On Saturday, June 12th 2010, the Apologetics Research Society sponsored a debate between four scientists entitled "Four Christian Views of Evolution".   The purpose of this debate was to compare and contrast four different views of evolution that could be acceptable to a Christian.   They were: Intelligent Design, Young Earth Creationism, Progressive Creationism, and Evolutionary Creationism. ... << MORE >>

        

Several Atheists like to complain that Theism, unlike Atheism is unfalsifiable.  If this is true, then it means that Atheism can be proven false, Theism cannot.  Many Atheists consider this to be a strong point for Atheism and a weak point for Theism.  The problem is, since Atheism CAN be proven false, then IF it IS proven false, then Theism (its negation) would necessarily be proven true.  When there are only two possible answers for a proposition, and one of them is proven false, then the other is necessarily true.  Consider the question "Does God Exist?" There are only two possible answers, "yes" and "no".  If the answer "no" was proven false, then the only alternative answer remaining is "yes".
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The way I choose to show Atheism false is by showing the self contradictions contained within the Atheistic worldview.  Logically speaking, if a proposition contains necessary consequences that are themselves self-contradictory, then the proposition cannot be true.  For example, there are no living corpses, there are no unemployed employees, and there is no dehydrated water.

According to a few famous Atheists, here are a few necessary consequences of Atheism.  There is no God; there is nothing but the physical world (Dan Barker – Protest sign at the Washington State Capital).  Humans are nothing but machines that generate DNA (Richard Dawkins – The God Delusion).  Morality is based on the consensus of human beings (Gordon Stein – “The Great Debate: Does God Exist?”).  If this is true then it would be impossible to account for things such as moral absolutes, laws of logic, or human dignity; three things that we all understand to be indisputable.

Moral Absolutes
Every Atheist I've ever met believes that murder and rape is evil.  But what is evil?  I thought all that exists is matter.  Is there anything evil about matter?  Does the knife care that someone used it to kill someone?  Of course not.  Perhaps evil is just something that we experience as decreasing our happiness.  Wouldn't that mean that since the rapist increases his happiness by raping people, then raping people would be considered good for him?  Who's to say that the rapist's moral judgments are flawed and ours are not?

Once an atheist woman told me that she heard that her co-worker was cheating on his wife with another woman from the office.  She told me that she was outraged at how immoral he was and how she lost all respect for him.  I asked her “What was so wrong with what he did?”  Why does the fact that he’s married make the act of sex with another woman immoral?  She simply said “Its just wrong!”  I agree, but I’d like to know why it’s ultimately wrong given the Atheistic worldview.

Laws of Logic
Consider the law of “excluded middle” which says that a proposition is either true or false, there is no third option.  What is the ontological foundation of this law?  Is this law just a result of the chemical functions in our brain?  If so then how is it universal?  Is the law material?  Of course not!  Laws of logic are immaterial abstract entities, the very things that cannot exist if the only thing that exists is matter.

Dan Barker, in a debate with Dr. James White, attempted to refute this argument by saying that “logic is not a thing.”  Well if by thing he means a physical object then I would agree with him.  The problem is that he already said that things are all that exist.  So according to Dan Barker there is no logic.   

Human Dignity
Why do people put on a lab coat and argue that people are simply evolved animals, and then say that we shouldn't treat people like animals?  If all that exists is matter, then that would mean that we are nothing but matter as well.  If that’s true then why do we believe that humans are worthy of respect?  In a debate with Paul Manata, Dan Barker asserts that human beings are no more important than broccoli.  I find it very interesting that the piece of broccoli known as Dan Barker thinks that other certain pieces of broccoli are worthy of love and respect, as if they were something more than just broccoli.  Every single day we all treat each other with respect and dignity, and we all know that those who disrespect people ought not to do that.  This is true for Theist and Atheist alike.  Humans really are worthy of respect.  This is inexplicable on the Atheistic Worldview.

Conclusion
The Atheist is able to recognize moral absolutes, laws of logic, and the dignity of human beings, three things that cannot exist given the worldview of the Atheist.  So the question is, why is the Atheist contradicting his/her own worldview?  The answer is obvious, because as we’ve seen, the proposition "God doesn't exist" entails impossible consequences.

There is however, another worldview that is capable of accounting for the very things that the Atheist cannot account for, namely Christian Theism.  On Christian Theism moral absolutes make sense because God is provided as the absolute moral standard.  Immaterial, timeless, transcendent entities such as the laws of logic make sense because they can be grounded in an immaterial, timeless, transcendent God.  Human dignity makes sense because humans are created in the image of the only being worthy of honor and praise, God.

