BSR 25: Believing in God Is Like Believing in the Flying Spaghetti Monster

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Summary of reply: Belief is in the eye of the believer, Christianity’s claims to textual support fail, and the argument that evidence for God is all around works for the Flying Spaghetti Monster just as well.

(These Bite-Size Replies are responses to “Quick Shots,” brief Christian responses to atheist challenges. The introduction to this series is here.)

Challenge to the Christian: Believing in God is the same as believing in the Flying Spaghetti Monster (FSM).

Christian response #1: No one believes in the FSM, not even its creator! The creator protested religion by equating worship of the FSM (Pastafarianism) with religions. He failed.

BSR: The FSM was invented in 2005 to protest a proposal to teach Intelligent Design in Kansas public schools alongside evolution. Since the state school board was in effect declaring biology class open to all comers, Bobby Henderson insisted they add his own variant of Intelligent Design, with the Flying Spaghetti Monster as the Creator of the universe and life as we know it. As a lampoon of Intelligent Design (see his quote at the end of this post), it worked brilliantly.

Pastafarianism claims many earnest followers and even states that the faith has splintered into sects (as you’d expect from any religion that specified precisely one correct worldview). You’re welcome to laugh at Pastafarians, but don’t deny them the government rights that you enjoy for your Christian beliefs. And don’t insist on government oversight that judges who’s an honest follower of Pastafarianism unless you want the same critique for your Christian beliefs.

You’re welcome to laugh at the Flying Spaghetti Monster, but don’t deny its followers the government rights that you enjoy for your Christian beliefs. [Click to tweet]

Christian response #2: Textual evidence for God is far better than that for imaginary characters.

BSR: Let’s go with the assumption that the FSM was manmade. We have the foundational document, Bobby Henderson’s letter to the school board.

But things don’t look any better for Christianity. We don’t have the foundational documents for Christianity, and the origins of Christianity fade into the mists of history. For the gospels, the per-chapter average time gap between original authorship and our oldest copies is two centuries. This is flimsy support for Christianity’s incredible claims.

The best the Christian can say is that Christianity is so old that it’s untestable, but this is nothing to brag about. If Hinduism, Jainism, Shintoism, Zoroastrianism, and a thousand other venerable religions are in the bin labeled Mythology and Legend, then so is Christianity, and for the same reasons.

Or let’s look at it from another angle. In less than two centuries, Mormonism went from a nutty invention to a venerable religion. Give Pastafarianism the same amount of time, and who knows?

Christianity is so old it’s untestable. Its origins fade into the mists of history. That’s nothing to brag about. [Click to tweet]

Christian response #3: We don’t need to compare founding documents. We find clues to God in nature—design in biology, finely tuned universe, objective morality, and more. Not so for the FSM.

BSR: The “evidence from nature” claim is the usual list of arguments—the Argument from Design, the Argument from Morality, and so on. Problem 1 is that these arguments all fail. Problem 2 is that these are deist arguments, and they support most gods equally. Support for God is support for the Flying Spaghetti Monster. And if the properties of the FSM aren’t optimal to take advantage of some particular deist argument, then change the properties. Remember that God relatively recently acquired omniscience, omnipotence, timelessness, and other superpowers. In Genesis, he was just an old-fashioned, limited-power kind of god. If God can level up over time, so can the FSM.

The supernatural explains nothing satisfactorily in our world today. New scientific puzzles will likely be answered by science, and God continues to be a solution searching for a problem.

The deist arguments Christians claim support their supernatural claims will support the Flying Spaghetti Monster just as well. [Click to tweet]

(The Quick Shot I’m replying to is here.)

Continue with BSR 26: If Christianity Were True, There Wouldn’t Be So Many Denominations

For further reading:

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 [Pastafarianism],
and one third time for logical conjecture
based on overwhelming observable evidence.
— Bobby Henderson, 2005
(letter to the Kansas school board)

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Image from Wikimedia, public domain
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BSR 24: God Wouldn’t Allow Evil and Suffering

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Summary of reply: free will fails as a response to evil from humans, and God is hardly a defender of people’s free will. “It’s all your fault” is a surprisingly frequent answer from Christians trying to protect their fragile God, but it fails. And the obligatory appeal to objective morality is made with no evidence.

