Posted on by Christian Apologist

A Christian’s Rebuttal to “Why I Am Not A Christian” By Bertrand Russell

Russell delivered this lecture in 1927 at the National Secular Society, South London Branch, at Battersea Town Hall.

In the fall of 2016, I encountered an atheist on Twitter who posed a challenge. He said that he would read material by my favorite Christian author if I would read material by his favorite atheist. I was hesitant to agree because I had never read any books or articles by those advocating atheism, and I was fearful that something they would write would challenge my beliefs in a way I found uncomfortable. After some prodding, he finally convinced me to read Bertrand Russell. In exchange, he read Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis.

After both of us read the other’s suggestions, this particular atheist, “Facepalmer,” wrote a rather long rebuttal of C.S. Lewis, while I wrote a rather short blurb on Russell. I found Russell’s “arguments” against God to be unsubstantiated, yet I wasn’t prepared to write a rebuttal to the arguments since I needed to do some research on effective ways to counter them. It was at this point that I was inspired to read rebuttals to other atheists’ arguments, since I figured I had seen their best in Russell.

Well, I’ve done my research by reading numerous rebuttals on atheists’ Robert Price, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, and Lawrence Krauss. Therefore, the intention of this blog is to present these arguments and to offer an opinion on the arguments from a Christian perspective. I next present Bertrand Russell’s arguments, along with my rebuttals to the arguments.

The First Cause Argument

Russell states, “Perhaps the simplest and easiest to understand is the argument of the First Cause. (It is maintained that everything we see in this world has a cause, and as you go back in the chain of causes further and further you must come to a First Cause, and to that First Cause you give the name of God.) That argument, I suppose, does not carry very much weight nowadays, because, in the first place, cause is not quite what it used to be.”

Russell adds that the First Cause “cannot have any validity” and adds “There is no reason why the world could not have come into being without a cause; nor, on the other hand, is there any reason why it should not have always existed. There is no reason to suppose that the world had a beginning at all. The idea that things must have a beginning is really due to the poverty of our imagination. Therefore, perhaps, I need not waste any more time upon the argument about the First Cause.”

In all fairness to Bertrand Russell, when he delivered his speech in 1927, scientists had not reached the conclusion that the universe had a start date yet. Coincidentally, it was in 1927 when an astronomer named Georges Lemaitre conceived that the universe started long ago as a single point. Two years later, an astronomer named Edwin Hubble discovered that other galaxies were moving away from us and the farthest galaxies were moving faster than the galaxies closer to us. Hubble is known as the Father of the Big Bang Theory (LaRocco & Rothstein, 2017). “The Big Bang Theory is the leading explanation about how the universe began. At its simplest, it talks about the universe as we know it starting with a small singularity, then inflating over the next 13.8 billion years to the cosmos that we know today” (Howell, 2015).

Since the universe had a start date for time, space, and matter (Hawking, 2017), one wonders what existed prior to the Big Bang. At this point, science hasn’t provided an explanation for what caused or powered the Big Bang. What we know is that the force to inflate the expansion of the universe did not have properties of linear time, space, and matter. The sheer force that powered the expansion seems likely to be powerful. So, the assumption can be made that the force that powered the universe’s expansion was powerful, metaphysical, and eternal. In other words, the force bears all of the characteristics of God.

Thomas Aquinas’ First Mover Theory for Proof of God, which was quoted in Applied Cognitive Psychology, 23: 901-917, helps to further explain this logic.

1. Our senses tell us that there is some motion in the world.
2. All things moving must be moved by something else.
3. Motion is the change from potentiality to actuality.
4. It is not possible to be potential and actual in the same respect.
5. Therefore, the mover cannot also be the moved.
6. There cannot be an infinite regression of movers.
7. Therefore, there must be a first, unmoved mover.

A.W. Tozer (2006, p. 59) states, “In the beginning God…” (Genesis 1:1) Not matter, for matter is not self-causing. It requires an antecedent cause, and God is that Cause…In the beginning God, the uncaused Cause of matter, mind, and law. There we must begin.”

In summary, Russell refutes the First Cause Argument by saying that the universe had no start date so the argument is irrelevant, yet the fact that the universe has a start date, coupled with logic, suggests that God is the First Cause, the uncaused Cause.

The Natural Law Argument

Russell states, “Human laws are behests commanding you to behave a certain way, in which you may choose to behave, or you may choose not to behave; but natural laws are a description of how things do in fact behave, and being a mere description of what they in fact do, you cannot argue that there must be somebody who told them to do that, because even supposing that there were, you are then faced with the question ‘Why did God issue just those natural laws and no others?’ If you say that he did it simply from his own good pleasure, and without any reason, you then find that there is something which is not subject to law, and so your train of natural law is interrupted. If you say, as more orthodox theologians do, that in all the laws which God issues he had a reason for giving those laws rather than others – the reason, of course, being to create the best universe, although you would never think it to look at it — if there were a reason for the laws which God gave, then God himself was subject to law, and therefore you do not get any advantage by introducing God as an intermediary. You really have a law outside and anterior to the divine edicts, and God does not serve your purpose, because he is not the ultimate lawgiver. In short, this whole argument about natural law no longer has anything like the strength that it used to have. I am traveling on in time in my review of the arguments. The arguments that are used for the existence of God change their character as time goes on. They were at first hard intellectual arguments embodying certain quite definite fallacies. As we come to modern times they become less respectable intellectually and more and more affected by a kind of moralizing vagueness.”

In the above statement, Russell makes the assertion that “if there were a reason for the laws which God gave, then God himself was subject to the law, and therefore you do not get any advantage by introducing God as an intermediary.”

Russell doesn’t understand that God is not “subject to the law” that guides the universe; He is the law that guides the universe. He is the moral code and the absolute standard. God is the eternally great I AM (Exodus 3:14), “who is, and who was, and who is to come, the Almighty” (Revelation 1:8). In Revelation 22:13, God states, “I am the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end, and I will give to the one who thirsts from the spring of the water of life.”

In his book Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis states (p. 28), “When you say that nature is governed by certain laws, this may only mean that nature does, in fact, behave in a certain way. The so-called laws may not be anything real – anything above and beyond the actual facts which we observe. But in the case of Man, we saw that this will not due. The Law of Human Nature, or of Right and Wrong, must be something above the actual facts of human behavior. In this case, besides the actual facts, you have something else – a real law which we did not invent and which we know we ought to obey.”

There was no start point at which time God sat down to make choices about the physical laws that guide the universe. Such an assertion drags God down to the level of a human and traps Him in our linear timeline. God is unbounded by time and choice. As C.S. Lewis indicated in the Great Divorce, “Ye cannot fully understand the relations of choice and time until you are beyond both.” Humans create laws to govern society. God is the law and the standard from which our innate sense of an absolute standard of right and wrong is derived.

Similarly, Stephen Hawking refers to the dynamical laws that govern the universe. He states, “Since events before the Big Bang have no observational consequences, one may as well cut them out of the theory, and say that time began at the Big Bang. Events before the Big Bang, are simply not defined, because there’s no way one could measure what happened at them. This kind of beginning to the universe, and of time itself, is very different to the beginnings that had been considered earlier. These had to be imposed on the universe by some external agency. There is no dynamical reason why the motion of bodies in the solar system cannot be extrapolated back in time, far beyond four thousand and four BC, the date for the creation of the universe, according to the book of Genesis. Thus it would require the direct intervention of God, if the universe began at that date. By contrast, the Big Bang is a beginning that is required by the dynamical laws that govern the universe. It is therefore intrinsic to the universe, and is not imposed on it from outside” (Hawking, 2017).

