Is the Assumption of the Christian God Axiomatic?

Towards the end of his 7/27/04 discussion with Zachary Moore, Christian apologist Gene Cook asked the following question:

Why is my axiomatic assumption of the Christian god not a good starting point?

Gene's question itself makes a questionable assumption which needs to be probed. He assumes that his “assumption of the Christian god” (I take this to mean at minimum the assumption that the Christian god exists), is axiomatic in nature. Does he explain why his “assumption of the Christian god” is axiomatic? I could not find where he might do this. Instead, it appears that he wants just to slip it in, perhaps with the hope that it will be accepted unquestioningly. From what little he does give, it's unclear what Gene might mean by 'axiomatic' in this context. In fact, it’s unclear how axiomatic concepts could even make sense in the Christian worldview; the term is completely alien to the New Testament, and the idea of axiomatic concepts can only make sense in a worldview in which knowledge is understood in terms of logical hierarchy, and this in itself is foreign to Christianity as well. (Anton Thorn makes this latter point clear in his essay TAG and the Fallacy of the Stolen Concept.)

Contrary to what seems to be a common habit among Christian apologists, great care should be given to what we call axiomatic, for axioms identify the very foundation of our knowledge and worldview. The term is not to be used lightly. At the very least, axioms are not something we must infer from some prior point of departure. Rather, they name in the most general terms what we directly perceive, what we are first aware of.

So if Gene Cook wants to defend the position that his "assumption of the Christian god" is axiomatic, he would first have to identify the means by which he has awareness of what he has named "the Christian god." Did he have direct awareness of this god by looking outward at the world? It’s doubtful that this could be the case, because the Christian god is said to be invisible. When Gene looks out at the world, he sees the world of finite objects, not an invisible magic being. If Gene says that the world is evidence of his god, then he runs into the following problems:

1) he admits that his "assumption of the Christian god" is not axiomatic, for now it must be inferred from some prior point of departure (i.e., he is saying that his god's existence is inferred form what he directly perceives, and what he directly perceives comes first),

and

2) that which is finite, physical, corruptible and natural cannot serve as evidence of something that is said to be infinite, non-physical, incorruptible and supernatural. A is not evidence of non-A. (See for instance my blog Is Human Experience Evidence of the Christian God?)

Perhaps Gene will say that he has direct awareness of his god by looking inward. In other words, when he consults the inner workings of his mind, he “sees” his god staring back at him. If he says this, then he has the following problems:

1) Extrospection (the act of looking outward) always precedes introspection (the act of looking inward) - thus anything said to be known by means of introspection cannot be axiomatic, for ultimately it must refer to that which is perceived extrospectively; to introspect, there must be content. Where did this content come from? From magic?

2) How did he identify what he "perceives" inwardly as the Christian god as opposed to something else? He would need to have some knowledge already in order to do that, which simply is another point against his assumption that his "assumption of the Christian god" is axiomatic.

3) How does he distinguish what he calls "the supernatural" from what he imagines? This is a big problem for the theist, and I've not seen any theists attempt to answer this question cogently.

And

4) How does he know that he is not confusing his emotions with a means of knowledge? Proverbs 1:7 (“The fear of God is the beginning of knowledge”) suggests that the believer’s starting point is emotional in nature rather than axiomatic. An emotional response, however, is not a primary; emotions are reactions to things we learn, not self-generated phenomena which causelessly manifest themselves in our conscious experience spontaneously. So the introspective route will only prove problematic for Gene, if he chooses to take it.

If he says that his god spoke to him directly, then the problems compound:

1) how did he identify the voice he heard as that of the Christian god?

2) spoken communication requires words, and words are symbols for concepts. Where did Gene get those concepts? And to what do they refer? To understand the words spoken to him, he would need some prior understanding. Otherwise he's just making up things that simply derail the hierarchical structure of knowledge, and such a course will only invalidate itself.

Again, not axiomatic by a long shot. Besides, what if everyone ran around claiming to have knowledge as a result of hearing voices in his head? Incidentally, it was in consideration of this very question (in reference to how Abraham supposedly knew that the voice he heard commanding him to sacrifice his son Isaac was that of the Judeo-Christian god), that presuppositional apologist John Frame threw up his arms and confessed, “We know without knowing how we know.” (Presuppositional Apologetics: An Introduction (Part I)) So if Gene claims that he heard a voice and said it belonged to the Christian god, one would hope that he could do better than Frame, and indicate how he was able to distinguish the voice he allegedly heard in his head as belonging to the Christian god.

Also, by simply affirming that their god exists, Christians are in fact borrowing from the Objectivist worldview, for the Objectivist worldview alone affirms the fact of existence as its very starting point. In encounters with Christian apologists, I've asked many to explain where they got the concept "exist," for clearly they assume that it has meaning. But none can answer where they got it. Many are even confused by the vanity and futility of many modern philosophical trends which just confuse the whole problem of abstractions while pretending to be presenting a solution to it. For instance, some thinkers treat existence as merely one of many attributes or properties that make up an entity. On this view a soccer ball is roundness, rubbery-ness, black-and-whiteness, bounciness, resilience, and along with these also existence. This ignores the fact that an entity which exists, is all of its attributes, not just some of its attributes put together with something additional which somehow makes it real.

Others treat an entity that exists as "an INSTANCE of existence," as one apologist put it, perhaps as an "instantiation" of a "universal" which somehow precedes the entity in some immaterial, “transcendental” realm which allegedly exists, a realm which is itself supposedly not merely an "instance," but a source out of which all instances come. On this view, man's knowledge of the universals is not made possible by a mental process of abstraction based on perceptual input from his environment, but by means of what Platonists called “anamnesis,” which is supposedly a kind of reminiscence of a time when man existed in that allegedly “transcendental” realm. Such ideas linger in modern philosophy like a bad odor. It’s time to open a window and let the cleansing breeze of reason come through and quench the stuffiness that has built up in Academia. In other words, it’s time that thinkers shed the stolen concepts that they’ve accepted unquestioningly for generations, and clarify their starting point once and for all.

Another point which is easy to overlook is that, those who say that belief in a god is axiomatic performatively contradict themselves whenever they attempt to prove that their god exists by means of argument. Proof is a process of logically securing a position on the basis of inferring its truth from some prior point of departure, one which ultimately has its basis in what we directly perceive. So a position which is inferred from some previously accepted position cannot itself be axiomatic. An axiom is a starting point, not a conclusion to some prior argument. If one presents an argument to secure the conclusion that a god exists, then the supposition that his god exists consequently cannot be his starting point. At the very best, one of the premises supporting that conclusion may be his starting point, but this could only be determined on a case by case basis, depending on the content of the argument so presented. So the apologist needs to decide: is his assumption that his god exists axiomatic in nature, or does this assumption rest on proof?

So, to answer Gene's question about whether or not his axiomatic assumption is good or not, we must ask: Is the “assumption of the Christian god” truly axiomatic? It appears not. Indeed, those who want to say that the “assumption of the Christian god” is axiomatic have their homework cut out for them, for I have raised a number of crucial points to the effect that this could not be the case. Besides, as an Objectivist, I already know what the proper axiomatic starting point to knowledge and rationality must be, and the implications of that starting point spell disaster for those who want to believe in invisible magic beings which go around creating universes and assembling a “plan” by which human history supposedly unfolds.

by Dawson Bethrick

Can Reformed Christians Count?

First they tell us that their one god is actually three in number. Then they say we're wrong when we point out that this belief of theirs amounts to a species of polytheism. So we ask: Do you worship one, or do you worship three? Typically, instead of clear answers, we get bad attitude, as if we were supposed to accept their tangled convolutions on their say so.

But the question of how many gods they worship is not the only issue where Christians show a poor ability for basic math. Another area where simple counting ability seems lacking is in the number of times Jesus has allegedly visited the earth. According to the traditional account, Jesus has so far come only once, but is apparently planning another visit at some unspecified future point in time. "Behold, I come quickly," the author of the Apocalypse puts into his Jesus' mouth (Rev. 3:11). And yet, who would think that 2000 or more years constitutes "quickly"?

But no. We are now told that Jesus has already paid a second visit! That's right, at least according to Paul Manata, Jesus already came a second time!! This second visit allegedly took place back in 70 AD, at which time Jesus is said to have "fulfilled" the "prophecy" to the effect that the Jerusalem temple would be destroyed. It seems that this visit in 70 AD by Jesus would have constituted his second "comming" [sic], as Mr. Manata puts it, since according to the gospels Jesus came once before during the reign of Pontius Pilate some 35-40 years before the razing of the Jerusalem temple. But Paul vehemently denies this reckoning, for in an exchange with Aaron Kinney of Killing the Afterlife, Manata snarled the following point:

You see, all you're doing is taking a preconceived understanding of Christianity, trying to fit me into that mold, and then acting like a child when I don't fit into it. You keep using the term "second coming." I DENY this term.

