Let’s continue with our exploration of stupid arguments Christians really shouldn’t use (Part 1 here).

Stupid Argument #13: Pascal’s Wager.

Bet on God, and the upside is huge. Bet against God, and the downside is huge. Any questions?

The error is in imagining just two choices, Christianity and atheism. In reality, human societies have invented myriad choices, and Christianity is just one more. Christians are in the same spot they imagine for atheists. What if they bet wrong on the Hindu or Roman or Norse pantheons? Or on the Zoroastrian or Egyptian or Buddhist afterlife? Take a look at Buddhist hell in the image above—it ain’t pretty.

It also assumes that the deity will accept an ass-covering “bet on God” instead of authentic belief driven by conviction. Wouldn’t a god be smart enough to see through the insincerity?

In the gospel of John, we read, “[Peter] said, “Lord, you know all things; you know that I love you.’ ” (John 21:17). Christians’ own Bible defeats Pascal’s Wager.

Finally, notice that Pascal does nothing to provide evidence for God’s existence. (More on Pascal’s wager here.)

Stupid Argument #14: You’ll be sorry!

Watch yourself, smart guy—you won’t be so cocky when you’re standing in judgment before the Creator. You’ll have an eternity in hell to repent your foolishness.

You’re really going to threaten atheists with something we don’t believe in? Why should we be any more concerned about Christian hell than you are about Buddhist hell? Let me again quote St. Christopher (Hitchens): “What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.”

Even if you’re right, how heavenly will heaven be? Don’t you think the ongoing torment of billions of humans in hell—whose crime was nothing more than not getting it—will bother you after a while?

Imagine a different judgment scenario. You and I are standing in judgment before God. You’re feeling pretty smug since it’s clear that you guessed right. But then God turns to you and says, “So this is how you used your brain, my greatest gift to mankind? You just check it at the door and gullibly believe whatever your religious leader tells you? You weren’t supposed to return that brain with low mileage; you were supposed to use it!”

Guess who’s going to hell this time.

Stupid Argument #15: Citing Bible quotes.

We know that there is a Judgment Day. Jesus tells us, “Everyone will have to give account on the day of judgment for every empty word they have spoken.”

As proof that the Bible makes a particular claim, Bible quotes are fine. I use them myself. But don’t cite a Bible quote as evidence of something important. You realize I don’t consider the Bible authoritative, right?

And if the issue is the Bible’s position on a certain topic, don’t simply show me a verse that supports your position. The Bible can be made to support just about any position—witness the thousands of sects of Christianity. Instead, show me how the Bible supports that position and only that position. The context is not just the surrounding verses but the entire Bible.

For example, I’ve read many apologetics for biblical slavery that cite the Bible’s indentured servitude for fellow Israelites but ignore that it elsewhere imposes slavery for life on foreigners. Or apologetics that pick and choose verses to create just one interpretation of the afterlife or the Trinity or the Second Coming.

Stupid Argument #16: Excusing God’s excesses.

You’ve got to understand that things were different back then. God supported slavery and ordered genocide in the Old Testament simply because he was working within the culture of the times. Israelite culture had to mature in the same way that a child must mature to properly understand morality.

The apologists making these arguments are fine with modern morality and would be as horrified to see Old Testament genocide and slavery in use today as any of us. But suggest that homosexuality is natural, and suddenly their hands are tied because the Old Testament is the immutable word of God. They grant themselves license to pick and choose the bits of the Old Testament that they like and discard the crazy baggage that comes along with it. They make the Bible into a sock puppet.

As for Israel maturing gradually like a child, remember that God imposed the Ten Commandments with no grace period. Israel didn’t get the chance to mature into these rules, and breaking most of them was a capital crime on Day 1. God was not squeamish about imposing morality, and he clearly didn’t care what social customs he swept away with new rules. God didn’t demand genocide and support slavery because his hands were tied but because he was okay with them.

These are the same Christians who demand to know how an atheist can reject the Holocaust without objective morality, not realizing that they do the Nazi two-step when apologizing for their god’s slavery and genocide.

Continued in part 5.

.

(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 10/8/14.)

Photo credit: Wikimedia

Let’s continue with our list of stupid Christian arguments (Part 1 here).

Stupid Argument #9a: Argument from silence.

