Which worldview explains reality better? The first candidate is Christianity/theism. Opposing that is naturalism, the belief that natural explanations are sufficient to explain the world we see. (To be more precise, I argue that naturalistic explanations of nature are better than supernatural explanations, not that the supernatural necessarily doesn’t exist.)

Each worldview makes predictions about how our world should look. We’ll consider those predictions and compare them against the evidence from reality to see which worldview does the better job.

God’s hiddenness

Theism proposes supernatural deit(ies) that engage with humanity. (Contrast that with deism, in which a deity could’ve started up the universe and then walked away.)

Our example of theism is Christianity, which tells us that God should be obvious: “God’s invisible qualities . . . have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse” (Romans 1:20). It makes the same claim when it says that God is anxious to have a relationship with us, since understanding God’s plan and putting our faith in Jesus is mandatory for us to escape hell.

God should be obvious, and his message to us should be unambiguous. But when we look around, there is no good evidence for God, just as naturalism predicts. (I discuss this Problem of Divine Hiddenness in detail here.)

Fragmentation into sects

Even if humans invent religions, theism predicts that clear evidence for the one correct religion would outshine all the rest. Invented religions might always be background noise in the religious environment, but the correct religion—the only one actually supported by evidence of real god(s)—would quickly spread from its introduction thousands of years ago to become and remain the biggest religion by far. There would be no contest to any unbiased observer which religion was correct (more here).

But it doesn’t work that way. For all of human existence, the majority of people at any moment have always had the bad fortune to not believe in the one correct religion (assuming there is one). Religion is a cultural phenomenon. Christianity is the largest religion at the moment, though it might not be in fifty years when Islam is expected to become number one. Christianity is not the oldest religion, it didn’t become largest until centuries after its founding, and it’s never claimed the majority of the world’s people.

A single, unambiguous message doesn’t exist even within Christianity. There are 45,000 Christian denominations, a number that is growing rapidly.

The Bible itself documents how God’s fundamental properties have evolved.

• God was initially just a guy who walked in the Garden to chat with Adam and Eve, but later he said, “No one may see my face and live” (Exodus 33:20).
• God had to send out agents to get intelligence about Sodom and Gomorrah, but ask Christians now, and they’ll say that he’s become omniscient (“New and improved God 2.0—now with 10²⁰ times more omniscience!”).
• God was initially part of a pantheon, and only later do we get a clear statement of monotheism (Isaiah 43:10, for example).
• God was initially merely powerful, and he apparently had limitations. Now we hear he’s invulnerable.
• Like a superhero comic, the God story periodically reboots.

The map of world religions shows that religious belief doesn’t change with evidence like science does. Instead, it’s a cultural trait.

Relationship to science

Theism predicts that sacred texts would be useful in the real world. They wouldn’t be full of just-trust-me-on-this demands. Instead, they would be grounded in the real world so that we could see that their claims were both surprising (far beyond what was known in that society at the time) and reliable. We wouldn’t need faith to accept the supernatural; it would be obvious that this wisdom didn’t come from any human society.

Christianity is again a counterexample. Any scientific statement within the Bible that’s true was known by the culture that produced that part of the Bible, and all other scientific claims within the Bible are false. Mining the Bible to find verses that vaguely anticipate modern scientific discoveries is a popular hobby for some Christian apologists, but science has learned nothing about reality from the Bible.

You’d think that the Bible would at least make room for simple science that would greatly benefit people. For example, how about a recipe for soap plus basic hygiene rules? It would only take a paragraph, but we find nothing. Even Jesus’s healing miracles just reflect the superstitions of the time.

In the competition between science and religion, “God did it” was the answer for famine, plague, drought, disease, and even war in centuries past. Dogma rather than evidence pointed to God, and science has steadily produced reliable answers to replace God for countless scientific puzzles. The reverse has never happened. Shoehorning God into the remaining puzzles makes him a “god of the gaps,” a pitiful rearguard action that makes a joke of the all-powerful Creator of the Universe.

