Is God a Genocidal Bully?

(Conversantlife.com) by Sean McDowell

Richard Dawkins sure thinks so. In The God Delusion he wrote:

The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.

This is certainly a well-worded objection, but is it convincing? I remember the first time I heard this objection. It unsettled me quite a bit. How could a loving God be so malevolent as to command the extermination of an entire people-group (the Canaanites) including men, women, and children (Josh 9:11-15)? Undoubtedly, this is one of the most difficult questions confronting Christians. While not all answers will entirely soothe the emotions, there are three points that can help us makes sense of this challenge. (For a more in-depth analysis, I suggest reading an excellent article by William Lane Craig.)

An Objectively Good Night

Success!!! Despite a few hiccups in pre-event planning, last night's McDowell-Corbett debate went incredibly well. Saddleback College was buzzing with students, families, scholars, and local citizens lucky enough to get a seat in an event that sold out weeks in advance over a period of about 10 days. Sadly, we had to turn away over three times the number as our room could hold but the webcast was viewed by over a 1,000 people from around the globe. In fact, Conversant Life told me that so many people logged in at one time that the server crashed three times (sorry about that livestream viewers). I would be remiss not to thank Karla Westphal (Saddleback College Freethinkers Club faculty advisor) for hosting the event and handling lots of logistics. I wouldn't have wanted anyone else in her role.

Both speakers were articulate and dynamic which kept the audience captivated the entire 95 minutes without a break. Craig Hazen set the tone with his trademark wit and cordial demeanor. I witnessed first hand his unbroken contact with the timekeeper and even-handed treatment of speaker time limits. The only exception was when he granted Corbett an additional response in the Q&A portion. He even kept the course on track to about three minutes of our planned end time. Amazing work, Dr. Hazen! My only fear is the backlash I'm going to get from all those unable to attend now that Craig and Sean gave away free books and DVDs to everyone there (again, sorry webcasters).

Sean spoke first, as is customary of the positive debate position, and set the bar high for his opponent. Sean layed out his case in outline form stating two key contentions to frame the debate. 1) If God does not exist, we have no solid foundation for moral values, and 2) If God does exist, we do have a solid foundation for moral values. Sean carefully made the distinction between subjective and objective with Greg Koukl's famous ice cream illustration. He told the story of a terrible teen gang rape to show what it means for something to be objectively wrong. Sean argued that any ethical system must account for three things: 1) Transcendence, 2) Free will, and 3) Human value. Concluding that God makes the most sense of moral values, Sean then challenged Dr. Corbett to offer a better explanation.

Why Atheists Need God

A précis based on the book Persuasions by Douglas Wilson

What this Book is About:

Persuasions – A Dream of Reason Meeting Unbelief, by Douglas Wilson, is a story of a man named Evangelist who is journeying on a road towards the City. In his travels Evangelist encounters various people who are walking in the opposite direction towards the Abyss. Conversations ensue and Evangelist attempts to persuade these individuals to change their direction of travel. He uses reason and a Socratic style of questioning to expose the inconsistencies in their false thinking and answer common objections. In the end this story is a picture of our journey through life and our call to be thoroughly equipped ambassadors for Jesus Christ. Like Evangelist we have a responsibility to warn those who are heading away from the City of God and we must always be ready to give an answer for the hope that is within us.


Chapter 6: Mark - Atheism:

In chapter six of Persuasions, Evangelist meets a man named Mark who identifies himself as both a scientist and an atheist. A conversation follows in which Evangelist argues that the existence of reason only makes sense within a theistic worldview.

As Mark walks down the road toward the Abyss, he is approached by Evangelist who gives him a piece of paper which speaks about God. Mark brushes aside the tract and disregards any talk of God because he says he does not believe in fairy tales. Evangelist responds "If you object to 'fairy tales,' then why do you borrow from them?" (Wilson, 43). Mark explains that as a scientist he believes in the theory of evolution and that everything we see is the result of time, chance, and matter. He is a materialist who believes nothing exists apart from this process. Evangelist then asks "Why do you believe in the validity of reason? How can time and chance, acting on matter, produce reason?" (Wilson, 44).

Evangelist continues and explains that a chemical reaction observed in a laboratory is neither true nor false. It just is. And if our beliefs are also simply a product of time, chance, and matter, then neither can they be characterized as true or false. They just are. On Mark's view, our beliefs are nothing more than chemical reactions within our head. But if this is true then it makes no sense to characterize some beliefs as true and some as false. Evangelist has exposed the inconsistency in Mark's worldview. He wishes to object to belief in the existence of God because he thinks it to be false and yet his worldview does not permit the existence of true and false beliefs.

