Closing Thoughts from Randal
One day I decided to streamline the function of my computer by deleting all the old, useless files from the hard drive. But after I finished and restarted the computer I discovered, much to my chagrin, that not only had the operation not improved, it had noticeably worsened. In fact, my computer was no longer running properly at all. Slowly I realized that in my quest to streamline the computer’s operation I had actually deleted a file that was essential to its proper running. Only after the fact did I realize that I would have to reinstall that file to regain the function of my computer.
God is like that file. Today many people think that by deleting God from their intellectual hard drive they have merely streamlined their worldview: Why have the world plus God when the world alone will suffice? God is just unnecessary baggage. Or so they think. Through these debates I have labored to show that this is actually a fundamentally mistaken assumption. Just as the file was essential to the proper running of the computer, so I have argued that God is essential to a proper understanding of the world. Consequently, if you delete God from your worldview, you suddenly find all sorts of other things disappearing as well—things that are very important for understanding the world correctly. Away goes any objective standard to judge a life well lived. Gone as well is any sense of an objective moral standard. So too we find objective beauty disappearing from view. We even lose any rational basis to hold that any of our beliefs are true. In our quest to streamline our worldview, we discover that the system no longer functions properly. It is a classic case of the cure being worse than the disease. Indeed, it turns out that the so-called disease was in fact the cure, and reinstallation of the file is the only solution.
John has been my unwitting partner in this exercise. His uncompromising defense of an atheistic worldview has been, I am glad to say, a clear and consistent presentation of the deflationary way a thinking atheist looks at the world. Just consider what he has conceded along the way. Relationships with other human beings are, in John’s view, simply a way to bide our time in the house until we pass into the everlasting night. Truth is an unobtainable abstraction that is readily sacrificed on the pragmatic altar of survival (of our genes if not ourselves). And meaning joins beauty in a flickering marginal existence in the eye of the beholder.
The fact that John’s perspective is so capably presented bears out my claim regarding the implications of atheism because John rejects every one of these things we value most. To be sure, he doesn’t agree that his radical concessions defeat his worldview. On the contrary, he has tried a most implausible tactic by attempting to persuade us that all these things really don’t matter. We don’t really need the good, the true, and the beautiful. We can get by with the good for us, the true for us, and the beautiful for us. But this is false. If we know anything, we know that the good, the true, and the beautiful are objective values that exist above and beyond us as individuals and a species. Indeed, our innate orientation (despite John’s asseverations to the contrary) to recognize them and in our better moments to live in accord with their objective facticity is a fundamental part of what makes us uniquely human.
From this perspective, John’s advocacy of atheism is tantamount to the claim that we ought to reject civil government and all the benefits that go with it (roads, police, indoor plumbing, air conditioning) in favor of a bare, subsistence existence in the desert. Such a radical plea surely begs the question: What reason does John offer to take this radical step of deleting God, and all that goes with God, from our worldview? What reason does he have for us to abandon the benefits of civilized society in favor of a barren conceptual desert?
As best I can surmise, John seeks to offer both a general argument against theism and specific arguments against Christian theism. His first focus as expressed in this general argument really seems to take the form of a force majeure (a superior force) in which he suggests that intellectually honest, intelligent people simply cannot be theists. And what is the source of this force majeure? Apparently it is rooted in the advances of modern science generally and neo-Darwinism in particular. But this is mere bluster. We know this because countless highly educated individuals, including leading scientists and philosophers, maintain a robust and intellectually sophisticated theistic and Christian faith.[88] In fact, the intellectual reasons that drive academics to reject Christianity are philosophical, not scientific,[89] and these days that philosophy is typically naturalism.[90] But there is no good reason to accept naturalism (remember your mother’s advice: “everyone else is doing it” is not a good reason). Indeed, as Alvin Plantinga has recently argued, while naturalism appears to have a superficial consonance with science, it is actually deeply incongruous with science.[91] And thus upon closer analysis it appears that John’s cyclonic force majeure really has all the intensity of a light breeze barely glancing the ancient stone wall of a Gothic cathedral.
The second focus of John’s attack is on Christian theism in particular. On this front he has taken on a range of topics in the Bible including child sacrifice, genocide, the role of women, and slaves. The idea, I presume, is that whatever a person may think of theism in general, Judeo-Christian theism is not possibly (or likely) to be true given the moral problems attendant to it. In each case I have labored to show that John’s main arguments, even where they are successful, land only on the periphery of Christian conviction rather than at its heart. Admittedly some Christian readers may think I conceded too much at this point. Why not take on John’s critique of the biblical case for matters like slavery or genocide more directly? I understand the sentiment and happily direct that disconsolate reader to the apologists who do engage in that enterprise.[92] But I’m not convinced that Christianity is well served by this kind of apologetic. Indeed, it seems to me that such an apologetic invites more problems than it solves.[93] And regardless, matters like biblical slavery and genocide surely are on the periphery of the gospel rather than at its pious heart, a place where we find cherished doctrines well worth defending—such as Trinity, incarnation, and atonement.