At best, apologists can say, “Well, science hasn’t answered this question,” unconcerned that Christianity hasn’t answered any question. Yes, science does have unanswered questions on its to-do list—that’s how science works. These aren’t questions that theologians have pointed out but are mostly obtuse questions that only science could raise.

Life

Theism predicts that life is designed and that life is the purpose of the universe.

Neither is true. A Rube Goldberg machine and a Swiss watch are both complicated but in different ways. Cells are complicated, but they’re more like the redundant and inefficient Rube Goldberg machine than the elegant watch. Designer-less evolution is sufficient to explain why life looks the way it does.

DNA is often cited as being so software-like that it must have come from a mind, but I disagree. The sloppiness in DNA alone is enough to defeat the Design Hypothesis (the argument that life must’ve been designed).

The theist will say that software invariably comes from minds, but they forget that minds invariably come from brains. If invariability is important to them, they must show us the brain that houses God’s mind.

And, no, software doesn’t invariably come from minds. Software can be evolved in a computer where it is randomly changed and tested for fitness, analogous to what happens in the real world to DNA.

The theist must look at the hundreds of billions of galaxies in the universe, each with hundreds of billions of stars, and say that all of that exists because of the humans on one planet in an insignificant backwater of one galaxy. Naturalism gets it right when it predicts no design and sees life as just something that happens now and then.

We’ll conclude this worldview comparison next time with a look at morality, the mind vs. the soul, and more. Go here.

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(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 11/17/16.)

Image from Image Catalog, public domain

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It seems to always be election season, and that pushes many of us into heated political conversations. Or maybe the arguments are about public policy (how to address climate change or infrastructure improvements). Or science education (evolution or sex ed in schools). Or religion (end times or church scandals).

Suppose you jump into such an argument. Will you get anywhere? What most frustrates me is not being able to say “I told you so” after the evidence is in. When things play out like I said they would—whether ten days have passed or ten years—I never even get the minimal satisfaction of hearing my antagonist admit that they were wrong. They adapt to (or ignore) the new data without going through that unpleasant I-was-wrong phase.

It’s not about me. It’s not about how smart I am for being correct. I’d just like for my antagonist to learn something, creating a small hope that our argument was worthwhile, and they will be less likely to make this kind of mistake again.

Let me add two hopefully obvious clarifications. First, sometimes the antagonist does indeed admit their error (it’s just that this is rare). Second, this goes both ways, and it might be me eating the humble pie and learning the lesson.

I’m guessing you’ve been in similar situations.

Commit to a public declaration

So how can we improve our chances of eventual satisfaction? Let’s say that the topic is rabbit overpopulation, and your antagonist is in favor of the upcoming ballot initiative to use mutant weasels to control the rabbit problem.

You list the problems with this approach but your friend disagrees. Then the initiative passes, the weasels are released, and the environmental catastrophe (and untouched rabbit population) plays out like you predicted. When you confront your friend with this, he agrees that it was a disastrous project (or maybe not) but denies specifics of both his prior position and your prediction.

The answer is for you to write a shared Public Declaration. This is a short statement summarizing the facts that clearly states what one of you think will or won’t happen and the time frame. It should be unambiguous so that an objective third party could determine who was right. (Of course, you could both be partly right. Or partly wrong.)

Let’s go back to the rabbit overpopulation argument and imagine that it ended with your writing this:

Sigmund Freud and I disagree on the best approach to the rabbit overpopulation problem. Sigmund advocates the mutant weasels proposal in Initiative 7 on the November, 2021 ballot. I think it will be a terrible idea.

Prediction: I predict that the weasels will (1) have little impact on the rabbit population and (2) have the side effect of endangering the populations of other animals like birds. This is the position of the Natural Resources Defense Council, which has come out against Initiative 7. Their “Weasels Primeval” white paper goes into more specifics, and it represents my position.

Test: If the proposal is implemented, check with the NRDC one year afterwards to see if things turned out as predicted.

(signed) Friedrich Nietzsche

What does this do?

