Typical Deconversion Story: False Dilemmas & Incoherence

Last updated on: March 28, 2019 at 1:33 pm By Dave Armstrong

I have long noted as regards deconversion stories from Christian to atheist, that, very often, these accounts of an exodus out of Christianity have the following characteristics:

1) an initial fundamentalist belief, which is thought to be the sum total of Christianity (as if there are no other more thoughtful and nuanced species of it).

2) rejection of various straw men, which do not represent the most informed versions of Christianity; “throwing the baby out with the bathwater.”

3) highlighting of terrible, hypocritical Christians, rather than the best examples.

4) acceptance of the notion that atheism is the only alternative to rejection of (what amounts to) straw men and lousy, inadequate versions of Christianity.

I have observed these motifs in these stories over and over and over, as I have critiqued a great number of them (word-search “Deconversion” on my Atheism web page). As long as atheists keep writing their stories, and implying that they can offer profound and supposedly solid, unanswerable reasons for leaving Christianity, we Christians (especially apologists like me) can just as easily critique them and show how and why the reasoning is fallacious and unsuccessful in establishing atheism or the falsity of Christianity.

Goose and gander. Yet, I often meet with great hostility when I do so (atheist author and “debater” John Loftus being the most outrageous and hilarious example): as if it were the rudest thing in the world and essentially improper and unethical to examine a public attack on Christianity.

I ran across a deconversion story by one Don R., on the Patheos website, Recovering from Religion: Ex-Communications. It is entitled, “My Escape from the Belly of the Beast” (9-24-18). It exhibits all of these typical traits. Don’s words will be in blue. I will go right to examples of fallacious thinking, false dilemmas, needless exaggerations and category mistakes, false dichotomies, factual error, etc.

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[W]e were brought up in a very strict fundamental Christian household.

As so very often in these stories . . . Fundamentalism is a small minority and fringe portion of evangelical Protestantism, which is one portion of Protestant Christianity, which is itself a minority of all Christians. Thus, to reject fundamentalism is not at all to reject all of Christianity (not even all of evangelicalism or Protestantism).

It is a rejection of what is in many respects the very worst and insubstantial and least intellectually respectable form of Christianity. Yet we’ll see that Don never seriously considers any other form of Christianity before departing. Those of us who never grew up as fundamentalists never cease to marvel at these sorts of “tunnel vision” dynamics.

You see, our father was a pedophile and was molesting my sister and I for years. Our stepmother had very little use for us, . . .

I am very sorry to hear about this tragic situation. But this is the motif of the “lousy, hypocritical” Christians: often (in these stories) subtly implying that a huge number or even a majority or most Christians are this way (not just pedophilia, but any serious sin), which is not true. Christianity has its “bad apples” just like any large social group does.

But it’s not fair to judge a religion based on its worst practitioners, or in some cases: literal “wolves in sheep’s clothing”: folks who never were Christians at all and only claimed to be (the ones that Jesus condemned because they say “Lord, Lord” but refuse to do what He commands them to do).

Our stepmother remained very religious (to this day she is fanatical in her beliefs) . . .

Again, if this is true fanaticism, rather than what Don thinks is fanatical simply because it is Christian, then it is an example of the extremes of Christianity. In other words, to reject true fanaticism is to reject a distortion and corruption of Christianity (which I have always done, myself), rather than the thing itself.

From early teens to mid-twenties, I still held a belief in god, but I just didn’t want to be around any of his people.

One can see why. If he had actually met some good, loving, Christlike Christians, then things might very well have been much different, right? If the terrible Christians drive one away, then it stands to reason that good examples of Christians would draw one in. Don does talk about his increasing church involvement as being “rewarding and fulfilling” and states that he “really loved the feeling of community.” So he must have found some (good) Christians that he enjoyed being around. Glad to hear it!

When people would come to me with their hard questions, I would share my process with them and help them come to “correct” answers, always based on the infallibility of the bible and the pure goodness of god. And every time I did that, there was a little voice saying “that doesn’t make sense”, which I ignored… because it felt so good to know that I was helping people be stronger in their faith.

This is rather subjective. We could simply reply that he wasn’t very good at apologetics and didn’t provide (or find in research) the best answer that could be given; therefore, he felt a nagging doubt. It doesn’t prove that there were no solid, plausible answers to be had.

I remember when I realized that even the people I believed were fully dedicated to god had their own doubts.

Everyone has doubts and befuddlement about various doctrines and beliefs: whether concerning Christianity or anything else. The question is whether they add up to outright unbelief, or are simply areas that require further thought and study.

Eddie (not his real name) was every bit as passionate about god as I was, and we had many nights of great discussions. I knew that he was fully committed and sought god with all his heart. So, when I found out that he believed in theistic evolution (the theory that god used evolution to create the earth), I was stunned.

Why? There have been Christians who were theistic evolutionists right from the beginning of Darwin’s theory in 1859; for example, the botanist Asa Gray. Darwin wrote to Gray in 1881, “there is hardly any one in the world whose approbation I value more highly than I do yours.” Darwin conceded to Gray that his theories were “not at all necessarily atheistical.” This was also the position of Darwin’s good friend Thomas Henry Huxley: himself an agnostic, but without insisting that the only form of evolutionism must be materialistic (i.e., atheistic). Darwin, after all, had developed his theory while he was still a Christian or at least theist. That is beyond question.

You see, I believed in a literal interpretation of the bible, and to hear that someone who was as fully devoted as I was could believe in evolution was really difficult.

Exactly. This is fundamentalism. But an informed, educated approach to the Bible understands that the Bible has many literary genres and modes of expression, and is not always to be taken literally (though many times it is). To hold that it must always be interpreted literally is simply “Bible ignorance.”

I had just assumed that god made everything clear to those who diligently sought him, so how could we believe two very different things about the creation of the world?

They could and did because Christianity has enough latitude to allow different views on the particulars of scientific matters. The Bible isn;t a scientific textbook. Good, orthodox Christians believed that the creation story was not necessarily literal (literally, six 24-hour days) at least as far back as St. Augustine (354-430).

This was the first of several times that my beliefs were shaken by things like this.

There was no need for such a crisis at all, if he had simply realized that he was in a fundamentalist fish tank and couldn’t imagine any other Christian paradigm. So because of that he gets “shaken” and this is included in his story of why he eventually forsook Christianity. It’s not an adequate reason at all.

Earlier in his story he noted how “Many evenings I would read Christian authors and study apologetics. I had 2 large bookcases filled with religious books and had read every page.” So we’re to believe that he had never encountered a good Christian or Christian book who believed (or which explained) that God used evolution as His method of creation? That’s hard to believe. What: did he only read fundamentalist apologetics?

There would be two writers that I deeply respected who held opposite beliefs on the role of women in the church. There were very different views on the “once saved always saved” or can you lose your salvation issue.

Yes, Christians differ on many issues. But disagreement doesn’t prove that no one got it right, or that there is no one correct position. If, for example, one person believes that the earth is flat and a second believes it is shaped like an egg, this doesn’t disprove that it is actually a sphere. All it proves (by strict logic) is that they can’t both be right. But they may both be wrong, with the actual truth found elsewhere.

But we can say concerning the “losing salvation” issue, that the vast majority of Christians (Catholics, Orthodox, Lutherans, Methodists, Anglicans, many Arminian denominations, pentecostals, a good proportion of Baptists, etc.), have believed that one can lose salvation or fall from grace or the Christian faith. It’s mostly Calvinists / Presbyterians and fundamentalists who disagree.

On most issues we can look to determine whether a large majority of the sum of all Christians accepts a thing, while a much smaller minority does not. And that should tell us something. But internal Christian disagreement is no compelling reason to become an atheist. All it proves is that Christians disagree and often are shortsighted (and too often, plain stupid), just as any group of people do.

Science is largely the same as theology in this “sociological” respect. Fifty years ago, things like the Big Bang Theory or plate tectonics were not as firmly established as they are today, with the vast majority of scientists agreeing. Some still disagree, but the likelihood or plausibility is that a view taken by almost all scientists will turn out to be the actual fact of the matter.

But I couldn’t understand why the deeply faithful would come to opposite decisions about the biggies. . . . I just couldn’t ever fathom why there would be such discord among the “true believers”.

For the same reason that scientists and philosophers have massive disagreements amongst themselves, and especially through time: over hundreds of years. There can be many reasons (good and bad) for why folks disagree with and contradict each other. But to add these up and conclude, “I reject the entire system as rubbish” is quite a jump and a stretch, and exceedingly difficult on an epistemological level.

One week, he began a 4 part series on the story of Noah and the flood. He came at it from a totally different perspective than I had ever heard or thought of before, and I was enthralled. On the 4th Sunday, he mentioned that there were different interpretations of the story within the church, and he brought up the fact that the flood story actually appeared in earlier writings that were not biblical at all. I was stunned. Could it be true that the bible borrowed the flood story from earlier secular writings (hint: Epic of Gilgamesh)? It was just a fable?

Huh? The reasoning here is very convoluted. How is it that simply because another culture also had a story of a massive Flood, therefore, somehow it becomes a “fable”? Isn’t it much more likely and plausible that an event of such shattering magnitude would be recorded by someone besides the Hebrews? Therefore, the mere presence of a similar story elsewhere is no disproof of the biblical account at all.

Pagan or heathen parallels or precursors do not necessarily “disprove” the biblical account. Thus, The Catholic Encyclopedia (1913) notes how such parallel stories of the Flood, confirm, rather than disconfirm, the historicity and trustworthiness of the Bible:

The historicity of the Biblical Flood account is confirmed by the tradition existing in all places and at all times as to the occurrence of a similar catastrophe. F. von Schwarz . . . enumerates sixty-three such Flood stories which are in his opinion independent of the Biblical account. R. Andree . . . discusses eighty-eight different Flood stories, and considers sixty-two of them as independent of the Chaldee and Hebrew tradition. Moreover, these stories extend through all the races of the earth excepting the African; these are excepted, not because it is certain that they do not possess any Flood traditions, but because their traditions have not as yet been sufficiently investigated. Lenormant pronounces the Flood story as the most universal tradition in the history of primitive man, and Franz Delitzsch was of opinion that we might as well consider the history of Alexander the Great a myth, as to call the Flood tradition a fable. It would, indeed, be a greater miracle than that of the Deluge itself, if the various and different conditions surrounding the several nations of the earth had produced among them a tradition substantially identical. Opposite causes would have produced the same effect.

I was deeply shaken to realize that the bible was not the historically accurate document I was always told and completely believed it was.

I don’t know why. It certainly wasn’t because of the above things mentioned, because that conclusion simply doesn’t follow.

How much was allegory? How much was literal? How much was parable? How could you tell which was which?

Obviously by searching related cross-references, studying biblical commentaries, and especially by researching biblical genre, literary types, the nature of different books (Psalms and Proverbs are poetry, etc.), and ancient near eastern culture and ways of thinking. Apparently, it never occurred to Don to do that (tons of books about these things) — otherwise he wouldn’t have asked this rhetorical question — , and this is usually the case in a fundamentalist paradigm.

Is god a god of confusion?

No, but human beings often bring about confusion by ignorance, stubbornness, pride, self-interest, etc. So we wind up with lots of disagreements. Catholicism offers one self-consistent, historically continuous view of Christianity, which is why I am a Catholic. No form of Protestantism possesses these traits.

I began to look for what set Christianity apart from all the other false religions in the world. I knew that they all had holy books, and the bible was very suspect at this point, so that wasn’t it.

Again, nothing presented in this account proves that the Bible isn’t what it claims to be.

There were several times in my life where I KNEW that god had spoken to me. Times of deep struggle and fear that he had comforted me. Surely that must be unique to the Christian religion. Nope. People all over the world had their own profound experiences that proved their god to them.

Why must Christian religious experience be unique? The Apostle Paul Romans 2 teaches that people can possibly be saved, who have never even heard the Christian message. Jesus talked to a pagan Roman centurion and concluded that He had rarely seen such faith in Israel. So this man had religious faith, yet wasn’t an observant Jew. Truth is truth, and God can reach men in many different ways, including religious experiences.

It’s simply silly and shallow thought, to think that because non-Christians have also had spiritual experiences, therefore our own personal spiritual experiences that we “KNEW” actually happened, somehow get nullified as pipe dreams and self-delusion. That doesn’t follow. It’s lousy “reasoning.”

Nor does atheism at all follow from this: “lots of people have had spiritual experiences; therefore there is no God”? What?! How does that follow? I must confess to being mystified as to how that “logical chain” works. If atheists think it does, then they must explain it to me.

I begged god for some kind of sign that he was real, and I really expected him to answer, because he would know that my very faith was at stake. Nothing…

Very often, God will not comply with such a request, because He knows it is a cop-out: “show me some huge miraculous sign to prove that you exist!” People know enough to believe God exists, simply by looking at His creation (as it states in Romans 1).

I had to learn I was not the complete piece of trash that my religion had taught me I was . . .

That’s what fundamentalists and Calvinists believe (total depravity and a completely fallen, corrupt human nature), but not what the vast majority of Christians have believed (fallen, subject to concupiscence, but still capable of good and freely receiving God’s grace). So once again, Don rejected a straw man that only a tiny number of Christians believe.

If he truly wants to see a worldview that results in human “trash,” he has to look at hundreds of millions of aborted babies: killed by Christians who no longer follow the historic teachings of their own group, secularists, atheists, and all who have started to believe that an innocent, helpless human being can be utterly worthless, so as to be torn to shreds and murdered (all the way up to full term at nine months, and now even after birth) for the “sin” of existing because of someone else’s actions.

That is a “complete piece of trash”: not the biblical and Christian teaching on original sin, as taught by the great majority of Christians.

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Photo credit: ||read|| (5-28-09) [Flickr / CC BY 2.0 license]

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Dialogue w Atheists on Hell & Whether God is Just

Last updated on: December 10, 2018 at 5:19 pm By Dave Armstrong

This exchange took place on the Debunking Christianity blog, underneath a post by John W. Loftus, called No More Funerals! [which appears to now be a defunct link]. Words of “DagoodS” will be in blue; some others in various colors as indicated. Indentation (excepting Bible verses) indicates my own words being cited by my opponents.

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She still exists. Hopefully, she went to the right place. I don’t know if she did or not. God is merciful and gracious. That would depend on her entire life’s response to the divine grace given to her, not on a momentary decision.

You would have tended toward the latter in your former theology, but most non-Protestant Christians take a little more of a nuanced view.

[Bruce] For the husband’s sake, I sure hope she “went to the right place”. Must be torture to believe that your dead wife could be burning in Hell. Why would anyone want to be part of a religion that tortures both the dead and living?

Makes a lot of sense: hell is a yucky, icky, dreadful place, so to avoid the yuckiness and ickiness one simply denies that it exists and accuses the Christian of being cruel to folks by suggesting that it may.

Meanwhile, there is no ultimate justice in the atheist world. Hitler, Stalin, Mao, and Jack the Ripper end up in the same place (nowhere) that John Loftus and DagoodS end up.

Sorry; I find that view of reality far more disturbing (apart from the question of which view is true) than the Christian notion of hell, where someone only goes there if they choose to reject God and suffer the consequences.

The atheist “consequences” (i.e., of the entire worldview) makes life far more troubling and ultimately meaningless than the doctrine of hellfire, much as you guys will protest that till you’re blue in the face.

No one has to go to hell, in the Christian view, rightly understood. But we all have to cease existing and only have a 70-year or so dinky, miniscule lifespan in the atheist view. And then those of you who favor abortion would disallow even that for those who must die by those atrocious ethics. They get obliterated out of existence before they have even drawn one breath in this world.

And you want to wax indignant about hell?

We all would like people who truly deserve it to get what is coming to them, but wanting it to be so doesn’t make it true.

Nor does wanting hell to be untrue make it untrue.

Are your religious beliefs based on what you believe to be true or what you want to be true?

The former; however the latter is not to be immediately dismissed. The presence of thirst doesn’t disprove that there is water; sexual drives don’t prove there is no such thing as sex, etc. Likewise, a desire for God or for heaven is more likely to prove that there is a God and a heaven, in my mind, than that no God or heaven exist. The fact that we all seem to have this interior, gut-level sense of right and wrong and desire for justice suggests to me that there is absolute justice in the universe, grounded in God.

When I ponder a universe without God I truly wonder why it would be that this godless universe contains human beings on earth: some 90-95% of whom are religious, and virtually 100% feel that the universe has meaning and that certain things are right and wrong even though there is no basis upon which we are all bound to carry out this morality, unless there is a God.

You chastise John for making this funeral a “matter of polemics” but you have no problem using it to push a pro-life agenda?

I didn’t “use” the funeral for anything. John chose to write about it; that being the case, folks can make comments. Didn’t you see how I wrote that it is inappropriate to make a funeral an evangelistic service? My point about abortion was just to show how wildly unjust some aspects of the atheist worldview are: depriving human beings of the only life they could ever have. Abortion is self-evidently wrong as it is, but adding the atheist element of no afterlife, either, makes it all the more outrageous.

[John W. Loftus chimed in (tolerant and respectful of the views of others, as usual) ]:

You seem so confident, just like I once was. You defend the notion of hell. That’s utterly ridiculous from my perspective. If you were not so blinded by your faith you would see it as I do. . . . a trinitarian three separate consciousness Being is nonsensical, . . . Defend this all you want to, but you are deluded. [emphases added]

Hell is a yucky, icky, dreadful place . . .

[Paul] I’ve got to say, this is a new one for me. “Yucky?” “Icky?” Cooked spinach may be yucky, icky. But hell? Whatever happened to “wailing and gnashing of teeth?” Burning torture without end?

Nothing that I am aware of. I would say that this is covered pretty well by the word dreadful. The rest was obviously rhetorical and semi-sarcastic understatement, subtly aimed at atheists who are always going on and on against hell, as if it were an indictment against God (which it is not at all). But as it involved some subtlety and my characteristically dry wit, I’m not surprised that some would misunderstand it.

Yes indeed Dave, it is cruel for the christian (and would be for god if it existed) to use hell as a threat.

As I agree. I don’t talk about hell as a threat, but as a potential reality for those who choose to rebel against God. If it is a threat at all, it is in the sense that cancer is a “threat” to those who insist on smoking, or venereal disease is a “threat” for those who insist on promiscuity and sexual immorality. The rational person doesn’t blame the laws of nature for those bad things coming about, but rather, the person (who should have known better, based on our knowledge of causation for these horrors) who did the things that were the cause of them coming about.

When a criminal rebels against the laws of a society and is caught, convicted, and imprisoned for life (or executed, to make the analogy fit even better), we don’t say that the “cause” of his imprisonment or execution was the laws of the state that he violated, and rail against the very notion of law as the horrible, unjust cause of this guy’s suffering! He brought about his own demise by going astray. Likewise, with human beings, God, and hell.

The penalty for very serious crime in a civil sense is life imprisonment or execution. That’s just how it is. Law itself is not to be blamed.

The penalty for very serious sin and rebellion against God in spiritual reality is eternal torment in hell. That’s just how it is. God (the ground of moral law) is not to be blamed for that.

Likewise, a desire for God or for heaven is more likely to prove that there is a God and a heaven, in my mind, than that no God or heaven exist.

Actually, this is exactly backwards. “Desire” is an outstanding motivator, but a horrible proof. If we desire something, this places us on notice that we have a bias, and should be more careful to remove that bias when attempting to ascertain the truth, not less because it is “more likely.”

Well, technically (epistemologically), the word suggest would have been a better choice here than prove. But I still say that the desire is more likely to correspond to the things that are desired actually existing, rather than non-existent. This was the point of the analogies that followed. It was not so much hard philosophical “proof” in mind as it was common sense and experience of our desires and whether or not they are able to be fulfilled. Peter Kreeft makes a long elaborate “argument from desire,” drawing from and expanding upon C. S. Lewis. I think it is a rather neglected argument in the Christian “arsenal.”

In high school, I may have desired the head cheerleader to want to date me, but the fact she glanced my way in class is not proof of my desire. Simply because we desire something to be true, does not make it true.

I didn’t say that it did (I fully agree; that would be most foolish indeed). Don’t take this criticism too far. I said that the desire, in my opinion, made it probably more likely that the desired end exists, than that it does not. This is obvious from life. So in your analogy above, you desired to have a date with the cheerleader. This proves that it is possible that such a thing as a date with the cheerleader exists. It may be unlikely, but it is untrue that the desire proves or suggests that the thing is absolutely unattainable or nonexistent. more so than the contrary (as you atheists would make out with regard to the theist longing for God and heaven).

We have no evidence of life after death. None. NDE’s don’t even come close.

Nor do we have any compelling evidence for the cause of the Big Bang. There are lots of things that don’t have evidence; e.g., extraterrestrial life. But then again, you assume from the outset the unreasonable assumption that scientific knowledge is the only sort that gives us reliable information. You would deny the miraculous and revelation: precisely the things that we Christians would bring forth as evidence for life after death.

Therefore a “desire” for it is not a proof, but rather a warning we have painted a wish and now look for “proof” with anything that sticks.

It is a strong indication of existence, precisely on the analogical basis that I have described; particularly because the desire is so widespread, and even had many many defenders in the philosophical world, through the centuries.

I have said it before, I will say it again. The idea of this is NOT to pick the team with the snazziest uniforms and stick with them regardless of the score.

Sure; not exactly clear what this means . . .

Hey, the concept of a place where we will be with people we love and can socialize for all eternity, where wrongs will be avenged, and good acts rewarded is a great idea. So is a perpetual motion machine. Doesn’t make either true.

I didn’t say it did. You misrepresent my argument if you think I was claiming that the mere desire for something is proof that it exists. I did use a word that should have been softened, but my use of “likely” shows what I had in mind. Context (as almost always) shows that I was not arguing as foolishly as you make out. And now my clarification makes it even more clear. This is one reason why I love dialogue.

The fact that we all seem to have this interior, gut-level sense of right and wrong and desire for justice suggests to me that there is absolute justice in the universe, grounded in God.

Interesting statement. Yet when we want to talk about the Christians claims regarding their God, and how it clashes with our “gut-level sense of right and wrong” we are often (if not always) informed that God’s Justice is not like Our Justice.

I wouldn’t argue in that way. That is more of a Calvinist approach. The Catholic and Orthodox and non-Calvinist Christian argument is that God builds upon nature. If we (human beings) feel a certain sense of morality naturally, God builds upon that and presents His fuller revelation to us, that expands upon what we already know.

C. S. Lewis argued somewhere that the almost universal agreement on many basic moral precepts doesn’t show that Christianity is false because these things are ingrained with the necessary aid of religion (Christian or otherwise), but the opposite: they are ingrained because God put the moral sense in human beings in the first place.

The prevalence of a single broad morality is not inconsistent with the notion of one divine source for that morality, just as, e.g., if one follows the history of language, one sees that languages tend to come from a common background (French, English, and Spanish, all derive from Latin). If there were no God and everyone was truly on their own, it seems to me quite reasonable to suppose that we would see a great deal more basic diversity on morality than we do.

