Which is Easier to Believe, that Life Was created by God or by Chance?

OK, this question gets asked a lot by theists in a lot of different ways. At its core, it’s simply a form of the classic “Argument from Design” that I addressed here:

The Argument from Design

But let’s look at this from a slightly different perspective, shall we?

Time and again, we see theists claiming that it is just too improbable or inconceivable to imagine that life could have originated “by chance” and therefore the most reasonable explanation is that it was created by the omnipotent, omniscient, all-loving and perfect God described by the particular religion of which they happen to be a member.

Unfortunately for theists, the life we see on earth is far from what we would actually expect to see if it were actually created by an omnipotent, omniscient, all-loving and perfect God, the way we would expect to see a finely crafted watch from a master watchmaker. Instead of perfection and fine craftsmanship, we see eyes that have blind spots, vestigial organs that occasionally burst open and kill us, cells that periodically start reproducing uncontrollably (cancer), a propensity for genetic flaws that cause all sorts of diseases such as Downs Syndrome and Tay-Sachs disease, a whole system that gradually breaks down as you get older, etc., etc., etc. So much for “fine craftsmanship,” eh?

And that’s just the human condition! Sure, it’s pretty amazing that plants and animals so closely depend on each other for survival and it’s so cool that bees are attracted to beautiful flowers who need the bees to spread their pollen. What a great design! How perfect! But then you also have the fact that there are parasites that have to lay their eggs in living hosts so their larva can hatch and eat their way out to survive. Not quite so beautiful and perfect. And then there’s the whole predator/pray relationship where some animals have to brutally kill other animals to survive (and the prey animals have to be brutally killed in order to not overpopulate and starve to death). And don’t forget that the rest of the animal kingdom also gets nasty diseases and suffer accidents and experience pain and agony. Oh, look — A Tasmanian Devil with face cancer:

[Where’s the perfect design in all of that?]

As a result, theists find themselves in the position of coming up with a whole bunch of additional justifications and rationalizations as to why life is so flawed when it was supposedly created by a perfect being, including one or more of the following:

• All of nature used to be perfect before Adam sinned and caused the entire universe to enter a fallen state. Which means, what, God is a sadistic bastard who set up a system whereby ALL OF NATURE would need to suffer for the sins of one person instead of just punishing that one person?
• God specifically gave us these flawed bodies to provide us with obstacles in life to be overcome or to test our faith or some other reason known only to him because he works in mysterious ways. And I guess all those cute, furry animals that die horrible agonizing deaths also have important lessons to learn as well, huh?
• It doesn’t matter whether life is flawed right now, since life is but a twinkling of an eye compared to all eternity and we’ll all have perfect bodies in the next life.
• “You are assuming the human body can be better designed under these circumstances. Maybe it can’t. You are also assuming it is not a work in progress. You can probably imagine the first watches were not fine tuned machines.” [An actual response I received from a theist, who apparently thinks an omnipotent, omniscient, all-loving and perfect being needs theists like him to make excuses for His shoddy workmanship and who doesn’t understand what “omnipotent” actually means.]

It doesn’t matter what your personal favorite justification is. The point is that, despite what theists claim, the evidence of our senses does not automatically give us reason to believe in the sort of God that most theists claim to believe in (omnipotent, omniscient, all-loving and perfect) and theists MUST tack on other conditions for which there is no evidence.

Naturalism (or “atheism”, if you insist), on the other hand, requires no such additional caveats and conditions and justifications to be believable. We know from observation that there are natural laws that govern how the universe works. And, although we may not have perfect knowledge of every natural law, there is no reason not to believe that those laws can explain every single observed phenomenon, including the origin of life itself.

So, which is easier to believe? That the natural world evolved to be the way it is — warts and all — due to purely the natural processes that govern the universe, or that the natural world was designed by an omnipotent, omniscient, all-loving and perfect God who, for some reason we can’t quite figure out, decided to make the world look as if it had evolved to be the way it is — warts and all — due to purely the natural processes that govern the universe? My money is on the former.

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One final thought. To many theists, there are only two options — either life was created “by God” or else it happened “by chance.” And “by chance” apparently means completely randomly, entirely by coincidence, etc. This is a false dichotomy, however. “By chance” in this context simply means without being directed by any sort of intelligence, yet still according to natural laws that guide and constrain the outcome.