Here’s what’s good about this statement.

• It’s specific about the claim: you referred to Initiative 7 on the November ballot, and your prediction is specific. There’s no need to also summarize your opponent’s position because he simply thinks that you’re wrong.
• It’s clear on the time frame: judgment day is “one year after the proposal has been implemented.”
• It defines an objective test: use the NRDC’s analysis after the proposal has had time to work. This could be a weakness of this public declaration if the NRDC is seen as biased. Another option might be to predict an editorial confirming your position. It works as long as your opponent agrees on the test. It’s tempting to imagine that “everyone” on this future date will just know who was right, but the lack of a clear test with specific measurements would weaken such a statement.
• It’s a shared statement. This project works best when you work on it and sign it together. It shouldn’t matter which party writes it.
• Recording your position for posterity is satisfying, which might give more closure than just walking away frustrated and angry.

Be as specific as possible. Things that are clear and obvious in your mind now could be forgotten by the time the prediction must be evaluated. (Contrast this with the vague and unspecific claims made by biblical prophecies.) Imagine the future judgment day and give yourself a clear and unambiguous statement to work with.

Rapoport’s Rule

By writing the statement together, each party should be proud, rather than reluctant, to sign and agree to it. If the writing of the statement is difficult, that’s a clue that you don’t understand each other’s positions correctly. If you thoroughly understand your opponent’s position, you should be able to painlessly state it.

This is an important aside, because arguing against not-your-opponent’s-argument is a common and usually inadvertent waste of time. The solution is for you to correctly state their position, and vice versa. This has been formalized as Rapoport’s Rule of debate, the most important step of which is to state your opponent’s position to their complete satisfaction.

Note how this sidesteps the frequent debate impasse of, “No, it isn’t!” and “Yes, it is!” When you state your opponent’s position, you are no longer equals. They are the final judge of their position, and if they say you got it wrong, then you got it wrong. Get more information and try again. Arguments dissolve away once the combatants realize they have been arguing past each other, and the sooner you attempt to restate your opponent’s position, the better.

Let’s assume that misunderstandings have been resolved, there still is an important difference of opinion, and you’ve written your summary of the issues.

How can someone forget so important a position?

While you’re arguing with someone, the argument and your position are very, very clear in your mind. (Again, let’s assume you’re beyond the mutual restatement of positions.)

While the declaration could prevent your antagonist from lying about their former position once it’s been proven wrong, I think simple forgetfulness is the bigger issue. The Challenger memory experiment makes clear the difference between vivid and accurate memories—just because you have a clear memory of a past incident doesn’t mean that memory is correct.

Implementation

The idea could play out in different ways. This could be as casual as notes on the back of a napkin or drinks coaster. It could wind up on a Facebook post (use a consistent phrase, like “public declaration,” so that you can search for it on judgment day). Or maybe there’s a single site, PublicDeclarations.com, that could give a simple template for those who want to boldly plant their flag.

This could work for several kinds of claims.

• If-then claims such as, “If same-sex marriage is legalized in the U.S., then X will happen” or “If Joe Biden is elected, then X will happen.”
• An even simpler claim is, “X will happen,” such as the predictions about the end of the world by John Hagee, Hal Lindsey, and Harold Camping. Another example: “Biologists will realize that evolution doesn’t explain life.” (More on fundamentalists’ decades-long claim that evolution will collapse any day now here.)

Since arguments usually distill down to a simple “Yes, it will” versus “No, it won’t” dichotomy, public declarations could have wide applicability.

What do you think?

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(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 10/17/16.)

Image from Jonathan Baker-Bates (CC BY-SA 2.0)

Image credit:, flickr, CC

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“This is gonna be a good one.”

That’s how a recent Red Pen Logic video from Tim Barnett begins. His confidence was in response to Brien Doyle’s brief list of atheist arguments, “10 Ways to ‘Prove’ God Doesn’t Exist.” Barnett gives the entire list a grade of 0/10, he found a fallacy in each one, and he encouraged fellow apologist Mike Winger to respond as well. I’ve also added a rebuttal from Who Is Like You Ministries to the Christian side of the argument.