The point Evangelist is making is that the existence of reason only makes sense within a theistic worldview. In order for atheists to argue their case that evolution is true and that God does not exist they have to believe that there are actually good reasons for believing these things. But appealing to reason implies that something exists apart from the material universe and assumes that we can get beyond our pre-determined beliefs to establish what is true, that is, what corresponds to reality. The existence of reason and the ability to discover true beliefs only makes sense if God exists. Hence, Evangelist states, "My question is why the proponents of evolution borrow reason from theism to argue their case" (Wilson, 44).

So it is not the case that the existence of God depends on reason but rather the existence of reason depends on God. Evangelist states, "Reason flows out of His nature" (Wilson, 45). Mark now finds himself in a dilemma. He used to reject the existence of God because he thought he had good reason. Now he realizes that the existence of reason actually presupposes that which he is trying to argue against. Mark can no longer give reasons for his atheism because in order to do so he must borrow from theism. His worldview prevents him from using rationale so that his "atheism must rest on an unsupported presupposition, not on any claim to reason" (Wilson, 45). Evangelist concludes that "The only thing standing between you and God is your unwillingness to have anything to do with Him" (Wilson, 45).

Before the conversation ends, Evangelist encourages Mark to ponder one last thing. If Mark cannot give any reasons for his decision to rebel against God then the source of rebellion must come from somewhere else. Evangelist encourages Mark to investigate the area of morality. Perhaps the reason Mark rejects God is because Mark does not want to live the way God has instructed him to. If this is true then it is not the case that Mark has intellectual problems with the existence of God but rather a problem of volition. Ignoring this observation, Mark continues down the road toward the Abyss despite his not having any reason to do so.

Dawkins' Delusion

(Reasonablefaith.org) William Lane Craig

Richard Dawkins has emerged as the enfant terrible of the movement known as the New Atheism. His best-selling book The God Delusion has become the literary centerpiece of that movement. In it Dawkins aims to show that belief in God is a delusion, that is to say, "a false belief or impression," or worse, "a persistent false belief held in the face of strong contradictory evidence."1 On pages 157-8 of his book, Dawkins summarizes what he calls "the central argument of my book." Note it well. If this argument fails, then Dawkins' book is hollow at its core. And, in fact, the argument is embarrassingly weak.

It goes as follows:

1. One of the greatest challenges to the human intellect has been to explain how the complex, improbable appearance of design in the universe arises.

2. The natural temptation is to attribute the appearance of design to actual design itself.

3. The temptation is a false one because the designer hypothesis immediately raises the larger problem of who designed the designer.

4. The most ingenious and powerful explanation is Darwinian evolution by natural selection.

5. We don't have an equivalent explanation for physics.

6. We should not give up the hope of a better explanation arising in physics, something as powerful as Darwinism is for biology.

Therefore, God almost certainly does not exist.

This argument is jarring because the atheistic conclusion that "Therefore, God almost certainly does not exist" seems to come suddenly out of left field. You don't need to be a philosopher to realize that that conclusion doesn't follow from the six previous statements.

Indeed, if we take these six statements as premises of an argument intended to logically imply the conclusion "Therefore, God almost certainly does not exist," then the argument is patently invalid. No logical rules of inference would permit you to draw this conclusion from the six premises.

A more charitable interpretation would be to take these six statements, not as premises, but as summary statements of six steps in Dawkins' cumulative argument for his conclusion that God does not exist. But even on this charitable construal, the conclusion "Therefore, God almost certainly does not exist" simply doesn't follow from these six steps, even if we concede that each of them is true and justified. The only delusion demonstrated here is Dawkins' conviction that this is "a very serious argument against God's existence."2

So what does follow from the six steps of Dawkins' argument? At most, all that follows is that we should not infer God's existence on the basis of the appearance of design in the universe. But that conclusion is quite compatible with God's existence and even with our justifiably believing in God's existence. Maybe we should believe in God on the basis of the cosmological argument or the ontological argument or the moral argument. Maybe our belief in God isn't based on arguments at all but is grounded in religious experience or in divine revelation. Maybe God wants us to believe in him simply by faith. The point is that rejecting design arguments for God's existence does nothing to prove that God does not exist or even that belief in God is unjustified. Indeed, many Christian theologians have rejected arguments for the existence of God without thereby committing themselves to atheism.

So Dawkins' argument for atheism is a failure even if we concede, for the sake of argument, all its steps. But, in fact, several of these steps are plausibly false in any case. Take just step (3), for example. Dawkins' claim here is that one is not justified in inferring design as the best explanation of the complex order of the universe because then a new problem arises: Who designed the designer?

This objection is flawed on at least two counts.

