How Strong is the Case For Atheism?

Often, we hear "philosophers have been wrestling with these problems for centuries, and never found a solution."  The truth is, it's more like "philosophers have been studying these things for centuries, but were never able to make everyone acknowledge the truth."

We live in a world that thinks (or seems to think) that everything can be decided with a vote, so of course, it's hard for people to understand, but just because not everyone agrees with you doesn't mean you're wrong.

One of the most baffling and astonishing phenomena in the history of mankind has emerged from this vote-based view of the universe; the re-emergence of atheism as a popular world view.  This is utterly new, largely because of just how weak the arguments for atheism really are.  Yet, you only realize this if you think about these arguments logically.  Taking a show of hands won't convince you that atheism is wrong, for quite a few reasons, really.

No, the only way out is to start looking at the truth again.  In logic, there is a method of proving a point by establishing that your own position is correct, independant of what your opponents say; which is known as forming "a positive argument."  It's also possible, even if you can't prove your own position correct, to prove that your opponent is wrong by pointing out weaknesses or contradictions in their claims.

Atheism can't do either of these things, and Christianity can do both.  There is no strong, positive proof that God doesn't exist.  There isn't even any way to seriously challenge the proofs that exist for Christianity being right.

Proofs for Christianity?  What?  Yes, proofs.  Positive proofs; the strongest kind.  Here are a few of the strongest.

The Kalam Cosmological Argument
Everything that begins to exist has a cause.  The universe began to exist.  Therefore, the universe has a cause.

The Moral Argument
If God exists, we have a very strong reason for believing that morality is a real and objective thing.  If God does not exist, we have a very poor reason for believing that morality is a real and objective thing.  Objective moral values exist.  Therefore, God exists.

The Ontological (of Existence) Argument
God is the greatest conceivable being.  The greatest conceivable being would exist, necessarily, in every possible world.  We live in a possible world.  Therefore, God exists.

The Argument From Evil
Evil clearly exists.  Evil is clearly wrong.  In order for something to be wrong, there must be a standard of rightness to guage it by; something which is morally perfect.  Therefore, God exists.

I may deal with these proofs, and a few others, in greater detail in a later season, but any one of them would be sufficient to establish the existence of God.  Each is a strong, positive proof of God's existence, and none of them depend on emotional highs, or upbringing, or social situations, or blind faith.

If you're an atheist, just ask yourself this one question.  Why are you an atheist?  Every day, I ask myself why I'm a Christian, and every day, I answer that it's because that's where the strongest evidence points.  As a Christian, I can defend my position rationally.  As an atheist, I couldn't do that.

If you want my advice, you'll look into some of these arguments.  Don't get hung-up on the datedness of the biblical language or symbolism, don't refuse to believe because of poor conduct that some religious people have demonstrated, and certainly don't refuse to believe because you don't want to obey any moral authority.  If that -is- your reason for not believing, take some time to analyze that, and think it over in your mind.  Don't flee from the difficulties this might present you with.  Study them objectively.

However, if you're an atheist who just doesn't believe for -purely- intellectual reasons, then you're very similar to the kind of person I once was.  I languished in agnosticism for close to ten years, because the only answers I ever received from the believers I knew was "Well, it doesn't challenge -my- faith."  Don't let that kind of reply bias your study of these issues.  Learn the real arguments in favor of Christianity, and learn the real arguments in favor of atheism, and then ask yourself; "Which one -really- has more evidence behind it?"

This is the path I took, and the place I wound up is an indication of where, in my view, the strongest proofs lie.

8 Weak Arguments for Atheism

Weak Argument 1: Gods Are Too Similar to Their Believers.  For Example, the Norse Gods Were Norse, the African Gods Were Black, The Greek Gods Were Greek, Etc..., so of Course, the Jewish God is Jewish.

Response to Argument 1: There are many reasons why the Christian view of God doesn't even fall into a broad categorization of religions like this.

1. Jesus was only Jewish in his human nature.  His divine nature wasn't Jewish, Norse, African or anything else like that.

2. Furthermore, actual Judaism of the time had a very firmly-established understanding that God was fundamentally different from any human being, and nothing about that has changed in Christianity.  We believe that God is pure spirit, not black, white, Russian, etc...

3. Many of the Jews (most, I would say) absolutely refused to believe in Jesus, in spite of him being Jewish.

4. The Jewish and Christian understanding of God is an uncaused, timeless, spaceless, matterless, morally-perfect being who never sins or errs in judgment.  A more -dissimilar being from man is hard to imagine.

5. Even supposing the last four points were wrong or false in some way, the argument still falls victim to what's called "the genetic fallacy."  Namely, it tries to invalidate a claim by explaining where that claim came from.  Therefore, the argument is neither valid, nor particularly strong.

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Weak Argument 2: Religions Have Too Many Contradictions to be Real Religions.