Sounds like this should be a tough challenge. Let’s take a closer look.

(Brien Doyle’s atheist arguments are in blue. I’ve put the Christian responses in green and, to avoid clutter, have avoided labeling most sources.)

1. We must be taught that God exists

Atheist argument: “The fact that a human being has to tell you about the existence of your God proves there’s no God. We would be born with knowledge of its existence.”

Christian response: “Here’s the first fallacy, a non-sequitur, where the conclusion doesn’t follow from the premises.”

My response: Most of the Christian responses come from Tim Barnett. He was eager to find logical fallacies in each atheist argument, but we’ll see that he’s living in a glass house.

“Research has shown that humans are predisposed to believe in supernatural agency behind the world. God belief will crop up in humans unless indoctrination pushes it out, so by your own standard, this is actually evidence for God.”

That’s evidence for evolution, not God. A rustling in the bushes could be the wind . . . or it could be a jaguar. Seeing agency, even if there is none, and running away would’ve been a protective instinct. It’s a small jump to go from seeing agency behind a sound in the bushes to agency behind drought, illness, and lightning. The plausible naturalistic explanation trumps the supernatural explanation.

And the Christian thinks that indoctrination is a point in their favor?! Remember the Jesuit maxim, “Give me a child until the age of seven and I will give you the man.” Christianity continues only because it indoctrinates impressionable children. Reverse this by making Christianity an adults-only activity like voting, driving, or military service and see how long Christianity lasts (more).

Does it not exist, or do we just not know about it?

“Let’s say that no one knew of the existence of God because no one was told about it. That means nothing when it comes the actual existence of a divine being. Ignorance of something does not equal non-existence.”

And if the supernatural existed but left us alone, its existence would be irrelevant to anyone’s life here on earth. Christianity’s problem is its claim that God exists and is eager for a relationship. Surely such a god could make his existence obvious.

Imagine a post-apocalyptic world where all evidence of science and Christianity were destroyed. The societies that emerged from the rubble would eventually recreate the same science we have today. They would likely recreate religions of some sort, but they wouldn’t recreate Christianity. Christianity can’t be deduced from nature.

“We all have knowledge of God, but some suppress it.” Romans 1:18–20.

Yes, the Bible says that God’s attributes “have been clearly perceived,” but the Bible is no authority. The world is full of people of different faiths saying that their god(s) are the real ones. Don’t quote the Bible; quote evidence.

But we teach children about lots of things

The atheist argument is that knowledge of God must be taught. “Human beings have to tell us about the existence of all kinds of things, but that doesn’t prove that those things don’t exist. For example, teachers tell terrified students about fractions, but that doesn’t prove there’s no fractions. Bad start.”

The atheist argument says that, if God existed, we’d be born with that knowledge. Sure, that’s one way that God might’ve done it, but that’s not the only way. A better argument would say that God would be obvious from the environment, since that’s how we learn of the existence of everyone and everything else.

The Christian response compares knowledge of God with knowledge of fractions. Every educated adult understands that fractions exist and we all understand them the same way. Unlike math, religion is a cultural trait, varying across the world. There is a map of world religions, but there is no equivalent for math (or science). Also, fractions aren’t all-knowing and eager for a relationship, but we’d expect an omnipotent god to make his mere existence obvious.

Since Barnett likes to point out fallacies, this one is a false analogy.

“Bad start.”

Bad indeed. Be careful with those charges of fallacious thinking.

Evaluation: The atheist argument is the Argument from God’s Hiddenness, which I think is the most powerful argument against Christianity.

I’ll give an evaluation of the strength of the argument at the end of each, adding in any improvements from the critique. I give this one 10/10.

