Skipping Through Strawmen
You Can Beat Atheists at Their Own Game
Christians these days often think itโs hard to face an atheist.
Even I do sometimes, and Iโve been talking to atheist for years. Used to be agnostic myself.
But every now and then, an atheist comes along to remind us how fragile their own perceptions really are.
Take for example this meme I recently shared:
At first glance, it appears clever. Heโs dropping bombs and blowing up Christianity before our very eyes.
Itโs a rush. You want to ride the Harley. See where it takes you. Participate in the thrill.
But looks...especially in this case...can be deceiving. He misrepresents Christianity by a country mile, and his makeshift Titanic tumbles beneath waves.
Holes in the boat are blatant. Waterโs everywhere. In fact, itโs a boat without a bottom.
Hereโs why the atheistโs 11 critiques fail before they ever get started.
1. Whatโs With Those Bible Thumpers?
The argument โThe Bible says it, I believe it, that settles itโ is where the atheist gets his first track.
And itโs so 20th century.
Few serious Christians use it anymore when speaking to skeptics. For the reason the atheist outlines: Itโs circular.
The mantra assumes the Bible is the ultimate authority without first establishing why.
However, one approach the atheist hasnโt thought of, as most donโt, is that the Bible isnโt just one book. Itโs a series of books written over thousands of years with multiple authors (lowercase โaโ) from different walks of life across many nations and three separate continents.
And within that series, there is interconnected validation historians would consider multiple attestation, which lends credence to the Bible being true.
2. Godโs Attributes in Nature
The atheist next attacks the trees, which appears to be a reference to Intelligent Design. But itโs straw-manned by minimizing ID and also ushering in a crass ode to the alleged โproblem of evil.โ
Trees and photosynthesis alone are not what ID advocates appeal to when arguing for God. The irreducible complexity within everything is what captures attention.
Every system in every creature and everything in our universe is incredibly complex, and complex objects are only ever witnessed to be created by minds. Therefore, by logical implication, the complex systems in the universe must have come from a Mind.
And since their interworking parts provide vital functions down to the most microscopic level, without which they all would die, slow and random processes over billions of years is an invalid alternative explanation.
Even the mold, which the atheist considers evil (weโll get to that below when we discuss morality), is vastly complex. All he has shown is he misunderstands the argument for ID and has instead set up a pile of hay as an irrelevant, convenient punching bag.
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3. Silent as the Wind Blows
โYou canโt prove God doesnโt existโ is typically a cop-out used by an unprepared Christian who has run out of arguments, not one any serious Christian leads with. But the atheist treats it as if itโs our standard modus operandi. So, heโs already being disingenuous.
And he also finds it convenient because itโs an easy argument from silence. One of the simplest logical fallacies to refute.
After all, silence doesnโt tell us anything. In the absence of evidence is when we speculate and invent falsity. Punching the dark.
Which is the ultimate end to the atheist bringing it up. He wants to paint us (Christians) as having blind, empty faith. Because it positions him as the โreasonableโ one and puts him on a pedestal of righteousness.
But note how the atheist himself just assumes his own position correct in this case. Without providing evidence.
As determined in the last section, simple random processes over billions of years are an inadequate explanation for the irreducible complexity witnessed in the universe. But without turning to God as the only remaining explanation, simple random processes are all heโs left with, meaning the atheist is operating on blind faith.
Hence, his bringing attention to the argument from silence is a distraction from his own weak worldview.
4. Much Ado About Nothing
Atheists love the โWho made God?โ question. Think theyโre being clever. โSomething canโt come from nothingโ is a rendition of that question. And a misrepresentation of the Kalam Cosmological Argument for God.
Iโve written about the argument in a past article. It states:
Anything that has a beginning has a cause
The universe had a beginning
Therefore, the universe has a cause
Virtually all credible cosmologists over the past century, with very few exceptions, have agreed that the universe began at the Big Bang, and prior to that, there was nothing. Which provides a compelling argument for God.
Hereโs how I phrased it in the past:
Space, time, and matter came into existence at the Big Bang. That is settled science. Few dispute it, and those who do arenโt taken seriously in scientific circles.
