Even extraordinary claims require only ordinary evidence!

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a post describing how some critics of Christianity use demands for “evidence” as a way of dodging tough questions rather than dealing with them. In that post, I described a hypothetical example of two strangers: one tells me he has a pet dog and the other tells me he has a pet sloth. In these cases, I would be apt to believe the claim to own a dog but be skeptical of the claim to own a sloth.

A few people have tried to point out to me that my heightened suspicion of the claim to own a sloth actually contradicts a point I made later in my post. Carl Sagan made a famous claim that, “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” By me being more critical of the claim to own a sloth than a dog, they say I'm engaging in exactly the kind of skepticism Sagan said was necessary before believing an extraordinary claim. I don't think so, but since a few people have accused me of the same thing, I thought I'd use this as an opportunity to expound my earlier point.

First off, Sagan's claim is self-contradicting. If it were true, then where is the evidence for Sagan's claim? I'm not even asking for extraordinary evidence, mind you. I mean any scientific evidence whatsoever to justify the claim that claims require evidence? If Sagan were here and I asked him to present the evidence for his claim, I'm sure he would resort to logic and reason which proves my point. Through logic and reason, we can make judgments about the truthfulness of a claim – even a claim for which there may be no scientific evidence! In my example about the sloth, you will notice that not once did I demand to see the sloth. My point in asking more questions was so that I might judge the truthfulness of the claim using only my skills of logic and reason.

But let's examine that a little but further. What if I were an especially stubborn skeptic and demand to see a picture of the sloth? If he pulled out a photo of him holding his sloth, that really still wouldn't prove anything. How do I know he didn't have that picture taken some exotic petting zoo somewhere? How do I know it's not a Photoshop? Maybe he could take me to his home and show the sloth in person. It's still not enough because, if I were especially bullheaded, I could ask for proof that this was his home. You say he has the deed? So what?! Maybe he's leasing part of his property to someone else who actually owns the sloth! No matter what evidence he shows me, I could sit cross armed and skeptical saying, “That's not enough evidence!”

This is my frustration with many unbelievers. I try to give reasoned arguments and ask they consider them objectively yet they respond only with a demand for more evidence. For some people, I could say that it would take God appearing to them personally to make them believe but I know even that wouldn't be enough because they could still dismiss God's appearance as a hallucination. For someone who truly doesn't want to believe, no amount of evidence – not even extraordinary evidence – is sufficient.

Now back up a minute. Remember about the person claiming to own a dog? If I were just as skeptical of his claim, what evidence might he produce that is different than the evidence that I demanded from the owner of a sloth? In other words, how is the evidence that proves someone owns a dog substantially different than the evidence that proves someone owns a sloth? If I am truly a “blank slate” and will never believe something unless I have evidence for it, then the evidence necessary to prove someone owns a dog need not be any different than the evidence necessary to prove someone owns a sloth.

To prove conclusively a person owns a dog or a sloth or even a stegosaurus, it would take roughly the same evidence: 1) look at his address on his ID, 2) drive to that address, and 3) see if the animal is there. One claim may seem more extraordinary than another, but the evidence to prove any of the claims is rather ordinary. The critic might ask, “what if he doesn't really own the animal? Maybe he's caring for a friend's or relative's pet.” Regardless, whatever could be said of a pet sloth could also be said of a pet dog. The evidence to prove either is still the same.

What if I claimed to own a Big Foot? Simple – drive to my house and see it for yourself. What if I claimed to own a unicorn? Drive to my house and see it for yourself. What if I claimed to have a flying saucer in my backyard? Drive to my house and see if for yourself. What if I claimed to have created a to-scale model of the Grand Canyon in my backyard? Drive to my house and see it for yourself. What is so “extraordinary” about the evidence that could prove any of these extraordinary claims?

Besides the famous quote we've discussed here, Carl Sagan also left us the analogy, The Dragon In My Garage. In that story, he pretended to have dragon in his garage and invited his skeptical friend to see it. Of course, the garage appeared to be empty. Sagan explained the dragon was invisible. The friend thought of ways to see if the dragon was there: spray paint the dragon to make it visible, sprinkle powder on the floor to see its footprints, or use a sensor to detect its flames. One by one, Sagan explained why none of these would work. A subtle irony here is that the skeptic only seems to be looking for ordinary evidence: he wants to see the dragon! Owning a dragon is an extraordinary claim. According to Sagan, it should require extraordinary evidence to substantiate that claim but in this analogy, merely seeing the dragon seems to be enough. So even Sagan, who made this famous quote, seems to understand that the proof for owning a dragon really isn't any different than the proof for owning a dog.

In Isaiah 1:18, God says, “Come now, and let us reason together.” To have the clearest picture of reality requires that we employ our God given gifts of reason and deduction. For someone to set the ridiculously high standard of evidence before believing anything is a guarantee to have a distorted view of reality.

The word “extraordinary” is enormously subjective. It describes more about the person hearing the claim than the nature of the claim itself. When a claim is labeled, “extraordinary,” it means the person hearing the claim has a hard time believing it. Maybe he just doesn't want to believe it. But even extraordinary claims require only ordinary evidence. To say one claim requires “extraordinary” evidence simply means the skeptic is likely to reject most of the evidence you present because of his own incredulity.

Further reading:

When asking for evidence becomes a red herring

Carl Sagan's Invisible Dragon

How many jellybeans are in this jar?

Bill Nye on video lying about evidence!

Not so simple beginnings

Richard Dawkins has said this:

If the alternative that's being offered to what physicists now talk about - a big bang, a spontaneous singularity which gave rise to the origin of the universe - if the alternative to that is a divine intelligence, a creator, which would have to have been complicated, statistically improbable, the very kind of thing which scientific theories such as Darwin's exists to explain, then immediately we see that however difficult and apparently inadequate the theory of the physicists is, the theory of the theologians - that the first course was a complicated intelligence - is even more difficult to accept.... Complicated things come into the universe late, as a consequence of slow, gradual, incremental steps. God, if he exists, would have to be a very, very, very complicated thing indeed. So to postulate a God as the beginning of the universe, as the answer to the riddle of the first cause, is to shoot yourself in the conceptual foot because you are immediately postulating something far far more complicated than that which you are trying to explain.