So which is it – is our sense of Justice in line with God’s or not?

I say it is. But it is also likely, granting this, that some things about God or what He does will be difficult for us to understand. We derive from Him; we’re made in His image, but we are finite and created and don’t know a millionth of what He knows. So for us to find certain things difficult (stuff like you’re about to bring up now!) is totally to be expected.

See, my sense of justice would say that an authority, simply to demonstrate loyalty to the authority, requiring its subject to kill its own child would be an injustice. Yet your God does not. (Abraham and Isaac.)

But He didn’t require Abraham to kill his son (as we see at the end of the story). It was a test of faith. How far would Abraham’s faith go? Would he do that thing which is incomprehensible to him. Kierkegaard writes an entire marvelous book about this (Fear and Trembling). On the other hand, even nations sometimes require able-bodied persons to fight in wars that will get some of them killed. People die for their country. So do you argue, also, that this is inherently unjust for a country to demand of a mother the possible life of her child? It becomes a reductio ad absurdum. You would have to be a pacifist.

The professions of firefighter or policeman involve a given risk of death. People are willing to give their life for someone else. De we say that “society” is unreasonable in having things like firefighters, because potential sacrifice is involved? Yet you would blame God in this instance. You’re inconsistent. God is the one who does have power over life and death, so even if He did demand someone’s life, there would be no grounds that this was unjust, because He gave the life in the first place, as the Creator. And there is eternal life.

What is truly unjust, as I keep saying to atheists, is abortion, given your presuppositions. You take away the life that is all that this preborn child has, or will ever have. This is the true human sacrifice, going on every day!; not Abraham and Isaac, which wasn’t even a sacrifice, but a profound test. Abortion is the sacrament of atheism and radical feminism. That’s what your vision of “life”(and the supposed “happy life”) leads to: death and destruction. But Christian death may come about because God the Creator wills it, and He has every prerogative to do so; and then there is an eternal life, so that the life of that person isn’t truly over, anyway; it just becomes different and better (presuming salvation).

I would think that holding the value of silver and Gold over the life of a two day old boy is unjust. Yet your God does not. Numbers 31:26-28. I would think that enforcing a genocide for the actions of one’s great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandparents would be unjust. Yet your God does not. (Amalekites)

Christians have explained this stuff a million times, and the atheist will never understand it. Because God is Creator He also has the prerogative to judge. This is analogous to our experience. Society takes it upon itself to judge the criminal and punish him if he supercedes the “just” laws that govern the society, in order to prevent chaos and suffering. If that is true of human society (one man to another), it is all the more of God, because He is ontologically above us (Creator and created).

So it is perfectly sensible and moral to posit (apart from the data of revelation) a notion of God judging both individuals and nations. God’s omniscience is such that He can determine if an entire nation has gone bad (“beyond repair,” so to speak) and should be punished. And He did so. Now, even in a wicked nation there may be individuals who are exceptions to the rule. So some innocent people will be killed. But this is like our human experience as well. In wartime, we go to war against an entire nation. In so doing, even if it is unintentional, some innocent non-combatants will be killed.

But it’s also different in God’s case because He judged nations in part in order to prevent their idolatry and other sins to infiltrate Jewish (i.e., true) religion. He also judged Israel at various times (lest He be accused of being unfair). In any event, it is not true that nations or individuals were punished because of what “great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandparents” did.

Nice try at more of patented atheist caricature and 50-story straw men. There is a sense of corporate punishment, just described, and it is also true that the entire human race is a fallen race. We all deserve punishment for that fact alone, and God would be perfectly just to wipe us all out the next second. No one could hold it against Him.

He decides to be merciful and grant us grace to do better, but He is under no obligation to do so, anymore than the governor is obliged to pardon convicted criminals. Again, the societal analogy is perfectly apt. If someone rebels at every turn against every societal norm and law and appropriate behavior and so forth, is society to be blamed? Say someone grows up thinking that serial rape is fine and dandy and shouldn’t be prevented at all. So he goes and does this. Eventually, the legal system catches up with him and he gets his punishment. He rebelled against what most people think is wrong, and more than deserved his punishment.

We don’t say that there should be no punishment. We don’t blame society for his suffering in prison. We don’t deny that society has a right to judge such persons. So if mere human beings can judge each other, why cannot God judge His creation, and (particularly) those of His creation that have rebelled against Him at every turn? What is so incomprehensible about that? One may not believe it, but there is no radical incoherence or inconsistency or monstrous injustice or immorality in this Christian (and Jewish) viewpoint (which is what is always claimed by the critics).

My sense of justice would be to hold each person accountable for knowledge based upon persuasive evidence. Your God does not.

That is how the ultimate judgment works; absolutely. Each man will give his own account (Rom 14:10; 1 Cor 3:13; 2 Cor 5:10; Rev 22:12). So again, God’s way is analogous to our own (and your own). Hence, Scripture teaches:

Jeremiah 31:30 (RSV) But every one shall die for his own sin; . . .

Numbers 27:3 Our father. . . died for his own sin . . .

Deuteronomy 24:16 The fathers shall not be put to death for the children, nor shall the children be put to death for the fathers; every man shall be put to death for his own sin. (cited in 2 Kings 14:6; 2 Chron 25:4)

Now obviously, the Christian and the Jew holds that Mosaic Law came from God to Moses, and thus represented how God viewed morality. And this principle was within it. So it is incorrect to say that God is judging someone for someone else’s sins. It’s a distortion of what the Bible teaches. This true teaching is made even more explicit in the entire chapter Ezekiel 18:

1: The word of the LORD came to me again:
2: “What do you mean by repeating this proverb concerning the land of Israel, ‘The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge’?
3: As I live, says the Lord GOD, this proverb shall no more be used by you in Israel.
4: Behold, all souls are mine; the soul of the father as well as the soul of the son is mine: the soul that sins shall die.
5: “If a man is righteous and does what is lawful and right –
6: if he does not eat upon the mountains or lift up his eyes to the idols of the house of Israel, does not defile his neighbor’s wife or approach a woman in her time of impurity,
7: does not oppress any one, but restores to the debtor his pledge, commits no robbery, gives his bread to the hungry and covers the naked with a garment,
8: does not lend at interest or take any increase, withholds his hand from iniquity, executes true justice between man and man,
9: walks in my statutes, and is careful to observe my ordinances – he is righteous, he shall surely live, says the Lord GOD.
10: “If he begets a son who is a robber, a shedder of blood,
11: who does none of these duties, but eats upon the mountains, defiles his neighbor’s wife,
12: oppresses the poor and needy, commits robbery, does not restore the pledge, lifts up his eyes to the idols, commits abomination,
13: lends at interest, and takes increase; shall he then live? He shall not live. He has done all these abominable things; he shall surely die; his blood shall be upon himself.
14: “But if this man begets a son who sees all the sins which his father has done, and fears, and does not do likewise,
15: who does not eat upon the mountains or lift up his eyes to the idols of the house of Israel, does not defile his neighbor’s wife,
16: does not wrong any one, exacts no pledge, commits no robbery, but gives his bread to the hungry and covers the naked with a garment,
17: withholds his hand from iniquity, takes no interest or increase, observes my ordinances, and walks in my statutes; he shall not die for his father’s iniquity; he shall surely live.
18: As for his father, because he practiced extortion, robbed his brother, and did what is not good among his people, behold, he shall die for his iniquity.
19: “Yet you say, ‘Why should not the son suffer for the iniquity of the father?’ When the son has done what is lawful and right, and has been careful to observe all my statutes, he shall surely live.
20: The soul that sins shall die. The son shall not suffer for the iniquity of the father, nor the father suffer for the iniquity of the son; the righteousness of the righteous shall be upon himself, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon himself.
21: “But if a wicked man turns away from all his sins which he has committed and keeps all my statutes and does what is lawful and right, he shall surely live; he shall not die.
22: None of the transgressions which he has committed shall be remembered against him; for the righteousness which he has done he shall live.
23: Have I any pleasure in the death of the wicked, says the Lord GOD, and not rather that he should turn from his way and live?
24: But when a righteous man turns away from his righteousness and commits iniquity and does the same abominable things that the wicked man does, shall he live? None of the righteous deeds which he has done shall be remembered; for the treachery of which he is guilty and the sin he has committed, he shall die.
25: “Yet you say, ‘The way of the Lord is not just.’ Hear now, O house of Israel: Is my way not just? Is it not your ways that are not just?
26: When a righteous man turns away from his righteousness and commits iniquity, he shall die for it; for the iniquity which he has committed he shall die.
27: Again, when a wicked man turns away from the wickedness he has committed and does what is lawful and right, he shall save his life.
28: Because he considered and turned away from all the transgressions which he had committed, he shall surely live, he shall not die.
29: Yet the house of Israel says, ‘The way of the Lord is not just.’ O house of Israel, are my ways not just? Is it not your ways that are not just?
30: “Therefore I will judge you, O house of Israel, every one according to his ways, says the Lord GOD. Repent and turn from all your transgressions, lest iniquity be your ruin.
31: Cast away from you all the transgressions which you have committed against me, and get yourselves a new heart and a new spirit! Why will you die, O house of Israel?
32: For I have no pleasure in the death of any one, says the Lord GOD; so turn, and live.”

This is how God thinks. This is how He has revealed Himself (or in your skeptical atheist terms, how Jews, and Christians after them, have conceived of their God-that-doesn’t exist). Either case, your characterization of God (and/or how He is conceptualized) is false.

“Strong” Logical Argument from Evil Against God: RIP?

Last updated on: November 28, 2018 at 2:46 pm By Dave Armstrong

[for general, philosophically lay-level background, see my paper: “Logical” Problem of Evil: Alvin Plantinga’s Decisive Refutation]

*****

Atheist Jeffery Jay Lowder (prime mover behind the influential Internet Infidels / Secular Web network) maintains that the former position is currently widely accepted:

Ever since Alvin Plantinga refuted J.L. Mackie’s logical argument from evil, the majority of contemporary philosophers of religion have come to believe that logical arguments from evil are unsuccessful. This opinion is not unanimous, however. Philosophers Richard Gale, Quentin Smith, and Howard Jordan Sobel challenge the conventional view regarding the prospects for logical arguments from evil. Indeed, Smith has formulated a new version of the logical argument from evil to avoid the pitfalls of Mackie’s argument. Nevertheless, many philosophers remain highly skeptical regarding logical arguments from evil. (Logical Arguments for Atheism: Logical Arguments from Evil)

It’s interesting that even some of those who argue against Plantinga’s famous free will defense, do not purport to have totally, decisively overthrown or refuted it. For example, philosopher Quentin Smith writes about his colleague Richard Gale’s attempts (both men are mentioned above):

Gale points out that his argument is not conclusive . . . the analogies may not be sufficiently strong. Nonetheless, Gale thinks his argument has some force against Plantinga’s free will defense. But does it? . . . I think Plantinga’s free will defense can survive this attack.

Gale has much more to say about the problems with Plantinga’s free will defense, none of which he thinks conclusively refutes the defense. (A Sound Logical Argument from Evil, from pp. 148-157 of Ethical and Religious Thought in Analytic Philosophy of Language, Yale University Press, 1997)

Smith thinks his own rebuttal does succeed where Gale’s fails, but it is interesting to note what he says about the other attempt, and how Gale himself regards his own efforts; he writes:

Obviously, any analogy between man and God will be an imperfect one, since there are such striking disanalogies between the two. For this reason I do not see my argument as in any way conclusive. At best, it might take the smirk off the face of a Free Will Defender and replace it with a worried grin. (Freedom and the Free Will Defense; originally published in Social Theory and Practice, Vol. 16, No. 3, Fall 1990; emphases added)

Noted atheist philosopher Graham Oppy elaborates similarly on the current consensus about this particular version of the atheological argument from evil:

. . . it is one thing to suppose that ‘the problem of evil’ has some kind of justificatory role in non-theistic rejection of theistic beliefs; it is quite another question whether ‘the problem of evil’ poses some kind of insuperable problem for reasonable theistic belief . . . While it seems clearly reasonable for non-theists to allow ‘the problem of evil’ to have some role in their reasons for rejecting traditional Western theism, it is much less obvious that it is reasonable for non-theists to claim that ‘the problem of evil’ raises insuperable difficulties for theists.

In her book, Weisberger argues a case for the stronger claim, i.e. Weisberger argues for the conclusion that ‘the problem of evil’ amounts to a disproof of the existence of the god of traditional Western theism. For various reasons, I think that her case is not quite as strong as she supposes, and that she doesn’t manage to establish that anyone who is both reasonable and fully apprised of the facts about the amounts, kinds, and distribution of evils in the world will deny the existence of the god of traditional Western theism.

. . . Perhaps the main fault which I find with the overall line which Weisberger takes lies in her appeals to the burden of proof. It seems to me that the right method here is to formulate the competing views – i.e. theistic and non-theistic theories of the world – and then to ask which one is best supported by the total available evidence. If theists can reasonably suppose that they have lots of evidence which supports the claim that God exists, then they may reasonably believe that there is a solution to ‘the problem of evil’, even if they do not know what that solution is. To insist, that theists have to provide a satisfactory theodicy or else abandon their theism, is to fail to pay proper regard to ‘the principle of total evidence’. (Review of Weisberger, A. [1999] “Suffering Belief: Evil and the Anglo-American Defence of Theism,” Toronto Studies in Religion 23, New York: Peter Lang, pp. xvi+245)

David O’Connor is a non-theist professor of philosophy at Seton Hall University. His book God and Inscrutable Evil: In Defense of Theism and Atheism (Lanham/London, Rowman & Littlefield, 1998) was reviewed by Dean Stretton (2001). Note how O’Connor, too, doesn’t regard the logical problem of evil as a conclusive, unanswerable refutation of theism:

In the shorter part II, O’Connor moves to discussion of direct empirical arguments from evil (namely, those whose evidential base comprises certain facts of evil), and in particular the argument formulated by William Rowe. O’Connor then considers the skeptical defense of theism advocated by Stephen Wykstra and others, and concedes that this defense not only succeeds to a large degree against Rowe’s argument, but also refutes (or at least justifiably departs from) the assumptions of the standard model of debate on the problem of evil, and thus undermines the indirect empirical argument of part I as well. This is the defense of theism referred to in the subtitle. The facts of evil, O’Connor says, constitute sustaining evidence for atheism (p.211), in the sense that someone who is already an atheist will regard those facts as further reason to remain an atheist (since those facts are just what we would expect if atheism were true); but those facts do not settle or even tend to settle the debate in favour of atheism, since, as the skeptical defence shows, the facts of evil are equally what we would expect if theism were true (or at least are not particularly surprising given theism).

O’Connor thus argues, in the end, for a “detente” between “friendly theism and friendly atheism”- the term “friendly” denoting “each side’s recognition of failure to either refute the other [side] or to gain decisive cognitive advantage over it” (p.227). “[T]heism,” he says, can be justified for certain persons in certain circumstances, atheism for others in other circumstances” (p.xi); thus the need for an “intellectually tolerant, live-and-let-live view” on the issue of God’s existence (p.236).

Atheist Dave Holloway concurs:

Historically, and in terms of popularity, the argument from evil (AE) is the most important argument of any argument that has attempted to justify disbelief in the existence of a God. Philosophers from Epicurus to J.L. Mackie have put forth the argument; theologians from Augustine to Plantinga have taken the problem seriously and attempted to grapple with it.

The classic statement of the argument maintains that the existence of God, defined as all-knowing, all-powerful and all-good, is incompatible with the existence of evil in the world. Atheologians historically stated this as a deductive argument, attempting to show that the following statements are inconsistent:

(1) God is all-powerful and all-knowing.

(2) God is all-good.

(3) Evil exists.

However, this approach is generally regarded as unsuccessful. The logical compatibility of 1-3 can be seen when one considers that (1) and (2) entail, respectively,

(4) God could prevent evil unless evil is logically necessary.

(5) God would prevent evil unless God is morally justified in allowing it.

(4) and (5) combined entail

(6) Evil exists only if it is logically necessary or morally justified.

which is compatible with (1) and (2).

Because of the general perceived failure of this approach, the focus has shifted to evidential arguments from evil. (Skeptical Theism and the Evidential Argument From Evil [link now defunct] )

The former Christian and doctoral candidate in philosophy “exapologist” (these ubiquitous and unnecessary Internet nicknames will be the death of me) concedes less than all that but still takes a view far less triumphant than traditional post-“Enlightenment” atheism:

[A]pologists are being misleading when they claim that Plantinga has refuted the deductive argument from evil. At best, he’s shown that we can’t be confident that the deductive argument from evil is sound. (Some {Temporarily} Final Thoughts About the Free Will Defense)

What, then, does Plantinga’s Free Will Defense really show? In light of the previous discussion, just this: for people who aren’t theologically conservative Christians, it’s not conclusively ruled out as impossible that the Free Will Defense saves theism from the logical problem of evil . . . (On the Force of “Possibly” in Plantinga’s Free Will Defense)

Now based on what I understand so far of the current literature on this clarification, the FWD is still problematic even on the correct construal (though I can’t say so with any confidence yet). (blog comment under the above paper)

But alas, there is division in Atheist-Land, and not all realize what has occurred in philosophy and philosophy of religion in the past 40-50 years. Steven Conifer, a sharp, zealous young atheist (whom I have debated at least three times), confidently states:

Conversely, many atheological arguments, such as the Argument from Evil, Theodore Drange’s Arguments from Nonbelief and Confusion, various incompatible-properties arguments, and the Lack-of-Evidence Argument (which is based on the very assertion that there exists no good objective evidence for God’s existence) have never, to my knowledge, been seriously challenged. (The Argument from Reason for the Nonexistence of God, 2001)

[Note: I debated Dr. Drange regarding his “ANB” argument, too; I don’t think I did that bad of a job, seeing that I am a mere layman with the formal experience of eight to ten college philosophy classes, going against a philosophy professor]

John W. Loftus, former (semi-heretical sect) Church of Christ pastor-turned-atheist and blogmaster of Debunking Christianity, throws all restraint and nuance to the wind when he writes about the current philosophical status of the logical problem of evil:

The Logical Problem of Evil Is Still Very Much Alive! [title of post]

Of course, this is nothing new to educated people, but I still read where Christians proclaim the logical problem of evil is dead. What gives? In the future if someone says such an ignorant thing, refer them here, and to the books listed below.

. . . Most Christians claim the logical problem has been solved, but there are still versions of the logical problem of evil that have not been sufficiently answered. There are those written by Quentin Smith, “A Sound Logical Argument From Evil;” Hugh LaFollette, “Plantinga on the Free Will Defense;” Richard La Croix, “Unjustified Evil and God’s Choice” [all to be found in The Impossibility of God, eds. Michael Martin and Ricki Monnier (Prometheus Books, 2003)], Richard Gale’s On the Nature and Existence of God (Cambridge, 1991), pp. 98-178, and Graham Oppy’s book Arguing About Gods (Cambridge University Press, 2006), pp. 262-268, who argues at length for the thesis that Plantinga’s treatment of the logical problem of evil is inconsistent in several respects. See also A.M. Weisberger’s critique of Plantinga’s free will defense in her book Suffering Belief(Peter Lang, 1999), pp. 163-184. Just because Plantinga answered Mackie’s formulation, and just because Mackie admitted it, doesn’t mean that all formulations have been answered, or that others agree with Mackie’s admission.

Christian people like to tout any successes they have since they have so few. But it’s propaganda, plain and simple, and based on out of date information. (The Logical Problem of Evil Is Still Very Much Alive!: 10-26-06)

At the risk of showing how un-“educated” and “ignorant” I am, I beg to differ, based on what we have seen above. The fact is that Plantinga accomplished about as much as anyone can expect a philosopher to achieve, visa-vis his peers: he caused a major change of perception regarding what was previously thought to be a virtually unanswerable weapon in the atheist arsenal. Very few philosophers (theist and atheist alike) are able to manage that.

Of course there will be continued replies and arguments and claims of some that Plantinga failed in what he is widely-perceived to have done. We expect this, but it doesn’t change the fact that the consensus (which is not, as we know, itself decisive, but certainly something to be taken into consideration) is that the traditional logical argument has been seriously weakened: particularly in the premature dogmatism of its classically triumphalistic atheist claims.

I’ve documented above how Quentin Smith didn’t think that Gale succeeded in refuting Plantinga. Gale himself admitted the same regarding a 1990 version of his critique. We also observed how Oppy thought that Weisberger’s argument against the logical argument from evil (1999) was too ambitious and failed in some key respects. He certainly didn’t think that the logical argument trumped all feeble theist replies, since he wrote [see above for sources and more context]:

. . . it is quite another question whether ‘the problem of evil’ poses some kind of insuperable problem for reasonable theistic belief . . . it is much less obvious that it is reasonable for non-theists to claim that ‘the problem of evil’ raises insuperable difficulties for theists.

Perhaps Oppy has changed his mind in the ensuing years (I don’t know), but that is what he thought then, at any rate. The fact remains that Plantinga and other influential theistic philosophers in the last 40 years or so, have changed the very nature and emphases of the debate. Atheists used to run around with an attitude of complete superiority and the thought that theist philosophers were basically (though not stated as bluntly) ignorant, outdated troglodytes and intellectual neophytes and pretenders, improperly mixing mere religion in with supposed theistic “philosophy.”

Bertrand Russell even went so far as to say that Christianity and philosophy were altogether incompatible and contrary, so that even St. Thomas Aquinas or St. Augustine could not be considered philosophers in any reasonable sense of the word. Those heady days of atheist hubris (along with ludicrous positivism) are long gone, praise be to God!

