We’re stepping through ten terse atheist arguments, seeing how they stand up to responses from Christians such as Tim Barnett of the Stand to Reason ministry.

Barnett loves fallacies. Perhaps he’s even a bit lovestruck, because he’s seeing fallacies where they don’t exist in the atheist argument and missing them in his own. He included a fallacy counter in his video, and he was determined to identify a fallacy in each argument, whether there or not. He reminded me of Edward Current in his classic ten-point “Checkmate, Atheists!” video.

For the first four arguments, go to part 1.

5. Why is the devil still causing trouble?

Atheist argument: “God either allows the devil to exist and is an accomplice or it isn’t an all powerful God. An all powerful and all loving God wouldn’t allow the devil to exist.”

The argument cites Isaiah 45:7, which says, “I form the light and create darkness, I bring prosperity and create disaster; I, the Lord, do all these things.”

Christian response: “[This is] a false dilemma. It’s not an either-or. There’s another option. God is all-powerful and all-loving, and God allows the devil to exist because he has good reason to do so. Which is why philosophically trained atheists have largely abandoned this proof.”

My response: With this last line, he’s trying to get points without earning them. This is the appeal to authority fallacy: “Those atheists who are worth listening to have abandoned this argument, so you should, too. Nothing to see here. Let’s move on.”

“[This is] a false dilemma.” But not according to you! The dilemma given is: God (1) works with the devil or (2) is impotent to stop him. You’re supporting option 1—Satan is part of God’s plan. In fact, the first chapter of Job makes clear that Satan (who I’ll assume is the same person as “the devil”) works for God and is one of the good guys. “Satan” isn’t a name but a title: the prosecutor—God’s prosecutor. True, Satan is portrayed very differently centuries later in the New Testament, but that simply means that the Bible is contradictory and unreliable.

“God allows the devil to exist because he has good reason to do so.” Yeah? Like what? Give me an example of something that God could only accomplish through the devil rather than through miracles. Remember, the guy can do anything.

If you’re saying that God could have a good reason, even one that we could never understand, I agree. But rework the atheist argument from a proof claim to simply seeking the preponderance of evidence, as I’m doing with all of these, and this response fails. The atheist argument is just one approach to the Problem of Evil.

Satan’s story

Let’s return to the idea of the evolving Satan story. The book of Revelation says that the God vs. Satan bout is the most lopsided fight ever. (Since Satan is aware of Revelation, one wonders why he would participate in a real-life play in which his character dramatically and painfully loses.)

This evolution from being on God’s payroll to being God’s opponent could have come into Judaism from Zoroastrianism, which had the idea of two primary gods, one good and one evil.

Back to the Christian argument:

“The problem of evil is irrelevant to there being a God or not. . . . God could be the most evil and hateful being in the universe, however, it is irrelevant to the question of His existence.”

This wouldn’t be the Christian god, though, since Yahweh is said to be all-good. The atheist argument isn’t proving that the supernatural doesn’t exist but showing that the Christian god most likely doesn’t.

Evaluation: 10/10. I’d rather see a more traditional Problem of Evil than this use of the devil, but the argument still works.

6. The existence of other gods

Atheist argument: “The God of the Bible is jealous of other gods. This proves that this God is not the only God. With multiple choices, [this] only shows that there is no reason to choose [one over another]. If a God were true, there would be no other options.”

The argument cites Exodus 34:14, which says, “Do not worship any other god, for the Lord, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God.”

My response: The Bible (at least part of it) imagines a world with multiple gods—not just the Israelites’ Yahweh, but Chemosh, Moloch, Marduk, Baal, and other ancient Mesopotamian deities. And these are (supposedly) real gods—the Bible isn’t saying, “Yahweh obviously exists, but those nutty Moabites worship their invented god Chemosh.” There were multiple choices for a god but no good reason to pick one as preferable over another.

Christian response: “If you’re taking the Bible as true . . . then you realize that these ‘other gods’ are at worst fake or at best demons and lesser spiritual beings—ontologically nothing like God almighty.”

