Making an Atheist Doubt
Humans have an inherent urge to justify their behavior. We do this by measuring ourselves among ourselves while gravitating towards information and individuals who vindicate our thinking. When we find a particular thing pleasing, we are more likely to legitimize it with supportive friends and data while avoiding anything to the contrary, which we will often find discomforting. In the 1950s, modern psychology took up the study of this phenomena, which they labeled cognitive dissonance. This condition is quite apparent in the debate over evolution, which has set out to silence any scientific data that may conflict with the view.
Although Christians are not immune to cognitive dissonance themselves, the wealth of contradictory information shows conclusively that it is a growing plague within the secular establishment. Oxford Professor Richard Dawkins’ 2007 best selling book, The God Delusion is a great example. When something doesn’t fit into the evolutionary paradigm, it’s just an evolutionary “misfire” or as a level headed person would see it: another theory to explain the original theory’s theory. As you read through the pages of this book, it is theories, stacked on top of theories, over the top of more theories.
Here’s how he explains why mankind is charitable. Remember being charitable, brave or loving contradicts Darwinian Evolution because it conflicts with our basic instinct for survival. After he explains how a mother bird is genetically programmed to take care of her young, he asserts, “The rule misfires if another baby bird somehow gets into the nest, a circumstance that is positively engineered by cuckoos. Could it be that our Good Samaritan urges are misfiring, analogous to misfiring of a reed warbler’s parental instincts when it works itself to the bone for a young cuckoo?” So that’s it, we’re charitable because millions of years ago another bird’s baby fell into the wrong nest and the mother bird looked after it. And that, we’re led to believe, is science. I’m always astonished at how such faulty arguments make their way into the mainstream.
Over the years, I've come to believe that atheism is the most irrational doctrine ever proposed by mankind. One that requires an immense amount of faith, trust, and speculation. The Theory of Evolution, which gives atheism its intellectual support is equally irrational for a host of reasons that we outline in other articles. Among the many problems, support for the theory is almost always used selectively. For example, they will use the Buckeye butterfly which looks like a leaf to make their case that it's markings and colors evolved to protect it from predators. But of course that only makes you wonder how the rest of the butterfly species which are at the bottom of the food chain survived because some have colors as bright as the sun. The Venus Flytrap apparently evolved into a bug eater to protect itself from extinction, which leaves one wondering why we have fruit trees which attract bugs.
I am also convinced that atheism fulfills the prediction made by Paul in 2 Timothy 4:3-4 when he writes, "For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, because they have itching ears, they will heap up for themselves teachers; and they will turn their ears away from the truth, and be turned aside to fables." Evolution and atheism is laden with fables and wives tales about how the universe came to be, how life began, and how feathers, eyes, and ears evolved. And sadly, most people take it at face value because it's coming down to us from academics and scientists. So few question their claims. The good news for the evangelist is that it doesn't take much to get your average atheist to doubt, given most have not thought things through very well. Below are just a few arguments that you can use to place doubt in the atheist's mind.
Affirming a Negative
Atheism comes from the Greek “A” which infers the negative. Theism for god. Definition: There is no God. It’s not saying, “I do not think there is a God.” It’s not saying, “I do not believe there is a God.” It is saying, “There is no God.” It is affirming the non-existence of God. This is very different from saying there is a god, which is affirming the positive. Affirming a negative is very different and much more challenging.
Universally affirming a negative is a logical fallacy. An introductory course in philosophy or logic teaches that, you cannot affirm a negative in the absolute. Let me say it again: you cannot affirm a negative in the absolute. That is, you cannot prove the non-existence of something universally. You can prove the non-existence of something in a closed system, for example: there are no atheist in the Senate. Yes this can be supported by taking a survey. But to make a universal statement, there are no atheist in the universe, without first searching the universe is a logical fallacy. Thus, atheism is self-defeating, because atheism does not have infinite knowledge to make this claim.
Example: If I said, “There is a green ball in the universe,” all I have to do is find one green ball and my statement is true. This is affirming a positive. Now if I said, “There are no green balls anywhere in the universe,” I would have to look everywhere first for my statement to be true. We know the atheist has not looked everywhere for God.
Of course this does not prove the existence of God, it just demonstrates that atheists have no case against the existence of God and that it is quite irrational to make such a position.
The Universality of Religion
The fact that 90% of Americans have had a religious experience puts a heavy burden on Atheists. www.gallup.com Their response is that religious people are hallucinating or it’s a neurological response to what we believe, or we are just plain lying about it. Many have made the claim that it is a survival mechanism due to million of years of evolution.
