Dodging the Subject-Object Relationship

Robert from Debunking Christianity recently left a most interesting comment to my blog Stolen Concepts and Intellectual Parasitism. In his comment he related his exchange between himself and a Christian in which he (Robert, a non-Christian) spelled out a carefully constructed syllogism against the claim that a creator god exists. The argument that he repeats from his exchange with the Christian defender is clearly influenced by Objectivist thinking, and he also quotes the Christian’s reaction to that argument. Robert’s argument proceeds as follows:

1. To believe that a theistic creator deity exists and is responsible for reality, the believer must imagine their deity was in some timeless fashion akin to "before" existence alone in a timeless, non-spatial, void without anything. That is alone as a consciousness, conscious of nothing or only itself without time, space, energy, location, dimensions, fields, concepts, knowledge, symbols, perceptions, physical natural law, logic or matter. Believers imagine that their deity was a primordial, immaterial, non-spatial, consciousness that wished existence to instantiate.

2. Consciousness is an irreducible primary.

3. Consciousness at the most common denominative rung on the ladder of complexity consists of awareness of existence.

4. Consciousness of consciousness necessarily requires primary consciousness to first obtain as awareness of existence.

5. Prior to existence there could not have been anything to be aware of.

6. Without anything to be aware of, there could not have been any awareness.

7. Without awareness there could not have been any consciousness.

8. From 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 there could not have been a primordial consciousness prior to existence.

9. Creator gods are defined as primordial consciousness.

10. From 8 and 9 Creator gods cannot exist.

First some comments in response to Robert’s argument.

In response to the first premise, he is correct in pointing out that belief that a creator-god exists and created the universe (or reality, the world, or what have you), requires at a base minimum that the believer retreat into his imagination. Just as the believer imagines that his consciousness will survive his death and be transported to a magic kingdom beyond the grave, he also imagines that the deity which created and resides within that magic kingdom also created the universe in which human beings exist and the mechanism, whatever it may be, by which the human soul supposedly traverses from the side of life to the side of death and the alleged realm to which death is thought to serve as a doorway. Robert is also correct in pointing out that the believer relies on his imagination when developing the image of his god in his mind, for it is within his imagination that the believer assembles a mental picture of what his god is like given the descriptive inputs supplied by his religious devotional program. In the case of Christianity, the source of this devotional program is, of course, the Old and New Testaments of the bible. The remaining essence of Robert’s first premise is remarkably similar to Anton Thorn’s argument that creator-theism inevitably results in what he calls the fallacy of pure self-reference. This fallacy is committed when a statement refers exclusively to its own referring (Thorn’s examples is the statement “This statement is true,” wherein the statement referenced is the given statement itself). The same fallacy is committed, Thorn rightly claims, when a form of consciousness is affirmed while prohibiting it from having awareness of anything other than itself. The quotation that Thorn cites from Binswanger is most topical:

Consciousness cannot be purely self-contained. That applies to any specific act of consciousness just as it does to consciousness as a whole. A statement cannot refer only to itself. More precisely, It cannot refer only to itself qua statement; a statement cannot refer only to its own referring. Its own referring to what?

It should be easy to spot the “blank out” here. What is denied in such instances is an object of consciousness, as if consciousness could exist all by its lonesome, without anything to be conscious of, inhabiting a completely empty void in which no other existent could provide itself as an object to the consciousness in question. The implication here should be obvious: a consciousness which is alleged to have created everything distinct from itself would have had nothing to be conscious of prior to creating anything distinct of itself. Both Thorn and Robert are correct in pointing out that such a scenario would require us to accept a fallacy here. And of course, theists are at a loss as to why one should do this.

Proceeding through Robert’s syllogism, he points out some basic facts about the nature of consciousness which are irrefutable. They are: that consciousness is irreducible (premise 2); that essential to consciousness is that it is consciousness of something that exists (premise 3); and that introspective awareness cannot be primary, that consciousness can be its own object only if it is a secondary object (premise 4). This latter position does not deny the authenticity of introspection; it simply points out that introspective investigation of conscious activity always involves some object independent of consciousness. For instance, if I think about how I came to the conclusion that running with scissors in one’s hands is dangerous, I could be aware of my own conscious activity only after I was aware of something in the world, something independent of myself, something independent of my awareness. Prior to being able to do this, my senses were active, giving me perceptual awareness of things like scissors and organisms capable of holding and running with them, consequently giving me the option of considering such activity and evaluating it, or ignoring it and going on with some other activity.