If we’re taking the Bible as true, then these “other gods” were just as real as Yahweh. In one confrontation, he was even beaten by one. This was the period of henotheism, where multiple gods existed (like polytheism) but only one was worshipped (like monotheism). The Bible even documents when Elyon, the head of the pantheon, parceled out the tribes of earth among the members of the council of the gods, giving Israel to Yahweh.

Who’s a false god?

“You’re literally taking a warning passage about worshipping false gods [in Ex. 34:14] and using it as an excuse to reject the true god.”

Let’s not be too sure about the reference to false gods. The first Commandment, “You shall have no other gods before me,” doesn’t say that there aren’t other gods or even that they mustn’t be worshipped! It simply says that Yahweh must be the primary god.

“God is clear throughout the Bible that He is the only God (Isa. 43:10).”

Completely wrong. What is clear is that the Bible evolved over time.

The book of Isaiah was written in three parts, and this chapter is in the middle piece, written in the 6^th century BCE. It’s true that verse claims God is the only god, but by this time, henotheism had been replaced by monotheism. The Bible evolved.

Evaluation: 9/10. I’m taking a point off because I think it could’ve been much clearer: The Bible itself says that Yahweh is just one of many gods. The Bible documents the evolution of the supernatural from henotheism to monotheism, which shows that Yahweh is no more real than any of the others.

Continue with part 4, where much is made of nothing.

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Image from midiman (license CC BY 2.0)
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Tim Barnett is attacking ten atheist arguments in a recent Red Pen Logic video. Here’s how he recalls stumbling across them.

So, a few days ago, I’m scrolling through the comments section of this channel, and I came across something that left me speechless. At first, I wasn’t sure if this was serious or if it was just a joke.

Wow—the atheist argument is in tatters before we even begin! Let’s poke through the rubble and see if anything is still standing after Barnett’s savage analysis.

For the first two arguments, go to part 1.

3. How could God cause the Big Bang without time to do it in?

Atheist argument: “There was no time before the Big Bang, so that means that there was no time for a God to exist in or create things in.”

Christian response: “Christians have traditionally held that God is a timeless being, outside of time, prior to creation.”

My response: Make up whatever properties you want for God, but that won’t magic away the problem. You must first show that this God exists. With evidence. The Bible makes vague hints at God’s timelessness, but the Bible is no authority. Iron Age thinking isn’t helpful when dealing with 21st-century physics.

And be careful what you wish for, since God as a Time Lord calls down a rain of new questions. How can you create anything if you’re outside of time? In particular, how did timeless God create time (or turn it on or however you’re inventing God’s relationship with time)? Isn’t timelessness permanent, since causes require time? How do you go from being timeless to within time?

And do you really want to imagine God outside of time? Such a god would be inert. Only within time can God judge, decide, punish, create, have emotions, take pleasure in things, and so on. Some of these actions of God—like deciding to create time or loving other members of the Trinity—supposedly happened outside of time.

All this science fiction must be justified. Apologists try to talk their way out of a logical predicament of their own making, but then they expect a pass to avoid having to justify their exuberant claims.

God’s properties—exalted or mundane?

“Since the universe is space, time, matter, and energy, then the thing that made the universe needs to be spaceless, timeless, immaterial, and incredibly powerful. The timeless nature of the origin of all things is another piece of evidence for God.”

Reshaping God to cooperate with modern physics is a recent project. The original hearers of what became the first books of the Bible roughly 3000 years ago had no concept of this debate. Back in God’s early days, he had to personally investigate stories he’d heard about Sodom and Gomorrah, he spoke to Moses face to face, and he was beaten by rival god Chemosh (more). Omniscient and omnipotent God was a later invention. An unchanging god who nevertheless evolves over time isn’t the Creator. It’s just fiction.

Evaluation: 8/10. Most listeners won’t be comfortable with this concept of being inside or outside time (it certainly makes no sense to me), but the argument works.

4. What’s good for the goose . . . 

Atheist argument: “The Abrahamic God cannot exist because it wasn’t the first God to be created. There are other gods that have been proclaimed to exist before this God. They can’t all be true. So, if we can deny the existence of one of these gods, we can use the same method to deny them all.”