Atheism is inadequate and incapable of explaining our experience of the world around us.  Atheism therefore cannot be true.  This is why I conclude that the best proof for the existence of God is the impossibility of the contrary.

        

“If God does not exist, then objective moral values do not exist.  But objective moral values do exist.  Ergo, God exists.”

Introduction
Imagine, if you will, a knight who wants to prove how good of a fighter he is in order to win the favor of the King.  The Knight takes some clothing and straw and creates a scarecrow.  Then the knight draws his sword and beats the straw man to the ground.  He then proclaims, "Your Highness, as you can see, I am the most powerful knight in all the land!"

 

The Straw Man Fallacy
It’s obvious to anyone that beating a lifeless scarecrow is in no way an indication of how good of a fighter you are.  This is an analogy for what philosophers call a "straw man fallacy".  One commits the straw man fallacy when they alter the argument of an opponent and then proceed to attack the altered argument.  If you succeed in defeating a position that your opponent is not defending, it doesn't mean you win!

 

Every time I've ever heard a scholarly debate on the proposition "Can objective morality exist without God?" the person arguing in the affirmative almost always commits the straw man fallacy.  Click here to see one such debate.  I've watched and studied this debate several times, and I must say that it is a train wreck!  It is absurd how many times the affirmative speaker, Paul Kurtz, commits the straw man fallacy.

 

Here is what usually happens:
Christian Theist: "Without God, moral values would not exist". 
Atheist: "That's ridiculous!  You don't have to believe in God to live a moral life!!  I know of thousands of Atheists who lived good moral lives without believing in God!  Let me name them for you...Bertrand Russell,  Mark Twain,  Thomas Jefferson, Sigmund Freud..."

 

Did the Christian Theist say that you need to believe in God to live a moral life?  No, he didn't!  He simply said that moral values wouldn't exist if God didn't exist, regardless of whether you believe in Him or not!  Christian Theists, like me, do not say that Atheists are immoral; we say that they are inconsistent.  He's the way the Christian Theist presents the Moral Argument:

The Real Moral Argument
If God does not exist then objective moral values do not exist.  The term "objective moral values" means that certain actions are right or wrong, good or evil independently of whether anyone agrees with them.

 

For example:  To say that the Holocaust was objectively evil, is to say that it was evil even though the Nazis who carried it out thought that it was good.  And it still would have been evil if the Nazis had won World War II and succeeded in exterminating or brainwashing everyone who disagreed with them so that everyone thought the holocaust was good.  Even if the whole world thought the Holocaust was a good thing, it still would not have changed the fact that it was evil.

 

But the question remains, "Why is it evil?" Is it because the Nazis broke federal law?  Apparently not.  They acted in accord with their own federal law which defined the Jews as sub-humans who needed to be exterminated.  Is it because they broke someone else's federal law?  So what if they did?  Another country's federal law is just as worthwhile as theirs.  Is there anything that makes one set of laws more important than another?  On what basis can you possibly say that the Nazi ethic was evil?

 

One might say, "Hitler hurt people!  That's why it’s wrong!" I would simply ask, “Why is hurting people wrong?”  Apparently Hitler and quite a few of his followers thought it was great!  Who are you to judge?  It should become obvious by now that in order to condemn the Holocaust as objectively evil, you must be able to judge the Holocaust while standing on an objective vantage point where it will be possible to say "It doesn't matter who you are or what you believe, THIS is what is true".  So that raises the question, "Does such an objective vantage point exist?"  If you are going to say "no" to that question then you must admit that there was nothing wrong with the Holocaust, because in reality, right and wrong do not exist!  This is what a consistent Atheist must believe, but who can live like that?

Remaining Consistent
In an effort to remain consistent, one Atheist named Michael Ruse, a philosopher of science explains that…

 

"Morality is a biological adaptation, no less than our hands and feet and teeth.  Considered as a rationally justifiable set of claims about an 'objective something', ethics is illusory.  I appreciate that when someone says, 'love thy neighbor as thyself' they think they are referring above and beyond themselves.  Nevertheless, such reference is truly without foundation.  Morality is just an aid to survival and reproduction, and any deeper meaning is illusory." 1

 

It becomes incredibly obvious that this statement is just an attempt to be consistent in Atheism when you consider another quote from Michael Ruse,

 

"The man who says it is morally acceptable to rape little children is just as mistaken as the man that says 2+2=5." 2

Objective Moral Values Exist

Thanks to Michael Ruse’s contradictory statement we are able to see that even the Atheist knows that objective moral values do exist.  Could anything be more obvious?  Christopher Hitchens, one of the “four horsemen of Atheism” has said countless numbers of times in his debates that “everyone knows” that there is a moral difference between kicking a woman in the stomach and kicking a pregnant woman in the stomach.  Hitchens usually says this when a Christian Theist uses the moral argument against him, imagining that the Christian Theist is saying that you can’t know the difference between right and wrong without being a Christian (another example of the straw man fallacy I mentioned earlier).