But suppose one day you went to a small village of 100 people and you asked them all if they knew someone named Josh McIntosh. About 90 people said they know Josh and had a relationship with him. Five people said they never met Josh and the other five said the 90 people you spoke to were hallucinating about Josh, he is fictional. Who do you believe, the 90 people who met Josh or the 10 who hadn't met Josh? This is a hard obstacle for the atheist to overcome. For me, I have always found it fascinating how an atheist can say for example, that miracles do not exist and right down the street at his local church you have miracles breaking out every weekend. It's astonishing.
Near Death Experiences
Many skeptics claim that science has disproved God. But this of course is a complete misunderstanding of science and God. Science only tests natural causes, like hurricanes, supernovas, tides, molecules, etc. Science does not test for the supernatural. A few weeks ago, there was a shooting at a local commission meeting. The video shows the gunman pointing the gun right at the mayor and opening fire from five feet away. The bullets never hit the mayor. When asked about the incident, the mayor claimed God protected him. Well at that point, the scientific community did not dispatch a group of scientist to research his claim. Science does not test for the metaphysical. So when someone claims they believe in science rather than God, this is out of ignorance.
Yet for those atheists who believe that science is the best source of knowledge, there is a group of scientific studies that support theism. Scientific research into near-death-experience (NDE) has been going on since the 70s, with the work of Dr. Raymond Moody Jr. Investigations have now documented thousands of cases of out-of-body experiences. One of the leading researchers, Dr. Atwater records the events of over 3,000 adults and 277 children who have had NDE.
Dr. Pim van Lommel conducted the most impressive clinical study, which covered 12 hospitals and 300 people. The conclusions are startling. “Every single skeptical theory or argument put forward to explain NDEs has been disproved and discredited by clinical research.” Lommel’s findings were published in the highly respected international medical journal, The Lancet, where he concludes, “Our results show that medical factors alone cannot account for the occurrences of NDE.” Countless cases reveal information about events the subjects could not have otherwise known while they were lying in the hospital bed. Legally blind subjects report accounts which could not have otherwise been reported had they not been able to see during the event. Some described the roof of the hospital accurately, other describe family events happening in a different state. Once again, this does not prove the existence of an all powerful God, but it does disprove any possibility for the atheist.
Does the Atheist Know Everything?
Another way to get the atheist to doubt is to ask the atheist if he knows everything? Then ask, what percentage of everything does he know? If he says “60%”, ask: is it possible that the knowledge of God exists in the 40% of things he doesn’t know? If he says no God cannot exist there ….remind him he just admitted he has no knowledge of this 40%.
A Cause Must be Sufficient to Account for the Effect
Let's continue to demonstrate how irrational atheism can be. Suppose you walked into my house one day and you saw a beautiful painting of a sunset hanging on the wall. You noticed it was signed, so you asked me who is the artist. Suppose I told you that one day I had left some canvas and some paint outside, and the next morning I found this painting complete and next to it was a frog with the brush in his hand finishing the job. So I concluded that the frog painted the sunset. You would think I was crazy because frogs are not sufficient to account for beautiful paintings. Put another way, everything that exists must have an adequate and appropriate explanation. Example:
When an atheist speaks of the universe appearing from nothing, our solar system coming together by chance, an eye, butterfly or kidney coming together by natural selection, we have to conclude that the cause is not nearly sufficient to account for the effect, as there is an unimaginable amount of precision, information and purpose behind all of them. It is more likely that a rabbit wrote the Encyclopedia Britannica.
If There is a God Why Isn’t There More Evidence?
Many atheist have often said that the burden of proof for God's existence is on the Christian and we have not met that burden. But the fact is we met that burden one second after the universe began. After all, how could something begin from nothing? The question, "If there is a God, why isn't there more evidence?", is designed to put the Christian on the defensive. We can answer it this way: A universe from nothing, the complexity of life, a fine tuned solar system, the laws of physics, the complexity of an eye, the existence of a fruit tree, and so forth should be conclusive evidence for the existence of God.
While this is a legitimate question, it is important to remember that the atheist or agnostic has the same burden of proof for their claims. Now turn the question: what is the evidence for the absence of God and if there is no God, how do you explain the existence of so much precision in the universe? If there is no God, why is there anything at all? If there is no God, would this be what we would expect to find, fruit trees, sun light, oxygen, gravity, the electro-magnetic spectrum, consciousness, and so forth? If there is no God, we should expect to find nothing at all.
If There is a God Why is the Universe so Wasteful?
