This is a continuation of my response to the Christian apologetics book I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist by Norm Geisler and Frank Turek. Read part 1 here.

For more, I recommend an excellent and thorough critique by fellow Patheos atheist Jeffery Jay Lowder.

Let’s move on to some vaguely science-y arguments in I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist.

Cosmological Argument

Geisler and Turek (GT) uses the familiar form of this argument:

1. Everything that had a beginning had a cause
2. The universe had a beginning
3. Therefore, the universe had a cause (page 75)

Why the “that had a beginning” caveat? The phrase is obviously added to avoid the challenge, “But if the universe had a cause (let’s call it ‘God’), what caused God?” What that premise is trying to say is, “Everything had a beginning . . . except God.” That’s a remarkable claim, and we need evidence before we accept that God had no beginning.

GT labels premise 1 the “Law of Causality,” but a fancy label doesn’t make it right. Who says it is? Indeed, the popular Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics says that it’s wrong: at the quantum level, events don’t always have causes. For example, when an electron, neutrino, or photon comes out of a decaying atomic nucleus, that event had no cause.

Even if “Everything that had a beginning had a cause” were always true, we’re talking about two different kinds of “begins to exist.” In our world, everything that begins comes from something else. The oak tree comes, not only from the acorn, but from sunlight, water, carbon dioxide, and nutrients. Even quantum particles, virtual or otherwise, come from the matter or energy that was there before. But GT is talking about the universe, which they think came from absolutely nothing. Science knows of no examples of such a thing happening, and we’ve entered the realm of science fiction. Or religion.

Another problem is that cause implies time. X wasn’t there, then the cause happened, and now X is there. But how does this make sense when there is no time before the Big Bang?

Here are a few more points:

• This is just a deist argument. If I found it convincing, I’d still be far from Christianity.
• Physicist Sean Carroll has responded to William Lane Craig’s attempt at this argument (my summary of that debate).
• I write more about Christians’ attempts to defend against the rebuttal, “If God caused the universe, what caused God?” here.
• I critique the Kalam Cosmological Argument here and here.
• Christian philosophers like Craig often introduce pop philosophy (that is, common sense that’s labeled “philosophy”) into the conversation. This doesn’t help.

Thermodynamics

You know the witticism about knowing just enough to be dangerous? That’s GT within science. I just wish their readership were skeptical enough to catch their negligence. Or deception.

If a wind-up clock is running down, then someone must have wound it up. (p. 77)

Why someone? Why not something? GT’s agenda is showing. Childish naiveté is appealing when it comes from a child; here it’s just tiresome.

Since we know of no other supernatural explanations for natural things, we won’t be starting now.

And most cosmologists accept the idea of a zero-energy universe in which the positive energy in things like matter is balanced by the negative energy in gravity. No, this appeal to thermodynamics fails. The universe isn’t running down; from a net energy standpoint, it’s doing nothing, and no scientific laws are violated.

Science and Genesis

GT handwaves about the “overwhelming evidence for the Big Bang and its consistency with the biblical account in Genesis” (p. 84).

Yes, the evidence for the Big Bang is overwhelming, but there are no clues to it in the six-day creation account in Genesis. Where in Genesis do you find the idea of a singularity? Inflation? Quantum physics? The unification of the four fundamental forces? 13.8 billion years?

You might respond that Genesis isn’t supposed to be a science textbook, and that’s fine. But someone who says this shouldn’t try to jump on the science bandwagon now.

Here’s how GT could make their case. Give an unbiased person a copy of the six-day creation story in Genesis, and ask for a one-page summary of the main scientific points with no theology. Now get the same thing from a science perspective—say from middle school textbooks that cover cosmology, geology, and evolution. Compare the two summaries. You still think they would be consistent? Could you derive the science summary from the Creation summary?

The Cause of the Universe revealed!

GT wants to find properties in the Big Bang that they can match up to with properties of the Christian god.