I thought this was rather novel, since historically Christians have taught that Jesus paid one visit already (in the first decades of the first century AD), and that they expect yet another "second coming" of Jesus to occur at some unspecified point in the future at which time the "end times" would be initiated (the authors of many of the New Testament writings apparently thought Jesus' next visit was "at hand").

Then I flip over to Craig Sowder's blog, and read his blog Dead in Christ where he writes:

I guess there is one good thing about being the dead in Christ. At Christ's second coming we get to rise first. (1 Thess. 4:16) (Emphasis added)

Now, Sowder is apparently a cut from the same theological cloth as Manata, for in the very same blog Craig writes, "I love the Reformed tradition." Paul makes a similiar confession in his blog profile, where he says of himself, "I am reformed in my theological, philosophical, and apologetical distinctives." But here one affirms the notion of a verbatim "second coming," while the other vehemently protests "I DENY this term."

So which is it? Is the term "second coming" a valid Reformed Christian notion, or not? According to one self-identified Reformed Christian, it apparently is. But according to another one, it isn't.

Obvious questions remain unanswered: How many times has Jesus come to the earth? Has Jesus already paid his second visit to earth, or is Jesus' "second coming" yet to come? Etc.

With internal controversies like this, which would be so easy to resolve by acknowledging that Christianity is just a myth, I dare say they make Christians look as though they cannot do simple arithmetic!

by Dawson Bethrick

Is Human Experience Evidence of the Christian God?

Christian apologists seem eager to take anything as evidence for their god's alleged existence. When asked if he could prove that his god exists on the All-Bahnsen list, for example, Christian apologist Chris Kersey pointed to Greg Bahnsen’s performance in his debate with scientist Dr. Gordon Stein. I have already presented an analysis of Bahnsen’s opening statement in my blog Bahnsen's Poof, which shows that the over-hyped apologist gives no identifiable argument whatsoever for the existence of any god, Christian or otherwise. I have yet to see any response to my analysis which salvages Bahnsen's opening statement to show that an actual argument establishing the conclusion that the Christian god exists can in fact be found in it.

Kersey also pointed generally to a number of unspecified papers by Bahnsen that are available here. I’ve examined a number of Bahnsen’s papers available at this site, and I have yet to find one which gives good solid reasons to suppose his god exists. If he or other apologists have a particular article in mind, I'd be happy to take a look at it.

Then Kersey made the following statement:

In terms of evidence for God's existence, the answer inevitably is everything in human experience as well as experience itself.

Let’s examine what Kersey is essentially saying here. Basically, he’s saying that human "experience" is "evidence for God’s existence." The term ‘experience’ is probably preferred by apologists who want to rest their position on this case because it tends to be philosophically imprecise and approximate, thus allowing them to invest it with all kinds of questionable notions. Apologetics glossaries such as Frame’s A Van Til Glossary, Apologetics.org, Haus-von-Nomos, and the one in Bahnsen’s By This Standard, do not give entries defining this term. And why should they? After all, doesn’t everyone "just know" the definition of ‘experience’? Maybe, but in matters of philosophy where imprecision and approximation do more to obscure our ideas than enlighten them, care should be taken to qualify them with more precise terms. Thus it should raise our suspicions if apologists who want to use this term in key premises of their argument for the existence of the Christian god are reluctant to state their definitions for the record. How much confidence do such thinkers have in their argument? Are not Christians always telling us that there would be no "meaning" if their god did not exist?

Since consulting these apologetic sources themselves offered no intelligence on what they might mean by ‘experience’, I turned to Webster’s online dictionary, a non-biblical source, and found the following:

1 a : direct observation of or participation in events as a basis of knowledge b : the fact or state of having been affected by or gained knowledge through direct observation or participation
2 a : practical knowledge, skill, or practice derived from direct observation of or participation in events or in a particular activity b : the length of such participation
3 a : the conscious events that make up an individual life b : the events that make up the conscious past of a community or nation or mankind generally
4 : something personally encountered, undergone, or lived through
5 : the act or process of directly perceiving events or reality

The first two definitions both specify "direct observation" by a subject of an object ("events") in the process of acquiring knowledge or in participating in personally attended activity. And the final three similarly include some kind of conscious attendance or process of interaction with one's surroundings. So it should be clear that the essential which is common throughout these definitions is consciousness as such.

Now, it’s been my position all along that religious philosophies ultimately stem from a grotesque misunderstanding of the nature of human consciousness, a perversion which the ancients themselves never identified even though the view opposite to the one they verbally endorsed is inescapable. Central to that misunderstanding is the invalid view that consciousness has the power to create its own objects, which constitutes a complete reversal of the objective orientation of the subject-object relationship. This reversal can be observed throughout a religion’s metaphysical, epistemological, moral and social doctrines when one examines them with an explicit understanding of the proper relationship between consciousness and its objects in mind. Furthermore, the bible, which is the source of Christianity's many doctrines, presents no serious discussion of the fundamental nature of consciousness (I am not the first to question whether any of its authors had ever explicitly formed the concept to begin with; indeed, none of my bibles uses the term), and seemed to associate certain mental states (particularly the emotions or "passions") with the body's abdominal organs, not the brain and the nervous system which it regulates (the inclinations behind such associations no doubt arose due to the fact of mind-body integration, whereas their explicit religious views reduce to a division or dichotomy between mind and body). Also, the overt implications that the bible’s teachings have regarding the nature of consciousness, only show that its authors had uncritically adopted the primacy of consciousness model of metaphysics from their intellectual forebears, and this metaphysical view invalidates itself.

Because of such reversals and misunderstandings, Christians typically view consciousness as if it were somehow mysterious, unnatural, even "otherworldly." But it’s hard to see how one could maintain such a view given certain discoveries about consciousness that have become common knowledge due to a major shift away from the religious conception of the world to the scientific, thanks in large part to the achievements of the Renaissance and the Industrial Revolution. We know, for instance, that human beings are biological organisms, and that there are definite physical organs in the human body which make consciousness possible, such as the brain, the nervous system, and those associated specifically with the senses, such as the eyes, olfactory nerves, taste buds, ears and skin. We also know that human beings are not the only biological organisms capable of consciousness, that other animals are conscious, and that the consciousness of non-human animals is also the product of similar organs in their bodies. All these facts, which are undeniable on a rational worldview, point incontestably to the view that consciousness is a natural, indeed biological phenomenon.

The Christian god, however, is said to be something other than natural. Christians prefer the dubious term "supernatural," a notion which seems to be invoked only when one has no legitimate explanation for some position he wants to maintain, thus making it an anti-concept which, according to Christian apologist Greg Bahnsen, means "whatever surpasses the limits of nature." (Always Ready, p. 178.) It’s not clear that anything "surpasses the limits of nature," for it’s not clear how one could determine just what the limits of nature may be. Indeed, in rational philosophy, to say that something has a nature basically means that something is itself, that to exist is to be something specific and therefore finite. In rational philosophy, the concept 'natural' is contrasted with 'man-made', that is, something taken from nature and altered in some way by man. But even shoes, watches and jumbo jets have their own specific nature, even though they are not naturally occurring, that is, occurring without the intervention of men.

And yet, believers continue to tell us that there are so-called "supernatural" beings, beings which are invisible and inaccessible to any of man's senses. This poses many obvious (and even not so obvious) epistemological problems for those who want to try to justify such beliefs, but this doesn't stop those who want to believe that their "supernatural" being exists from insisting that they do. The issue that I want to focus on here, however, is the fact that theists characterize that which is allegedly "supernatural" as something that is other than natural, and yet not man-made. So the theist introduces a third category which he calls "the supernatural," something which by definition is not observable in nature (for there is no reason to suppose that what we observe in nature "surpasses the limits of nature"), and, according to the theists' own vehement protestation, also not man-made (for believers would not want to allow that their deity is a human invention). So on the one hand we have that which is natural, and on the other hand that which is allegedly not natural ("supernatural"). In other words, A (natural) and non-A ("supernatural").

Given these points, then, let us return to Kersey's statement, that man's experience somehow qualifies as "evidence" for the existence of the Christian god. As described in their literature, the Christians' god is said to be "supernatural," immaterial, infinite and incorruptible. Man's experience, however, is neither of these; it is natural, material, finite and in fact corruptible (for man can and sometimes does misidentify what he perceives). So the question logically arises:

How does that which is natural, material, finite and corruptible serve as evidence of that which is supernatural, immaterial, infinite and incorruptible? In other words, how does A serve as evidence of non-A?