 

The Matrix

Consider the philosophical question “Is the external world real?”  Since we only observe the external world through our own five senses there is no way to get outside of ourselves to observe the external world to make sure what we’re experiencing is real.  The movie “The Matrix” describes the entire world we experience as an interactive computer program.  Everyone in the world is hardwired into the program making them think that they are actually walking down the street, eating breakfast, or writing in a blog.  Philosophers sometimes ponder whether we are living in such a world right now?  Are the physical objects I see around me real?  Or are they just projections of a computer program, like in “The Matrix.”  While this is a legitimate question to ask, it is obvious that no one believes that such a “Matrix” exists.  People may at times toy with the notion that we have no way of verifying that our experience of the physical world is correct, but that same person will always get off the train track before the train runs him over.

 

In the same way, we all know that objective values exist.  We know that actions like murder, rape, or child abuse are not just socially unacceptable behaviors, they are moral abominations.  However, there are some people who disagree.  Such people are usually called “nihilists”.  Nihilism is the view that there are no moral values.  While there are people who adhere to this view (usually as a necessary consequence of Atheism) such people should simply be regarded as morally handicapped.  There is no reason to think that our experiences of morally right and wrong actions are undermined just because of another person’s impaired vision.

Ultimate Standard
If we are going to be able to judge between good and evil, we need to have an ultimate standard of good and evil to compare to.  I submit that that ultimate standard is God.  By nature, God is loving, kind, compassionate, self-sacrificing and so-forth.  Without God as the ultimate standard of right and wrong, everything becomes relative.  And when everything becomes relative, you can't condemn something like the Holocaust as evil, because in a world without God, good and evil do not exist.  To quote the famous Christian philosopher, William Lane Craig,

 

“We cannot truly be good without God.  But if we can, in some measure be good, then it follows that God exists.” 3

End notes
1.  Michael Ruse, “Evolutionary Theory and Christian Ethics,” in The Darwinian Paradigm (London: Routledge, 1989), pp. 262, 268-9

2.  Michael Ruse, Darwinism Defended  (London:  Addison-Wesley, 1982), p. 275.

3.  William Lane Craig, "Can We Be Good Without God?"

        

"The modern age, more or less repudiating the idea of a divine lawgiver, has nevertheless tried to retain the ideas of moral right and wrong, not noticing that, in casting God aside, they have also abolished the conditions of meaningfulness for moral right and wrong as well.  Thus, even educated persons sometimes declare that such things are war, or abortion, or the violation of certain human rights, are 'morally wrong,' and they imagine that they have said something true and significant.  Educated people do not need to be told, however, that questions such as these have never been answered outside of religion...Contemporary writers in ethics, who blithely discourse upon moral right and wrong and moral obligation without any reference to religion, are really just weaving intellectual webs from thin air; which amounts to saying that they discourse without meaning."

-Richard Taylor

        

Let’s just suppose that there is a God who is all Holy and Righteous;

and suppose that this God freely creates mankind and gives mankind the gift of life.

Suppose he sets His creatures in an ideal setting and gives them the freedom to participate in all the glories of the created order.  

Suppose, however, that God imposes just one restriction on them, warning, that if they violate that restriction they’ll die. Would such a God have a right to impose such a restriction?

And suppose that for no just reason, the ungrateful creature disobeys that one restriction the moment God’s back was turned.  

Suppose that instead of killing that creation he redeemed them.  

Suppose the descendants of that first transgression broadly and widely increase their hostility towards their Creator, to the point that the whole world became rebellious to God and each person ‘did what was right in their own eyes.’  

And suppose that God still determined to redeem these people and freely gave special gifts to one people (the Jews) so that through them the whole world would be blessed.

And suppose God delivered this people from poverty and enslavement to a ruthless Egyptian Pharaoh and suppose that this privileged nation, as soon as it was liberated, rose up in further rebellion against God.  

And suppose they took his law and violated it constantly.  

And suppose that God, still intent upon redemption, sent messengers and prophets to plead with his people to return to Him.  

And suppose his people killed those messengers and mocked the message.  

And suppose the people began to worship idols of stone and things fashioned of their own hand.  