Let’s unpack Stephen Hawking’s statement. He points to the book of Genesis and a universe start date of four thousand and four BC, which, if such a date were true, he indicates that it “would require the direct intervention of God.” I will assume that he made the latter statement in recognition of the physical evidence supporting the 13.8 billion year start date. Hawking further states that there are “dynamical laws that govern the universe” that are “intrinsic” to the universe. Such assertions naturally beg the question of how these “intrinsic” laws came about. Laws don’t create themselves. I ask readers to consider why we have “intrinsic laws” that govern the universe if we supposedly have no source or governor of such laws.

Famed mathematical physicist, Sir Roger Penrose, worked alongside of Stephen Hawking for many years. He recently went on Christian Radio and stated that Hawking’s new book is “misleading,” adding that M theory is “not even a theory” and “hardly science” but “hopes.” He further noted that the universe did not “create itself from nothing” (Hunt4Truth.wordpress.com, 2014).

As A.W. Tozer (2006 p. 57-58) helps to explain the way God is both present within the universe intrinsically and independent of it, extrinsically. He says, “God dwells in His creation and is everywhere indivisibly present in all His works…While God dwells in His world He is separated from it by a gulf forever impassable. However closely He may be identified with the work of His hands, they are and must eternally be other than He, and He is and must be antecedent to and independent of them. He is transcendent above all His works even while He is immanent within them.”

The Argument from Design

Russell states, “When you come to look into this argument from design, it is a most astonishing thing that people can believe that this world, with all the things that are in it, with all its defects, should be the best that omnipotence and omniscience have been able to produce in millions of years. I really cannot believe it. Do you think that, if you were granted omnipotence and omniscience and millions of years in which to perfect your world, you could produce nothing better than the Ku Klux Klan or the Fascists? Moreover, if you accept the ordinary laws of science, you have to suppose that human life and life in general on this planet will die out in due course: it is a stage in the decay of the solar system; at a certain stage of decay you get the sort of conditions of temperature and so forth which are suitable to protoplasm, and there is life for a short time in the life of the whole solar system. You see in the moon the sort of thing to which the earth is tending — something dead, cold, and lifeless.”

In this argument, Russell discounts (1) free will, (2) our purpose in this existence, and (3) intelligent design. Let us first consider free will. Genesis indicates that God gave us free will and that we face consequences for our choices. Accordingly, blaming God for the existence of toxic groups such as the Ku Klux Klan or Fascists is ignoring the fact that He gave us free will. God wants the very best for us, yet He doesn’t control us. It’s up to us to capitalize on our spiritual gifts to advance our souls. Some don’t. Some make serious and irreparable mistakes, such as Stalin, Hitler and Pol Pot. Yet all are made with free choice.

As C.S. Lewis states, “If a thing is free to be good, it is also free to be bad. And free will is what made evil possible. Why, then, did God give them free will? Because free will, though it makes evil possible, is the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having.”

Russell also calls into question an imperfect world, yet let us note our very purpose within this imperfect world. Had He made us perfect, we wouldn’t have the desire to persevere and grow, overcoming our challenges to emerge as better people. Champions are born out of adversity. More on this point will be discussed later.

“And what did God do?” C.S. Lewis asks (2002, p. 49). “First of all He left us conscience, the sense of right and wrong: and all through history there have been people trying (some of them very hard) to obey it. None of them ever quite succeeded. Secondly, He sent the human race what I call good dreams: I mean those queer stories scattered all through the heathen religions about a god who dies and comes to life again and, by his death, has somehow given new life to men. Thirdly, He selected one particular people and spent several centuries hammering into their heads the sort of God He was – that there was only one of Him and that He cared about the right conduct. Those people were the Jews, and the Old Testament gives an account of the hammering process.”

A short discussion on our design seems fitting at this point, to further address Russell’s assertion of defective design. Dembski (1998) offers an interesting perspective on intelligent design, which is the concept in which we were created by an intelligent Creator, God. “But design is not a science stopper. Indeed, design can foster inquiry where traditional evolutionary approaches obstruct it. Consider the term ‘junk DNA.’ Implicit in this term is the view that because the genome of an organism has been cobbled together through a long, undirected evolutionary process, the genome is a patchwork of which only limited portions are essential to the organism. Thus on an evolutionary view we expect a lot of useless DNA. If, on the other hand, organisms are designed, we expect DNA, as much as possible, to exhibit function.”

Since 1998, a large project called ENCODE came to the conclusion that at least 80% of DNA had a function, which called into question the existence of ‘junk DNA.’ In 2012, Casey Luskin wrote that findings from the ENCODE project “buries” the “junk DNA dogma – the idea that evolution left our genome littered with useless leftovers of mutation and natural selection.” (Click here for further details on the ENCODE project: https://evolutionnews.org/2017/02/encode_team_con/)

According to Sy Garte, Ph.D. of biochemistry, (personal communication, 2018), findings from the ENCODE project “caused an uproar. Intelligent design and young earth creationists were thrilled, but the scientific community was not. Lots of debate and finally a consensus was reached that there is such a thing as ‘junk DNA’ but not as much as previously thought.”

Atheists discount intelligent design and often call on natural selection, chance, and the long history of the earth to explain the evolution of humans. Natural selection doesn’t explain the origins of life, however. It merely explains the evolution of existing life forms.

According to Trevors and Abel (2004) “The constraints of historical science are such that the origin of life may never be understood. Selection pressure cannot select nucleotides at the digital programming level where primary structures form. Genomes predetermine the phenotypes which natural selection only secondarily favors. Contentions that offer nothing more than long periods of time offer no mechanism of explanation for the derivation of genetic programming. No new information is provided by such tautologies. The argument simply says it happened.”

According to Hugh Ross (2016), “Many suggest that earth’s life-sustaining features are just ‘amazing coincidences’ that somehow fell into place in a way that suits human needs and, at the same time, determines what life-forms exist…Ongoing research tells us that earth has been shaped not only by an intricately orchestrated interplay of physical forces and conditions, but also by its vast abundance and diversity of life-forms. By means that no depth and breadth of scientific research can explain, life arose early in earth’s history under anything but the benign conditions it would seem to require and somehow persisted through multiple mass extinction events, always appearing and reappearing at just-right times and in just-right forms to meet the needs and demands of the revised environment.”

“The more thoroughly researchers investigate the history of our planet, the more astonishing the story of our existence becomes. The number and complexity of the astronomical, geological, chemical, and biological features recognized as essential to human existence have expanded explosively within the last decade…Are we simply the result of a colossal matrix of innumerable, narrow coincidences, against all odds, or is there a more reasonable explanation?” (p. 14).

“Even if evolutionary processes are responsible for new life-forms, there must be an external intellect sustaining the material world to make life and evolution possible,” according to Frank Turek (2015 p. 82-83). “In other words, evolutionary processes themselves rely on the goal-directedness of the material world. Evolution could not work without a mind actively directing the repetitive and precise natural forces that keep life together and make mutation and natural selection possible! …Mutations may be random in the sense that they do not have any goal in mind, but the natural forces that produce the mutations are not random. Living and nonliving things continue to exist because the foundation of the entire material world is goal-directed, not random.”

In summary, the purposes and complexities of life forms on the earth, coupled with goal-directed non-random evolutionary processes, suggest the presence of an intelligent designer, an originator. Using the imperfections and failures of humans (e.g., Ku Klux Klan) to discount the possibility of an intelligent designer equates to pointing to cracks in a home’s foundation to claim the home had no builder. Such assertions obscure the purposeful intentions of the Creator who designed the universe and the free will He granted.

The Moral Arguments for a Deity

Russell says, “The point I am concerned with is that, if you are quite sure there is a difference between right and wrong, then you are in this situation: Is that difference due to God’s fiat or is it not? If it is due to God’s fiat, then for God himself there is no difference between right and wrong, and it is no longer a significant statement to say that God is good. If you are going to say, as theologians do, that God is good, you must then say that right and wrong have some meaning which is independent of God’s fiat, because God’s fiats are good and not bad independently of the mere fact that he made them. If you are going to say that, you will then have to say that it is not only through God that right and wrong came into being, but that they are in their essence logically anterior to God. You could, of course, if you liked, say that there was a superior deity who gave orders to the God that made this world, or could take up the line that some of the gnostics took up — a line which I often thought was a very plausible one — that as a matter of fact this world that we know was made by the devil at a moment when God was not looking. There is a good deal to be said for that, and I am not concerned to refute it.”