My response: I interpret this argument to be the copycat argument (the Bible copied stories from earlier local religions, which shows it was invented) plus a demand for consistency (whatever arguments Christians use to invalidate other religions must be applied to Christianity, and if Christianity is special, they have the burden of proof to show that).

Christian response: “If this is a good argument against God, then it’s also a good argument against science since older false concepts are often replaced by newer true concepts. On Doyle’s logic, since the older geocentric view is false, we can just deny the newer heliocentric view by the same method.”

Science and mythology aren’t evaluated the same way. To see this, imagine a murder crime scene. If you know it was a murder, you also know that there were one or more murderers. The murderers may be unknown to the police, but you can’t have a murder without at least one. Contrast that with astrology. Many different incompatible astrology systems have been developed, and none are valid. You can have a pseudoscience without any valid theories for how it works.

Science is like the crime scene. You may not know the scientific explanation, but there must be one. Religion is like pseudoscience. It’s quite possible that none are correct. (The Monty Hall problem is related.)

This is like saying that fake van Goghs prove there are no real van Goghs.

No, it’s observing that every single religion could be false. By talking about fake van Goghs, you’re acknowledging that one or more real van Goghs exist (or did exist). Again, the two camps are like astrology (for which there are zero valid systems) and murder (for which there must be at least one murderer). There could be zero real religions, but there must be one or more real van Goghs to make sense of the concept of a fake van Gogh.

This comparison of science with religion is a false analogy. We evaluate scientific theories with evidence. A new theory might supersede the old, the old might still be standing after the challenge of the new, or a third theory might overthrow them both. There is no “current champion” within religion, because they’re cultural traits. Shintoism won’t come to America and vanquish the reigning champ in a few decades, as could be the case with an upstart new scientific theory that better explains the evidence than the old one. (The map of world religions comparison expands on this.)

The progression of religions through history

I assume we agree that people make up religions. We see the fingerprints of the (human) creator in Mormonism, Scientology, and others. Christianity has the advantage here because those new religions have a paper trail, and Christianity’s origins are clouded by time. But having an obscured beginning is hardly a selling point for a religion trying to prove the truth of its supernatural claims.

The Bible story picked up elements from neighboring cultures. Genesis describes earth’s geology as water in the sky and under the earth, taken from an earlier story from Sumer. Noah’s flood had parallels in the stories of Gilgamesh and others. The supernatural conception of Jesus followed those of gods and kings, and his resurrection had precedents, too.

What should we look for in the Bible to show that it, unlike the other ancient myths, is actually true? We’d look for its story to be unique. We find instead that world religions make up a family tree like we see with world languages, with Christianity just one more entry, more similar to religions from nearby areas and less similar to distant ones.

Or see the comparison another way. If Christianity were the single correct religion, it would look radically different, like Disney World, with the other, manmade religions more like a trailer park. There would be no contest. Instead, we see Christianity fighting for market share like the rest with no particular reason to think it’s more likely true than others.

However the Christian evaluates and rejects other religions, Christianity is cut down with the same scythe. The Christian might acknowledge much of this but insist it doesn’t prove that Yahweh is false. I agree, but that’s the way to bet.

Evaluation: 10/10. This one was poorly worded, but I think the copycat argument plus a demand for consistency—that Christian be evaluated with the same critique as the other religions—works well.

Continue to part 3 for arguments God allows the devil to exist + other gods exist.

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Image from Martin Sanchez (free-use license)
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The Problem of God’s Hiddenness, where God wants a relationship with us and knows that hell awaits those who don’t know him (but refuses to make his existence obvious), is what I believe is the most powerful argument against Christianity.

We’ll conclude our critique of a rebuttal of this argument by apologist Greg Koukl (part 1 here).

What do other apologists say?

C. S. Lewis in The Screwtape Letters tried to explain it this way: “[God] cannot ravish. He can only woo,” but this relationship analogy fails. In an ordinary human relationship, the very existence of the other person is never the question. No party to a relationship “ravishes” by simply making their existence known. The rare examples where someone is fooled into believing someone exists become man-bites-dog stories. (Consider the surprising story of Notre Dame football star Manti Teʻo.)