I find this question to be more subconscious than out front with most atheists. When we look into the universe, we see stars emerging and stars burning out. When we look at history, we see dinosaurs emerging and then going extinct. We see the universe is very large and we are a mere spec in the cosmos. It begs the question; why such a big universe, why so many stars, why did it take so long? In short, why so much waste?
The concept of waste only applies to finite objects with limited resources. If a struggling artist who didn't own a car and was living on his friend's couch won $10,000 in the lottery and the next day spent it on a weekend cruise, one would say that was wasteful. If billionaire Bill Gates spends $10,000 on a weekend cruise, most would agree that is far less wasteful. God is infinite and has infinite resources, therefore nothing God does reduces in any way his unlimited resources. He could have made the universe a billion times bigger, taken a billion times longer and still retained every bit of his power. Those who believe in a young earth have often said God doesn't need billions of years to create the universe. This is true, he could have done it in a micro second. But to God ,13 billion years or 6,000 years are both like one second. He is eternal and infinite.
Isn’t it Unfair that a Murderer Can Just Say a Simple Prayer and go to Heaven?
This is a common problem for atheists and the answer of course is, yes that would be unfair. If a prayer can take away sin then God is not just. The problem of course is that this is not the proposition of the Christian faith. The Bible claims that the Son of God occupied a human body and lived a perfect righteous life. On a given day he chose to die as a consequence for sin on behalf of you and me. That is: He paid the price for murder, adultery, lying, etc. despite the fact that He did not owe this debt. The prayer of faith simply appropriates the payment for sin into our life. So yes this would be unfair, but that is not the proposition of the New Testament.
Can the Christian be Sure of God's Existence?
Suppose you are speaking to an atheist and you put forward some persuasive arguments. You've even managed to get him to doubt some of what he believes. When you are done, the atheist turns around and asks you, how can you be so sure God exists.
I would respond to this question by stating that I can be certain of God’s existence. You can make this point by asking the atheist if he is certain that his mother exists. How can you be certain that she exists: because you know your mother. You talk to your mother and have a relationship with your mother. The fact that I never met your mother is irrelevant. In the same way, a Christian who knows God can be certain of His existence. Here we are affirming a positive, rather than affirming a negative.
What about conflicting experiences from other religions? No other religion suggests that you can know God and experience his presence. The Muslim at best can only know Allah's will by reading the Quran. The Buddhist doesn't even claim god exists. Therefore, other religions at best only support the idea of a supernatural experience, while only the Christian can come to know the living God.
Articles
Unreasonable Doubt Jim Spiegel
Although Christians are not immune to cognitive dissonance themselves, the wealth of contradictory information shows conclusively that it is a growing plague within the secular establishment. Oxford Professor Richard Dawkins’ 2007 best selling book, The God Delusion is a great example. When something doesn’t fit into the evolutionary paradigm, it’s just an evolutionary “misfire” or as a level headed person would see it: another theory to explain the original theory’s theory. As you read through the pages of this book, it is theories, stacked on top of theories, over the top of more theories.
Here’s how he explains why mankind is charitable. Remember being charitable, brave or loving contradicts Darwinian Evolution because it conflicts with our basic instinct for survival. After he explains how a mother bird is genetically programmed to take care of her young, he asserts, “The rule misfires if another baby bird somehow gets into the nest, a circumstance that is positively engineered by cuckoos. Could it be that our Good Samaritan urges are misfiring, analogous to misfiring of a reed warbler’s parental instincts when it works itself to the bone for a young cuckoo?” So that’s it, we’re charitable because millions of years ago another bird’s baby fell into the wrong nest and the mother bird looked after it. And that, we’re led to believe, is science. I’m always astonished at how such faulty arguments make their way into the mainstream.
Over the years, I've come to believe that atheism is the most irrational doctrine ever proposed by mankind. One that requires an immense amount of faith, trust, and speculation. The Theory of Evolution, which gives atheism its intellectual support is equally irrational for a host of reasons that we outline in other articles. Among the many problems, support for the theory is almost always used selectively. For example, they will use the Buckeye butterfly which looks like a leaf to make their case that it's markings and colors evolved to protect it from predators. But of course that only makes you wonder how the rest of the butterfly species which are at the bottom of the food chain survived because some have colors as bright as the sun. The Venus Flytrap apparently evolved into a bug eater to protect itself from extinction, which leaves one wondering why we have fruit trees which attract bugs.