The Jewish leaders would’ve been eager to shut down a rogue sect. If Jesus hadn’t risen from the dead, they would’ve pointed to the dead body. Faced with this refutation of their most important claim, early Christianity would’ve collapsed. And yet they didn’t produce the body—because they couldn’t!

This is the Naysayer Fallacy (discussed in detail here). What’s hard about imagining early Christianity withstanding contradicting information? Believers in lots of other religions haven’t let disquieting facts get in their way. Look at the historical errors in the Book of Mormon; they don’t sink Mormonism.

The Jewish leaders and the empty tomb are story elements in gospels written over forty years after the events they claim to describe. To say that Jewish leaders ought to have done this or that forty years earlier is like arguing with novelists that the characters in their stories ought to have done this or that. Characters are just pawns in a story, and they do what the authors make them do.

The Bible says that the early Christians didn’t go public until fifty days after the crucifixion. Even within the story, the Jewish leaders couldn’t/wouldn’t have produced that corpse.

Stupid Argument #9b: Demand for counter-evidence.

I’ve given you evidence (for the resurrection, say). You may not be impressed, but you’ve got to admit that it’s something. If you want to rebut that, you must provide contemporary counter-evidence. Gary Habermas said, “Skeptics must provide more than alternative theories to the Resurrection; they must provide first-century evidence for those theories.”

What’s that? You say you don’t have any first-century evidence against my argument? Well then I guess I win!

Nope, I don’t have first-century evidence of people arguing that Jesus didn’t rise from the dead, and I’m sure I never will. Is that what you’d expect to see if the Jesus story got embellished with supernatural elements in the retelling—people preserving first-century letters that say that the Jesus story was nonsense?

Let’s imagine that demand in the case of Merlin the magician. The story goes that he was a shape shifter. Are we obliged to accept that as history unless we can find contemporary evidence against it? I propose instead that such a remarkable claim needs far more than just an old story to support it.

Ditto the Jesus story.

I turn this conversation around and demand evidence that George Washington didn’t fly with a jet pack here. Just like these Christians demanding contemporary evidence that Jesus didn’t rise from the dead, I demand contemporary evidence that Washington didn’t fly with a jet pack. (Admittedly, my argument about Washington crumbles when we bring common sense into the discussion, but in that case, so do the miraculous claims for Jesus.)

Stupid Argument #10: Appeal to objective truth.

You can’t say that something is really wrong.

Really or truly, as qualifiers for some moral word (good, bad, right, wrong, and so on), are used to imagine some sort of objective morality grounded outside of humans. Apologist William Lane Craig defined objective morality as “moral values that are valid and binding whether anybody believes in them or not.”

No, Mr. Christian, I can’t say that something is objectively wrong, but then neither can you. I’ve explored claims of objective morality from a number of apologists (Greg Koukl, William Lane Craig, J. Warner Wallace, Frank Turek, and C.S. Lewis), and they do little more than make an appeal for it. The error they make is confusing universal moral truth (for which they give no evidence) with universally held moral programming (evidence of which is all around us). We’re all the same species, and it’s easy to see how we would share moral thinking.

Moral words like good, bad, and so on don’t need either objective grounding or God. Look them up in the dictionary and see for yourself.

Stupid Argument #11: Argument from accurate place names.

The Bible mentions names that archaeology has later validated—Jericho, for example. The Bible’s accurate historical track record where it could be substantiated means that unsubstantiated claims should be assumed to be accurate as well.

The Iliad also mentions names that archaeology has later validated—Troy, for example. That the Bible has confirmation on some of its names of people and places isn’t remarkable. Accurate names is the least we’d expect of a book that claims divine inspiration. More here.

Stupid Argument #12a: The Bible makes clear that God’s existence is plain for all to see.

“For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse” (Rom. 1:20).

The Christian’s book says, “God exists; deal with it,” and that is supposed to mean something to an atheist? Let me respond with a quote of my own: “What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence” (Christopher Hitchens).

Stupid Argument #12b: The good in the world shows the hand of a loving god.

Think of the birth of a baby, sunsets and rainbows, or an unexpected remission of cancer. That’s the hand of God.

If desirable things point to a loving God, what do terrible things like smallpox, tsunamis, and birth defects point to?