I want to stress that where Christianity is concerned I have not simply been on the defensive. On the contrary, I sought to defend not only the rational status of Christian faith commitments but also specific Christian beliefs in several particular areas including the experience of answered prayer and the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus. And so my goal has been not just to defend theism over-against atheism but to affirm Christian theism as the most intellectually satisfying view of the world.
So where does this leave us? If you’re a Christian, I hope it leaves you sensing a certain vindication in your beliefs. There are excellent reasons to be a theist generally and a Christian theist in particular. There are not comparatively strong reasons to be an atheist. But what if you are at present an atheist? It may be at this moment that you’re thinking there may be something more to theism than you thought. But perhaps you’re not yet ready to commit to Christian theism. Perhaps it still requires you to believe more than you’re able to accept at this time. So what do I suggest for you? Ask yourself if Christianity is a view of the world that you can accept provisionally as you seek to live in accord with the values that make us most fully human. If you find that you can take that step, then start doing so. Live as if Christianity is true.[94] Begin exploring the rich intellectual and spiritual resources of the Christian tradition. Find a community of Christians with whom you can relate openly and honestly by sharing your beliefs and your doubts. Seek to live out the faith you do not yet fully possess through works of mercy and righteousness as you study, reflect, and learn. And then just see what happens. Most of all, never give up your tireless pursuit of that which none greater can be conceived.
Pax Christi,
Randal Rauser
Closing Thoughts from John
I am honored that Dr. Rauser saw fit to consider me a worthy contender to argue against his faith. I consider him a worthy contender myself, and a friend. Kudos to him for initiating this book.
I have twin goals in co-writing this book. The first one is to force Christians to think about what they would believe if the Bible itself was undermined as a source of divine truth. My claim is that they probably won’t believe at all. I’m trying to drive a wedge between the Bible and the brain of the believer. The second goal is to show in a cumulative fashion that Randal’s God, having the three main attributes most Christians believe in today—omnibenevolence, omniscience, and omnipotence—does not exist. My focus is on the problem of evil for the believer, both with regard to God’s supposed revelation in the Bible and his supposed actions in the world we see around us. You can see this from my ten chosen topics for debate (the even-numbered ones).
When it comes to defending his faith, all Randal can do is revert to special pleading, arguing from ignorance, and repeatedly punting to mere possibilities even though probabilities are all that matter. He also uses the you too fallacy, saying I have a problem as an atheist too. The reason this is a fallacy is because there are just too many you’s to too. My arguments are the same ones Christian liberals use, and I quoted from them at times. Since they are believers, it does no good at all to say you too to them. Randal also cherry-picks the Bible in favor of his own moral intuitions and yet claims that when I share these same moral intuitions that mine are subjective. If mine are subjective, then so are his; or if my moral intuitions are sound ones, then so are his. He cannot have it both ways whenever we both reject certain biblical texts.
When it comes to the explanation of the whole shebang, we are faced with basically two options: (1) something—anything—has always existed, or (2) something—anything—popped into existence out of nothing. Either choice seems extremely unlikely—or possibly even absurd. There is little in our experience that can help us choose. But one of them is correct and the other is false. We either start with the brute fact that something has always existed or the brute fact that something popped into existence out of nothing. So the simpler our brute fact is then the more probable it is, per Ockham’s razor. All that scientists have to assume is an equilibrium of positive and negative energy and the laws of physics. This is as close to nothing as science can get. But grant it and physicist Victor Stenger argues, “The probability for there being something rather than nothing can actually be calculated; it is over 60 percent.” As such, “only by the constant action of an agent outside the universe, such as God, could a state of nothingness be maintained. The fact that we have something is just what we would expect if there is no God.”[95]
By contrast, I find it implausible to believe that a Triune God (three persons in one):
How is it possible for this being to think or make choices or take risks (things that all involve weighing alternatives)? How could he have freely chosen who he is and what his values are, since there was never a previous time before he was who he is?