And suppose these people invented  religions that were contrary to the truth of the real God and worshiped created things rather than the Creator.  

Suppose that in an ultimate act of redemption, the Creator God Himself became Incarnate in the person of His Son.  

And suppose this Son came into the world, not to condemn the world but to redeem it.

But suppose this very Son of God was rejected, slandered, mocked, tortured and murdered.   

Yet suppose that God accepted the murder of his own Son as punishment for the sins of the very persons who murdered Him.  

And suppose that God offered to His Son’s murderers total amnesty, complete forgiveness, transcendent peace that comes with the cleansing of all guilt, victory over death, eternal life and complete happiness.  

And suppose God gave these people as a free gift the promise of a future life that would be without pain, without sickness, without death, without tears;

and suppose God said to these people there is one thing that I demand, I demand that you honor my only Begotten Son and you worship and serve him alone.  

Suppose God did all that.  Would you be willing to say to him, “God that’s not fair.  You haven’t done enough.“?

- R.C. Sproul Reason to Believe

        

Brian Auten, my friend from Apologetics315 recently had an interview with Dr. William Lane Craig. Among the topics they discussed was Dr. Craig's advice for those interested in pursuing Apologetics as a ministry. Needless to say I was listening with a notepad and pencil in hand.

        

"Do you believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God?  That He came to earth, lived a sinless life, was crucified for your sins and rose from the dead three days later?"

This is a question that most of us have heard before.  Its the question that is asked to new Disciples just before they are baptized.  While the wording may change from time to time (as there is no script instructing anyone on how to say it) one there is one thing that is never left out.  Every time someone is baptized, the participant is always asked if they believe that Jesus rose again on the third day.  This is the central belief of Christianity.  As Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15:14 "If Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith."

Wow!  What a bold statement to make!  What was Paul thinking?  So much for just BELIEVING its true.  Paul said, regardless of whether you believe it or not, if Jesus didn't rise from the dead, then your faith is USELESS!!  Believing in something just because you believe it isn't enough.  It has to be objectively true.

Well I'm a pretty big fan of proving Christianity true, so it wouldn't surprise most of my readers to hear that I think that Paul's statement is an excellent example of "putting your money where your mouth is."  Just like a poker player with a Royal Flush, Paul shoved all his chips in the center of the table and confidently exclaimed "All in!!"  

So what makes us so confident that the resurrection of Jesus is something that can be objectively proven?  Isn't it just something we're supposed to just accept by faith?  Well personally, I don't have a problem with someone knowing that Christianity is true based on the evidence of the Holy Spirit speaking to their heart, and inferring from that that the scriptures are accurate in reporting that Jesus rose from the dead.  However, for those interested, an excellent case can be made for the Resurrection of Jesus historically.

Forget the "New Testament"

The title of this section might surprise or offend some people, but allow me to explain.  It wasn't until the late fourth century that there even was such a thing as the "New Testament"  The early church simply had the documents that were written by the apostles which they considered to be scripture.  It wasn't until a few hundred years later that the church collected all these documents together under one cover and called it the "New Testament."

My point is that the New Testament is NOT a single book.  It is a collection of ancient historical documents that one could use to investigate and determine what happened in history.

Real historians realize this and therefore have establish a list of historical facts about Jesus.  These facts are agreed upon almost unanimously.  To illustrate this point, I'll list them here and provide some quotations from Atheist and Theist scholars.

The Evidence:

Miracles...
“Most of the miracle stories contained in the gospels are legendary or at least are dressed up with legends. But there can be no doubt that Jesus did such deeds, which were, in his and his contemporaries’ understanding, miracles, that is, deeds that were the result of supernatural, divine causality. Doubtless he healed the sick and cast out demons.”
-Rudolf Bultmann, Jesus (Berlin: Deutsche Bibliothek, 1926), p. 159.

Craig Evans, a well-known Jesus scholar, says that “the older notion” that the miracle stories were the product of mythological divine man ideas “has been largely abandoned.” ... “It is no longer seriously contested” “that miracles played a role in Jesus’s ministry.”
-Craig Evans, “Life-of-Jesus Research and the Eclipse of Mythology,” Theological Studies 54 (1993): 18, 34

Death by crucifixion...
“The support for the mode of his death, its agents, and perhaps its coagents, is overwhelming: Jesus faced a trial before his death, was condemned and executed by crucifixion.”
-Johnson, Real Jesus, p. 125.

The crucifixion of Jesus is recognized even by the Jesus Seminar as “one indisputable fact.”
-Robert Funk, Jesus Seminar videotape.