Robert’s premise 5 introduces the idea of “prior to existence,” which literally refers to nothing. The reason why premise 5 is important, is because of the absurdity which is implicated by the position to which Robert is responding: if one holds that existence was created by a consciousness, this could only mean that prior to creating existence nothing existed, not even the consciousness which allegedly did the creating. Moreover, if nothing exists (as would be implied by the view that existence was created), then there’d be nothing for consciousness to be aware of. To affirm that existence is a creation of some conscious activity, then, errs in at least two ways: first, it errs by affirming the existence of a conscious being while requiring that nothing exists; and second, it errs by affirming consciousness without anything to be conscious of, which is a contradiction in terms.

Premise 6 simply makes explicit what is already implicit in the foregoing: that the affirmation of a consciousness without anything to be conscious of is self-contradictory. In other words, if there are no objects for a conscious to be aware of, on what basis could one affirm the reality of a consciousness? Blank out. To ignore this kind of question is to ignore the nature of consciousness as such, which means: to ignore the nature of one’s own consciousness, which means: to indulge a fundamental evasion.Premise 7 has a tautological quality to it. It essentially says that if there is no consciousness, there is no consciousness of anything.

Premise 8 wraps up the truths of the prior five premises and draws the inevitable implication that “there could not have been a primordial consciousness prior to existence.” By “primordial consciousness” Robert means something like the Christian means by a supernatural consciousness which is alleged to have created the universe (premise 9). Where ‘universe’ refers to the sum total of everything that exists, then obviously there could be no consciousness outside the universe (or “prior” to the universe, assuming the universe did not at one time exist), for the reasons given up to this point.

Christians may attempt to rebut this argument in a variety of ways, and can be expected to give it their best effort since the argument targets the very fundamentals of god-belief. Robert clipped a portion of one response he got from a Christian, and as one would expect, it’s a valiant effort, but at the end of the day it is quite weak:

my point is 1) I can have the capacity to be aware of things without actually being aware of anything.

We need to make a distinction here:

A) Consciousness is having the capacity to be aware of things and

B) Consciousness is being aware of things. You sound like you accept B. I accept A.

And my second point is 2) Even if B were true, God could be aware of himself. One can be introspectively aware of themselves, their feelings, their thoughts, their character, etc. There is no contradiction there.

And my third point 3) Even if B were true, God the Father could be aware of God the Son. ...snip...

Robert then asked me to comment on how one might best respond to the Christian’s points here.

When engaging mystics like the Christian whom Robert engaged, one may find it helpful to focus on the issue by refining the terminology. Thinkers untutored in Objectivism are frequently confused by the sheer breadth of concepts like ‘consciousness’ and ‘existence’. The issue of metaphysical primacy pertains specifically to the relationship between the subject of consciousness and any object(s) that it perceives, observes or considers. I’ve observed even institutional philosophers (e.g., Parrish, Toner, etc.) get tripped up on this point; the sheer breadth of these concepts seems to lend themselves to a wide variety of interpretations, many of which are not at all what Objectivism has in mind. While the statement “existence exists independent of consciousness” is certainly true as Objectivism understands it, non-Objectivists tend to be lost by it, and I think this is the case not only because non-Objectivists are not in the habit of thinking in terms of essentials (just look at what passes as definitions in their views), but also because these concepts are so wide (‘existence’ of course being the widest of all concepts). Consequently, what is typically missed by non-Objectivists who participate in such discussions is the question of the relationship between the subject of awareness and the object of awareness. It is this distinction – between the subject and the objects of consciousness – and the relationship between the two, which need to be brought to the surface, for it is precisely here where Christians and other mystics depart from reality. In his comment, Robert referenced Anton Thorn’s essay The Issue of Metaphysical Primacy, which is a good place to start for those who are interested in expanding their understanding of this fundamental topic.

Robert’s Christian interlocutor seems to have the desire to make the debate revolve around whether consciousness is best conceived as “having the capacity to be aware of things” or as “being aware of things.” He seems oblivious to the fact that by introducing this distinction he accomplishes nothing more than delaying the inevitable. For one, the statement that “consciousness is having the capacity to be aware of things” would make more sense on a non-supernaturalistic viewpoint. What possesses “the capacity to be aware of things” if not certain biological organisms? And by what means do they have such capacity if not by a central nervous system, a brain, sensory organs, etc.? This would tend to rule out a so-called “immaterial” or “non-physical” being from possessing the capacity denoted here, because on this view consciousness is a capacity of an entity, not an entity in its own right (and I agree: consciousness is an attribute of an entity, not an independently existing entity). Perhaps what the Christian meant here was that consciousness is “the capacity to be aware of things,” which is at least slightly less problematic for his position, but it is still very much compatible with the Objectivist view. This would seem to have in mind generally the ability to be aware of things. One could say in this respect that mammals are conscious organisms, i.e., they have the ability to be aware of things.