Or,

How does something serve as evidence of that which completely contradicts it?

Questions such as this seem to have slipped by apologists, for they continue to equate man's experience with evidence for the "supernatural" without bothering to attend to such questions. Recall, however, that the definitions of 'experience' given above specify direct observation. But the Christian god is said to be invisible (I Tim. 1:17), and thus at best not directly observable. And since man's experience entails his nature as a biological organism, it is by necessity also natural, just as are other bodily functions, such as respiration, circulation, digestion, etc.

But consider: suppose I perceive an object, such as the apple tree in my backyard. Christians like Kersey are in effect saying that this tree, or at least my consciousness of the tree, is somehow evidence of his god's existence. But what is it that I see? I see a tree, not a supernatural, invisible, magic being. The tree itself is not in any way like the Christian god is supposed to be; the tree that I perceive is a biological organism (and therefore natural) composed of atoms and molecules (and therefore material) which has a specific nature (and therefore finite), and which dies if denied the nutrients it requires (and therefore corruptible).

If I accept the tree as evidence of anything, I must accept it as evidence only of itself, of its own existence. To suppose that it is evidence of something other than itself - indeed, as evidence of something which fundamentally contradicts it (e.g., "supernatural," immaterial, infinite and incorruptible), I would at the very least have to infer this somehow from what I do perceive. But why would I interpret something I directly observe as evidence of something that contradicts what I directly observe? Such a process of inferring could not rest on what I perceive alone; it would in fact require certain assumptions imported expressly to bridge the gap between what I really perceive (i.e., what is real, natural, material, finite and corruptible) and what I can only imagine (since I can only imagine something that "surpasses the limits of nature"). Where would I get such assumptions, and what would their basis be, if not just the arbitrary imaginings that religion supplies?

Here is where the apologist simply blanks out, giving us absolutely nothing to go on, apparently expecting us to accept what they claim about "the supernatural" on their say so, i.e., on faith.

So unless the apologist can shore up his claim and give a plausible explanation as to how man's conscious experience can somehow serve as evidence of that which completely contradicts it on every essential, it is safe to assume that he has no case whatsoever to support his god-belief.

by Dawson Bethrick

No "might be" About It: I AM an Atheist

Today I thought I’d post something a little more lighthearted, this time a point-for-point reaction to Paul Manata’s amusing You Might Be An Atheist… As I read through some of his points, I couldn’t help but chuckle, so I wanted to partake in the fun.

1. If you think that it's theoretically possible to stub your toe on a law of logic, you might be an atheist.

No, I don’t suppose this is possible, but that’s probably because I’m an atheist. You see, if I were a Christian, I would have to accept this as a real possibility, for Matthew 19:26 says “with God all things are possible” and Mark 9:23 says “all things are possible to him that believeth.” Also, in Luke 18:27 we read Jesus say “the things which are impossible with men are possible with God.” So if I were a professing believer and yet said it is not possible for one to stub his toe on a law of logic, I would be inconsistent with my stated beliefs. But as an atheist, there is no such inconsistency.

2. If you tell people who think that humans are better than slugs that they're guilty of "speciesism," you might be an atheist.

No, I’ve never told anyone this, but I am an atheist. Indeed, if I were a Christian, I would probably be wrong to think I’m better than a slug, because Christianity teaches that man is depraved and cursed. On my worldview, however, the slug has to look out for himself just as I do.

3. If you think Ayn Rand's novels are far superior to Dostoevsky's, you might be an atheist.

In fact, I do think Rand’s novels are superior to Dostoevsky’s, but that’s not because of my atheism. Rather, it's because I think it's true. I have read Rand’s novels in the original English, and I’ve read several of Dostoevsky’s in the original Russian, and consistently I find that Rand’s novels have characters that are much more admirable than any that I find in any of Dostoevsky’s. And while I did enjoy the epistolary Bednie Liudi for its story line development (in spite of its indulgent sentimentalism), I couldn’t find one character that I admired in that or any other story by Dostoevsky. Who but a Christian would not admire a Howard Roark? Anyway, I wonder if Paul Manata has ever read a novel by either author. I doubt it.

Rand herself greatly admired Dostoevsky’s achievements as a novelist, namely “his superb mastery of plot structure” and his ability to dissect the psychology of his characters, who were typically depraved. Rand hastened to qualify her admiration, however, saying that “his philosophy and sense of life are almost diametrically opposed to mine.” (The Romantic Manifesto, p. 43.) She considered him, along with Victor Hugo, to be one of the “great masters” of integrating important themes with complex plot structure (p. 86) and a “top rank” Romantic novelist (p. 107). As a native Russian who took Dostoevsky as one of her highest models but who wrote her novels in English and according to an explicitly pro-reason, pro-man, pro-value philosophy, Rand is a novelist to be taken seriously by both the literary and the philosophical world.

4. If you're obsessed with telling people that they have the burden of proof, you might be an atheist.

No, I do not have such an obsession, but I am an atheist. However, if someone comes to me and says that logic finds its source in the nature and character of an invisible magic being, I won’t wince at challenging him to present a proof. It’s always entertaining to see the apologists scramble as they try to recover from such challenges.

5. If you think that calling yourself an agnostic is more intellectually respectable than calling yourself an atheist, you might be an atheist.

No, I wouldn’t think that calling myself an agnostic is in any way, shape or form “more intellectually respectable” than calling myself an atheist, since I’m an atheist, not an agnostic. Unlike superstitious believers, I don’t see anything wrong with simply being honest and admitting that I don’t believe in invisible magic beings, regardless of who disapproves.

6. If the first thing you do when you go to the zoo is to run to the ape exhibit so you can see your closest relative, you might be an atheist.

Actually, the first thing I do when I go to the zoo is stand in line waiting for tickets to enter. Then I usually start viewing the exhibits that are closest to the entrance and proceed from there. The last time I visited the zoo, I was amazed by the ostriches and how eloquently their habit of shoving their heads in the ground reminded me of some Christian apologists I know. But, that’s probably because I’m an atheist.

7. If you treat Jane Goodall like a Mother Theresa, you might be an atheist.

Actually, if I ever met Jane Goodall, I wouldn’t insult her by treating her like a Mother Theresa. But that’s not because I’m an atheist per se. Rather, it’s because I do not celebrate those who think self-sacrifice is somehow “noble” or important.

8. If you stay up 'till 3 in the morning to hear NASA's findings of the soil analysis on Mars which could show that life once existed there (as if that would somehow disprove the Bible), you might be an atheist.

No, I’ve never done this, but I am an atheist, and I do think that space exploration - a human achievement made possible by reason - is very exciting. As for disproving the bible, it disproves itself.

9. If you're depressed for a whole week after the findings came back negative, you might be an atheist.

No, I don’t get depressed about anything. But that might have something to do with my being an atheist.

10. If you cheer yourself up by saying: "we'll get 'em next year," you might be an atheist.

Well, I am an atheist, but I’m not concerned with “getting 'em next year.”

11. If you've watched “Contact” and "The Contender" 50 times, you might be an atheist.

I’ve watched “Contact” numerous times, but that’s because I’m a big John Hurt fan, not because of my atheism. I’ve never seen “The Contender,” though. Probably because John Hurt’s not in it.

12. If you think that women can kill their unborn children but Hitler can't kill the species called "Jews," you might be an atheist.

I don’t think Hitler can kill anyone now since he’s dead. But I am an atheist.

13. If your kids are named Lucretius, Bertrand, Kai, and Ayn, you might be an atheist.

No, I don’t have any children by those names. But did I mention that I am an atheist?

14. If you read Bertrand Russell saying this: "Brief and powerless is man's life. On him and all his race the slow, sure doom falls, pitiless and dark. Blind to good and evil, reckless of destruction, omnipotent matter rolls on its relentless way," and then inconsistently go upstairs and kiss your wife goodnight, you might be an atheist.

For one, reading something is not sufficient to imply agreement with what has been read. Secondly, I don’t have to go upstairs to kiss my wife (we sleep in the same room). And she’s an atheist, just like me.

15. If you think Bill Clinton can get his jollies off by dropping his pants in front of interns but George Bush can't get his jollies off by dropping bombs on Arabs, you might be an atheist.

Well, I’m sure both these individuals can get their jollies doing whatever they please, just as some persons get their jollies by pretending that the world is being guided by an invisible magic being while fueling their hatred for atheists, homosexuals, scientists and other members of the human race. But that doesn’t pose a problem for my atheism.

16. If you think man is nothing but a bag of chemicals but then act as if man has dignity by going to a friend's funeral, you might be an atheist.

