Too Many Religion

A common atheist argument is “There are a lot of other religions and gods. You’re atheist for all those other gods. I just take it one step further. You deny every other religion in the history of mankind and yet think yours is the special one and you made the right choice is beyond ridiculous and arrogant.”

“Catholics are atheists about 99.9999999999% of all made up gods from Zeus to Thor. Atheists just have one more god on the list than they do.”

Yes, I deny every other religions just like I deny that 2+2=5 or 2+2=6 or 2+2=7 and only assert that 2+2=4. Just because I reject several falsehoods doesn’t mean there isn’t a truth.

Science Can’t Prove God

Another typical argument goes like this: Since science relies on empirical observation and experimentation, and God is not directly observable or testable, then the conclusion is drawn that God does not exist.

The refutation to this argument often emphasizes the limitations of science. It acknowledges that while science is an incredibly powerful tool for understanding the natural world, it has intrinsic limitations. Science deals with the empirical, the measurable, and the observable. God, if conceived as a transcendent and non-material being, may exist outside the scope of what science can directly address. As a commenter on our page said mockingly it’s like saying, “I cannot eat ice cream with chopsticks. Therefore, ice cream does not exist.”

The absence of scientific evidence for God doesn’t necessarily imply God’s non-existence. As William Lane Craig explains, there are realms of human experience, such as ethics, metaphysics, beauty, and the very foundations of science itself, that cannot be fully explained or justified within a purely scientific framework. In other words, the absence of evidence in the scientific domain doesn’t necessarily negate the possibility of God existing in a different, non-material realm that science isn’t equipped to investigate.

This line of reasoning encourages a broader perspective on the types of questions that different domains of knowledge are equipped to answer. While science is a powerful tool for understanding the natural world, it might not be the sole or most appropriate method for addressing questions about the existence of God or the meaning of metaphysical and ethical realities.

The Problem of Pain

Another common argument is “If God was all loving and all powerful, He wouldn’t let bad things happen to good people.” This is what CS Lewis referred to as the problem of pain. There are several responses to this:

1. Free Will and the Fall: Catholics believe that God created humans with free will, allowing them to choose between good and evil. The existence of suffering is often traced back to the misuse of this free will, as seen in the biblical narrative of the Fall in Genesis. God gave us the ability to do evil so that we had the ability to love.
2. Redemption and Christ’s Sacrifice: Central to the Catholic response is the understanding that God, in His infinite mercy, sent Jesus Christ to redeem humanity from sin and suffering. The suffering of Christ on the Cross is seen as a redemptive act that provides hope and meaning to human suffering.
3. Mystery of God’s Plan: The Catholic Church acknowledges that the full understanding of why there is suffering remains a mystery beyond human comprehension. God’s plan is often described as intricate and beyond our complete understanding, and suffering is seen as part of the divine plan for the greater good.
4. Participation in Christ’s Suffering: Catholics believe in the concept of “offering up” one’s sufferings in union with Christ’s suffering on the Cross. This perspective transforms individual suffering into a participation in the redemptive work of Christ. Suffering, then, is an opportunity to engage in the divine economy to pay for one’s or others’ debts.
5. Compassion and Charity: The Catholic response emphasizes the call to respond to the suffering of others with compassion and charity. Acts of kindness, service, and love are seen as ways to alleviate suffering and manifest God’s love in the world.
6. Eternal Perspective: The Catholic faith teaches that life on Earth is temporary, and the ultimate goal is eternal communion with God. In the context of eternity, the sufferings of this world are considered temporary and can be redemptive when united with Christ’s suffering.

The Problem of Free Will

Some consider the problem of free will or theological determinism to be the greatest argument against theism. If God is omniscient and knows everything that we do, how can we have free will (which is requisite for us to love and sin)? Moses Maimonides wrote, “Does God know or does He not know that a certain individual will be good or bad? If thou sayest ‘He knows’, then it necessarily follows that the man is compelled to act as God knew beforehand how he would act, otherwise, God’s knowledge would be imperfect.…”

In his book Mere Christianity, Lewis argues that God is actually outside time and therefore does not “foresee” events, but rather simply observes them all at once. He explains:

But suppose God is outside and above the Time-line. In that case, what we call “tomorrow” is visible to Him in just the same way as what we call “today”. All the days are “Now” for Him. He does not remember you doing things yesterday, He simply sees you doing them: because, though you have lost yesterday, He has not. He does not “foresee” you doing things tomorrow, He simply sees you doing them: because, though tomorrow is not yet there for you, it is for Him. You never supposed that your actions at this moment were any less free because God knows what you are doing. Well, He knows your tomorrow’s actions in just the same way – because He is already in tomorrow and can simply watch you. In a sense, He does not know your action till you have done it: but then the moment at which you have done it is already “Now” for Him.

Ricky Gervais’s Litany of Fallacies

In a documentary called “The Unbelievers,” atheist comedian Ricky Gervais lays out his philosophy about religion. In what many atheists claim is an intellectual dismantling of religion, he makes many fallacies and one massive outright contradiction.