Dawkins tends to be a little wordy so let me simplify it: he is saying that the explanation for any phenomenon should be less complicated than the thing it tries to explain. Can I say that I find it humorous and somewhat ironic that he would use so many words to explain how things should have a simple explanation? Anyway... according to Dawkins, God would necessarily be far more complicated than the universe and so a Supreme Being as the First Cause is not a satisfactory explanation for the universe. It's a stretch, I know, but he makes this point frequently so he must think it's compelling.

Dawkins' argument suffers from a flawed premise. What objective, testable, scientific principle exists that requires a cause to be less complicated than its effect? He is trying to make a logical argument but it's more like philosophical “wishful thinking.” I utterly reject the notion that an explanation must necessarily be less complicated than what it explains. Such an idea runs contrary to everything we observe.

Consider a painting on a cave wall. How did the painting get there? It's not rocket-science: someone must have painted it on the wall. But isn't a human being more complicated than than the painting? So, according to Dawkins' reasoning, a human painting a picture on the wall isn't a satisfactory explanation.

Of course, Dawkins is not so easily stymied. He's heard this rebuttal before. He claims that the human who made the painting is, himself, the product of simpler beginnings. Through a billions of years long chain of events, the human has evolved from more primitive creatures, which evolved from a single celled creature, which rose naturally from non-living matter, which was fused together from simpler elements, which ultimately came from hydrogen atoms in the big bang. It's a sort of cosmic “butterfly effect” where an expanding cloud of hydrogen in space becomes a painting on a cave wall. How convenient.

The death knell of Dawkins argument lies in our understanding of cause and effect. We've learned that every phenomenon we've ever observed must have sufficient cause to explain it. In every case, the cause is not simpler than the effect but rather is always greater than the effect. In other words, a big bad wolf cannot huff and puff and blow a house down; it takes something like a hurricane or tornado to blow a house down. A ship cannot float unless the weight of the water it displaces weighs more than the ship itself. A bird cannot fly unless the shape of its wings creates more lift under its wings than the bird weighs.

Now, no system is perfectly efficient – there is always wasted energy. If a little input could create a greater output, then something like perpetual motion should be possible. It's not. The cause is always greater than the effect. Always! Therefore, the universe could not have come from nothing. Nothing can only produce nothing. It could never produce something – not even a single atom. The cause of all the matter and energy in the universe must necessarily be something greater than all the matter and energy in the universe.

Dawkins' rhetoric is really nothing more than clever semantics. There is no reason to expect the cause of the universe must be something less complicated than the universe. The exact opposite is true. God creating the universe is by far the most reasonable explanation.

How Young Earth Creationists are not like Jesus Mythicists

It's not very often that I come across a truly novel argument against creationism. Just recently, though, I came across a headline that caused me to do a double-take. On FaceBook, Stephen Bedard posted an article comparing Young Earth Creationists and Jesus Mythicists. It just struck me as odd because I would never have viewed those particular beliefs in the same light. Obviously, I was curious about how anyone would consider them to be similar.

For anyone not familiar with Jesus mythicism, Bedard describes it as the belief “there was no historical Jesus and that he is only another form of the common Horus/Dionysus/Mithras myth.” Weird, huh? Any way, as I read Bedard's article I saw that the claims he made weren't really novel at all. //Sigh//.  Before giving my opinion, let me highlight how Bedard sees Jesus mythicism as being similar to young-earth creationism. According to Bedard:

• Both are views that a person would never get just by looking at the scientific/historical evidence.

• [B]oth theories are highly suspicious of the scholarly consensus.

• [B]oth YEC and JM are agenda driven rather than evidence driven. YEC start with their theory and then look to scientific evidence to see how it can be reinterpreted to fit the theory.

Bedard says in the article he was once a young-earth creationist, obviously intending to mean that he no longer is. He tries to deal politely with creationism and concludes his article by saying, I have tried to remain objective here. Either group could be correct.... My point is simply that two groups that have widely different belief systems actually go about their task in very similar ways. Bedard seems to be a nice guy so I will return the favor and not direct my comments toward him specifically. Rather, I will make my own observations of old-earth creationists or theistic evolutionists in general.

I'll start by saying that I agree with Bedard in some ways. For example, I am skeptical of scientific consensus. Just put me in the same category as people like Galiliei who argued against the “scientific” consensus of Ptolemy. Even the majority can be wrong.  Besides, truth is not decided by vote. If we stopped questioning anything after “the science is settled,” where would we be? Scientists are usually proud to say that we should question everything. However, when it comes to issues like evolution or global warming, they want critics to shut up because the science is settled!

At its heart, this is a question of our presuppositions. As people search for the truth, they have to decide what they will accept as evidence.  Personally, I have decided without exception that I will believe the Bible. Romans 3:4 says, “let God be true, but every man a liar.”  Even if the whole world were to disagree with me, I would like to think I would still stand firmly on God's word. If I'm wrong, then I'm wrong. And when I stand before God in judgment, let my plea be that I believed the Bible too much.

Bedard, apparently, has decided to put more faith in scientific consensus than the Bible. Such a belief has a direct impact on how a person interprets Scripture. An examination of the chronologies in the Bible, for example, suggests that history only goes back about 6,000 years. Of course, old-earth creationists can't accept that because “scientific consensus” says the earth is billions of years old. Therefore, even though the Bible says God made the universe in 6 days, it can't believe it really mean 6 days.