Logically, that means whatever was before that moment had to be spaceless, timeless, and immaterial.
Nothing doesnโt produce anything, so this whatever had to be something else capable of producing.
The only things or beings capable of producing, that we have observed for millennia, are living creatures, meaning whatever made the universe must be alive.
This universe is vastly complex and astounding in wonder. So much so that whenever we try to replicate it, we fail to come anywhere close to matching the observed complexity within. This suggests whatever that living maker is, it is extremely intelligent and creative.
Only sentient beings (persons) willingly create, so that Being must be a sentient person.
Ergo, a spaceless, timeless, immaterial, living, intelligent, sentient God.
Now, God could have a cause, but in order to establish that, one would have to prove he had a beginning. But we canโt. Not to mention, itโs unclear how one would go about such a proof since by necessity God is TIMELESS.
So, until then, โWho made God?โ is an invalid line of inquiry.
One also has to consider that the impossibility of infinite regresses (an eternal strand of objects) tells us the buck has to stop somewhere, or else nothing would ever begin. Because, again, nothing produces nothing.
God MUST have eternality built into his essence, which matches the description of the biblical God. An everlasting sentient Being who exists alongside nothing and then chooses to create the universe and make humans in his own image.
Iโm guess the atheist avoids the whole above argument because, again, itโs easier to punch hay.
5. Letโs Get Fussy About Good and Bad
Morality is another of those topics atheist think theyโre experts at, while in the very same breath theyโll treat Christians with the utmost hate and contempt. Not realizing the depth of their own hypocrisy.
But their own position fails in other ways as well.
They get one thing right. Value is in the eye of the beholder. But they donโt go far enough.
If humans are the makers of morality based on subjective value judgments, then morality is built on sinking sand. Anyone with enough power can come along and redefine ethics to fit his or her own agenda. Because humans have no objective rights in such a world.
And anyone who fights back would have no leg to stand on because its just his word against anotherโs.
Ironically, the worst outcomes of subjectivism have played out in atheistic societies. Namely communist countries.
The death toll from the enactment of communism and socialism stretching from the French Revolution to the end of the 20th century numbers in the 10s of millions. And that doesnโt account for the millions more who were tortured, abused, and had their homes and livelihoods destroyed.
All in all, the figures outnumber and outweigh the devastation from so-called โreligious warsโ throughout the entirety of human history. By a loooong shot.
Add into the mix the systematic slaughtering of 300 million+ babies through institutionalized abortion in the 20th century (by atheist liberals), and nothing has caused more damage to society than atheism.
Why? Because, as it turns out, humans canโt figure out on their own โdonโt murder Dave.โ Even worse, if everything is random and material, there IS NO โdonโt murder Dave.โ It doesnโt exist.
Unless thereโs an ultimate Beholder who made all things with purpose and design and established order into reality, including a moral order written into the fabric of this cosmos. A Beholder to whom all humans will one day give account of their doings and be held accountable for their sins.
By implication, evil itself is the absence of the good order established by the Beholder. It is not a thing. Itโs the NOTHING encroaching back into the SOMETHING the Beholder made.
Which again, aligns with the Bible.
Adam and Eve disobeyed the perfect Maker, ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil prematurely (instead of trusting the Creator), and their rebellion destroyed a barrier against chaos and disorder (nothingness), thereby opening up the possibility of the absence of Godโs goodness in this world.
Yet again, atheists deny this moral framework, and because of that, they are left with no foundation. Moral laws require a Lawmaker.
6. Is It Getting Crowded in Here?
That Christianity is the most widespread religion across the globe is a compelling stat for its impact across the last two millennia.
But that billions believe in Christ is a bandwagon fallacy if used as a standalone argument for Christianityโs validity. So, the atheist is right to condemn it.
However, the atheist also doesnโt give credit where credit is due and shows his lack of historical knowledge.
He brings up that billions used to believe the sun orbited the earth, which is a natural mistake to make because the sun rises in the East and sets in the West. With their limited technology, past societies could not observe beyond the horizon of this earth or could only do so in a highly limited fashion.
Furthermore, most societies used astrology for religious purposes, namely prophecy.
What changed? CHRISTIANITY.
