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

Stupid Argument #17: Failure to acknowledge the incredibleness of the Christian claim.

So you think the Big Bang just happened? And you accept evolution saying we got here by chance and life came from nonlife? That’s crazy—I don’t have enough faith to be an atheist!

Correcting the many confidently asserted scientific errors isn’t our goal at the moment. The problem I’d like to focus on is apologists expressing doubt over a naturalistic explanation when their God hypothesis—that a supernatural being created the universe and came to earth as a human and that this was recorded in history—is perhaps the most incredible explanation imaginable.

That the conclusions of science offend their common sense is irrelevant and unsurprising. If science were nothing but common sense, no one would need to spend years getting a PhD. Unfortunately, none of these science skeptics seem motivated to end their perplexity by reading a textbook on the relevant subject.

Science has given us plenty of surprising explanations—the earth goes around the sun, germs cause disease, plate tectonics, quantum physics, and so on—that aren’t on Christians’ radar only because they don’t step on their theological toes.

And when apologists object to a natural explanation for some aspect of the Christian story (the resurrection, say) they ignore that not only is their supernatural explanation less likely than even an outlandish natural explanation, there isn’t even an accepted category of supernatural events that we can all agree to. Science has found the evidence to reject countless supernatural explanations in favor of natural ones, but the reverse has never been true, even once.

The plausible natural explanation always trumps the supernatural. (For a response to Geisler and Turek’s book I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist, click here and here.)

Stupid Argument #18: Christians are better people.

Christians give more to charity (or are nicer or have fewer divorces or have fewer abortions or are better looking or have fewer weeds in their yards or whatever).

In the first place, many of these proud claims wither under closer scrutiny.

• Christians are not more generous.
• Divorce rates for evangelicals and fundamentalists are the highest of any group.
• Teen mothers disproportionately come from red states.
• Red states consume the most antidepressants.
• Atheists have better mental health than religious people.
• Atheists know more about religion than Christians do.
• Religious belief is even inversely proportional to innovation and intelligence.

A study by Gregory Paul compared 17 Western countries on social metrics (homicides, suicides, STDs, and so on). The U.S. came out at the bottom of this comparison of social metrics but on the top in religiosity (more). Proving a causal link is difficult, but Paul suggests that poor social conditions cause the high religiosity, and religion remains the opium of the masses, helping people deal with their pain.

I have no interest in getting into a citation war, where you show me studies that rebut any of the points above. Select any subset of the population, and you can probably find at least one thing on which they’re better than average. I’m confident we could find one or more positive traits that Christians have to a greater degree than atheists.

But so what? “Christian belief gives benefits; therefore God” is the pragmatic fallacy. This fallacy argues that if it is beneficial, it must be true.

Perhaps I’m just old fashioned, but I first want my beliefs to be true. I think I can handle the consequences of believing true things.

Stupid Argument #19a: God’s making himself plainly known would impose on your free will.

You couldn’t then make a free choice to follow him or not. As C.S. Lewis observed about God making himself known, “[God] cannot ravish; he can only woo.”

Knowing of the existence of no one else offends my free will; why should it be different for God? Satan knows about God in great detail, and he’s still free to not follow him.

The Bible record many instances of God imposing on people’s free will. “God has mercy on whom he wants to have mercy, and he hardens whom he wants to harden” (Romans 9:18). He hardened Pharaoh’s heart (Exodus 9:12), for example, and he gave ungrateful humans over to “shameful lusts” (Rom. 1:26). “The Lord foils the plans of the nations; he thwarts the purposes of the peoples” (Psalms 33:10). Following the Ten Commandments and the rest of the 613 Old Testament laws is mandatory, which was a substantial imposition on human free will.

And these Christians will be quick to say that belief is the work of the Holy Spirit, so even coming to belief is not something we do freely.

This is a pathetic attempt at avoiding the Problem of Divine Hiddenness and celebrating faith (that is, belief without sufficient evidence). Faith serves no purpose in any other part of life and is always the last resort. Defending an invisible God and celebrating faith is precisely what Christians would do if their religion were manmade (more).

More in response to this free will argument here and here.

Stupid Argument #19b: “All that are in Hell, choose it” (C.S. Lewis).

People send themselves to hell—don’t blame God. God is a gentleman, and he won’t impose himself on people. If they don’t want to be with him, he respects that. The gates of hell are locked from the inside.

Are we talking the same God who imposes genocide? Not much of a gentleman.

I understand the motivation to downplay the eternal torment that the loving God has planned for the majority of his greatest creation, as C.S. Lewis does with his quote above. There may be Bible verses by which liberal Christians imagine a kinder, gentler hell, but the parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus gives the traditional view. When the rich man is sent to hell, he says, “I am in agony in this fire.”

That’s one person who wouldn’t be in hell if he could choose otherwise, and Lewis’s argument fails.

Continued in part 6.

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(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 10/13/14.)

Image via Scott McLeod, CC license

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.

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(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.

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(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.

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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.

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

Image via marneejill, CC license