Russell makes several assertions that require a refutation. The first assertion is on the difference between right and wrong and whether God ordered both right and wrong. He asserts that God, who is only good, cannot have ordered wrongdoings. The Bible suggests God has ordered both. For example, in Habakkuk 1:5-11, God relates his intention to raise up Babylon, a ruthless and dreaded nation to achieve His purpose. Romans 8:28 says, “For those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to His purpose.”

Evil and love. Apathy and compassion. Hubris and humility.  Lies and truth. Cruelty and kindness. The best way to fully understand each of the ideal dimensions of love, compassion, humility, truth, and kindness, we must understand and fully experience their counterparts. God uses adversity and our struggles to grow our empathy and love for His glory and our goodness.

Turek (2015, p. 138) states, “We can’t see the ultimate outcomes of events because the human story isn’t over yet – not here or in the afterlife where perfect justice will be done. And even if God were to tell us those outcomes and His reasons for allowing such evil, we wouldn’t be able to comprehend them all. That’s because every event sets off a ripple effect that impacts countless other events and people. How many lives will be changed in the future by the trillions of good and bad events happening just this hour? No human mind can know or grasp it all. And even if we could, knowing the reasons for a painful event might alter our behavior and prevent that good outcome that would have otherwise occurred.”

“If God would concede me His wisdom for 24 hours, you would see how many changes I would make in this world. But if He gave me His wisdom too, I would leave things as they are,” says a former priest at Notre Dame in Paris, Jacques Marie Louis Monsabre said (quoted in Turek, 2015, p. 139).

A second assertion from Russell is that a superior deity gave orders to the God who made this world. If this were the case, God wouldn’t be God, the eternal uncaused cause. God would be an inferior deity. Based on Aquinas’ line of theory noted above, I refute this point.

A third assertion is that the devil made the world as we know it when “God was not looking.” Psalm 139 states that God is everywhere, so doing something behind God’s back is simply not possible.

Psalm 139:

O LORD, You have searched me and known me.
You know when I sit down and when I rise up;
You understand my thought from afar.
You scrutinize my path and my lying down,
And are intimately acquainted with all my ways.
Even before there is a word on my tongue,
Behold, O LORD, You know it all.
You have enclosed me behind and before,
And laid Your hand upon me.
Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;
It is too high, I cannot attain to it.
Where can I go from Your Spirit?
Or where can I flee from Your presence?
If I ascend to heaven, You are there;
If I make my bed in Sheol, behold, You are there.
If I take the wings of the dawn,
If I dwell in the remotest part of the sea,
Even there Your hand will lead me,
And Your right hand will lay hold of me.
If I say, “Surely the darkness will overwhelm me,
And the light around me will be night,”
Even the darkness is not dark to You,
And the night is as bright as the day.
Darkness and light are alike to You.

As A.W. Tozer (2006, p. 60) says, “The presence and manifestation of the presence are not the same. There can be the one without the other. God is here when we are wholly unaware of it. He is manifest only when and as we are aware of His presence. On our part, there must be surrender to the Spirit of God, for His work is to show us the Father and the Son. If we cooperate with Him in loving obedience, God will manifest Himself to us, and that manifestation will be the difference between a nominal Christian life and a life radiant with the light of His face.”

The Argument for the Remedying of Injustice

Russell states, “Then there is another very curious form of moral argument, which is this: they say that the existence of God is required in order to bring justice into the world. In the part of this universe that we know there is great injustice, and often the good suffer, and often the wicked prosper, and one hardly knows which of those is the more annoying; but if you are going to have justice in the universe as a whole you have to suppose a future life to redress the balance of life here on earth. So they say that there must be a God, and there must be Heaven and Hell in order that in the long run there may be justice. That is a very curious argument. If you looked at the matter from a scientific point of view, you would say, “After all, I only know this world. I do not know about the rest of the universe, but so far as one can argue at all on probabilities one would say that probably this world is a fair sample, and if there is injustice here the odds are that there is injustice elsewhere also.” Supposing you got a crate of oranges that you opened, and you found all the top layer of oranges bad, you would not argue, “The underneath ones must be good, so as to redress the balance.” You would say, “Probably the whole lot is a bad consignment”; and that is really what a scientific person would argue about the universe. He would say, “Here we find in this world a great deal of injustice, and so far as that goes that is a reason for supposing that justice does not rule in the world; and therefore so far as it goes it affords a moral argument against deity and not in favor of one.” Of course I know that the sort of intellectual arguments that I have been talking to you about are not what really moves people. What really moves people to believe in God is not any intellectual argument at all. Most people believe in God because they have been taught from early infancy to do it, and that is the main reason. Then I think that the next most powerful reason is the wish for safety, a sort of feeling that there is a big brother who will look after you. That plays a very profound part in influencing people’s desire for a belief in God.”

Let us unpack his assertions. Russell points out that believers believe that the existence of heaven and hell establishes a remedy to the injustices that occur on earth when the good suffer and the wicked prosper. He then states that he only knows of “this world.” This statement implies that because he has no knowledge of or experience in heaven and hell, they must not exist. According to Russell, only the physical world exists, which is the world in which Russell lived. Such an argument equates to me saying that because I have no knowledge of someone else’s dreams, the person must not have had such dreams. Another example relates to the dismissal of near death experiences, which are “too numerous and well documented to be dismissed altogether” (Lichfield, 2015). Click here for many inspirational findings and scientific studies relating to otherworldly near death experiences:
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/04/the-science-of-near-death-experiences/386231/

As A.W. Tozer (2006) states, “Our trouble is that we have established bad thought habits. We habitually think of the visible world as real and doubt the reality of any other. We do not deny the existence of the spiritual world but we doubt that it is real in the accepted meaning of the word.”

“The world of sense intrudes upon our attention day and night for the whole of our lifetime. It is clamorous, insistent, and self-demonstrating. It does not appeal to our faith; it is here, assaulting our five senses, demanding to be accepted as real and final. But sin has so clouded the lenses of our hearts that we cannot see the other reality, the City of God, shining around us. The world of sense triumphs. The visible becomes the enemy of the invisible, the temporal, of the eternal. That is the curse inherited by every member of Adam’s tragic race” (p. 53-54).

Russell states that because we have injustice in the world that justice must not rule the world. Yet we all adhere to an absolute moral standard, which suggests justice is innate, established, and sourced. For example, any parent with a sound mind would demand justice if his or her son or daughter were raped or murdered or hurt in any way. Any person with a sound mind would want justice for the perpetrator if he or she were unfairly and indiscriminately tortured. The horrors of World War II still plague the minds of the sensible members of societies, whether in Guam or Bolivia. These are examples of the way humans adhere to a shared moral standard. This standard is not relative, set within particular cultures (though there are relative standards as well), but shared between cultures. Such a standard calls attention to the source of the standard: God.

Arguments against Christ and the Church

The rest of Russell’s arguments point to Christ’s character, morality, teachings, and perceived failings of the church. Russell states, “I now want to say a few words upon a topic which I often think is not quite sufficiently dealt with by Rationalists, and that is the question whether Christ was the best and the wisest of men. It is generally taken for granted that we should all agree that that was so. I do not myself. I think that there are a good many points upon which I agree with Christ a great deal more than the professing Christians do. I do not know that I could go with Him all the way, but I could go with Him much further than most professing Christians can. You will remember that He said, ‘Resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.’ That is not a new precept or a new principle. It was used by Lao-tse and Buddha some 500 or 600 years before Christ, but it is not a principle which as a matter of fact Christians accept. I have no doubt that the present prime minister [Stanley Baldwin], for instance, is a most sincere Christian, but I should not advise any of you to go and smite him on one cheek. I think you might find that he thought this text was intended in a figurative sense.”