I’m curious about statements like this. Does Paul Manata not realize that there are chemical compounds in the human body? If he renounced his professed belief in mysticism and adopted a rational worldview, he might come to see the truth about man’s biology. He won't learn about biology by reading the bible, that much is for sure.

17. If you think "Doubting Thomas" is the Bible Character we should emulate, you might be an atheist.

Actually, I don’t think the bible wants believers to emulate Doubting Thomas at all. On the contrary, I think the bible wants to encourage people to believe things without rational proof. Why else would Jesus say to Doubting Thomas “blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed” (John 20:29)? It’s obvious that the bible does not teach an epistemology of reason.

18. If you think that variation within a species is proof that species turned into other species, you might be an atheist.

I’m not an expert in the mechanics of evolution, but the very fact that there are sometimes vast variations within a species does indicate something. Besides, there is ample fossil and microbiological evidence for evolution, but many people today have adopted a worldview that is opposed to scientific discovery, so it’s expected that some will want to ridicule such facts.

19. If you think "good" is definitional and then act angry when someone defines "good" as hitting you in the head with a shovel, you might be an atheist.

Actually, I think it would be refreshing to find other thinkers who are willing to give terms like ‘good’ a stable definition. I’ve sought throughout the bible for just such a definition, and even though many have told me that the bible is supposed to be some kind of authority of matters of good and evil, I haven’t found one definition for the term anywhere in its pages. When I point this out to apologists, they usually say something like “The bible’s not a dictionary.” In other words, the bible doesn’t define its own terms. But as an atheist, I already knew this.

20. If you're already making up the signs: "Hillary For President in '08," you might be an atheist.

Good grief, no, I’m certainly not doing that. But I am an atheist.

21. If you spend your free time protesting and calling the ACLU because city signs say: "No Crossing," and the mere mention of a "cross" might get people to think about religion and thus violates separation of Church and State, you might be an atheist.

No, I haven’t done that, either. But I am an atheist.

22. If your car has a bumper sticker on it that reads: "Practice random acts of kindness and senseless acts of beauty," you might be an atheist.

I actually don’t even have a car (you don't need one when you live in San Francisco), much less a bumper sticker. But I am an atheist.

23. If you get upset at parents who raise their children to be Christian because those parents are "brainwashing" their kids and you say this around your children, as well as making fun of Christians on the T.V., and you also say sarcastic things when your family goes to visit its Christian uncle, like, "Boy, I hope Uncle Tom doesn't pray for 5 minutes before we eat because, you know, he's such a holy roller," you might be an atheist.

While I do think that indoctrinating philosophically defenseless minds with religious lies is a form of child abuse, I realize that parents who do this have themselves been brainwashed by persons they have poorly chosen to trust. But as a rule I do not watch any TV, and if I did I probably wouldn’t want to watch adults who pretend that invisible magic beings exist. Also, I don’t have an uncle named Tom. But I am an atheist.

24. If you think that scientists are neutral, non-committal observers, who are only interested in the facts but you seem to not "get it" when you watch the Discovery Channel and you see evolutionists cheering, crying, and drinking champagne when they find what they think is a transitional fossil, but then you hear nary a word when it turns out that it wasn't, you might be an atheist.

I think scientists are human beings and are thus just as fallible as the next guy. But if they're serious and guide their investigations with reason, they would earn the right to celebrate their achievements so far as I'm concerned. But I don’t watch the Discovery Channel, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen “evolutionists cheering, crying, and drinking champagne when they find what they think is a transitional fossil.” But if some did this, why would someone allow this to bother him?

25. When someone asks you the name of your boat and you say, "The HMS Beagle," you might be an atheist.

I don’t have a boat at all. But I am an atheist.

26. If you drag your family, kicking and screaming, to the Galapagos Islands for your family vacation, you might be an atheist.

I cannot say I’ve ever dragged my family “kicking and screaming” to the Galapagos Islands for our vacation. But I do think it would be a very interesting place to visit.

27. When you continuously confuse the problem of universals with the problem of concept formation, you might be an atheist.

This tells me that Paul Manata has two philosophical problems on his hands, and since he embraces a worldview that has no theory of concepts (for the bible does not teach one), it’s unlikely we’ll ever see him produce a solution to either.

28. If you drive a Geo Metro, because you're trying to do your part to save "Mother Nature," you might be an atheist.

I don’t drive a Geo Metro. But I am an atheist.

29. If you think that a chaotic explosion, known as the Big Bang, eventually turned into the ordered universe we see around us, you might be an atheist.

Personally speaking, I do not hold to the Big Bang model. But I don’t know how one could prove that it didn’t happen.

30. If you think that the non-living turned into the living and then point to Miller and Urey and tell people that they intelligently created life in a lab, you might be an atheist.

If they did "create life in a lab," why would I tell people otherwise? Meanwhile, I wonder how apologists might go about explaining how there is imperfection in the universe when it was supposedly created by a perfect creator.

31. If you think that the first humanoid was lucky enough to find a mate that happened to evolve in the same geographic location, within the period of time the female was fertile, and then knew what to do with his member, while telling me that nature is creative and given random chance anything can happen, when I ask you how that happened, you might be an atheist.

When I read this, my first thought was of Cain, who, after killing his brother, went into the land of Nod and suddenly found a wife (see Gen. 4). Where did she come from? No explanation is given. And yet, we’re told that the entire human race came from Cain’s biological parents, Adam and Eve. So if Paul has a problem with the reason-based model of evolution on this point, why does he swallow the bridge hook, line and sinker when he affirms his faith-based worldview? Is there any consistency to be found in an apologist’s objections?

32. If you believe that all the flora and fauna we see came about by survival of the fittest, but then when asked "how do you know who will survive?" and you say, "the fit will survive" and your also say, in response to the query, "how do you determine which mutation was beneficial so as to make a member of a species 'fit?' that "we know that by seeing if they end up surviving," you might be an atheist.

Actually, I’ve never said these things, but I am an atheist.

33. When your college science teacher tells you that the ultimate goal for a member of a species is to get the most offspring into the next generation and your ethics teacher tells you that rape is morally wrong, and you don't see a problem with this, you might be an atheist.

I don’t believe any of my college science teachers told me that “the ultimate goal for a member of a species is to get the most offspring into the next generation,” and I don’t think I would have accepted it if he did, unless he gave some good reasons for supposing so. An organism’s goal is to live, regardless of what shape its consequent generations end up taking. As for my ethics teacher, I took everything he said with a grain of salt. Good thing, too. He was a Christian, and eventually committed suicide. Perhaps he wanted to be with a loved one who had “departed from the earth.” If so, then he acted consistently with his stated belief in an afterlife.

34. When someone asks you what religion you are, and you say, "I'm a molecular biologist, a denomination within Scientism," you might be an atheist.

I have no religion because I have no god-belief, and I don't have a god-belief because I don't think the universe is anything like a cartoon. Moreover, I’m not a molecular biologist, and I don’t know what one might mean by “Scientism.”

35. When you're an atheist, like Francois Tremblay, and you e-mail me asking me to give you books that have the presuppositionalist arguments in them because you're writing a book refuting presuppositionalism, which shows that you have your mind made up that we're wrong even before you've read any of our arguments, you might be an atheist.

Well, I don’t think of Paul Manata as the best source to consult for reading material. But if he has a particular book in mind that actually presents some serious “presuppositionalist arguments,” I’m open to suggestion. But it should be pointed out, however, that Paul is on the verge of a non sequitur here. For simply asking for Paul to recommend “books that have the presuppositional arguments in them” does not mean that one has not yet “read any of our arguments.” This just doesn’t follow. But if someone wants to be convinced of atheism, I’d suggest reading the presuppositionalist literature. I’ve collected some choice statements here.

36. If you continue to get spanked in debates, but keep coming back for more, you might be an atheist.

That's cute, but it’s pretty hard for an apologist to “spank” an atheist when that apologist is too afraid to engage the atheist’s position and interact with his statements. Indeed, the apologist’s whole worldview is founded, not on reason, but on fear (cf. Prov. 1:7).

by Dawson Bethick

Is Man "Created in the Image of God"?

The Christian worldview claims that man is "created in the image of God." This teaching is first given in the Genesis story which tells of the creation of allegedly the first man, named Adam, who was created in the "image" of his maker, Yahweh. There is no tangible, extra-biblical evidence of this, such as photographs of both Adam and Yahweh which could be compared side by side, which could put to rest any disputes over this matter in the Christian's favor. So people who accept this claim do so on faith, that is, without supporting evidence. In spite of any confirming support, the supposition that man is “created in God’s image” is reiterated as if it somehow explained certain phenomena that have proven philosophically difficult for many thinkers throughout history to explain and integrate, such as man's reasoning ability and concepts of value, good, purpose, etc. Thus we have another contentless religious expression intended to do much heavy lifting.