I don’t know about the other people that Loftus mentions above, but if he got it that wrong concerning three of them, I suspect that he is exaggerating about one or more of the others, too. Yet Loftus kept up his insults and exaggerations in comments on my blog about my article on Alvin Plantinga (cited at the top of this post):

Since you seem so well-read, have you read A.M. Weisberger’s Suffering Belief? She’s written over 40 pages on the Free Will Defense. Have you read the essays in The Impossibility of God? I don’t think so. There are still versions of the logical problem of evil that have not been answered, by Quentin Smith, Richard La Croix, and Richard Gale. Just because Plantinga answered Mackie’s formulation, and just because Mackie admitted it, doesn’t mean that all formulations have been answered. This is just bogus. But Christian philosophers like to tout any successes they have till their [sic] blue in the face, since they have so few. But it’s propaganda, plain and simple, coming from an old boys club of guys who hang around together in the Society of Christian Philosophers. (10-13-06)

Right. Well, he is entitled to his opinion. But professional philosophers and other atheists don’t agree that Christian philosophers have fared so poorly or that the logical argument from evil has not been significantly refuted insofar as it claimed to be an absolute disproof of God’s existence and of the supposedly inherently illogical nature of Christian belief. Loftus’s colleague and fellow blogger, the agnostic Edward T. Babinski, who has a BS degree in science, outdoes even Loftus’s triumphalism: he thinks that he refuted Plantinga (one of the most highly-regarded philosophers alive today) with a phone call and one “difficult” question. [defunct link from Haloscan and my old blog]

As I believe I noted in my previous paper on the topic, philosopher James R. Beebe, in his Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy article, “The Logical Problem of Evil”, reiterates the position for which I have been contending:

Since the logical problem of evil claims that it is logically impossible for God and evil to co-exist, all that Plantinga (or any other theist) needs to do to combat this claim is to describe a possible situation in which God and evil co-exist. That situation doesn’t need to be actual or even realistic. Plantinga doesn’t need to have a single shred of evidence supporting the truth of his suggestion. All he needs to do is give a logically consistent description of a way that God and evil can co-exist. Plantinga claims God and evil could co-exist if God had a morally sufficient reason for allowing evil. He suggests that God’s morally sufficient reason might have something to do with humans being granted morally significant free will and with the greater goods this freedom makes possible. All that Plantinga needs to claim on behalf of (MSR1) and (MSR2) is that they are logically possible (that is, not contradictory).

Does Plantinga’s Free Will Defense succeed in describing a possible state of affairs in which God has a morally sufficient reason for allowing evil? It certainly seems so. In fact, it appears that even the most hardened atheist must admit that (MSR1) and (MSR2) are possible reasons God might have for allowing moral and natural evil. They may not represent God’s actual reasons, but for the purpose of blocking the logical problem of evil, it is not necessary that Plantinga discover God’s actual reasons . . . since (MSR2) deals with the logical problem of evil as it pertains to natural evil (which claims that it is logically impossible for God and natural evil to co-exist), it only needs to sketch a possible way for God and natural evil to co-exist. The fact that (MSR2) may be implausible does not keep it from being possible. Since the situation described by (MSR2) is clearly possible, it appears that it successfully rebuts the logical problem of evil as it pertains to natural evil.

Since (MSR1) and (MSR2) together seem to show contra the claims of the logical problem of evil how it is possible for God and (moral and natural) evil to co-exist, it seems that the Free Will Defense successfully defeats the logical problem of evil.

. . . The desire to see a theistic response to the problem of evil go beyond merely undermining a particular atheological argument is understandable. However, we should keep in mind that all parties admit that Plantinga’s Free Will Defense successfully rebuts the logical problem of evil as it was formulated by atheists during the mid-twentieth-century.

If there is any blame that needs to go around, it may be that some of it should go to Mackie and other atheologians for claiming that the problem of evil was a problem of inconsistency. The ease with which Plantinga undermined that formulation of the problem suggests that the logical formulation did not adequately capture the difficult and perplexing issue concerning God and evil that has been so hotly debated by philosophers and theologians.

As for recent literature; well, that works both ways. Theists have made further arguments also; for example, see:

The Problem of Evil, by Peter van Inwagen (Oxford University Press, 2006)

The Problem Of Evil And The Problem Of God, D. Z. Phillips (Augsburg Fortress Publishers, 2005)

Encountering Evil: Live Options in Theodicy, edited by Stephen T. Davis (Westminster John Knox Press; Revised edition, 2001)

Horrendous Evils and the Goodness of God (Cornell Studies in the Philosophy of Religion), Marilyn McCord Adams (Cornell University Press: 2000)

Providence and the Problem of Evil, Richard Swinburne (Oxford University Press, 1998)

The Problem of Evil (Oxford Readings in Philosophy), edited by [theists] Marilyn McCord Adams and Robert Merrihew Adams (Oxford University Press, 1991), including articles by theistic philosophers Terence Penelhum, Alvin Plantinga, Stephen J. Wykstra, and John Hick

***

(originally 11-26-06)

Photo credit: WhiteKnight138 (7-27-17): Alvin Plantinga: the greatest living Christian philosopher [Wikimedia Commons / Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license]

***

Christians & the Stupidity of Satan (vs. Insulting Humanist)

Last updated on: November 10, 2018 at 2:32 am By Dave Armstrong

*****

Cassidy McGillicuddy, who goes by “Captain Cassidy” runs a blog called Roll to Disbelieve. She describes herself and her views as follows: “I was raised Catholic by a very fervent family, converted to evangelicalism in my teens, and became a full-on fundamentalist shortly thereafter, . . . But shortly after college I figured out that my religion’s claims weren’t true. . . . I’m a humanist, a skeptic, a freethinker, and a passionate student of science, mythology, and history. . . . I care more about what people do than on what they call themselves. I don’t think of myself as having much of a specific religious or non-religious label beyond “ex-Christian,” . . .

Cassidy wrote a post entitled, “Why Christians Need Satan to Be An Idiot” (11-1-18). I love the little psychological judgment there. In it she takes me to task, by “critiquing” [???] an article I did about Satan: “Satan is Highly Intelligent—and an Arrogant Idiot” (National Catholic Register, 11-27-17). As usual, I wasn’t informed of it so I could reply. I just happened to run across it last night. Her words will be in blue.

***

First of all, to get an idea of the polemical / insulting spirit in which Cassidy undertakes this criticism, I cite her comment in the combox under her post (11-4-18), with my reply:

I originally thought I must have banned him [i.e., me] from here already, but since we’ve never really delved into his blathering, he has no real reason to care about us so I probably haven’t. When I think about Christians who are bullies but wilt like orchids under a hair-dryer when they get pushback, he’s one of the first people I think of!

Really? That must be why I wrote 30 papers (yes, thirty: all on different topics he wrote about) in response to atheist Bob Seidensticker (at his initial urging), without one peep in reply: because I’m the coward and he is obviously intellectually confident . . .

Thanks for letting me know, by the way, about this piece, so I could reply. It’s a sign of your sublime intellectual confidence [sarcasm alert!]. I had to run across it. Having done so, it’ll get a full reply tomorrow. It looks to be a very fun piece. I look forward to it!

Will you flee to the hills, too, like Bob always does, after you are critiqued? Well, we’ll see, won’t we?

Now onto her paper itself:

When I was a Christian, every single Christian I knew had two completely contradictory opinions about Satan. First, everyone thought he was beyond infernally intelligent. But second, everyone thought he was a stone-cold IDIOT.

It’s not contradictory at all: rightly understood. And I explained this in my article. There is intelligence / cleverness / brain power / ability to analyze and be subtle and sophisticated / high IQ. That’s one thing. And then there is wisdom and knowledge, which is the ability to arrive at truth and an understanding of reality as it actually is, as opposed to falsehood and pretense and self-delusion or plain befuddled ignorance.

Satan possesses the first quality, and utterly lacks the second. Thus, he can be described simultaneously as “infernally intelligent” (the perfect description of that) and an “idiot”: because they are referring to two different things. As usual, the atheist / skeptic thinks it is a contradiction when it is not at all (they love to do this with the Bible, and one of my sub-specialties is to refute such efforts).

Perhaps the reason that Cassidy doesn’t grasp this distinction (which isn’t rocket science) is because some atheists / agnostics / humanists have an outlook which is quite similar to Satan’s: the denial of God, or undue skepticism towards Him, while usually having above-average brain power, IQ, and “book learning.” They can’t see the forest for the trees: just as Satan couldn’t. They stand outside of reality, in terms of spiritual and metaphysical matters. More on this below.

And that may also (I speculate) account for Cassidy’s anger and insults in her paper. Perhaps she understands down deep that these same criticisms of Satan apply to her and other non-Christians (i.e., to the intransigent sorts among them, who have been informed of Christian truths and the gospel — have enough knowledge to understand and believe — and reject them).

Catholic author, conspiracy theorist, chest-thumper, and zinger-flinger Dave Armstrong somehow missed the message that Jesus wanted him to love his enemies and forgive seventy times seven. He finds way more pleasure in doling out abuse, dripping condescension, and blistering scorn.

Apparently, for Cassidy (follow her link above), any philosophical defense of Christianity (such as the teleological argument) is “conspiracy theory”. That would be news to the philosopher David Hume (often erroneously regarded as an atheist), who held to a form of the teleological argument, and believed in some sort of deity (though not the Christian one). I need not waste any more time with silly personal insults like this, which have no relation to truth. As for the charge of abuse and so forth, this is, in my opinion, essentially code language for “a Christian who dares to get uppity and critique atheism and their atheist intellectual superiors and overlords”.

Even this line of mine (the previous sentence) will be classified as a species of “abuse” because atheists usually are unaware of how condescending they routinely are towards Christians. Thus, when we fight back against lies told about us, we get this accusation (almost to the extent of atheist paranoia and abject fear of any serious criticism of themselves). We can’t win, no matter what we do. We either take the lies and do nothing, or if we oppose them, then we’re accused of yet more false charges. I’d rather stick to the issues.

(Sometimes he insults people who know far more about his chosen topics than he does, like John Loftus and Edward Babinski. The responses he gets are uniformly satisfying and educational to read.)

People may read my exchanges with Loftus (who exploded into the stratosphere and melted down to goo when I critiqued his deconversion story) and my discussions with Babinski (one / two / three), and make up their own minds. Cassidy thinks I got slaughtered (what a surprise). Whatever the case may be, I am happy to present both sides of these debates on my site. That’s what I do: I engage in debates and dialogue: just like this present effort. And I have scores and scores of debates with atheists (see my Atheism web page). Folks can read, use their critical faculties, and decide who made the more plausible case and arguments.

Armstrong decides Satan is “stupid.” Mainly, his argument consists of this following (and unsupported) burst of mental arithmetic:

Satan knew better than anybody what his god liked, wanted, demanded and expected.
He didn’t need to be “a rocket scientist” to guess what would happen to him if he didn’t fall into line.
He rebelled anyway.
What kind of nitwit even does that? Only someone really dumb!
Corollary: when TRUE CHRISTIANS™ like himself tell us unwashed heathens the totally-for-realsies penalties for rebellion and we reject their control grabs, we reveal to King Them that we are just as dumb as Satan is.

The first four points, notwithstanding some bias, basically present what I argued. The last one emphatically does not. Belief or nonbelief is an extremely complex matter, and it doesn’t help to caricature what Christians believe about it. I make a sharp distinction (following the New Testament) between “open-minded agnostics” (who aren’t sure God exists, but open to possible proof) and “rebellious” atheists (like Satan!): who know that God exists, but reject Him anyway.

I don’t hold that all atheists are automatically wicked and evil; quite the contrary, I contend that some atheists may be saved in the end, given certain conditions of invincible ignorance and what they have been taught (or not taught). I think my position is quite tolerant and irenic: compared to what many other Christians say. I base it on biblical teaching. Cassidy was in anti-intellectual fundamentalist circles in her past life (so she would have observed — and perhaps joined in on — a lot of Dumb Christianity™). I never was. Most Christians (the vast majority: especially through history) never were.

My view, then, is far from thinking all atheists are “dumb” and “evil.” Some are (just as some Christians are, too: and some of those will be damned). It comes down to each individual case. Our job (and particularly mine, as an apologist and evangelist) is to share the Good News of Christianity and the fullness of Catholicism. God goes from there, and people may accept what we share or reject it or remain undecided.

Cassidy says in her profile that “I’m generally friendly to the idea of spiritual stuff, but I want evidence for it.” I take her at her word, which means I would classify her as an “open-minded agnostic” rather than “rebel” (a la Satan). She has not ruled God out altogether.

I’m focusing on this post because it reveals the toxic Christian playbook in such detail. Though nowhere near all Christians believe in Satan (or Hell, for that matter), the ones who do definitely qualify as toxic. Nor is this belief exclusively evangelical—plenty of Catholics just like Dave Armstrong believe in a literal Satan. So his opinion represents a commonly-held opinion in those nastier ends of Christianity. Indeed, I heard exactly the same sorts of statements about Satan in both Southern Baptist (SBC) and Pentecostal (UPCI) churches.

Note what she is saying: all Christians who hold to the actual historic teachings of Christianity: in this instance, the existence of Satan and hell, are bad people, and “toxic Christians.” Lest we miss what she means by this, let’s follow her link above and see how she understands it:

Zealotry demands control over other people’s lives even if those people aren’t even members of its group. It is not love but hate, though zealots may relabel hate as love to make its members think that by harming others, they are really showing love to them (though the people being harmed are not fooled in the least).

Zealotry doesn’t care about facts in its rush to push its bizarre understanding of “truth;” it will do whatever it must to spread itself, because spreading itself is what is important. Love, truthfulness, faithfulness, a servant’s heart, charity, none of it matters to a zealot. The ends justify the means. . . .

So when I talk about a “toxic Christian,” I’m talking about that narrow subset of zealots who harm others in the name of their religion, want to force their narrow interpretation of their religion’s dictates on everybody else, confuse love with hate and abuse with caring, and care more about proselytizing than they do about following their religion’s primary commands. They are a poisonous cloud of gas seeping over every surface and poisoning everything they touch, and their form of religion just spawns more people like themselves: zealots ready for the cause.

According to her, any Christian who merely believes in hell and Satan (standard Christian beliefs) are “toxic” and hateful, despicable scumbags. But if we start discarding Christian beliefs, like good theological liberals and dissidents, then we are fine and dandy in her book, because we are more similar to her. Very charitable and tolerant, isn’t it? Contrast that with my irenic, ecumenical view that atheists might possibly be saved and should be treated with respect and charity and approached as sincere individuals.

Cassidy has decided beforehand that hundreds of millions of Christians are evil and wicked wascally wascals because they dare to accept the historic Christian beliefs about hell and Satan. Talk about massive bigotry! And this would explain her hostility to me, wouldn’t it?: since I believe in Satan, and critique his behavior. That means that I am a scumbag, by definition. And scumbags and morons need not be treated with civility and charity. All the while she lectures us Christians about charity and behavior . . . the ironies here are very rich and sad.

It’s not that there aren’t many millions of Christians who do a lousy job at both properly living the Christian life (trying to be Christlike) and at sharing (or bearing witness to) the faith. There certainly are, and I roundly criticize them all the time, because they give Christians a bad name. What is so objectionable and beyond insulting is that Cassidy classifies everyone who believes in hell and Satan as a “toxic Christian”: someone who hates others and is not Christlike at all. This simply doesn’t follow. Reality and the facts of the matter are not nearly that simple and simplistic. We can’t classify millions of people as morons simply because we disagree with them on some point of theology (or anything else). This is the classic bigoted or prejudiced outlook.

By the way, the United Pentecostal Church (UPCI) is not Christian, but rather, Sabellian heresy, which is a denial of trinitarianism and the orthodox doctrine concerning Jesus. This is apparently part of Cassidy’s background (we know she at least attended such churches), which would partially explain some of her confusion about and rejection of true Christianity.

Christians talk this way for a reason. They seek to reassure each other that while there’s everything to fear, they’re all perfectly safe because ultimately, Satan is easy to defeat because he is an idiot.

This isn’t true as a blanket statement. Mainstream Christianity (Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant) teaches that he can certainly be defeated by Jesus and for us, through the power of the Holy Spirit granted to us as Christians, but not that this is easy-as-pie. Top the contrary, most Christian groups teach that we have to be constantly vigilant against the wares of the Evil One: against “the world, the flesh, and the devil.” It takes faith and work and perseverance.

Toxic Christians fear their enemies for their greater intelligence, popularity, and reach–and also for their apparent lack of fear of Christian threats and retaliation, which are such devastatingly effective tools in their culture. At the same time, they hate those enemies for what they see them as taking from the tribe.

The Goal.

Greed.

Fear.

Every terrible thing these Christians do is driven by one of those two emotions (and sometimes both at once). The harvest of those dark seeds is terror and rage. Indeed, terror and rage propel them. These emotions feel familiar.

Ideally, manipulating these two emotions will produce either a lessening in their own fear or an increase in others’ fear, which will bring about an increase in their own power and holdings–or a lessening in that of their enemies. That motivation about covers moral panics in general. But it applies beautifully to all the other awful stuff they do.

Faux-psychoanalysis from a hostile, bigoted perspective, rather than objective rational analysis, and so unworthy of a reply . . . Cassidy continues on in this vein. She’s in her own little world: thinking that all Christians are somehow like the anti-intellectual fundamentalist ones she used to be part of. It’s very common among atheists and agnostics: identifying the whole with a small, poor representation: throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

Not only is Satan himself super-smart-but-abysmally-stupid, but so is anybody else who refuses to fall into line.

As I have already stated: this isn’t true: not for thinking Christians. It only is for lousy Christians who haven’t thought-through or loved their faith very well: again, the ones Cassidy used to be among. That is not — repeat, NOT — the whole ball of wax. But we can’t prevent her from employing this fallacy and this caricature and stereotype over and over, to the cheers of her fan club.

The rest of the post simply repeats ad nauseam the same fallacious views (repetition doesn’t make a flimsy, non-substantive pseudo-argument any better). Very disappointing. I was expecting much better, but I suppose the insults were a clue that it wasn’t to be.

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Cassidy “responded” on her blog (after banning me there):

You are just one tiny piece of exactly why Christianity is declining. You, personally, shout to the whole world that absolutely no gods of infinite love and grace inhabit you, and that you can’t even take your own religion’s commands seriously.

It’d probably blow control-freak Christians’ little minds to realize just how little anybody cares about their various tantrums.

Abusive people are their own kind of drama. They can’t help but act out, but acting out makes their situation worse, which makes them act out worse… He’s exactly why his religion is failing. He shows us . . . that no gods of love inhabit him–and that his “faith” is really his permission slip to abuse others.

So I don’t care what this guy has to say. He offers nothing whatsoever of interest or value to anybody. He’s a hateful, spiteful, reactionary, vengeful, rage-filled bore just like the rest of his tribe, howling and beating their chests with their fists and lashing out at any criticisms. Hell, I won’t even remember he dropped by in a day or two.

It’s downright amazing to see their ingenuity in avoiding the commands attributed to Jesus himself. That wriggling comes in second only to their pretenses at rationality.

Christian hypocrisy just reminds me that Christianity is morally bankrupt. So many people just like this guy can operate in the religion and even flourish in it because there’s nothing real to its claims. It should be impossible for him to be like this. And yet here he is, and nobody will ever convince him that he is a stone-cold hypocrite who ought to be ashamed of himself for the way he sets back the cause of Christ. The ways of a man truly are right in his eyes, eh? This is why religion is poison. The foxes voted themselves long ago to be the keepers of the henhouse, and they don’t see any problem with that–and they sure don’t care what the hens might have to say about their self-granted liberties.

Who’d want to join a group that allows someone like that to run roughshod over people? Literally the only reason people put up with Christians is because we had to. We don’t have to anymore.

The fact that someone can be a Catholic author, fully complicit with all the ghastly things the Catholic church is doing and has done, and look down on others is just mind-blowing. But that’s how controllers and oppressors are. When they have no real defense, they hit offense as hard as they can.

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Photo credit: Lucifer (1890), by Franz Stuck (1863-1928) [public domain / Wikimedia Commons]

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Theistic Argument from Desire: Dialogue w Atheist

Last updated on: September 28, 2018 at 5:01 pm By Dave Armstrong

This exchange took place on the Debunking Christianity blog, underneath a post by John W. Loftus, called “No More Funerals!” Words of atheist “DagoodS” (whom I have met in person) will be in blue, and those of a second unknown atheist in green.

*****

We all would like people who truly deserve it to get what is coming to them, but wanting it to be so doesn’t make it true.

Nor does wanting hell to be untrue make it untrue.

Are your religious beliefs based on what you believe to be true or what you want to be true?

Likewise, a desire for God or for heaven is more likely to prove that there is a God and a heaven, in my mind, than that no God or heaven exist.

I didn’t say that it did (I fully agree; that would be most foolish indeed). Don’t take this criticism too far. I said that the desire, in my opinion, made it probably more likely that the desired end exists, than that it does not. This is obvious from life. So in your analogy above, you desired to have a date with the cheerleader. This proves that it is possible that such a thing as a date with the cheerleader exists. It may be unlikely, but it is untrue that the desire proves or suggests that the thing is absolutely unattainable or nonexistent: more so than the contrary (as you atheists would make out with regard to the theist longing for God and heaven).

We have no evidence of life after death. None. Near-death experiences don’t even come close.

Nor do we have any compelling evidence for the cause of the Big Bang. There are lots of things that don’t have evidence; for example, extraterrestrial life. But then again, you assume from the outset the unreasonable assumption that scientific knowledge is the only sort that gives us reliable information. You would deny the miraculous and revelation: precisely the things that we Christians would bring forth as evidence for life after death.

Therefore a “desire” for it is not a proof, but rather a warning we have painted a wish and now look for “proof” with anything that sticks.

I have said it before, I will say it again. The idea of this is not to pick the team with the snazziest uniforms and stick with them regardless of the score. Hey, the concept of a place where we will be with people we love and can socialize for all eternity, where wrongs will be avenged, and good acts rewarded is a great idea. So is a perpetual motion machine. Doesn’t make either true.

I didn’t say it did. My argument (based on analogies) is that a perpetual desire for something suggests that it is more likely than not that it actually exists.

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(originally 12-2-06)

Photo credit: Pedro Szekely (10-6-12). Sunset in El Porto, California [Wikimedia Commons / Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license]

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Dialogue on Deconversion & Losing One’s Faith in College

Last updated on: September 13, 2018 at 1:33 pm By Dave Armstrong

Daniel Morgan (atheist) responded in my comments boxes, with regard to my critique of John Loftus’ deconversion story. This is my reply. His words will be in blue; my older cited words in green.

* * * * *

Hi Daniel,

Thanks much for the rational response. It’s good to know that at least one atheist who comments here has his wits about him [see, e.g., John Loftus’ astounding display of hostile non sequiturs, in “response” to my critique] . Y’all are generally a pretty sharp group.

generally this indicates a less-than-stellar foundational Christian teaching

So him being in trouble is worse than you losing faith?

Losing faith is bad, though I really didn’t do that. I didn’t have any decent religious instruction or any informed faith to lose. I was abysmally ignorant. It was a sort of vacuum, rather than an active rejection. I was only ten years old at the time we stopped going to church. But I was still interested in spiritual things, which is precisely why I became fascinated with the occult.

But my point in context was that John’s account did not suggest to me that he had any good religious instruction or example himself. There’s always exceptions to the rule, but generally that great of a rebellion lends itself to a deficient upbringing as the cause or partial cause. Just ask about the childhood of criminals if you doubt this. Take a survey.

Seems odd to claim, esp given some Biblical characters, whose troubles were always overcome by faith, rather than vice versa.

See my last comment.

Even that won’t suffice to prevent apostasy if there are other deficiencies because the mind is only one aspect of a well-rounded faith.

Do you think that belief is not a completely mental affair?

That’s correct. Grace and faith (and the soul itself) are supernatural in character. The intellectual aspects of Christian faith are only one aspect of it.