Response to Argument 2: Some religions do.  Even most Christian groups contradict themselves in their teachings.  However, the Roman Catholic Church does not.  I won't pretend to defend every last religion and what they teach.  I only defend one faith, and as it happens, that's all you need to defend.  This argument is therefore a strawman; pretending that the Christian needs to defend something other than what they believe in.

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Weak Argument 3: Can You Prove the Universe Requires a Cause?

Response to Argument 3: According to scientific study, the idea that everything that begins to exist has a cause is a -very- strongly-proven law of existence as we know it.  It has -never- been falsified, and it easily could be if we found something that began to exist without a cause.  Therefore, it's not intellectually-honest to doubt this principle unless there is some evidence that runs contrary to it.

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Weak Argument 4: Believing in God is Like Believing in Santa Claus.

Response to Argument 4: This argument could also be applied to dinosaurs, fairies, leprechauns, etc, and it falls into two categories.

Category 1 is basically the normal version, where belief in God is compared to belief in some fictional thing, like a gryphon or Santa.  However, this doesn't work, because we have good reasons to believe that Santa Claus doesn't exist; namely, no one is living at the north pole, making toys or flying around on Christmas Eve.  There aren't any strong reasons for believing that God doesn't exist.

Category 2 is that belief in God is like believing in -invisible- fairies, or -undetectable- dinosaurs.  However, this also isn't true.  If, for example, there were an invisible fairy in front of me right now, I still wouldn't be obligated to believe it, because I have literally -no- evidence that it even exists, and this isn't the case with God.  There's actually quite a bit of evidence that God exists.

There's a permutation of this argument where the dinosaur or fairy is repeatedly given more and more undetectable and supernatural traits, such as being beyond time and space, or even being matterless.  However, this scuttles the whole argument.  If something really -was- beyond time and space, or matterless, it would no longer be a fairy or a dinosaur, or Santa Claus, or anything else, because those things are what they are because of their forms, and forms can only exist if there's space for them to exist in, and matter for them to be composed of.

If you give up and attribute to the "dinosaur" -all- of the essential attributes of being uncaused, timeless, spaceless, matterless, morally-perfect, and so forth, then my reply is just that you've removed all of what once made it a dinosaur, and therefore, what you're called a "dinosaur," is really God.  So this argument fails on the basis of its own circular logic, and isn't particularly strong.

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Weak Argument 5: If You Claim That God Designed the Universe, You Then Need to Explain Who Designed God.

Response to Argument 5: No, you don't.  If you want to recognize that an explanation is the best one available, you don't need an explanation for that explanation.  For example, if I'm exploring the wilderness, and I find an ipod lying on the ground, that clues me in to the fact that a human being was recently there, and lost their ipod.  I don't need to know the whole geneology of that human being, or even their full name, to know that the technology proves that a person was present.

Furthermore, the very -premise- of God -implies- being uncaused, and therefore not being designed by anyone, so the question itself is incoherent.

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Weak Argument 6: The Idea of God contradicts the Laws of Nature, Which We're Now Very Familiar With.

Response to Argument 6: God is supernatural, which means that he exists beyond nature.  Therefore, he does not contradict any laws of nature.  They merely don't apply to him.

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Weak Argument 7: God, if he Existed, Would Need to be Beyond Human Comprehension, and Therefore Couldn't be Intelligent, Like us, But Would Need to be an Impersonal Force.

Response to Argument 7: There are many impersonal forces in the universe, but they're not "beyond" us.  They -apply- to us, but they're not our superiors in the chain of life.  If God were an impersonal force, he would merely be a part of nature, and would therefore not be God.

Additionally, in order to be superior to us, or even equal, God -must- have intelligence.  After all, we have intelligence, and this is certainly a superior characteristic among animals.  It's given us the ability to build houses, write poetry and fly to the moon, and is therefore a good thing, so obviously God, who is perfect, possesses it.

Finally, without intelligence, it would be impossible for God to create the universe, since if a timeless God were -impersonal,- he could only create other timeless things.  After all, if the cause is timeless, then no additional conditions for creating can be introduced to it, and if the cause is timeless and all the conditions for creating are present, then God would be timelessly creating other timeless things.

The only way for God to be timeless, but for his creation to exist in time is for God to make a voluntary choice to create something different from himself.  This is why this argument fizzles out on its own.

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Weak Argument 8: God, if he Existed, Would Need to Provide an Explanation For Everything That Exists, Both Good and Evil, But the Christian God Only Explains the Good, Since he Causes the Good, but Not the Evil.

Response to Argument 8: This one haunted me for almost a decade, but it's actually very simple to answer.  God does not -cause- evil, but -does- provide a sufficient explanation for the evil, in that "evil" just means "an absense of good."  Therefore, evil is essentially just the empty spaces in normally-good things.  So, this argument isn't particularly strong.