Christians were the first to see true design in the natural world, so they chose to explore it deep in order to understand it from a scientific perspective. Believing it would enhance their relationship to their Creator. Without their ventures, people would still believe the sun orbits the earth.
Therefore, atheists take credit for science, just as much as they take credit for morality, despite their lack of presence in either topic until recent centuries. Talk about unjustified hubris.
7. All About Them Vibes
I find it funny how atheists are all about observations with the five senses (empiricism), yet they deny feeling (which is one of those senses) when a Christian claims to have felt God.
Donโt get me wrong. Feelings alone are not substantial proof of anything. Human experience is subjective. Which is why experience should never be just accepted outright.
But atheistsโ denial of such feelings without studying the many claims to them and determine their validity or lack thereof (through proper open-minded, logical examination) is the epitome of hypocrisy.
And there ARE many claims to spiritual experiences throughout the ages.
Itโs mathematically impossible for them all to be invented. They have to be explained.
Atheists typically default to delusion as the explanation, but in order to know someone is experiencing delusion, you must know with a high degree of certainty what the truth is. And the atheist worldview comes up wanting in that regard...as already well established above.
There are three potential explanations for spiritual experiences:
God and the supernatural are real and people have experienced him and other spirits.
The material world is all there is and humans made up the gods and spirits.
A mixture of the first two in which some have experienced God and spirits and others have had psychological problems, and all claims to supernatural experience must be tested.
Atheists cannot go beyond the second with their restricted naturalism, making them seriously closed-minded.
At least with explanations 1 and 3 the possibility of alternative realities to our own is permitted, and we can engage in metaphysical discussions.
With explanation 2, our own thoughts are restricted to mere neurons firing inside randomized matter that somehow (without justification) produces the illusion of intelligence. So, we canโt even trust our own reasoning in relation to the cosmos.
Hence, the entire enterprise of rational exploration is tripped up before the journey even begins.
8. Canโt Beat Perfection
Fine-tuning is another facet of Intelligent Design. And of course, atheists hate it because it obliterates their materialist fantasies.
Weโve already discussed the immense complexity in the cosmos, but fine-tuning goes one step further, asking the question of mathematical degrees. And creationists are not the only ones asking said question. Big Bang cosmologists with evolutionary leanings also take it on and tend to agree with the findings.
We live in whatโs known as the Goldilocks Zone of the universe within the Milky Way galaxy. Conditions and distances are perfected with precisions so specific that for them to have happened by chance is beyond logically impossible.
Weโre talking 10 squared by 1000s+ when all the numbers are crunched. Thatโs like tossing a penny into space, waiting a billion years, and then trying to find it blind-folded with a toothpick.
So many factors are required for life to exist that even a microscopic change to any of them could spell doom for the universe. Yet here we are.
We should have died long ago, all things considered, so the 99.9% death rate the atheist brings up must have another explanation.
That is, of course, entropy. The nothing encroaching on the something. Evil/chaos unleashed on Godโs very-good creation. Which isnโt part of the original design.
The atheist seems to presume entropy has always been part of the cosmos. But if thatโs the case, and the universe has been experiencing a slow death for billions of years, why are we still around?
Death moves at varying rates of speed. Sometimes fast, sometimes slow. So why is it taking its time with the cosmos as a whole?
Iโve never met an atheist who can adequately answer that question.
9. Dr. Strange Wants His Powers Back
Near Death Experiences (or NDEs) are out-of-body experiences encountered when someone has been clinically dead for a certain period and then brought back to life. Such events have occurred throughout history at around the same rate as claims to experiences of the supernatural.
Atheists, like the one who made the meme, are again forced to resort to delusion as an explanation. They default to random neurons firing in oxygen starved brains. But the same problem emerges here: If weโre just mindless matter, atheistsโ own argument canโt be trusted because it is just neurons firing randomly.
Furthermore, he misrepresents the findings of neurology. Abstract, rational thought cannot be mapped to any part of the human brain. AT ALL.
As in, no part of the brain activates when you engage in sentient faculties. Which is significant evidence for the existence of your soul.
The brain appears to act as a receptor, like a radio antenna, for your mind.
So, NDEs are entirely possible and plausible since your mind is separate from your matter.
