Dan
Barker is a former evangelical, Christian preacher turned zealous
atheist. He and his wife, Annie Gaylor, co-preside over the activist
atheist group, Freedom From Religion. He also spends a lot of time
debating Christians. By the way, in his own words, his apostasy
began with a rejection of a historical Adam & Eve and his
embracing of evolution – but that will have to be the subject of
another post.
I
was watching a video on
YouTube where Barker was debating Matt Slick of CARM.org
about the existence of God. I normally invite people to watch the
whole video but it's pretty long. If you're interested in watching,
the part I'll be discussing was raised by Barker in his opening
comments beginning at about 20 minutes into the video but, for the
sake of brevity, I found an article online where he explains his
point more concisely. He calls this, The
Freewill Argument for the Non-existence of God (FANG, for short).
In his article, we find the following summary:
The
Christian God is defined as a personal being who knows everything.
According to Christians, personal beings have free will.
In
order to have free will, you must have more than one option, each of
which is avoidable. This means that before you make a choice, there
must be a state of uncertainty during a period of potential: you
cannot know the future. Even if you think you can predict your
decision, if you claim to have free will, you must admit the
potential (if not the desire) to change your mind before the decision
is final.
A
being who knows everything can have no "state of uncertainty."
It knows its choices in advance. This means that it has no potential
to avoid its choices, and therefore lacks free will. Since a being
that lacks free will is not a personal being, a personal being who
knows everything cannot exist.
Therefore,
the Christian God does not exist.
As
I listened to Barker make his point, it reminded me a little of the
Omnipotence
Paradox people sometimes use to argue that God cannot exist. In
that case, critics ask, “Can
God make a rock so big that He can't lift it?”
The answer is either yes or no but, either way, it would mean there
is something God cannot do so, therefore, an omnipotent God cannot
exist. Barker's argument is very much along the same lines and has
been described before as the Omniscience
Paradox.
At the end of the day, it's simply another gimmick of logic.
I
believe the flaw in Barker's argument lies in his definition of free
will. His definition just sounds unusual. For example, Barker adds
the qualifier, “This
means that before you make a choice, there must be a state of
uncertainty during a period of potential: you cannot know the
future.”
Since when is uncertainty a condition of free will? When I
googled a definition, I found that free will commonly means, “the
power of acting without the constraint of necessity or fate; the
ability to act at one's own discretion.”
That
certainly describes God since He is not bound by either fate or
necessity. I found no mainstream definition that included any
discussion of indecision, uncertainty, or knowing the future.
If
you think about it, it's rather ridiculous to argue that free will
must mean making a decision without knowing anything about the
outcome. Barker is essentially saying that since God knows the
future, He cannot exist. What? You can see how Barker's argument is
completely non
sequitur.
The Bible attests
that God knows the future. Let me rephrase that: what we call the
“future” is simply the coming to pass of the things He has
already purposed. It's not a prediction
as though God's some kind of psychic; He writes the future and then
brings to pass what He has already decreed. He had the ability to
make things any way He wanted and He made them this way. According
to Barker, that's proof He doesn't exists. //RKBentley
shakes his head//
Free
will is a notoriously thorny subject. One might even ask if humans
have free will. We may have choices but we have little say in the
consequences. I could choose not to eat, for example, but I then I
couldn't choose not to be hungry. I could choose not to breath, but
then I couldn't choose to keep living. Sometimes it seems life is
like a game of chess we are playing against a better opponent. We
might think we are deciding which pieces to move but our decisions
are only unavoidable responses to the better moves the other player
is making. The game we think we're playing is really the game he is
playing and we continuously have fewer and fewer choices until,
finally, we have no choices. Checkmate!
As
we live day to day, it may seem at any moment like we are free to
choose from a near infinite number possibilities, but the
consequences of each decision continuously restricts the number of
our future options. I could decide to walk to work instead of
driving. However, walking takes longer so the decision to walk
affects what time I decide to get up in the morning or whether I
decide to get to work on time. Do you see what I mean? My future
choices are the victims of the consequences of my present choices.
In
the theological realm, especially, Christians have often debated if
we have free will. If God is sovereign, then perhaps I cannot choose
to believe or deny Him. Perhaps everything I do is as He has
commanded. This debate has raged for centuries. But Barker fails to
see how this is a problem for his argument. He is hoisted upon his
own petard, if you will, because if humans do not have free will, how
is that an argument for their non-existence? Let's reduce this to the absurd: do rocks have free will? Do rocks exists? It's rather obvious that free will is not a condition of existence yet that is what Barker argues!
There
is much more that could be said on this subject but why bother? Just
the few paragraphs above show that Barker's argument is a tangle of
logical fallacies. If I say I will do something, and then I do it,
it may not be proof I have free will but, at the very least, it's
evidence that I exist. God has declared the end from the beginning.
He spoke to the prophets centuries in advance of things that would
come to pass and they came to pass! It's laughable to
say that's evidence He doesn't exist. If anything, that is proof
of His existence!
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articles:
3 comments:
I've put off replying because I pretty much agree with you totally here.
At most I would note that "free will" has been defined in various different ways, and seems to include some quite different ideas. I've seen it defined as the ability to respond to the same situation in different ways at different times (although that ability can be built into a simple computer program -- something with no real will at all -- if you can incorporate a random-number generator into the algorithm). I've seen it defined as not being completely predictable (in which case, insanity might be the highest form of free will). I've seen it defined as you do (which is interesting: Calvin thought we had that, and thought we had free will; Luther -- and some of the later academic Calvinists -- thought we had that, and that we lacked free will, since the ability to do as seems good to us doesn't automatically imply freedom over what seems good to us).
Now, some of those academic Calvinists would in fact deny that God has free will: He can only do the best thing in every circumstance, with no alternatives (i.e. they agree with Barker's premise but draw the opposite conclusion). Science fiction writer Larry Niven agreed with them (at least in the early 1970s, when much of his work dealt in one way or another with problems of free will) when he wrote the novel Protector about an alien being who (according to its own estimation) lacked free will because it could always see the best choice and never had to ponder or decide what to do. I wasn't quite sure, reading that novel, that the protectors were right in that estimation: how does the possibility of being stupid or wrong make one more free?
It's almost amusing, listening to/reading the arguments people come up with against the truth.
JM1999,
Thanks for visiting. I agree. Some arguments atheists use are so far fetched, I am tempted to think they are meant as parodies. There's actually a word for this phenomenon; it's called Poe's Law, where extremists' comments are indistinguishable from parodies of the extremists' comments.
Some people don't accept Jesus as their Lord. It's sad but it happens. But when someone denies there is a God, they are completely out of touch with reality. How can any of their arguments be rational?
Please keep visiting and commenting. God bless!!
RKBentley
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