Russell calls attention to Christ’s directive to turn the other cheek, yet states that Christians do not follow the directive (without any empirical support), implying that the directive is invalid. Such an argument equates to a mother telling her son to forgive his friend, and the son deciding not to forgive the friend, so someone makes the assertion that the mother must have poor character.

Russell goes on to state that Lao-tse and Buddha also called on followers to turn the other cheek, implying that Christ isn’t original. If Christian values didn’t form the fabric of ethical guidelines in previous societies and cultures, wouldn’t we question them more? The fact that previous cultures adhere to similar arguments helps to validate the arguments and the Lord’s influence on prior generations. In his book The Abolition of Man, C.S. Lewis does an excellent job of explaining this concept by noting marked similarities between the major world religions and belief systems and Christianity.

Russell also takes issue with Christ’s “moral character” because Christ “believes in hell.” He states, “I do not myself feel that any person who is really profoundly humane can believe in everlasting punishment. Christ certainly as depicted in the Gospels did believe in everlasting punishment, and one does find repeatedly a vindictive fury against those people who would not listen to His preaching — an attitude which is not uncommon with preachers, but which does somewhat detract from superlative excellence.”

Religious scholars from the Gotquestions.org website state the following with respect to hell: “In the Hebrew Scriptures, the word used to describe the realm of the dead is sheol. It simply means ‘the place of the dead’ or ‘the place of departed souls/spirits.’ The New Testament Greek equivalent to sheol is hades, which is also a general reference to ‘the place of the dead.’ The Greek word gehenna is used in the New Testament for ‘hell’ and is derived from the Hebrew word hinnom. Other Scriptures in the New Testament indicated that sheol/hades is a temporary place where souls are kept as they await the final resurrection. The souls of the righteous, at death, go directly into the presence of God—the part of sheol called ‘heaven,’ ‘paradise,’ or ‘Abraham’s bosom’ (Luke 23:43; 2 Corinthians 5:8; Philippians 1:23).”

“The lake of fire, mentioned only in Revelation 19:20 and 20:10, 14-15, is the final hell, the place of eternal punishment for all unrepentant rebels, both angelic and human (Matthew 25:41). It is described as a place of burning sulfur, and those in it experience eternal, unspeakable agony of an unrelenting nature (Luke 16:24; Mark 9:45-46). Those who have rejected Christ and are in the temporary abode of the dead in hades/sheol have the lake of fire as their final destination.”

To me, it seems likely that people like Hitler, Pol Pot, and Stalin will be the types cast into the lake of fire, yet clearly I can’t know this to be certain because I’m not the judge. What I do have is a sense of distributive and procedural justice based on the innate moral standard to which I adhere. This standard, set by God, suggests that people will be treated fairly. Accordingly, I don’t believe that all people should be punished in the same way as Hitler, Pol Pot, and Stalin. God gave me common sense, which suggests He’ll vary the punishments to fit the crimes.

It seems likely that people like Hitler, Pol Pot, and Stalin are not of God (lost sheep), but are the weeds described in the Bible, aligned to Satan. My guess is that such despots take the express train to hell, however hell is conceived, to either be destroyed or to spend eternity in an environment devoid of all love, which is God. God is love. Eternity without God is despair, which the Bible states is torment.

Russell further criticizes the church. I do not dispute the assertion that some churches are flawed and there are flaws in the history of churches. Yet many are not. Many churches today are run by strong people with good Christian values who strive to deliver Biblically-inspired messages of inspiration to attendees. My own church, Fishhawk Fellowship Church (Fishhawkfc.org), is a case in point. My church is relatively young (not much older than a decade), yet its pastors and staff offer the community such powerful messages each week that attendance has skyrocketed to the point where the church must now move from its original building to a much larger one, which will soon be under construction. Its message is to “come, grow, serve, and go” and it serves the local, national and global communities with all sorts of outreach programs. If other churches adopted its approach, I suspect they would be booming in attendance as well, fueling Christianity.

Conclusion

In conclusion, I find it interesting how atheists often challenge the divinity and governance of the Christian God. For example, Christopher Hitchens refers to himself as a “Protestant Atheist.”

Why is the Christian God the God of choice? My suspicion is that the Christian God is the one they know is the most likely to be real. As C.S. Lewis said, “Atheists express their rage against God, although in their view, He does not exist.” As Ray Comfort has added, “Atheists don’t hate fairies, leprechauns, or unicorns because they don’t exist. It is impossible to hate something that doesn’t exist. Atheists – like the painting experts hated the painter – hate God because He does exist.”

According to C.S. Lewis, “We may ignore, but we can in no way evade the presence of God. The world is crowded with Him. He walks everywhere, incognito.”

Thank you for your time.

References

Lewis, C.S. (2002). The complete C.S. Lewis signature classics. New York, NY: HarperOne.
Dembski, W. A. Science and design. First things: A monthly Journal of Religion and Public Life, 86: 21-34.
Got questions? Accessed 1-21-2017 at: https://www.gotquestions.org/sheol-hades-hell.html
Hawking, S. (2017). The Beginning of Time. Accessed 1-20-2017 at: http://www.hawking.org.uk/the-beginning-of-time.html
Howell, E. (2015). What is the Big Bang Theory? Accessed 1-20-2017 at: http://www.space.com/25126-big-bang-theory.html
Hunt4Truth.com (2014). Scientist debunks Hawking’s ‘No God needed’ theory. Accessed 1-21-2017 at hunt4truth.wordpress.com.
LaRocco, C. & Rothstein, B. (2017). The Big Bang: It sure was Big. Accessed 1-20-2017 at: http://umich.edu/~gs265/bigbang.htm
Lichfield, G. (2015). The science of near-death experiences. The Atlantic. April.
Ross, H. (2016). Improbable Planet: How earth became humanity’s home. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books.
Tozer, A.W. (2006; 1948). The pursuit of God: The human thirst for the divine. USA: First Wingspread Publishers.
Trevors, J.T. & Abel, D.L. (2004). Chance and necessity do not explain the origin of life. Cell Biology International, 28: 729-739.
Turek, F. (2015). Stealing from God: Why atheists need God to make their case. USA: NavPress

19 Replies to “A Christian’s Rebuttal to “Why I Am Not A Christian” By Bertrand Russell”

  2. I am unaware of an atheist ( that I know) who hates your god or any god.
    Why would anyone hate something they consider simply does not exist?
    The things done is your god’s name are often despicable and history is replete with examples.

    And if ever you come up with a way to demonstrate,”show” that your god is real …please let me know!
    🙂

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  3. I had things I should have done, but instead I wrote this response, because if there is a god then it is the Lord of Procrastination, & I am his Prophet:

    “I was hesitant to agree because I had never read any books or articles by those advocating atheism, and I was fearful that something they would write would challenge my beliefs in a way I found uncomfortable.”

    So…did you ever figure out that this was his point? That he correctly deduced that you were literally totally ignorant of the subjects of atheist arguments because you feared it would “challenge your beliefs in a way you found uncomfortable”? I mean, you’re the first apologist I’ve ever seen actually admit this, so I almost want to give you credit, but holy cow, that is such a low bar.

    “After some prodding, he finally convinced me to read Bertrand Russell. In exchange, he read Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis.”

    I’m glad you 2 had this exchange. I’ve not read Mere Christianity myself, but I have listened to it read by Steve Shives, on his “An Atheist Reads” series. I don’t remember specifics very well, but I know were in broad agreement, especially with how the whole thing essentially reads like Lewis arguing from wishful thinking.

    “It was at this point that I was inspired to read rebuttals to other atheists’ arguments, since I figured I had seen their best in Russell.”