Christians have a long history of handwaving away this Problem of Evil. The term for this discipline is theodicy. But a discipline that dates back to the early days of the church makes clear that this is no obvious matter. Apparently, this particular God is not “clearly seen,” so I have an excuse.

In a desperate move, one apologist attempted to argue that this is a two-edged sword, and evil is a problem for everyone, both the Christian and the atheist. That’s true, but that’s not what we’re talking about. We’re not talking about evil but the Problem of Evil, the riddle of how a good god could allow so much evil to exist. The atheist drops the god presupposition, and the problem vanishes completely. The Christian is still stuck with it. (More here.)

Continued in part 4.

.

(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 10/6/14.)

Photo credit: Tony Fischer

Words sometimes have more than one definition. For example, “organic” can mean “having to do with life” or “food grown without non-natural chemicals,” or it can simply mean “contains carbon.” But when justifying the unjustifiable, Christian apologists often need to invent new definitions that aren’t supported by the dictionary.

In part 1, we saw an apologist trying to deal with the reality that if God answers every prayer, his “answers” are indistinguishable from no answers at all. That he’s not even embarrassed by his predicament makes his handwaving no more convincing.

What is a miracle?

Let’s move on to another pious redefinition, this time for the word “miracle.” Our apologist this time is Jim Wallace, who recently analyzed the story of a claimed miracle. A couple in Tennessee had parked at their apartment and gotten out of their car. Only then did they notice three bullet holes in the side of the car and two more in the trunk. The wife soon found something else. One bullet had come through and lodged in her purse. Without the purse, that bullet might have hit one of them. Her interpretation of the purse stopping that bullet: “Just by the grace of God. It’s a miracle to keep me or him from getting hit.”

Wallace said, “When I was an atheist, I would roll my eyes at statements like this.”

I hear you. Why didn’t God stop the shooter in the first place? Or why didn’t he redirect the shooter’s life years ago so that he wouldn’t turn to violence?

Alternatively, if you imagine God saving this couple, what explains him not saving the other 10,000 people that die from gun violence in the U.S. each year? Your happy miracle story morphs into the problem of justifying God’s capriciousness. “God works in mysterious ways” won’t do—if you say that God performed a miracle in this case and had good reasons to let the bullets kill someone in another case, you must support that incredible claim with evidence.

Alternatively, why not just call this a coincidence, where a situation was bad but not so bad that anyone got injured? The naturalistic explanation (lots of gunshots are fired in public, and this just happened to be one of those situations where no one was hurt) explains all the facts. God performing a miracle is an unnecessary complication to the story.

But no, none of these interpretations are where Wallace wants to go. Now that he’s a Christian, he says that he’s reconsidered his position on miracles. He wants to label as “a miracle” events like this injury-free shooting.

You say that you don’t accept miracles? Wallace argues that all naturalists accept miracles. Here’s his argument.

1. The Big Bang is the standard explanation for the origin of the universe.

2. The Big Bang tells us that the universe—that is, space, time, and matter—had a beginning.

3. “Everything came into existence from nothing.”

4. What caused the Big Bang? It couldn’t have been anything to do with space, time, or matter, since they hadn’t been created yet.

5. “See the dilemma? My naturalistic belief in ‘Big Bang Cosmology’ required an extra-natural ‘Big Banger.’ ”

6. The dictionary defines “miracle” as having a supernatural cause, and “supernatural” as “above or beyond what is natural,” so the Big Bang drags the naturalist into accepting at least one miracle, that of the origin of the universe.

7. The Bible agrees. It says that the origin of the universe was created by God (and therefore a miracle), and if that’s the case, God could surely pull off something as trivial as a resurrection. Or stopping a bullet with a purse.

Correcting that poorly defined argument

Let’s highlight a few problems.

2. There are plausible models of the universe that have no beginning.

3. No, the Big Bang doesn’t say that everything came from nothing. That’s one possibility, but that’s not the consensus view.

4. Does it make sense to ask for a cause before there was time? And if the Big Bang were a quantum event, it might’ve had no cause (not all quantum events have causes).

5. “Big Banger” deliberately suggests an intelligence, but if the Big Bang were just a quantum event, that would be a natural cause with no mind required. Maybe our universe is just one of many universes that started with this natural cause.