First, in order to recognize an explanation as the best, one needn't have an explanation of the explanation. This is an elementary point concerning inference to the best explanation as practiced in the philosophy of science. If archaeologists digging in the earth were to discover things looking like arrowheads and hatchet heads and pottery shards, they would be justified in inferring that these artifacts are not the chance result of sedimentation and metamorphosis, but products of some unknown group of people, even though they had no explanation of who these people were or where they came from. Similarly, if astronauts were to come upon a pile of machinery on the back side of the moon, they would be justified in inferring that it was the product of intelligent, extra-terrestrial agents, even if they had no idea whatsoever who these extra-terrestrial agents were or how they got there.

In order to recognize an explanation as the best, one needn't be able to explain the explanation. In fact, so requiring would lead to an infinite regress of explanations, so that nothing could ever be explained and science would be destroyed. So in the case at hand, in order to recognize that intelligent design is the best explanation of the appearance of design in the universe, one needn't be able to explain the designer.

Second, Dawkins thinks that in the case of a divine designer of the universe, the designer is just as complex as the thing to be explained, so that no explanatory advance is made. This objection raises all sorts of questions about the role played by simplicity in assessing competing explanations—for example, how simplicity is to be weighted in comparison with other criteria like explanatory power, explanatory scope, plausibility, and so forth. If a less simple hypothesis exceeds its rivals in explanatory scope and power, for example, then it may well be the preferred explanation, despite the sacrifice in simplicity.

But leave those questions aside. Dawkins' fundamental mistake lies in his assumption that a divine designer is an entity comparable in complexity to the universe. As an unembodied mind, God is a remarkably simple entity. As a non-physical entity, a mind is not composed of parts, and its salient properties, like self-consciousness, rationality, and volition, are essential to it. In contrast to the contingent and variegated universe with all its inexplicable physical quantities and constants (mentioned in the fifth step of Dawkins' argument),3 a divine mind is startlingly simple. Certainly such a mind may have complex ideas (it may be thinking, for example, of the infinitesimal calculus), but the mind itself is a remarkably simple entity. Dawkins has evidently confused a mind's ideas, which may, indeed, be complex, with a mind itself, which is an incredibly simple entity.4 Therefore, postulating a divine mind behind the universe most definitely does represent an advance in simplicity, for whatever that's worth.

Other steps in Dawkins' argument are also problematic; but I think enough has been said to show that his argument does nothing to undermine a design inference based on the universe's complexity, not to speak of its serving as a justification of atheism.

Several years ago my atheist colleague Quentin Smith unceremoniously crowned Stephen Hawking's argument against God in A Brief History of Time as "the worst atheistic argument in the history of Western thought."5 With the advent of The God Delusion the time has come, I think, to relieve Hawking of this weighty crown and to recognize Richard Dawkins' accession to the throne.
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Endnotes

1 Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2006), 5.

2 Ibid., 157. Indeed, he fancies himself to have offered a "devastating" and "unrebuttable refutation" of God's existence.

3 Otherwise known as the fine-tuning of the universe for life. The optimism expressed in step (6) of Dawkins' argument with respect to finding a physical explanation for the cosmic fine-tuning is really quite baseless and represents little more than the faith of a naturalist. For discussion of the design argument from the fine-tuning of nature's constants and quantities, see William Lane Craig, Reasonable Faith, 3rd ed. (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2008), 157-79.

4 His confusion is evident when he complains, "A God capable of continuously monitoring and controlling the individual status of every particle in the universe cannot be simple. . . . Worse (from the point of view of simplicity), other corners of God's giant consciousness are simultaneously preoccupied with the doings and emotions and prayers of every single human being—and whatever intelligent aliens there might be on other planets in this and 100 billion other galaxies" (God Delusion, 149). This conflates God with what God is thinking about. To say that God, as an immaterial entity, is extraordinarily simple is not to endorse Aquinas' doctrine that God is logically simple (rejected by Dawkins on 150). God may have diverse properties without having the sort of complexity Dawkins is talking about, namely "heterogeneity of parts" (ibid., 150).

5 Quentin Smith, "The Wave Function of a Godless Universe," in Theism, Atheism, and Big Bang Cosmology (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), 322.

God Is Not Dead Yet

(Awakengeneration.com) Frank Turek

The following is from Christian Philosopher William Lane Craig’s recent article “God is not Dead Yet” in Christianity Today. I encourage you to read the entire article. I include this section on the moral argument because of our recent discussion here about how the existence of objective morality requires God– a claim that atheists have yet to refute.

The moral argument. A number of ethicists, such as Robert Adams, William Alston, Mark Linville, Paul Copan, John Hare, Stephen Evans, and others have defended “divine command” theories of ethics, which support various moral arguments for God’s existence.