Much philosophy can make one go astray as well, if too much skeptical and fallacious philosophy takes hold on one’s brain. But in the end it comes down to God’s grace and whether we accept it and continue to live by it, or reject it.

I can honestly say that this is why I no longer believe – atheological and philosophical arguments.

It seems you have an interesting change-up in views – before you are emphasizing the integral issue of apologia, now you are cautioning those who may want to build defenses not to allow “much philosophy” to “take hold”

Obviously in context I meant “bad philosophy”; not philosophy per se. I love philosophy. But there is plenty of it that starts from false premises and goes from there.

. . . how can a Christian interested in answering doubts and such know which philosophical ideas will “take hold”, and does this “taking hold” indicate that the philosophical arguments are actually strong?

It may or may not. If a person isn’t equipped to answer a bad (but clever and prima facie plausible) philosophical argument, then he is dead meat. There may be excellent Christian replies. But obviously they do little good if one is totally unaware of them.

If you take a relatively ignorant (in things of faith and also other subjects he is, after all, there to learn), inexperienced, idealistic, (usually) herd-mentality young person of 18-21 and throw him into an environment where it seems like the “smart” people (the professor and other smart alecky non-Christian students) mock Christianity and Christian morals, then what would you expect?

He isn’t presented with both sides, generally (I took about eight philosophy courses; I know what goes on, and psychology and sociology are the same). It is oftentimes the best atheist arguments against the worst, or caricatured Christian or theist arguments. Really fair, ain’t it?

So is it any surprise that the Christian student often loses his faith? Usually he had no apologetic background with which to counter this utterly slanted onslaught. This is why I do what I do! Lots of young kids read my stuff. I’m delighted to be able to help them through this ordeal of relentless, almost forced secularization at college.

Your answer seems to waver here as you indicate God’s grace, something that always seems difficult to flesh out from free will. Do you think God’s grace may be lessened or withdrawn if someone is reading “bad” philosophical ideas?

If one accepts false ideas, that may counter grace, yes. But it’s complex. It would depend on how much one really knows. If he deliberately rejects a God and a Christianity that he truly knew, then the consequences for lack of grace would be worse. But if he is simply ignorant (as I was, up to age 18, in matters of theology), then I think it is a very different situation.

Do you liken such reading to going into a strip club and expecting God to protect you from it?

Any false idea has (somewhat like lust and sex, but on a totally different level) an attraction to one who is predisposed to accept it or too ignorant to counter it, or lacking a superior alternative. It should frighten all of us. Truth is oftentimes difficult to attain in our society.

The philosophical arguments are as “seductive”? Is it perhaps because they are sound and difficult to reply to?

The ideas are received in an environment which is strongly weighted against theism and faith. That’s supremely important to understand and take into consideration. We’re not all calculating rational machines. We accept things usually because everyone around us, or some respected figure does first. Some are “good” arguments as far as they go. This is why we home-school our children: not because we want to insulate them from reality, but because we refuse to leave them open to the distinct possibility of being brainwashed in the overwhelmingly secularized, literally anti-Christian public school system (as I was in the Detroit schools).

By the time they go to college they will be equipped with apologetics and solid Christian philosophy and the ability to think critically and to be able to spot false premises and ideas when they see it, with the knowledge to withstand them when necessary. I hasten to add that I don’e believe every parent must home-school. It’s impossible in some cases. But every Christian parent must provide some Christian counter-weight to the onslaught of secularism and profound anti-Christian bias in the schools.

If the student never sees any alternative, then what would you expect? On my website, I give people the alternatives. They can read both sides and decide for themselves which is more worthy of belief. I don’t just present the Christian view and ignore all the other ones. That’s why I have almost 360 dialogues posted. I’m a totally committed Socratic in method.

There is a reason many Christians lose their faith in college.

I wrote a post on this phenomenon. Do you think it possible that it is because many Christians are insulated from the most serious objections to faith, and evidence that damages their conception thereof?

That’s part of it; absolutely. The atheist “evidence” damages only insofar as a student is unfamiliar with the best Christian replies. Christians need to know not only how to defend their own belief, but how to refute competing ideas, of varying levels of respectability. Young Christians usually have neither skill when they go to college. And the skeptical or atheist professors (the ones who deliberately — and I would say, unethically — try to undermine the faith of their students) know this full well and cynically exploit it to their advantage.

I certainly do. I think this is a huge reason for it – the whole reason for going to college is to enlarge your borders/perspectives/knowledge, but this is dangerous to any religion.

It’s dangerous if the situation is abominably unfair and extremely biased to one side only. Very few young people, who want to be accepted by their peers and thought to be intelligent by their professors, can withstand that. It’s a stacked deck.

All religions work via identifying “us/them” and most have a protective effect (purge “them” if they infiltrate “us”).

All belief-systems whatsoever do that, I would contend. Atheists do the same exact thing. Hence, we have blogs with names like, oh, how about Debunking Christianity? LOL It looks like I may soon be banned from commenting there myself, judging by John’s current hysteria and profound hyper-sensitivity to critique. If so, then that is an atheist “purge” of the oddball Christian “them.” I mustn’t be allowed to mess with the status quo of atheist profundity and skepticism by giving cogent answers and rational alternatives to misguided atheist rhetoric (I hope I’m wrong about that, but we’ll see soon enough). I made a point somewhere about how John Loftus puts up a site like that, whose purpose is almost entirely negative. He doesn’t put up a blog called The Joys and Rewards of a Life of Atheism. Christianity at least offers some positive, constructive vision.

lest we get duped by truly stupid, utterly unnecessary dichotomies such as this “dogma vs. philosophy” or “faith vs. reason” claptrap

Responding to this adequately would take a lot of time,

It was a very general statement.

so I would just quote Aquinas and Gregory the Great: Aquinas said, “If our opponent believes nothing of divine revelation, there is no longer any means of proving the articles of faith by reasoning, but only of answering his objections – if he has any – against faith.”

Yep; I agree. Apologetics (particularly with atheists) is largely about the removal of “roadblocks” or obstacles. Once those are disposed of, then the apologist can defend Christian doctrines that ought to be accepted in faith, with a rational (and not at all irrational) basis, as far as reason can take one.

He admits this directly after quoting Gregory the Great, “faith has no merit in those things of which human reason brings its own experience.”

St. Thomas Aquinas believes that faith and reason can be totally harmonized. I agree with him. Are you claiming that he is teaching otherwise here? You provide no reference for the sake of consulting context.

Surely you will admit that a careful handling of dogma, philosophy, faith and reason does lead to some dichotomies? Esp the problem of revelation v reason?

I meant irreconcilable dichotomies. There are different kinds of knowledge. The atheist wants to rule out that one can attain knowledge in certain ways (e.g., revelation) and that certain things can happen (miracles), or (often) that anything non-material can exist. But that is not a real dichotomy; it is an artificial one.

in the end, belief-systems must be analyzed of their own accord.

I agree, but we must keep in mind that Xianity has a particular truth claim to evaluate and analyze that involves the indwelling, sanctification, etc., of the believer. One of the few truth claims that we can evaluate just from observation.

No particular reply . . .

The fact that my wife or child may die or that my reputation is ruined, or that I go bankrupt or get a fatal disease, or become handicapped due to an assault has nothing to do with, that I can see, of whether the truth claims of Christianity are acceptable or not.

It certainly depends upon your interpretation of Xianity, doesn’t it?

Not really. What is it about a person dying or going through problems that disproves Christianity? Nothing. Just like the problem of evil doesn’t disprove that God exists. Atheists tried for centuries and had deluded confidence in that, but now it is in shambles and they are left with far less impressive, highly subjective plausibility arguments.

Some going through such tragedies would point to the covenant nature of Xianity, and question if God was involved in another “bet” with the devil. Some would question the idea that God speaks to them at all, if they spend hours each day “communing” yet had no warning whatsoever that their child had an advanced stage of cancer and that no one knew until it was too late . . . etc., etc. Surely you can see how the question of the relationship of the believer to God falls under this category?

Yes, but I thought we were talking about how this supposedly is a disproof of Christianity (related to John’s deconversion).

There are many teachings about the “covenant”, and so I would think you could see some falsification potential here.

One particular theology may be proven wrong and that disproves Christianity? Again, you lost me.

People know that’s not possible on merely human power alone. It contradicts everything we know about ourselves.

Ah, so you believe in Allah now?

How so?

He shows poor hermeneutical skills here.

And this is what Steve Hays would say to you. (Steve is a YEC) And AiG, and ICR, and etc., they all have their “experts” who would disagree with your interpretation of Genesis and its exegesis.

Every movement has its fringe groups. YAWN Even atheists!

That’s the view of many of us Christians, and we’re not all losing faith like John. Quite the contrary. I’ve been doing Christian apologetics for 25 years now, and I’ve never been caused to doubt my faith as a result of further study (and I’ve done tons of that). I’ve always had my faith strengthened, in defending the faith, seeing how solid it is on rational grounds, and observing the weakness of attacks upon it.

Up above, you cautioned those who would delve into “much philosophy”. Do you see how one could read your words before, and these words, and see a bit of a contradiction?

No, because you took that completely out of its context. I meant “bad philosophy.” I have entire web pages on philosophy, and excruciatingly long debates on heavy philosophical issues with atheists and scientists. You have simply misunderstood my meaning, in your zeal to find a contradiction somewhere.

Either you can admit that there are rational grounds for rejecting Christianity or not,

Conceivably, but I’ve yet to see one in my rounds as an apologist. The Problem of Evil is instructive. For centuries atheists strutted around like poeacocks thinking that was the Knockout Punch. Turns out it wasn’t. I suspect this is the case for all the other currently fashionable arguments too.

but you seem to admit there is some sort of grounds that people do, upon having “too much [secular] education” . . .

They have grounds for rejecting a caricature for a seemingly plausible view in an atmosphere thoroughly hostile to Christianity. I was saying that in the context of Christian college students losing their faith. Like I said, it’s a “stacked deck” and they don’t have a chance in that situation, if they are inadequately equipped. Belief systems and reasons for adopting them are exceedingly complex. I’ve always thought that: at least as far back as my first philosophy course in 1977 as a freshman in college, if not before.

No, but they could explain how a person would be more open to thoughts of a contrary nature to Christianity, if one is going through a period when he wonders about why God might do thus-and-so, or not do this or that, and if Christians are not being particularly consoling or understanding of his crisis. We don’t develop in a vacuum.

Ah, now we’re back to the catch-all factor: God’s grace.

I don’t see that I was talking all that much about grace in this particular remark. I was talking about hostile environments that one may find oneself in. That can explain loss of faith on a personal, emotional, human level, but that doesn’t disprove Christianity. That was my point.

There is no question that this happens, and that intellectual rationales are only the merest facade for the real or far more important reasons.

Sometimes it does, just as many people merely believe out of tradition, fear or hope, and not serious rational analysis.

Exactly.

One thing to keep in mind though is that freedom does not necessitate atheism. Rejecting Christianity is just that, and it leaves one with quite a number of options for “freedom” if that is all they want – from Buddhism to Krishna to any other Eastern philosophy, then to a sort of open/loose theism or deism, then agnosticism, etc.

Of course.

Everyone wants others to think that they made these big changes in opinion based on complete rationality and objectivity.

I agree – we all want to at least THINK that we’re rational, and appear that way to others.

But any look at ourselves quickly disabuses us of that notion: at least in any pure sense.

That’s a difficult claim to back up. First, looking inward is subjective, definitionally. Now, we all act irrationally at times, and often in retrospect we can even see it and admit it. But to say what you’ve said, bereft of argument, is, well, just another assertion.

Okay; so I am to view you as this perfectly rational, objective thinking machine, immune from all human influences, emotions, biases, pressures of friends and admired ones, family, any number of possible false premises, possible unsavory motivations, pride, jealousy, etc., etc., etc.? I dont think so.

I wonder if he still does, and if not, why atheism would change a respect for the rights of the most defenseless and innocent of human beings? It seems to me that the pro-life position is almost self-evidently right and moral, without the necessity of any theological basis.

I will admit you will find some sympathies with me, esp regarding late-terms. However, in the end, it comes down to a question of value – what makes human what they are, what gives them rights, and what rights does one have over their own body?

A male child is not the same body as his mother, unless you want to argue that females possess male sex organs. Nor is a female baby, for that matter, because she has an entirely different DNA. A human being is the offspring of two other human beings. This ain’t rocket science! It is what it is, genetically, from the moment of conception. A preborn child has rights from simply existing, according to every system of human ethics there is, if it is regarded as a person and a human being (that’s what it boils down to).

There is no good argument that would deny personhood to a preborn human being. What you are now began at the time you were conceived, and cannot possibly have any other logical starting-point. Anything after it is arbitrary; anything before is senseless since the DNA that you possess was not in its present combination. This stuff has to be argued with a graduate student in chemistry? It’s practically self-evident.

I choose to place someone’s legal right to decide whether they will abort a 2-3 month old fetus above any presumed “rights” of something which can rightly be described as less complex, less value-laden in the biological and psychological sense, than a mouse.

Then you have adopted absurd and monstrous ethics, to regard something you can’t rationally argue is not a human being as of less value than a mouse. This is what atheist (as well as liberal Christian) ethics usually amounts to in practice: animals considered more valuable than human beings. We can’t kill a protected species without penalty, but we can legally slaughter a human being and be patted on the back for it by people like you.

I wanted to know if John changed his mind on abortion, and if so, why? He knows what goes on in abortion, if he used to oppose it.

I think the difficulty in separating this from theology lies in the concept of value – Xians believe the soul itself is an embuement of value.

And atheists believe it is perfectly just to deprive this human being being slaughtered in its mother’s womb of the only life it will ever have. This is the same mentality that ruled the Nazi Holocaust: the notion that there is such a thing as a human life unworthy to be lived, due to inconvenience, or someone else’s lousy science and even more atrocious and selfish ethics.

It did? Not if it doesn’t exist!

He certainly should’ve stated this (and the next statement) otherwise here. The only way to make sense of it, in light of his perspective now, is to inject, “What I thought of as…”

A bad habit of speaking; a remnant of his past fantasies?

But Christianity (rightly understood) is the remedy of that, not its cause.

Hardly. Christianity creates guilt for normal and biological urges and behaviors. It is a source of much guilt where there is no moral argument contrariwise, especially with respect to doubt, sex, self-interest-first behavior, etc.

Not going down that huge rabbit trail . . .

Want a speculation? I’ll bet it’s because there are far fewer “true Christians” than you’d want to believe, and most just go through the motions out of tradition, to keep up appearances, and because of family. Just a speculation.

It depends on how you are defining “Christian” and “true Christian.” The first can be defined doctrinally and discussed in an objective manner. The second: who really is a Christian (really eschatologically saved, or of the elect, etc.), — apart from doctrinal considerations — cannot be determined with any certainty by human beings, only God. But that there are many “wolves in sheep’s clothing” is undeniable. The Bible clearly teaches that.

Does John give far less to charity than he used to, because he is free from guilt?

Speaking for me only, I now see the huge waste in tithing that could be going to real charities –

I wasn’t talking about tithing, but about charity in general. I think it was a good and fair and relevant question, given his rhetoric about guilt. Lots of people give money at church out of guilt or dead, begrudging obligation, not with joy.

places that use >90% of their resources to actually help people, rather than provide infrastructure and etc. for their organizations.

Like pro-life groups? They help real little people . . . to live and be allowed to have a life in the first place.

I see. So the more we can sin, the less guilt we feel? That couldn’t be more opposite of the truth than it is.

Perhaps the better way to see this is, “Why adopt ridiculous notions of perfection that don’t comport with reality, which induces guilt, rather than building an ethical system that actually comes into contact with real life, and living by it, so that you don’t have to deal with guilt?”

Guilt (and the related conscience) is a necessary part of any ethical system and any normal human being. To attempt to get rid of it simply because one has an extreme, distorted sense of guilt (and false attribution of this to God) is as foolish and irrational as trying to get rid of all automobiles because the one you had didn’t run properly.

I’d lay my “sins” on the table next to anyone else’s, any time. I’m a quite transparent kind of guy. People know when I feel bad, and I am a terrible liar.

That’s how I (admittedly, probably cynically) read this. So he has simply gone from overscrupulosity (one extreme, and a distortion of Christianity and discipleship), to another (a marvelously “guilt-free” existence: so he says, anyway). But I don’t believe it. I believe guilt is there, down deep, and knowledge of God is there too (buried and suppressed).

You believe that, and maybe you’re right, although you have no evidence, but you also should consider that people are the products of their environment, and John was a minister for a very very long time. You don’t “shake off” deep-seated convictions overnight, nor the guilt response you’ve held since you were 18. [assuming you’re right]

That’s true, too. But I am saying that he had an incorrect notion of the place and function of guilt as a Christian. He rejected (in that respect) a gross caricature of the proper Christian view and went to the other extreme.

Two considerations:

1) Do we justify Jesus’ words that it is the same to hate someone as to murder? Was this merely a metaphor to point out that bad thoughts are bad? Ditto with adultery/lust?

The thought is that the interior disposition precedes the act and is the essence of the bad act. To murder, one must have a motive, and that motive is immoral and unethical. The hatred is the key to the act.

2) His point is that overscrupulosity can be avoided by saying, “How silly is it to think that we can control our thoughts!”

Of course we can control our thoughts, with God’s help. This is the whole point. I’m not saying it’s easy. It’s a perpetual struggle. But it is possible. When I fall into lust or jealousy or greed or pride or any number of sinful thoughts and feelings, it’s me; it ain’t God doing that. We cultivate and coddle sin when we fall prey to it. The proper response to lust (something I’ve struggled with a lot through the years, as have most men) is to run, as Joseph did from Potiphar’s wife.

That’s the only thing that works. Run! Otherwise we can quickly become consumed by it. But it’s our free will. The response to jealousy is to recognize that we are no better than anyone else under God, and to rejoice if someone else has some blessing we don’t have; not to dwell on ourselves and what we don’t have, etc.

All these things are cultivated by force of habit. Jealousy and slander and malice develop in group gossip situations. It’s obvious how lust is fostered everywhere in our culture. Greed flows from the excessive materialism of our society, and the selfishness that we all must fight constantly. But to just throw in the towel and think that we are at sea with regard to our wills and controlling decadent and immoral habits: that’s asinine and absurd. It’s no more true within an atheist ethical framework than a Christian.

But I have never doubted the fact that God loves me and that He is merciful and all-loving.

Never doubted that, eh?

That’s what I said. And the Christian believes this is only possible itself by God’s grace, not our own power.

I guess some of us can believe easier than others. I always had doubts, and fears of going to hell, ESP as a devout Christian.

I think a lot of that has to do with our innate temperaments, as I alluded to in my critique. A worrier by nature will obviously worry about matters of faith, or worry that he is good enough, etc. There are many different temperaments. The trick for us is to understand when some objection or feeling we have flows from that rather than the nature or necessity of our belief system.

My temperament is very even keel, easy-going, not moody at all (though I did suffer a serious six-month depression as a one-time event in my life, so I understand that firsthand). It obviously grates upon someone like John, who has a different temperament, and so he has to call me names. But we need to learn to live with and accept (without senseless knee-jerk reactions) human beings who are different from us in gender, age, temperament, culture, politics, religion, worldview, IQ level, class, body type, etc. . . .

Nor do we see even a trace in this in someone like the Apostle Paul, who has a confident, almost boasting faith.

The least of the apostles? The guy who appealed to people he knew in order to make his case that he was authoritative in knowing what God wanted?

The guy who said he was “a Pharisee of the Pharisees” and killed Christians earlier in his life?

Exactly. He was very confident as a Jew and again as a Christian.

Perhaps he just wasn’t as well-endowed (conscience-wise) as some of us, huh?

Before his regeneration, certainly not. But this is what we teach, so no big deal.

So this becomes a major factor. Personal elements that made John feel this excessive guilt and inability to accept God’s mercy and forgiveness, are neither Christianity’s nor God’s fault.

I’ll agree with you on this – guilt and community should have very little to do with our analysis of Christianity.

Good.

Personal elements aren’t determined or caused by God?

I would say they are largely caused by genes and early upbringing.

So the density of one’s conscience (a cultural and mental phenomenon) has nothing to do with God? How sovereign is your God?

Conscience is only one aspect of temperament of self-aware personhood. We can cultivate conscience just like anything else or gradually cause ourselves to be dead to it. We all have it originally, but it can clearly be abused.

***

(originally 10-16-06)

Photo credit: Demolition of the Sydenham Heritage Church (New Zealand) in February 2011 (Bob Hall) [Wikimedia Commons / Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license]

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Critiquing Atheist Deconversions = “Spiritual Predator”?

Last updated on: August 23, 2018 at 6:31 pm By Dave Armstrong

If one dares to critique an atheist’s “deconversion” from Christianity to atheism one will prove oneself (in the eyes of some – dunno how many) atheists, to be evil incarnate, the scum of the earth, and a most unsavory personage. “RubySera Martin”, a former Christian herself, leaves no stone unturned in savaging my person for this outlandishly evil sin that I have committed. The link to her post is now defunct, but I cited it in its entirety.

RubySera’s words will be in blue, John Loftus’s in green, and my older cited words in brown.

*****

John Loftus’s “reply” to my critique of his deconversion was ridiculous enough (“He doesn’t think I was sincere. I’m probably not even a person to him. . . . You’re a joke. I’m surprised you have an audience. . . . To think you could pompously proclaim you are better than me is beyond me when you don’t know me. It’s a defensive mechanism you have with people like me. . . . damned psychobabble . . . drivel . . . It’s called respecting people as people, and Dave’s Christianity does not do that with people who don’t agree with him. . . . self-assured arrogant idiots out there, like Dave, who prefer to proclaim off of my personal experience that they are better than I”), but this goes beyond merely ridiculous, to surreal and hysterical. And the sad thing is that it is again based on a massive misunderstanding that doesn’t follow from the words and arguments I used.

So now, rather than rationally discuss the issues at hand, I have to prove I’m not the devil. See how it works? I wish I could just ignore this, but it is so absurd that I just don’t have it in me. It’s one thing to honestly disagree, but when a person has to literally demonize someone because she is unable to properly understand what they are arguing, then someone must speak out against that. It’s a true shame, that here we are again with atheists who want to resort to personal attack and insult.

Once again, we’ll see that context was utterly butchered, and little attempt was made to grant good faith to me, because, after all, I am a Christian, and I committed the unpardonable sin of critiquing an atheist’s deconversion story. I didn’t know it was the unpardonable sin according to atheists till I did it. Now I know.

Spiritual Predators

The following was said by a Christian about a person [John Loftus] who deconverted from Christianity:

So he grew up being “taught to believe in the Christian faith” yet this is how he ended the later years of his youth? Doesn’t sound like a very compelling Christian upbringing to me. Something was deficient there somewhere. On the other hand, I was a very nominal Methodist growing up, and even stopped going to Church at age 10 (because my parents also did) and was almost a practical agnostic; at the very least exceedingly secular in outlook (though never an atheist). Yet I never remotely got into this much trouble (pursuing the occult was about the extent of it).

