The Apologetics Advertisement for Christianity
By Nathaniel Ashcroft
Atheism, Morality, and Rhetorical Fallacies
Atheism is defined as the disbelief in the existence of God, which is just as much an expression of faith as theism is. If someone is an atheist, they believe that there is no God, or that it is more reasonable to believe that there is not a God than that there is a God. In making a claim such as this, it must be backed with evidence. The atheist must answer this question: “How can we explain the world under the worldview that there is no God?”
There are atheists who do bring up their evidence for atheism, but they are few and far between. Most of the arguments are philosophical, and therefore not empirical. Although some of the greatest arguments for theism have come from philosophy, there is a certain weight to scientific and historical arguments that philosophy can miss. From what I am aware, there are scarcely a few evidential arguments for atheism. Actually, if I am being honest, I truly cannot think of any evidential atheistic arguments. I am not trying to allow my bias to take over or misrepresent the atheistic position, this is truly what I observe. This section mostly addresses the main argument used: skepticism. Skepticism is essentially just doubting a conclusion. Healthy skepticism is good. Skepticism is not good when it becomes irrational and ignores evidence, or never evolves past merely a ‘what if’ statement. Healthy skepticism starts as a ‘what if’, but when presented with evidence either becomes validated or is deemed irrational and only speculative. Keep this in mind as you read.
Skepticism is not evidence. This is a simple fact, and we must operate under it if we are to arrive at truth. I can be skeptical of literally anything. I can be skeptical of my government; are they telling the truth about the moon landing? I can be skeptical of my friends; do they really want to hang out with me, or are they doing it because they feel bad? I can be skeptical of my existence; am I in an eternal dream-like state? None of these have any evidence in support of them. To actually seek truth, we must follow evidence. If there was substantial evidence for these assertions, then they would be valid considerations in the pursuit of truth. Side note to any Christian readers- the devil loves it when you become skeptical of Biblical truths. Remember the first lie? Did God really say?
“Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (NIV, John 8:32)
Ultimately, atheism is quite lacking in evidence. This is largely due to the fact that most atheists only attack Christianity, without providing evidence that the universe is explainable under an atheistic worldview. Evidence, as I am using it here in this section, is information that supports a belief or a conclusion in any way at all. This is how we always arrive at the truth. Therefore, any attack on Christianity is skeptical unless evidence is provided. Again, I could be wrong, but I truly cannot think of an evidential atheistic argument.
Let’s demonstrate this through a hypothetical scenario: I tell a friend that it is dangerous to drive quickly. My evidence is the amount of automotive crashes a year, I give equations showing the limitations of the frictional force on tires, and lastly I show my friend studies about the average human reaction time. I remind him he drives a van, which is not meant to go quickly, especially around turns. I tell him he’s not guaranteed to crash if he excessively speeds, but it is dangerous to drive in this manner. This is all evidence. It doesn’t mean I am right, it means I have good information that supports my point.
My friend responds like this: I mean, have you ever been in a crash? Then how would you know? They could be lying on that website, what if I don’t trust them? If you have a car with enough downforce it could probably be safe. Who are you to force your beliefs onto me? There’s a lot of people in the world, so the crashes a year statistic is probably a blown proportion.
Yes, this is a slight exaggeration to demonstrate my point. See? He didn’t give me any evidence. He was skeptical of my claims, attacked the credibility of them, and gave me possible scenarios in which it may not be dangerous. But he did not counter with any evidence. Skepticism is not substantive. When skeptical claims are made they are only attempting to subtract from the opposite view point. Even if the skeptic does reduce the credibility or substance of the opposite view point, he’s still at a deficit. It’s still substantive evidence (Christian arguments currently provided) versus nothing (atheist arguments currently provided). To put up a valid critique, the skeptic must provide evidence for their atheistic worldview as well as argue against the opposite side. He must make it substantive evidence (Christian arguments currently provided) versus substantive evidence (atheist arguments currently provided).