(These Bite-Size Replies are responses to “Quick Shots,” brief Christian responses to atheist challenges. The introduction to this series is here.)

Challenge to the Christian: God wouldn’t allow evil and suffering

Christian response #1: Are we talking about evil done by other people? God may allow us free will to do evil because free will is a requirement for human love. But there will be a reckoning where God will right these wrongs.

BSR: God as a champion of free will? Tell that to the victims who had their free will violated by rape or murder while God stood by, ignoring them.

If free will is as essential to human wellbeing as you insist, heaven must also have free will. But if free will is indirectly the cause of so much evil on earth, will that make heaven as bad as earth? If not—perhaps people in heaven get the wisdom to use free will properly—then God can clearly allow free will while avoiding evil. Blame God that that’s not the situation here on earth.

And if the issue is love for God, he can earn a loving relationship like anyone else. By being indistinguishable from nonexistent, he’s not making his case.

Let’s move on to the promised reckoning where God will right the wrongs. According to Christian logic, serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer, who became a born-again Christian in prison, is in heaven now. Mahatma Gandhi, Indian pioneer of nonviolent resistance, died a Hindu and is now in hell. How is that justice?

According to Christian logic, serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer, who became a born-again Christian in prison, is in heaven now. Mahatma Gandhi died a Hindu and is now in hell. How is THAT justice? [Click to tweet]

Christian response #2: Are we talking about natural evil like floods or earthquakes? Some of that is our own fault, and some of that is part of life-giving nature.

BSR: I get so tired of hearing that every instance where God could be at fault relabeled as our fault. God doesn’t answer prayers, God created hell, the Bible seems contradictory—it’s all somehow our fault. This is the “God is a Sensitive Baby” argument. Can God accept any criticism? Heck—can he simply come here himself and address these issues instead of having you do it for him, poorly?

We’re told that natural disasters are our fault, or at least putting ourselves in harm’s way by not being clairvoyant and knowing where they’d strike. We build where there are tornadoes or hurricanes, and we should’ve known better.

Sure, now we know better, though that’s thanks to science, not God. What about centuries ago, before science taught us about how natural disasters work? And what remedy do you recommend? What fraction of the US Midwest should be off limits because of tornadoes? Should the east coast from Florida to New York have a 50-mile uninhabited coast because of hurricanes?

I wonder if the trillions of dollars spent on these busywork projects could be better spent helping those whom Jesus called “the least of these brothers and sisters of mine.”

The last part of the argument, “some of that is part of life-giving nature,” says that tornadoes come with rain-giving thunderstorms, and earthquakes are a consequence of a process that recycles minerals. But this, of course, is irrelevant to a god who can speak the universe into existence. A magic god could get the good without the bad.

Is everything our fault? This is the “God is a Sensitive Baby” argument. Can God accept any criticism? Can he simply come here himself and address his problems instead of having the Christian do it, poorly? [Click to tweet]

Christian response #3: What standard are you using when you label something “evil”? Objective rightness is grounded on an unchanging, transcendent God.

BSR: You ask what standard I’m using. I’m using my own—whose would you recommend? Obviously you imagine that there are moral truths that are objective (correct whether humans are here to appreciate them or not) and reliably accessible. That’s a fascinating claim for which you’ve provided zero evidence. The ball’s in your court.

With no objective morality, your grounding argument fails, leaving no reason to believe in your God.

And what is this “unchanging” aspect of God that you imagine? The Old Testament god walked in the Garden of Eden, sent scouts to check out reports about Sodom and Gomorrah, and spoke to Moses “as a man speaks to his friend,” but today he’s an omnipotent and omniscient god who transcends time and space and created a universe with several trillion galaxies.

Morality has changed as well. Today, slavery, genocide, and killing everyone in a worldwide flood are beyond the pale, but they were part of God’s songbook in the early days. All that’s unchanging is that whatever correct morality happens to be at the moment, “unchanging” God has adapted and is now on board.