But even then (here comes the inevitable part), when this ability is exercised, it is still awareness of things, i.e., of objects, and thus a relationship between consciousness and its objects pertains, and it is this relationship, specifically the orientation of this relationship, which the issue of metaphysical primacy isolates and identifies. Objectively speaking, one would not affirm the ability to be aware and qualify this as the ability to be aware of nothing, just as, again objectively speaking, one would not affirm that one is aware but is aware of nothing. When a conscious being is aware, it is always aware of something, of some object(s). If the Christian disputes this (and many whom I’ve encountered have), and affirm that consciousness could very well be awareness of nothing (or the capacity to be aware of nothing), this would render consciousness on such an account completely inert and contentless. Even as a capacity, it would be of no consequence whatsoever. So the distinction which the Christian introduces here gains him nothing, and strikes me as a blatant red herring. From what Robert quoted from his exchange, the Christian doesn’t even offer any argument for the alternative he prefers.

When the Christian says “I can have the capacity to be aware of things without actually being aware of anything,” what could he be describing if not simply a state of unconscious? When we are asleep, for instance, we still have the ability or capacity to be aware (because we are still alive and our sensory organs, nervous system and brain are still intact), but that ability or capacity is not being exercised. The Christian apparently thinks this point is key to evading Robert’s argument. But what does it gain him? He’s simply ducking for cover at this point.

The Christian then announces that, even if consciousness is awareness of things (i.e., of objects), then “God could be aware of himself.” By this I take him to mean that his god “could be aware of himself” if there’s nothing else to be aware of, since the context here is the question of what objects a creator-god, as a conscious being, could have in its awareness prior to creating anything distinct from itself (since every existent distinct from the Christian god is said to have been created by that same god, and it was allegedly conscious prior to creating anything distinct from itself).

The notion of being aware of oneself at the exclusion of anything else, strikes me as utterly fantastic and nonsensical, as a debating point thrown out simply to be contrary or salvage an otherwise untenable position. To say, for instance, that the Christian god, prior to creating any objects distinct from itself, was yet conscious of itself (and thereby conscious only of itself), is to concede that it was not conscious of anything else. The Christian backs himself into a corner by his own dogmatic stipulations. Not only does this acknowledge, albeit in roundabout fashion, that it does not make sense to speak of consciousness without anything to be conscious of, that the subject does in fact require an object.

But when the Christian god is said to be conscious of itself in this respect, prior to creating anything distinct from itself, existing all alone in an utterly empty void, what exactly is it conscious of? Again, we have what in human beings amounts to secondary conscious (introspection, awareness directed inward into its own operations), treated as if it were sufficient as primary consciousness. What exactly serves as the object of consciousness in this case? The Christian may say that his god’s thoughts are its objects. But again, as we saw above, this simply delays the inevitable: thoughts of what? The Christian may say his god’s thoughts are thoughts of what it plans to do. Plans to do about what? Round and round and round we go, without the Christian ever making good on the subject-object relationship.

Incidentally, to affirm that, prior to “the beginning” which the Genesis account references, the Christian god was aware only of itself and of nothing else (for there were no other objects yet to be aware of), simply confirms the point that it has no independent standard (something Christian apologists seem willing to affirm), which can only mean that its subjective whim prevails over all else. To call such a being “rational” and its decrees “objective” would commit the fallacy of the stolen concept, because both concepts are premised on the primacy of existence (i.e., of objects which exist independent of consciousness), and yet are applied in a context whose stipulations prohibit all legitimate objectivity whatsoever.