Let me make a meta comment about these ten atheist arguments. They’re flawed because they claim to each be a proof that God doesn’t exist when they should simply remind us that atheism is the default, that Christians have the burden of proof, and that each argument against God has the preponderance of evidence on its side. That’s a more reliable way to win the argument. I’m surprised that the Christian respondents didn’t take a charitable interpretation of the argument and respond to the strongest version they could make.

Well, no, I guess I’m not surprised. They do that all the time.

2. God belief is geography

Atheist argument: “A God belief is simple geography. Being raised in a Christian home decides which God you believe in.”

Christian response: “This is a textbook example of the genetic fallacy. You cannot invalidate a belief by showing how someone came to hold that belief.”

My response: No, it’s not a textbook example of the genetic fallacy, but your response is a textbook example of misunderstanding the fallacy. “Genetic” comes from “genesis,” referring to the origin of the claim, and an example of the fallacy is “X is a bad person, and he says Y, so therefore Y must be false.” Or “X is a good person, and she says Y, so therefore Y must be true.”

Now suppose I ask the question, “Is there a God?” and decide the answer with a coin flip, crystal ball, Tarot deck, or Ouija board. Is the belief that I come to reliably correct? What if I adopted my religious belief saying, “If it was good enough for Mom and Dad, it’s good enough for me”?

Or (dare I say it?), can we invalidate a belief by showing that it came from a flawed process?

Time for a quiz!

Let’s return to the original argument. Barnett plays a teacher in his Red Pen Logic videos, and we can illustrate the atheist argument as a multiple-choice word problem.

The population of Somalia is almost entirely Muslim. What is the likelihood of a Somali baby growing up to be a Muslim? Is it closer to:

〈  〉   24.1 percent, the fraction of the world’s population that is Muslim, or

〈  〉   99.8 percent, the fraction of the Somali population that is Muslim?

Religion is a social trait. Children pick it up like language. More.

But flip your argument around: if you’re programmed based on where you come from, the same must apply to your atheist belief.

The symmetry you imagine doesn’t exist. Children raised in a religion-free environment usually aren’t atheists because they were taught to be atheists but because they were not taught to be religious. By contrast, Christians are Christian because they were taught to be. Christianity must be taught, and atheism need not be taught. Atheism is the default. Remove tradition and religious books, and Christianity would vanish. There is no objective knowledge from which to rebuilt it.

“Where you are born and what you believe has no bearing on the actual existence of God.”

Right, but that’s not the issue. The question is: given that religious belief of children maps reliably to the religiosity of their society, what is left unexplained by the explanation, “There is no God, and religion is a social construction”? The correlation is very strong; who doubts what causes what?

If Christians want to dismiss this argument, they’ve lost an important tool. If almost all Somalis grow up to be Muslim but it’s not because they mirror their environment, then what explains it? Do Christians want to say it’s because Islam is correct?

Evaluation: 10/10. People adopt the traits of their environment—language, customs, and religion.

Continue to part 2: God and time + copycat argument.

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Image from Kyle Brinker (free-use license)
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We started with a couple of arguments from popular Christian apologists with an evasive approach to the burden of proof in part 1.

Reevaluating the strategy

Returning to apologist Greg Koukl’s “Professor’s Ploy” in part 1, note that he wasn’t making a claim of parity. He wasn’t saying, “My God hypothesis is in the running just as much as a naturalistic explanation, and I demand a seat in this debate as an equal.” That would be bold enough. No, he was going further by taking the role of the Socratic questioner, assuming that he was right and guiding the student (the professor, in his example) through a pre-planned series of questions to a predetermined conclusion.

To the extent that Koukl’s goal is to help inexperienced Christians ease into the intimidating world of public speaking and debate with antagonistic strangers, that’s fine. He encourages them to ask questions to learn, to admit when a topic is new to them, and to ask permission to respond to the atheist after some research. However, his tactics go too far when he ignores that the atheist is defending the default hypothesis (naturalism) and that the Christian is making the extraordinary claim, which must be defended. Attack has its place, but that’s subordinate to making and defending the Christian claim. And, of course, his goal isn’t to follow the evidence, it’s to support a predetermined conclusion.