Slavery, genocide, and killing everyone in a worldwide flood are unacceptable today, but they were part of God’s songbook in the early days. Whatever passes for correct morality at the moment, “unchanging” God is apparently on board. [Click to tweet]

(The Quick Shot I’m replying to is here.)

Continue with BSR 25: Believing in God Is Like Believing in the Flying Spaghetti Monster

For further reading:

[Your comment] is a mixture
of ignorance, stupidity, wishful thinking
and a very large dose of Kool-Aid.
— commenter epeeist

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Image from Peter Forster, CC license
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BSR 23: Moral Truths Are a Matter of Personal Opinion

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Summary of reply: Sweeping moral claims built on Christianity only impress fellow Christians. Christians need to support their claims of objective morality with evidence.

(These Bite-Size Replies are responses to “Quick Shots,” brief Christian responses to atheist challenges. The introduction to this series is here.)

Challenge to the Christian: Moral truths are a matter of personal opinion.

Christian response #1: Is your claim also just a personal opinion? If so, why accept it? And if moral truths are personal opinions, then they all have equal claim to being valid.

BSR: Ah, our old friend, the attempt to disqualify an opponent’s argument so you don’t have to respond to it. But no, not this time—the original challenge said that moral truths are a matter of personal opinion. That’s a claim, not a moral truth claim.

The “Why accept it?” question makes me wonder if you’re a newcomer to this planet. Do you not understand how people argue as they try to convince another person to change? We’re only human, and people usually resist changing their minds and may fail to honestly follow the facts to their conclusion. Nevertheless, minds are sometimes changed by a compelling argument and reliable evidence.

Moral truth claims aren’t all equal. You should accept a claim (and change your mind if necessary) if and only if it comes with a compelling argument.

It sounds like you’re convinced that objective truth exists. I doubt that it does, and you’ve made no effort to demonstrate this remarkable claim, but I’m listening. Remember, objective morality is more than merely belief that is strongly felt or universally held. Show us that its truth is grounded outside humans and that it is reliably accessible.

Christians need to back up the claim of objective morality. It’s more than moral belief that is strongly felt or universally held. It must be grounded outside humans and reliably accessible. Where’s the evidence? [Click to tweet]

Christian response #2: Subjective morality like this should push us to pursue our individual self-interests. Why care about others?

BSR: Since we do care for others, atheists included, something is obviously wrong with your analysis. The error is not that morality must be objective (grounded outside people) but that morality can be subjective and still be focused on others. Being social animals was evolutionarily beneficial, and our moral programming pushes us to be concerned about others.

Look up “morality” in the dictionary, and you’ll find nothing about it being objectively true.

There’s no evidence for morality being objective. Ordinary morality, as defined in the dictionary, can be subjective and still focused on others. [Click to tweet]

Christian response #3: If moral truth is just personal opinion, doesn’t that make it based on feelings? Morality should be decided by intellect, not emotion.

BSR: When you get an immediate visceral reaction to something—priests raping children is horrible or unforgiveable or a child making a special present for Mother’s Day is thoughtful or sweet—that’s part of our moral programming. The analysis is done instantly. We don’t need to consult a book of morality in God’s library for these.

But other moral questions don’t get immediate, black or white responses like these. For example, Should I spend an afternoon helping an elderly neighbor clean out their garage? How much of a family’s budget should go to charity, and which ones? Doing the right thing is a more intellectual process with questions like these.

Human morality comes from (1) our moral programming and (2) from society and our upbringing. God isn’t necessary to explain any of this.

Human morality is part moral programming (from evolution) and part customs and traditions (from society). [Click to tweet]

(The Quick Shot I’m replying to is here.)

Continue with BSR 24: God Wouldn’t Allow Evil and Suffering

For further reading:

Everybody’s got to believe in something.
I believe I’ll have another beer.
― W.C. Fields

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Image from Daisuke Murase, CC license
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Response to “Top 10 Myths About Jesus’ Resurrection” (5 of 5)

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Let’s conclude our critique of Mike Licona’s “Top 10 Myths About Jesus’ Resurrection” (part 1 here).

(Blue text is the supposed myth, green is Licona’s rejection of the myth, and black is my response to Licona.)

Myth 9: Not enough evidence

There’s not enough evidence to support the conclusion that Jesus was raised from the dead.

