Because televangelists make clear that prayer doesn’t work
  7. Because Christians want help from the government
  8. Because of unnecessary physical pain
  9. Because God gets credit for good things, but he’s never blamed for bad things
  10. Because the universe doesn’t look like it exists with mankind in mind
  11. Because God is absent from where we’d expect him
  12. Because physics rules out the soul or the afterlife
  13. Because “Christianity answers life’s Big Questions!” is irrelevant
  14. Because not even Christians take their religion seriously
  15. Because there’s a book called The Big Book of Bible Difficulties
  16. Because Christianity can’t be derived from first principles
  17. Because theism has no method to decide truth
  18. Because there are natural disasters
  19. Because the “best” Christian arguments are deist arguments
  20. Because the Bible story keeps rebooting
  21. Because doctrinal statements exist
  22. Because prayer doesn’t work
  23. Because of Shermer’s Law
  24. Because Christianity evolves
  25. Because God is hidden

Image from Mitya Ivanov, CC license
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Top 10 Most Common Atheist Arguments—Do They Fail? (3 of 4)

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Let’s continue with our critique of Eric Hyde’s analysis of atheist arguments, “Top 10 Most Common Atheist Arguments, and Why They Fail.” Begin with part 1 here.

“5. Christianity arose from an ancient and ignorant people who didn’t have science.”

Hyde lampoons any atheist who thinks the ancients didn’t understand where babies come from.

The virgin birth of Christ was profound and of paramount concern to the ancients precisely because they understood that conception was impossible without intercourse.

The Old Testament prophecy of the virgin birth in Isaiah 7 is about neither a virgin birth nor a prophesied messiah. The Jesus birth narratives in Matthew and Luke are simply wrong when they claim otherwise.

Hyde continues:

The claim that Christianity was viable in the ancient world because it was endorsed by widespread ignorance is a profoundly ignorant idea. Christianity arose in one of the most highly advanced civilizations in human history.

The Roman Empire in the first century was impressive for the time, but it preceded modern science by about 1800 years. The public (if we’re talking about the spread of religion, we’re talking about ordinary people, not just scholars) filled in knowledge gaps with superstition because there was nothing better. The Bible records some of this superstition such as Jacob influencing the appearance of newborn animals by what the parents saw when they mated (Genesis 30:37–9). Or the six-day creation story. Or the Flood. Pseudoscience and supernatural belief fare pretty well without competition from science.

And why are we even talking about the Roman Empire? Superstition, supernaturalism, magical thinking, and ignorance of science thrive in our own day! Don’t believe me? Walk down the homeopathic aisle at the store or read the astrology section of the paper.

The human brain is impressive, but it’s susceptible to lots of nutty thinking.

“6. Christians only believe in Christianity because they were born in a Christian culture. If they’d been born in India they would have been Hindu instead.”

This argument is appealing because it pretends to wholly dismiss people’s reasoning capabilities based on their environmental influences in childhood. The idea is that people in general are so intellectually near-sighted that they can’t see past their own upbringing, which, it would follow, would be an equally condemning commentary on atheism. But, this is a spurious claim.

If you say that religion is not due to indoctrination, let’s perform a thought experiment. Suppose we categorized religion as an adult activity like voting, driving, or smoking—activities that are acceptable but which one must be old enough to handle responsibly. Young adults would opt in to Christianity at a tiny rate. Without new members, Christianity would vanish within a few generations.

You might well reply that 18-year-olds are set in their ways and won’t accept the truth then. But what kind of “truth” must be force-fed into someone before their intellectual defenses are mature? (More here.)

You might argue that adults can adopt a new religion for intellectual reasons. Could this inflow make up the difference? A recent Pew Research study estimates that less than one percent of believers switch in, with the rest keeping the religion of their upbringing. Your atheist strawman says that “Christians only believe” because they mirror their environment. That’s not what I’m saying, but it’s close.

Why are some fundamentalist Christians so concerned that their kids’ going to college will shake their faith? If the evidence supports Christianity, then more education and sharper analytic skills can only enhance the Christian argument. Their concern is well placed, which doesn’t say much about the evidence backing up Christian claims.