The apologetic value of the expression "the image of God" is its lack of clarity, its vagueness, its ambiguity and its imprecision. It is because this expression has no objective meaning that apologists can use it in such a wide variety of ways; it has no objective content and thus no obviously conflicting applications when doctrinally sloganeered as a kind of stop-gap. Its apologetic value is therefore its very meaninglessness - a conceptually referenceless putty that can assume virtually any shape impressed upon it, since it has no inherent shape of its own. Indeed, saying that "man was created in the image of God" makes no more sense than saying "Man was stencil-graphed in the JPEG of Geusha" or "Man was traced on the silhouette of Hoola." The only reason why people don't question the former is because they've been hearing it all their lives and are thus accustomed to its effect and prone to reacting to it as desired (namely by shutting down all further inquiry), even though its implications remain completely indefinite and unmeaningful. Moreover, cursory analysis of the notion of "the image of God" will show why it has no objective reference, and that the claim that man was "created in the image of God" consequently has no explanatory value and thus no valid apologetic use.

We should not be surprised, then, to find that apologists tend to have difficulty when pressed to explain precisely what they mean by "the image of God." Even simple and straightforward questions remain unanswered. For instance, what does it mean to say that something that is said to be invisible (cf. I Tim. 1:17) has an "image"? We usually tend to have in mind something visual - or at least understandable in terms of vision - when using the term "image." But something that is invisible doesn't have a visual image. So already we might suspect that the wrong term is being used here.

The Christian could not say, for instance, that man resembles the Christian god in that it has two arms and two legs, and walks upright, for these are bodily descriptions, and the Christian god is said not to have a body. John 4:24 says "God is a Spirit," and Luke 24:39 says "a spirit hath not flesh and bones." But man has flesh and bones, indeed a physical body. So in what sense does Christianity teach that man was "created in the image of God"?

Some Christians seem to think that man was “created in the image of God” in a “personal” sense. For instance, apologist Cornelius Van Til says, speaking of man as such, that "he is like God in that he is a personality." (Christian Apologetics, p. 40.) Here we must then ask: What is the defining characteristic of personality which serves as the common denominator to both the Christian god and man? It seems that this would reduce ultimately to consciousness, for man has consciousness, and Christians attribute consciousness to their god. For how could something be said to have personality if it did not first have consciousness?

But this raises some questions:

- Most if not all animals have consciousness, and yet it is only man which is said to be "created in the image of God." If the apologist admits that personality stems from or presumes consciousness, does he assume that animals other than human beings have no personality? If so, on what basis would he assume this? Most dog- and cat-owners would argue that their pets have distinct personalities. So something other than (or in addition to) mere consciousness must provide the distinguishing factor here. Believers might say that “spirit” is the distinguishing factor. But on further examination, such assertions prove unhelpful to clarifying what is meant by “the image of God” since the term ‘spirit’ remains just as indefinite and nebulous as the expression under consideration. One does not gain any mileage by explaining one ambiguous notion with another. Why say man has a "spirit" but animals do not? Again the apologist is confronted with Luke 24:39: "a spirit hath not flesh and bones," but man does undeniably.

- Also, what can we say about the fundamentally contradictory orientations to the objects of consciousness enjoyed by the Christian god as opposed to man? In the case of man, the objects of consciousness hold primacy over his consciousness. That is, the objects he perceives remain what they are regardless of his wishes and imaginings. The function of man's consciousness is to be aware of objects and to identify them. But the consciousness of the Christian god, given Christianity's own description of it, is entirely and radically different from the nature of man's consciousness in this most fundamental regard. For according to what we gather from the bible, the objects of the Christian god's consciousness conform entirely to its wishes and imaginings. In fact, there would be no objects of the Christian god's consciousness if it did not first create them out of its wishes and imaginings, which reduces the claim that it is conscious to the fallacy of pure self-reference. At any rate, how could one say that man, for whose consciousness the objects hold metaphysical primacy, was “created in the image of God,” whose consciousness holds metaphysical primacy over its objects? It is in this sense that the claim that man was “created in the image of God” amounts to the view that objectivity finds its source in subjectivism, but this is nonsensical. A rational orientation of consciousness does not find its basis in its contradiction.

Van Til also says that “[man] is therefore like God in everything in which a creature can be like God” (Ibid.). Again we are given nothing specific to go on here, just a vague generalization suggesting that there are ways in which that which is natural, finite, imperfect, non-omniscient, non-omnipotent, fallible, mortal, temporal, destructible, physical, biological and visible can be “like” that which is supernatural, infinite, perfect, omniscient, omnipotent, infallible, immortal, eternal, indestructible, non-physical, non-biological and invisible. This raises a question on the Christian god’s ability to create. Could not the Christian god create a personality that is infinite, perfect, omniscient, omnipotent, infallible, immortal, eternal, indestructible, non-physical, non-biological and/or invisible? In this statement, Van Til apparently overlooked angels and demons. Are these not also created by the same Christian god, and yet are they not personal beings which have greater attributes and powers and are thus more "like" the Christian god than man? If man is the best that the Christian god could create, how could Christians turn around and say that their god is omnipotent? If we accept Van Til's statement, which fails to take into account Christian teaching about supernatural creatures like angels and demons, it would seem that the Christian god's expertise is in creating imperfection. Christians will likely want to point to the fall of Adam to account for man’s imperfections. In other words, they want to blame the creature rather than the creator, even though the state of affairs is said to be precisely how the creator intends them to be. But even by pointing to the fall of Adam, Christians implicate their god as something less than what they claim it to be. For Adam would not have fallen had he been endowed with perfect judgment, for one who has perfect judgment does not judge erroneously and consequently come up short morally. Since, on Christianity’s own story line, Adam could have only had imperfect judgment, those same premises necessarily imply that the Christian god is an imperfect creator, for a perfect creator does not create imperfection, by definition. Thus we uncover yet another inconsistency internal to Christian theism.

What other sense of “image” could the Christian have in mind when he says that “man was created in the image of God”?

Could he mean that man was “created in the image of God” in a physical sense? No, he could not mean this. While man is in fact physical, the Christian god is said to be non-physical - it is something other than physical (we are told only what it is not - we are not told what it is). Does it have arms and legs? Apparently it does and doesn't - sort of like the trinity: it's three but one. But Luke 24:39 and John 4:24 together strongly suggest that it could not be a physical image, and yet man is physical. If man is physical, how could one say that it bears the image of something that is non-physical? Unanswered questions abound.


“God’s Intellectual Image”?

Could the Christian mean that man was “created in the image of God” in an intellectual sense? No, he could not mean this, for the Christian god is said to be omniscient and infallible. But man is neither of these. In fact, man needs reason precisely because he is neither omniscient nor infallible. Man needs reason to discover knowledge about reality (and without knowledge of reality he will not be able to live), and he needs reason to guide his mind, for it does not operate automatically. An omniscient, infallible being, however, has no such needs, and thus it would have neither need nor capacity for reason whatsoever. As it is described, if the Christian god existed, it would simply and automatically "just know" everything without effort and without any need to discover and/or validate new knowledge content (since there could be no new knowledge for it to discover and validate), and its infallibility would be equally automatic. A mind that is automatically always right would not have any need for a faculty which enabled it to discover and validate knowledge. So saying that man's reasoning ability is somehow "explained" by having been "created in the image of God" misses some enormous points.

But missing such points is common even with defenders of the Christian faith. For instance, in his discussion with Zachary Moore, Christian pastor Gene Cook clearly ignores such vast and fundamental differences when he states that "part of being made in the image of God is the ability to reason." But do Christians give any reason to suppose this any more than that their ability to reason stems from having been created in the image of Allah, Geusha or Ripitornula? Indeed, to say that our reasoning ability comes from having been "created in the image of God" only results in making our faculty of reason all the more mysterious and thus incomprehensible; it sheds no light on how or why we reason or why we would need reason in the first place. Rather, it's just an empty faith claim void of content which consequently cannot be backed up by a rational appeal to fact, but which also cuts off an entire category of valid ideas from man's consideration and understanding.