Doesn’t the Beauty and Majesty of the Natural World Prove that God Exists?

A question that gets frequently asked of atheists is how we can possibly look at all the wonders of the natural world and not believe in God? Now, sure, this is partially just a restatement of the classic “Argument from Design” (which I cover in detail here), and it also involves a fair amount of arguing from ignorance or incredulity (“I can’t personally imagine how such a thing is possible without God, therefore it must not be possible”). But I think it actually goes a little deeper than that.

After all, once upon a time, we really did have no idea what caused sunsets, how mountains formed, how rock structures came to looked like they were carved into interesting shapes, etc., so it only made sense to think that such things were specifically created for our benefit. But now we obviously are able to explain how all these things are caused by purely natural forces and principles, so this question can’t just be due to sheer ignorance of how the natural world works. There must be more to it than that.

But hey — maybe all this means is that God created all the natural laws in the first place and therefore is ultimately responsible for it turning out the way it has. Sure, God didn’t personally sculpt the amazing rock formations seen in Utah’s Zion National Park or the Grand Canyon, but can’t we still give Him the credit for creating the rocks and wind and water and setting up a natural system whereby rocks can be eroded by wind and water? And sure, maybe God doesn’t personally paint every single beautiful sunset by hand, but we can still praise Him for creating the water cycles that causes clouds to form and making it so that sunlight refracts when it strikes water droplets, etc., right? And, OK, so maybe God didn’t personally cause those majestic mountains to rise out of the crust and get covered with snow, but we can still worship Him for coming up with the idea of plate tectonics and snow in the first place, right? After all, God created the entire universe from scratch, and therefore every beautiful and awesome and great thing we see in that universe must therefore be the result of God’s will, right?

So, maybe the argument is not simply about how could all these things exist without God but instead why would they all be so majestic and beautiful and awe-inspiring without God. Surely God must have set things up so that the end results would be so amazing, right?

OK, let’s play that game. The natural world is full of amazing, beautiful, wonderful and awe-inspiring things that prove that God exists and loves us enough to share all this beauty with us. Gotcha. Now let’s take a look at all the things in the natural world that aren’t so great shall we? Let’s look at the volcanic eruptions instead of just looking at the majestic mountains. Let’s look at the vast dust storms instead of just looking at the pretty sunsets. Let’s look at the floods and earthquakes and droughts and lightning strikes and tornadoes and hurricanes and tsunamis instead of just looking at the amazing rock formations. And then go look at the children dying of genetic diseases and the ugliness of things like Ebola and smallpox and parasitic infections and flesh-eating bacteria. Care to look at some picture of people with half of their face eaten off? Seriously — go ahead and do a Google image search for flesh-eating bacteria. It’s OK, I’ll wait for you to finish vomiting at the sight and come back here.

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Still with me? Wonderful. Now, after looking at all that ugliness in the world, you go ahead and tell me that it’s all a testament to just how depraved and sadistic and cruel God is, since He created the universe from scratch and therefore every horrible and ugly and terrible thing we see in that universe must also be the result of God’s will.

• No, you can’t claim that the ugliness is just random stuff not under God’s direct control or all the work of Satan.
• No, you can’t claim that all the bad stuff is the result of man’s exercise of free will, since I didn’t even mention anything related to man’s inhumanity to man.
• No, you can’t claim that Adam and Eve sinned and somehow caused the entire universe to enter a “fallen” state since (a) that would mean that a supposedly loving God decided to punish the entire universe for the sins of two people and (b) it would also negate all the previously “great” things that you previously gave God credit for. I mean, seriously — either the world is full of ugliness because it is in a fallen state or else it is full of beauty and greatness because of God. You can’t have it both ways.

So, please. Go ahead. You admit that all the ugliness in the world is evidence that God is a sadistic bastard (or, perhaps doesn’t exist at all), and I’ll admit that the beauty in the natural world is evidence that He does exist and loves us so much that He wants to share His glory with us. You don’t get to just look at the good and ignore the bad and claim that it somehow proves something.

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Having said all that, let me just make it clear that I do think there are many beautiful, majestic and awe-inspiring sights in the natural world, both here on earth and out in the rest of the known universe. And no, I don’t think the entire universe is a dark and depressing place just because there are also many ugly, hideous and scary things as well. I take the good with the bad and understand that this is what happens when you have a universe that operates on impersonal natural principles and that wasn’t designed specifically for our benefit.