Caesar Augustus was Rome’s greatest emperor . . . but how do we know? We have only six sources. One is a funerary inscription. The others are dated 90–200 years later. Contrast this with the gospels: they were written 20–65 years after the event.

Note that “Augustus was Rome’s greatest emperor” is a natural claim. That there would be one greatest emperor of Rome’s many emperors is not startling, and Augustus is a leading candidate. We have statues of him. The coin that Jesus used as an example in the “Render unto Caesar” story has a reference to Caesar Augustus as a god. Heck, we have a month named after Caesar Augustus. Yeah, I think we have evidence to back up that claim.

Knowing that we have only meager evidence (and that being written evidence) for the Greatest Story Ever Told, Licona wants to focus on just the written evidence for Augustus. All right—that’s not a fair comparison, but let’s go there. If the Augustus-was-the-greatest claim was overturned because of poor written evidence, no one would much care. The claim has no impact on the average person’s life. But the remarkable claim of Jesus as the son of God is, if true, far more consequential and needs much more than stories written down and poorly transmitted to us over 2000 years. (More on the relevance of the importance of a claim here.)

Licona also slips in conservative dating for the gospels. No, the consensus is that the earliest gospel was written forty years after the events. But this is a small matter. If the supernatural claims in the gospels were committed to papyrus even the day after the events they claim to document, they would still be unbelievable.

We also have Paul, who was an eyewitness of the risen Jesus.

The “risen Jesus” appeared to Paul as an apparition! And the word Paul used to indicate that Jesus “appeared” to him is the same that he uses to describe how Jesus appeared to the other disciples. Paul isn’t much of a friend to your side if he thought that no one, not even the disciples, met a physical Jesus.

“When we subject it to the typical criteria for the best explanation, the resurrection hypothesis is by far the best explanation for the historical data, and thus we should regard it as an event that happened in history.”

This is what passes for scholarship within the evangelical camp? Licona will have us believe that the supernatural explanation beats all the natural hypotheses, from the slightly farfetched (hallucinations) to the eminently reasonable (legend). Christians should feel insulted that he treats his audience as so stupid that they’ll buy this empty declaration.

Myth 10: Lost gospels

What about the noncanonical gospels like the Gospels of Thomas, Peter, Philip, or Mary that aren’t in the Bible but see the resurrection in a different way? For example, the Gospel of Thomas says that it was immaterial or calls it “enlightenment.”

Let’s not give the Gospel of Thomas much weight. Dates for authorship vary, with some scholars dating it to a century later than the canonical gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John).

And some date it to be roughly concurrent with the canonical gospels! The key thing about the Gospel of Thomas is the lack of interest in the resurrection and that salvation comes through understanding the teachings of Jesus, not faith.

There are lots of noncanonical gospels, many dating to the second century. Some scholars date the canonical gospels to the second century as well (because the references to apocalyptic destruction seem to fit the third Jewish-Roman war of 132–136 CE better than the first war in 70 CE), but that’s a minority opinion so let’s set that aside. The authorship of the noncanonical gospels is significantly later than that for the four canonical gospels, though it’s not like their authorship in the late first century was especially close to the events they claim to document. Any complaint that noncanonical gospels are late must apply to a large extent to the canonical gospels as well.

The liberals in the Jesus Seminar don’t think the Gospel of Thomas contains the authentic words of Jesus.

Yeah, and they don’t think much of the canonical gospels, either. You can say that the Gospel of Thomas is legendary, but it’s just built on top of the prior legend in the canonical gospels.

“The New Testament literature provides us with the very best information on what the early Christians claimed and believed pertaining to the resurrection of Jesus.”

Which isn’t saying much. This does nothing to argue for the accuracy of the outlandish resurrection claim.

And let’s not assume that first-century Christians held only the beliefs that survived to be included in the New Testament. Early Christianity was much broader than you would think looking only at the New Testament, and other branches (Marcionites, Gnostics, Ebionites, and perhaps others) have been pruned away.

Let me admit that Licona’s videos were quite short, and I’m sure he could’ve added a lot to each one. Nevertheless, I felt comfortable attacking these arguments without restraint because I’ve never seen longer arguments that are any more convincing.