You imagine that people “are so intellectually near-sighted that they can’t see past their own upbringing” is a weak argument, but how else do you explain the nearly 100% hold Islam has in many countries? If a baby born in Pakistan will almost surely grow up to be a Muslim and one born in a Hindu community in India will almost surely grow up to be a Hindu, won’t many babies grow up to be Christian for no more profound reason than they’re mirroring their environment as well?

“7. The gospel doesn’t make sense: God was mad at mankind because of sin so he decided to torture and kill his own Son so that he could appease his own pathological anger. God is the weirdo, not me.”

Hyde says that this is an effective argument against some Protestants, and I agree. But his particular flavor of Christianity sees the logic of the crucifixion differently.

The Father sacrificed His own Son in order to destroy death with His life; not to assuage His wrath, but to heal; not to protect mankind from His fury, but to unite mankind to His love.

Uh, okay. It’s your religion, so you can imagine whatever you want and not bother providing evidence or even logic to support it. You might want to ask yourself why God’s message is so ambiguous that different denominations have very different interpretations.

And you’re still stuck with the question of how much of a sacrifice it was when Jesus popped back into existence a day and a half later. Or why Yahweh could ever demand a human sacrifice in the first place, as if he were stuck back in the Bronze Age.

If you’re saying that this makes some kind of literary sense, I can understand it better. For example, the Superman story is boring if he can effortlessly achieve every goal. Solution: make it a fairer fight by adding cunning adversaries and kryptonite to the mix. And if God really is like Superman without any weakness or equally matched enemies, there wouldn’t have been a problem for Jesus to fix in the first place. Or, if there were, God could’ve just fixed it with magic.

It’s your story, just don’t expect it to be believable to an objective observer.

Concluded in part 4.

In the age of information, ignorance is a choice.
— Donny Miller

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(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 7/1/15.)

Image from Caden Crawford, CC license

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The “Consensus of New Testament Scholars” Isn’t What You Think

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When New Testament scholars speak, especially when delivering the consensus of their field, it might be hard for a lay person like me to do anything but accept it. The consensus of these scholars says that Jesus was a historical person, that the tomb was empty, that the experience turned the disciples from cowards into bold proclaimers of the new faith, and so on. These scholars are the experts, and we’re novices.

I’d like to recommend a very different response. I argue that many of these scholars play no part in the consensus of New Testament or biblical scholars because they have disqualified themselves. William Lane Craig, Frank Turek, every professor at Biola—indeed every professor at most other Christian colleges, and more—they’re all disqualified.

Evangelical response to the Jesus Seminar

Let’s start with an attack in the other direction, an objection to the Jesus Seminar by Christian apologist William Lane Craig. The Jesus Seminar was a group of Christian scholars and laypeople who reevaluated the sayings of Jesus from a skeptical viewpoint. Craig said:

Of the 74 [Jesus Seminar fellows] listed in [their] publication The Five Gospels, only 14 would be leading figures in the field of New Testament studies. More than half are basically unknowns, who have published only two or three articles. Eighteen of the fellows have published nothing at all in New Testament studies. Most have relatively undistinguished academic positions, for example, teaching at a community college.

This is a straightforward attack on the Seminar based on their small numbers, lack of credentials, and lack of prestige. Unsurprisingly, Craig thinks that his position is stronger on every point: he represents the group with the big numbers, the complete credentials, and the substantial prestige.

Hold that thought.

The problem of doctrinal statements

Christian colleges or organizations often require that faculty and staff commit to doctrinal statements (also called “faith statements”). Here’s an example. Biola’s Articles of Faith say, in part, “The Scriptures . . . are without error or misstatement in their moral and spiritual teaching and record of historical facts. They are without error or defect of any kind.”

(I’ve written several times about doctrinal statements: here and here.)

The problem with a Bible scholar signing a doctrinal statement is that they have straightjacketed themselves to only reach conclusions about Christianity that are in accord with that statement. Their conclusions in their articles or books are predetermined before they begin their research. For example, if the available evidence points to Jesus not being born of a virgin, they must reject that conclusion because the doctrinal statement says otherwise.

Or see this from the other end: suppose a Biola professor writes a paper that concludes that Jesus was born of a virgin. I can’t simply dismiss the argument, and the argument might be informative, but I have no guarantee that this article weighed the data objectively rather than cherry picking it. This scholar has no inherent reputation, and I’m obliged to evaluate the argument myself.