At best, this argument points out that cosmologists have unanswered questions about the Big Bang. That’s true, but that’s no excuse to inject a supernatural explanation involving your favorite god. If science doesn’t have the evidence to justify an answer, don’t pretend that your religion does. If making everything from nothing is a problem, then how did God do it? We need evidence, not dogma. And if “God did it” explains the origin of the universe, what explains the origin of God?

What happened to the good, old-fashioned miracle?

You want a miracle? During the famous Battle of Agincourt during the Hundred Years’ War, English and Welsh archers delivered a stunning victory over French cavalry. Almost exactly 500 years later during the Battle of Mons during World War I, in the same part of Europe as Agincourt, ghosts of those archers materialized to save the British from a vastly superior German force.

Unfortunately, the story doesn’t match the history. That’s always the problem, isn’t it? The good stories don’t withstand scrutiny, and the true ones are just luck, like the woman whose purse stopped a bullet.

So if bullet-stopping purses are what pass for miracles in society today and you can’t raise the quality of miracles, then just pull down the definition so that there’s a match. That was the goal of the “you naturalists believe in miracles, too!” argument. Like the redefinition of “answered prayer” in the previous post, just redefine “miracle.”

Christians, this may be what you need to help you sleep at night, but this is not an honest way of looking at the evidence. By changing definitions, your argument has lost any power. You’ve salvaged your words—“answered prayer” and “miracle”—but at what cost? Convince yourself that you’ve won the battle if you must, but with these dishonest games you lose the war.

.

Image via Stuart McAlpine, CC license

Let’s continue with our list of stupid Christian arguments (Part 1 here).

Stupid Argument #5: you can’t prove Christianity false.

You can’t know that God doesn’t exist unless you’re omniscient.

First off, don’t ask for proof. Proofs are for math and logic, not science or history. You can’t prove that God exists, and I won’t ask that of you; I simply want compelling evidence of your claim. And vice versa: ask for arguments and evidence from the atheist, not proof. If there is insufficient evidence to support the God hypothesis, you have no grounds for holding it. Belief in God is like belief in unicorns—don’t believe without sufficient evidence.

More important, the burden of proof is on the person making the claim. I’ve made many positive arguments for atheism in posts at this blog, but the fundamental claim is made by the Christian that God exists. There would be nothing to talk about without this claim by the Christian. You’re making the claim, so it’s your burden. Don’t shirk it by demanding that the atheist prove Christianity false.

So many Christians want to dance away from this burden of proof that it’s almost like giving an answer to those who ask for the reason for the hope within them . . . is a burden.

Stupid Argument #6: Creationism.

Evolution is flawed. It isn’t repeatable, observable laboratory science; it’s only forensic science. And it makes no sense.

Evolution is the scientific consensus—deal with it (more here and here). You say your common sense is offended by the idea of evolution? Unless you have a doctorate in biology, you of all people should appreciate how meaningless this is. If common sense were the guide to science, no one would need to spend years getting a doctorate.

Science isn’t always right, but it’s the best means that we’ve got of finding out the truth about reality.

Ask yourself if you object to science in proportion to how much it steps on your ideological toes. Do you get in a lather about evolution, Big Bang, or climate change but ignore the conclusions of superconductivity, string theory, or the Millennium math problems? If you accept science according to how you’d like the world to be rather than follow the evidence, your biases are showing.

Another ridiculous tangent is to point to something controversial written by Charles Darwin. In the first place, most Creationist quotes of Darwin are misinterpreted. Before you make this argument, read Darwin’s words in context. Second, no one cares what Darwin said. Darwin’s work was hugely influential, but Darwin now resides solely in the History of Science domain. No one validates new ideas in biology by testing them against the great man’s writings.

And to those who say that evolution is “just a theory,” do some reading and then get back to me. (Slapping down Creationism isn’t the goal at this blog, but I do touch on that here.)

Stupid Argument #7: If you throw out the account of Jesus, you must discard the record of every other figure of history.

The quality of documentation of the gospel story is unprecedented.

The account of Jesus is primarily in the gospels, written decades after the events they claim to document. (More on the long and turbulent journey of the Bible here.) We have 25,000 copies (or fragments) of New Testament manuscripts, which is impressive, but that doesn’t turn out to be much of a plus for the apologetic argument.