When people start doubting the clear meaning of the words in the Bible, I'm not sure where they draw the line. Hank Hanegraaff – aka, the Bible Answer Man – also believes in an old earth. However, he rejects evolution. That's curious. Why would he accept the scientific opinion on one subject but not the other? I've heard him talk about both subjects and he always appeals to science. He believes that distant starlight proves the earth is old but feels the scientific evidence for evolution isn't as compelling. It seems even the “Bible Answer Man” doesn't necessarily start with the Bible when looking for answers.

Besides the origins issue, what else might these people compromise for the sake of science? The virgin birth? The miracles of Jesus? The resurrection? Where does it stop? And on what grounds can we say science is wrong there but not here? The rate of atheism is a lot higher among scientists than the public. If we trust their opinions, why should we even believe in God at all?

I suppose the ultimate irony in Bedard's article is that it is his views that are more like Jesus mythicism. Neither old earth creationism nor Jesus mythicism are supported by a plain reading of the Bible. Both conclusions are reached by starting with opinions from outside of the Bible and then projecting these unbiblical beliefs onto Scripture. Think about it, Jesus mythicists claim Jesus wasn't a literal person; well, most theistic evolutionists also believe Adam wasn't literal. Neither was Noah. Jesus talked about Adam and Noah as real people from history yet TE folks say they are fictional! Why? Because of science? Many professing Christians also claim Abraham, Moses, and David weren't real. At what point does Luke's chronology from Adam to Jesus stop being fictional characters and start becoming real people?

Let me just say, I agree on a lot of things with folks lot Bedard or Hanegraaff or William Layne Craig and others of that stripe. However, when they allow science to shape their understanding of the plain meaning of words of the Bible, they're setting a terrible precedent. I will paraphrase Martin Luther who said that, if we ever lack understanding of how the Scriptures can be correct, let us merely grant that the Holy Spirit is wiser than we are.

God is evident in what we DO know

Answers in Genesis has a list of arguments they feel creationists should avoid using. I too have heard Christian apologists making very weak points and I just shake my head wishing they'd stop. I've thought about making a list similar to AiG's but many of the items would overlap and AiG has a much bigger audience than I so what would be the point? There is one particular argument, though, that I've heard used frequently and no one is telling them to stop. The argument goes something like this:

A Christian will hold up a piece of paper or draw a circle on a whiteboard. He asks an atheist to pretend the circle or the paper represents all the knowledge there is in the universe. He then asks the atheist to draw another circle inside the larger circle to represent all the knowledge we actually possess. I've never really seen an atheist actually draw a circle; usually an answer is provided by the apologist. The apologist might put a tiny circle or even a dot, meaning we only know a tiny, tiny bit of everything there is to know. In other words, of all the things there are to know in the universe, we probably know less than 1% of it. The Christian then delivers the “death blow” by saying, “If this paper represents everything there is to know, and we only know this little bit, how can you be sure there's no evidence for God among everything you don't know?!”

This video shows Glyn Barrett making this very argument, recounting a supposed debate he had with an atheist. I've seen other videos where Christians make the exact same argument and I don't want to embarrass them by calling them out. Here, however, Barrett sufficiently embarrasses himself by obviously inventing the entire debate so if he should object to my using it as an example, I say he's brought it on himself. But I digress.

I guess the teeth of this argument is that it illustrates the fallacy of claiming a universal negative. That is, I really can't say a certain thing doesn't exist anywhere in the universe unless I already know everything that exists in the universe. Note – many people claim it's impossible to prove a negative but that's not true. For example, I can prove I don't have $100 in my pocket by turning my pocket inside-out and showing you it's empty. I can prove I don't have $1,000,000 in my checking account by showing you my account balance on my smart phone. However, I can't prove life doesn't exist anywhere else in the universe because I can't show you everything else in the universe.

Most atheists understand the impossibility of proving a universal negative and so won't claim to know that God doesn't exist anywhere. Instead, they simply say that they've never seen evidence for God. In that case, what does the argument above accomplish? We're just basically telling the skeptic there could be evidence we haven't found yet and he'll probably say, “OK, I'll look at it when you find it.” You see? There's nothing compelling in just saying there could be evidence out there somewhere.

Besides not being convincing, this argument actually reinforces some of the criticisms of Christianity made by atheists. For example, critics often claim that Christians only have blind faith and not evidence. This illustration tacitly admits that the evidence for God still hasn't been discovered, we just believe it's out there. Critics also accuse Christians of believing in a god-of-the-gaps; this argument seems to do just that by saying the evidence for God exists in what we don't understand.

Instead of saying the evidence for God can be found in what we don't know, I assert that God is clearly evident in what do know! We know that everything that begins to exist has a cause. We know that life cannot rise spontaneously from non-living matter. We know that nature displays design and purpose which are characteristics of created things. From everything we know scientifically, there must be a transcendent, powerful, intelligent Designer who made it all.

Another claim made by skeptics is that our advances in understanding have continuously pushed back the need for God. Ha! If anything, we see more and more the need for God. Darwin, for example, believed a single cell was a “simple” blob of goo that could just fall together by a fortunate arrangement of amino acids. However, we now know that even a single cell is enormously complex. The more we learn about a cell, the more we realize such a thing requires a Creator.

The irony in all this is that it is the atheists who have put their faith in what we don't know. We know, for example, that matter/energy cannot be created naturally. How then can all the matter/energy in the universe have just appeared out of nothing? Even space and time had to appear out of nothing. So what must have happened flies in the face of what we already know can't happen yet atheists still cling blindly to the belief that an answer lies somewhere in what we haven't discovered. Neither have we observed a living cell form from non-living chemicals. Neither have we observed novel features appearing in a population. Many things necessary for secular theories of origins to be true have absolutely no evidence yet atheists sincerely believe the evidence for these things are going to be found someday.

I would say to all atheists that it's OK to ignore arguments that ask you to think evidence for God exists in what you don't know. Instead, I would ask you to think hard about what you do know and seriously question the evidence for what you believe. Do you have evidence that matter/energy/space/time can just appear out of nothing? Do you have evidence that life can rise from non-living matter? You know that you don't. Can you see that design and purpose are evidence for a creator? You know that it is. There's no need to wait around, wondering if clear evidence for God will someday be discovered. I'm saying that God is clearly seen in what you already know is true!