(In case it’s not obvious, I do want to follow the evidence. Atheism is my provisional conclusion, but evidence could change that. If atheism is incorrect, I want to find the evidence that shows this.)

We’ve seen the same contempt for honest debate with Koukl’s metaphor of arguments committing suicide by being self-defeating. Here’s an example: if I said, “I’m offended at Christians condemning homosexuals; in fact, I think it’s wrong to condemn anyone for anything,” he could reply, “Then you shouldn’t be condemning me.” Or if I said, “There are no absolutes,” he could reply, “You might want to reconsider your position because that certainly sounded like an absolute.” Many of these “suicides” are easily corrected, but Koukl has no interest in engaging with the valid points at the core of any opponent’s argument. He just wants a technicality with which to dismiss it. (More here.)

Clumsy reversal of the burden of proof: more examples

Here are two more quick examples that illustrate the wrong approach to the burden of proof. These have nothing to do with religion, so both Christians and atheists should be able to see the flawed thinking without distraction.

Beginning in the 1970s, psychic Uri Geller claimed to be able to perform a number of impressive feats, most famously bending spoons with his mind. While these were part of the standard repertoire of stage magicians, Geller claimed to be able to do them with paranormal powers given to him by aliens, not with stage magic.

Magician and psychic debunker James Randi publicly showed that he could duplicate all of Geller’s tricks. Geller admitted that but said that just because Randi could do his tricks with fakery (like any stage magician would) didn’t mean that Geller wasn’t doing it for real. Randi replied, “If Uri Geller bends spoons with divine powers, then he’s doing it the hard way.”

Let’s map this onto Christianity. It’s true that just because Christianity arose from a region in the world at the crossroads of cultures with religious dogma including supernatural births, dying-and-rising gods, and other miracles familiar to Christians, that doesn’t mean that Christianity’s stories about Jesus’s virgin birth and resurrection weren’t real. Just because Christianity looks like just another religion, and we toss all those other religions into the bin labeled Legend and Mythology, that doesn’t mean that Christianity isn’t the real deal.

We can’t prove that Christianity is just one more manmade religion, and we can’t prove that Uri Geller uses trickery to bend spoons, but in both cases, that’s the way to bet. (More on Uri Geller here.)

Here’s an example from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the inventor of the ruthlessly empirical detective Sherlock Holmes. Conan Doyle was fascinated with spiritualism, and he discussed this interest with illusionist Harry Houdini. Each was an expert in deception in his own way, but curiously, they were on opposite sides of the spiritualism question. Deaths of people close to Conan Doyle pushed him to see spiritualism as a legitimate way to contact the dead, while Houdini spent much of his life debunking the spiritualist Uri Gellers of his day. Houdini encouraged Conan Doyle to reject spiritualism, pointing out that all his stagecraft was deception.

After Houdini’s death in 1926, Conan Doyle wrote a book about spiritualism. Without Houdini to refute him, the book included a chapter summarizing Houdini’s feats. In it, Conan Doyle argued that Houdini used supernatural powers but lied about it. He said,

Can any reasonable man read such an account as this and then dismiss the possibility which I suggest as fantastic? It seems to me that the fantasy lies in refusing its serious consideration. . . . As matters stand, no one can say positively and finally that his powers were abnormal, but the reader will, I hope, agree with me that there is a case to be answered.

(More on Conan Doyle and Houdini here.)

Closing thoughts

The person making the extraordinary claim has the burden of proof. If I claim there’s a teapot orbiting the sun or that pixies and unicorns exist or that we’re living in the Matrix or that our world came into existence last Thursday, I would have the burden of proof.

There’s another definition of “burden of proof”—the obligation someone has to defend a statement they made—and that’s fair, but keep these two definitions separate. Don’t let this definition allow the person making the Christian claim to demand any sort of parity. There is no parity between the extraordinary claim (the theist’s position) and the default hypothesis (the atheist position). The theist is starting at a deficit—don’t let them forget that.