Contrast that with a historian from Princeton or a cosmologist from CalTech or a physicist from MIT. Here, I don’t have to critique their papers as if I were a member of their discipline but, because I trust their institutions, I can accept those scholars’ conclusions with some confidence that their research was sound.

Where does this leave us?

Let’s return to the title of this post, which referred to the consensus of New Testament scholars. That a claim is the consensus view is typically used to argue that it is a settled position, so we should take it as a given and move forward.

Let me respond by first saying that I always do that with the scientific consensus. Second, there is no religious consensus. The religions of the world can’t even agree on how many gods there are, what their names are, or how to placate them. Every religion is a minority view, and the majority thinks they’re wrong.

And third, if it is to mean anything useful, “the consensus of New Testament scholars” must refer to a set of scholars that are not bound by a doctrinal statement. None of them. Throwing in any scholars who are bound by doctrinal statement—that is, who are obliged what to think and have publicly declared that they won’t honestly follow the evidence—contaminates the set.

Let’s return to William Lane Craig’s portrayal of the Jesus Seminar as a small group with unimpressive credentials and little prestige. Craig might want to rethink his dismissive characterization when he can’t take part in an objective consensus in his own field.

The rest of us should insist that any claimed consensus comes from a group of scholars unbound by doctrinal statements and able to objectively follow the evidence where it leads.

The fools says in his heart there is no god,
but the wise man shouts it from the rooftops.
— seen on internet

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Image from Wikimedia, public domain
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Top 10 Most Common Atheist Arguments—Do They Fail? (2 of 4)

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Let’s continue with our critique of Eric Hyde’s analysis of atheist arguments, “Top 10 Most Common Atheist Arguments, and Why They Fail.” (Begin with part 1 here.)

“3. God is not all-powerful if there is something He cannot do. God cannot lie, therefore God is not all-powerful.”

Just for completeness, I’ll share Hyde’s response even though it makes little sense. Hyde argues that God’s properties are subordinate to his free will. He doesn’t lie because he wills to not lie, and he could just as easily will to lie. While we’re at it, God could also will to not be good or to not exist . . . which raises more questions than it answers. As for the “Can God make a rock so heavy he can’t lift it?” category of paradoxes, he says that God can’t “overpower Himself.”

Much has been written about the contradictions that arise when pitting God’s perfect qualities against each other, and there are lots more examples than “God can’t lie, so he’s not all-powerful.” For example, if God is omniscient (knows everything), he knows the future. But how can he be omnipotent (can do anything) when he can’t change the future without violating his omniscience?

How can there be “necessary suffering” when God is omnipotent? Isn’t he powerful enough to achieve his ends without causing suffering? Or is he just not omni-benevolent?

Does God have a personality? How can this be when personality traits have a negative side? For example, there’s no pleasure in victory without the risk of defeat, and an overabundance of kindness makes you a doormat. But if a personality is an odd thing for God to have, what would a personality-less god be like?

Our universe isn’t eternal. Before God created it, reality was either perfect or not. God wouldn’t have allowed an imperfect reality to exist. But if it already were perfect, what motivated God to create the universe? How could the universe have satisfied a need of God when a perfect being wouldn’t have needs? And if creating the universe satisfied no needs, why would he create it?

How can God be all-just (that is, giving everyone precisely the punishment they deserve) and merciful (giving less punishment than people deserve)?

How can God have a purpose? A purpose implies goals and unfulfilled desires. But that’s impossible for a perfect being.

If God is all-powerful, he can just forgive our sins, which sounds reasonable since we’re imperfect and sinful because he made us that way. That would eliminate the bizarre tale that God had to sacrifice himself to himself to make a loophole in a law that he made himself so we could get into heaven. (And, in fact, God has forgiven sins and then forgotten them.)

We typically give Christians a pass when they list God’s properties—it’s their religion, so why not? But the Bible gives some very human limitations on God.

  • God changed his mind: “The Lord changed his mind about the disaster that he planned to bring on his people” (Exodus 32:10–14). He dithered about whether Balaam (the one with the talking donkey) should go on his trip or not (Numbers 22).
  • God doesn’t know everything: “I will go down [to Sodom] and see if what they have done is as bad as the outcry that has reached me” (Genesis 18:21).
  • God isn’t all-powerful and is defeated several times in the Old Testament.
  • God isn’t especially moral.
  • God regrets.
  • God lies.