The Logical Impossibility of God

Is God constrained by the laws of logic?  It's an important question, and the answer seems to be, "Yes, but only when it's convenient to say that He is."

It's an old chestnut of a question, but whenever theists start talking about how their particular version of God is "omnipotent" some atheist wag will invariably ask, "If God is omnipotent, can He create a stone so massive that He can't move it?"  To which the theist will usually respond, "that's a logical impossibility and being omnipotent means being able to do anything logically possible."  OK, so no creating a stone too massive for Him to move, no creating a square circle, etc.  Got it.  And, presumably, this is because logic transcends human understanding and provides general principles of existence.  There isn't "human logic" and "God logic," there's just logic.

With me so far?

OK, now one of the fundamental principles of logic is the so-called Law of Non-contradiction, which in its basic form states that, "Contradictory statements cannot both be true in the same sense at the same time."  This means that the two propositions "A is B" and "A is not B" are mutually exclusive.  It also means that something cannot simultaneously be two opposite things.  This is why, for example, there can be no such thing as a square circle or an married bachelor since both concepts involve a self-contradiction.

So, is there anything about God's supposed nature that violates the Law of Non-contradiction?

Well, one place to start would be to examine the relationship between him supposedly being  both omnipotent (all powerful) and omnibenevolent (all loving).  This apparent contradiction was perhaps best stated by the ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus, who put it this way:

God, he says, either wishes to take away evils, and is unable; or He is able, and is unwilling; or He is neither willing nor able, or He is both willing and able. If He is willing and is unable, He is feeble, which is not in accordance with the character of God; if He is able and unwilling, He is envious, which is equally at variance with God; if He is neither willing nor able, He is both envious and feeble, and therefore not God; if He is both willing and able, which alone is suitable to God, from what source then are evils? Or why does He not remove them?

Or, as it is commonly put:

Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then He is not omnipotent.
Is He able, but not willing? Then He is not benevolent.
Is He both able and willing? Then whence comment evil?
Is He neither willing nor able? Then why call Him God?

So that's it, right?  The so-called "Problem of Evil" proves the logical impossibility of God since (a) Evil cannot exist if there is an omnipotent, omnibenevolent God and (b) we know from our own experience that there is, in fact, evil.  Well, not quite...

Although this argument has been sufficient to convince many people throughout history to reject the idea of God, those who cling to their beliefs have come up with numerous ways to get around the apparent contradiction:

• "Evil," they will say, "is the result of human free will, and since God values free will more than anything He allows evil."  Except, of course, this only applies to evil acts done as a result of human free will (murder, rape, robbery, etc.) and wholly ignores things like pain and suffering caused by genetic diseases, natural disasters, accidents, etc.


• "When Adam and Eve sinned against God in the Garden of Eden, the world fell into a fallen state, so all the evils in the world are a direct result of those actions."  Except, of course, this doesn't explain why God would need to punish the entire world (not to mention universe) because of the actions of two people.  Why not simply punish Adam and Eve (and all their descendants if God were feeling particularly vengeful) and leave the rest of the natural world alone?  Why make animals die horribly painful and cruel deaths just to teach us a lesson?  Wouldn't it be a more powerful lesson if everything in nature was blissfully happy except for us?  Besides, God is the one who set the whole system up in the first place, so it was his decision to make the whole universe suffer for the sins of Adam and Eve and not their free will.


• "This life is a test, and how we deal with suffering will determine our eternal fate."  Well, OK, but that seems awfully callous when applying it to, say, young children who are born with horrible genetic diseases that cause them to lead painfully short lives.  It also doesn't address all the pain and suffering throughout the rest of the natural world.


• "This life is but a twinkling of an eye when compared to all eternity, so any pain and suffering we experience while alive will seem like a mere pin-prick when compared to the rest of our existence."

And the list goes on and on.  The bottom line is that there's always some way to define "omnipotent", "omnibenevolent" and even "evil" to avoid inherent contradictions, even if the newly defined terms don't really make much sense or accord with experience.  "An all-loving God is one who lets His children have free will, not freedom from suffering."  "Pain and suffering are actually good things, not evils."  You get the idea.  As I said, a lot of people are not convinced by these rationalizations, but they do make it hard to state unequivocally that God is logically impossible solely due to the so-called Problem of Evil.