Cook goes on to say "God says 'come reason with me,' then we have a... we have reasonableness universally, that is, man reasons logically." All this because man was "created in the image of God," right? It obviously doesn't fly. For consider: How can a man reason with someone who thinks he's always right? Reasoning with others necessarily involves the potential for mutual discovery on the part of all parties involved. The ability to discover and validate new knowledge is preconditional to the use of reason, and crucial to reasoning with others. But an omniscient and infallible being would be incapable of discovering and validating new knowledge, since from its perspective there would be no such thing as new knowledge to begin with. Also, reasoning with others involves a two-way dialogue which consists of the consensual exchange of information. But with the Christian god there is no possibility of such dialogue; any “discourse” between man and the Christian god would be one way and only one way – from it to man. Moreover, reasoning with others is only possible if knowledge is hierarchically contextual, which is the result of discovery and validation of new knowledge on the basis of previously validated knowledge, which reason makes possible for man but which is impossible for an omniscient being. Such would not be the nature of the Christian god’s knowledge, if it could be called that; its “knowledge” would not have a hierarchical structure for it could not have discovered and validated new knowledge by integrating it with previously validated knowledge for there would be no such thing as new knowledge for a being that somehow has all knowledge already. So again, on the Christian's own premises, man has an ability that an allegedly omnipotent deity could not itself have, and yet we are told that we are "created" in its image.

Cook tries to assert his way beyond such problems, as if he wasn't even aware of them, saying "since logic is an attribute of God, and we are made in His image, I now have a source for why I think logically." It's difficult to make sense of such statements, since they don't refer to anything that reduces to what we can discover and validate from what we can perceive. Cook makes it sound like he has some kind of uplink to his god's mind which thus serves as a "source" from which "logic" is downloaded into his finite, human mind so that he can use it for something his own god could not use it for, namely discovering and validating new knowledge. Additionally, the idea that "logic is an attribute of God" - something Cook asserts, but nowhere justifies - is nonsensical. Logic is not an "attribute" of entities, since logic is not a concrete. Indeed, we do not say that rocks are “logical” any more than we say that vinyl siding is. Rather, the term 'logic' refers to a conceptual method of organizing ideas in a way that exposes their inferential support, allowing a thinker to integrate new ideas with previously validated ideas and to reduce ideas to their perceptual basis. Thus ideas can be said to be logical or illogical; but such terms do not apply to the specific concretes to which those ideas ultimate refer but to principles that are derived from the axioms. But such misunderstandings as the one Cook offers here are to be expected from Christians, since their worldview does not teach an objective theory of concepts.


“God’s Moral Image”?

Could the Christian mean that man was “created in the image of God” in a moral sense? The answer here is clearly no as well, because the Christian god wouldn't even need morality, while man does. This would be the case whether we consult the Christian's subjective (whim-based) morality, or the objective (reason-based) morality of the rational atheist. On the Christian model, morality consists of commandments which must be obeyed on pain of eternal punishment, and man’s actions need to be commanded because thinking on his own (so-called “autonomous reasoning”) is strictly prohibited and anathema to the mindset desired by religious leaders. Quite simply, the Christian view is that man is intellectually impotent (a remarkable creation, is he not?) and thus cannot figure out what is good or evil on his own. As one Christian puts it, “As finite beings there’s no way for us to know what’s right unless our creator tells us.” By contrast, the Christian god could hardly be said to have a need to be told by someone else what is good and what is evil, let alone any need to obey someone else's commands. Besides, those commands would have to come from some being that is somehow greater than the Christian god, but Christians wouldn't allow for the existence of such a being. So on Christianity’s own conceptions, it’s unlikely that the believer would say that his god would need morality, for saying that the Christian god needs morality would, on Christianity's own premises, be tantamount to saying that it could not guide itself autonomously and that it needs someone else’s imperative direction.

Furthermore, on a objective model, morality consists of a set of rational principles which guides one’s actions and choices. Man needs this because he needs to act in order to live; he cannot live by being inactive. But the Christian god is said to be immortal, eternal, indestructible, perfect and lacking nothing. Thus it could not be the case that the Christian god, were it to exist, would face the fundamental alternative that man faces, namely life vs. death. Man needs morality precisely because he faces such an alternative and because his actions are not automatic; he must choose to take those actions which make his life possible, and it is his nature as a biological organism and his environment which together dictate which actions will be pro-life as opposed to anti-life. Since the Christian god does not face such an alternative, it could not be said to have any need to act in the first place (remaining inactive would in no way hurt the Christian god), and thus it would have no need for a code of values which guides its actions. If such a being acts by choice, its choices and actions could be nothing but arbitrary.

Additionally, Greg Bahnsen’s suggested resolution to the problem of evil, which he gives in his book Always Ready (cf. pp. 171-172), makes it clear that the Christian god’s nature is not moral in the sense that man’s moral nature can and should be. Bahnsen frames the problem as follows:

1. GOD IS ALL-GOOD.
2. GOD IS ALL-POWERFUL.
3. EVIL EXISTS.

Bahnsen then suggests that the obvious tension among these premises is resolved by the following additional premise:

4. GOD HAS A MORALLY SUFFICIENT REASON FOR THE EVIL WHICH EXISTS.

While clearly resting his solution to the problem of evil on man’s ignorance of the Christian god (for Bahnsen admits on page 172 of his book that the believer does not need to know what that “morally sufficient reason to allow evil” might be), Bahnsen makes it clear that his god chooses not to stand against evil with all that is in it. But men can (and some men do) choose to stand against evil with everything that is within them, thus morally distinguishing themselves from the Christian god in ways that it could not achieve, given such responses to the problem of evil. What Christianity ignores is the fact that moral character is something one chooses for himself, not something that is dispensed by invisible magic beings. Those who choose a moral character would reject any view that suggests that there is such a thing as “a morally sufficient reason” to allow evil or “a perfectly good reason for the human misery” (Ibid.) that results at the hands of evil-doers, for they would see this as a contradiction in terms. On a rational view, this would essentially amount to saying that there are moral reasons for allowing immoral actions, or pro-value reasons to allow anti-value actions. The idea that it is good to allow that which is opposed to the good, is, on rational premises, completely and unavoidably self-contradictory. Christians do not see this as a contradiction, for they have already divorced morality from values, and to the extent that they embrace values, they experience personal guilt, for values are profoundly selfish, and selfishness is anti-Christ by nature. As a man devoted to his own values, then, every Christian must necessarily view me as anti-Christ by my own chosen nature.

So on both the Christian and the objective models of morality, there are fundamental differences between man and the Christian god as Christianity has conceived of it. Consequently, saying that man is “created” in the Christian god’s “moral image” ignores these fundamental distinctions, thus slighting both man and Christianity’s teachings about the nature of its deity.

Man is biological, but the Christian god is not. So where does the "image" part come into play? Here Christianity draws a blank, and the believer is left in the darkness of its perennial cave. The coldness he experiences upon reading such words is not causeless; indeed, it is the result of his monstrous worldview.


Exposing Christian Absurdity:

The "image of God" is really an image projected against the blank screen of a desperate mind that seeks to evade reality and hopes to rationalize that evasion by submitting to an imaginary authority and by claiming that all human beings have a duty to do likewise. Such evasion is possible only when one rejects reason as his only means of knowledge. Indeed, we saw above that, according to the Christian view, man’s mind is impotent, therefore his reason is likewise impotent. According to Christianity, man cannot figure things out for himself; rather, he needs to be told what is true, and he can only do what is “right” if he does so in obedience to someone’s commandments.

In the case of all religious viewpoints, we learn of them - not from the being alleged to have authored these "truths" - but from other men, finite human beings who are just as fallible and ignorant as the rest of us. They call us "the damned" while they reserve for themselves the pretended privilege of numbering among "the chosen." As fallible men, religious leaders are just as prone to confusing their imaginations with what is real as anyone else, and more likely to do so since their religious teachings offer no guidance on objectively distinguishing between the one and the other. This opens up a chasm in the minds of the believer who invests religious anecdotes, which he reads in biblical literature, with images he selects from his memory of personal experiences and rearranges in his imagination to fit the descriptions depicting those anecdotes, thus making the religious stories he reads in the bible seem more real than they really are. There is no way to visualize the events described in the gospels, for instance, without fitting one's imagination to the scant details they supply. The believer has most leeway in filling in those details which are not specified in the stories. The more the believer invests the stories with his own imaginary content, the more real they become in his mind and the more incapable he becomes when it comes to distinguishing fact and fantasy. Here the image is all in the believer’s mind, one invested with inputs he’s gleaned from personal experiences and assembled according to anecdotal cues given in the narratives themselves. This is the real "image of God" - an entirely subjective construct encouraged in the religious literature itself.