My friend could have provided evidence such as this: I drive quickly all the time. One time, I went 100mph on a straight highway. The German autobahn has no speed limit, and it’s quite safe. Is this good evidence? No, not really. Even if he has never crashed, that doesn’t mean it’s safe to drive quickly. At the speeds this fake person gave, their reaction time starts to become seriously tested. If something were to go wrong while going at those speeds, which can also be a risk safely going the speed limit, the repercussions will be far worse. So don’t speed. Seriously.
Atheism reduces existence to chance, reduces our value as a person to chemicals in skin, entirely gets rid of true moral value, and does not seem to adequately explain our universe. Atheists and skeptics often ask Christians to exactly and fully prove Christianity, and in doing this continue to mount and assault against Christianity without giving any evidence for their beliefs. Granted, refuting opposing views to Christianity does help me, but not nearly as much as the philosophical, empirical, historical, scientific, and practical evidence does. When an atheist tries to discredit the Bible, it doesn’t prove atheism. It’s just an attack. Or if an atheist is taking up an attempted scientific refutation of Christianity, they must also show how they can explain the world without God. I want to see evidence versus evidence. Not skepticism versus evidence. So, when atheists demand a high level of evidence of Christians, it also begs the question, do they have that level of evidence for atheism? There are an incredible number of arguments for Christianity, all piled with evidence, but yes, there is no time machine we can take back to the stone being rolled away, or to the transfiguration, or to the ascension. Theism is the majority view across history, and therefore the ‘default’ position. So, if someone is to assert that there is no God, they must provide evidence for that claim just as much as the Christian does. I’ve never met an atheist. I’ve met a lot of anti-theismists and anti-Christianists, though.
Morality
The argument from the existence of universal moral values is perhaps one of the most observable evidences for the existence of God. Here is the argument in a simple and concise form: The vast majority of people across history and in today’s society hold to believe some actions to be right, and some to be wrong. This leads us to an intelligent designer, because rules require a mind. Can anything without a mind cause there to be universal rules? Do things without minds have expectations? Can matter give humans intrinsic value? Of course not, but since we do see these rules and observe that humans of all kinds and walks of life have intrinsic value, we must credit this observance to someone. The only way an action can be factually right and factually wrong, not because of each human’s opinion, is if it is enforced by some sort of higher standard, which must originate from a mind. The continued morality section below is more academic, so take your time reading.
Since humans are all universally aware of right and wrong in extremely similar (often near identical) ways, there needs to also be a universal reason as to why we believe this. There must be a universal reason to adequately explain a universal observance. Otherwise it would not be a universal observance, and each person and culture would believe in very different moral values (Romans 2:12-15). Some may object and point to people such as Adolf Hitler and say that morality is not universal. I highly doubt Hitler believed mass genocide was morally permissible in of itself. He justified it by believing he was purifying the land of certain people. He de-humanized them.
Never has there been a more fervent form of atheism than when the atheist believes themself to be the source of truth. This is manifest in the de-humanizing of others. The denial of the imago Dei. They would not phrase it as such, but that is what it is. A denial that a certain person or population of people are lesser. The faulty conclusion that a person does not bear the image of God, and that their opinion has the power to devalue them.
If morality is not objective, but relative, then no one can say anything is right and no one can say that anything is wrong objectively. All any person could state is their opinion on the matter. Opinions are only true if they correspond with reality. Relative morality is the idea that each person has a different view of morality, and nothing is objectively right and objectively wrong; all the morality that exists is decided by the individual (opinionated). If moral relativism is true, then Hitler was correct in his worldview; in his mind it was morally correct to commit mass genocide by justifying it by racial superiority. If morality is relative, no one has any grounds to accuse anyone of anything. Under what authority would Hitler be wrong? Your opinion? The amount of people who share your opinion? Your opinion that your opinion is more ‘right’ than his? That’s no authority at all.
Jonathan Edwards states in Freedom of the Will,
“The sun is very excellent and beneficial in its action and influence on the earth, in warming and causing it to bring forth its fruit; but it is not a moral agent: its action, though good, is not virtuous or meritorious. Fire that breaks out in a city, and consumes great part of it, is very mischievous in its operation; but is not a moral Agent: what it does is not faulty or sinful, or deserving of any punishment. The brute creatures are not moral Agents: the actions of some of them are very profitable and pleasant; others are very hurtful: yet seeing they have no moral faculty, or sense of desert, and do not act from choice guided by under standing, or with a capacity of reasoning and reflecting, but only from instinct, and are not capable of being influenced by moral inducements, their actions are not properly sinful or virtuous, nor are they properly the subjects of any such moral treatment for what they do, as moral Agents are for their faults or good deeds” (Edwards 24).