That can be about the most scathing thing seekers face. They make themselves vulnerable, they bare their souls, hoping for understanding. Instead of understanding they are mocked for being the way they are.

The author, Dave Armstrong, claims elsewhere that he was only critiquing. No, he was not critiquing. He was being skeptical of another human being’s honesty regarding that person’s own personal experience of life. In other words, he was being skeptical about another person’s interpretation of his own life experience.

This is a complete distortion of what I was trying to do, and my interior disposition. I was not mocking at all. This is implied in the fact that I concluded my own not very stellar example of religious background. My point was that there was likely some deficiency in how John was taught the Christian faith, because, as a rule, those who are taught it properly, don’t get into all the trouble that he did (“I had dropped out of High School, and was arrested six different times for offenses like running away, theft, and battery. I had also hitchhiked around the country with a friend. I was heavily into drugs, alcohol, sex, fast cars, and the party scene”). This was all prior to age 18. I used myself as an analogy; in effect, arguing: if I wasn’t properly taught religious things and got into relatively little trouble, it stands to reason that John probably wasn’t, either, since he got into a load of trouble.”

This doesn’t involve my allegedly “being skeptical of another human being’s honesty regarding that person’s own personal experience of life.” Not at all. And that is because the statement, “I grew up being taught to believe in the Christian faith” is capable of including within it many possibilities as to factual variables: possible deficiencies in doctrine, in ethics, in bad example from those teaching it, in hypocrisy of those teaching it, etc. It is a subjective statement. I only had so much information to go by and responded accordingly.

It’s true that I am skeptical of the nature of this faith that he was taught. I highly suspect that there was something wrong there (in the teaching, not with him as a supposedly rotten, evil person), that led him to go astray in his youth. Most people who see a young person go so far astray will immediately look at the parents and what they have been doing. But this doesn’t entail some unsavory claim that John is not honest, or that he is deliberately misrepresenting his past. That simply doesn’t follow. It was a very general statement.

What I am skeptical of is whether he was properly taught Christianity. Perhaps he was. I assumed he would clarify that later, since, after all, he asked me to critique his deconversion in the first place, and we were getting along fine (so I thought) until I did so. He could easily have done so, but instead we had an explosion of irrational and emotional invective.

RubySera says I was “being skeptical about another person’s interpretation of his own life experience.” Again, this is not true. The above observation doesn’t require this sort of reading at all. I was simply reacting to the general statement that he was raised in the Christian faith, combined with his own report of his mischief and lawbreaking, and stating aloud that something doesn’t connect there. I don’t place that in his sincerity, but in problems in what he was taught, or something along these lines.

I do see, however, that there were two things I could have expressed in a better way: the use of the phrase, “on the other hand,” which can (I see now) be taken to imply that I was contrasting myself (by this phrase) as (an inherently) “good kid” over against John as a “bad kid” (and then using this presumption of his “badness” to dismiss his reasoning thereafter). But that was not my intention at all. I intended the phrase to contrast the two following things, by reverse analogy:

1. John: good Christian upbringing — wild youth.

2. Dave: nominal Christian upbringing — relatively docile, trouble-free youth.

My reasoning (I grant that it is not totally clear) was that good religious teaching usually corresponds to kids getting into less trouble. So if John got into a lot, I was saying that maybe the teaching or the environment in which it was presented wasn’t that great. He may have sincerely thought that it was. But reasonable people can differ on that.

RubySera herself was brought up as a very conservative Mennonite (she describes it as a “horse and buggy Mennonite community”). She now thinks it was a terrible thing. So why is it unspeakably evil for me to simply question whether there were deficiencies in John’s upbringing, too? It’s only permissible for atheists to critique such things, but Christians dare not, on pain of being publicly savaged and demonized as wicked scoundrels? Atheists can critique errors in practice of Christians, but Christians cannot?

The second thing was my use of the word “deficient.” I meant it strictly to imply to the teaching he received. But I can see how, grammatically, it is possible to think that I was referring to John as a person. I was not. Even if I were, this would make little sense in the context of a Christian understanding, because we say that everyone is subject to original sin, and everyone actually sins (except for Mary in Catholic theology and the unfallen angels). We’re all sinners in need of a savior. I might make judgments that a person is lacking in this or that quality, if it is repeatedly manifest.

But I can’t imagine saying “x is a deficient person.” I don’t think I’ve ever said since I have been a serious Christian (almost 30 years): “I’m better than that person.” That’s just not the way I talk or approach people, so it wasn’t what I meant here. It’s completely foreign to my worldview and thinking processes. I would say (and have, many many times), “we’re all sinners; myself foremost; Exhibit #1.” But I recognize that it could legitimately have been misunderstood here, and to that extent I accept my share of the responsibility and even offer an apology for the poor wording, leaving myself open to be misunderstood.

But even that, in my opinion, doesn’t excuse how RubySera has responded to me. She has the choice of whether or not to believe my report of my intentions, just as she is protesting against my imaginary doubting of John’s personal report. So stay tuned for that. It’ll be very interesting either way.

Before we proceed further, let’s look at the context of my remark. This is easy, because there is only one additional paragraph, right after what was cited, before moving onto other sub-topics. Here it is. Note the information that gives a quite different impression from the one RubySera drew from the isolated paragraph. It’s a classic study in quoting out of context:

I’m not questioning John’s sincerity; only saying that something was missing for this sort of rebellion to have occurred. It could still occur even in a profoundly Christian home (e.g., Billy Graham’s son Franklin, who later straightened up and became a minister), because we all have free will, but generally this indicates a less-than-stellar foundational Christian teaching. And that, in turn, influences one’s thoughts and opinions, which has relevance to a “deconversion” and sad descent into atheism.

First of all, one observes my making very clear that I am not questioning John’s sincerity (first five words). The choice, then, is to either believe my report of my interior disposition and opinion of John or not. I am being chided for supposedly not granting this charity and benefit of the doubt to John. But ironically, now I find myself being subject to the same thing I am being falsely accused of. We’re supposed to believe that atheists are sincere in their stories, but Christians are not in their critiques? If not, why does RubySera continue?:

That is outside the boundaries of anyone except for the individual who has the experience. Telling a person that he did not experience things that way is like telling someone, “No you are not cold when you are cold.” It denigrates a human being’s perception. We must protect ourselves against that kind of person. They are destructive in all their ways.

But I didn’t do this! I just stated that I don’t question John’s sincerity! I even granted that there are exceptions to the rule of the “kid gone astray” (thus, John’s case may have been one itself). There is no question that youth go astray overwhelmingly when there is some serious deficiency in the home. This could be either from teaching or disciplinary chaos or lack of one parent or drug use. It could be any number of things. But it is completely rational to suspect that something seriously wrong (i.e., from the parents) went on.

If anyone doubts this, go interview juvenile delinquents or adult criminals and ask them about their childhoods. Only a fool could deny the connection. I don’t know more particulars about John’s childhood unless he decides to let me in on them. But it was entirely rational and reasonable (and, I say, not unethical or uncharitable) to suspect what I did, based on the information I had.

Secondly, one phrase makes it clear that I was concentrating on the Christian teaching (or lack thereof) when I referred to something being “deficient”: “generally this [rebellion] indicates a less-than-stellar foundational Christian teaching.” I think this easily explains my use of that word, in context. But by omitting the second paragraph, RubySera could have a field day in distorting my intentions, and then moving on to “argue” (based on this false premise) about what wicked, evil — indeed, even “dangerous” — person I allegedly am. I think it also explains the intent of my phrase “on the other hand.”

Nevertheless, I’m happy to acknowledge that one might misinterpret those words; particularly because it is an emotional and personal topic, etc. That often causes lapses in logic and reading comprehension. If John (and/or RubySera) immediately got angry with my first paragraph, then they read the rest of the paper in that fog of misguided anger. I’m saying that it was ultimately unjustified. It certainly is now, at any rate, after my elaborate explanations. But if they insist on having an axe to grind against me, on a groundless basis, all of this won’t amount to a hill of beans.

In our search for what is right for us we need clear-headed, honest people to help us understand ourselves. People who talk in the tone of voice Dave Armstrong talks are among the most dangerous people to listen to. The problem with not listening to them is that they will get emotionally vicious. They will make personal attacks. They will threaten that bad things will happen. Those are a few of the things they will say.

I did none of these things whatsoever. I just didn’t. It’s amusing to me that she talks about “tone of voice” when that is precisely the thing that is lacking in written material. Anyone who has met me would never say this nonsense. I appeal to those who know me in person, just as John has done. Even two fellow atheists in the very thread discussing my critique recognized that I was not intending to attack John personally.

Matthew Green, for example, wrote on John’s own blog: “. . . the tone of Dave’s critique is a bit pleasant and not really nasty, . . . At least Dave Armstrong seems a likeable kind of a guy, . . .” And “whizler” wrote: “I don’t believe Dave Armstrong’s response was directed at you personally.” So this personal interpretation is often wildly subjective. These are four atheists all looking at the same exact thing. John and RubySera go nuts and start attacking me personally, whereas Matthew and whizler make rational comments and form a very different impression.

Moreover, I made it very clear in my comments underneath the critique on my blog, that I do not hold the unsavory opinions about John, that have been falsely attributed to me:

Dave, as I read this I thought to myself, he doesn’t think of me as an equal.

Quite the contrary; we’re all sinners. No one is any better, at bottom, than anyone else. Whatever good is in us is because of God’s grace, not our inherent superiority to someone else.

He looks down his nose at me.

Not at all. I simply disagree with your positions and your denigration of Christianity. Your position is not you. If you write about such things publicly, then do you not expect that Christians will respond to them? You actually encouraged me to respond to your deconversion, so I did.

As I’m writing he looks for loopholes. He doesn’t think I was sincere.

Really? That’s news to me. I never remotely implied such a thing; nor do I believe it. Your problem (at least insofar as this version of your story suggests) is intellectual, not a matter of dishonesty.

Bad premises lead to bad conclusions. I didn’t see anything that would bring any Christian doctrine into question at all. Sorry, that’s my honest opinion. Or am I dishonest?

I’m probably not even a person to him.

Wow. Well, I know one thing: you are extremely sensitive to Christian critiques, even when done respectfully and not attacking you as a person or immoral scoundrel, etc. I can understand that, but it has the effect of alienating those (such as myself) who simply don’t have the attitudes you are attributing to them.

I understand that many Christians have treated you rottenly. I’ve seen some recent things that shocked me and were terrible witnesses to Christianity. That’s contemptible. But I am not among them. I don’t share their attitudes. I never said you were especially evil (more than any other sinner, of whom I am foremost) or damned, etc. Catholics (to their credit, and we have many faults, believe me) generally don’t do that. We leave those judgments up to God.

[Of, course the net is impersonal anyway so some of this is excusable].

This is true. But I take great pains not to fall into the common shortcomings of Internet discourse. You think I’ve attacked your person? Good grief. You should see the amazing things that are written about me. And the worst comes from fellow Christians (some of them even Catholics).

I dare say Dave that if YOU were to write about your CONVERSION story I could pick it apart no matter how much you write too IF I DIDN’T CONSIDER YOU TO BE A SINCERE AND HONEST AND THOUGHTFUL PERSON.

Now get this straight, John (in big capital letters):

I *****DO***** CONSIDER YOU TO BE A SINCERE AND HONEST AND THOUGHTFUL PERSON.

Got that? Now if you say I am lying, then obviously all discourse is over. But it wasn’t because of me. God is my witness for that, and also (since you think He doesn’t exist) all who have read our exchanges.

RubySera could easily have read that, if she is so interested in figuring out exactly what my intentions, opinions, and interior dispositions were. Instead, we get her ludicrous attack. It ends with this ultra-absurd rant:

I call them spiritual predators because that is exactly what they are. They attack, maim, and torture. Only when they have their victim completely within their power to do release the pressure. It is possible to escape even then, but it is extremely difficult and dangerous.

Further comment on this paragraph would obviously be superfluous and futile and would be an insult to my readers.

There is nothing to these charges. But if it floats RubySera’s boat to falsely demonize me based on no evidence at all that I hold these alleged opinions (and much flatly stated evidence to the contrary), what can I do about it? All I can do is use reason, as I have, and hope that fair-minded atheists will try to persuade this woman that she is only hurting herself and the cause of atheism by this sort of groundless attack.

***

(originally 10-28-06)

Photo credit: werner22brigitte (12-24-12) [Pixabay / CC0 Creative Commons license]

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Dialogue w Atheist on the Origin of the Universe

Last updated on: June 25, 2018 at 10:50 am By Dave Armstrong

Grimlock is an atheist from Norway. He made a response to my initial provocative questions (see the whole thing). This is my counter-reply. Due to his length I can’t reply to absolutely everything (that would make this post way too long). His words will be in blue.

*****

One thing I habitually ask atheists is to explain how matter could obtain the qualities it has, including evolving into living organisms. I don’t see that science (at least to my knowledge) has yet explained that, but you guys object when we suggest that a God might be the explanation of the universe and its marvels. You in turn call that “god of the gaps.”

But I don’t see that whatever explanation you come up with is all that more explanatory or plausible than our “answer.” I see it as atheists having even more faith, and a much more blind faith, in the inherent capabilities of matter, than we Christians exercise in believing in God. At least we have (love or despise them) some 25 theistic “proofs” for God, while we await even one plausible materialistic scientific explanation of matter evolving into life and everything we see in the universe: all starting from a chaotic explosion that itself has no good explanation as to prior cause.

Do you know that feeling when your comment ends up being a 2700 word essay?

I do very well! :-)

I interpret these issues as dealing with the matter of providing explanations. Different types of explanations, to different types of questions, but still; explanations. Consequently, I’ll endeavour to provide my view on a view different questions, and also how I see my view compared to the theistic view. The following are the different questions.

1) Why is there stuff? (Also phrased as why is there something rather than nothing?)
2) Given that there are stuff, why is there is particular stuff?
3) Given that there are this particular stuff, how can these particular events come to pass?

Throughout pondering these questions I shall also consider that if we take it as given that these events came to pass, what is the most plausible explanation for these events; theism or naturalism?

Good start!

[for the sake of space, I have passed over his self-described “digression” regarding what he thinks “makes something a good explanation.” See it at the original posting]

1) Why is there stuff? (Also phrased as why is there something rather than nothing?)

I have no idea. It might be that there not being anything at all is utterly incoherent and impossible. But perhaps not.

It might be thought that the theist has an edge here — after all, a common claim is to say that God is necessary, that He had to exist. But I find this unconvincing. It is far too easy to simply inquire, why is it so that God is necessary?

Instead, one ought to concede that at some point you just have to say that this is simply how it is. A brute fact, if you will. My intuition (admittedly hopelessly useless in this context) is inclined towards this view. A bit of epistemic humility, and a concession that I don’t think the mere existence of anything at all provides neither the naturalist nor the theist with an edge.

As a quick note, the two criteria that I laid out for what makes a good explanation is futile here. I have no idea how to explain existence of stuff in a way that existence must follow, nor do I see how existence — everything that is — can be explained in terms of something else.

I greatly appreciate your honesty and “epistemic humility.” I think , right off the bat, this gets to the heart of the matter and the question of relative explanatory value of theism and atheism for these grand cosmological / material mysteries. You ask, “why is it so that God is necessary?” The answer is simple: something has to explain why the universe is here, and why it is so unbelievably marvelous and extraordinary.

This “something” is what Einstein called his own religion (a sort of pantheism or panentheism). He recognized that straight atheism was woefully inadequate to explain what we observe; especially all the more so, as we learn more and more about physics. His religion was very different from ours as theists; yet on the other hand, it is far more like our cosmological answers and religion than your answer (or “epistemologically humble” non-answer, as the case may be) and non-religion.

I found a site called Brief Answers to Cosmic Questions (run by NASA / Harvard / Smithsonian Institute). It made the fascinating observation (one of many):

Was the Big Bang the origin of the universe?

It is a common misconception that the Big Bang was the origin of the universe. In reality, the Big Bang scenario is completely silent about how the universe came into existence in the first place. In fact, the closer we look to time “zero,” the less certain we are about what actually happened, because our current description of physical laws do not yet apply to such extremes of nature.

The Big Bang scenario simply assumes that space, time, and energy already existed. But it tells us nothing about where they came from – or why the universe was born hot and dense to begin with.

I just did a series of critiques of Richard Dawkins’ book, The God Delusion. He complained about an “infinite regress” where the theist appeals to God and then Dawkins asks (thinking he is spoiling the party), “well, where did God come from?” He came from nowhere. He was always there, by definition. He’s not subject to the laws of science. We can’t prove about matter (at least according to our present knowledge), what theists attribute to God: self-existence, self-sufficiency, and eternality.

But in the quotation above, “space, time, and energy already existed” before the Big Bang, and moreover, we know “nothing about where they came from” (my emphasis). Well, isn’t that something? Science is awful ignorant about some very important things, isn’t it? Theists are mocked and looked down on all the time for “god of the gaps.”

But how is the above scenario any different? How is it not “matter of the gaps” or making matter god: as I have mercilessly satirized, to the consternation of many atheists (oooh: you should have seen the insults, in the attempt to shut me up!)? Matter was just there; we know not how — don’t have a clue — but we will believe it anyway, if we are materialists, because, what choice is there (minus God)? This is truly a faith-filled belief in something with no evidence: precisely as theists and Christians are constantly criticized (and I would say it is a bum rap in our case).

You say, “this is simply how it is.” Okay, that’s fine. Matter’s here; the universe is here. We have no inkling how or why, but “it’s simply how it is.” There’s no evidence there. My problem with this is that we are always forbidden (under pain of being called irrational, gullible, superstitious, followers of the tooth fairy and leprechauns, et al) to posit that God was the Prime Mover and First Cause. At least we can provide many reasonable arguments for His existence. Science offers none for the universe before the Big Bang (not according to its own methodology of relentless cause and effect). We just saw that above. So why is that view supposedly so much more reasonable and plausible than ours? I don’t buy it! It’s simply not. I think our view is far more reasonable and plausible.

2) Given that there are stuff, why is there is particular stuff?

To this, I think one ought to be rather more specific. I don’t know if it is meaningful to ask why this particular stuff exists. It might be some if one limits the scope, for instance as is done in the fine-tuning argument. Or, as you ask, why does matter act in the way that it does?

Yes I would, but not only that; also, how is it that it came to evolve and become what it now is?

Yet, once again, I must admit that I don’t know. I am not surprised that the stuff that exists has some regularity at some level. After all, what would be the alternative? Sheer randomness?

I don’t see how that could be conceived without the randomness having some probability distribution. But then you see regularities at some aggregated level, and you’re once again given some regularities. So I am not surprised that the stuff that exists behaves in some way with regularity.

It’s perfectly conceivable that the universe could be a chaotic, random, senseless place that simply didn’t have all these laws and regularities of nature that we observe (uniformitarianism, etc.). In reality it has extraordinary order, and so we must ask why? From whence did such amazing things derive?

At some limited level, one could explain the stuff that exists by appealing to other existing stuff. For instance, certain of our so-called laws of nature (which I tend to think of as descriptive rather than normative) appear to be emergent from other underlying regularities. But as for explaining these regularities, I don’t know.

How does theism do in this regard? Not particularly well, I think. One might be tempted to claim that God made it so that things are as they are. But as with (1), one always seem justified in asking why stuff is so that God is the ontologically non-contingent part of existence. Note also the criteria that I set for explanations; It is hard to see why this particular type of stuff would follow from God, and as an appeal to an entity whose existence is not an immediate part of our ontology, it utterly fails at appealing to established ontologies.

Yeah, you simply rule out the possibility of God from the outset, or (perhaps more accurately) rule out that God as an explanation or First Cause can never be more plausible than your explanation. Death by preconceived category . . . But since your explanation of these fundamental questions so far is nothing; that’s not a very high bar to surpass, is it?

Now, another digression might be appropriate. I believe there is one way we could look at our stuff, what we perceive to exist, and give either theism or naturalism the edge.

[see another “digression” comment in Grimlock’s original posting at this point, that provides relevant context]

Consider the universe as a whole, or on a general level. We observe that physical stuff exists and changes. The mental that we observe (animals, including humans) appear to be dependent on the physical. This seems to correspond better with naturalism than with supernaturalism, and as such, the stuff that we do observe seems, on a very general level, to provide some evidence for naturalism.

Nature does suggest naturalism, I agree, but that’s only after the “wheels have been set in motion.” Observational cause and effect are fine; no one disagrees with that. How things came to be in the first place is what I am interested in, in this discussion. I deny that everything mental is dependent on the physical, but that’s a completely different discussion.

3) Given that there are this particular stuff, how can these particular events come to pass?

Now we come to, I think, at least three points that you make in the quote above.

3a) You appeal to life originating from non-life. Abiogenesis, as I believe it is called. It is true that there is no current scientific theory that explains either how life can originate from non-life, or how life did originate from non-life. (If anyone knows differently, I’d love to be corrected.)

Exactly. So once again, materialistic science has no clue; not even the hint of one.

I expect that it would be tempting to here, once again, appeal to God as an explanation.

Not only tempting, but equally as reasonable, and (I say) more plausible than matter coming from nothing for who knows what reason, or having some sort of supposed faux-eternality, and somehow organizing itself into ever more complex forms, up to and including life and consciousness.

As a contrast, I will appeal to the following: Saying the word “chemistry” while doing a vaguely circular gesture with my hand. Let us now compare these explanations, based on the criteria that I appealed to above.

Do either of these explanations make it so that the life originating from non-life is a reasonable consequence? I don’t see how. Neither provides sufficient details, and while one could always add ad-hoc premises to either explanation, that seems… well, ad-hoc. So in terms of (i), neither is particularly successful.

How about in terms of (ii)? Well, as this is used as an appeal to increase God’s plausibility, I fail to see how one can contend that God is an entity that exists in our ontology without being circular. Whereas chemistry is something we know to exist. Thus, my vague explanation is superior to the God-explanation of terms of (ii). This is what I tend to think characterizes a god-of-the-gaps argument; A phenomena that is not currently understood, where God has little to no explanatory power, and where we have a promising venue in terms of stuff that we already possess in our ontology.

Well, that’s just it. You and atheists say “God isn’t in our ontology; we can’t comprehend him, or understand why anyone else believes in him.” Or if theists do offer reasons they are circular or inconsistent, or incoherent, or non-empirical / evidential. But atheists have always been in a small minority. Most of mankind is religious, believing in some sort of superior power or Supreme Being. So the facts on the ground suggest an existing ontology that does indeed include God or at least some sense of an organizing, creative force (if it is deemed as non-personal).