Textual criticism made amazingly easy

Critics often attack Christianity by attacking the integrity of the Bible. As is the case with any written work from antiquity, we no longer have the original writings of biblical authors. Critics point out that all we have are copies of copies transcribed over centuries and not all the copies agree with each other. They say the Bible has been copied, translated, and edited until we can no longer have any certainty about what it originally said. Have you heard any of this before? Well, I'm going to explain why we can have confidence in the integrity of the Bible in amazingly easy terms.

Trying to determine the original wording of a document is called, textual criticism. Here's a reading exercise. Below are five sentences that were copied from a single sentence. (OK, they weren't really copied, but let's pretend they were.) Each one contains an error.

The book si heavy

A book is heavy

The Bible is heavy

The book is hard

The book is not heavy

My question is this: if you only had these five sentences as a reference, do you think you could reconstruct what the original sentence was? Let's look at it word by word.

Four of the sentences say, “the” but only one says, “a.” Therefore, I would guess the first word in the original sentence was, “the.”

Four sentences say, “book” and one says, “Bible.” I happen to know that “Bible” is the Greek word for “book” so the person who copied that might have thought “Bible” when he saw the word, “book.” The second word in the original sentence was probably book.

Four of the sentences say, “is.” The fifth sentence says, “si” which is not an English word. It probably is simply a misspelling of the word “is” so the third word is probably, “is.”

One sentence says, “not” but none of the other ones do so I suspect “not” wasn't in the original sentence.

Finally, the last word in four of the sentences is “heavy.” One sentence says, “hard.” Both words start with “h” so it's possible the transcriber misread the original word “heavy” and wrote, “hard.” I think the fourth word in the original sentence was, “heavy.”

So, having compared every sentence and considered the differences, I believe the original sentence was, “The book is heavy.” Wouldn't you agree? I would be confident in that conclusion even though none of the sentences above actually say, “The book is heavy,” because there are enough similarities in just these five to justify that conclusion. Of course, if I had 10 sentences to compare, I would have even more confidence. If I had 100 or 1000 sentences to compare, there would no longer be any room for doubt. In this same way, we can have confidence in the integrity of the Bible – by comparing the manuscripts.

Now, suppose I'm a scribe and it's my job to make copies of the sentences above. But, for the sake of argument, I'm not a very dutiful scribe and I take it upon myself to change what the text originally said to what I think it should have said. I think it should say, “Reading the Bible is not hard.” That could be a problem. How would anyone reading my copy know I copied it faithfully? Well, there are still the 5 sentences above that could be compared against my copy. My edit is different enough from earlier copies that it would be easily identified as a fake. None of the earlier sentences even have the word, “reading,” for example. Of course, if I were especially nefarious, I could make 5 or 10 copies, hoping that the number of edited copies would overwhelm earlier copies. That might work if there were only 5 earlier copies. However, as was the case before, the more copies that exist, the harder it becomes to add intentional edits later. If there were 100 or 1000 earlier copies that did not resemble my edited copy, they would bear more weight than all of my later copies.

So you can see, the integrity of the Bible hinges upon the number of early manuscripts we have. The more manuscripts that we have to compare, the greater confidence we can have in determining what the originals said and the harder it becomes for forgers to edit the text later. How many manuscripts do we have of the New Testament, then? Greek scholar, Daniel Wallace, tells us the following:

As far as Greek manuscripts, over 5800 have been catalogued. The New Testament was translated early on into several other languages as well, such as Latin, Coptic, Syriac, Armenian, Georgian, Gothic, etc. The total number of these versional witnesses has not been counted yet, but it certainly numbers in the tens of thousands. At the same time, it should be pointed out that most of our manuscripts come from the second millennium AD, and most of our manuscripts do not include the whole New Testament. A fragment of just a verse or two still counts as a manuscript. And yet, the average size for a NT manuscript is more than 450 pages. At the other end of the data pool are the quotations of the NT by church fathers. To date, more than one million quotations of the NT by the church fathers have been tabulated. These fathers come from as early as the late first century all the way to the middle ages.... NT scholars face an embarrassment of riches compared to the data the classical Greek and Latin scholars have to contend with. The average classical author’s literary remains number no more than twenty copies. We have more than 1,000 times the manuscript data for the NT than we do for the average Greco-Roman author. Not only this, but the extant manuscripts of the average classical author are no earlier than 500 years after the time he wrote. For the NT, we are waiting mere decades for surviving copies.

I've written before that we have more evidence for the historicity of Jesus than any other person of antiquity. All we know about ancient people is what has been written down about them. The number of New Testament manuscripts dwarfs any other ancient writing. If we know anything at all about history, then we can be as certain of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus as any other event in history.

Rejecting a straw god

I've been blogging for a while now; this month makes nine years. My online discussions with critics, however, go back over 20 years to the old, AOL chat rooms. I've been on FaceBook and many online forums like CARM where I've engaged atheists head to head – not just answering the comments left on my blog. I read other people's blogs, watch their videos, and listen to their arguments. Suffice it to say, I've heard about every reason there is that people use to reject God. Yet in all that time, all the different arguments I've heard can be grouped into just a few different categories.

Before I get into the categories, let me just say that I have my doubts that these are the real reasons why people reject God; they are merely the excuses they give. I think, deep down, they ultimately reject God because of their sinful, prideful, rebellious nature. They would prefer to continue in their sin rather than submit to God. They want to live life how they please and simply are trying to convince themselves there will be no judgment at the end of it. But since these are the excuses they give, they are what I will use.

Keep in mind that critics will seldom limit themselves to just one of these categories. Usually, it's only one of these things that will first cause someone to doubt, but once he has rejected the idea of God completely, he always embrace the other things as well. Here are the categories I've seen.