The Christian wants to compare our evidence of Jesus with that of figures like Julius Caesar or Alexander the Great. But this confident comparison withers when we consider the coins and busts with the likeness of Julius Caesar. Or the more than a dozen cities across the Ancient Near East named after Alexander. We have nothing comparable for Jesus.

No, the evidence for the very existence of Jesus is paltry, let alone evidence for the incredible supernatural claims in the gospel story. More important, historians reject supernatural claims, including the many supernatural claims made about the great statesmen from 2000 years ago. Christians do themselves no favors by demanding a critique for the gospel story from an unbiased historian.

Stupid Argument #8: “One of the most important legal criteria . . . is that the accused and witnesses are innocent until proven guilty.”

This is an argument advanced by lawyer John Warwick Montgomery. He says that the gospels are the equivalent of witnesses and must initially be presumed accurate.

Let’s ignore that the presumption of innocence doesn’t apply to witnesses. Montgomery assumes the historicity of the story and that it was written by eyewitnesses (both of which must be demonstrated) and ignores how unreliable the New Testament books are. A document written 2000 years ago in Ancient Greek, for which our oldest fragment dates to two centuries after the original authorship (which is true for Mark), for example, is not equivalent to a living eyewitness who we can cross-examine.

Even ignoring all this, eyewitness testimony is unreliable (I’ve written about unreliable memory and thinking). Can Montgomery actually expect us to credulously accept claims from 2000 years ago for what might be the most remarkable supernatural claim imaginable? We’re comfortable with myth and legend, and that’s what the Bible looks like.

Continued in part 3.

.

(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 10/1/14.)

Image via marneejill, CC license

To give me a time to work on a new book project, I’m replaying a few oldies from the vault. I’ve recently been adding to this list (spoiler: I’m already well past 25), but let’s go back and review the first few arguments from four years ago. 

Hey, gang! Get out your Christian Fallacy Bingo cards and cross off the bogus arguments as they’re called out! These are some of the dumb arguments apologists often use. Christians, do us all a favor—yourself especially—and make good arguments. These aren’t what you want to use.

Stupid Argument #1: the consequences of atheism are depressing.

Atheism is sad or unfortunate or otherwise discouraging, or atheism declares that life is hopeless and meaningless.

This is like saying that the consequences of earthquakes and hurricanes are sad or unfortunate. Sure, the consequences of reality can be sad, but that doesn’t make them untrue. “Atheism is depressing; therefore, it’s false” is a childish way of looking at the world. A pat on the head might make us feel better, but are we not adults looking for the truth?

As for life being meaningless, I find no ultimate meaning, but then neither can the Christian. Atheists can find plenty of the ordinary kind of meaning. Look up the word in the dictionary—there is nothing about God or about ultimate or transcendental grounding. (More on objective truth here.)

Stupid Argument #2: I sense God’s presence; therefore, God exists.

The argument is more completely stated: If God existed, I would sense his presence; I sense God’s presence; therefore, God exists. This is the logical fallacy of affirming the consequent (formal version: if P then Q; Q; therefore P). I’ve discussed this in more detail here.

The point is that there could be lots of reasons why you sense God’s presence, God’s existing being only one of them (and the least likely). Maybe you were just raised that way and are a reflection of your culture. Maybe humans were programmed by evolution to err on the side of seeing an intelligence behind that rustling in the woods.

I can’t tell whether you’ve deluded yourself or whether you’re justified in believing in a supernatural experience. Nevertheless, your subjective personal experience may be convincing to you, but it won’t convince anyone else.

Stupid Argument #3: defending God’s immoral actions.

Christians might say that genocide or slavery was simply what they did back then, and God was working within the social framework of the time. Or they might say that God might have his own reasons that we mortals can’t understand.

This is just embarrassing. You’re seriously going to handwave away God’s being okay with slavery (discussed in detail here and here) and ordering genocide (here, here, and here)? If it’s wrong now, it was wrong then. How do you get past the fact that the Old Testament reads just like the blog of an early Iron Age tribe rather than the wisdom of the omniscient creator of the universe? And if you dismiss slavery as not that big a deal, would you accept Old Testament slavery in our own society? This reminds me of Abraham Lincoln’s comment, “Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.”

As for God having his own unfathomable reasons for immoral actions, this is the Hypothetical God Fallacy. No, we don’t start with God and then fit the facts to support that presupposition; we follow the facts where they lead—whether toward God or not.