There is also the issue of epistemology which should not be overlooked or discounted. When the believer makes claims like “God the Father could be aware of God the Son,” by what means of knowledge could anyone know this to be the case? How does this kind of statement refer to reality? To understand such claims as legitimate knowledge of reality, we would need to understand how it reduces to the perceptual level, which is where our awareness of reality begins. (Those who deny that knowledge of reality begins at the perceptual level of awareness are simply announcing that whatever it is they call knowledge, it is not knowledge of reality.) If claims like “God the Father could be aware of God the Son” are admitted to have any basis in perception, the Christian has no recourse but to appeal to the storybook of the bible as the source of this so-called knowledge. And as we know from reading any storybook, the content of such sources simply excites and inspires the imagination, and what is imagined on the basis of reading stories like those found in the bible, or The Wizard of Oz, or Alice in Wonderland, can seem real to the reader if his energy is invested in the hope that what he is imagining is real. Social pressure and repetition are of course very effective here, which is why church attendance is so highly stressed in most Christian circles.

In my blog The Axioms and the Primacy of Existence, one of my major points was that our epistemology needs to be compatible with the primacy of existence, since the truth of the primacy of existence is undeniable in human cognition. Believers are often found saying things like “God is real even if you don’t believe in Him” or “God’s existence is true no matter who denies it.” Notice how these statements attempt to make use of the primacy of existence principle, how they borrow from the fundamentals of a worldview fundamentally opposed to the one they’re intended to defend. They are essentially saying that something is the case (in this case, “God’s existence”) independent of anyone’s conscious activity – e.g., whether anyone knows it, believes it, wishes otherwise, is disturbed by it, etc. How often do we hear people saying “wishing doesn’t make it so”? I’ve seen even believers making this statement, a statement whose truth can be rightly taken for granted precisely because existence exists independent of consciousness, because of the primacy of objects in the subject-object relationship. Ask the believer who insists that you submit to his indoctrination, whether he thinks his god exists because he wants it to exist. He will likely insist that this is not what he has in mind. So even here, he seems implicitly willing, at this point of the conversation anyway, to conform his epistemology to the truth of the primacy of existence principle, even though he has no explicit understanding of this principle. As the discussion proceeds and it turns out that he appeals to divine revelation and the god he claims is real is said to have all kinds of magical powers of consciousness that we nowhere find in nature, we are essentially observing how quickly he abandons the principle which moments before he was invoking. I’m reminded of James 1:8 where it characterizes the “double-minded man” as being “unstable in all he does.” Just as the believer is encouraged to put his treasure on the other side of death, he also reserves for himself the permission to draw from that imaginary source and call it knowledge. What in fact he is doing is mistaking the imaginary for the real, and abandoning the primacy of existence principle is crucial to such pretense. For the Christian, the primacy of existence principle is true one minute, but happily jettisoned the next. And typically, the believer himself does not recognize this.

by Dawson Bethrick

Stolen Concepts and Intellectual Parasitism

A visitor to my blog once suggested that Christianity comprises a long tradition of concept-stealing, and cited as examples the pagan mystery religions from ancient times (e.g., the eucharist, the virgin birth, a dying and rising savior, etc.), the adoption of non-Christian holidays (e.g., Easter, Christmas), even modern scientific advancements (such as hospitals) that are claimed as the byproduct of Christian intellectualism. I was taken aback by this comment because it demonstrated to me that even frequent readers of my blog may not have a good understanding of what is happening when one commits the fallacy of the stolen concept. For although the fallacy of the stolen concept is an error that is fundamental to the Christian worldview, these are not examples of concept-stealing (though the reasoning behind some of them may involve stolen concepts). There are important distinctions between the fallacy of the stolen concept on the one hand, and cultural hijacking and intellectual parasitism on the other. These distinctions can be missed due to unfamiliarity with the nature of the error committed by stolen concepts.

The Fallacy of the Stolen Concept

A stolen concept is not characterized by making use (either real or apparent) of a tradition of a worldview to which one does not ascribe. An non-Christian, for instance, is not committing the fallacy of the stolen concept if he gives out gifts to friends and loved ones every December 25. Similarly, I would not be committing the fallacy of the stolen concept by attending a Passover feast with one of my Jewish friends. On the contrary, the fallacy of the stolen concept is a cognitive fallacy involving specifically a breach of the knowledge hierarchy. It’s an insidious type of error which usually goes unnoticed, unless it’s so explicit that it’s difficult to miss. The fallacy of the stolen concept occurs when one makes use of a concept while denying or ignoring its genetic roots. An obvious example would be when someone affirms the validity of geometry while insisting that numbers are meaningless. As a mathematical science, geometry assumes that numbers are conceptually valid, that numbers have meaning. But how could something which assumes the meaningfulness of numbers be valid if numbers really are meaningless? One of the primary genetic roots, then, of the concept ‘geometry’ is the validity of numbers. So the fallacy of the stolen concept occurs if we make use of the concept ‘geometry’ while denying the meaningfulness of numbers.