Some people claim to reject God because of the “bad things” they see in the world. It's common for people to say things like, “Why does God allow bad things to happen?” This includes not only people doing bad things but also natural disasters like earthquakes, plagues, famines, or tsunamis. Sometimes, there will have been a personal tragedy in the persons life, like the loss of a loved one or maybe a divorce or abuse. They believe that God doesn't act at these times because there is no God.

Other people claim to reject God because they reject the biblical standards of morality. They will point to passages like 1 Samuel 15:3, where God commanded Saul to destroy the city of Amalek and describe it as genocide. They say a loving God wouldn't condemn things like homosexuality. Dan Savage once said that the Bible was “wrong” on slavery so how can we trust it on things like sexuality? They also question the “fairness” of God forgiving really bad people or condemning “good” people who reject Him. They aren't just questioning why God let's bad things happen, but claim God Himself is bad. Critics believe if there were a God, He wouldn't act like this.

People also claim to reject God because they see no evidence that He exists. I can't tell you the number of times I've heard people ask, “If there is a God, why doesn't He just show Himself?” These critics see the universe operating according to fixed, physical laws and we don't really need to invoke a god to understand them. Just a few months ago, I blogged this quote: Why is God so stingy with direct evidence?... [T]he supposed miracles that attest to a supernatural power all happened in ancient, pre scientific, times, in which there existed no means of reliable verification. These supposed miracles are not being duplicated today so that we could see that such things are possible.... A loving God would not erect such high barriers to belief and then further compound the difficulty in believing by providing us with such strong evidential circumstances against the supernatural, such as the inviolability of the laws of nature. These critics believe if there were a God, He would make Himself known in an obvious way.

I could include people who reject the Bible on the grounds that they claim it contains contradictions and so can't be divinely inspired. This is more of an argument for agnosticism than atheism. That is, they may still think there could be a god, they just don't believe it's necessarily the Christian God of the Bible. This category isn't really relevant to my point today. I just raise it in case people later try to claim I didn't think of it.

As we review this short (but nearly exhaustive) list of reasons, we see a theme begin to develop. These people aren't merely searching for God and not finding Him. Instead, they've imagined how they think God should act but they can't find a god that acts like that! In other words, they aren't really rejecting God, they're rejecting a straw god, one they've created in their own imagination.

If we look at these reasons objectively, we can see they're non sequitur. Take the first excuse, for example: bad things happen so there can't be a god? How exactly does that follow? It's sort of like saying, “doctors are supposed to heal sick people but, since there are still sick people, doctors must be imaginary.” You can see how that doesn't work. The second point suffers the same way. It makes no sense to say, “I don't think homosexuality is a sin so if God thinks so He must not be real.” Finally, no one can seriously claim that God can't be real because He won't appear on the evening news and tell us He's real. OK, maybe they do claim that but it still doesn't make sense.

There is a God. He is loving but He is also just. The bad things that happen in the world are His judgment for our sins but He has made salvation available to all who believe. He has redeemed His people by shedding His own blood and He will restore His creation where there will be no more death. He also has made Himself known through His prophets, through His word, and through His Son, who became flesh and dwelt among us.

It's no wonder some people can't find God. They're looking for a capricious god who loves sin. They're not rejecting God; they're rejecting an imaginary god who doesn't exist.

Ten Lies Evolutionists Tell: Part 3

5) There is no evidence for creationism

I'm sure you've heard, on many occasions, evolutionists say, “There is no evidence for creationism.” First, I think it's hilarious that they routinely use the word “creationism” incorrectly. Words ending in “ism” describe world views or philosophies – like “atheism.” “Creationism” is the belief that God created the universe miraculously. Obviously, there are people who believe this – me being one – so “creationism” is real. Attention all evolutionists: what you mean to say is, “There is no evidence for a miraculous creation.” You're welcome. However, even to say, “there is no evidence for creation,” while grammatically correct, is still a lie. Let me explain why,

I read an analogy once that really nailed this point. People used to believe the sun moved around the earth, a belief called, geocentricism. Obviously we can't feel the earth moving and we can see the sun moving across the sky so the theory of geocentricism seemed to explain the evidence very well. There were a few things, though, like the retrograde motion of planets, that geocentricism didn't explain so we kept searching for answers. Over time, we began to see that the earth orbits the sun, a theory called heliocentricism. This new theory seems to be a better explanation of our observations, including the apparent motion of planets. Yet in all this time, though our theory may have changed, the evidence is still the same. We still can't feel the earth moving and the sun still appears to travel across the sky.

You see, there is only one universe. There is only one fossil record, only one geological column, only one earth, etc. These things are the “evidence.” The evidence isn't for any theory. Evidence merely exists and we develop theories in attempts to explain why things are the way they are. So the evidence “for” evolution is the same evidence “for” creation.

A good theory should explain all the evidence but there are still some things one theory or the other doesn't seem to explain well. That's why we keep studying – not to find evidence for our theories but to find a better explanation for the evidence. The evidence itself doesn't care about our theories.

6) 99.9% of all the species that have ever lived are extinct

On ChristianCentury.org, we see one Christian struggling with this question:

I recently took a friend’s three-year-old son to the Natural History Museum in London. We stood together in awe in the hall of dinosaurs, wondering at the beauty, strength and majesty of the long-departed creatures. I questioned how a good God could let such magnificent creatures as the iguanodon or the allosaurus simply fade from the earth. My question could extend well beyond dinosaurs: about 99 percent of all species that have ever lived are now extinct.

I've heard this statistic quoted so many times that I assumed there must be some truth to it. It's a lie. What makes it an especially grievous lie is that this Christian believed it and felt compelled to engage in mental gymnastics to explain why a “good” God would create everything through such a wasteful, slow, and cruel process like evolution.

Wikipedia estimates there have been 5 billion species. Scientists have identified only around 1.2 million living species. Some people speculate there may be another 10 million species still undiscovered. Maybe there are, it doesn't make much of a difference. There are also around 500,000 species that are known only from fossils. Again, maybe there are more but it's surely only a few million more. That totals only 1.7 million of species known to exist and maybe 10-15 million not discovered.