Some will say that psychologically, humanity only believes in morality insofar as it pertains to self preservation. If we see someone get attacked by another person, and we would rather not have a similar event befall us, then that feeling of self preservation is how we get our moral sense. Of course, looking at the excerpt from Freedom of the Will, we must acknowledge that we do not think fire is morally incorrect whenever it poses a threat to our lives, so this idea of self preservation that others believe constitutes morality is flawed. The sun does so many good things for us, and yet we would not say the sun is morally correct in doing so. It’s doesn’t logically make sense to assign morality to inanimate objects, but biologically, if the only reason we experience moral compulsions is due to the feeling of not-wanting-uncomfortable-stuff-to-happen-to-us, then we should think fire morally wrong, blizzards morally wrong, and the chair you hit your knee on morally wrong. But no one believes that, it’s not grounded in reason. We often do not even say that animals are in the wrong when they do an action that hurts us. This is where we must look to a higher authority to appeal to for the morality of our existence.
This idea of self-preservation morality I am addressing only accounts for the reason we don’t want bad things to happen to others and ourselves, but not for why anyone believes it to be factually wrong. Mostly everyone agrees that immorality is much deeper than not wanting evil to befall ‘myself and others’. There is a difference between asserting an action is actually incorrect to do, or just thinking I don’t want that action to be applied to me. Yet people of all beliefs make statements of moral absoluteness all the time. So the atheist point of view explains morality by self-preservation, but not why we deeply believe it’s wrong in a universal and objective sense. This is where people come to the moral relativistic conclusion, which I wrote about earlier. This idea also does not account for why morality is so universally believed in similar ways, and has been for all of history.
The self-preservation route links morality to Darwinian evolution in some sense, in which our moral values come from our genes, which develop this morality from a drive to self-preservation. Self preservation is a very Darwinian idea when paired with the idea that it affects our genetics. Genetics vary quite a lot from person to person. If morality is truly linked to our genetics, then it should be as varied as hair color, height, weight, eye color, and whatever else, but it just simply isn’t. Why do we also think some actions to be wrong even if they do not adversely affect anybody in a life-endangering manner (lying, sexual immorality, cheating, etc.). If morality is relative in this way, what am I going to say when someone commits an action against me that I believe to be wrong? My genes more correct than yours? My morality is more right than your morality? All you can say is, “Hey I didn’t like that!” But who cares if you didn’t like it, if morality is relative? In this view, there’s no objective standard, there’s no God who has said that the action is wrong; the only grounds for anyone asserting something is wrong is the survival instinct within them (that doesn’t account for morality anyway) that is derived from their genetics. Maybe the person who wronged you has a different morality. Maybe they think it’s ok. This is where emotivism (I’m not going to get into what this is, if you want to know more feel free to research it) breaks down. If the only reason why humans don’t want an action to happen is because said action hurt us during our evolutionary process, then the response would simply only include our expression that we don’t want to be hurt, and that expression of self preservation would be the same for humans and non-human entities. The ‘wrong’ part should never enter the conversation. It also fails to explain why we emphasize others’ wellbeing and happiness over our own, or, in simpler terms, we have a moral obligation to do good.
‘Wrong’ carries a very heavy connotation with it. A wrong action answers to some sort of standard. If you get a question wrong on a math test, it is objectively incorrect. Wrong carries a heavily objective connotation. I could just be making a big deal over semantics, but when people use ‘wrong’ in relation to morality, they certainly seem to mean it with its connotation and actual meaning both. According to the United States government, it is illegal to drive over the speed limit. Now that this standard has been set, when we see someone driving over the set speed limit, we can appeal to that standard and assert that what they are doing is wrong in relation to said law. Apart from this law, we have no grounds to assert that a person is doing something wrong by going a certain speed.