Other clearly detectable examples of the fallacy of the stolen concept which may be encountered in the theist-atheist debate would include the following:

- “Consciousness does not exist, and here’s why I think that”: This statement commits the fallacy of the stolen concept because it assumes the actuality of thinking while denying consciousness, the faculty one needs in order to think in the first place. In fact, the fallacy occurs in two distinct ways. It occurs conceptually, because the concept ‘consciousness’ is a conceptual root of the concept ‘to think’, and yet it is being denied in the statement. It also occurs genetically, for the faculty of consciousness is the genetic root of the act of thinking.

- “Your consciousness is invalid unless you believe that God exists”: This statement obviously commits the fallacy of the stolen concept because it requires that one perform a conscious function (believing) in order to validate one’s consciousness. But if one’s consciousness is invalid to begin with, how could he use it to believe anything? And if he accepts the premise that the use of his consciousness is required in order to validate it, how could any believe he holds be true? Blank out. Just by perceiving any object, one’s consciousness is a fact. This is why Objectivism holds that the validity of consciousness is axiomatic. Any view which denies this ends up committing the fallacy of the stolen concept.

- “Existence cannot be ultimate for it is an impersonal starting point, and the impersonal cannot account for the personal”: One who affirms this kind of statement has a very poor understanding of why knowledge requires a starting point, and seems to think that the undesirable consequences of a certain position are sufficient to invalidate that position. The only alternative to existence is non-existence, but the proponent of the view expressed here wants to posit something that exists prior to existence, one answering to the descriptor “personal.” What is essential to “personal” if not conscious activity? Thus the view affirmed here seeks to place consciousness prior to existence, alleging that this consciousness “accounts for” existence as such. This view clearly commits the fallacy of the stolen concept by affirming consciousness before or outside existence, which is a contradiction in terms. It affirms the existence of a consciousness, and yet it affirms this existence “prior to existence.” The result is conceptually absurd, and yet it is on this basis that some would label contrary views absurd.

Most commonly accepted instances of stolen concepts, however, are not so obvious or easily identified, at least to those who have little understanding of the nature of abstractions and the process of conceptual reduction. On this point I’m in deep agreement with Peikoff when he writes:

The reason stolen concepts are so prevalent is that most people (and most philosophers) have no idea of the “roots” of a concept. In practice, they treat every concept as a primary, i.e., as a first-level abstraction; thus they tear the concept from any place in a hierarchy and thereby detach it from reality. Thereafter, its use is governed by caprice or unthinking habit, with no objective guidelines for the mind to follow. The result is confusion, contradiction, and the conversion of language into verbiage. (Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand, p. 136.)

Knowledge is conceptual in nature, and concepts are formed ultimately on the basis of perceptual input, or on the basis of previously formed concepts (which were formed ultimately on the basis of perceptual input). Knowledge is thus hierarchical: higher levels of knowledge rest on the truth of lower levels of knowledge. For instance, the mathematical science of geometry depends on the truth of basic number theory. Without basic number theory, there could be no science of geometry. One commits the fallacy of the stolen concept, then, if, for example, he affirms the validity of geometry as a mathematical science, but denies the truth of basic number theory. How could the calculation of the volume of a cone, for instance, be intelligible if the units of measure represented numerically could not figure in that calculation, because their quantification was impossible? Blank out.

So how does Christianity commit the fallacy of the stolen concept then? Obviously, it does not explicitly affirm a higher level abstraction (such as geometry) while explicitly denying its genetic roots (like basic number theory). Or does it? Numerous Objectivist philosophers have pointed that Christianity does in fact commit the fallacy of the stolen concept at the most fundamental level of cognition. However, it may not be so readily apparent to thinkers who are unfamiliar with the kind of error that makes stolen concepts fallacious.

Even broader than simply Christianity, theism in general commits the fallacy of the stolen concept by reversing the proper orientation of the subject-object relationship. It must be borne in mind that, since consciousness is consciousness of something, a subject by virtue of its nature qua subject presupposes the existence of some object(s) for it to be aware of. Theism commits the fallacy of the stolen concept by granting metaphysical primacy to the subject in the subject-object relationship. It does this most explicitly in its notion of a god, but it does this elsewhere as well. In terms of essentials, Christianity’s notion of a god amounts to affirming consciousness prior to any independently existing objects. Taking into consideration its full implications, Christianity basically asserts the existence of consciousness without anything to be conscious of, which is a contradiction in terms. In the actual world (as opposed to the imaginary realm of the theistic believer), the objects of consciousness hold metaphysical primacy over the subject of consciousness: objects are what they are independent of any consciousness which perceives or considers them. All rational activity presupposes this orientation in the subject-object relationship, and rational philosophy is firmly and explicitly built on this fundamental premise. To deny it is to affirm the reality of consciousness while denying its inherent need for objects to complete the relationship which distinguishes conscious experience from other phenomena.