The First Cause must be self-existent, timeless, nonspatial, and immaterial (since the First Cause created time, space and matter, the First Cause must be outside of time, space, and matter). (p. 93)

Their agenda is clear when they pick and choose bits of science like chocolates. They rely on science to get the Big Bang but then jettison science when it’s inconvenient and swap in Christianity. Science says, “We don’t know” when appropriate, and that’s a perfectly good answer when, in fact, we don’t know.

Science doesn’t imagine any being behind the Big Bang; there simply isn’t any evidence pointing there. But that doesn’t stop GT from loving and groundless speculation in that direction. They’ve already named it First Cause, so they’re halfway to God: it must also be “unimaginably powerful,” “supremely intelligent,” and “personal” (personal, because he chose to create the universe). And when you squint at the Bible, you find those properties an exact match for (drum roll!) the Christian god!

In light of the evidence, we are left with only two options: either no one created something out of nothing, or else someone created something out of nothing. Which view is more reasonable? . . . The most reasonable view is God. (p. 94)

What kind of proof is that? No one creates a crystal. At a higher level, no one creates a whirlpool. Higher still, no one creates a solar system. We have no examples of a supernatural being creating anything and myriad examples of nature creating things. Why imagine a supernatural being creating the universe?

And who says that what came before the universe (if that’s even a well-constructed idea) was nothing? Let’s leave the nice scientists alone and let them do their work. If any discipline will tell us more about the origin of the universe, it will be science. Religion has taught us nothing verifiable about reality.

Continued in part 3.

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(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 8/27/15.)

Image credit: NASA

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I’d like to respond to the Christian apologetics book I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist by Norm Geisler and Frank Turek. Though published in 2004, it continues to be popular (it’s #10 on Amazon’s Christian Apologetics list) and needs a rebuttal.

What does “faith” mean?

Let’s pause for a moment to consider the word “faith” in the title. Atheists will charge that it means belief poorly grounded in evidence or even in contradiction to the evidence. To rehabilitate their poor relationship with evidence, many Christian apologists today argue the opposite. For example, Christian podcaster Jim Wallace said it’s “trusting the best inference from the evidence.” Presbyterian leader A. A. Hodge said, “Faith must have adequate evidence, else it is mere superstition.”

But the very title of Geisler and Turek’s book admits the opposite. They “don’t have enough faith to be an atheist,” and faith has returned to our old, familiar definition: belief poorly grounded on evidence. In the Introduction, the authors make this clear: “The less evidence you have for your position, the more faith you need to believe it (and vice versa). Faith covers a gap in knowledge” (p. 26).

(I explore the ways Christians play games with the definition of “faith” here and critique faith as a way to know things here.)

Characteristics of atheists (it’s not pretty)

I’ll refer to the book as GT (Geisler and Turek). Page numbers refer to the 2004 Crossway paperback edition.

GT is certain that many or most atheists are really theists. Atheists already have enough evidence—they just willfully refuse to accept it.

[For many nonbelievers] it’s not that they don’t have evidence to believe, it’s that they don’t want to believe. (page 30)

Many non-Christians . . . take a “blind leap of faith” that their non-Christian beliefs are true simply because they want them to be true. (p. 30)

What we have here is a will problem—some people, despite the evidence, simply don’t want to admit there’s a Designer. (p. 112)

Someone who has sufficient evidence but refuses to accept it? What you’re describing is not an atheist.

He argues that even scientists have an agenda:

By admitting God, Darwinists would be admitting that they are not the highest authority when it comes to truth. Currently, in this technologically advanced world, scientists are viewed by the public as the revered authority figures—the new priests who make a better life possible and who comprise the sole source of objective truth. (p. 162)

(What I’m sure they mean is evolution, not Darwinism, but they insist on speaking childishly to those at the children’s table. The Vridar blog has a helpful summary of why “Darwinism” is incorrect.)

So biologists can’t admit that God exists, not because of evidence, but because they’d be forced give up their authority? Religion has never taught us anything new about reality. Even if all scientists became Christian, science rather than theology would still be how we’d understand the world.