This is an imperfect analogy, however, because ‘wrong’ carries with it a standard that far exceeds the United States government. A governmental decree also does not put an emotional, conscious, and inherent intuition that the stated decree is right or wrong. In the U.S., we believe actions to be wrong that are not punishable by any law the government has put into place. We believe it to be wrong to disrespect those who care and love for you. There is no law in place to defend this. The only way we can make any claim about a person besides ourselves and deem them to be committing an action that is fundamentally incorrect, is if we appeal to a standard that is higher than both parties. As Christians, we know we are appealing to God. God has decreed you shall “Love your neighbor as yourself” (NIV, Mark 12:31). Now we have grounds that are higher than our genes and higher than our opinion that we can stand on to make a moral claim.
It requires much more faith to believe the atheistic side of this in my opinion. So why does everybody do it?
So before you try to disprove any elements of Christianity, consider why you don’t want to even attempt the faith it requires, even if you have already taken a much larger one for atheism. Ultimately, when debating over questions that have to do with why God did an action, like why suffering exists if God is good (this will be addressed later), it’s already a difficult question. If we assume that God is true, for the sake of argument, then because He is infinite with an infinite mind, it’s impossible to fully explain why God does anything. We can consider the evidence and make educated guesses, but some things are above our pay grade. So the argument that the Christian God doesn’t even exist just because of one of His actions or decisions is basically saying, “I don’t like how He did this, so I don’t believe in Him”. It’s simply not a good argument, and, assuming there is a God, it’s an unanswerable question because our finite minds frankly cannot understand the infinite will and plan of an infinite God who is omnipotent (all-powerful), omnipresent (present everywhere always), and omniscient (all-knowing). What the atheist should be considering is, “does this God even exist?”
Many times I have failed when speaking to skeptical atheists/agnostics by thinking that I had to prove to them exactly why certain Bible stories happened the way they did, especially when I had never heard the objection before. I do not need to justify the actions of God. He is God, all His ways are just. So again, if anyone thinks an action of God unjust, they absolutely have to be wrong, as their argument assumes that God exists. The idea of justice is a reflection of the character of God. He’s incapable of injustice, and therefore any allegations of unjust behavior that are raised to God are false.
Some may be surprised I did not address the Euthyphro Dilemma. This is simply because I don’t understand how it is supposed to try to disprove the idea that morality must be derived from God. I don’t understand why the answer isn’t just that morality is derived from God and God is unchanging. Any wrong action is wrong because it strays from what God has decreed is good from everlasting to everlasting; it’s wrong because we are disobeying what God made perfect.
Behind many of the popular atheistic arguments are a few rhetorical fallacies. Rhetoric is the use of strategies to convince or sway the listener in a certain direction. It can be used to make the recipient feel a specific effect, like quickness or urgency. A fallacy is something that is a trick or a false idea. A rhetorical fallacy is a faulty argument or line of reasoning that is convincing but does not hold up under scrutiny. Let’s consider four of these fallacies.
1: Hasty Generalization
The first fallacy is going to be a hasty generalization. This is when a conclusion is made by providing a small amount of specific evidence (essentially an extreme form of inductive reasoning). This is a fallacy because the conclusion made from such a small amount of evidence is not backed strongly enough to actually be reliable.
An extreme example is finding one person with brown hair and making the conclusion that everyone has brown hair. When debating if Jesus claimed to be God or not, atheists often find an instance highlighting Jesus’s humanity, which is a big part of what we believe about Jesus, and say that because His humanity is highlighted in one instance, He is not God. These instances usually deal with Jesus humbling himself below the Father. The atheist picks one specific time in which Jesus is shown to be humbled below the Father, and it is then used to make a hasty generalization: He is not God. Philippians 2:6-11 highlights Jesus’s identity as we believe it quite well. Pretty fire passage.
2: Begging the Question
The second fallacy is arguing by begging the question. This is when a conclusion is provided and is presumed to be a proven fact. It’s a fallacy because no evidence is offered for the conclusion besides the arguer’s word, which is a bad line of reasoning as the only reason the recipient has to believe the conclusion presented is because the arguer says so. The ultimate “trust me bro” argument.