Here we get into the waters of “properly basic belief.” Alvin Plantinga explored that in a famous paper. I’ll quote a good chunk of it:

[T]he believer is entirely within his intellectual rights in believing as he does even if he doesn’t know of any good theistic argument (deductive or inductive), even if he doesn’t believe that there is any such argument, and even if in fact no such argument exists. . . . it is perfectly rational to accept belief in God without accepting it on the basis of any other beliefs or propositions at all.

The evidentialist objector holds that one who accepts theistic belief is in some way irrational or noetically substandard.

Typically this objection has been rooted in some form of classical foundationalism, according to which a proposition p is properly basic for a person S if and only if p is either self-evident or incorrigible for S (modern foundationalism) or either self-evident or ‘evident to the senses’ for S (ancient and medieval foundationalism). [Elsewhere] I argued that both forms of foundationalism are self referentially incoherent and must therefore be rejected. Insofar as the evidentialist objection is rooted in classical foundationalism, it is poorly rooted indeed: and so far as I know, no one has developed and articulated any other reason for supposing that belief in God is not properly basic. Of course it doesn’t follow that it is properly basic; perhaps the class of properly basic propositions is broader than classical foundationalists think, but still not broad enough to admit belief in God. But why think so?

I’ve heard it argued that if I have no evidence for the existence of God, then if I accept that proposition, my belief will be groundless, or gratuitous, or arbitrary. I think this is an error; let me explain. Suppose we consider perceptual beliefs, memory beliefs, and be liefs which ascribe mental states to other persons: such beliefs as

(1) I see a tree,

(2) I had breakfast this morning, and

(3) That person is angry.

Although beliefs of this sort are typically and properly taken as basic, it would be a mistake to describe them as groundless.

[ . . . ]

By way of conclusion then: being self-evident, or incorrigible, or evident to the senses is not a necessary condition of proper basicality. Furthermore, one who holds that belief in God is properly basic is not thereby committed to the idea that belief in God is groundless or gratuitous or without justifying circumstances. And even if he lacks a general criterion of proper basicality, he is not obliged to suppose that just any or nearly any belief — belief in the Great Pumpkin, for example — is properly basic.

The takeaway here is that appeals to abiogenesis hardly gives the theist an advantage, but rather the opposite.

Really? You yourself freely (and admirably) admitted above: “It is true that there is no current scientific theory that explains either how life can originate from non-life, or how life did originate from non-life.” Yet despite that big zero explanation-wise, you continue to believe that an exclusively natural explanation (what explanation?!) is superior to a Christian believing that “God created life” (which may, of course, have been through the means of evolution). Once again you have nothing, but you regard it as a superior explanation (nothing!) to simple Christian belief in a God Who created the universe.

3b) You also appeal to the universe’s alleged cause, and more broadly its origin. But in terms of explanations, let us once again make a comparison.

This time, we once again appeal to God as an explanation. One could, I suppose, add more speculative details, if one is so inclined. I would undoubtedly make a muddle of that, so I shall leave it be.

Compare this with this model by Anthony Aguirre and Steven Gratton.

The latter, entirely naturalistic, explanation provides an expectation of our universe. So in terms of (i) above, it is rather successful.

What is the proof and evidence that they offer, beyond being just a speculation from their own brains? You tell me. Most of the article is way over my head (far too technical for a non-physicist or non-mathematician). If it’s mere speculation, with no solid scientific evidence, then of course it is ultimately on the same epistemological ground as our belief in God.

These guys think matter has all these amazing inherent capabilities. We believe God does. I fail to see how your scenario is superior to ours. Yours is self-contradicting when it claims to be superior in terms of explanation, yet offers no compelling evidence from its own supposedly self-sufficient scientific paradigm.

This is the heart of my ultra-controversial, feather-ruffling, sacred cow-busting satire of atheist “atomism”:

Matter essentially “becomes god” in the atheist / materialist view; it has the inherent ability to do everything by itself: a power that Christians believe God caused, by putting these potentialities and actual characteristics into matter and natural laws, as their ultimate Creator and ongoing Preserver and Sustainer.

The atheist places extraordinary faith in matter – arguably far more faith than we place in God, because it is much more difficult to explain everything that god-matter does by science alone. . . .

The polytheistic materialist . . . thinks that trillions of his atom-gods and their distant relatives, the cell-gods, can make absolutely everything in the universe occur, by their own power, possessed eternally either in full or (who knows how?) in inevitably unfolding potentiality.

One might call this (to coin a phrase) Atomism (“belief that the atom is God”). Trillions of omnipotent, omniscient atoms can do absolutely everything that the Christian God can do, and for little or no reason that anyone can understand (i.e., why and how the atom-god came to possess such powers in the first place). The Atomist openly and unreservedly worships his trillions of gods, with the most perfect, trusting, non-rational faith imaginable. He or she is what sociologists call a “true believer.”

Oh, and we mustn’t forget the time-goddess. She is often invoked in worshipful, reverential, awe-inspiring terms as the be-all, end-all explanation for things inexplicable, as if by magic her very incantation rises to an explanatory level sufficient to shut up any silly Christian, who is foolish enough to believe in one God rather than trillions. The time-goddess is the highest in the ranks of the Atomist’s wonderfully varied hierarchy of gods (sort of the “Zeus” of Atomism). One might call this belief Temporalism.

Atomism is a strong, fortress-like faith. It is often said that it “must be” what it is. The Atomist reverses the error of the Gnostic heretics. They thought spirit was great and that matter was evil. Atomists think matter is great (and god) and spirit is not only “evil” (metaphorically speaking), but beyond that: non-existent.

Is God as successful an explanation in terms of (i)? Not really. God could easily create other types of universes, not to mention eternal ones, or create a universe mid-existence in such a way that its current laws of nature does not explain its history.

I have found one vigorous critique of a similar paper by them. The great theistic apologist William Lane Craig criticizes their theory:

For the two models mentioned (Aguirre-Gratton and Carroll-Chen) were specifically addressed by name by Vilenkin in the paper from the Cambridge conference which I quoted in my opening speech. These models were comprised in Vilenkin’s conclusion, “None of these scenarios can actually be past-eternal.” So when Vilenkin says that they afford a “possible loophole,” the idea must be that because they deny the single assumption of the theorem, maybe that’s a way to avoid the beginning of the universe. But in his paper Vilenkin proceeds to close this loophole by showing that these models cannot be past-eternal for other reasons. . . .

To my delight [Alexander] Vilenkin furnished the unabridged version of his letter to [Lawrence] Krauss. . . .

Any theorem is only as good as its assumptions. The BGV theorem says that if the universe is on average expanding along a given worldline, this worldline cannot be infinite to the past.

A possible loophole is that there might be an epoch of contraction prior to the expansion. Models of this sort have been discussed by Aguirre & Gratton and by Carroll & Chen. They had to assume though that the minimum of entropy was reached at the bounce and offered no mechanism to enforce this condition. It seems to me that it is essentially equivalent to a beginning. . . .

Dr. Craig cited a letter from theoretical physicist and cosmologist Alexander Vilenkin to himself:

The Aguirre-Gratton model can avoid singularities by postulating a small “initial” closed universe and then allowing it to evolve in both directions of time. I put “initial” in quotation marks, because Aguirre and Gratton do not think of it that way. But this model requires that a very special condition is enforced at some moment in the history of the universe. At that moment, the universe should be very small and have very low entropy. Aguirre and Gratton do not specify a physical mechanism that could enforce such a condition. . . .

Whatever it’s worth, my view is that the BGV theorem does not say anything about the existence of God one way or the other. In particular, the beginning of the universe could be a natural event, described by quantum cosmology.

So Vilenkin is not some Christian apologist. He’s an agnostic, and is saying that his own theory doesn’t address the issue (which I think is proper). On the other hand, he doesn’t dogmatically rule out God either. I think this is the better, more open-minded scientific approach. Similarly, Dr. Craig opines:

As for Vilenkin’s theological views, while I would never rejoice that someone is not a Christian, I find his agnosticism to be helpful in that no one can accuse him of having a theological axe to grind in his defense of the universe’s beginning.

How about existing ontology? I believe the model by Aguirre and Gratton contains some speculative physics, and some appeals to existing physics. So it’s moderately successful in terms of (ii), while God – as mentioned before – fails in terms of (ii).

Dr. Craig debated atheist Dr. Sean Carroll (on You Tube), in February 2014. Dr. Carroll in the debate was an advocate of the Aguirre/Gratton thesis. He wrote in a post-debate reflection:

In contrast, I wanted to talk about a model developed by Anthony Aguirre and Stephen Gratton. They have a very simple and physically transparent model that (unlike my theory with Chen) imposes a low-entropy boundary condition at a mid-universe “bounce.” It’s a straightforward example of a perfectly well-defined theory that is clearly eternal, one that doesn’t have a beginning, and does so without invoking any hand-waving about quantum gravity. I challenged Craig to explain why this wasn’t a sensible example of an eternal universe, one that was in perfect accord with the BGV theorem, but he didn’t respond.

Dr. Craig may not have responded, but Dr. Vilenkin (the “V” in “BGV”) did. I showed above how he does not think Aguirre/Gratton is “in perfect accord” with his own. He thinks it does not show an eternal universe (let alone a “clearly eternal” one), but rather, one with essentially a “beginning.” See also a related video by Dr. Vilenkin, who stated in 2012, “All the evidence we have says that the universe had a beginning.”

Dr. Craig, with Paul Copan, offered further fundamental critiques of Aguirre/Gratton, in the book, The Kalam Cosmological Argument, Volume 2: Scientific Evidence for the Beginning of the Universe (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2017, p. 133):

A matter of some importance is that there is no communication; no causality by definition from one region to the other. Thus one can say that there is no eternal past that evolved into our present. . . . What one really has in this model are two separate universes that trace their origins to a past boundary (the very singularity that Borde, Guth, and Vilenkin have demonstrated). . . . if they are right, then a beginning of time has been demonstrated. Rather than a past eternal universe, one has a past finite multiverse.

3c) As a more general view, you appeal to at least 25 theistic arguments of proofs. I assume you consider these to be 25 strong theistic arguments, as I suspect there are far more actual arguments. I’d say that both (3a) and (3b) are instances of such theistic arguments, though not phrased particularly precisely.

I said nothing about relative strength. I would consider some fairly strong (e.g., cosmological, teleological) and some pretty weak (e.g., ontological, argument from beauty). I don’t consider any of them strictly a proof. Five days ago, I summarized my precise view of theistic proofs as follows:

My view remains what it has been for many years: nothing strictly / absolutely “proves” God’s existence. But . . .

I think His existence is exponentially more probable and plausible than atheism, based on the cumulative effect of a multitude of good and different types of (rational) theistic arguments, and the utter implausibility, incoherence, irrationality, and unacceptable level of blind faith of alternatives.

As a counter, one should note that there are many arguments against various forms of theism. A handful, primarily aimed at looking for contradictions or tensions in the concept of God, can be found in this compilation.

Of course there are. The question is (just as with our proofs): how good and convincing and reasonable are they?

Others can be found, for instance, at the Secular Outpost here on Patheos.

Since we’re trading lists, here are some of mine:

Cosmological Argument for God (Resources)

Ontological Argument for God (Resources)

Teleological (Design) Argument for God (Resources)

15 Theistic Arguments (Copious Resources)

Atheism & Atheology (Copious Resources)

God: Historical Arguments (Copious Resources)

While I cannot claim to be familiar with all theistic arguments, my impression is that they can be put in a rough shape along the following lines:

P1: Phenomena A exists (e.g. the universe’s alleged beginning or ontologically real moral values)
P2: Phenomena B is more probable on theism than on atheism
C: Theism is more probable than atheism

In other words, the arguments appeal to some observed phenomena (concrete or abstract), and argue that this is more easily explained in terms of theism. (There are exceptions, obviously.) Without going into detail, the ones that I have encountered appear to me to fail to establish their conclusion with a high degree of certainty. As you don’t refer to any particular arguments, I shall respond with some general observations.

No particular beef, except to say that obviously I think they are stronger arguments than you do.

3c-1) I am deeply skeptical to the proposition that a person can coherently defend all such ‘strong’ arguments, as they rely on a variety of underlying premises and conceptions, all of which might not be compatible. My impression is also that most Christian philosophers criticise several arguments. (To name a couple of examples off the top of my head, I believe Swinburne has criticized EAAN, and that van Inwagen has criticized the argument from contingency. Though I might be mistaken about these specific examples.)

That’s true. They are of variable strength.

3c-2) I believe that Paul Draper has made the point that while some phenomena might support theism (e.g. the existence of minds), details of this fact (e.g. that minds seem to be dependent upon the physical) often provides evidence against theism.

Dependence on the physical (in Plantinga’s argument from other minds) is, I believe, irrelevant, because he’s looking at our “basic” belief that other minds exist, before we get to the specifics of the other minds or the mind-body question.

3c-3) When the arguments gets turned around a bit, there is usually a sense in which God in some way is supposed to be an explanation for some phenomena. But as we have seen, God tends to be a bad explanation in terms of (i) and (ii). One can improve upon the sense in which God fulfills (i), but only by adding further auxiliary propositions to the God hypothesis. This has the consequence of decreasing the modesty of God as an explanation, and thus increasing the burden of evidence on the theist.

Meanwhile, you have given me zero compelling scientific evidence for a purely materialistic explanation of the origin of the universe or for life. That is not any kind of appearance of strength for your position.

I believe that this provides a fairly thorough account of why appeals to specific phenomena in our universe is hard to credit to theism, but rather plays nicely along with naturalism.

As I said, it does for current processes (which we believe God set in motion and sustains in some sense). When we get to origins, it is exponentially more difficult to explain by materialism / naturalism alone.

Some final thoughts

Let me close by making some final remarks to a somewhat long comment. I find it vital to specify the scope of one’s explanations when comparing two explanatory models. In our case, we compare theism to naturalism. If we try to answer how life originated from non-life, we need to compare the respective explanations. I find that when one is careful with comparing like explanations with like, theism comes up short compared to naturalism.

Since you have given me no explanation, I fail to see how yours is better than ours! Our explanation is essentially the cosmological argument. You don’t like it, but I think most people would agree that at least a serious attempt at explanation, made by many great philosophers through the centuries, is superior to no explanation at all.

While there are some instances of what we observe that fit better with theism than with naturalism, on the whole, naturalism as the upper hand.

A takeaway is, I think, that appealing to questions such as the ones you raise does not, as I see it, provide challenges to naturalism that is not also shared by theism. I have tried to stay reasonably on point, and only include the digressions that I find pertinent.

Thank you for what I thought was an enjoyable and constructive exchange.

***

Photo credit: photograph of physicist Alexander Vilenkin from a You Tube video [You Tube / standard You Tube license]

***

The Problem of Evil: Dialogue with an Atheist

Last updated on: June 12, 2018 at 2:37 pm By Dave Armstrong

This occurred in a thread at the Debunking Christianity website. I have expanded it slightly here and there with some additional clarifying sentences, and corrected numerous typos. My opponent (who goes by “drunken tune”) is responding to replies that I posted on my website and in the same forum. His words will be in blue. His older cited words will be in purple, and my older words in green.

* * * * *

Thanks for joining the conversation. If only you had something to add to it.

That’s interesting. So you want to spend a considerable amount of time (judging from the length of your reply) dealing with someone who in fact has “nothing” to add to the conversation (and commence with an insult). Why in the world should anyone spend time engaging in philosophical discussion with “nothing”? Is not your time more valuable to you than that?

On the other hand, though I may strongly disagree with someone, and even think they are irrational, I see no need to say that they add nothing to a discussion, as if they are not even thoughtful and reflective, whether or not illogically so. That’s how I approach Christian-atheist discussion (obviously unlike yourself). You poison the well from the outset in two serious ways (see my next comment).

Here’s some short answers that most Christians will have trouble with . . . but they do with Christianity.

According to you . . .

One of the greatest issues that Christian apologetics attempts to address is the problem of evil. So, according to leading Christian apologists, it is a very big problem. There are hundreds of books from atheist and Christian alike trying to grapple with the problem. Many Christians have lost their faith because they saw the problem of evil as a nail in the coffin of insane religious belief. It’s fine if you put your blinders on. I don’t mind. Just don’t dismiss me because you think it’s a non-issue.

LOL You prove here, two things:

1) You fail to read comments in context (at least in this instance).

2) You failed to read my recent comments on this very thread, above, which contradict your ridiculous claim, or else read them and have forgotten in a day or two, or didn’t comprehend what I wrote.

Let’s start with #1: first. Let me give the reader your entire comment, without the middle section deleted:

“Here’s some short answers that most Christians will have trouble with. Us atheists need not answer them because they do not contradict with [sic] atheism, but they do with Christianity.”

And so I replied:

“According to you.”

So what is it that I am denying? Quite obviously, I denied that the various dilemmas you propose along the lines of the problem of evil, contradict Christianity. That is how the logic and grammar of your statement (despite its technically incorrect grammar: the proper phrase is “conflict with”, not “contradict with”) and my reply inexorably function.

So I have denied that the problem of evil contradicts Christianity. That is an entirely different proposition from maintaining (as you vainly imagine I did) that I supposedly “think it’s a non-issue.” That’s simply not true (the very opposite of the truth). How many times must I deny this on this blog? I’ve already done it three times now. First I wrote on 6 October 2006, on this blog, replying to John Loftus:

“I think I glanced at your deconversion. Wasn’t the problem of evil key? I consider that the most serious objection to Christianity (though, not, of course, fatal at all, as you’d expect). So while I could still quibble with that, it would be in an entirely different league from the sort of shallow stuff that usually constitutes reasons for deconversions.

“You know how that goes: there are reasons that one disagrees with, while considering them highly respectable and serious and worthy of attention, and others which are downright frivolous and trivial or plainly fallacious.”

Despite that, John cited back to me (on 9 October 2006, in this very same thread; just scroll up) Christian philosopher James F. Sennett:

By far the most important objection to the faith is the so-called problem of evil – the alleged incompatibility between the existence or extent of evil in the world and the existence of God. I tell my philosophy of religion students that, if they are Christians and the problem of evil does not keep them up at night, then they don’t understand it.

I replied: “I agree completely.”

What parts of the words “agree” or “completely” (especially when conjoined) do you not understand? And then I reiterated it in another comment on 9 October 2006; also in this same thread (somewhat disdainfully and sarcastically):

“So being a Christian apologist and having regarded the problem as a very serious and worthy objection for 25 years isn’t sufficient to have any inkling of the depth of the problem.”

So can we put this idiotic portrayal of what I supposedly deny or don’t have a clue about, to rest yet? First John wanted to make out that I was so ignorant that no sensible dialogue was even possible (he has since softened some, but not sufficiently). Then you come along with more sanctimonious, equally irrelevant lectures and say that I don’t think the problem of evil is a problem at all. It’s getting downright goofy in here. One truly wonders if you guys understand the English language or if you think I am simply lying through my teeth when I give you my report of my own long-held opinion.

I just want to have a good dialogue, but it is wrecked by this kind of nonsense and gross misrepresentation of opposing views.

“When earthquakes occur, or children are hacked to pieces, where is your god?”

Being hacked to pieces and slowly murdered on the cross.

What a worthless statement.

Quite the contrary; from the Christian perspective, it has all the worth and relevance to this discussion, in the world. You are critiquing the Christian view, and its supposed internal inconsistencies, so I responded (surprise!) from a Christian perspective. What you think of the cross is perfectly irrelevant to whether my reply is sensible from within my own paradigm that you are critiquing.

Be glib all you want, but some of us are interested in debate – not offhand comments.

It’s not “offhand” in any sense of the word. If you imply that the Christian God cares little about the suffering of His creatures, we reply that He not only does care, but that He is willing to suffer horribly Himself. That is tremendously significant. If you care so much about debate, then why have you begun with three straight insults: all illogical and misguided?

The question at hand is whether God must stop all evil or else cease to exist, or be not-omnipotent, or not all-loving. I deny the atheist negative conclusions about God. But to do so does not imply in the least that a Christian doesn’t struggle with particular acts of evil or minimize them. It just doesn’t add up to a rejection of God and Christianity.

Your god has all the power and incentive to stop earthquakes, but he does not. Either there is an entirely natural explanation of it, or there is some other kind. The natural one is coherent, while the super-duper-natural one is not.

I have given a reply as to natural evil in my thus-far longest paper on the subject (and summarized in some depth in my last installment). I argued precisely from the natural world and what it should plausibly be expected to be like, even if God created and oversees it.

Is it a sign of divine displeasure? What god sanctions an earthquake?

One need not make that equation at all. It doesn’t follow. If God created the natural world and set these processes in motion, which include earthquakes, etc., it doesn’t follow that He approves of every individual instance of suffering as a result of the nature of this natural world, nor that He is obliged to intervene with a miracle in every such case.

The natural world is what it is. Unless the miraculous becomes the status quo at all times (which I think is implausible, and so does the atheist, when not arguing about this topic) with endless miracles, the natural world will entail suffering.

It doesn’t necessarily follow that He should prevent all suffering.

Is he all-good, or not?

He is.

If he’s all-good, he should intervene in every instance.

That doesn’t follow. Nor can it even follow as a logical necessity, given free will, nor does omnipotence itself even necessarily allow God to do so, as Alvin Plantinga decisively proved in his famous Free Will Defense. Philosophers generally no longer claim that the argument either 1) disproves God’s existence or 2) establishes a formal contradiction between the propositions:

A) God is all-good.
B) God is all-powerful.
C) Evil exists.

All you can do, then, logically, in light of this current consensus in philosophy of religion, is to argue that it is improbable or implausible that God would do thus-and-so. But that is a far, far different ballgame. That is weighed down by a host of presuppositions which are all themselves open to serious question and doubt. My primary concern as an apologist (as was Plantinga’s as a theistic philosopher) is to show that the problem of evil does not make Christian belief inexorably self-contradictory or irrational, or (in your charitable, charming terms) “insane.”

Plantinga has already achieved that goal within the realm of the philosophical world, as is generally acknowledged, even by atheists. So I don’t have to (even if I could; of course I would be unable as a non-philosopher). But old atheist habits die hard, don’t they? My concern is not with atheist emotionalism and disdain of God and Christianity, but with logic and rationality. On that score, you guys failed in your attempt to “prove” that God (or an all- good and/or all-powerful God) doesn’t exist because of the problem of evil.

He has the power and will to do so. If he isn’t all-good, then he is nothing more than a brute.

That doesn’t follow, based on the reasoning of Plantinga’s now classic free will defense.

The atheist casually assumes that God should intervene in every tragic situation and use the miraculous to do so, without stopping to consider what this would entail: what sort of weird world (in terms of the natural order) that would require.

You attack the atheist without addressing the issue.

No; I disagree with the atheist by bringing to bear the deeper, more involved aspects of the issue that they fail to address. I always do that. I’m a Socratic (and Socrates was no Christian, last time I checked). I will always question and examine the premises of my opponent and challenge them to consider the deeper implications of their own argumentation.