    Now, this is one I’ve seen before, & it’s just as baffling now as ever. First, you read ONE atheist source, & then a bunch of Christian sources to counter it, so it’s pretty obvious you were looking to bolster your initial opinion after it was challenged. Second, you read other people’s arguments as filtered through THEIR OPPONENTS, & you think that gives you a good understanding of the initial claim? Let me ask you something, do you think only reading flat earther responses to round earth points is a good way to learn about geology?

    “So, the assumption can be made that the force that powered the universe’s expansion was powerful, metaphysical, and eternal. In other words, the force bears all of the characteristics of God.”

    This is what Daniel Dennet would call a “deepity,” which he defined as something which is in 1 sense true but trivial, yet in another & more important sense, totally false. For the true but trivial sense, we can reasonably assume that some kind of force probably existed even before the big bang (so check on the eternal part), we do believe the big bang was a massive expansion of energy (check on powerful), & has implications to the philosophy of reality (which is what “metaphysical” means).

    But you know what this is also true of? Energy. By all accounts, it’s always been around in some form or another & probably always will be, making it eternal. Obviously it’s powerful, it drives everything from our smartphones to our sun. And all interactions in the universe can be described in terms of energy, making it effectively the fundamental unit of metaphysical reality. Thus, saying the cause of the universe must meet these criteria is more-or-less true but ultimately trivial, because it’s not unique to your god or even unheard of in this universe. Russel’s basic point actually remains valid, there is decent evidence that the universe as we know it was perfectly capable of arising from a pre-existing vacuum universe, thus meaning that the universe as we know it started itself, & in a broader sense, has always existed in some form or another.

    The “more important but completely false” part, & this is the biggest problem I have with the First Cause argument, is that these are NOT all of the characteristics you people attribute to your god. The whole thing is one big bait & switch, you get someone to agree that there was some kind of ultimate origin of the universe at some point that had certain broad characteristics, & then you say it proves your god because he has the same features, ignoring that your god has many OTHER features that HAVEN’T been agreed upon to be proven. Such as intelligence, a moral philosophy consistent with your religion, specific actions prescribed by your holy book, & so on. The first cause argument misses the entire point, the skepticism is not over the notion that there must at some point be a foundation holding the rest of the tower up–I guess some people don’t believe that, but to modern western atheists it’s largely pushing against an open door–it’s that you claim the foundation is a magical carpenter who talks to you in your mind, has a personal relationship with you, & you can only see him if you believe hard enough.

    The Prime Mover & the First Cause are basically the same, moving on.

    “Russell doesn’t understand that God is not “subject to the law” that guides the universe; He is the law that guides the universe. He is the moral code and the absolute standard.”

    No, you don’t understand Russel’s argument, in part because you cut out the explaining context, hopefully by accident. What he was doing was listing possible explanations for why, assuming your god designed natural laws, he did so in the way he chose. In this list, 1 of the possible arguments he gave was that this is the best possible universe that the god could design. Russel’s argument was that, if this is true, then something else constrained his power & prevented him from designing an even better universe.

    In your argument, your god essentially designs the universe how he wants & calls it absolute law. But that doesn’t work, because the law still isn’t absolute: We puny humans may not be capable of violating them, but nothing stops your god from doing it, & nothing prevented him from designing the laws differently. Thus the laws, from your god’s perspective–which you say is the ultimate perspective–are arbitrary. Russel kind of got at this, but ultimately I think he was responding to a different theological debate altogether.

    No amount of apologist quotes poetically describing how awesome Yahweh & his rules are gets around this paradox. Laws which are absolute cannot be violated, & laws which can be violated are arbitrary. A god who can violate the any laws by definition cannot coexist with absolute laws, & therefore cannot have created any. To say nothing of the fact that you’re shoehorning “moral laws” in here, despite the fact that they’re demonstrably different from physical laws in that we are totally capable of disregarding them, & some of us won’t even feel guilty about it.

    “God is unbounded by time and choice.”

    You’re phrasing this in a way that makes your god sound awesome (again), but what you’re really saying here is that your god is INCAPABLE of choice. He doesn’t make choices, he just does the thing that is in his nature to do, which means he’s subject to determinism, at the very least the deterministic nature of his own self.

    “Similarly, Stephen Hawking refers to the dynamical laws that govern the universe.”

    No, that’s not similar. Lewis is–& I can’t stress this enough–giving us some word salad feel good pitch that makes his god sound just so awesome & powerful that he’s beyond our petty rules of logic! There’s no factual basis to anything he’s saying, or even proof that it’s possible, he’s just imagining that his god has whatever attributes he needs to win the argument. If he can’t explain how that’s even possible, that’s not a big deal, since he can just imagine a god that doesn’t need to obey logic! It is literally exactly the same as a school kid making up an endless list of new powers for his imaginary superhero in an argument with his friend. Sure, I guess it’s hypothetically possible that the superhero could swoop down at some point & prove he really does have all of these powers, but that would just mean the kid is right by an amazing coincidence. He didn’t actually know any of this, he pulled it out of his hat, so it’s not a good argument.

    By contrast, what Hawking is saying is that we have reason to believe, from math we’ve tested using experiments based on Einstein’s predictions, that time as we know it was not possible prior to the Big Bang. We know for sure time is relative to mass, & if all the mass was concentrated in a specific area, how could time as we know it be relevant back then? The important difference is that Hawking isn’t just making this up as he goes, he has actual evidence for his claim.

    “Laws don’t create themselves. I ask readers to consider why we have “intrinsic laws” that govern the universe if we supposedly have no source or governor of such laws.”

    Basic etymological fallacy. They’re called “laws” because WE NAMED THEM that. As Russel himself pointed out at the beginning of this whole spiel, in reality they’re simply descriptions of things that happen, & don’t imply anyone personally drafted them up with the intent of people following them. Also, the reason they’re named that is because early science was popularized by the deists, who did indeed view the universe as an orderly machine designed by a supreme power. A lot of their assumptions have since been challenged & even proven untrue, the universe is much less clockwork than they believed. In the most basic, non-loaded terms, the natural laws are simply the facts of the universe. Their existence does not in any way imply that they were originated by a personal entity.

    “Famed mathematical physicist, Sir Roger Penrose, worked alongside of Stephen Hawking for many years. He recently went on Christian Radio and stated that Hawking’s new book is “misleading,” adding that M theory is “not even a theory” and “hardly science” but “hopes.” He further noted that the universe did not “create itself from nothing” (Hunt4Truth.wordpress.com, 2014).

    And? What is the relevance of this guy, except that he’s an educated person who agrees with you, to counter the educated person who disagrees with you? What’s even the point of bringing up M theory? Hawking didn’t even mention it in that quote, & it’s an entirely separate issue. Also, nobody even kinda versed in the concepts of quantum physics believes that the universe emerged out of philosophical nothing, that most likely never existed to begin with. The “nothing” we detect in the absence of matter is just empty space, & as I said before, it has its own energy independent of matter & electromagnetism.

    Sometimes we observe particles & antiparticles spontaneously forming from this energy, & so this gives us reason to believe that this–which is the closest thing to “nothing” that appears to be possible–is what the universe as we know it originated from. But the empty space didn’t originate with the Big Bang, & recent models of physics suggest that it’s literally infinite, & it simply expands into itself–as Michael from Vsauce puts it, “That’s the thing about infinity: You never run out of it.” Point is, since it didn’t originate with the Big Bang & is infinite, it’s an entirely plausible candidate for the chief composition of the pre-big bang universe.

    “As A.W. Tozer (2006 p. 57-58) helps to explain the way God is both present within the universe intrinsically and independent of it, extrinsically.”

    Look, even if your analogies & quotes explained anything, which they don’t since they amount to little more than saying apparently contradictory things & handwaving it with some “god’s ways are not our ways” line, I have to stress again, these apologists have NOTHING to show for their claims. They NEED TO use what could graciously be called thought experiments & linguistic devices to argue their points, because that’s ALL THEY HAVE.