OK, how about this?  In order to create the universe, which is the totality of all time and space, God must exist outside of time and space.  Which means He must not be composed of matter or energy Himself.  But, if God is not composed of matter or energy, how can He possibly have created matter and energy in the first place and how can He continue to interact with it today?  That seems like a logical contradiction, doesn't it?

Well, not quite.  Even if we accept that God is composed of neither matter nor energy, we cannot state unequivocally that He would therefore be unable to interact with matter and energy.  In the same way that energy can interact with matter despite not being composed of matter, God could be composed of some entirely different substance (let's call it "mind" or "spirit") that can interact with matter and energy in some way we just can't understand.  Of course, we now know that energy actually is composed of matter in a very real sense, but that just means the analogy (commonly used by theistic apologists) is a bad one.  It doesn't change the fact that God logically could be composed of some other substance that allows Him to interact with matter and energy without being composed of matter or energy Himself.

OK, so the mere fact that God somehow interacts with matter and energy while being composed of neither is not, in and of itself, a logical impossibility.  I think we are getting very close, however...

In order to avoid any apparent contradictions inherent in the notion of a God who is timeless and not composed of matter or energy, Christian apologists over the years have declared that God is both "Transcendent" and "Immanent".  According to Wikipedia,  the two terms are defined as follows:

Transcendence refers to the aspect of a god's nature and power which is wholly independent of the material universe, beyond all physical laws. This is contrasted with Immanence, where a god is said to be fully present in the physical world and thus accessible to creatures in various ways. 

Or, in other words, God is both wholly apart from the material universe and wholly within the material universe. At the same time.  He is simultaneously B and not B.  His very nature is therefore in violation of the Law of Non-contradiction and He is therefore logically impossible.  Q.E.D.

Now, some will argue (and believe me, they have) that it doesn't matter if God is logically impossible since we're only talking about human logic here and God is above such things.  Well, fine, except then why do you claim that an omnipotent God can't create a rock too massive for Him to move or can't create a square circle?  Aren't those just principles of human logic as well?  It seems that if you want to apply some logical principles to God, you would have to apply all of them (not just the ones that are convenient).

It seems that theists are left with three possible responses to this:

1. They can claim that God isn't bound by anything whatsoever and therefore can actually create a rock too massive for Him to move, create a square circle, etc.  Of course, once you throw all logic out the window it becomes rather pointless to discuss anything, but some theists are apparently willing to do just this.


2. They can claim that Immanence and Transcendence aren't actually opposites despite the plain definitions of the words.  But, since the whole idea of God being both Immanent and Transcendent is a way to explain how He could create the universe and still be part of the universe, there's no real way of getting around the fact that they are, in fact, complete opposites.  A lot of theists do go down this path, but they are usually the same ones who will write dissertations on how God can simultaneously be three distinct beings and one unified being that is absolutely not made up of three distinct beings whatsoever ["We worship one God in trinity, and trinity in unity, neither confounding the persons nor dividing the substance. For the person of the Father is one; of the Son, another; of the Holy Spirit, another. But the divinity of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit is one, the glory equal, the majesty equal. Such as is the Father, such also is the Son, and such the Holy Spirit. The Father is uncreated, the Son is uncreated, the Holy Spirit is uncreated. The Father is infinite, the Son is infinite, the Holy Spirit is infinite. The Father is eternal, the Son is eternal, the Holy Spirit is eternal. And yet there are not three eternal Beings, but one eternal Being. So also there are not three uncreated Beings, nor three infinite Beings, but one uncreated and one infinite Being. In like manner, the Father is omnipotent, the Son is omnipotent, and the Holy Spirit is omnipotent. And yet there are not three omnipotent Beings, but one omnipotent Being. Thus the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God. And yet there are not three Gods, but one God only. The Father is Lord, the Son is Lord, and the Holy Spirit is Lord. And yet there are not three Lords, but one Lord only. For as we are compelled by Christian truth to confess each person distinctively to be both God and Lord, we are prohibited by the Catholic religion to say that there are three Gods or Lords. The Father is made by none, nor created, nor begotten. The Son is from the Father alone, not made, not created, but begotten. The Holy Spirit is not created by the Father and the Son, nor begotten, but proceeds. Therefore, there is one Father, not three Fathers; one Son, not three Sons; one Holy Spirit, not three Holy Spirits. And in this Trinity there is nothing prior or posterior, nothing greater or less, but all three persons are coeternal and coequal to themselves. So that through all, as was said above, both unity in trinity and trinity in unity is to be adored. Whoever would be saved, let him thus think concerning the Trinity."]