Burial (known grave location)...
According to the late John A. T. Robinson of Cambridge University, the honorable burial of Jesus is one of “the earliest and best-attested facts about Jesus.”
-John A. T. Robinson, The Human Face of God (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1973), p. 131

Jesus' burial by Joseph is "very probable," since it is "almost inexplicable" why Christians would make up a story about a Jewish Sanhedrist who does what is right by Jesus.
-Raymond E. Brown, The Death of the Messiah, 2 vols. (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1994), 2: 1240-1.

Empty Tomb...
“By far most exegetes hold firmly to the reliability of the biblical statements concerning the empty tomb.”
-Jakob Kremer, Die Osterevangelien–Geschichten um Geschichte (Stuttgart: Katholisches Bibelwerk, 1977), pp. 49-50.

“It is extremely difficult to object to the empty tomb on historical grounds; those who deny it do so on the basis of theological or philosophical assumptions.”
-D. H. Van Daalen, The Real Resurrection (London: Collins, 1972), p. 41

Postmortem Appearances...
“It may be taken as historically certain that Peter and the disciples had experiences after Jesus’s death in which Jesus appeared to them as the risen Christ.”
-Gerd Lüdemann, What Really Happened to Jesus?, trans. John Bowden (Louisville, Kent.: Westminster John Knox Press, 1995), p. 80.

The overnight beginning of the Christian Faith...
"We have here a belief which nothing in terms of prior historical influences can account for—apart from the resurrection itself."
-C. F. D. Moule and Don Cupitt, “The Resurrection: a Disagreement,” Theology 75 (1972): 507-19.

"That is why, as an historian, I cannot explain the rise of early Christianity unless Jesus rose again, leaving an empty tomb behind him."
-N. T. Wright, "The New Unimproved Jesus," Christianity Today (September 13, 1993), page 26.

"Some sort of powerful, transformative experience is required to generate the sort of movement earliest Christianity was."
-Luke Timothy Johnson, The Real Jesus (San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 1996), page 136.

The Best Explanation of the Evidence
We've seen that historians have agreed on a few interesting facts concerning Jesus' life and death:  (1) Jesus performed a ministry of miracle working, (2) He died by crucifixion, (3) He was buried in a tomb, the location of which was known by everyone, (4) three days later the tomb was found empty, (5) believers, non-believers, skeptics, and even enemies saw appearances of Jesus alive after his death, (6) the Christian faith grew overnight, despite their opposition. 

Thats the evidence.  The only question that remains is, how do you explain the evidence?  Here are the most popular alternative theories concerning Jesus' life and death.  Examine these for yourself and determine how well they explain those historical facts about Jesus.

Unknown Tomb Theory:  The body of Jesus was buried in a common grave, no one knew where it was.
Wrong Tomb Theory:  The women came to the wrong tomb.
Legend Theory:  The entire story was a myth.  Click here to listen to a debate where this view is defended.
Twin Theory:  The resurrected Jesus was Jesus' twin brother.  Click here to listen to a debate where this view is defended.
Hallucination Theory:  Several hundred people experienced identical hallucinations.
Stolen Body Theory:  The Disciples stole the body in order to validate their movement.
Swoon Theory:  Jesus didn't die, he fainted and awoke in the tomb.
Alien Theory:  Jesus was an alien with the ability to die and resurrect.

Personally I am not convinced by any of these theories.  I believe that it is plausible to conclude that Jesus was exactly who he claimed to be, and his resurrection confirms it.

        

Last week I taught a class to the Apologetics Group in the Orange County Campus Ministry at UC Irvine. The class was on the Transcendental, and Moral arguments for the existence of God. I wasn't able to record the whole thing but I was able to record a few 10 minute clips of the class. In this clip I explain the most common Atheist response to the Moral Argument, namely the Euthyphro Dilemma.

The Euthyphro dilemma is found in Plato's dialogue "Euthyphro," in which Socrates asks Euthyphro: "Is the pious loved by the gods because it is pious, or is it pious because it is loved by the gods?"

In Christian terms, this is transformed into: "Is what is moral commanded by God because it is moral, or is it moral because it is commanded by God?" The dilemma has continued to present a problem for theists since Plato presented it and it continues to be an object of theological and philosophical discussion with respect to the Moral Argument.  Here I offer a refutation of the Euthyphro Dilemma.

This is the first class I've ever taught on this subject so I'm still refining my teaching style.  I saw a lot of things in the video that gave me an idea of what I can work on in the future.  Nevertheless, I think the main point is clear.  Any comments would be appreciated.

        

Dr. Craig answers questions from the audience after his lecture "Can we be good withouth God?"