In the final analysis, a grand reversal is suggested by the inescapable conclusion that the Christian god is created in man's imagination: those who imagine that there is a god, imagine a being modeled on man's nature but free of the constraints of that human nature at the same time. Herein resides the inherent contradiction that grounds the Christian god-belief, a contradiction which is exposed when the claim that man is “created in the image of God” is examined closely given what can be known of man, and what Christianity claims about its diety.

by Dawson Bethrick

Cooking with Gene’s Arbitrary Presuppositions

In his discussion with atheist Zachary Moore, Christian pastor Gene Cook of Unchained Radio announced that "the fact that the Bible is the Word of God is the presupposition that drives my worldview." This statement suggests that he takes the alleged truth of the bible as his most fundamental starting point. And yet, how could this be? The statement "the Bible is true" is no more irreducible than the statement "the Bible is the Word of God" or "the Bible is not true." Indeed, as mentioned in my previous blog, the claim that "the Bible is true" is simply a shorthand way of claiming that all the pronouncements and teachings found in the Christian bible, from the very first verse of Genesis to the last verse of Revelation, are true, factual and historically accurate. To affirm the truth of all these things in one gulp is quite a land grab to say the least, so voluminous and complex that to affirm it at the level of one's starting point is beyond absurd. Indeed, by saying that "the Bible is true," or some statement akin to this, is one's most fundamental starting point, presuppositionalists are essentially admitting that attempts to prove that the bible is true are completely hopeless.

In other words, instead of trying to prove that there is a god, that it created the universe in six days and rested on the seventh, that Adam was the first man and that Eve was made from his rib, that there was a pristine garden in which they lived along with a talking snake, that the first murder was of a man by his brother who went out and married a woman from who knows where, that the diversity of languages is due to the rash anger of a god threatened by men who constructed a tower (apparently that same god is not threatened by modern skyscrapers), that there was a worldwide flood that was survived by a man named Noah and his family in a wooden ark, and that on that ark he had gathered samples of all the species of fauna on the earth (apparently the flora had to survive on its own), that this god made some sort of agreement with a man named Abraham, etc. (and we're not even out of Genesis yet!), the presuppositionalist wants to just wave his hand and say "It's all true!" and everyone's supposed to believe it on his say so.

In response to my characterization of this apologetic tactic, the presuppositionalist would likely say "No, not on my say so, on God's say so." And yet that would simply beg the question. Apparently we're supposed to believe it's "God's say so" on the apologist's say so. The only thing that the presuppositionalist demonstrates is the fact that the defense of the arbitrary cannot proceed without recourse to logical fallacy. And yet, if an atheist made the sweeping claim that everything Michael Martin said and wrote was incontestably true, the presuppositionalist would demand that we go through everything he said and wrote piecemeal to prove it. So expect circular reasoning to be followed up by a rash of double standards and special pleading.

When Moore asked Cook "did you make that conclusion based on any evidence, or did you just decide...[?]" Cook starts to answer by saying "Based on evidence...," but then shifts to an appeal to Romans 8:16 which "says that the Spirit of God bears witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God." Thus he's essentially saying "the Bible is true" because he accepts a statement in the bible to be true, which is utterly circular; one does not prove the bible to be true by reciting any of its content. Moreover, Cook doesn't offer any objective evidence to accept the statement in question as truth. All that he has is a claim to something internal, a feeling or sensation which he attributes to a "Spirit" which "indwells" within him some place, somehow. He does not even indicate how he could have concluded that the feelings he feels were caused by what he attributes them to, namely his god. It's as baseless as the claim that a stain on a wall or a burn mark on a tortilla that kinda-sorta looks like a human figure, is "the Virgin Mary." How does one prove that it's an image of Mary, and not an image of, say, Socrates' mother or Jack the Ripper's first victim? How did Abraham know that the voice he heard in his head commanding him to sacrifice his son Isaac, was that of a deity? John Frame's only answer to this question is "We know without knowing how we know" (Presuppositional Apologetics: An Introduction - Part I), which isn't helpful at all.

Cook admits that his position boils down to nothing more than a faith commitment; and he must do this, given the inconvenient preponderance of appeals to faith throughout the bible. But he then rushes to give his religious appeal to faith a glossy coating by saying "Faith is not fideism, it's not a blind leap into a dark chasm. Faith is... based on reasonable... reasons."

Webster's defines 'fideism' as "reliance on faith rather than reason in pursuit of religious truth," thus confirming that there is an antithesis between faith and reason (as I mentioned in my previous blog, Christians tend to view things in terms of pro-Jesus vs. anti-Jesus, while rational individuals view things in terms of reason vs. anti-reason). So Cook needs to make a choice here: does he go with faith (the route endorsed throughout the bible), or with reason (which is incompatible with the religious worldview)? His statements make it sound like he wants to have it both ways, but reason and faith are as incompatible with one another as are oil and water. Why not just go with reason, and cut loose all this unworkable religious mess? Indeed, why not simply be honest and just admit that the universe is not a cartoon?

But notice his statement, that his "faith is... based on reasonable reasons." One would think, with all the talk about "presuppositions" and "ultimate presuppositions," that Cook would be willing to clearly identify his starting point, his most basic affirmation, what he takes to be irreducible and primary. On the one hand he says that "the fact that the Bible is the Word of God is the presupposition that drives my worldview," thus suggesting that he takes the statement "the Bible is the Word of God" (or "the Bible is true") as his irreducible primary. Notwithstanding the gaping problems I mentioned in my previous blog with affirming such statements as one's starting point, Cook does not seem to have a problem with Moore's characterization of this position as a conclusion. If it's a conclusion to an argument that supports it, then it's not his most fundamental premise, simple as that. Something else must come before it. But what? He confirms this suspicion by saying that his "faith is... based on reasonable reasons." But what are those "reasonable reasons"? And on what are those based? Where does he start? Like with virtually all apologists, the answer to such questions remains stubbornly unclear, and presuppositionalists give no indication that clear answers to any such questions will ever be forthcoming.

by Dawson Bethrick

Arbitrary Presupposition vs. Reasoned Conclusion

Christian apologists have come to use the term "presupposition" so loosely that it is not always clear what precisely they mean by it. But the intended approximate meaning is evidently some very basic assumption or "belief" that governs all or most all other positions in one's worldview. Apologist John Frame defines 'presupposition' as "the belief that governs all other beliefs, or the most fundamental commitment of the heart" (A Van Til Glossary), which clearly suggests a belief or position held at the foundational level of one's thinking. Apologist Greg Bahnsen wants to equate “presuppositions” with “elementary assumptions.” (Always Ready, p. 13.) Both authorities on presuppositional apologetics thus agree that the term ‘presupposition’ as they use it refers to some very basic affirmation that serves as a foundation in one’s thinking.

In his Aug. 3, 2004 online radio discussion with non-Christian scientist Zachary Moore, Unchained Radio host and Christian pastor Gene Cook of 'The Narrow Mind' insisted on speaking for Moore's position, a common apologetic practice. "See," said Cook, "we both have presuppositions. Yours is now that the Bible is not true." As a presuppositional apologist, Cook has a motive for making such a charge: he wants to debate with Moore's position as a non-believer on the assumption that non-belief in the Christian worldview is no less arbitrary than the Christian's own position. The effect is to put both positions, the Christian and the non-Christian, on the same level for the purpose of taking control of the issue, when in fact they do not enjoy the same level in the hierarchy of ideas.

In this blog I will show that the judgment that the bible is not true is not a presupposition in the sense that it is 1) a starting point, 2) an unargued conclusion, 3) an emotional prejudice or 4) an "ultimate commitment." In a following blog I will show why Gene Cook's presupposition that the bible is true, is arbitrary and rationally untenable.

1) Why "the Bible is not true" is not a presupposition in the sense of a starting point:

My starting point is not the statement "the Bible is not true." On the contrary, I start with the axioms - existence, identity, consciousness, and their logical corollaries and implications. I would agree that these axioms, taken in their full context, do in fact imply that Christian theism is false, but they also imply that Islam, Hinduism and virtually any other form of mysticism are false as well, since they imply the falsity of all forms of mysticism as such. (This would most likely irk Gene Cook since he'd probably rather not view Christianity as just one more variant of mysticism, while I see them, philosophically speaking, as kissing cousins to one another.) Also, the statement "the Bible is not true" could not in any way qualify as a conceptual starting point, for its terms assume prior concepts. We know this because certain terms in that statement can (and must - in order to have meaning) be defined in terms of prior concepts. We have the concept of a bible which refers not just to a stack of papers bound together on one side, but to an enormous sum of claims ranging a broad spectrum of topics, from history to morality to genealogies to predictions to cosmology, etc. Those claims do not make statements that are verified by direct perception, so each one of them would have to be argued for if one were to accept them as truth. So the concept of 'bible' is certainly not irreducible. Nor is the concept 'true' irreducible; it too must be defined in terms of prior concepts for it to be meaningful. Furthermore, the human mind starts by affirming - namely what it is directly and immediately aware of - not by negating. We don't start by saying "Not X," but by affirming what we directly perceive in the form of a general statement, such as "there is a reality" or as Rand put it "existence exists." Where religion obscures this foundation, Objectivism makes it explicit and unmistakable. So the statement "the Bible is not true" is not a "presupposition" if by "presupposition" one means a starting point.