But let’s grant that on each of Randal’s ten chosen debate topics (the odd-numbered ones) he is correct. Let’s grant first of all that there is a supernatural force (or being) out there who explains the whole shebang, gives life meaning, and is the basis for morality, reason, and beauty. I can grant all of these things and it would not make a difference. For at best all Randal can reasonably conclude with regard to God is that he existed at one time and then ceased to exist, or that he exists now but we cannot reasonably determine if he is a good God, a trickster God, or one who is watching us with enjoyment like rats in a maze to see what we conclude about it all. At best Randal’s arguments lead us to a distant God, one who is indistinguishable from none at all—an unnecessary hypothesis we can simply do without.
In addition, even if this supernatural force (or being) answers prayers and raised Jesus from the dead, we still have no reasonable way of accepting these claims. Reasonable doubts abound for these claims such that thinking people cannot accept them. There are many claims that are true that reasonable people should not accept because of the lack of sufficient evidence. Surely there is a murderer whom no reasonable person suspects did the evil deed because there isn’t sufficient evidence to think he did. Then too, perhaps someone really was abducted by aliens, but without sufficient evidence no reasonable person should accept his claim.
There is therefore no need to propose an alternative scenario to the resurrection hypothesis, just as a historian does not need to propose a different scenario after disputing what someone claimed happened at Custer’s Last Stand. Perhaps there just isn’t enough evidence to say for sure after having rejected it; although when it comes to the claim that Jesus resurrected, I did so in my book Why I Became an Atheist. What we do know is that incredible events happen all the time, like getting pregnant after a tubal ligation operation, meeting a twin brother on the street whom you never knew existed, or finding a bottle that had been at sea for five years washed up on your beachfront property. Accordingly, what’s so hard about thinking something incredible happened that caused the early disciples to believe without punting to a miracle? I see no reason to think we should.
My claim is that the raw, uninterpreted historical data is simply not enough to believe God raised Jesus from the dead because there can be no relevant background knowledge or “priors” prior to concluding he did. The main reason Christians think the historical evidence for the resurrection is conclusive is because they have already come to believe in a God who did this particular miracle, and that’s pretty much it. Overwhelming numbers of Jews in the days of Jesus did not believe it, along with millions of other people even after being confronted with this so-called evidence. One would think that if eternal damnation awaits someone who doesn’t believe, then that evidence would be much stronger than it is. Since the evidence is weak, believers must continually punt to faith. But as I have argued, faith is not acceptable, especially when it comes to the historian’s task.
Finally, let me comment on something that may not seem obvious but should. Randal has bypassed what I consider the proper protocol here. He has placed himself in the proverbial final championship game by jumping in line, as it were, bypassing other worthy religious contenders in order to debate me, an atheist. I have obliged him of course, but before debating an atheist he should have shown that his brand of Christianity can successfully win prior debate contests with the many other religionists found around the world—something he has not done. Why? Because the bottom line is that atheists are skeptics. That places us in a bracket all our own. We are not affirming anything. We are denying the claims of all religionists. We do not think there is sufficient evidence to believe in supernatural forces or beings. Since this is the case, religionists must determine among themselves who is their best contender to face off against us. That process did not happen here precisely because they cannot agree among themselves who should be in the finals.
In every part of the globe religionists who circumvent this proper protocol will have their provincial debates with atheists as if those are the only two options to consider: Hinduism versus atheism, or Islam versus atheism, or Orthodox Judaism versus atheism, or—well, you get the point. The implied assumption is that the culturally dominant religion gets to act like it has earned its place in the championship game simply by virtue of the fact that it is the dominant one. That is emphatically not the case.
If the proper protocol were followed, there wouldn’t even be a final debate between a particular cultural religion and an atheist. That’s because no religion can rise to the top by legitimately beating all the others. They would all just endlessly beat up on each other with no clear winners. And that’s precisely one of the major reasons why we are atheists in the first place. It’s because no religion can rightfully be shown to have any more epistemic warrant than the many others. They all share the same epistemic grounding; they all stand on the quicksand of a faith-based reasoning. So while I have granted Randal a place in the finals with me, now he must still go back and justify why he was here in the first place rather than one of the myriad numbers of other religions, including the various branches of his own.
All that believers must do is apply the same level of skepticism to their own religion as they do to the religions of others that they reject. This is what I call the outsider test for faith. When believers understand why they dismiss all other religions, they will understand why I dismiss theirs. If they refuse to do this, I merely ask them why the double standard? Why treat other religions differently than you do your own? Believers should be skeptical of what they were taught to accept given the proliferation of so many other religions and sects separated into distinct regions on the planet who learned their religion in the same way—on their mama’s knee.
Be well,
John W. Loftus