“4. Believing in God is the same as believing in the Tooth Fairy, Santa Claus, and the Flying Spaghetti Monster.”

Hyde says that God is different from the other three. Christianity has developed over thousands of years, it’s had martyrs, and it’s endured religious persecution. The Bible has “historical and geographical corroboration.” Compare that against fairies, Santa, and the Flying Spaghetti Monster, which no adult believes in. “It’s strawman argumentation at its worst.”

Yes, Christianity is old. Hinduism is older. That doesn’t mean that either one is correct. And look what longevity has done to Christianity: there are now 45,000 denominations of Christianity. Christians can’t even agree what their own holy book says, and the religion is becoming more fragmented, not more coherent, with time.

Yes, there have been Christian martyrs and Christian wars. Some evaluations of the Thirty Years’ War, in which Catholics and Protestants fought in Europe in the early 1600s, estimate that it killed up to two percent of the entire world’s population (I explore the deaths due to religion here). Religious violence is no evidence that Christianity is correct.

Yes, the Bible does refer to some places that history or archeology have corroborated. This Argument from Accurate Place Names isn’t much to brag about. Getting the basics of history and geography correct—countries, rivers, kings, cities, and the like—earns you no praise. It simply gets you to the starting line. No one would say that The Wizard of Oz is likely true because Kansas really exists.

And speaking of Kansas, the Flying Spaghetti Monster (may sauce be upon Him) was invented by Bobby Henderson in 2005 in response to a proposal by that state’s board of education to include intelligent design along with evolution in biology classes. He concluded his argument:

I think we can all look forward to the time when these three theories are given equal time in our science classrooms across the country, and eventually the world; one third time for Intelligent Design, one third time for Flying Spaghetti Monsterism, and one third time for logical conjecture based on overwhelming observable evidence.

Yes, Pastafarianism was deliberately made up, and Christianity wasn’t. Doesn’t matter—if the evidence for the Flying Spaghetti Monster and Yahweh are equally weak and we are certain that one of them is false, what does that say about the other?

Continued in part 3.

I don’t know if God exists,
but it would be better for His reputation if He didn’t.
— Jules Renard

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(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 6/29/15.)

Image from Dr. Partha Sarathi Sahana, CC license

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Same-Sex Marriage Is the Law of the Land, Four Years Hence

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We’ve recently passed the four-year anniversary of the Obergefell v. Hodges Supreme Court decision that legalized same-sex marriage in the United States. Let’s revisit the conservative reaction after that decision to see if cats are now marrying dogs, or whatever it was that conservatives were sure would follow.

Consider another Supreme Court decision

Justice Alito dissented from the opinion:

I assume that those who cling to old beliefs will be able to whisper their thoughts in the recesses of their homes, but if they repeat those views in public, they will risk being labeled as bigots and treated as such by governments, employers, and school. . . . By imposing its own views on the entire country, the majority facilitates the marginalization of the many Americans who have traditional ideas.

Well, yeah. If you hate the idea of either homosexuality or same-sex marriage, you can speak your mind, and I support you in that. Make your argument. Tell us why it’s bad for society rather than simply being something that doesn’t work for you personally. But where your opinion conflicts with others’, they may also speak their mind, and you may get your feelings hurt. Such is life as an adult. You think this is unique? You think Loving v. Virginia in 1967 wasn’t a bitter pill for those who supported laws against mixed-race marriage?

As public opinion in favor of same-sex marriage becomes even stronger, your views will be seen as increasingly marginalized and weird. You will be on the wrong side of history. No one’s forcing you either way, but don’t be surprised or outraged when fewer and fewer see you holding the moral high ground.

Politics—the tail wagging the dog

One straight-married woman, interviewed just after the Obergefell decision, said that it, “essentially ends marriage as we know it.” It threatens society because “marriage is the fundamental building block for the family and society to flourish.”

This is an impressive Machiavellian win for the conservative PR machine, but it refers to a reality that we don’t inhabit. This decision doesn’t threaten their marriage or my marriage or indeed any straight marriage at all.

Glenn Beck, always eager to throw gasoline on a fire, said that the civil disobedience necessary in response to same-sex marriage is now martyrdom—literal martyrdom.