    You occasionally try to quote scientific sources that say something sort of similar to them as if it grants them legitimacy, but your method here is baldly unscientific. When a scientist appears to agree with something about your worldview, you quote them as an authority, while tearing down scientists who disagree without any actual evidence that they’re wrong. The other smart guy believes in god, so that settles it, he’s right, Hawking & Krauss & whomever else are wrong. Never mind that they have similar levels of education & contribution to the very cosmological models you keep selectively quoting from to imply it’s what your religion was talking about the whole time, the religious one is just right, because C.S. Lewis said so.

    “Accordingly, blaming God for the existence of toxic groups such as the Ku Klux Klan or Fascists is ignoring the fact that He gave us free will. God wants the very best for us, yet He doesn’t control us.”

    Every physical law & anatomical limitation represents an action or set of actions I could hypothetically do, but cannot do in reality, ostensibly because that’s the way your god designed it. There is no such thing as unlimited free will, so what you’re actually saying here is that your god intentionally didn’t include racist hate crimes in the list of things that couldn’t be done, because he wants to test people’s morality. Implicit in here is that he ALSO has no problem with the violations of free will that we can impose on others due to the way he designed the game, & if he does intervene to help those people who are having their free will violated, he does so inconsistently & at his own whims.

    Which isn’t much better, if at all. Simply put, you can have a universe where your god designed the system this way, or you can have an omnibenevolent-omnipotent-omniscient (omniomni, as I like to say) god, but you can’t have both. Though, since we know for a fact that the universe we live in has these possibilities whether or not it was designed, it’s more accurate to say that you just can’t have am omniomni god.

    “Russell also calls into question an imperfect world, yet let us note our very purpose within this imperfect world. Had He made us perfect, we wouldn’t have the desire to persevere and grow, overcoming our challenges to emerge as better people.”

    …Only because if you start from perfection, it’s already the best thing possible, & therefore cannot be improved. Like what you say your god is. So I guess, according to your own logic, it’s a bad thing that your god cannot face adversity & emerge as something better. Which, given the standards you ascribe to him, I’m inclined to actually agree with.

    “And indeed, the most recent findings suggest that designating DNA as “junk” merely cloaks our current lack of knowledge about function.”

    He’s just doing the same fallacy in reverse by assuming that “unknown function” means “must have a function,” & therefore ruling out entirely the possibility that the genes genuinely don’t have a function. Which is absurd, since we know for a fact these exist, for example there are viral DNA strands that can get embedded in the genome & obviously weren’t put there deliberately by the body. It is possible, though not necessarily true, that these might acquire new functions over time, but that doesn’t imply design. If your foundation cracks & ants start living in there, you didn’t design that crack for the ants.

    This dovetails nicely into the 2nd problem: His usage of the term “vestigial structure” is a strawman, a vestigial structure need not actually be useless, but simply have a drastically reduced usage from its earlier form. Obviously, a site for muscle attachment is vastly reduced from being a prehensile tail.

    “Admitting design into science can only enrich the scientific enterprise. All the tried and true tools of science will remain intact. But design adds a new tool to the scientist’s explanatory tool chest.”

    Okay, no, he’s just straight up lying here. His proposal blatantly smashes the intended neutrality of a scientific investigation by assuming a conclusion before it even starts, & worse yet this is proposed without any real evidence. “Some amount of noncoding DNA actually does something, therefore God” is missing quite a few steps. This is not a “tool,” it can’t inherently make any predictions that another scientist can’t make–they’re going to study the genes to see if they do anything regardless of whether or not they believe a god was involved–it’s a way to try to force religion into science, which can only end in rigging science to justify dogma.

    “Natural selection doesn’t explain the origins of life, however. It merely explains the evolution of existing life forms.”

    True, that’s why there’s pioneering research into abiogenesis. Seriously, read more things that aren’t Christian apologists, you will learn a lot, particularly about science & how they misrepresent it.

    “Contentions that offer nothing more than long periods of time offer no mechanism of explanation for the derivation of genetic programming. No new information is provided by such tautologies. The argument simply says it happened.”

    Don’t care. He’s dismissing totally out of hand that “it happened” is even an acceptable answer, let alone the actual truth. Before he wants me to explain to him the transcendent meaning of life, he needs to give me a reason why it’s even necessary to assume that one actually exists & needs to be discovered.

    “By means that no depth and breadth of scientific research can explain, life arose early in earth’s history under anything but the benign conditions it would seem to require and somehow persisted through multiple mass extinction events, always appearing and reappearing at just-right times and in just-right forms to meet the needs and demands of the revised environment.”

    Will you stop quoting people that beg the question? I’m getting tired of saying, “He’s just saying something must be true or can’t be true with absolutely no proof, & arguing from his own ignorance & incredulity.”

    “The more thoroughly researchers investigate the history of our planet, the more astonishing the story of our existence becomes. The number and complexity of the astronomical, geological, chemical, and biological features recognized as essential to human existence have expanded explosively within the last decade…Are we simply the result of a colossal matrix of innumerable, narrow coincidences, against all odds, or is there a more reasonable explanation?” (p. 14).

    Here’s your explanation: There are an estimated 10^24 stars in the universe. Some stars don’t have any planets, but on average, they tend to have multiples. Our own solar system had at least 8 cracks to get it right, & that’s even assuming that there aren’t places & ways life can emerge beyond the 1 that we know about. Do you think a person who wins the lottery once must be magic just because the odds are 1 in 175 million?

    The next guy is just asserting that an intelligent force must be sustaining evolution for no reason other than his personal incredulity. Again. Never mind that, in many cases, we observe what by all accounts appears to be randomness in mutation, genetic drift, etc. Fortunately, I’m finally at the end of this section.

    The whole moral argument section is totally irrelevant to me, since the character ascribed to your god is independent of whether or not he actually exists. But I will note that I do find it personally disturbing that you basically go, “Yeah, God uses genocide as part of his perfect divine plan,” & apparently cannot conceive why people would consider your Biblical moral code to be completely depraved.

    “Such an argument equates to me saying that because I have no knowledge of someone else’s dreams, the person must not have had such dreams.”

    It isn’t, for 2 reasons. First, we have real evidence that other people dream, & second, his argument is that areas Y & Z will be similar to X. Your argument is that People Y & Z will be DISsimilar to Person X. But I actually agree for once that this isn’t a great argument. It’s also an unnecessary one to make, since he could simply say it’s an appeal to consequences: It doesn’t follow that good must exist elsewhere to balance out bad. I guess he wanted to go the extra mile & come up with an argument for why it was not only an unreasonable conclusion, but also one which should be actively doubted, but his mistake is that in his analogy he would actually be using 1 crate of oranges to argue that another crate of oranges had the same ratio of healthy to rotted fruits. Which makes no sense.

    “Another example relates to the dismissal of near death experiences, which are “too numerous and well documented to be dismissed altogether” (Lichfield, 2015).”

    Hah, that’s just using a nebulous gish gallop to obscure the fact that we know that very few people have NDEs, they’re influenced by the preexisting beliefs of the person, & they can even be triggered in a lab via brain stimulation. He’s effectively just shifting the burden of proof, acting like I need to disprove every single NDE in specific in order to say they’re a natural phenomenon born out of neurochemistry. Sorry, it doesn’t work that way. I dismiss NDEs as being anything more than a neurological illusion because that’s what the scientific evidence supports.

    “Our trouble is that we have established bad thought habits. We habitually think of the visible world as real and doubt the reality of any other. We do not deny the existence of the spiritual world but we doubt that it is real in the accepted meaning of the word.”

    No, this isn’t a bad habit, this is because everything which has been successfully explained has been explained in terms of the physical universe. You can tell me that your god does this, that, & the other thing, but you’ve failed to give any verifiable evidence to distinguish this as something that is inherently true & not just your opinion or guess.