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Image from Mariam Shahab, CC license
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In part 1, we looked at a couple of arguments from popular Christian apologists with a deceptive view of the burden of proof.

Who knew atheists had that much to defend??

Here’s another trick Christian apologists like to play with the burden of proof. This is from Alan Shlemon:

While it’s true that atheists don’t have to prove the absence of God, they’re hardly off the hook when it comes to making sense of their position. If they don’t believe in God, their view entails at least three incredible assertions that require a lot of explaining.

Huh? You’d think that a Christian apologist would understand the definition of “atheist.” But let’s play along. Shlemon says that atheists must explain (1) how the universe came into existence by itself and how it came from nothing, (2) how free will can exist, and (3) where morals come from.

Bullshit.

Wow, how many ways is this wrong? First, atheists don’t claim these things. Ignoring the inept wording, if you’re saying that these are things for which modern society is trying to explain, sure. By why is this any particular burden on the person who has no god belief? Sigh . . . the old kindergarten try.

Second, I’m sure that Shlemon is bursting to share with us Christianity’s explanations for these topics. I agree that Christianity could have answers, but then so could Hinduism, Buddhism, and a thousand other mystical worldviews. Show me that Christianity is any more plausible than the others (which aren’t at all plausible), and you have an argument. Until then, you only make yourself look clueless.

Third, Science has no obligation to provide answers, and “We don’t know” is a perfectly reasonable answer. Science has nothing to be ashamed of and an immense body of work to be proud of. “Science has unanswered questions; therefore, God” is no argument. Christians may have answers, but their answers are based on nothing.

Fourth, Christianity needs to stop worrying about the speck in the eye of Science and focus instead on the beam in its own eye. There are a pile of silver-bullet arguments against Christianity that it needs to resolve, each of which are arguably enough to sink it.

And finally, I can’t let these challenges go without brief responses.

• What does “the universe came into existence by itself” mean? If you’re saying that things don’t come into existence without a cause, that’s probably not true. And show me that the consensus of cosmologists is that it came from nothing. (I respond to William Lane Craig’s Kalam cosmological argument here.) If you think that the universe couldn’t have come from nothing, justify Christianity’s claim that God did it.
• The only opinion I have about the free will argument is that it’s a big topic about which I’ve read very little. “God created free will!” might be a tempting response for the Christian, but it’s groundless.
• Morals come from evolution. (As an evolution denier, Shlemon is gleefully on the wrong side of the scientific consensus.) He is doubtless demanding to know where objective morality came from, to which I respond: first show us that objective morality exists. I see no reason to imagine that it does (more here, here, here, here).

As with the claim for unicorns, the skeptic has no burden of proof. That these puzzles have a natural explanation, like the countless things science has shown in the past, is the default. Religion has no track record for explaining reality.

Christian strategy exposed

Apologists admit quite a bit when they reveal this strategy. They want to attack because they can’t defend!

We see the same strategy with Creationism/ID. The Creationism argument is just a pile on of questions, challenges, and demands. Creationists don’t want to stand and defend their position because it’s not particularly defensible; they’d rather attack by mocking evolution and demanding answers to questions that have been answered a hundred times. The public often doesn’t know that, so this approach can be effective in a public debate, but it isn’t science. How do we know? Because if there were science behind it, Creationists would publish in scientific journals!

What does it say about their position that they must resort to rhetorical tricks? It’s like pleading the Fifth Amendment (that is, asserting your right to not incriminate yourself)—you’re admitting that your position is weak or embarrassing. If they had compelling evidence, they’d give it.

And when in this process do they plan on sharing the Good News? Koukl’s stratagem seems to be designed to remove the Christian from the opportunity (predicament?) of evangelizing. The burden of proof is (incredibly) a burden.

If your argument is weak, dancing around to avoid engaging head-on might be a good option, but a better one might be to admit that you’ve lost the argument. That might be the first step to putting together a worldview that is defensible.

Concluded with some final observations in part 4.

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Image from Lance Goyke, CC license
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