If we have identified only 1.7 million species, where is the evidence for the other alleged 4.99 billion species? There are no fossils at all for more than 99% of the species evolutionists claim have existed. None!! The statistic is entirely invented.

How did they get such a high estimate? It all has to do with their assumptions – primarily their assumptions about the age of the earth. It works sort of like this: if life began 1 billion years ago, and if the average species only appears during 5 million years in the geological record, then all species have been replaced around 200 times. If there are 10,000,000 identified species (an inflated number to begin with), that means there must have been 2 billion total species that have lived! Get it?

Their vastly inflated estimate of the number of species is merely the consequence of assuming an ancient earth which virtually demands countless generations to fill all those millinea. If the earth is young, then most of the species that ever lived are still alive! What we actually observe, aka – the evidence, is better explained by a recent, miraculous creation. The 99.9% estimate of extinct species is a lie.

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Part 5

If God made everything, who made God?

Critics are often frustrated when Christians ask them, “Where did everything come from?” They're frustrated because they really have no convincing answer. Many critics will attempt to turn the tables and ask the Christian, “Well, if everything has to come from something then where did God come from?” They ask this question intending to create the impression that Christians have a similar dilemma as atheists – namely, how can something exist without being created? They feel if Christians can believe God exists without a cause, then why can't atheists believe the universe exists without a cause?

This reminds me of a funny story I once heard.

An astronaut was speaking to a group of elderly folks about his experiences, in particular about the first time he saw the earth from space. While he was speaking, a lady interrupted him and said, “Sir, I don't know what you're talking about. Everyone knows the earth sits on the back of a giant turtle.”

Not wanting to argue with the lady, the astronaut politely asked her, “Ma'am, what do you think that turtle is standing on?”

The lady didn't miss a beat, “Why, another turtle, of course.”

The astronaut saw he was going to have to press the issue a little. “Then what is that other turtle standing on?”

The lady shook her head and said, “Sir, I see what you're doing and it's not going to work. It's turtles all the way down!”

This is what is known as an infinite regress. It's a logical fallacy where a speaker projects a causal chain of events backward without any definite point that starts the chain. If someone created God, then it must have been by some bigger god. Then who created that god? It must be an even bigger god. Then that god must have been created too, by a still bigger god. There has to be a First Cause – an infinite God who was not created.

If something exists, it must either have always existed or it began to exist. If something began to exist – like the universe – then what caused it? You can't say it was caused by another created thing because that other thing would need a cause. There has to be an eternal Creator who started it all. An infinite God creating the universe is the only thing that makes any sense. Anything else is just turtles all the way down!

Five quick arguments for the existence of God

My blog is mostly apologetics – with a little politics and theology thrown in once in a while. I try to write in such a way that I cover my points pretty well, while still keeping my posts reasonably short. It occurred to me, though, that even two, typewritten pages can contain a lot of material and if people want to use some of my points in discussions with non-believers, they might need some quick bullet-points that are even shorter and easy to remember.

To that end, I thought of what might be the five simplest, yet still effective arguments Christians could use when talking with atheists. If you remember only these five points, you'll find they'll go a long way. I tried to think of a 5-letter acronym to help remember them but nothing came to mind. If anyone has a suggestion, comment me.

1) The existence of matter and space

There is a law in science called the conservation of matter. It basically says that matter can never be created nor destroyed. You can convert matter into energy, but the net amount of matter/energy in the universe remains constant. This begs the question: if matter is not being created, where did it all come from in the first place? Logically speaking, nothing can create itself so the universe must have been created by something outside of itself. There has to be a supernatural, eternal, First Cause. I call Him, God.

2) The origin of life

Once upon a time, people believed maggots sprang out of rotting meat through a process called, spontaneous generation. Through experimentation, though, all examples of spontaneous generation were shown to be false. In every case, another living organism was determined to be the origin. In the case of maggots, for example, it was flies lying eggs on the meat. Darwin, however, stilled believed that spontaneous generation could occur in single-celled animals. That's because he believed uni-celled creatures were “simple” blobs of goo – a fortunate arrangement of amino acids. We know now that even single-celled creatures are incredibly complex. In spite of all of our efforts, we've never been able to create a living thing nor seen one rise spontaneously in nature. The true origin of life is a bona fide miracle. God created life.

3) Absolute morality

Is it wrong to lie? Is it wrong to steal? Is it wrong to rape? We all know it is but why? Among animals, we can find numerous examples of deception, cunning, or forced mating. Why are these things wrong for humans but not animals? Some people think society decides for itself what is right and wrong. If that is true, then we could hardly condemn Nazi Germany for the holocaust since that is what they thought was best for them at the time. It just seems we instinctively know that some things are always wrong but again, why? Obviously the universe doesn't care what happens. Objective right and wrong can only exist if there is a moral code that transcends human opinion. If good and evil exist at all, it is only because God exists.

4) The historical fact of Jesus

Pick any person from the past and try to prove – scientifically – that he ever lived. You will soon find it's an impossible task. When we study historical figures, we look at historical evidence. What was written down about them? In the case of Jesus, we have the gospels and the letters of Paul. We have the extra-biblical writings of historians like Josephus, Tacitus, and Pliny the younger. We have eyewitness accounts of the miracles of Jesus and His promise of eternal life to those who believe in Him. We have eyewitness accounts of people who saw Him die and saw Him alive again. We have accounts of the empty tomb, the martyrdom of the apostles, and the explosion of the first century church. We have more evidence for the historical fact of Jesus than any other person of antiquity. Jesus lived, died, and rose again.