Stupid Argument #4: I’ll believe the first-century eyewitnesses over modern historians.

The Christian gives more weight to writings closer to the events.

It’s fair to be concerned about the accretion of layers of dogma or tradition over time, but don’t think that you’ve solved that problem by reading the Bible and the writings of the early church fathers. We don’t have what the original authors wrote; we have copies of what they wrote (and it’s debatable how good those copies were). Perhaps the Christian actually wants license to dismiss unwanted ideas from modern sources.

As for the “eyewitness” claim, this is often slipped in without justification. None of the gospels claim to be eyewitness accounts. We don’t even know who wrote them. That Matthew and Luke borrow heavily from Mark—often copying passages word for word—make clear that they’re not eyewitness accounts. And those gospels that do make the claim (the Gospel of Peter, for example) are rejected by the church. Show compelling evidence for the remarkable eyewitness claim before confidently tossing it out.

Of course, getting closer to the events is a good policy. The problem is that this doesn’t work to Christianity’s favor. We’re separated from both Islam and Mormonism by less time than from Christianity. Mormonism in particular fares much better than Christianity in a historical analysis (more here). This is an argument the Christian wants to avoid.

What arguments should be in this list?

There will be some controversy about this list. Maybe some of these deserve more space. Maybe you’d combine or divide them differently. Maybe some are reasonable enough that they shouldn’t be on a “stupid” list. And I’m sure there are plenty that I’ve forgotten.

At the very least, referring back to the argument number might be a shorthand way for us to respond to bogus arguments by Christian commenters. But my hope is that thoughtful Christians will understand the problems behind these arguments and minimize them in their own discourse.

Continue with part 2.

.

(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 9/29/14.)

What does heaven look like? Does the heaven imagined by Fred “God hates fags” Phelps match that of Mother Teresa, who said, “The world gains much from [the poor’s] suffering”? Do these heavens match that of Maximilian Kolbe, the friar who volunteered to die in the place of a stranger in Auschwitz? These are three Christians with three possibly incompatible views of heaven.

Suppose the properties of Paradise are what we imagine them to be. The British comedy Red Dwarf explored this idea of the perfect life in one episode. In “Better than Life,” the three characters enter a total immersion game that’s better than life. They get whatever they want—food, cars, cash, girlfriends, power. Things go wrong when one of the characters can’t accept good things happening to him and corrects the balance by imagining his father’s disapproval, then being saddled with a nagging wife and seven children, and finally that all of the characters are buried up to their necks with jam on their faces, about to be eaten by ants.

This was just a television show, but if you reject the idea of imagining into existence the properties of a perfect life, you won’t care for this Christian apologetic argument.

Ontological Argument

Here’s the original argument as formulated by Anselm of Canterbury a thousand years ago. First define “God” as the greatest possible being that we can imagine. Next, consider existence only in someone’s mind versus existence in reality—the latter is obviously greater. Finally, since “God” must be the greatest possible being, he must exist in reality. If he didn’t, he wouldn’t meet the definition of the greatest possible being.

But this is crazy talk. How is this not wishing something into existence as with the Red Dwarf episode? If we can simply think God into existence, can we think other perfect things into existence as well?

This is a little like Zeno’s paradox. The conclusions of neither Zeno’s paradox nor the Ontological Argument seem to follow, and yet the error isn’t obvious.

Rebuttals to the Ontological Argument

But perhaps our intuition fails us here. Let’s be more rigorous and explore some rebuttals.

1. Does the thing exist or not? The most obvious flaw is that the first step defines an imaginary being—God is the greatest possible being that we can imagine. But in step three, we are now talking about beings that exist. The definition of “God” from the first step no longer applies. We’re switching definitions mid-argument.

2. “Greatest” is subjective. This was the lesson from the Better Than Life game. Consider a few examples: I like sugar in my tea, you like your tea straight, and the Mormon either has iced tea or avoids tea altogether. “The greatest cup/glass of tea” is not definable.

Or religion: Muslims say that their religion is best because it’s a monotheism. Christians say that their Trinity is better. Which is greater?