    “The world of sense intrudes upon our attention day and night for the whole of our lifetime. It is clamorous, insistent, and self-demonstrating. It does not appeal to our faith; it is here, assaulting our five senses, demanding to be accepted as real and final. But sin has so clouded the lenses of our hearts that we cannot see the other reality, the City of God, shining around us. The world of sense triumphs. The visible becomes the enemy of the invisible, the temporal, of the eternal. That is the curse inherited by every member of Adam’s tragic race” (p. 53-54).

    I think it’s kind of hilarious that this person gave an actual, sensible reason why people “believe in” the physical world & not “others,” but then backtracks & says, “But it’s actually sin!” Also, these guys need to calm down, most people DO believe in the supernatural. If even most of you can’t actually see it, that’s not a very compelling case.

    “Russell states that because we have injustice in the world that justice must not rule the world. Yet we all adhere to an absolute moral standard, which suggests justice is innate, established, and sourced.”

    No we don’t. You even refute this in your next sentence: You point out that people without sound minds don’t necessarily adhere to these standards. We have certain standards which are relatively universal, but nonetheless relative. There is no such thing as an absolute moral standard, at least not more absolute than any other human-designed concept. I don’t know why you’re so bent out of shape about this, I think it’d be pretty awful if all the rape & genocide you’ve mentioned exist according to some absolute moral standard–which I must remind you that you’ve also said uses it as part of its “perfect divine plan.” The fact that moral standards ARE relative means that they are alterable, we can correct behaviors that are harmful, we don’t just have to go with them.

    “Russell calls attention to Christ’s directive to turn the other cheek, yet states that Christians do not follow the directive (without any empirical support), implying that the directive is invalid.”

    All the things you have said without empirical support, & now you’re ragging on Russel for not giving empirical support? Okay, sure, he’s technically made this mistake once, & since he’s dead, he can’t respond to explain how he came to this figure, & I’m not familiar enough with his work to know if he did so elsewhere. I think that’s a pretty hollow victory in comparison, but if you want to take it, I guess you’ve earned it. In terms of the implication, I don’t know if that’s what he was getting at or not, so I guess you’re right to criticize him for this IF it was actually his point.

    “Russell goes on to state that Lao-tse and Buddha also called on followers to turn the other cheek, implying that Christ isn’t original. If Christian values didn’t form the fabric of ethical guidelines in previous societies and cultures, wouldn’t we question them more? The fact that previous cultures adhere to similar arguments helps to validate the arguments and the Lord’s influence on prior generations.”

    What? No it doesn’t. You just picked 2 cultural figures who agreed on a certain thing, that doesn’t amount to a universal influence, & even if it did, it’s just as likely that Lao-tse’s religion is the correct one. Also, there’s no reason to suspect that cultures wouldn’t broadly agree on a lot, since generally speaking, something which is detrimental to a person or society will be detrimental to ANY person or society. Thus, we can expect that all societies would have at least some measure of scorn for murder, theft, & so on. But even these tend to have caveats, differences in how much they’re tolerated among different groups & the precise reasoning for why, because once again, there are no true moral absolutes.

    “Accordingly, I don’t believe that all people should be punished in the same way as Hitler, Pol Pot, and Stalin. God gave me common sense, which suggests He’ll vary the punishments to fit the crimes.”

    Well, good for you, but that’s not what your quote says. It quite explicitly says that all who don’t follow Jesus are goin’ in the same fire pit. I’ve not gotten to the new testament myself yet, so I can’t say for certain that Jesus preached hellfire in the modern sense, but just judging from what you’ve presented here, which roughly aligns with other sources I’ve seen commenting on the subject, it kinda looks like you have better scruples than Jesus did. Again, I don’t know if what you’re presenting is accurate, but that’s my tentative conclusion for now.

    “I do not dispute the assertion that some churches are flawed and there are flaws in the history of churches. Yet many are not.”

    I suspect you arrive at this number by being pretty selective with what you consider to be a flaw. For example, I can’t abide by a church that preaches “the sin of homosexuality,” since there’s no compelling argument for why consenting adults can’t have a relationship in the same sense that a heterosexual couple would other than “I find it icky!” Yet this is preached by most forms of Christianity. You can just hop on Wikipedia, they have articles for that sort of thing, feel free to go down the list & see how many churches don’t do that.

    “In conclusion, I find it interesting how atheists often challenge the divinity and governance of the Christian God. For example, Christopher Hitchens refers to himself as a “Protestant Atheist.”

    I had to look this up, since you didn’t explain the context. I found one of him doing a comedy bit in which someone had a gun to his head & forced him to identify if he was “a Catholic atheist or a Protestant atheist,” in which he was making a point about cultural assumptions. I also found quotes, though I couldn’t confirm for sure if they’re real, in which he said he was influenced by the Protestant culture he grew up with, but is nonetheless an atheist in the sense that he doesn’t believe in their god or agree with all of their religious doctrines. I have no idea what either of these have to do with your point here.

    “Why is the Christian God the God of choice? My suspicion is that the Christian God is the one they know is the most likely to be real.”

    I think you might want to practice a bit more before you apply for a detective job. Factors you’re overlooking: People generally don’t argue that fairies & leprechauns actually exist, they don’t want to rewrite science courses to include them or pass laws based on what the fairies allegedly told them, most of the atheists you know are English-speaking people who live in English-speaking cultures which are predominantly influenced by Christianity more than any other religion…& finally, you’re seeing what you expect to see with regards to “anger.”

    Some people actually do get legitimately angry at fictional characters. Others don’t, but would still express a general dislike of them if you asked, especially toward people who defend their actions. Some genuinely just wouldn’t care, & you’d never hear from these people, because they’d never talk about it. People have different emotional reactions to stories, none of which imply de facto belief. You’re only seeing it as that because you’ve been taught this as a kind of Gotcha. The problem, aside from basically being presumptive & inaccurate, is that this is clearly deliberately designed so that the apologist always has an escape hatch. If the atheist doesn’t refute their arguments, they can point to that & say, “See, our arguments are so good they’re irrefutable!” But then, if you actually do respond, they pull this “Oh, you’re just mad at God because you know he exists!” card.

    Many atheists also walked away from a Christian upbringing, which left them upset for one reason or another. The sense of being lied to, maybe disowned by a relative, or other factors. Finally, it must be acknowledged that some atheists are frankly just jerks, & they’re not only jerks to you. In spite of how just awful I find your arguments, & how condescending I think some of your accusations are, I wouldn’t even be here if you were TJ “Amazing Atheist” Kirk. The guy is just a belligerent bully, & I wouldn’t even spit on him if he was on fire.

    Oh, & having encountered monotheistic apologists of various stripes–Jewish, Islamic, & Deist, mostly–I can tell you that there’s a lot of overlap in those arguments, & they don’t really need to be changed much. Heck, 3/4 of these groups actually call their god “God” (even though the Judeo-Christian god has names, most notably “Yahweh”), & even Muslims will generally just say that “God” is the English equivalent to Allah. I only need to make an argument specific to the Islam if I see an argument specific to Islam. Which doesn’t happen often, but does happen.

    “Sixteen atheists responded “no.” This answer surprised me, yet offered an explanation for some of the hostility I’ve seen on Twitter from atheists.”

    The well poisoning is duly noted, but the fact that this surprised you tells me you still have a lot to learn. Your god’s a jerk. Call this “hostility” if you want, but from a literary standpoint, he is so thoroughly unpleasant to the point that he resembles how modern authors design their villains. Demanding of absolute loyalty, harshly punishing dissenters, calling for the wholesale slaughter of enemy villages to make way for his chosen people, & saying the whole thing is justified on the basis that there’s nothing more powerful than him…I could just as easily be describing Lord Voldemort here as I could be Yahweh.