You can misrepresent my method if you wish, but you’ll just end up looking foolish. Be my guest. I’ve been through this routine with atheists a dozen times: someone on a list or board assumes I am an ignoramus, until a few exchanges, whereupon he changes his tune to avoid further embarrassment. In several cases in past exchanges with atheists, I eventually gained the respect of atheists who started out exactly as you are doing: judgmentally trying to make out that I am a dope with the IQ of a pencil eraser. Fair-minded people can see through that.

Just because you cannot comprehend it, doesn’t mean that your god couldn’t do it.

Even an omnipotent God is subject to limitations insofar as He allows His creatures to truly be free, and therefore potentially counter His will, up to and including evil.

Isn’t that what Christians claim all the time? He can do whatever he want, and “weird world” or not, it makes no difference to him.

Omnipotence means being able to do whatever is logically possible; not anything whatsoever. This is commonly understood by philosophers, and not arguable. God cannot, e.g., make a square circle, or make 2 + 2 = 5, or make Himself not exist, or make you exist and not exist at the same time, or make two brothers both be an only child. Likewise, He cannot create a world where, necessarily, free will precludes evil. And that is true, even given His omnipotence.

I’m agreeing with the theist, then following to the natural conclusion. You just might not like it. He could give us all wings tomorrow, or make the moon talk, or anything else. He can do it, can’t he?

He can do what is logically possible. The moon could conceivably “talk,” I suppose, but not by the laws of nature as we currently understand them. That’s as implausible as (to use a Plantinga example) Henry Kissinger swimming the Atlantic. Is God not omnipotent because Kissinger cannot do that? No; that’s just a limitation of human bodies that follows from physiology.

You haven’t adequately thought through what either free will or omnipotence entail. I don’t say this to insult you (as you repeatedly do to me) but simply as my reply. I appeal to Plantinga, and his much more involved argument.

I plan to present an abridged version of it later today or tomorrow, which I urge anyone to read, due to its high importance in the world of philosophy, regarding this topic. I don’t require you to read a dozen people (as John thinks I must do to intelligently discuss this); I simply recommend reading an abridged version of one highly-significant argument, which I am willing to spend many hours typing up, for your convenience.

I made the point that atheists are extremely reluctant to allow any divine intervention in matters of nature and will despise even theistic evolutionary attempts to do so in any way, shape, or form, yet if we switch over to this discussion on evil, all of a sudden, if God doesn’t do thousands of miracles per second, then He is either bad or not there at all.

Nice blanket label on us atheists.

Is it? I’ve yet to meet an atheist who will argue that it is plausible or logical in the realm of the natural world, for God to constantly, continually intervene with miracles and the supernatural. You disagree? Okay; please direct me to even one such atheist, let alone many, as you make out. If you can’t produce even one, then you have no basis for accusing me of improperly labeling or generalizing in this respect.

Attack the idea, not the person.

That’s precisely what I was doing. The reasoning is as follows:

1. Atheists don’t reason like this (i.e., that God should continually intervene in or contravene natural law) at all, when it comes to the natural world, cosmology, evolutionary discussions, etc.

2. But they want to switch their position and demand that God should do all that (and often, constantly, 1000 times a second), when it comes to discussion of the problem of evil.

Ergo, which is it? Is it plausible to assert a dichotomous hypothetical theistic universe where God can’t or shouldn’t intervene at all in matters of creation or DNA or evolution or intelligent design, whereas He should intervene all the time to prevent every evil imaginable?

I say it is not, and I contend that this is an internal contradiction in the atheist approach to God, when arguing that He doesn’t exist. I doubt that this is an original idea of mine, but I did come up with it without reading it in any philosopher, that I recall. I’d be interested to learn if someone else has made a similar argument.

In any event, it is not attacking people at all. Generalizations based on profoundly repetitive firsthand experience are not “personal attacks” by any stretch of the imagination.

It’s the sin that’s bad, not the sinner. Isn’t that what you’re supposed to say?

Yes it is. I’m the last person to say that atheists are necessarily “bad” people. I’m not a Calvinist (who tend to say that); I’m a Catholic. I’ve written papers (on my website right now) expressly denying that atheists must be bad people just because they are atheists. So you can stop that approach right now. It’ll get nowhere with me. I oppose atheist arguments, not the persons as persons, supposedly wicked and evil, and so forth. I can’t read anyone’s heart or know their motivations. I ain’t God.

I want your god to reveal himself.

Great; that’s a good start.

Let’s hold a thought experiment: your god has said in the NT that he will present evidence to all that asks for it. I do not believe in god, so I ask that in a show of power, your god present himself.

The same God also revealed that He often refuses to give a sign if the purpose is as some sort of “test.” He wants you to have faith in Him without some absolute proof, just as you have “faith” (i.e., assent without absolute proof) in any number of things that you don’t fully understand. So, e.g., Jesus appeared to “Doubting Thomas” after His resurrection, to “prove Himself.” Yet at the same time, He said, “Blessed are those who have not seen, yet believe” (John 20:29). There is more than enough evidence out there to support belief as rational and worthy of allegiance. But God will not be tested in the way that you seem to demand. This is a common biblical motif.

So help me, may I be stricken down by a thunderbolt.

If that’s what it takes, then so be it (provided you survive the experience). God could possibly do that, but He probably won’t, because He wants you to exercise faith without the necessity of oceans parting and people being raised from the dead. We know that some people won’t even be convinced by those miracles, anyway. Unbelief is often stronger than the most obvious miracle.

If we allow your god to tamper with our genes, thus agreeing with ID,

See, this illustrates the internal contradiction in your outlook. Why do you call it “tamper[ing]”, if indeed God does do this (note: I am not asserting that He does or not)? You assume from the outset that He shouldn’t do so; that it is inherently improper. Yet out of the other side of your mouth, when you argue the problem of evil, you want God to change His generally “non-interventionist method” and appear in a great and mighty miracle just so little old you can now believe in Him. Why the difference? Why do you demand the supernatural over here (PoE) and deny it with great vehemence over there (ID, etc.)?

we then must go once again to the problem of evil – namely harmful mutations he has all the power to prevent.

I see; so in He intervenes positively in creative acts or supervision, He is “tampering,” but if He doesn’t prevent a mutation, this proves His character as immediately suspect and not good. The universe as I construe it is far more plausible, I think: God usually doesn’t directly intervene. He created the universe and the presence of free will in sentient creatures, within it. Sometimes He intervenes with the miraculous, but this is a rare exception to the rule. This applies both to the “spiritual” realm (people having a religious conversion, remarkable answered prayer such as a healing, etc.), and to the natural world. But your (and the general atheist) position involves an irrational dichotomy that I find utterly implausible.

If he is messing around with our genes,

See the improper value judgment again?: “messing around”? Why is that such a bad thing, if God chose to do that? If indeed He is the Creator, why is it so implausible that He could supervise His creation in some fashion? I don’t have this all worked out; my own views on creation are in flux and I am actually an agnostic as to actual process. But every Christian believes that God is creator and that He is inexorably “in” all creation in some sense, whether He chose to use evolution as His usual method or direct creation, in some instances. What all Christians deny is that God should be utterly separated from the natural world. We deny scientific materialism. Methodological naturalism is fine in the laboratory and at the theoretical level, but not philosophically.

he must be directly responsible for, or at least doesn’t mind, every single child born with a genetic disorder.

The natural world is as it is. If we didn’t have order in it, including calamities, then it would be a chaotic world that would make no sense, and arguably (per, e.g., C. S. Lewis, in his classic work, The Problem of Pain), even free will would be impossible. We would all be completely determined in our actions. Evil might be precluded in such a world, but good also would be, and that is the central issue: What is God willing to allow in order to bring about the possibility of good and love and virtue and the freedom that is necessary for all to exist? What is it that even He cannot prevent, in a universe with true freedom of action?

In fact, I argue consistently for your god to present himself. No god has taken me up on the challenge yet. Perhaps if you pray hard enough, he might pop in for a chat.

Chances are, He won’t, because of your manifest attitude of extreme skepticism, and borderline mockery. That is not how God, according to the Bible and Christian experience and thought, operates. There are always exceptions, but I wouldn’t expect that to occur at all.

I make the argument (too involved to briefly summarize) that there is, therefore, some necessity for the world being the way it is, and that God is bound to the laws of logic, insofar as natural disaster and natural evil occurs.

How is preventing a natural disaster breaking a law of logic?

It doesn’t necessarily break any law of logic. God could intervene whenever He chose to do so. We believe He has in fact on occasion done so. What I am denying is the claim that He must do so, and in virtually all such scenarios, or else the conclusion musty be (so we are told) that He is bad or weak or not there. You simply have not proven that these things hold true. I have tried to make an argument that there is some (to us, mysterious) sense of the natural world having to be the way it is, and thus entailing suffering, by its very nature. God can then make great good come from suffering, in many different ways.

Your god can do whatever he wants, right?

Whatever is logically possible, as far as that goes. That doesn’t mean He has to do whatever is possible, as if He were determined in His actions, also. Nor does it mean that He is bound to our paltry human considerations of what He must do or not do. Clearly, an omniscient, eternal Being is so vastly different from what we are that it is pretty foolish for us to try to second-guess what this Being should or shouldn’t do. Christians believe on many grounds that He is a benevolent Being. The problem of evil, difficult though it is, doesn’t cause us to doubt that, because we have many other evidences, suggesting He is good.

The presence of free will makes it possible that it will be abused, yes. We believe that God thought it better to allow free will and the evil that can result, rather than make robots who can do no other than what they do. God made it possible for you to be so free that He even allows you to believe foolish things like denying that He exists. That’s extremely tolerant, isn’t it? It would be like me saying, “hey, you can believe whatever you want, even that I don’t exist.”

And for questioning something, I am deserving of hellfire.

Who said that? No intelligent Christian that I know of. You’ll be judged based on what you know, not what you don’t know. If you know there is a God and reject Him, you will end up in hell by default, as your own choice. If you truly don’t know that He exists, and God decides that the conditions and environments that you moved in were sufficiently problematic, so that you had warrant for your disbelief from your own limited perspective, then there is hope that you can be saved trough ignorance and due to mitigating circumstances. That is why it is heartening to me to see a great deal of ignorance and irrationality in atheist circles. That gives me hope that many of you will be saved.

I don’t see sheer rebellion as much as profound disinformation and lack of knowledge and wisdom. And I see the attitudes that I run across myself, as a Christian apologist. If an atheist approaches an apologist, who represents the Christian faith, in an arrogant or mocking manner, chances are, that is how he approaches God, or the philosophical questions surrounding God, too. He is not seriously considering the Christian argument. But if that is not the case, I would argue (abstractly, from a purely philosophical perspective, momentarily putting myself in your shoes), that he shouldn’t bother at all with Christians or God, and simply go about his life and his business, doing his thing, whatever it is, free and full of bliss.

Yet you guys are here arguing with Christians all the time. If you didn’t have the slightest suspicion that we may be right and you wrong, then rationally-speaking, you shouldn’t bother with us at all. This blog shouldn’t exist. But it does. And people like you spend time answering ignoramuses like me. Why? There is something there; some remote glimpse or flicker of a possible world where God exists, with all that flows from that.

Pretty tolerant, ain’t it?

I have shown that your caricature of how someone may wind up in hell does not accurately portray either God as we know Him or the Christian position.

Why would an all-good god want me to burn in hell?

He doesn’t. I deny your premise.

He should know exactly what would turn me to theism, or the clutches of Christianity.

He does. How do you know that it won’t take many many years? God knows everything. He knows what would convert you, and you will have an adequate chance to believe or reject Him. It may take some tragedy 30 years from now that will break through your non-belief. There are millions of possibilities. But it is irrational to require Him to appear RIGHT NOW so that you can believe in Him. That’s an utterly simplistic view of the universe, not a thoughtful, reflective, adult approach to the possibility of theism and/or Christianity.

All I ask for is the evidence to save my soul. You should be jumping at this opportunity.

I am. I’m here arguing. Whether I do so to your satisfaction is not my concern (just as whether God does what He does to your satisfaction is any of His concern: how could He possibly please five billion people and however many millions of atheists there are, with all your irrational demands?). You can decide to continue with me if you see some spark of truth or possible, potential truth in what I say, or not. But in any event, I am not the one who would convert you; that is God’s job, and involves your free will. I can’t change that; only He can and you can, in the end. I’m just here making my arguments, and I have tons of material on my blog and website, if you or anyone else is interested.

[C.S. Lewis] “All matter in the neighbourhood of a wicked man would be liable to undergo unpredictable alterations. That God can and does, on occasions, modify the behaviour of matter and produce what we call miracles, is part of the Christian faith; but the very conception of a common, and therefore, stable, world, demands that these occasions should be extremely rare . . .”

Why should they be rare?

Why should God’s intervention in creation itself be rare or nonexistent? Why is this opposed at every turn in discussions of evolution or ID? Why is it disallowed? Clearly, because some theory or grand outlook has precluded it. That’s exactly what we are asserting here: we claim that it is sensible for God to allow the natural world to be what it is, without intervening at every turn.

The existence of a god would neither dictate that miracles would occur quite frequently or once a blue moon.

That’s right. But you in effect irrationally demand both scenarios simultaneously; that’s what I am driving at. It’s one way to turn the tables on the problem of evil argument. “The problem of good” is another. I’ve done both.

He obviously thought differently, and He (being omniscient) knows better than we do, why the world is the way it is. This was essentially the perspective of the Book of Job. It makes a lot of sense, if one presupposes for the sake of argument, the theistic God. If He does exist and is all-knowing, then who are we to try to second-guess Him, no matter how perplexing we may think the world is?

Oh, so I shouldn’t ask questions. Ok.

To say that we shouldn’t second-guess God is quite different from saying we shouldn’t question or have any doubts and questions at all. This is what Job is driving at. It is the tomfoolery of a creature who knows that God is Who He is, questioning all these things, from a position of vast, incomprehensible intellectual inferiority. It’s like a two-year-old questioning Einstein.

Now, again, this doesn’t preclude any agony or thought or befuddlement on our part. It presupposes it and goes on to a deeper level. The point of Job was not that Job shouldn’t suffer and wonder what the hell was going on. Quite the opposite: God assumed that as perfectly natural, but objected to Job using his suffering (however profound, and it was) to cause him to “curse God and die” (as his wife and friends: the proverbial “Job’s comforters” – suggested).

In other words, the problem of evil is not great enough to warrant disbelieving in God, or even believing that He doesn’t have some greater purpose in mind, that we simply can’t comprehend. That is the specific meaning behind my comment about “second-guessing.” The Book of Job deals with this question in a dramatic, narrative, pre-philosophical and pre-scientific fashion. Alvin Plantinga disposed of it with brilliant philosophical method. Two ways to skin a cat . . .

Wait a minute! I couldn’t help but wonder why your god is correct, and the Islamic god is wrong.

That involves a ton of apologetics, and is, of course, far beyond our purview here.

If I was to presume “the theistic god”, I can only conclude that the world is the way it is because a deity said so. Nothing more.

Not if free will is taken into account.

I hope I haven’t fallen out of your favor by thinking. I guess I shouldn’t ask questions.

If you ask them, I’ll answer them to the best of my ability. I won’t mock and belittle you, as you do me. That’s quite Christian: endure mockery and insult and continue to try to act in a considerate, loving fashion by providing some halfway decent answers from a Christian perspective. By God’s grace (it sure ain’t in my own power), may I always do so.

The Bible tells us that anyone we meet is like encountering Jesus Himself (“if you do it [provide charity or aid, etc.] to the least of these, you do it to me”). Mother Teresa had a funny saying (recounted by Malcolm Muggeridge): if someone perturbed and annoyed her, she would call them “Jesus in rather distressing disguise.” That’s how you are! God teaches me patience and longsuffering in dealing with mocking types like you. But you won’t stop me. Do you think you are the first atheist who has dealt with me in this manner? You ain’t the first and you won’t be the last. It has no bearing on how I reply. I’m here to communicate Christian truth, as I understand and believe it in faith, in complete harmony with reason.

He allows the evil to happen for a higher purpose (often so high we cannot comprehend it). He was certainly behind the crucifixion. That had the utmost purpose, even though the thing itself was horrendous evil. God (the Father) took it and made it the means for the salvation of mankind. He used the intended evil for good.

So where’s the free will for the Roman soldiers?

They acted freely in ignorance. How were they to know what they were doing? They were just following orders.

Is your god guiding them along like actors in a play?

He allowed the evil as He often does. In this instance, He brought about a tremendous good as a result of evil intentions (of those responsible for murdering – unjustly executing – Jesus).

He was, after all, “certainly behind the crucifixion.”

In the sense of allowing the evil for His greater purposes, but not direct causation.

You seem to be unable to comprehend how a theistic world could contain suffering or that much suffering could be the result of 1) natural laws of nature . . .

If your god is all-powerful, he could change the laws of nature.

He could. And He could also make them exactly as they are. I don’t see how the laws of nature somehow disprove God’s goodness because people sometimes get harmed by them.

He could make gravity less to stop a fall. He’s performed miracles, stopped the sun in the sky, and raised the dead. He can do all these things, but he can’t stop a rape?

He could do lots of things. But because of free will, lots of bad things become possible.

The child that gets run over by a speeding car had a purpose in being violently crushed to death under the wheel of a hummer? I think not.

In and of itself, it does appear meaningless, senseless, and outrageous, I admit. It certainly is in atheism, because this life is all there is. But when there is an eternal life ahead of us, tragic events like this are not the be-all and end-all.

You have just devalued the child’s life.

I don’t see how. I simply said that there can be a greater meaning in even the most horrible things, and that the child has eternal life. The child’s existence didn’t end then, as in atheism. Imagine the senseless slaughter of abortion from an atheist perspective: now the child is not only deprived of an eternal life (because there is none), but even of this life, which is all he or she had. And this is thought to be perfectly rational, moral behavior.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn is thankful to God for his time spent in the Gulag because it brought him to God. Corrie Ten Boom’s sister (I forget her name) felt the same in the Nazi concentration camps: that they had a purpose (or that God could use these horrors in some fashion), however incomprehensible to us. So did Corrie (that was the subject of a movie, The Hiding Place). They didn’t blame God for that. Why should they? Men did those horrors, not God.

That is horrible to do so.

Yeah, it would be, but I didn’t do it. What is horrible is for you to imply that I did.

Life is meaningless to a Christian.

Is that so? You could have fooled me.

All that matters, as you say, is “an eternal life ahead of us”.

I didn’t say that was all that mattered. I wrote, rather: “when there is an eternal life ahead of us, tragic events like this are not the be-all and end-all.” No Christian can disagree with that. Not even an atheist could disagree. All you have to do is change the initial “when” to “if” and you must agree to this, even as an atheist. It is a point about perspective.

But to make that point has nothing to do with how valuable this life is or isn’t; only to note that the perspective on the evil event shortening that poor child’s life can be seen in a profoundly different light, when one believes that it is not the “end” of the child altogether.

So, nice try to caricature and twist what I said into some idiotic, stereotypical “pie-in-the-sky” scenario. It is not at all, and if you were thinking sensibly in interacting with me and accurately portraying what I argue, you would see that without it having to be pointed out to you.

You have devalued existence.

Right. Of course I did no such thing. But nice try.

Now that is depressing. As you point out, “It certainly is in atheism, because this life is all there is.” Wouldn’t this make life much more important?

In the sense of it being all there is, yes. So, then, why do most atheists think abortion is fine and dandy? You may claim (on illogical, unscientific grounds) that the baby slaughtered is not yet a person or a human being, but you can’t deny that it WILL be, if just given enough time. So you have still deprived it of the only life it would ever have, in your viewpoint. This is as monstrous an evil as I can imagine, and it is undertaken by torture and murder of the most defenseless creature.

We have only one life to live, so we try to help others because it helps, not because it gets you into heaven.

That’s what we do, too, thank you. Because God is good, He will reward us in heaven one day, but our motivation is to love others and show them the way to God so they can get to heaven one day too. It’s illogical, of course, to argue that the Christian can only be motivated by heavenly rewards, simply because we believe in heaven. You have not proven that in the least. You simply assert it, because it is one of those old saws that play real well in atheist circles. But I’m not interested in empty rhetoric; I am interested in reason.

The Christian is selfish and cares only about the imaginary life after while the atheist cares about this life and others.

See my previous comment.

God can even use such horrors to bring about good.

So your god can direct the actions of the parents, but can not prevent the ball from bouncing into the middle of the street? Pretty bizarre.

I appeal back to my argument from the regularity of nature and the implausibility of the opposite state of affairs.

And that can be a witness which can bring about the salvation of many, which would be a wonderful thing brought about by the bad, hence giving it meaning it would not have by itself.

To give the death of a child run over by a car ‘meaning’ is a despicable act.

Not at all. I’m not saying that the thing is good in and of itself, or even meaningful from our human perspective. Heavens no. I’m trying to look at it unemotionally from the standpoint of reason and philosophy (something you seem unable or unwilling to do, due to the highly emotionally-charged nature of the topic, that bothers everyone). To say that God can use some unspeakable horror and bring some good out of it is not to devalue the victim of the horror in the least.

The worst act can be cast aside for a positive meaning.

Who’s casting aside?

You have just made the death of a child worthless.

Not at all. You are the one doing that, because in your world, such a horrific tragedy has no conceivable purpose. There is no eternal life. The child was just deprived of the only life it had. There is no way to balance the scales of unjust happenings and make it better for the child in another world. There is no God to bring anything at all good from it. Those things are what make the act senseless and the child’s life senseless, not Christian belief. You are in the world of nihilism, not I.

These things should make you tremble and be baffled and perplexed and disturbed far more than the problem of evil troubles Christians, because we have faith in a loving, omniscient God and accept that there are lots and lots of things we don’t know, with our severe limitations as finite creatures. You can lie about our perspective on these things if you wish but it won’t solve your existential problem or prevent the despair you ought to be in if you really, truly contemplated the ultimately meaningless world that your position entails.

Is the death of a fetus good because the mother may grow up to witness to others, which can bring about the salvation of many, which would be a wonderful thing brought about the bad, hence giving it meaning it would not have by itself?

The act itself remains evil. Do you support legal abortion? God can use it, as He does any evil. The mother involved (and pro-lifers generally don’t find the mothers responsible, but rather, the doctors, and those who “persuade” her to do this terrible act) may later give testimony that this choice was wrong, and help women to not have an abortion, or talk about the side effects which are ignored, etc. So good could come out of that.

If a child’s death is permissible, so is abortion.

Abortion is the willful taking of an innocent human life. It’s murder. An accident with a car is not that. Apples and oranges.

Any action is permissible.

In atheism consistently thought through, yes.

Bill Donohue said that the tsunami disaster in Southeast Asia was the “poor Asian people[‘s] gift to the world,” so it mustn’t have been that bad.