I am also convinced that atheism fulfills the prediction made by Paul in 2 Timothy 4:3-4 when he writes, "For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, because they have itching ears, they will heap up for themselves teachers; and they will turn their ears away from the truth, and be turned aside to fables." Evolution and atheism is laden with fables and wives tales about how the universe came to be, how life began, and how feathers, eyes, and ears evolved. And sadly, most people take it at face value because it's coming down to us from academics and scientists. So few question their claims. The good news for the evangelist is that it doesn't take much to get your average atheist to doubt, given most have not thought things through very well. Below are just a few arguments that you can use to place doubt in the atheist's mind.
Affirming a Negative
Atheism comes from the Greek “A” which infers the negative. Theism for god. Definition: There is no God. It’s not saying, “I do not think there is a God.” It’s not saying, “I do not believe there is a God.” It is saying, “There is no God.” It is affirming the non-existence of God. This is very different from saying there is a god, which is affirming the positive. Affirming a negative is very different and much more challenging.
Universally affirming a negative is a logical fallacy. An introductory course in philosophy or logic teaches that, you cannot affirm a negative in the absolute. Let me say it again: you cannot affirm a negative in the absolute. That is, you cannot prove the non-existence of something universally. You can prove the non-existence of something in a closed system, for example: there are no atheist in the Senate. Yes this can be supported by taking a survey. But to make a universal statement, there are no atheist in the universe, without first searching the universe is a logical fallacy. Thus, atheism is self-defeating, because atheism does not have infinite knowledge to make this claim.
Example: If I said, “There is a green ball in the universe,” all I have to do is find one green ball and my statement is true. This is affirming a positive. Now if I said, “There are no green balls anywhere in the universe,” I would have to look everywhere first for my statement to be true. We know the atheist has not looked everywhere for God.
Of course this does not prove the existence of God, it just demonstrates that atheists have no case against the existence of God and that it is quite irrational to make such a position.
The Universality of Religion
The fact that 90% of Americans have had a religious experience puts a heavy burden on Atheists. www.gallup.com Their response is that religious people are hallucinating or it’s a neurological response to what we believe, or we are just plain lying about it. Many have made the claim that it is a survival mechanism due to million of years of evolution.
But suppose one day you went to a small village of 100 people and you asked them all if they knew someone named Josh McIntosh. About 90 people said they know Josh and had a relationship with him. Five people said they never met Josh and the other five said the 90 people you spoke to were hallucinating about Josh, he is fictional. Who do you believe, the 90 people who met Josh or the 10 who hadn't met Josh? This is a hard obstacle for the atheist to overcome. For me, I have always found it fascinating how an atheist can say for example, that miracles do not exist and right down the street at his local church you have miracles breaking out every weekend. It's astonishing.
Near Death Experiences
Many skeptics claim that science has disproved God. But this of course is a complete misunderstanding of science and God. Science only tests natural causes, like hurricanes, supernovas, tides, molecules, etc. Science does not test for the supernatural. A few weeks ago, there was a shooting at a local commission meeting. The video shows the gunman pointing the gun right at the mayor and opening fire from five feet away. The bullets never hit the mayor. When asked about the incident, the mayor claimed God protected him. Well at that point, the scientific community did not dispatch a group of scientist to research his claim. Science does not test for the metaphysical. So when someone claims they believe in science rather than God, this is out of ignorance.
Yet for those atheists who believe that science is the best source of knowledge, there is a group of scientific studies that support theism. Scientific research into near-death-experience (NDE) has been going on since the 70s, with the work of Dr. Raymond Moody Jr. Investigations have now documented thousands of cases of out-of-body experiences. One of the leading researchers, Dr. Atwater records the events of over 3,000 adults and 277 children who have had NDE.
Dr. Pim van Lommel conducted the most impressive clinical study, which covered 12 hospitals and 300 people. The conclusions are startling. “Every single skeptical theory or argument put forward to explain NDEs has been disproved and discredited by clinical research.” Lommel’s findings were published in the highly respected international medical journal, The Lancet, where he concludes, “Our results show that medical factors alone cannot account for the occurrences of NDE.” Countless cases reveal information about events the subjects could not have otherwise known while they were lying in the hospital bed. Legally blind subjects report accounts which could not have otherwise been reported had they not been able to see during the event. Some described the roof of the hospital accurately, other describe family events happening in a different state. Once again, this does not prove the existence of an all powerful God, but it does disprove any possibility for the atheist.
Does the Atheist Know Everything?
Another way to get the atheist to doubt is to ask the atheist if he knows everything? Then ask, what percentage of everything does he know? If he says “60%”, ask: is it possible that the knowledge of God exists in the 40% of things he doesn’t know? If he says no God cannot exist there ….remind him he just admitted he has no knowledge of this 40%.