I’ve found that when talking about the topic of science, non-believers will simply say that evolution is the cause of how humans came to be, and assume it is a proven fact. Evolution does not create. Evolution did not create life. Evolution does not explain the biological order in creation. Macro evolution, if true, is only a mechanism. Not a creator. People often use this rhetorical fallacy when they are not well versed in the topic of biology or astrophysics, but make an assertion based on what they have been told. I personally do not think macro evolution is a phenomenon that happens when the evidence is considered, but it doesn’t really matter regardless. I have not backed this conclusion here, but I did earlier in the creation section. If I had not done that earlier, this would be an example of begging the question.
The Big Bang theory is also fallaciously used to attempt to disprove theism. It is also often accompanied with the ‘begging the question’ fallacy. Ironically, the Big Bang was not initially seen as an idea that disproved God, but an idea that gave extremely strong evidence for God! Only recently has it been used as an argument against theism, and that is likely because the person who is utilizing this argument may not know what the Big Bang theory implies.
I would ask anyone who uses these arguments to explain it before making the conclusion. If I find that they are very well versed in astrophysics and biology, only then can we start to have a real conversation.
3: Appeal to Ignorance
The third fallacy is the appeal to ignorance. This is whenever the belief is held that if a certain conclusion is not completely proven true, it must be false. This is a fallacy because a slight lack of evidence in no way constitutes a faulty conclusion.
I think you can already see where I’m going with this. Elements of Christian theology are sometimes discarded, like the resurrection, because they do not have ‘proof’ that it is a historical event. Faith, in Christianity, is not blind. It is grounded in evidence. We don’t have a printed picture of Jesus walking out of the tomb, nor a video of His post-resurrection appearances. But that line of proof is impossible to acquire. For that time period, the evidence and preservation of the historical events in the Bible are unrivaled. We essentially have the next best thing to a video documentary of the events, in my opinion. Atheists don’t require this standard of proof for anything else. As I established before, atheism itself is a belief set, not grounded in pure empirical and verified proof. Even just on the broad topic of God’s existence, some atheists abuse this fallacy; if complete proof that provides certainty is not provided, God doesn’t exist. Now, Christians can also use this fallacy straight back at them and say that we need proof that there is not a God, and if this is not provided God exists.
4: Non Sequitur
The fourth fallacy is non sequitur. This is when a statement is given that draws a conclusion, but the premises of the conclusion do not correlate to the conclusion. For example: John outran Peter because John is cooler than Peter. This is a fallacy because the assertion that John is cooler than Peter has absolutely nothing to do with the outcome of the race.
This faulty line of reasoning is used when dealing with the actions of the Christian God. The very idea of attempting to disprove the Christian worldview by saying the actions of God are immoral or illogical assumes that God exists, but the arguer just doesn’t like what He’s done. Most of the time the nonbelievers who utilize this fallacy have a strong bias against God in some way and try to find anything that they themselves disagree with in Christian theology. Of course, if God exists, He is the source of logic (logos; John 1) and the origin of morality (Romans 3:23), and therefore He makes what is logical and what is not; what is moral and what is not, and it would be rather prideful to impose your worldview on His actions. The divine hiddenness argument is guilty of this fallacy, along with the majority of the attacks on Old Testament judgement. The premises given (God did something I do not like in the Bible) do not correlate with the conclusion (God does not exist).
Cheeky Disclaimer
Now, Christians are not without use of these fallacies, we are all fallen. I’m merely highlighting the areas in which they are used by non-believers most commonly. A lot of these atheistic arguments can have quite a strong persuasion over a newer Christian, and I am only trying to highlight why they are invalid and how to recognize more as such. I am not claiming that these rhetorical fallacies are solely used by atheists, I am unveiling the illogical reasoning behind atheistic arguments which use these rhetorical fallacies.
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View next week’s section to learn if the true religion can be based on works for salvation.
Works Cited
NIV Quest Study Bible. Zondervan, 2011.
Edwards, Jonathan. Freedom of the Will. Christian Classics Ethereal Library, 1754 (original publish date).