One such argument:

1. If God does not exist, objective moral values and duties do not exist.
2. Objective moral values and duties do exist.
3. Therefore, God exists.

By objective values and duties, one means values and duties that are valid and binding independent of human opinion. A good many atheists and theists alike concur with premise (1). For given a naturalistic worldview, human beings are just animals, and activity that we count as murder, torture, and rape is natural and morally neutral in the animal kingdom. Moreover, if there is no one to command or prohibit certain actions, how can we have moral obligations or prohibitions?

Premise (2) might seem more disputable, but it will probably come as a surprise to most laypeople to learn that (2) is widely accepted among philosophers. For any argument against objective morals will tend to be based on premises that are less evident than the reality of moral values themselves, as apprehended in our moral experience. Most philosophers therefore do recognize objective moral distinctions.

Nontheists will typically counter the moral argument with a dilemma: Is something good because God wills it, or does God will something because it is good? The first alternative makes good and evil arbitrary, whereas the second makes the good independent of God. Fortunately, the dilemma is a false one. Theists have traditionally taken a third alternative: God wills something because he is good. That is to say, what Plato called “the Good” is the moral nature of God himself. God is by nature loving, kind, impartial, and so on. He is the paradigm of goodness. Therefore, the good is not independent of God.

Moreover, God’s commandments are a necessary expression of his nature. His commands to us are therefore not arbitrary but are necessary reflections of his character. This gives us an adequate foundation for the affirmation of objective moral values and duties.

crossexamined.org

The God Question

Philosopher and Theologian J.P. Moreland has recently come out with a new book entitled The God Question: An Invitation to a Life of Meaning.

For those of you familiar with the writings and lectures of Moreland, this book hardly needs endorsement. J.P. has done wonderful work over the last few decades in the areas of Christian philosophy, apologetics, and spiritual formation. This book carries on that tradition. It is particularly good to give away to non-Christian friends or skeptics who are genuinely interested in examining the truth claims of the Christian faith and discovering true meaning and purpose in life. I gave out several just this Christmas.

You can read Moreland's own summary of his book here.

Life Is Like Monopoly

The following illustration was taken from J.P. Moreland.

Imagine I invite you over to my house one night to play a game of monopoly. On this particular night however, I explain to you that the rules are going to be a little bit different. The monopoly board is in front of us, there is a refrigerator in the kitchen, a television in the living room, some coins in front of us, and a handful of jacks. Now when it's your turn, you can do anything you want, just let me know when you are finished.

On your first turn, you line the monopoly board with hotels and think this spells the beginning of my demise. You say to me, "Okay, your turn." I take my arm and swipe it across the board, knocking all of your hotels off. I then go to the kitchen, open the refrigerator, make myself a sandwich, and say, "Okay, your turn." You say to yourself, "I'm going to try this one more time." So you take all the hotels once again and line the monopoly board and say, "Your turn." This time I turn the monopoly board upside down, flip a couple coins, watch some television, and say, "Your turn." Now if you were faced with this type of situation, it wouldn't take you long to realize that if the game as a whole has no purpose, the individual moves within the game have no value or meaning. The only way your moves within the game of monopoly have meaning is if you discover the purpose of the game and you align yourself with that purpose.

And so it is with life.

Like the game of monopoly, the only way our lives have any ultimate value or meaning is if life has purpose behind it. And the only way life can have purpose behind it is if God exists and there is life after death. Think about it. Let us suppose that there is no God and that atheism is true. What does this mean? It means that we as human beings are simply Johnny-come-lately biological accidents on an insignificant speck of dust we call earth which is hurtling through empty space in a meaningless and random universe that will eventually die a cold heat death. In reality, we are really no more significant then a swarm of mosquitoes. In a universe where there is no God and no afterlife, our actions are meaningless and serve no final end because ultimately each one of us, along with everyone we influence, will die and enter oblivion. In this kind of universe, the mention of morality is an incoherent babbling and hence there is no difference between living the life of a saint or a sociopath, no difference between a Mother Theresa and a Hitler.

IF there is no God.

But, if God does exist, and there is life after death, then suddenly the universe and our individual actions take on meaning because there is ultimate purpose to life. Our actions not only make a difference in this life but also in the life to come. Meaning, value, purpose, and reason, can only exist within a theistic worldview. The absence of these in an atheistic worldview is what philosopher William Lane Craig frequently refers to as "The absurdity of life without God."

What is the purpose of life? It is not happiness, nor pleasure, nor power, nor fame. The purpose of life is to know God and make God known. But ultimate value and meaning does not simply come from knowing the purpose, but in aligning oneself with that purpose. And this means aligning ourselves with Jesus Christ, the author and perfector of our faith. "This is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent…and for this I have come into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth hears my voice" (John 17:3, 18:37).