A Cause Must be Sufficient to Account for the Effect
Let's continue to demonstrate how irrational atheism can be. Suppose you walked into my house one day and you saw a beautiful painting of a sunset hanging on the wall. You noticed it was signed, so you asked me who is the artist. Suppose I told you that one day I had left some canvas and some paint outside, and the next morning I found this painting complete and next to it was a frog with the brush in his hand finishing the job. So I concluded that the frog painted the sunset. You would think I was crazy because frogs are not sufficient to account for beautiful paintings. Put another way, everything that exists must have an adequate and appropriate explanation. Example:
- Paintings imply a painter
- A book implies an author
- A computer program implies a programmer
- A building implies a builder
- The universe implies a creator
When an atheist speaks of the universe appearing from nothing, our solar system coming together by chance, an eye, butterfly or kidney coming together by natural selection, we have to conclude that the cause is not nearly sufficient to account for the effect, as there is an unimaginable amount of precision, information and purpose behind all of them. It is more likely that a rabbit wrote the Encyclopedia Britannica.
If There is a God Why Isn’t There More Evidence?
Many atheist have often said that the burden of proof for God's existence is on the Christian and we have not met that burden. But the fact is we met that burden one second after the universe began. After all, how could something begin from nothing? The question, "If there is a God, why isn't there more evidence?", is designed to put the Christian on the defensive. We can answer it this way: A universe from nothing, the complexity of life, a fine tuned solar system, the laws of physics, the complexity of an eye, the existence of a fruit tree, and so forth should be conclusive evidence for the existence of God.
While this is a legitimate question, it is important to remember that the atheist or agnostic has the same burden of proof for their claims. Now turn the question: what is the evidence for the absence of God and if there is no God, how do you explain the existence of so much precision in the universe? If there is no God, why is there anything at all? If there is no God, would this be what we would expect to find, fruit trees, sun light, oxygen, gravity, the electro-magnetic spectrum, consciousness, and so forth? If there is no God, we should expect to find nothing at all.
If There is a God Why is the Universe so Wasteful?
I find this question to be more subconscious than out front with most atheists. When we look into the universe, we see stars emerging and stars burning out. When we look at history, we see dinosaurs emerging and then going extinct. We see the universe is very large and we are a mere spec in the cosmos. It begs the question; why such a big universe, why so many stars, why did it take so long? In short, why so much waste?
The concept of waste only applies to finite objects with limited resources. If a struggling artist who didn't own a car and was living on his friend's couch won $10,000 in the lottery and the next day spent it on a weekend cruise, one would say that was wasteful. If billionaire Bill Gates spends $10,000 on a weekend cruise, most would agree that is far less wasteful. God is infinite and has infinite resources, therefore nothing God does reduces in any way his unlimited resources. He could have made the universe a billion times bigger, taken a billion times longer and still retained every bit of his power. Those who believe in a young earth have often said God doesn't need billions of years to create the universe. This is true, he could have done it in a micro second. But to God ,13 billion years or 6,000 years are both like one second. He is eternal and infinite.
Isn’t it Unfair that a Murderer Can Just Say a Simple Prayer and go to Heaven?
This is a common problem for atheists and the answer of course is, yes that would be unfair. If a prayer can take away sin then God is not just. The problem of course is that this is not the proposition of the Christian faith. The Bible claims that the Son of God occupied a human body and lived a perfect righteous life. On a given day he chose to die as a consequence for sin on behalf of you and me. That is: He paid the price for murder, adultery, lying, etc. despite the fact that He did not owe this debt. The prayer of faith simply appropriates the payment for sin into our life. So yes this would be unfair, but that is not the proposition of the New Testament.
Can the Christian be Sure of God's Existence?
Suppose you are speaking to an atheist and you put forward some persuasive arguments. You've even managed to get him to doubt some of what he believes. When you are done, the atheist turns around and asks you, how can you be so sure God exists.
I would respond to this question by stating that I can be certain of God’s existence. You can make this point by asking the atheist if he is certain that his mother exists. How can you be certain that she exists: because you know your mother. You talk to your mother and have a relationship with your mother. The fact that I never met your mother is irrelevant. In the same way, a Christian who knows God can be certain of His existence. Here we are affirming a positive, rather than affirming a negative.
What about conflicting experiences from other religions? No other religion suggests that you can know God and experience his presence. The Muslim at best can only know Allah's will by reading the Quran. The Buddhist doesn't even claim god exists. Therefore, other religions at best only support the idea of a supernatural experience, while only the Christian can come to know the living God.
Articles
Unreasonable Doubt Jim Spiegel