GT drops a final turd as they wrestle with the evidence necessary to believe:

God has provided enough evidence in this life to convince anyone willing to believe, yet he has also left some ambiguity so as not to compel the unwilling. (p. 31)

But Romans 1:20 says there’s no ambiguity: “God’s invisible qualities . . . have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.” You’d better confer with your Bible to get your story straight.

GT imagines that God plays games about evidence for his existence. Maybe God doesn’t want it too easy so that everyone gets it, and heaven gets crowded. Maybe he wants to keep out the riffraff so heaven remains an exclusive gated community.

This becomes the free-will argument: God won’t force you to believe, because that would be an imposition. This means that being forced to accept the existence of the stranger on the street is not an imposition, but being forced to know the existence of the coolest guy in the universe would be a burden, so it’d be unfair to impose that on you. Or something.

GT provides no evidence but simply makes a sweeping claim, a claim that could be made by any believer. He could just as easily say that Allah or Zeus or the Flying Spaghetti Monster has given you plenty of evidence, so don’t tell me otherwise.

Hedonism

But why would atheists reject clear evidence for God? GT has uncovered the selfish reasons:

By ruling out the supernatural, Darwinists can avoid the possibility that anything is morally prohibited. (p. 163)

So atheists are just hedonists with no concern about the consequences of their actions?

If the atheists are right, then we might as well lie, cheat, and steal to get what we want because this life is all there is, and there are no consequences in eternity. (p. 68)

Wow—what planet are these guys from? How many atheists think that it’s fine to lie, cheat, and steal? Are the prisons filled with atheists? Do atheists not answer to the rest of society, let alone their family and friends? Do atheists not have consciences?

Since you’ll agree, after a moment’s reflection, that atheists are indeed moral, maybe you should drop the “atheists have no morals” claim and wonder where they get their morals from. I predict it’s the same place where you do.

Atheism does indeed mean that “there are no consequence in eternity,” but (dang it!) there are consequences right here and now, which is just one of the reasons I don’t murder people.

[Instead of teaching Islam] wouldn’t it be better to teach [kids] the religious truth that God wants them to love their neighbors? (p. 68)

GT is probably thinking of verses like Leviticus 19:18, “Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against anyone among your people, but love your neighbor as yourself,” but “neighbor” meant fellow Jew in this case. In a few cases, neighborly affection was demanded for non-Jews living in Israel. But we can’t twist either interpretation to mean everyone in the world, which is the modern interpretation that GT would like to impose.

When it comes to non-Jewish neighbors, God thinks of slavery or genocide more often than love.

GT talks about biology a lot (more later), but here is the connection between what atheists think and morality.

By means of a one-sided biology curriculum, we teach kids that there’s really no difference between any human being and a pig. After all, if we’re merely the product of blind naturalistic forces—if no deity created us with any special significance—then we are nothing more than pigs with big brains. (p. 68)

Being scientifically accurate is such a pain. Who’s got time for the research? But since you won’t do it, I will: pigs and humans share a common ancestor from 94 million years ago. No, we’re not descended from pigs, and humans aren’t pigs with big brains.

If the clumsily made point is that evolution explains everything with no need for a designer to grant some sort of transcendental moral value, then yes, that’s true. Humans are no more special in a nonexistent god’s mind than pigs are.

I see no problem with that. Morality works just fine with no god—look up the word and tell me what part assumes a god. (But while we’re going off on tangents, I do see a problem with your moral equivalence between a single fertilized human egg cell and a newborn baby. In fact, there’s a spectrum of personhood.)

And presumably “one-sided biology curriculum” is their cute way of saying “rule that says that you need to teach science (and just science) in the science classroom.” Creationism isn’t science—deal with it.

Frank Turek’s next train wreck

I’ll be following up with more posts rebutting the statements in this book, but let me touch on another of Frank Turek’s books, Stealing from God. It’s an expanded version of his CRIMES argument, an acronym for Cosmos, Reason, Information, Morality, Evil, and Science. He attempts to argue that these categories are strong evidence for the Christian position. I’ve got a lot to say in response.

Continued in part 2.

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(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 8/25/15.)

Image from imgur

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