I’d have to see the context of his remarks. Seeing how you have repeatedly run roughshod over the context of my own remarks, I don’t trust you to accurately report what some opponent of yours said.

Cardinal O’Connor called the Holocaust the Jewish “gift” to the world.

Ditto.

Everything is now a gift from Jesus, and we should be thankful that we got melanoma.

God can use any tragedy and bring good out of it.

[W]e Christians believe there is a purpose and meaning to everything, no matter how incomprehensible to us, and there is another world coming, where all will be made right and just, and suffering will cease.

Is there purpose to abortion?

Not in and of itself. It is a senseless outrage against justice and the very notion of defending the most innocent and helpless among us. That is pagan morality as well as Christian. In fact, when I was in one of my court trials after being arrested for blocking clinic doors, I stated in court that pro-life or opposition to abortion is not specifically Christian; it is based on the pagan Hippocratic Oath from ancient Greece, which also precluded it.

Can there be a silver lining found under each act? Cannot the child that survives the hurricane dedicate her life to her god, therefore giving the hurricane meaning? Cannot the woman that has an abortion dedicate her life to the name of Jesus, thus giving the abortion meaning?

That’s how God can use those things, yes.

Not at all; it is ultimately meaningless atheism which does that. Life has the highest meaning in the Christian worldview, which encompasses suffering and transcends it, even though it is very difficult for us to comprehend.

It must be very difficult for you to understand. You’ve caught your feet on the carpet enough for one night.

It’s difficult for everyone to understand. But being illogical and insulting and mocking, and butchering context and caricaturing one’s opponent and making them out to be imbeciles does not accomplish anything constructive, that I can see.

Don’t forget, you atheists are “witnesses” to the superiority of your own belief-system, just as we Christians are to ours. If someone on the fence sees your constant insults and shoddy argumentation, this does not bode well for the purpose of this blog or your own mission and purpose in discussing these things, whatever it is.

So I wouldn’t be so smug about your freely offered insults. Fair-minded people can see through all that and see that your recourse to it suggests that you lack rational replies or that you may very well be a miserable person (i.e., you are not happy or fulfilled in your atheism), to have to treat others so.

That may or may not be due to atheism, of course, but what you are doing does not exactly make atheism appealing to those on the fence. Who wants to believe something if its adherents are known as mockers and boors in discussion?

But the existence of free will of necessity entails suffering, because free beings really can rebel and cause untold suffering.

That makes no sense whatsoever.

If not to you, I trust it will to others working through the difficulty. That’s the wonder of the Internet. It ain’t just me and you. Others are reading this too.

Wow; you’re getting awfully angry at a nonexistent thing. I don’t spend my time getting into a lather about how unjust the man in the moon made of green cheese is or what a rascally scoundrel Darth Vader or Dracula is. Funny that you would do that with a mere fairy-tale known as “god.”

I guess someone doesn’t get hyperbole.

I don’t get irrationality either, or why someone has a need to misrepresent an opposing argument.

I’m not angry with any god.

Of course not; who would ever get that impression?

I don’t even think they exist. I am angry, however, that millions of people have a disease of the mind that allows them to justify every action with the three magic words: “God says so.” That’s why I’m angry.

Then you are in for a miserable life. First of all, it shouldn’t concern you. Let the ignorant be ignorant and go on with your life. If fantasies make others happy, then all you should think is that this is their way of dealing with the meaningless universe and slogging through somehow. You have your own way (heaven knows what that is).

Secondly, of course this is yet another gross caricature of how Christian theology and philosophy deal with these matters. Why am I not surprised? Of course many individual Christians can be found who will say all sorts of stupid things. But I am interested in the best of Christian (and atheist) thought, not the worst. And you should be too if you truly value good, constructive, challenging, thought-provoking discussion. I absolutely love interacting with thoughtful atheists. It’s one of my very favorite activities in my apologetics.

You want to play baseball? Now you can’t because some kid may let a bat fly after he swings and hit another kid and crush his skull. Okay; better not play then, and God is evil or ain’t there at all because He allows such things. What can God do to make it better? Well, He can make bats mushy and soft. Alright, fine. But how can you hit a ball now? You can’t. So it becomes impossible because to eliminate all suffering, God must make stuff soft so no bad thing can ever happen.

If he can do it, why doesn’t he?

Dealt with above and elsewhere.

He must not be all-good, because an all-powerful, omniscient being that is all-good would want to stop evil, and would be able to do so.

That doesn’t follow, per Plantinga’s dismantling of it. Take it up with him. Then we’ll see who is over his head.

Yet atheists fight tooth and nail against miracles as the most implausible, unprovable thing imaginable. Why, they violate the natural law, and this can never happen! And everyone knows that! But now they must happen all over the place so that God can be a good guy and exist after all?

I want the miracles to start happening left and right! Let the miracles start raining down from heaven like manna. That would be the perfect way the convert every last atheist on this planet – that is, if you can prove that it is your god that’s performing the miracles.

Not at all, because profound disbelief (where it exists) is not affected even by miracles. There have been plenty of documented miracles, and you guys deny every one of them. So what makes you think massive miracles will cause you to act any differently?

You know down deep that there is a God whether you see a single miracle, because He has put this knowledge within you and it is discerned just by being human. You need no miracle to ascertain that. But you can be led astray by all sorts of bad reasoning.

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(originally 10-11-06)

Photo credit: Azlan DuPree (9-18-10), entitled, “suffering is permanent – obscure and dark” [Flickr / CC BY 2.0 license]

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“Debunking Christianity”: Never-Ending Insults of Christianity

Last updated on: June 6, 2018 at 12:24 pm By Dave Armstrong

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Debunking Christianity is the website of John W. Loftus: former Christian and now atheist polemicist and author. I recently had dealings with it when I did a critique of one of Loftus’ papers: The Census, Jesus’ Birth in Bethlehem, & History: Reply to Atheist John W. Loftus’ Irrational Criticisms of the Biblical Accounts.

When I made some comments in the same combox where I announced the paper, all of a sudden we saw a good old-fashioned Internet “feeding frenzy,” with five safely anonymous atheists (not a single one of them gives their full name), joining in with wholesale mockery and insults and slanderous garbage, about Christians and about myself.

As always, I like to illustrate the bankruptcy of all such worthless, non-rational “discussions” online (which happen everywhere: commonly in Christian venues as well) by simply exposing them. They are their own refutations. I sure hope this isn’t representative of atheism as a whole (I know many atheists personally who are very different), but I know this sort of nonsense is very common at atheist sites online. I’m sure it turns more people off to atheism than a hundred Christian apologetic arguments could or would. Atheists like this are their own worst enemies.

I won’t cite absolutely everything (if you read the whole thread, be aware that it contains vulgarities and blasphemies), but only remarks that are of an absurdly sweeping, prejudicial nature: against Christianity or yours truly (the latter, indented). Color coding is as follows:

Me = black
Gandolf = blue
articulett = green
brdeadite99 = purple
renoliz = orange
Randy = brown

John Loftus = red

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I have made a lengthy reply to the post “Was Jesus Born in Bethlehem?” on my blog, entitled,“Census & Jesus’ Birth in Bethlehem: Atheist John W. Loftus’ Irrational & Uninformed Criticisms of the Biblical Accounts.” It will also be cross-posted on my Facebook Page (over 1200 followers, so lots of potential readers there) and Twitter page.

Atheists and agnostics are welcome on my pages and are treated politely and courteously (while their arguments are vehemently opposed). (2-3-11)

I would have referred him to what modern day archaeologists are saying about there being no Nazareth at the time of alleged Jesus but generally people who are this willing to ignore the obvious contradictions and complete lack of historicity in the birth narratives are too far gone to have a discussion with. He will be vehemently opposing any argument based on facts . . . Let us not allow facts to get in the way of our beliefs, for crying out loud.

There is one particularly foul git there known as “Doctor Doom”, . . . who dismisses links from atheist sites out of hand, saying that they’re “written by atheists with agendas, so you can’t trust anything they say”. Forget facts, they can’t even face simple reality.

. . . the obligatory mocking already starting to take place. :-) (2-3-11)

I just selected the latest post, so you would see it and not overlook it. It is humorously appropriate in this combox, though, since now my reasoning is being ridiculed and that was the topic of the post! LOL

It continues to be quite fashionable in atheist circles, apparently, to mock Christians and Christianity and yuck it up, sans rational discussion of a rational rebuttal of pet atheist theories. I’ve always marveled at it, but I don’t think these tactics are gonna go away anytime soon. Mockery and irrationalism have long since replaced rational, constructive discussion, as the normative way to communicate and “refute” positions that are disagreed with, these days.

It’s the same in politics, too, as we have observed in the recent spate of attacks on political conservatives as the alleged cause of the nutcase in Arizona.

Your books certainly do not consist solely of mocking and ridicule. There must be rational argument in them, I’m sure. I’m suggesting that you might want to encourage rational, mutually respectful discussion on your blog, too. You guys might actually like it: you never know! (2-5-11)

Given the negative agenda of this site (like so many atheist ones), you guys oughtta have a “dislike” button, so you can express your personal contempt for Christians! :-)

Let it be known that I don’t return this contempt for atheists. Many Christians do, which is a sad thing (and they are wrong and inconsistent to do it), but I do not. That’s why I try to have rational discussions with atheists. The common reluctance to do so doesn’t come from my end.

We can continue to mock and ridicule (and in some cases, “hate”) each other, or we can talk and reason like intelligent adults. (2-5-11)

Well, seeing as how I’ve spent months debating dozens and dozens of Christians(maybe over a hundred of them at this point) and still have yet to find any intelligent arguments from even one of them, my ” personal contempt”, as you call it, is well warranted. I don’t even know why I bother; because in the end, no matter how intelligent you thought a Christian was, it all boils down to feelings, emotions, dogma, and their brainwashed inability to let go of cherished beliefs.

If that is your opinion, then why not simply ignore Christians? This is what is perplexing about atheist behavior. Apart from the very common spectacle and folly of being angry at a God that doesn’t exist, they are obsessed with Christians whom they think are dumber than a doornail, and devoid (as you say) of even one intelligent argument.

Why bother? If I had such a view, I wouldn’t waste time interacting with Christians, and I wouldn’t even use up any energy mocking them. Speaking for myself, I don’t waste time debating flat earthers or Neo-Nazis. I don’t make fun of them, either. I simply ignore them as irrelevant and beyond hope (for intelligent discussion).

But you guys don’t and can’t seem to do that. This very site illustrates the problem: atheism seems to have to be self-defined by opposition to something else.You can’t just live your life and live and let live. You have to mock and express contempt for those who disagree with you.

I have two books that could be said to be arguments against atheism. I also have 21 that aren’t, because I don’t define or confine myself in terms of beliefs that I oppose. But with John Loftus, it is different. Look at his books: it’s all one droning theme: how Christianity is false, why he left it, etc. Has he nothing positive and pro-active to offer?

It’s a very curious phenomenon, but there are several possible explanations, I suppose. (2-5-11)

we are somewhat miffed at the superior and arrogant attitudes that his followers adopt and have held for well over two thousand years. As for expressing mock and contempt, if our opponents could actually dredge up ONE good reason to believe in talking animals, mythical creatures, and demi-god rabbi/carpenters(without telling us that we were never True Christians(TM) . . . we might have some respect for them. . . . At least atheists don’t churn out cheap, slanderous propaganda about other people’s personal beliefs, . . . John Loftus wants people to see Christianity for the sham it is, no different from an ex-cultist victim who warns people about the Church of The Seventh Stone, or whatnot.

Thanks for the quintessential display of irrational atheist anger. Pathetic . . . (2-5-11)

And thank you for the quintessential display of the arrogant, condescending attitude I was talking about. How precious… :)

And you wonder why atheists come to the conclusion that some theists are “dumber than a doornail”.

I think faith addles the brain so that the believer is unable to see themselves the way an outsider perceives them due to the Dunning-Kruger effect (the ignorant are too ignorant to know they are the ignorant people). The believer needs to believe that their magical beliefs make them more moral so they are everlastingly trying to prove that to themselves. Unfortunately they often lose their sense of humor in the process. Fortunately, I think lurkers who read these posts are often moved towards reason. No one wants to seem like the theist blowhard who doesn’t know he’s a blowhard. Mockery is probably the best tool we have against such primitive thinking. . . . former believers often find comfort and healing in laughing at their former superstitions and those that try to manipulate others with them. . . . Life is jollier when you can find glee in their buffoonery.

(I suspect no-one but David Armstrong takes David Armstrong seriously.) I think it’s funny that DA came to a skeptics site to get attention and then tells others to ignore him as though responses to him are “persecution”! I don’t know any skeptics that go to “woo” sites or churches goofing on believers for their silly beliefs, do you?

I think it’s just very hard for the theist to accept that the atheist finds their magical beliefs as silly (and potentially dangerous) as all the magical beliefs the theists rejects. (And for the same reasons!)

You suggest atheists are angry at God , this is manipulative and very misleading and deceitful propaganda. Most Atheists are not angry at God. Yet here you are pushing this deceitful manipulative propaganda that other theist sheep around you will end up having faith in. You also make the decietful [sic] manipulative accusation that atheists are simply “obesessed” [sic] with Christians. . . These false manipulative accusations turn theist sheep against atheists, plus have the effect of blinding theist sheep . . . And yet here you are Dave today, willingly spreading the manipulative deceitful propaganda/ministry. . . Does it make you feel morally superior? with your supposed God given “objective moral” values and Church hours spent warming pews, to be here today spreading blatant lies about Atheists. . . And when it upsets people like Brdeadite a bit .Dave Armstrong suddenly crys [sic] wolf and trys [sic] to suggest…”Thanks for the quintessential display of irrational atheist anger. Pathetic . . . ” . . . Daves [sic] “faithful attitude” makes him feel NEED to revert to use of even more manipulative decetful [sic] propaganda tactics again. . . . This is simply deceitful.Its a manipulation of the truth. And amounts to propaganda. . . . Dave you cannot come to places like this and use such manipulative deceitful tactics ….And not expect people to get a little angry about it. . . . I suggest to you that while Theists continue on with these blatantly manipulative deceitful practices ..It is indeed even warrented! [sic] that we sometimes do use ridicule. . . Theists display thoughtless uncaring attitudes that deceitfully misjudge people in a bigoted way . . .

Grand total:

“manipulative”: 9 times
“deceitful”: 9 times
“Propaganda”: 5 times

. . . for theist children to throw away their wee faith cuddly rugs, learn to grow up! and face responsibilities. . . We do see that much of its been so very childish and immensely irresponsible . . .

I don’t think believers in magic are qualified to have “rational discussions”, are they? — especially when such discussions might interfere with the magical things they feel saved for “believing in”? Does anyone here know of a religionists who is capable of having a “rational discussion” when it comes to their religion? I would venture that those who are capable of rational discussion are on their way to becoming non-believers if they aren’t there yet. I don’t find self-described Christians any more capable of having rational discussions on Christianity than self-described Scientologists having a rational discussion on Scientology. I find that former believers are much more capable of rational and insightful discussion on the subject of supernatural beliefs than those who are beholden to such beliefs.

Christians march into skeptic sites feeling all mad and claiming persecution because someone dared to find their magical beliefs as goofy as they find other myths.

Ah, it’s a feeding frenzy now, huh? (2-5-11)

“What You Can Find Here at DC”

By John W. Loftus at 11/18/2010

There is plenty of discussion that takes place afterward. . . . Stay on and engage us. We aim at having respectable debates, more or less.

Um, it’s totally less in this thread, dude! How can you possibly write that last sentence with a straight face? LOL I could have a better dialogue with a comatose jellyfish than what is available here (at least based on the evidence of this thread).

Christian, see if your faith can withstand our assault.

Sure, my faith can withstand the endless personal assaults of atheists. No problem there. But rational dialogue cannot survive in such a scenario. Takes two willing parties to do that.

You will grow as you do. What harm can there be in seeing if your faith can be defended?

But this contradicts what everyone here is saying: that no Christian has ever given a single intelligent argument for anything! LOL

Try it and see. Test your faith here.

More like “test your patience,” to see if it matches with Job’s, . . . (2-6-11)

For a lot of Theists this thing they call being polite and courteous seems to also include endless manipulation and educated sophistry. They even will use it to turn the existence of very abusive faiths . . . I dont bother much going to faithful folks blogs because i dont really expect much straight forward honesty. . . . Yes indeed Theists can sure create some wonderful harmonizations that will end up with human throwing live babies into fire. Or that Joseph Smith found some Golden plates. Ect.Ect.Ect [sic]

Thanks for some semblance of an actual reply to my arguments (even a semi-rational one in-between all the endless humorous put-downs and psychoanalyses). But of course it is Loftus’ argument and he needs to defend it. (2-6-11)

. . . the truth remains theists have traditionally proved they are quite capable of dragging themselves down into the bottomless mire and muck of being caught out ! and sprung for often being deceitful and untrustworthy. . . . And yet some theists will still wonder why some people would ever dare think of theists with such ridicule and contempt.

But it really isn’t healthy for society to be respectful to adults who engage in and promote magical thinking. . . . I think mockery is the best way to end the inanity of all these believers in assorted faiths imagining themselves superior to all those who believe in a different brand of magic. . . . Faith makes people self righteous and nutty!

tsk tsk– DA’s feelings are hurt because people don’t agree with him and no one here is coddling him for having magical beliefs. . . . the manipulations your indoctrinators used on you, Dave, don’t work here. All believers in all “woo” feel insulted by those who think their beliefs are delusional.

I continue to await Loftus’s counter-response. He made an indication that there is some slight chance it may happen. That may actually be on the topic, too (as an extra bonus). As for this thread and its 1001 rabbit trails, . . . zzzzzZZZZZ. (2-6-11)

You were the one who started the rabbit trails, you bozo-face– you posted off topic and then had a fit when John didn’t answer claiming censorship!

[I threw no “fit” at any time. I simply announced my new paper on the latest thread, so Loftus would see it. Because my first post disappeared, at first I thought it was censored. But after Loftus denied it, I figured out that it was Blogger’s automatic spam function (as indeed it was, as confirmed by Loftus), and so I wrote on 2-4-11: “It musta been Blogger’s automatic spam function. You can go to your comments section and check the spam folder. It acts weird sometimes. I should have thought of that. My apologies.”]

People who feel saved for having magical beliefs aren’t really capable of rational discussion on their magical beliefs. . . . the funny thing is is this was a thread illustrating how theists are unable to see themselves the way an outsider might see them…. and then you came in and proved the point– which made goofing on you too irresiistable. [sic] You tried to plug your creepy website and now you’re trying to imply that John not responding to your wackadoodle Christian conjecture means that your wackadoodle beliefs have merit… just like a slew of other wackadoodle Christians who post here trying to plug their goofy websites that no-one is going to. You guys should bond with each other and post on each other’s site about how great all your arguments are since the rational people here can’t seem to make sense of you and you end up feeling like your “patience is being tried” and we feel like we are being preached at by folks we’d never look to for advice.. . . I don’t appreciate the self righteous folks who do believe in such things interrupting a humorous thread to push their beliefs while insulting those who rightly find such beliefs mock-worthy. You are the one who has been rude here– not any of the atheists. I don’t know any theist that would put up with someone interrupting a humorous thread to try to push some website while insulting the readership in the process.

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My experience shows me that believers in the supernatural are seldom able to have rational conversations when it comes to their supernatural beliefs– especially if they feel “saved” or “moral” or “righteous” because of those beliefs like Muslims and Fox News viewers. To me, you guys are like children pointing at presents under a Christmas tree while claiming that it’s proof that Santa is real.

As such, I feel that YOU are poorly qualified for rational discussion here or anywhere, and I wouldn’t be surprised if John comes to a similar conclusion. Surely, you don’t waste your time on every “woo” who comes your way; why should John? What’s in it for him?

Oh ok …All of a sudden Dave doesnt want to play ball anymore …First he makes these claims suggesting there is no good reason for atheists to mistrust theism .We put a few possible reasons forward why it might not be so wise to “trust” theism. But Daves no longer keen to play ball. . . . That seems to be Daves plan?, continue to turn a blind eye, put the fingers in the ears and say nah naaa nah naaa ! …im not listening . . . But now Dave suddenly chooses to feel all sleepy and discontinue with the discussion that he started ?.Why is this ?, might it be because ? Dave knows he will need to be a little honest and admit that yes indeed he was wrong !. . . I think maybe Dave is having some trouble with dwelling within continuing denial .This seems to be a very traditional type trait for many faith believers. My own family sits rotting within a Christian cult stuck in this faithful “denial mode”, . . . I mean why would John Loftus even bother getting involved in another bitch-fight again , with a theist who obviously cant even see any good valid reason at all to feel need of some mistrust for theists and their theism, somebody so stuck in faithful denial mode he wont even bother to discuss it any further. Whats the use in discussing these matters much with theists on their blogs if this is the type of brick wall one comes up againsts right from the get-go.

I just want it known that I’m an equal opportunity mocker. I mock the Scientologists, Muslims, Mormons, and Christians. I mock those who believe in fairies and those who believe in astrology and those that believe in voo-doo. I mock reincarnationists as much as I mock those who believe in Heaven, hell, or Valhalla. I mock all those who believe in the supernatural. . . . I think the Christian “persecution complex” is HI-Larious given the fact that it’s atheists that are regularly actually discriminated against in America . . . I think you’ll find the majority of prejudice is the US is spread by Christians to Christians — many of whom are dishonestly and hypocritically claiming to be persecuted because people on skeptic sites don’t defer to their delusions!

I even purposely stay away from sites where other “ex members” of the cult we were born in, get together to chat. . . . Anyone dare even discuss it and they throw all their dollys out the pram and start wailing whaaa!…booo hoo i want my cuddly rug! They rather not face it, so as to claim the right to continue to live in “faithful” hope …Even if it means history keeps on repeating itself …and as such future generations need to keep suffering faith-abuse . . .

Keep it up, folks! I’ve always loved farce. I wanna see how many atheist stereotypes and caricatures of self-parodies can be present in one thread. Y’all are very inventive. It’s marvelously entertaining (if little else). (2-7-11)

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John Loftus then posted that I am far too ignorant and stupid for him to waste his time on. If I see further papers of his that I think will serve as examples of shoddy, flimsy atheist reasoning, I will refute them, whether he chooses to respond or not. My job as an apologist is to defend truth and refute error. If those defending errors (such as atheism) see no need to defend their view against critique, then it helps our cause. It would be nice to actually have a dialogue, but my first duty is to refute error, whether a person is willing to “talk” or not.

And let my self-proclaimed critics or “enemies” (as the case may be) mock and insult all they want. It never has stopped me from doing anything and it never will. We’re told by Jesus to fully expect this. Generally (though not always), it means we are doing something right and hitting a nerve.

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(originally 2-7-11)

Photo credit: David and Goliath (1888), by Osmar Schindler (1869-1927) [public domain / Wikimedia Commons]

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