That doesnโt mean you can astral project Dr. Strange style any time you want. And that doesnโt mean all NDEs are credible and acceptable.
They must be tested like claims to miracles and the supernatural. But such inquiry is outside the bounds of science.
Once one enters the realm of the metaphysical (the realm of non-repeatable one-time events, like witness statements), investigative methods akin to those relied upon by historians, detectives, attorneys, anthropologists, sociologists, and philosophers (comparative analysis, logic, and reason) take over.
Empirical science only provides data. And data has to be interpreted.
10. Mustard Seeds Grow Big, Bro
โJust have faithโ can be an โintellectual tap-out,โ as the atheist calls it. If used to deflect away from intellectual inquiry.
In that sense, no Christian should use the phrase. But faith itself, as in trust in certain presuppositions about reality, cannot be escaped.
All significant advancements in the modern world start with faith in a hypothesis of some kind, which was experimented with to see if it aligned with reality and was logically, objectively true. That process is the foundation of philosophy, without which empirical science would not exist. And Christians, as noted, while not the first to recognize said foundation, were the ones to embrace it because of their belief in Godโs intelligent design.
Every human has faith in something. The atheist has faith in materialism. Thatโs his worldview, and by it (unless he steals from Christian morality), he develops rites and rituals that guide him through life. That FORM him. Itโs Christianityโs opposition to his worldview that causes him to be so passionately against it.
Otherwise, he wouldnโt care in the slightest. Which also refutes his next point...
11. Freaky Frustration Says a Lot
Atheists always say, โhard to hate someone you donโt think exists,โ but those same atheists spend all day ragging on and mocking Christ and Christians.
And location doesnโt matter. Christians are the most persecuted religious group in the world, especially in Muslim and atheistic countries, and itโs not even close.
In places like China, certain countries in Africa, and some countries in South and Central America, churches are forced underground, with Christians being arrested, tortured, and sometimes executed for practicing their faith in public. The same is increasingly being done in places like Europe and Canada as Islamic invasion and materialist atheism (usually in the same old form of socialism) take hold.
Even in countries like India, Christianity is threatened daily by Hindus and Buddhists, who arenโt as peaceful as modern society likes to paint them. Missionaries all over wake up each day wondering if it could be their last on this earth because of the hatred they experience daily.
Go to places like Reddit online, and atheists never shut up about how much they hate God, think heโs evil, and believe Christians (not any other religion; just Christians) are stupid, ignorant morons.
We are warranted to ask: If the Christian God is mere fiction, why are he and his followers so hated across the globe?
No one in history has ever hated fiction, but millions upon millions have hated truth that makes them uncomfortable. And only the Christian God has been hated with such terrible ferocity by all nations since Christianityโs inception following the crucifixion of Christ.
Either Christianity is false, and humanity is throwing a fit over it like a bunch of petty children because theyโre delusional. Or Christianity is the true myth of reality, and humans donโt want it because it demolishes their preferred worldviews.
Would You Look at this Mess?
After trouncing the arguments for God hard, it turns out the atheist was beating up the wrong guy.
He pictures flimsy Twizzlers he can dissolve in a centimeter of liquid. Sacred cows, easily tipped over in forlorn fields at dusk.
But thatโs only because his imagination deceives him. The real arguments for God behind his dreary strawmen are quite strong and remain intact, despite years of hatred and criticism from anti-Christian parties.
And all it took for us was a close exploration of his points to diffuse the so-called bombs. In fact, the real bombs blew up his own boat.
Because reason is the enemy of atheism. A little scrutiny, and their whole worldview comes crashing down at the feet of Christ our Lord.
THIS! Basically says it all!
We are warranted to ask: If the Christian God is mere fiction, why are he and his followers so hated across the globe?
No one in history has ever hated fiction, but millions upon millions have hated truth that makes them uncomfortable. And only the Christian God has been hated with such terrible ferocity by all nations since Christianityโs inception following the crucifixion of Christ.
Either Christianity is false, and humanity is throwing a fit over it like a bunch of petty children because theyโre delusional. Or Christianity is the true myth of reality, and humans donโt want it because it demolishes their preferred worldviews.