Augustine had similar advice: “Do not understand so you may believe; instead believe so you may understand.” But why? You don’t pick a belief system first and then select facts to support it; it’s the other way around. You follow the facts to their logical conclusion. Christians are forced to imagine a trickster god who plants vague clues to the most important truth.

What does the theist admit when using this argument?

Consider the theist’s desperation in advancing an argument like this. For any reasonable claim of existence, we are given evidence. You want to know what “the sun” is? Just look up on a sunny day. You want to know what a black hole is? That’ll take a lot more effort, but there is plenty of evidence for black holes, too. And yet for God, we get just a suggestion of a shadow. If God loved us and dearly wanted us to know him, he would make his existence known. He doesn’t.

So—option B—we assume God’s existence and say that he wants to be an enigma for reasons that are unknowable to us. But, of course, if he wanted to be hidden, he would be so! If you’re playing hide and seek with God, you will lose. He’s God—he could leave no trace, and there would be no enigma.

That leaves the Christian with option C: God isn’t deliberately hidden but instead leaves just the vaguest of clues—only enough to tease the seeker. This is rarely enough to give complete confidence, so the Christian is always on edge, never quite sure whether he’s got it right or is instead going to hell. This is a god who plays games with people’s lives.

So where does this leave us? A God too shy to even make his existence known contradicts a God who wants a relationship—he can’t be both. Koukl’s handwaving about how people would respond to an obvious God (lots of people would still disbelieve; they’d have their own selfish reasons for rejecting God) ignores the fact that this would remove the legitimate obstacle of too little evidence for millions or even billions of people.

And how hard would it be for God to make everyone believe he exists? I could convince any sane person that I exist. Can’t God do the same? If I can do it, couldn’t an omniscient god a billion times smarter than me do it, too?

Or take another example: Imagine a child who doesn’t believe you that touching a hot stove will hurt. That child will, upon touching the stove anyway, believe immediately and completely that you were right. God apparently has less ability to convince than a stove (h/t commenter MNb).

Koukl might say that God’s hiddenness doesn’t prove that God doesn’t exist, which is true. But it certainly gives us no reason to believe in him. We can’t prove that God is nonexistent, but he’s functionally nonexistent.

More on Greg Koukl’s answers to skeptics’ questions, which he answered on the same podcast:

• How Does Prayer Work? And What Does that Say About God?
• Criticizing the Logic of the Atonement

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(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 8/12/16.)

Image from Martin Cathrae (license CC BY-SA 2.0)

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The Problem of God’s Hiddenness, where God wants a relationship with us and knows that hell awaits those who don’t know him (but refuses to make his existence obvious), is the most powerful argument against Christianity.

We’ll continue our critique of a rebuttal of this argument by apologist Greg Koukl. (In part 1 we analyzed the free will response and the “Yeah, but that wouldn’t convince everyone” response).

What requests for evidence are reasonable?

Koukl said that the evidence people have today for God is “fully adequate.” He clarified his position this way:

[Doubting] Thomas had fully adequate evidence but then made the ridiculous request that I wouldn’t believe until I stick my finger into the nail holes. . . . That was really above and beyond what was really required.

Bullshit. Beyond a certain point, apologists’ making excuses for God just gets embarrassing.

So Thomas had clues indicating that his teacher had validated his claim to be the creator of the universe in human form, but it would be rude to check them out? Wouldn’t Thomas have been smart to firmly ground his evangelical message with solid answers to the questions skeptics would obviously ask about the facts of the resurrection? “How do you know it wasn’t a lookalike?” “Did you make sure it really was the same guy?”

It’s not like God has a rule against providing public evidence. In Elijah’s contest with the priests of Baal, God lit Elijah’s waterlogged sacrifice (1 Kings 18). God enabled Moses to perform magic tricks to convince the pharaoh (Exodus 4). Later, “The Lord would speak to Moses face to face, as one speaks to a friend.” Jesus did his miracles in public, in part to convince people of who he was. But today God won’t even show us that he exists?

I wonder if Koukl is this gullible in response to claims from other religions. Would he read the Book of Mormon without making the ridiculous request to see if its claims of horses and elephants in the New World held up? Would he accept that the “Hindu milk miracle,” where statues drank milk from spoons, was indeed a miracle, or would he make the ridiculous request to see if scientists have a natural explanation?