3. They can just wave their magical Wand of Definitions^TM and state that God is defined as the sort of being who can be both Transcendent and Immanent without there being any sort of logical contradiction involved.

The bottom line, as far as I am concerned, is that God is absolutely and undeniably logically  impossible, a self-contradiction (at least as commonly depicted and worshiped).  The only question is whether theists actually care about this fact or whether cognitive dissonance will force them to compartmentalize and ignore it so as to not feel any angst about their beliefs.

Inconsistencies

No, this is not a going to be a discussion of apparent contradictions in the Bible. Instead, this will be a discussion of common inconsistencies in the arguments used by some people to defend the Bible as well their core beliefs based on the Bible. It's kind of an omnibus post of all the things that drive me crazy when listening to people try to justify their beliefs despite the fact that the Bible doesn't actually agree with what they are saying. As always, the views I ascribe to Christians in this post reflect things that I have actually heard or read Christians say, but may certainly not reflect the views of all Christians or even most Christians.


Why Would a Loving God Condemn His Children To Eternal Suffering?
 
A core Christian belief is that God is all-loving, cares about each and every one of his “children” and wants only the best for us. At the same time, however, God has apparently set up a system wherein THE VAST MAJORITY of his children will spend all eternity being tortured since only a very small percentage of all of humanity belong to whatever religion is the "right" religion (or even have “accepted Jesus into their hearts” if you believe that all Christian religions are equally valid paths to get to Heaven). Apologists try to wriggle out of this problem in a number of ways, including the following:

• All humans are sinners by nature and the demands of justice require that all sinners suffer eternally for their sins. God, through his great mercy and love, found a way to satisfy the demands of justice by sending down his son (a.k.a. himself) to take upon him all our sins and die for our sakes. Therefore, all we need to do is accept of Jesus (and possibly obey all of God’s commands and belong to the right denomination, depending on who you ask). The problem with this, however, is that God himself set up the whole system in the first place, including what is “demanded” by justice and the fact that these demands “must” be satisfied. Surely an omnipotent God could have set up a system where all his children could live in heaven forever. Or a system where the punishment demanded by justice was, say, only 1000 years of penance instead of an eternity of torture. So either God fully intended (and knew in advance) that the majority of his children would end up suffering forever, he’s not a very loving and/or omnipotent God in the first place or he doesn’t actually exist.


• God doesn't "condemn" anybody to an eternity of torment and suffering - we choose to condemn ourselves to an eternity of torment and suffering by deciding not to accept Jesus into our hearts, follow his commandments, belong to the correct denomination, etc. Except that, first of all, the vast majority of all humans who have ever lived throughout history never even had the chance to hear about Jesus, let alone have the the choice to accept and follow him. And, second of all, even if our choices do lead us being punished, God is still the one who determines what that punishment should be. If a brutal dictator issues an edict restricting free speech, making it a capital offense to say anything bad about the government, and then somebody gets executed for posting a message on their Facebook page complaining about the government, do we just blame the victim and say he chose to be executed? Or do we blame the dictator for setting such a harsh punishment in the first place?


• God does love us all deeply, but he values our free will more than anything else. So much so, in fact, that he would rather us suffer in torment for all eternity than take away our free will and force us to be good. Again, however, it is God himself who set up the system wherein not being “good” leads to eternal damnation (are we detecting a theme here yet?). Also, none of us actually have absolute free will in the first place, since physical laws (created by God, of course) limit what we can do regardless of what we wish to do.