Parable of the lost keys

These weak arguments remind me of the guy in an empty parking lot at night looking for something under a streetlight. Someone comes over to ask him what he’s looking for.

“I lost my keys over there.” He gestures to a dark part of the parking lot.

“Then why aren’t you looking for them over there?”

“The light’s better here.”

This is what apologists do. It’s hard to attack actual atheist positions, so they spend lots of time focusing on hallucinations or the swoon theory or the disciples went to the wrong tomb or the body was stolen, because they think they can make progress knocking over those arguments.

They never consider whether their own explanation is ridiculous; they’d rather sneak up on their preferred explanation through a process of elimination. This kind of argument can be distilled to, “We have alternatives A vs. B, but option A is unlikely so therefore B wins!” without showing that option B is any more likely. Or, in this case, “We have Jesus as legend vs. Jesus as universe-creating god, but legend is unlikely, so therefore Jesus must be a god!”

But to say that, they must ignore the best response to the resurrection claim, that it is legendary. What does it say about the Christian position that they must focus on the feeble arguments instead?

Surely it is better to know the truth
than to dabble in delusions,
however charming they may be.
Almost invariably, the truth turns out to be
far more strange and wonderful than the wildest fantasy.
— Arthur C. Clarke

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(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 3/30/16.)

Image from Wikimedia, CC license

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The Problem of Divine Hiddenness, Answered Poorly by William Lane Craig (2 of 2)

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Christian apologist William Lane Craig (WLC) recently responded to a post from the atheist blog A Counter Apologist. This is the conclusion of my response to his attack on the problem of divine hiddenness.

Part 1 critiqued WLC’s first response, that God has given evidence in the form of vague clues in nature and that this piddling evidence is just what you’d expect from a god who profoundly desires to let each and every one of us know he exists and loves us. Or something.

You don’t have good evidence? Blame yourself.

There’s more. WLC says:

God wants people to come to know him and build a relationship with him, and so he knows what gifts of grace, what evidences, what arguments to give to people that will be conducive to their coming to believe in him.

But what about the people in Schellenberg’s divine hiddenness argument in part 1, the nonresistant nonbelievers? These are the people who were eager, even desperate, for a relationship with God but insist that they had insufficient evidence to believe Christianity’s god claims. These are the people who, the Christians will say, are made in the image of God, using the rational brain that God gave us. When that God-given brain says there’s not enough evidence, the Christian must take that rejection seriously.

WLC gets to that:

I think that if there were someone who would come to know God personally if he were to get more evidence, God would give him that evidence because he loves him and he wants him to come to know him.

You think? I mean, sure, this is all just a silly game with rules you can bend or even make up as you go along. Tell yourself whatever you need to sleep at night. But taking the Christian claims at face value, there are afterlives with bliss or torment in the balance here. Why is this just speculation on your part? Why doesn’t God’s holy book make the rules of salvation unambiguous and irrefutable?

And it’s not like God gives solid evidence to those bound for heaven and nothing to those who wouldn’t benefit from it. The evidence that everyone gets is crap. We know because Christian apologists are eager to share with all of us the best arguments they can find, but they fail. (Reasons that our world looks like a world without a god are here.)

And consider the admission in the phrase, “if there were someone who would come to know God personally.” In WLC’s view, some people will eventually develop a relationship with God and some won’t. Consider that latter cohort: God deliberately creates people he knows won’t meet the entrance requirements for heaven. Instead, their afterlife will be conscious torment.

The burden of proof is yours to show that God was on solid moral ground when he created beings for torment. And before you jump into some rationalization for why God could’ve had some valid reason, admit first that God’s Perfect Plan® looks immoral (more). If it didn’t, you wouldn’t need to handwave your rationalization.

The Lazy God hypothesis

WLC restates his position:

The fact that there are many people who don’t get more evidence would simply be indicative of the fact that God has so providentially arranged the world that anyone who would get more evidence than what he has wouldn’t come to believe even if he had it, and so God knows it wouldn’t do any good to offer such a person more evidence.

