Arguing the Affirmative: JOHN THE ATHEIST
Arguing the Negative: RANDAL THE CHRISTIAN
John’s Opening Statement
First look at J. L. Schellenberg’s persuasive argument from divine hiddenness:
If I have shown anything in this book, then I have a reasonable nonbelief. Therefore, unless someone can still maintain against the evidence that I don’t have a reasonable nonbelief, Schellenberg’s argument has been shown correct.
Now consider Theodore Drange’s persuasive argument from unbelief for the existence of an evangelical God.
Drange defends his argument from the free will defense, in part by arguing that if a person wants to believe the truth, then “for God to directly implant true beliefs into his/her mind would not interfere with, but would rather comply with, the person’s free will.” Drange argues that people “want to know the truth. They want to be shown how the world is really set up.” So to perform miracles for them, as another option before God, “would only conform to or comply with that desire. It would therefore not interfere with their free will.”[85] Drange defends his argument from the “Unknown-Purpose Defense” of God, in part by asking why God has chosen not to reveal his purpose for permitting nonbelief. “It would be in his interest to reveal that, for doing so would immediately destroy one main obstacle to people’s belief in him,” namely unbelief itself. “Thus, for God to keep his purpose secret is clearly counter-productive.”[86]
Drange admits the unknown-purpose defense cannot be conclusively refuted. But we don’t need to refute it. We just need to show that it’s an improbable defense. It doesn’t matter what the particular problem is for a person’s faith. Having an omniscient God concept solves it. So believers must be convinced their faith is nearly impossible before they will consider it to be improbable, and that’s an utterly unreasonable standard since we cannot hope to overcome this omniscience escape clause. Given that there are so many different faiths with the same escape clause, then believers should seriously consider that their own faith may equally be false. Sure, an omniscient God may exist (for the sake of argument), but how we judge whether he exists cannot rely over and over on his omniscience since that’s exactly how other believers defend their own culturally inherited faith. Reasonable people must not have an unfalsifiable faith, and yet an omniscient concept of God makes one’s faith basically unfalsifiable.
Are we really to believe this God exists when there is so much reasonable non-Christian belief in the world? Are we really to believe God chose a good era in human history to reveal himself, when it was clearly a barbaric, superstitious, prescientific one that later generations could easily discount as such? Are we really to believe God chose a good place to reveal himself in a remote part of the globe before the advent of global communications, such that our salvation depends on believing what these people said happened even though we were not there? Are we really to believe that non-Christian belief is a willful and damnable offense deserving punishment in hell (however conceived)? Does it not dawn on believers that overwhelming numbers of people simply accept and defend what they were raised to believe in their homes and cultures—that belief is overwhelmingly, if not completely, involuntary?
Christians themselves make most of my arguments for me since there are so many types of Christianities to choose from. Catholics offer cogent arguments against Protestants, who in turn offer cogent arguments against evangelicals, and so on. Christians also offer cogent arguments against the world religions, who in turn offer cogent arguments against Christianity. When they criticize each other they are all right. So I’ve rightly argued that believers ought to examine their own faith with the same level of skepticism they use when examining the other faiths in the outsider test for faith. Do it. What have you got to lose?
Randal’s Opening Statement
The 2002 British horror film 28 Days Later, directed by Danny Boyle, depicts the dissolution of British society after a highly contagious virus called “rage” decimates the population. Imagine that you are a five-year-old living in London during the time the rage virus tears through the population. As you watch its effects unfolding in society, you witness the medical professionals working with the police, the military, and the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control to control the pandemic. To begin with, they cordon off the roads into and out of the city, thereby cutting off your access to the outside world. How could it be that your supposed liberators are blocking the route to safety? Next, they begin separating those who have been exposed to the rage virus from those not yet exposed. Given your mother’s early exposure, you find yourself and your father separated from her. This shocks you further, for your mother seemed fine to you. Finally, they initiate treatment of those exposed. You can hear your mother’s screams as they inject her with a serum while she is quarantined. None of this makes sense to you. Things were bad before the so-called liberators arrived, but they weren’t this bad. They blocked you in, took your mother, and are causing her great distress. Their actions strike you as utterly inexplicable and arbitrary.
Things look bad from the perspective of the five-year-old in the middle of an outbreak of rage. But things are very different from the perspective of those outside. We can readily see the logic of the medical, police, and military personnel as they work to contain and then treat the outbreak. They know much more about the pandemic and its proper treatment than you as a five-year-old know.