• The Bible doesn't actually say that sinners or those who do not accept Jesus will suffer eternal torment. Yeah, well, first of all, the Bible kinda sorta does actually say that. "Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels (Matthew 25: 41)." "And these shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal (Matthew 25:46)." Second of all, this is the actual doctrine that has been taught for centuries (thousands of years, actually) within Christendom. It was acknowledged by the early church, it was endorsed by the "church fathers" and it was defended by the theologians of the Middle Ages and the Reformation period. Hundreds of millions (billions?) of people lived and died throughout history believing this was the true doctrine of Christianity, so you don't really get to show up 2000 years later and say what Christian doctrine "really" teaches without acknowledging that it was all made up by man in the first place, do you?

Why is there so much suffering in the world if God loves us?
 
On a similar note, God supposedly loves us all absolutely and cares deeply about each and every part of his creation. And yet, we live in a world where all of creation must struggle to survive, where predators must hunt and feed on prey, where creatures of all types contract hideously painful diseases and where natural disasters cause all manner of pain and suffering. Christian apologists acknowledge this so-called “problem of evil”, but attempt to justify it in a number of ways:

• God values human free will above all else and therefore will not or cannot intervene to prevent one person harming another person. This argument is really just one big non-sequitur, since the inviolate free will that humans possess really has nothing to do with fact that animals eat other animals to survive, that we all suffer painful diseases, that natural disasters occur, etc.


• Our life here on Earth is but a moment compared to an eternity in heaven, so any suffering here is trivial.
Good point! Except, of course, for the fact that only a very small percentage of humans will actually make it to heaven. And, unless you want to claim that every single bug, bird, squirrel, bat, etc. (and not just your beloved pet) is going to heaven as well, then they are all doomed to spend their one, short life primarily in a state of suffering and torment.

• The sin of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden caused the world to enter a “fallen” state and therefore it’s somehow our fault that everything in the universe suffers so much, not God’s fault. This justification is just specious, since (as mentioned earlier) God set up the whole system in the first place and it was his decision to make the consequences of Adam and Eve’s transgressions be what they are. God is supposedly omnipotent, so you just can’t say that the Earth “had to” enter a fallen state after Adam and Eve ate the apple. God surely could have found a way to punish Adam and Eve and their descendants without punishing the rest of creation. But that’s what he chose to do, so either he likes seeing so much suffering in the natural world, he isn’t really omnipotent after all or he doesn’t really exist. To once again go with the "brutal dictator" analogy I used before, what if the dictator decrees that, not only will anybody who speaks out against the government be executed, but so will all that person's family members, neighbors, friends and pets. Is it fair to then blame the one person who posted on Facebook for the deaths of everybody else? Or is it more proper to blame the dictator who issued the harsh decree in the first place?

On a side note, many “intellectual” Christians acknowledge that humans evolved over millions of years and that the Biblical story of Adam and Eve is simply an allegory. If that’s so, however, how can we all be suffering because of something our non-existent ancestors never actually did?


Why don't we get what we faithfully pray for?
 
The Bible clearly and unequivocally states, over and over again, that God will grant whatever you pray for in faith. And this is taught in sermons to justify having faith in God -- we must have faith in God, faith like that of a mustard seed, because if we have faith in God he will give us whatever we ask for. Except that when we don’t get what we pray for, it’s suddenly, “Oh -- God promised to answer our prayers, but sometimes the answer is no.” Even though the Bible clearly says we will get what we ask for, not just get an answer. And when that doesn’t work, then suddenly it’s “God works in mysterious ways.” Pretty convenient the way that works, don’t you think? If we actually get what we pray for, God gets all the credit and it’s proof that God exists since he did, in fact, promise to give us what we prayed for. But if we don’t get what we pray for, it doesn’t mean that God is a liar or that he doesn’t exist, despite the fact that he broke his promise.


What does it mean if the Bible is the literal word of God?
 
To many Christians, the Bible is considered to be the literal word of God and, therefore, it is important to follow everything in the Bible in order to attain salvation. And yet, no two religious groups (or religious scholars, for that matter) can seem to agree on what everything in the Bible actually means. It’s easy to strip out a few key sentences and phrases and claim that those are the parts that really matter, but you can’t do that and also claim the entire thing is divinely inspired. When you start hearing people say things like, "Of course the entire Bible is the literal word of God, but the only part that really matters is the 'Two Great Commandments' mentioned in the New Testament," you have to wonder. You have to wonder, first, how can they say something like that with a straight face in the first place and, second, how do they actually know that that part of the entire vast Bible they have cherry picked is the part that "really" matters?


What does it mean if the Bible isn't the literal word of God?
 