5) The lack of evidence to the contrary

This is where the rubber meets the road. You see, atheists proudly boast that they've never seen compelling evidence for God. If you run down the above four reasons why there must be a God, they will merely shake their heads and say it's not enough evidence for God. Next, they accuse Christians of believing in a god-of-the-gaps and wherever we lack scientific understanding, Christians want to just say, God-did-it. I think they have a weak argument. How can they say God didn't do it unless they can provide strong evidence to the contrary? Let me show you how this applies to the above points:

• Point #1: Suppose I'm walking through the woods with a friend and we come across a crude log cabin. I might wonder who built it but my friend says, “No one built this. Look at all these sticks lying around here. I'm sure they just arranged themselves into the shape of a cabin – we just need to look for some natural mechanism.” Before I abandon the obvious conclusion that the cabin had a builder, my friend has to convince me that no one could build something. Furthermore, he has to convince me that his explanation is more likely than mine. You see? He has to provide evidence to the contrary of the most reasonable conclusion. I'm willing to listen but I don't think any story he could invent would convince me yet atheists believe that nothing created everything!
• Point #2: The origin of life poses a similar problem for atheists as the origin of matter. Atheists still cling to spontaneous generation only now they call it abiogenesis. Regardless, it's still the idea that life can arise from non-living matter. What compelling argument can the atheist make that would have me reject everything we've learned up till now and consider an idea that was discarded not long after blood-letting?
• Point #3: If atheists believe there are such things as good and bad, they need to show how they transcend human opinion. Atheists often ridicule the Bible, for example, saying that it endorses things like slavery. What makes the atheists' view of slavery more “right” than the societies who thought it was OK to own slaves? If they have no alternate, objective standard of morality, they need to stop using their personal opinions of right and wrong to criticize the Bible's standards.
• Point #4: Atheists often attack the Person of Jesus saying He was a myth or an embellishment. They say the Scriptures are of dubious origin and have been corrupted through centuries of translating and editing. So where is their evidence for these claims? Where are the uncorrupt autographs that I can compare with our modern Bibles to see the differences? How do they impeach the testimonies of people who claim to be eyewitnesses to the miracles of Jesus – including His resurrection? What am I to do with the Dead Sea Scrolls or the thousands of Greek and Latin manuscripts? It's fine that they choose to ignore the evidence but I would ask them what other historical figures have as much evidence and which of those with less evidence do atheists dismiss as myths?

There are compelling reasons to believe in God. Atheism, on the other hand, suffers from a glaring lack of evidence. I've never heard a sound argument for why atheism is true and correct. I only hear criticisms of Christian arguments.

Atheists can say they reject the evidence for God. They just can't say why.

Are Christians mostly atheists?

The following point has been made many times by many atheists but the most notable quote is attributed to Stephen Roberts:

I contend that we are both atheists.  I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.  

Godisimaginary.com has even made this “proof #28” in their list of reasons they believe God is imaginary. The point seems self-explanatory but, just for the sake of clarity, I'll expound on it a little. Over the course of human history, people have believed in literally thousands of gods – maybe millions. For example, people used to believe in the gods Zeus, Apollo, Ares, Aphrodite, Hades, Poseidon, etc but we now reject the gods of Olympus as myths. The claim is that the reasons Christians reject these false gods are much the same reasons atheists reject the God. It's a clever argument at first hearing and I've seen a couple of YouTube debates where Christian apologists seemed to get a little flustered when their opponent raised it. They shouldn't, though. I think the argument suffers from a fatal flaw.

The argument seems to give the impression that there are degrees of belief that range from believing in many gods, to believing in a few gods, to believing in one God, to believing in no gods. It's like a graph fading from black (many gods) to white (no gods) and the atheist would have us believe that he and Christians are both nearer to one end of the graph, separated by only a shade of gray. It's an entirely wrong impression of our positions.

You see, the difference between rejecting most gods and rejecting all gods is the difference between theism and atheism. It's not a fine line or a blurry line that divides the two. It's a bold line, a line of demarcation. Either the light is on or it is off and there is nothing in between. Atheists believe nature is all there is; theists believe there is something that transcends nature – something supernatural. Theists believe in things like miracles, souls, and an after-life. Atheists don't. It's black or white. There are no shades of gray.

Theists see the universe as sublime. We see the enormity of space, the multitude of stars, the beauty of nature and know it must be the product of a design. Therefore, there must be a Creator. We know instinctively there is a such thing as objective morality; that some things are always wrong. If there is objective morality then there must be a law that transcends our shifting opinions. Therefore, there must be a transcendent Lawgiver. The theist knows there is a God and asks, “Who is He?”

Atheists may think they see beauty in nature but “beauty” is merely the product of a chemical reaction in our brains. “Beauty” isn't really a thing. They see order in the universe but “order” is merely the result of matter behaving according to fixed physical laws and there is no purpose behind it. The laws, the matter, even the space all just poofed into existence without a cause – without a Creator. Morality is merely the collective opinions of a society. What society considers acceptable will change from time-to-time and place-to-place but the universe doesn't really care. There is no, “why?”; everything only “is.”

Perhaps the atheist rejects the Christian God for the same reasons I might reject Zeus or Thor. Maybe he believes the Bible is a myth. Even if that were true, that still wouldn't mean there is no god, only that there is some other First Cause that we just don't know about.  I'm not about to reject the one, true God but, if I did, that still wouldn't make me an atheist.  

Does God hide himself?

In a list of arguments against God's existence, one critic at Backyard Skeptics questioned the existence of God based on what he called, “Divine Hiddenness.” From the article we read the following:

Why is God so stingy with direct evidence?... [T]he supposed miracles that attest to a supernatural power all happened in ancient, pre scientific, times, in which there existed no means of reliable verification. These supposed miracles are not being duplicated today so that we could see that such things are possible. Scientific errors in the Bible and its other flaws, including the commanding of atrocities, all make Scripture much harder to believe. A loving God would not erect such high barriers to belief and then further compound the difficulty in believing by providing us with such strong evidential circumstances against the supernatural, such as the inviolability of the laws of nature.