Skeptical Thomas demanded strong evidence for an unbelievable claim. No apology is needed for this reasonable request. Gullible Greg makes quite a contrast. God gave you that big brain to use, Greg.

In his quest to denigrate evidence, Koukl then said that if God appeared right in front of you, you wouldn’t go to God, you’d go to a psychiatrist.

Wow—that’s a great point! What does that tell you about the plausibility of the Christian message and the reasonableness of atheists’ demands for excellent evidence?

Rhetorical tricks

Throughout his response, Koukl added an undercurrent of bluster. Every couple of minutes, he dropped in a confident, evidence-free, off-topic claim that his position was the right one:

I’ve seen what people have done with enormous evidence and how they’ve often rejected it.

My evidence for God is quite good, and I think it’s available to many people.

Atheism’s not even in the running for me because the problems are so much bigger than anything I face in Christianity.

There is so much evidence all over the world, and we’re constantly offering that kind of evidence as apologists. . . . We have lots to say, but for some people it just simply isn’t adequate, and I wonder why because the rational aspects (it seems to me) are certainly covered here. There must be something else going on in the minds of people who reject it.

If he were backing the winning argument, he’d let the evidence do the blustering.

He complains when non-Christians are given “enormous evidence” but reject it. I’m pretty familiar with Koukl’s work, and I’ve responded to some of it in this blog (for example, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here). No well-informed atheist would be impressed by his tired, retread arguments.

I presume he wants to shift the conversation to his hand shadow figures rather than the topic at hand, God’s hiddenness, to which he has responded poorly. His argument has become, “Yeah, but Christianity is true, so it doesn’t matter that I can’t respond to this problem!”

Koukl again:

From where I sit, I think the evidence is absolutely overwhelming, and the problems with atheism are so much more massive than anyone can come up with for theism that there’s no contest between the two.

Yet again, this is stated without evidence, and our Problem of God’s Hiddenness alone defeats Christianity. If God wants a relationship, where is he? Christianity has promised too much, its god is a no-show, and Christianity is no longer a worldview candidate.

Thought experiment: God World

Koukl says that if God appeared to us now, some people would have a hard time believing. He imagines that people like me wouldn’t want to believe because we enjoy sinning so much, but Koukl’s thought experiment is flawed.

To see the problem, consider an Earth-like planet without natural disasters—let’s call it Gaia. If you visited Gaia and asked the people there to imagine tornadoes, hurricanes, volcanoes, earthquakes, tsunamis, and so on, many couldn’t. For them, a violent and unpredictable Nature would be inconceivable because the concept is completely foreign.

Now suppose that on this gentle planet natural disasters began to happen like they do in our world. An earthquake that kills 20,000 people? A tsunami that kills 200,000? Disasters that we think of as inevitable natural events would be to them unbelievable tragedies. They’re familiar to us but inconceivable to them.

Natural disasters on Gaia would be hard to accept, just like God suddenly appearing on Earth would be hard to accept. The lesson from the Earth vs. Gaia comparison is that natural disasters are easy to accept if they’re simply an ever-present part of reality. And God would be easy to accept if he were an ever-present part of our reality—if we lived in God World.

The lesson here can be seen from two viewpoints.

• Telling people on Earth about God is like telling people on Gaia about natural disasters. The people of Gaia would have a hard time accepting the idea, and they’re justified in doing so. It’s a completely foreign idea without precedent.
• Telling people on Earth about natural disasters is easy. We already know all about them. But convincing people on Earth about God is difficult. They’ll have a hard time accepting the idea, and they’re justified in doing so.

If Koukl wanted to preach the idea of natural disasters, Gaia is not the place to do it. And if he wants to preach the idea of God, Earth is not the place to do it. For each place, these are foreign concepts that should come with evidence but don’t.

He wants it both ways. He wants to imagine God making his existence known but many people still not believing. He also wants to imagine that “the evidence [for God] is absolutely overwhelming.”

Concluded in part 3, where we discuss other apologists’ approach to this problem plus some unexpected weaknesses in the apologists’ position.

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(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 8/11/16.)

Image from Old Book Illustrations, public domain

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