Alternatively, some Christians acknowledge that the Bible isn’t the literal word of God and, while much of it is important and true, there’s also a lot of stuff that is purely allegorical and not meant to be taken literally. Unfortunately, all the “allegorical” stuff in the Old Testament (the creation of the Earth, the fall of Adam, the story of Moses and the Ten Commandments, etc.) is also the stuff that justifies believing in the supposedly non-allegorical stuff (the teachings of Christ, his atonement and resurrection, etc.) It’s a classic case of throwing out the baby with the bathwater, since the only thing that makes the Bible something other than a collection of ancient writings that contain some nuggets of gold amid a huge load of camel excrement, is the supposed “fact” that it is the literal word of God in the first place.


The Bible is the source of "absolute morality"
 
Many Christians claim that “absolute morality” (i.e., the unchanging set of rules that distinguish between right and wrong in all cases) can only come from God and therefore atheists must rely on “relative morality” instead of “absolute morality.” Further, this “absolute morality” can only be found in the Bible, since it is the literal word of God and the reason why its principles supposedly form the basis of our entire judicial system (even though that is not actually the case.) However, the Bible is full of commandments from God to do things that most Christians would find deeply immoral today, ranging from general laws (it’s OK to beat your slaves as long as they you don’t kill them) to specific instances (kill all the inhabitants of a city, including their children). The Bible is also full of commandments that no Christians bother following today, such as the laws of kosher and the prohibition of wearing clothing that has two different types of thread in it. When asked why we don’t have to follow all those commandments today, the answer is invariably because they were given to a particular people at a particular time and do not apply to our situation today. Which is, of course, the very definition of moral relativism. Oh, except for the Ten Commandments, which still need to be followed. today And the parts talking about how bad Homosexuality is. And maybe the part about not suffering a witch to live. And any other part we personally agree with. But definitely not all those other laws and commandments which we can apparently decide for ourselves no longer apply…


Arguing the necessity of a Deist god to justify belief in a Theist god
 
I have read and heard numerous Christian apologists claim to be able to prove the existence (or, at least, the necessity) of the Christian God, as well as a few Muslim apologists who claim to do the same with regard to the God of Islam. These arguments typically involve a lot of special pleading (“Everything that has a beginning must have been created, but that doesn’t include God”) and a whole lot of tortured logic to explain why something must have created the universe as an act of will. Much of the proof, however, presupposes (or outright states) that the type of being required to create our universe is one who lives wholly outside of time and space, who is not composed of matter or energy and who cannot (and therefore does not) interact with the material world in any detectable way whatsoever aside from somehow being able to create it all in the first place. In other words, the classical god of “Deism”, which posits a creator who got the whole ball rolling in the first place and who has not been seen or heard from since. Even if all the arguments for such a being were valid, however, (which they aren’t) these apologists are left with no way to reconcile this notion of a deity with the sort of “hands-on” Theistic deity they are actually seeking to prove. At best, they are left with personal anecdotes of how they know in their hearts that their particular brand of God exists and loves them, which doesn’t really prove much of anything…


You need to have a "deep understanding" of the Bible in order to make sense of all these apparent contradictions.
 
This one is actually my favorite. There is a certain breed of Christians out there who style themselves as serious Biblical scholars, who claim to have learned various languages in order to read the original text of the Bible (as if such a thing even actually existed today). They claim to have studied history, sociology, psychology, archaeology, etc., to such a degree that they have a nearly perfect understanding about who wrote the Bible, when it was written, to whom it was written and, most importantly, what it originally said and originally meant in the context of the time it was written. These self-proclaimed experts will then state that it is impossible for anybody to "truly" understand the Bible unless that person has done all the research they themselves have done.
Assuming these people are not just making this all up from whole cloth, there is one glaring problem with the whole idea that you need to be an "expert scholar" in order to understand what the Bible is "really" talking about. And that is the fact that, for thousands of years, people have been told that the Bible is the literal word of God and that it is only through following the words in the Bible that we can know how to obtain salvation. If God really loved us and wanted as many of us to be saved as possible, would he really put the necessary instructions for salvation into a book that most people would not actually be able to fully understand? All these "you must be an expert to fully understand" arguments are plausible if you are talking about something like, say, the works of Shakespeare or the writings of Homer, but they fail completely when you're talking about a book supposedly provided by an omnipotent, all-loving, all knowing, and infallible God whose sole purpose in proving the book was to tell his children what they need to do in order to rejoin him in Heaven. If I don't grasp the subtleties of "Hamlet", no great loss. But if I don't understand exactly which parts of the Bible I need to follow and what those important parts actually mean? It's not just an English test I'll be flunking...