The Christian god is said to be a conscious being which created the universe by an act of will. In other words, it wished, and this caused the universe of objects to come into being. On this view, the universe, defined as the sum totality of everything that exists, is a creation of consciousness. The consciousness in question here is clearly thought to hold metaphysical primacy over everything else. Christianity’s assumption of the primacy of consciousness is unmistakable. It’s also inexcusable. The primacy of consciousness means the primacy of the subject in the subject-object relationship. On such a paradigm, the objects conform to the subject, for the subject holds metaphysical primacy over its objects. This is the opposite of the principle of objectivity; in fact, it is the very essence of subjectivism, and Christianity’s embrace of subjectivism is explicit. (See for instance my blog Confessions of a Vantillian Subjectivist.)

The very notion of a bodiless consciousness commits the fallacy of the stolen concept by affirming consciousness while denying the biological processes which make consciousness possible. While the ancient primitives who first imagined a deity beyond the objects they perceived, lacked any scientific understanding of the brain, the nervous system, the organs of the senses, etc., which make consciousness possible in biological organisms, today’s theists do not have this excuse. When this fact is pointed out, theists often try to challenge it by insisting that the non-believer prove that consciousness is strictly biological. This maneuver, however, misses several important points. For one, it fails to take into account that all demonstrable examples of consciousness found in reality belong to biological organisms, be they cats, fish, horses, deer, orangutans, or human beings. Also, it fails to take into account how one forms the concept ‘consciousness’ in the first place. It is not up to the non-believer to prove that there can be no such thing as a consciousness without some biological organism which can host it. Rather, it is up to the asserter of such a view to explain how the concept ‘consciousness’ can be formed so as to allow for such assertions. For instance, what units does the believer discover and integrate into his concept of consciousness such that it allows for such notions? (The same type of error is found in attempts to evade the primacy of existence principle by allowing that existence may hold in the case of human consciousness, while affirming the existence of some non-human consciousness to which objects conform; for more on this, see my blog The Axioms and the Primacy of Existence.) And how does he distinguish what he calls a consciousness without a body from something he is simply imagining? Typically defenders of theism never consider these kinds of questions, let alone have ready answers to them. Instead, their goal is to deflect such considerations by insisting that the burden of proof is on those who do not accept their unsupported claims in the first place. So much effort can be found on the part of theists to cover their commitment to stolen concepts.

Christian apologists commit the fallacy of the stolen concept when they claim that their epistemological starting point is “the Word of God,” i.e., the entirety of the bible. For instance, Bahnsen asserts that “the true starting point of thought cannot be other than God and His revealed word” (Bahnsen, Always Ready, p. 73) Elsewhere he asserts that “God’s mind is epistemologically the standard of truth – thus being the ‘ultimate’ starting point.” (Bahnsen, Van Til’s Apologetic: Readings & Analysis, p. 100n.33) But none of this is conceptually irreducible.

To say that “God” is one’s proper epistemological starting point likewise commits the fallacy of the stolen concept, for – because even according to Christianity itself, it is supposed to be imperceptible – it could not (even if we supposed it exists) number among the objects of which man is aware directly. Even if the believer claims that we all know his god directly (following Rom. 1:18f), he cannot identify any objective means by which one could have awareness of his god, let alone explain how one can reliably distinguish between what he calls “God” and what he may simply be imagining. If the believer says “God exists” is his starting point, we simply ask where he got the concept ‘exists’. He must have already formed this concept in order to apply it to his god, thus indicating that he in fact does have knowledge that is even more fundamental than his claim that his god exists. As Porter rightly points out, “anybody can deny the validity of ‘God’, but nobody can deny the validity of ‘existence’.” (Ayn Rand’s Theory of Knowledge, p. 176) As far as fundamentality is concerned, the Christian notion of god, for instance, is so packed with notions and assumptions that it could not possibly constitute a conceptually irreducible primary. What is “God”? According to Christianity, it is, along with many other things, the creator of the universe, the uncaused cause, a trinity, a sovereign being worthy of man’s devotion and sacrifice, the controller of history, etc., etc. None of these roles, descriptors or definitions are conceptually irreducible, and yet they are all supposedly needed in order to know what the Christian god is and to affirm its existence.