That’s seriously the best reason you could come up with? Well, y’see, God is hidden . . . because, uh, . . . because God didn’t want to bother—yeah, that’s it! It’s such a hassle to make oneself known, right? It’s not like it would be difficult for God, but it’s the principle of the thing. Or something.

Okay, sure, I can’t think of anything better, but then I’m not motivated to. Here’s a quick critique: this Lazy God hypothesis sucks. I’ve read deconversion stories of seriously devoted Christians who pleaded and cried to God for good evidence of his existence for months as their faith dribbled away. I find far more heart in stories like these than those of typical fat ’n sassy Christians with their complacent and unexamined faith.

WLC not only dismisses these ex-Christians’ claims but insists on a worldview in which they’re destined for an afterlife of torment. There’s no Christian love in this argument.

And notice God’s perfect batting average. There are plenty of vague and unverifiable stories of individuals in lots of religions who get a surprise healing or feel a strong sense of divine guidance or presence. But at every chance the Christian god gets to make his existence clearly known to everyone, he retreats. Take, say, a pandemic—y’know, like the one we’re in right now. This would be a nice time for God to step in and instantly eliminate this coronavirus. But God ignores such opportunities. Every. Single. Time. If he exists, he’s deliberately making himself indistinguishable from nonexistent.

No more Mr. Nice Guy

Having (poorly) defended God’s afterlife scheme, WLC now goes on the attack. It’s all the atheist’s problem, doncha know. He shirks his burden of proof with the same “How can anyone accurately evaluate these probabilities??” argument he used before.

So once again you see the atheist finds himself saddled with probability judgments that are way, way beyond his ken. He would have to show that it is probable (highly probable) that if God were to offer more evidence of his existence that more people would come to freely know him and find salvation than those who do in the actual world. There’s no way he can know that. It’s pure conjecture.

“Pure conjecture”?? When I consider God creating people who he knows he will eventually put in hell with my God-given brain and conclude that that’s messed up, I shouldn’t trust that conclusion? I might as well flip a coin for all the good that being created in God’s image gives? Oh, please. Give back your doctorates if you’re not going to use them.

And he seriously wants to stick with the argument that God making his existence plain will do absolutely nothing to encourage undecided people to find out more about him? That a Christian god who looks as manmade as the thousands of other gods humans have invented is a problem WLC can just ignore and not get called on?

The one who’s handwaving based on nothing is you (for example, your “I think” paragraph above). You know that creating intelligent beings destined for conscious torment is immoral, and your inert god can’t get out of the line of fire (where you put him) so you rush in to protect him. Your argument is crap, and yet you state it with bluster and a straight face. You have to. Evidence isn’t something for you to follow but something to twist to satisfy your predetermined conclusion.

Why God is so hidden in modern society?
“You could blame Henry Ford,
mass producing all those iron chariots.”
— commenter Kevin K

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Image from Tinashe Mwaniki, CC license
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The Problem of Divine Hiddenness, Answered Poorly by William Lane Craig

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problem of divine hiddenness

Christian apologist William Lane Craig (WLC) recently responded to a post from the atheist blog A Counter Apologist. He responded to the problem of evil, and I critiqued that here.

The majority of WLC’s response was to the problem of divine hiddenness. In brief, this argument notes that the Christian claim that God merely exists (don’t worry about his properties yet) is very much in doubt. With no good evidence for this most basic and trivial claim, Christianity isn’t worth believing in.

The divine hiddenness argument

The version of the divine hiddenness argument up for discussion is the one from J. L. Schellenberg. Here is a summary:

  1. God is perfectly loving, so he would be available for a relationship with any human who was open to one.
  2. Therefore, God must have a relationship with every willing human. There can be no “nonresistant nonbelievers” (nonbelievers who are open to a relationship with God).
  3. But there are people who have desperately desired relationships with God, failed to find them, and now are nonbelievers.
  4. Because 2 and 3 contradict, this god can’t exist.

Since God doesn’t make himself known to nonbelievers who are open to a relationship, he either doesn’t exist or refuses a relationship with these people. Either is a problem for Christian claims.

You want evidence? WLC has evidence.

WLC responds that God isn’t hidden at all: “The evidence is there for anyone who has eyes to see.”