The Problem of Evil

One of the most compelling arguments against the existence of God (or, at least, the sort of all powerful, all knowing and all benevolent God worshiped by most religions) is the so-called “Problem of Evil”.  Stated simply, it asks how a God who is supposed to be an all knowing, all powerful and all loving being could allow so much suffering to occur.  The ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus put it this way:

Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?

There seem to be two standard responses to this argument that are made by theists, each of which I will address below:

1. God gave mankind free will, and if one person wants to do harm to another person then God cannot prevent that from happening without taking away that free will.  In other words, God could prevent suffering, but that would cause something even worse to occur (the loss of our free will).
2. Adam and Eve’s transgression in the Garden of Eden caused the entire world to become a cursed place, full of pain and suffering.  The “fall” from God’s grace affected all of creation, and all of creation therefore suffers as a result of man’s sin.

The first response to the problem of evil is actually a fairly persuasive argument for why God permits suffering that is actually caused by other people (or even caused by people themselves).  Yes, free will is a wonderful thing and it would be pretty bad if we were all just a bunch of mindless robots forced to act the way God wants us to act.

However, this argument says precisely nothing about why people suffer as the result of natural causes such as diseases, famine, blizzards, droughts, earthquakes, tsunamis, etc., none of which are the result of man’s exercising his free will.  OK, sure, I suppose an argument could be made that some of what we call “natural causes” do, in fact, have some basis in man’s exercise of free will.  Perhaps you could argue that some people get lung cancer, say, because of the choice they made to smoke cigarettes.  Or that some people needlessly die in hurricanes because we as a species have largely chosen to ignore the evidence of anthropogenic climate change.  I would argue, however, that those cases are few and far between when compared with all the other forms of suffering that clearly have nothing to do with our free will, unless you want to get completely reductive and claim that, since person X chose to live in a part of the world where tornadoes occasionally happen, it’s his fault that he (and his family, of course) are later killed by a tornado.

Moreover, this free will argument does not address why there is so much suffering in the rest of the world.  Sure, you can blame man’s free will for some of the suffering (deforestation, pollution, etc.), but man’s free will can’t be blamed for the fact that the majority of animal life either need to feed on other animals in order to survive or get eaten by other animals.  It doesn’t explain why animals also get painful, debilitating diseases.  It doesn’t explain why there are species of wasps that lay their eggs in the bodies of living creatures that die a slow and agonizing death as the wasp larvae hatch and eat their way out.

So, yeah – free will is important and can explain man’s inhumanity to man.  Aside from that, though, it’s not a particularly compelling argument.

The second response to the problem of evil has many flaws, but the primary one in my opinion is that it apparently takes away God’s free will and/or renders him powerless.  It’s basically saying that God didn’t want all of creation to suffer but had no choice due to Adam’s transgression.  Really?  He had no choice?  Let’s think about that for a minute, shall we?  If God is all powerful, surely he could have come up with a way to punish Adam (and all of his descendants) without punishing every other living thing on the planet (and perhaps even the universe).  Either God had no choice in the matter, in which case he is not all powerful after all, or else he chose to inflict as much suffering as possible on all of his creation, in which case he is not all loving.

I suppose one could argue that God really only cares about humans and just isn’t concerned with the suffering of lesser creatures who (presumably) have no souls and just exist to make the world a more colorful place.  That doesn’t seem to match the biblical description of God as a being who cares about a single sparrow falling to the ground.

Again, this argument assumes that it’s man’s fault that the world fell from grace into a state of suffering, but that’s only valid if you also assume that God was powerless or unwilling to prevent it from happening, or at least from happening in the way that it did.  If God really wanted to punish man for Adam’s sin (and I’ll leave the morality of punishing people for a sin committed by a distant ancestor for another post), wouldn’t it have been more effective to make man suffer and die while simultaneously leaving the rest of creation in an Edenic state as a constant reminder of what was lost?