Moreover, the bible, beginning with the first verse of the first chapter of the book of Genesis and ending with the last verse of the last chapter of the book of Revelation, is an enormous sum of mystical stories, genealogies, accounts, hymns, poetry, letters, etc. The claim that the bible (either in part or in toto) is true, rests on many prior assumptions, and errs by failing to recognize the hierarchical structure of knowledge. Like other pieces of literature, the bible is composed of a long series of statements and propositions, each of which in turn is itself composed of a string of concepts. There are very few axiomatic concepts in human thought; the rest are definable in terms of prior concepts. This is particularly the case with the higher abstractions. In other words, most concepts, because they can (and must) be defined in terms of prior concepts (concepts resting on lower tiers of the knowledge hierarchy), are reducible to other concepts. And if concepts are not irreducible, then surely the statements and propositions consisting of such concepts are not irreducible. Even more, a chapter in a book which is constituted by a string of propositions, is far from conceptually irreducible. So the bible (i.e., “God’s word”) is not conceptually irreducible, and thus could not be one’s starting point. To call it one’s starting point is to deny the entire conceptual strata assumed by the thousands of concepts which make up its content, which means: such a claim commits the fallacy of the stolen concept. It would be better if the believer sit down and honestly think about what his true starting point might be. But apologetics provides a mechanism by which his true starting point will forever remain obscured to him. This is why presuppositionalism is such a farce: rather than identifying one’s philosophical fundamentals in a clear, concise and explicit manner, the presuppositional apologetic shrouds its underlying assumptions in a haze of verbiage, subterfuge and gimmickry, while demanding that any rival position satisfy challenges which the Christian worldview could never attempt to tackle without tacitly borrowing from fundamentally anti-Christian perspectives about the world.

The idea that the bible is the proper epistemological starting point isn’t even really biblical. The bible itself never enumerates which books properly belong within it, nor does it come out and say that it should be one’s starting point. On the contrary, the bible is explicit on what should be one’s starting point. According to Proverbs 1:7, fear is “the beginning of knowledge.” But this constitutes yet another stolen concept, for it seeks to place an emotion prior to any knowledge, and yet emotions presuppose at least some knowledge. If X is one’s starting point to knowledge, then X could not assume knowledge prior to itself. But how could one have fear of something and not have at least some knowledge to give that fear its content? Indeed, if one can validly say that “the fear of God is the beginning of knowledge,” one could with equal validity say that “the love for Blarko is the beginning of knowledge.” Both are “equally valid” because both equally lack any objective basis and both turn the knowledge hierarchy on its head. Either way you slice it, , fear is certainly not man’s epistemological starting point. Perception is, and those who contest this fact simply mire themselves down in a flood of stolen concepts.

Believers witnessing for their faith commit the fallacy of the stolen concept quite regularly without realizing it. Take for example the claim “God exists whether anyone believes it or not.” One will see this kind of claim (in various renditions) in encounters with defenders of the religious worldview quite frequently. Without realizing it, the religious witness making this kind of claim is making use of the primacy of existence, the principle which recognizes the fact that reality exists independent of consciousness, that things are what they are regardless of thoughts, wishes, ignorance, emotions, memories, etc. And yet this principle is being applied to religious claims which assert the existence of a consciousness which allegedly has precisely the very power that is denied to every other consciousness. On the Christian view, there exists a supernatural being whose consciousness has the power to create, shape and revise anything in reality. Bahnsen makes this unmistakably clear: “The believer understands that truth fundamentally is whatever conforms to the mind of God” (Van Til’s Apologetic: Readings & Analysis, p. 163). “God is the creator of every fact,” says Van Til (Christian Theistic Evidences, p. 88; quoted in Bahnsen, Van Til's Apologetic, p. 378.) If one affirms that truth is “whatever conforms to the mind of God,” and “God is the creator of every fact,” this can only mean that he cannot consistently hold to the fundamental principle underlying the claim that something is the case “whether anyone believes it or not.” For he has made allowance for the primacy of the subject in the subject-object relationship by affirming a consciousness with abilities that no consciousness we find in the world possesses. Such a being would enjoy precisely the exact opposite orientation between itself as a subject and anything in its awareness that man and other biological organisms have. So the witness is borrowing a principle that is fundamentally alien to the worldview he proclaims in order to defend it. This can only mean that it is indefensible on its own terms. It constitutes a stolen concept because he enlists the help of a position (the primacy of existence) to defend a position which fundamentally denies that position (by affirming the primacy of consciousness).