Or warfare: was the English victory at Agincourt or the Greek holding action at Thermopylae greater? Was Hannibal’s generalship greater than that of Julius Caesar? Chinese strategist Sun Tzu said that the greatest battle is the one that was avoided. So then is the greatest superhero the one who kicks the most butt or the one whose diplomacy avoids the most butt kicking?

Is the greater god the omnipotent one, or is he the one limited in power but who overcomes his limitations and nevertheless gets things done by cooperation? The Buddhist has yet another approach and will argue that the greatest being has “completely purified his mind of the three poisons of desire, aversion, and ignorance.”

One Christian imagines Buddy Christ and another a severe and unfriendly Yahweh—which one is better? Joel Grus said, “Yahweh doesn’t have a rocket-powered jetpack, and a deity with a rocket-powered jetpack is easily ‘greater’ than one who doesn’t have it.” “Greatest being” is like “the highest integer”—you can always go a little higher.

The first point in the argument—“God is the greatest being that we can imagine”—is not well defined, just like there is no “greatest presidential candidate.” These are subjective categories.

3. What’s better—the God of the OT existing or his not existing? Obviously the latter! We can puzzle about the existence of the greatest possible being, but the reprehensible Yahweh of the Old Testament clearly isn’t it. (More here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.)

At best, the Ontological Argument is yet another deist argument; that is, it argues for an unspecified deity rather than the god of the Bible. If it were convincing, the Christian would still need to argue for which god.

4. The greatest possible being can’t create. The greatest possible being is perfectly satisfied and has no needs. No needs means no motivation to change or create, so it can’t be the creator of our universe.

5. The Ontological Argument invites its negative version. If we’re just imagining things into existence, other things will come through that door.

Define “God” as the worst possible being that we can imagine. Next, consider existence only in someone’s mind versus existence in reality—it would obviously be worse if this being actually existed. Finally, since “God” must be the worst possible being, he must exist in reality.

6. Questions about existence. Philosophers for the last millennium have wrestled with the Ontological Argument with no consensus. David Hume observed that to think of a unicorn (for example) is to think of it existing. Adding a second step after we’ve thought of a unicorn, “Okay, now think of it existing,” is meaningless. The same is true of God—the idea of God is the idea of God existing, and the argument no longer works.

Immanuel Kant argued that existence is not just another property like “blue” or “has four legs” that you can imagine (or not) about something. Theologian J.W. Montgomery agreed, “If one removes all the genuine properties from something, one does not find that existence remains; existence is the name we give to something that has properties” (Tractatus Logico-Theologicus, 119).

7. The Ontological Argument creates a moral conundrum. Here’s a nice refutation from commenter Greg G.

1. The greatest possible being would also be a morally perfect being.
2. A morally perfect being would prevent all unnecessary suffering.
3. For suffering to be necessary, it must achieve some purpose, and this purpose must also be logically possible to achieve.
4. The morally perfect being (being the greatest possible being) would also be omnipotent. An omnipotent being is able to do every logically possible thing, so it could achieve every purpose alluded to in #3.
5. But if the morally perfect being could achieve every purpose by itself, achieving it through suffering is unnecessary.
6. That means that all suffering is unnecessary, which means it is impossible for a being that is both omnipotent and morally perfect to exist in this world.
7. Therefore, the greatest possible being can’t exist. QED.

Wrapup

Imagine that you’re balancing your checkbook. You’re tallying up a list of figures and then stare at your calculator. Wow, you actually have a million dollars more than you thought—happy day!

When most of us reach a conclusion that seems to be crazy, we suspect that there’s something wrong with our analysis. Wishing God into existence is one of those too-good-to-be-true arguments that demands skepticism.

Let me admit that this post isn’t thorough and can only explore the ideas behind the Ontological Argument. Eager Christian apologists through the centuries have proposed many variations, taking a discarded version and giving it low-profile tires, spinning rims, and a new paint job. If you slap down one argument, they’re sure to demand that you evaluate all the others.

Are any of these variants valid? Do they prove God’s existence? I doubt it, but think of what this says about the arguments supporting Christianity. Must you really resort to such esoteric and impenetrable arguments to show the existence of a caring god who desperately wants you to know about him?

The Ontological Argument is effective because it violates Hoare’s Dictum. It’s complicated enough that there are no obvious errors. That’s its strength—not that it’s correct but that it’s confusing.

.

(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 9/24/14.)

Image via Wikimedia, CC license