    The point here is that, even if it were proven that your god exists, that doesn’t inherently mean he has to be followed. Cancer is a thing that exists, that doesn’t mean I think doctors shouldn’t treat it, & just let it run its course. The distinction between that which is & that which ought–AKA acknowledging the naturalistic fallacy–is pretty much Skepticism 101 here. Of many problems with religious apologetics, one of the most obvious is the conflation of arguments of fact with arguments of feeling. It is simply presumed that proving the factual correctness of the things described in your religion should engender a sense of loyalty to it, & in the other direction if you can appeal to someone’s emotions, that should prove that your god exists. But one does not imply the other.

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    1. Actually, I really should’ve read up on this Penrose guy before I wrote that. My basic point stands–it’s nothing more than his opinion that the book was misleading, he doesn’t really give anything specific that Hawking is wrong about, & it’s irrelevant to the point made in the OP–but there are other problems to his supposed authoritative debunking.

      The quote here is accurate in the sense that he did say that on a Christian radio show, the source cited has video evidence proving it, but said source also reports the information in a misleading fashion. The interview shows heavy signs of clipping the convenient parts of what he said out of a larger context. We’d have to assume a lot larger, since the video is only 3 minutes (way too short for a radio show segment), & he doesn’t even speak for most of it, as well as getting abruptly cut away from every time he says a few sentences. Further, since he’s an atheist, he certainly did not claim to prove the universe was created by a deity, which is the impression the article clearly aims to leave you with.

      As an added irony, it’s sort of funny for Penrose to seemingly have such disdain for M theory, considering he believes a lot of things that are far less supported. These include his belief that consciousness is an effect of quantum gravity on the microtubles of cells, & basically that the Big Bang as we know it didn’t happen, but was just an event which occurred in a pre-existing universe. These are not widely supported in the scientific community, & frankly seem to be things that he practically made up & justified via murky philosophical arguments & mathematical formulas designed to show his ideas as hypothetically possible, but which other scientists say don’t actually work. At least M Theorists generally admit that they’re making unverified mathematical predictions, & their math actually works out.

      This goes to show the problem with arguing from the opinions of expert authorities. Even if we ignore the cherry picking aspect (he’s apparently smart enough that his word alone refutes M Theory, but not Christianity), no matter how knowledgeable & credible someone is on certain subjects, there’s no guarantee they don’t ALSO believe things which are totally out there. “This guy knows a lot about physics” simply doesn’t mean “we can trust whatever he says.” I can’t say for sure that his cosmological views are false, but given the very scant evidence he has for them, it would be a shocking coincidence if they weren’t.

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    2. I’m not sure what this drivel is but you’re not simply a procrastinator, you’re a long-winded crashing bore. Did nobody tell you about the unwritten rule that you don’t paste blogs into the comments section of a blog. Get your own blog.

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      1. Well, Donnie, what you’re really saying isn’t that there’s something wrong with what I said, but that you hate the idea of reading. That doesn’t mean I’m going to start taking orders from you, so I guess your life sucks on 2 counts.

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      2. Lithp, it is annoying having to scroll through such long comments it did not even fit into one comment, when one is looking for something else. Why don’t you write a blog post, provide an excerpt from it so people can see what it is about, and comment the excerpt along with the link to your post? That way, you can write what you want, and those who want to read it can see it and find it, but it doesn’t take up so much space on the comments section, say, for somebody who is just scanning or wants to find the reply, which, unfortunately, end up at the bottom of all the comments.

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    3. I do agree that a lot of problems are caused by people reading their group’s response to/representation of the other group and then thinking or claiming that that means they know the other group’s argument/positions. I see this is so many places, not just apologetics, and I dislike it. I also dislike the fact that people will identify one with a group and then not listen to one because they think they have already heard one’s argument a hundred and one times.

      Also, there’s also a lot of poor thinking done by both sides in most arguments. I’m a Christian, and I’m not into apologetics, but I agree that a lot of Christian apologetics isn’t even all that great. For example, recently, I read someone claim that the universe cannot have an infinite past, because it is impossible for us to picture how an infinite past could bring us up to the future… (and, so, because there cannot be an infinite past, the universe must have a beginning and, therefore, a Maker). That is an assertion. It makes about as much sense as saying that the universe cannot have infinite space, which I understand to be a generally accepted possibility. Time is just one dimension. And, what makes the past different from the future? If the future can be infinite, why not the past? I’m not saying here that I believe the universe has an infinite past or future or that I believe the universe is infinite in distance/space. I’m just saying, here is a Christian who actually thinks most Christian apologetics are badly done (and, I have other reasons for not caring about apologetics, which is why I haven’t spent more time taking them apart and re-doing them).

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      2. “Lithp […] Why don’t you write a blog post, provide an excerpt from it so people can see what it is about, and comment the excerpt along with the link to your post?”

        I don’t have a blog, but it did occur that it would be better to write up my response on Google Docs & share the link–unfortunately, that only occurred to me AFTER I’d already submitted it. The reason I snarked Donnie is because he decided to ad hom me rather than saying something like “this isn’t very readable, you probably should’ve done this differently,” which would’ve been perfectly reasonable. Also, from the other comment:

        “I’m just saying, here is a Christian who actually thinks [many] Christian apologetics are badly done”

        I’ve recently heard that a lot of Christians don’t agree with apologetics, which I would certainly say makes sense, but it did surprise me. I definitely don’t disagree with your criticism.

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      3. Yeah, I know. A lot of people do that a lot, and it’s not very nice. Or very useful. It’s really annoying, actually.

        Oh, yes, I should have put this in the other comment, but I only remembered after hitting send: the main thing about Christianity is not that it is a new and better morality, or that Confucius did not say things similar to things in the Sermon on the Mount but the person of Christ Himself: that God the Son became a man, died for the sins of the world at the hands of His own creation, and rose from the dead. More, the Person Himself who did these things.

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  5. Thanks for your work here. Well-researched and written. I’m also a huge fan of C.S. Lewis… To me, he is still the best source for the seeker truly desiring to understand what Christianity is. Thanks again, and God richly bless you and grant you Divine Favor in all your efforts to defend our faith! M. A.

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  6. ”I was hesitant to agree because I had never read any books or articles by those advocating atheism, and I was fearful that something they would write would challenge my beliefs in a way I found uncomfortable.”

    Really? Your own belief is so uncertain that you actively avoid arguments that you think might weaken it further? Stress testing your convictions is surely the only way to be sure you are not making a lifelong mistake, and the only way to do that is to expose yourself to opposing points of view and refute them to your own satisfaction. I’ve been an atheist since a very early age, but I didn’t discount the possibility of a god entirely until I’d exposed myself to any and all opposing viewpoints I could find. I’ve never yet encountered an argument for any deity or religious belief thats caused me the slightest doubt (most don’t even get close to making sense), and I think it’s unlikely I ever will.

    Christianity, like most religions, is a cultural habit that survives only as long as it’s passed down through the generations by force feeding it to children from an early age. That process has now more or less collapsed in Europe, and in the 5 decades of my lifetime the number of people in the UK declaring themselves as Christian has dropped from over 80 percent to less than 50 percent, with fewer than two percent regularly going to church. Clearly doubt is making better headway these days than so-called ‘good news’.

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  7. If anyone is thinking of writing up a devastating critique of philosophical materialism, then they’re going to have to consult this wonderfully constructed article before doing so, it’s been very well researched, it deals with all of the bigger questions, Miss Thomason’s criticisms of Russell are not only credible, but consistently definitive, and finally, it puts to bed once & for all, any notion of this farcical, ‘chance + necessity’, beginning to our space-time continuum, simply because there’s no such thing as an infinity of matter & energy, we don’t get free lunches, not in the real world, at least.

    This is brilliant piece of work, SJ, people should appreciate your contributions more, since you very seldom miss the mark.

    Peace, Love & God bless!

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  8. Pingback: mid-week apologetics booster (10-6-2022) – 1 Peter 4:12-16

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