Christians believe that something like a rage virus infects the human race. They call it original sin. Theories as to its origin and the extent of the infection differ, but Christians agree that there is a universal infection, and you need not appeal to Adolf Hitler to find evidence of it. Consider a much more mundane example. In November 2006 comedian Michael Richards (who played the character of Cosmo Kramer on the sitcom Seinfeld) was being heckled by a couple of African-American gentlemen at the Laugh Factory comedy club in Los Angeles. Suddenly he exploded in retaliation, screaming a barrage of racist expletives and calling for a lynching. Unfortunately for Richards, somebody filmed the debacle and the footage quickly went viral. Shortly thereafter he appeared via satellite on David Letterman’s show to offer an apology. Here are a couple excerpts from his rambling monologue:
I’m really busted up over this and I’m very sorry to those people in the audience, the blacks, the Hispanics, the whites, everyone that was there that took the brunt of that anger and hate and rage and how it came through.
For this to happen, for me to be on a comedy club and flip out and say this crap, you know I’m deeply, deeply sorry and, um, I’ve got, I’ll get to the force-field of this hostility, why it’s there why the rage is in any of us.[87]
As Richards spoke, he looked bewildered as though he was still in shock at his own abominable behavior, struggling to “get to the force-field of this hostility,” to figure out “why the rage is in any of us.” Paul had the same perplexity two millennia before: “I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. . . . What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death?” (Rom. 7:15, 24).
What is this rage that infects us? What is it that allows creatures with such an unbounded potential for mercy, altruism, kindness, heroism, and love to have the potential for the most cruel, debased, malicious wickedness? How can it be that we are, as Pascal observed, simultaneously the glory and refuse of the universe?
We are all infected with rage. But God has moved in to deal with it through the death of his son, Jesus, and the work of his Spirit. We are but children in the city of the pandemic watching the forces move in to deal with the infection. At times the treatment may seem inexplicable and arbitrary. (How does the atonement work? Why did Christ have to die on a cross? How much cognitive information, if any, do people need to have about Christ to be saved by Christ?) But the fact that questions remain is no discredit to the liberators as they work to deliver us from the rage that hides in all of us.
John’s Rebuttal
The reason we sometimes act like brutes is because we evolved from them. There is therefore no need for atonement. It’s who we are, and it’s something that we alone can fix as morality evolves. The only reason Randal believes our rage (or sins) need atoning is because he was raised in a Western, Christianized culture. The vast majority of people in the world do not think someone like Jesus needs to be punished to death for the rest of us to be forgiven by a god. For instance, there is no sense in which punishment is related to forgiveness since we know of victims who have forgiven their attackers without it and other victims who will never forgive no matter how much they are punished. And it makes no sense at all to judge people based on whether they believe in the atoning death of Jesus, since belief is overwhelmingly involuntary at best.
Christians down through the centuries cannot agree on why Jesus needed to die for our sins. There are so many theories and counter-theories it can make our heads spin. Until theologians can come up with a coherent atonement theory, it’s time to give up such a superstitious notion as a whole.
Randal’s Rebuttal
Let’s focus on the second premise in Schellenberg’s argument:
2. If a perfectly loving God exists, reasonable nonbelief does not occur.
There is a very good reason to think premise 2 is false and thus that the current nonbelief of many people is consistent with God’s long-term plan to liberate human beings from original sin. Consider an analogy. Winston holds racist attitudes toward Indians, and he often shares his racist views with those he meets, including his neighborhood grocer Chahel. Little does Winston know that Chahel is himself an Indian. But if Chahel cares about Winston, shouldn’t he reveal his identity? This can be put as follows:
A. If a perfectly loving Chahel exists, Winston’s reasonable nonbelief in Chahel’s Indian identity does not occur.
In fact, A is false because Chahel could have very good reasons for keeping Winston ignorant of his true identity. For example, this may allow him to develop a deeper relationship with Winston so that when he finally does reveal his true identity Winston will be forced to rethink his racism more radically.
Schellenberg’s premise 2 is false for the same reason. God could have excellent reasons for allowing nonbelief to persist in some people that are perfectly in accord with his redemptive plans for the world.
John’s Closing Statement
Once again the omniscience escape clause does the requisite work for Randal against the probabilities. Sure, it’s a mere possibility that Randal is correct here, but so what? Probability is all that matters. To think God allows reasonable nonbelief when he could disallow it is reprehensible, since nonbelievers will be punished eternally for it.
Randal’s Closing Statement
John claims “there is no sense in which punishment is related to forgiveness” as though forgiveness is simply saying sorry. But forgiveness for a serious offense involves both repentance and reparations—an intentional stance to make amends. Through Christ, God offers reparations while seeking our repentance, and John has provided no reason to believe that God’s redemptive work is “incompetent.”