The implication being made is that, if God were real, He would openly reveal Himself to His creation; since He doesn't openly reveal Himself, it is evidence that He is not real. I've heard this same argument raised many times. Often, critics will sum it up with the question, “If there is a God, why doesn't He just appear to us?” I don't recall having heard the term, “divine hiddenness” before but it seems to make the same point. Here are some of my thoughts on that subject.

First, I would question the premise that God would necessarily reveal Himself. In the above quote, the author stated rather firmly, “A loving God would not erect such high barriers to belief.” Really? I've always considered it a bit presumptuous of people to tell me what God will or will not do. I agree that I might expect Him to appear, but on what grounds could one argue that He must? I can't think of any reason that obligates Him. Constructing a false narrative about how God should act, then criticizing God for not acting according to the false narrative is a logical fallacy known as a straw man.

Beyond that, though, I would say that God does not hide Himself. At the most fundamental level, we see God behind His creation. Psalm 19:1 says, “The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.” The enormity, the complexity, indeed, even the existence of the universe tell us plainly that there is a Creator who made it all. Romans 1:20 goes even further, “For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse.”

God also revealed Himself in special ways to people of the Old Testament. He appeared to Moses in the burning bush. He lead the freed children of Abraham through the desert as a pillar of fire or a cloud of smoke. The people heard His voice audibly at Mt Sinai. These examples and others show that God is a personal God who has made Himself known to His people.

God also made Himself known through the prophets and apostles. In many passages, the writers recite the words of God verbatim, prefacing their remarks with, “Thus saith the LORD....” As evidence that they were speaking with the authority of God, they were often given the ability to perform miracles. By extension, the words given to the prophets of old have become our Scriptures today. The canon of Scripture is God's revealed word to us.

But above all these is the incarnation – the birth of Jesus, our Emmanuel (God with us). John 1:14, 18 says, “And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth.... No one has seen God at any time; the only begotten God who is in the bosom of the Father, He has explained Him.” God has revealed Himself in the Person of the Son. He told us who He was and proved it through many miracles including His own resurrection. He told us that we can have eternal life through Him and He gave His own life as the atonement for our sins.

People who would claim that God remains hidden have to ignore the clear evidence for His existence in His creation; they have to ignore His revealed word in the Bible; and they have to ignore the historical certainty of Jesus Christ. Of course, some critics still complain saying that the Bible was written so long ago and where is Jesus now? I'm sorry, but God has already made Himself known to them and there is no obligation that He reappear every few years to remind them that He is still Lord of the universe and that they will someday have to give an account of their lives to Him.

Even if Jesus did appear today, it still wouldn't change the mind of some people. Many of the people He appeared to in the Bible refused to believe in Him. It's not so much that God is hidden from them but rather they have blinded themselves to the truth.

The best argument atheists have is that they have no argument!

1 Peter 3:15 commands us to always be ready to give an answer to every man who asks a reason for the hope that is in us. It doesn't say to only answer the easy questions. Indeed, the more difficult the question, the more urgent should our answers be. This is the reason I blog. It's true I devote most of my blog to the creation/evolution debate but that's because I believe evolution is the greatest challenge to the Faith in our time. Even so, I'm always on the look out for other criticisms of the Bible.

In my quest to answer the best arguments against Christianity, I came across a forum with a thread titled, A Library of the Best 40 Atheist Arguments Against God. Woohoo!! The mother-load. If I'm looking to answer the most challenging arguments against Christianity, here are the 40 best ones. At least, that's what the list's author said but as I began reading them, I didn't think the list lived up to its name. Or maybe I'm being too critical and there really aren't any good arguments for atheism. Hmm.

Anyway, in a list of the “best” arguments atheists use against God, what is the first argument – presumably, the “best of the best”? According to the list's author:

The fundamental argument for atheism is that there is no evidence or proof for God. There is no solid or tangible evidence for God nor a logical argument for God. The existence of God is taken on faith and not by evidence.

You can see why I was disappointed in the list. Is the best argument for atheism really that Christians don't have a good argument for God? Let's look at some of the many facets of this flawed reasoning.

First, there's a little hypocrisy going on. When I write about creation or evolution, I sometimes criticize the evidence for evolution. At those times, evolutionists often cry foul saying that criticizing the evidence for evolution is not evidence for creation. That's a valid point. Of course, I often write about evidence for creation but if all I ever had were criticisms of evolution, that's a very weak argument for creation. Now the shoe is on the other foot. When making an argument for atheism, the unbeliever's first resort is to criticize the evidence for God. Yes, it's a very weak argument! And it's their best argument?

There are a few other facets to this weak argument. Implicit in this quote is that unbelief is the default position of any thinking person. I've written about this before. Atheists proudly portray themselves as skeptics who cautiously (but still open-mindedly) examine the evidence and go wherever it leads. This author is making exactly that same point: until convincing evidence or some logical argument is made for God, our starting belief should be atheism.

In my last post on this subject, I gave the analogy of finding a log cabin in the woods. Even if you don't know who built the cabin, you would start with the assumption that the cabin had a builder. You wouldn't start with the assumption that the cabin is just the accidental arrangement of trees that fell into the shape of a cabin. Atheists are welcome to look for some “scientific” evidence to explain the origin of matter, time, and space but I could save them time and tell them that no scientific explanation exists. Their “skeptical” starting point is about as reasonable as insisting a log cabin has no builder.

Notice, too, that the author employs the usual evolutionist tactic of redefining “faith” to mean “blind faith.” How predictable. In my opinion, it is the atheist who exercises blind faith by believing in a purposeless, natural, uncaused origin of the universe (which I call “poofism”) when such a belief flies in the face of everything we know scientifically.

I've talked about evidence for God many times before. Besides the existence of matter, space, and time, I could talk about the existence of absolute morality or the apparent design in nature or the historicity of Jesus or any number of other things... but what does it matter?  It's the position of this atheist – probably most atheists – that they will sit cross-armed and unbelieving without offering any good reason why. They have no evidence for atheism. Their best argument is that they have no argument.