The number that I think will walk through a wall of fire, you know, and possible death, is anywhere between 17,000 and 10,000. That is an extraordinary number of people that are willing to lay it all down on the table and willing to go to jail or go to death because they serve God and not man.

Who does he imagine will be on the other side, killing these pastors? And what would be pastors’ crime? Churches can already refuse to marry any couple—mixed-race, same-sex, whatever.

And, unsurprisingly, zero pastors were martyred, and no one came back to Beck demanding that he address his failure.

One pastor had to walk back a bold declaration made just before the decision was announced.

We are not going to bow. We are not going to bend, and if necessary we will burn. . . .

The preachers need to get out front, the leaders need to get out front, out front of these ordinary citizens and say, “Shoot me first!”

 Oops. Didn’t really happen.

Precedent in Loving v. Virginia

Conservatives always hate when the conversation comes back to the 1967 Loving decision, which threw out state laws against mixed-race marriage. They handwave that they’re not comparable.

To some extent they’re right, though not for the reasons they imagine. Let’s look at how the 1967 Loving decision is different from Obergefell v. Hodges in 2015.

Obergefell squeaked by with a 5-4 vote. Loving was 9-0.

Today, the public is strongly in favor of same-sex marriage—approval reached 50% in 2012. On the eve of Obergefell it was 60% for and 37% against (Gallup), and the favorable number increases at more than a percent per year. Today, all states but two have more citizens supporting same-sex marriage than opposing it.

But public opinion was very different at the time of Loving: just 20% in favor of mixed-race marriage and 73% against it in 1968, one year after the decision. Approval was even less in the white demographic. And remember that laws against mixed-race marriage had been dismissed in most of the country at that time.

Consider approval ratings from a few more years: 4% approved mixed-race marriage in 1958, 50% in 1995, and 87% in 2013.

I don’t know which is more shocking—that nationwide approval was so low in 1958, that it took almost three decades after Loving to reach 50%, or that it wasn’t 100% in 2013! (The cartoon xkcd has an excellent graph.)

Conservatives four years ago declared that they were going to hold their breath until they turn blue (or get jailed or executed by the thousands if Glenn Beck’s fantasy came true), and yet public opinion is strongly in favor of the Supreme Court decision. Think back to 1967 with the Loving decision, where the unanimous Supreme Court was way out in front of public opinion.

Public response to Loving

Given conservatives’ rending of garments about same-sex marriage four years ago, I wondered what the public reaction was after the mixed-race marriage decision 52 years ago. I burrowed through online newspapers of the time. I wanted to find Southern newspapers (Loving overturned laws against mixed-race marriage in 17 Southern states) full of outrage at a meddling, activist court “legislating from the bench.” I expected to find scandalized opinion pieces predicting God’s retribution on society, supported with Bible verses.

I didn’t find a single one. I found instead many copies of a few nationally syndicated articles soberly summarizing the Loving decision, but that was it—just a simple statement of the facts. People seemed ready to accept the decision and move on.

That things are so different today, with many conservatives refusing to move on, makes clear that this is not Christians standing up for what’s right but just politics. Christians, keep in mind politicians’ Chicken Little games. Citizens can ignore politics when things are fine, but if Christians are under attack, they must circle the wagons and support Christian politicians. If there’s no reason to circle the wagons, they’ll invent one.

Ignore politicians’ made up crises. Have you stopped to think how hardhearted you look when you stand in the way of two people who want to get married?

A special thank you to my family of birth
for relentlessly and colourfully demonstrating
the cruelty of anti-gay sentiment,
thus driving decent people away from hatred
and into the arms of justice and equality.
— Nathan Phelps,
who left his father’s “God Hates Fags” church

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(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 6/26/15.)

Image credit: Nate Steiner, flickr, CC
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Top 10 Most Common Atheist Arguments—Do They Fail?

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Patheos Evangelical Christian blogger John Mark Reynolds recently shared his list of the five worst atheist arguments. I responded here. Today, let’s consider another list, “Top 10 Most Common Atheist Arguments, and Why They Fail” by Eric Hyde.

I do my best to take seriously attacks against my favorite arguments. The result is better arguments. Let’s take a look at these charges that popular atheist arguments fail.