“Indoctrination”

His first point is that people wouldn’t be as inclined to believe in God if no one was allowed to teach them about God until their ’20s. He says that religion relies on arbitrary dictate from parents or teachers: “There is a God.” “What?” “There is a God. And if you’re bad you go to Hell.” He likens this sort of unquestioning instruction to other commands that don’t require discussion: “Don’t touch the fire. Don’t go near the wolf. Don’t touch the spider.”

Well, there are reasons why you don’t touch a fire or go near a wolf or touch a black widow spider. Parents don’t say, “this tin foil hat will protect you from the fire” or “squawking like a monkey will make you impervious to the spider, and there is a god.” They actually tell the child the truth and believe it or not, some actually give reasons for it. Don’t touch the fire because it will burn you. Don’t go near the wolf or spider because they will bite you.

In fact, children test all of these commands anyway. As anyone with a toddler will understand, telling one to not do something is likely to make him want to do it more. And when the toddler tests it and gets burned, he learns. Unfortunately the type of burning involved with not believing in God comes when it’s too late, so the analogy is imperfect.

A better point would be with the belief in Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy, which Gervais makes throughout the interview. What inevitably happens to people who are taught falsehoods like Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy is that they disbelieve eventually. But belief in God persists in many intelligent people. Could it be because there is a good reason for that belief?

“Always born into the right god”

His next argument is that people typically believe the God that they are taught in their surrounding culture: Americans are typically Christian, Indians are typically Hindu, and Pakistanis are typically Muslim. “Isn’t that lucky? I was born into the right god. Everyone else is going to hell.”

This is a strong argument for the cultural origins of religious belief but there are two answers. 1) It could be explained as the local interpretation of the same God. One could say if you’re born in India, you probably like Indian food, if you’re born in the US, you probably like American food, if you’re born in Pakistan, you probably like Pakistani food. Liking different styles of food doesn’t discount the fact that everyone still needs to eat to live. Likewise, different regions liking different interpretations of God doesn’t discount the fact that God exists.

2) Cultural genesis works in totalitarian societies and those without religious freedom, but not so much in the West. According to this concept, free countries should be 100% atheist, but that’s not the case. We do see a mass abandonment of Christianity in Europe, but it’s perhaps stronger than ever in the United States. Additionally, religion persists in atheist countries like China and the former USSR. A strong atheist culture and threat of death by the government didn’t sink religion entirely in those countries. Perhaps religion is more than cultural coercion?

“God made it.”

His next argument is a blatant straw man: “Where did the universe come from? God made it.” Here, Gervais is trying to claim that all believers adhere to the God of the gaps philosophy in which God is everything we can’t explain. It’s very lazy and I don’t know if I’ve ever heard someone leave it at that. In fact, Gervais suggests an even lazier answer by saying nothing created the universe.

A much more nuanced approach to the origins of the universe is the Kalām Cosmological Argument, which is as follows:

Whatever begins to exist has a cause.
The universe began to exist.
Therefore, the universe had a cause.

To avoid an untenable infinite regression and the nonsensical universe-begetting-universe argument, we must conclude that there was an uncaused cause (Prime Mover) which caused the universe to come into existence. We call this God.

“There shouldn’t be a word for not believing in God”

Gervais then goes into an odd argument saying that there shouldn’t be a word for not believing in God: “We’re all born atheist.” Perhaps, but we’re also all born completely ignorant. We need to be taught that the Earth is round as much as we need to be taught about the origins of the universe. The default is atheism, just as the default is flat-Earthism. While moral theology may be written on the heart as is the innate understanding of a higher power, the specifics of theology need to be taught.

“I’m always going to follow the evidence.”

Gervais likes to pose as a scientific mind and says that he always follows the evidence. But is that true? In the early 1900s, the established cosmological model was the steady state model in which the universe had always existed and was in a “steady state.” Proponents like Einstein thought this made sense and proposed what he later called his “biggest blunder,” the cosmological constant. Later a Belgian priest Georges Lemaître, working deductively from the idea that God created the universe proposed that the universe was expanding and following it back in time, one would find a “creation.” Edwin Hubble’s red shift discoveries later provided evidence for Lemaître’s Big Bang theory. Ever since, science has continually shown more evidence for the existence of God. In fact some of the theories that physicists are proposing to explain a godless universe are so bizarre and evidence-free that it takes considerably less faith to believe in God.

Agnosticism

At the end of the interview, Gervais says you can’t be agnostic about God if you’re not about Santa Claus. If you can definitively say there’s no Santa Claus, then you must definitively say there is no God. This statement, however, contradicts his earlier statement where he defined atheist as someone who simply doesn’t have a belief in God. The difference is subtle, but not having a belief in God is different than positively believing there is no God. I don’t have evidence about any life that may live at the bottom of the ocean, but I cannot say that there is no life at the bottom of the ocean.

Gervais should take a cue from an institution that he supposedly appreciates: science. Science never proves anything—it only disproves—and as a result, scientists are all agnostic.

We didn’t expect a truly thoughtful examination of religion by the comedian Gervais, but it would be great if atheist fanboys didn’t act like it was. As a protestant minister once quipped, “If you rely on comedians to learn about religion, don’t be surprised if what you believe is a joke.”