2) Why "the Bible is not true" is not a presupposition in the sense of an unargued conclusion:

It is not difficult to assemble arguments which are wholly consistent with the axioms mentioned above and the system they imply, and which also show why the bible is not true. Those arguments can be against the philosophical content of religions based on the bible's teachings, or they can be against the historical claims that are found in the pages of the bible. Many persons who conclude that the bible is not true base that conclusion on such arguments. For instance, one can argue against the bible on the basis that its philosophy assumes a false metaphysics, namely the primacy of consciousness. This is a particularly effective way to argue against the bible since one would have to assume the truth of its opposite - the primacy of existence - in order to assemble and deploy any defensive arguments on behalf of a bible-based worldview. Also, one can argue that much of the content which is found in the bible is legendary in nature by exposing the progressive steps its authors took as their stories grew wider and wider in legend, thus showing why one should not accept its historical claims as truth. Moreover, the claim that the bible is true assumes that the bible is internally uniform, and this is untenable (see these essays by G.A. Wells). So the claim "the Bible is not true" is not a presupposition in the sense of an unargued conclusion. In fact, it is a conclusion that can be soundly defended on a philosophical basis which even Christians have to assume and make use of in order to think at all.

3) Why "the Bible is not true" is not a presupposition in the sense of an emotional prejudice:

In my worldview, emotions are not the arbiter of truth. On the contrary, reason is our only guide to knowledge and truth. In fact, people believe the bible either because they find some of its claims comforting for some reason, or because they're afraid its threats might be true. Consequently, if any worldview can be said to be based on an appeal to emotion, it is the one that takes the bible seriously for such reasons.

Contrary to the supposition that all atheists are atheists on account of their emotions, many atheists themselves are in fact former believers whose deconversion was a very painful emotional process. Many persons who were nurtured on the idea that there is a cosmic father figure watching over them and caring for their needs and directing their future course, experienced deep personal trauma when they discovered that there is no such thing and had to face the fact that they have to look out for themselves. Indeed, those who once thought that they could count on prayers to overcome obstacles or cure diseases or other ailments, are often left intensely disappointed when they realize that prayer not only fails, but that recourse to prayer can only imply intellectual surrender in life (which is essentially what presuppositionalism encourages when it speaks against so-called "autonomous reasoning").

Many theists argue that individuals turn atheist because are put off by religion's strict prohibitions on certain kinds of actions, particularly those which result in personal pleasure, sexual or otherwise (even though Psalms 115:3 makes it clear that pleasure is the Christian god's sole guide to action). This not only ignores the fact that the church is full of hypocrites - people who claim to be believers but who also thwart religious behavior codes as a matter of habit, it also suggests that theists who make such arguments consider a life without the threat of dreadful god-beliefs looming overhead to be a life of sheer indulgence, irresponsibility and hedonism. In actuality, however, quite the opposite is normally the case. Leading one's own life apart from pre-packaged behavioral imperatives issued on pretended authority typically means taking responsibility for one's own choices and actions. The overall effect of religious moral codes essentially reduces man to a sheepish robot, mindlessly obeying commandments out of fear of punishment and concerned primarily with pleasing an insatiable, unchanging deity whose attributes can only be imagined and never perceived. The threat of eternal damnation can be extremely powerful, emotionally speaking, to those who take it seriously. The bible even admits that its epistemological basis is emotional in nature when it tells us that "the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge" (Prov. 1:7). And fear of course is an emotion. And we should not forget that, for those who seek the unearned, the idea that forgiveness of wrongdoings and moral shortcomings can be had just for the asking (cf. I John 1:9) may in fact be too enticing to resist; and for those who feel guilty simply because they exist, may in fact be suckers for the promise of unearned forgiveness. Unsurprisingly, since theists have to assume the truth of at least the basic core of the rational atheist's worldview (e.g., the axioms, the primacy of reason in goal-oriented action, etc.), theistic apologists in fact have a hard time contending that non-believing worldviews are false on the basis of anything more than that they find any alternative to their own worldview depressing. For instance, in his response to a quote by a non-Christian thinker, Christian apologist Paul Manata finds that he can only say "oh, what a sad and pathetic worldview." Apparently he cannot assemble any serious argument against the views he disdains so furiously.

4) Why "the Bible is not true" is not a presupposition in the sense of an "ultimate commitment":

Many presuppositionalists want to understand the term 'presupposition' to refer to an ultimate commitment, as Frame puts it, "the most fundamental commitment of the heart." This characterization strongly resembles what a rational thinker would mean by starting point, which would make it susceptible to the same objections noted above. Does the conclusion that "the Bible is not true" constitute "the most fundamental commitment of the heart"? Not if it is a conclusion to prior argument. Nevertheless, apologists who insist that the statement "the Bible is not true" constitutes the atheist's "most fundamental commitment of the heart" would have to explain why the statement "the Quran is not true" would not be one as well. Christians tend to give their own particular religion's views a biased preference over other religious views, sometimes acting as if theirs were the only religious worldview available, even though those views share many essentials in common with other religions, such as belief in the supernatural beings, miracles, life beyond the grave, commandment-driven morality, endorsement of self-sacrifice and self-immolation, etc. While Christian believers tend to view worldview conflicts in terms of Christian vs. non-Christian, rational persons view worldview conflicts in terms of rational vs. irrational. Accordingly, Christians tend to view fundamental commitments in terms of pro-Jesus vs. anti-Jesus (cf. Mt. 12:30) and pro-doctrine vs. anti-doctrine, while rational persons view fundamental commitments in terms of pro-reason vs. anti-reason and pro-value vs. anti-value. Intellectually, man has a fundamental choice: to think or to evade thinking. If he chooses to think, by what ultimate standard will he guide his thinking: by reason, or by anti-reason? And what principle will guide his actions: one that is pro-value, or one that is anti-value? The religious believer has made his ultimate choice: he has chosen to go with anti-reason and anti-value. He has made this choice by virtue of his commitment to a faith-based worldview which logically leads to self-sacrifice. And although an atheist's non-belief does not guarantee that he will guide his thinking by reason, an atheist does not need to embrace a faith-based worldview. On the contrary, he is free to choose a rational worldview. Rationality is one's commitment to reason as his only means of knowledge and his only guide to action. So for those atheists who embrace a rational worldview, their "ultimate commitment," intellectually speaking, is to reason, for their "ultimate commitment," metaphysically speaking, is to life as an end in itself.

The only rational conclusion to draw, then, is that there are strong grounds on which to contest Gene Cook's charge that the atheist's judgment "the Bible is not true" is a "presupposition" in the senses considered here. The only sense that this judgment could be considered to be "presuppositional" in nature, is as part of a much broader context on which subsequent conclusions are drawn. But such cases do not entail that this judgment is baseless, untenable or acceptable only on faith. For instance, one can establish the fact that "the Bible is not true" as a conclusion stemming from prior facts (such as those to which I alluded above), and then incorporate this truth as a premise in drawing the subsequent conclusion that it would be wrong to teach biblical ideas as truth to young, impressionable children. Only in this restricted sense, one could call such a truth a "presupposition" in the functional sense of a logically relevant antecedent fact. For instance, consider the following argument, noting the embedded sub-argument and its conclusion's presuppositional function in supporting the conclusion of the larger argument:

1) If a particular viewpoint or set of claims is not true, it would be wrong to teach philosophically defenseless children that that viewpoint or set of claims is true.
2) The bible is not true.

a) Any set of teachings that assumes the truth of the primacy of consciousness metaphysics is not true.
b) The bible is a set of teachings that assumes the truth of the primacy of consciousness metaphysics.
Subconclusion: Therefore, the bible is not true.

Conclusion: Therefore, it is wrong to teach philosophically defeneseless children that the bible is true.

In this argument, we see that the truth that the bible is not true is presuppositional to the conclusion that it is wrong to teach philosophically defenseless children that the bible is true. But since this truth is supported by inference from more fundamental truths, it is clearly not a presupposition in the sense of a starting point, an unargued conclusion, an emotional prejudice, or an "ultimate commitment." But this is unsettling to apologists, for they want their religious teachings to be true, and they want others to take them seriously, even though they cannot show them to be true. Thus they are motivated to cast the atheist's judgments in a bad light and ridicule them with the pejorative notion that they are borne on untenable prejudice, which in fact appropriately describes the apologist's own commitment to theism, which I will show in my next blog.

by Dawson Bethrick