“1. There is no evidence for God’s existence.”

Hyde begins by asking what “evidence” means. My answer: good evidence is facts or argument of sufficient quality that, if the tables were turned, would convince you the other guy’s argument is strong. Too often, defenders of Christianity will bring out weak arguments—“There are fulfilled prophecies in the Bible!” or “Just yesterday I prayed because I was late and got the perfect parking space!”—that they’d laugh at if said in support of a rival religion.

Look at how conventional Christians will lampoon Mormonism or any other religion. They’re just as skeptical as I am, and they argue just as forcefully. It’d be nice if they’d consistently apply the same thinking to their own position.

Hyde critiques this argument:

Asking a Christian to prove God’s existence is like asking someone to prove the existence of civilization. What is one to do but point and say, “look, there’s a chair, and there’s a building,” etc. How can one prove civilization by merely selecting a piece here and a piece there as sufficient proofs rather than having an experience of civilization as a whole?

Nearly everything the Christian lays eyes on is proof of God’s existence because he sees the “handiwork” of God all around him in creation.

“Look, there’s a building.” Right—a building that had designers and builders. I know where buildings come from because I’ve seen them being built. Is this supposed to be an analogy with God and reality? A building had a designer so therefore reality must also? I see the analogy, but without any evidence for God, the analogy fails.

But this is hardly sufficient evidence in the court of atheist opinion, a court which presupposes that only what can be apprehended by the senses rightly qualifies as evidence. For the Christian who believes in a transcendent God, he can offer no such evidence; to produce material evidence for God is, ironically, to disprove a transcendent God and cast out faith.

Ah, the old “Science can say nothing about God because God is immaterial” argument. If your point is that God hides in his supernatural realm, which science can’t access, then I agree. But your God then becomes not only immaterial but irrelevant. God is only relevant to our reality if he changes our reality—tweaks evolution, causes miracles, answers prayers. And those interactions in our reality are things that science can (in principle) test for. You need to pick—do you want a God holed up in his supernatural tree house who never interacts with our world or a God who does interact and is therefore testable by science?

As for atheists demanding evidence, well yeah. How else do we reliably understand something? If you sense a truth in a vague way that no one else can experience or verify, that may be important to you, but it is useless in convincing others. You wouldn’t be convinced by that argument from some other religion, so why should I accept it from you?

Hyde moves on to ask what one means by evidence for God’s existence.

If one means, “that which has come into existence,” then surely God does not exist because God never came into existence. He always was; He is eternal.

Checkmate, atheists! . . . except that this is merely an assertion. Without evidence for the remarkable claim that God always was, it fails.

The atheist argument remains. I wouldn’t say that there is no evidence for God—the very existence of Christianity is evidence—just insufficient evidence to support what may be the grandest possible argument, that a supernatural being created the universe.

“2. If God created the universe, who created God?”

Those who use this charge as some sort of intellectual checkmate have simply failed to grasp what Christians understand as “eternal.”

No, I think we’re all on the same page here. The issue is simply that your claim that everything had a cause must apply to God as well. By your logic, he must’ve had a creator.

The next move in the chess game is to apply some sort of “except God” caveat to the everything-has-a-cause rule. For example, the first premise in William Lane Craig’s Kalam Cosmological argument is, “Everything that begins to exist has a cause.” That clumsy phrase is supposed to be his Get Out of Jail Free card because God always was. God had no beginning.

And what justifies this? Incredibly, Dr. Craig defends the claim this way, “[This] step is so intuitively obvious that I think scarcely anyone could sincerely believe it to be false.” Apparently, world-class Christian philosophers want their arguments accepted just because they feel right without having do go through all that difficult justification stuff.

If Eric Hyde has a better justification, he doesn’t share it with us. Apparently, we’re to accept that God doesn’t have a creator just because. Sorry—I need more.

I’ve responded more completely to the charge that “But who created God?” is a fallacy here.

Continue in part 2.

If god is real, evidence points to
an incompetent megalomaniac just trying to make it to Friday.
He delegates responsibility to the weakest members of his team,
his ideas are shit, his execution is poorly planned,
and his purpose is to have something to turn in so he doesn’t get fired.
He is the George Costanza of deities.
— commenter Kodie

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(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 6/24/15.)

Image from Dave Catchpole, CC license

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