What is this irresistible evidence? Unsurprisingly, it’s the same tired old arguments he always trots out. As I list them, challenge yourself to anticipate my response. Or perhaps you have additional responses that are better.

  • “The origin of the universe out of nothing at a point in the finite past.” I suppose this tries to map the six-day creation story in Genesis 1 onto modern cosmology’s understanding of the Big Bang. But science doesn’t say that the universe came out of nothing (it might have, but the jury’s out). Oddly, Genesis doesn’t even say that the universe was created out of nothing (I explore what it does say here). Let’s also note that the two creation stories in Genesis have taught science absolutely nothing about the origin of the universe or life on earth or indeed anything else.
  • “The fine-tuning of the universe for intelligent life with a complexity and delicacy that defy human comprehension.” Nope. The Multiverse hypothesis is supported by evidence, and the rarity of life-supporting universes could be overwhelmed by the vast number of potential universes. WLC also skips over the fact that we don’t understand the conditions necessary for life in the universe. We don’t even understand them for Earth. Christian claims about the universe are supported by no evidence. The best a Christian apologist can do is start with known scientific facts and sift through the Bible for the occasional vague similarity and then declare the Bible to be prescient.
  • “The existence of a realm of objective moral values and duties that impose themselves upon us.” Objective moral values? Show us that such things exist. I see no evidence.
  • “The applicability of mathematics to the physical world enabling modern science to operate.” This is the Argument from Incredulity fallacy (“I just can’t imagine a natural cause, so therefore it must’ve been supernatural!”) plus the Argument from Mathematics (responded to here).
  • “The resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth from the dead.” That’s a story. It’s your job to show that it’s history. (More here and here.)
  • “Religious experience.” Finally! This one is real. Our Paleolithic and pre-human ancestors grew up in a dangerous world. With technology, we’re the apex predator now, but that wasn’t the case when we were naked on the African savanna. Growing up in a dangerous world made us skittish. Guessing that the rustling in the grass might be a leopard made survival sense. Unseen predators rustling the grass gradually become unseen gods making lightning and drought, so that evolution created religious experience.

WLC’s pat-on-the-head platitudes don’t stand up to cross-examination, and even he senses that this isn’t  a complete argument.

Evaluating the morality of God’s actions

WLC asks the follow-on question:

If God exists, how probable is it that he would give more evidence than what he has given?

The first problem is the “than what he has given,” which assumes God into existence. But let’s suppose that was unintentional, ignore it, and move on.

I don’t see that there’s any great probability that if God existed he would give more evidence than that. That makes the argument from divine hiddenness, I think, very, very weak indeed because [the atheist] can’t demonstrate that it is highly probable that God would give much more evidence than what he has indeed given.

Remember his Problem of Evil response in the last post. Not having much to work with, he is playing the same trick. Y’see, it’s the atheist who has the burden of proof. WLC thinks he can plop a stinker of an argument on the table and insist that the atheist clean it up. (More about the burden of proof and how WLC bears it here.)

It’s not my job to rebut this argument, but I’ll do it anyway. An all-loving, omnipotent, and omniscient god who (1) created the hellish consequences of our not knowing he exists and (2) didn’t make his existence obvious, can’t exist because he wouldn’t be all-loving. We are not only justified but logically obliged to reject this god claim.

Keep in mind that it’s simply God’s existence that we’re looking for, the proving of which for ordinary humans is effortless. What’s “very, very weak indeed” is WLC’s argument that God’s diaphanous hints about nature and mathematics are the likeliest evidence by which he’d illuminate the path to heaven for his most cherished creation.

(I’ve imagined the conditions where we would easily accept that God exists, a world I call Gaia. That thought experiment is here.)

Concluded in part 2, where WLC digs his hole deeper here.

Then it dawned on me.
If my relationship with this person was that spectral,
indeed virtually imperceptible,
then what practical difference would it make to just let it go?
So I did. I let it go.
And you know what? I didn’t really miss it,
because there was literally nothing to miss.
I realized that life with him
would be exactly the same as life without him.
— Patheos blogger Neil Carter

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Image from José Fonticoba, CC license
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