Intellectual Parasitism

Now the cultural borrowings mentioned at the beginning of this blog are components of Christianity’s parasitic campaign of intellectual assimilation. Christianity’s goal of mass assimilation is the cultural outworking of its ethics of the unearned, which has its primary locus at the level of the individual. In Christianity’s moral theory, the believer is expected to accept unearned guilt (which he “inherited” from the original transgressors Adam and Eve by virtue of being born human) and to prize unearned forgiveness (“mercy” in the form of the “free gift” of “salvation” and “redemption”, neither of which he can “earn” through his own effort or on his own merit). By granting justification to the pursuit and acceptance of the unearned in morality, Christianity has no principle basis for restraining new iterations of this vice in other areas of human endeavor. Given its self-righteous claim to the unearned, Christianity’s lust for cultural assimilation is inevitable.

On the broader societal level, Christianity seeks to absorb entire cultures as well as individual minds or souls. Its appetite for assimilation is insatiable as it creates in its leaders a hunger to devour both achievers and their achievements, using underachievers and non-achievers as their instruments. Those who resist Christianity are to be destroyed, typically by turning them into non-persons through personal demoralization and public character assassination (burning at the stake is no longer allowed in the west), while those achievements which challenge Christianity’s doctrines must be reinterpreted so as to neutralize their damaging effect, or stigmatized through repetitive castigation (consider how vocal Christianity’s defenders are in reaction to the scientific theory of evolution). When Christianity moves into a new populace (think of Vladimir I’s autocratic baptismal of Kievan Rus in 988 AD), rival religious traditions are the first to be absorbed, because this netted the largest numbers of a culture’s population. An entire culture can be a tempting catch – and also a handy tool – for enterprising fishermen. In just two or three generations, entire traditions could be recast with Christian accoutrements, and the new generation, having never clearly understood the original meaning of the assimilated tradition in the first place, accepted the traditions in their new Christian guise as originally Christian. For instance, in Europe Christianity absorbed pagan traditions like Yule, while effacing the personalities and lore associated with those traditions and replacing them with its own, such as the nativity scene inspired by the gospel stories.

In modern apologetics, Christianity’s compulsion for cultural assimilation has created entire crusades to assimilate all of academia, to convert entire university faculties as well as their subject matter, teachers and students from their secular basis to a specifically Christian monstrosity. They focus on the humanities, the philosophy departments particularly, but by no means exclusively. Van Til made this ambition crystal clear when he announced:

Why am I so much interested in the foundations of science? It is (a) because with [Abraham] Kuyper I believe that God requires of us that we claim every realm of being for him, and (b) because with Kuyper I believe that unless we press the crown rights of our King in every realm we shall not long retain them in any realm. (The Defense of the Faith, 1st ed., pp. 279-280; quoted in Bahnsen, Van Til’s Apologetic: Readings & Analysis, p. 26.)

For Van Til, it’s all or nothing, and his worldview guarantees him that the ends justify the means. Non-Christians do all the enterprising work, the experimenting, the analyzing, the fact-checking, the risk-taking, the heavy-lifting, etc., and Christians come along afterwards, survey the results through the filter of their arbitrary religious views, and claim them on behalf of the magic kingdom. You almost expect them to show up on horseback in plate armor. That was how it happened in the olden days, before the Declaration of Independence. Today they serve up a piping hot dish of circuitous casuistry, sophisticated fallacies, deceptive tactics, and the promulgation of divisionary prejudices all found throughout a vast and growing apologetics literature that is prone to repeating itself over and over and over again (as if by ceaselessly chanting a mantra, one will eventually begin to believe it). In many cases one will find an attempt to make the achievements of men appear possible only on the basis of Christian theism in the first place. Often the attempt is as simplistic as mere association. Isaac Newton, for instance, was a professing Christian; because of this his achievements in mathematics and science are thought by many to be logically related to Christian teaching somehow.

Is this an unfair assessment? Not at all. Apologist John Frame also openly admits the intellectual grand larceny which he promotes as an integral part of the Christian worldview:

On the basis of Christian theism, we can use the knowledge discovered by unbelieving scientists, while observing the problems into which their unbelief has led them. (Cornelius Van Til: An Analysis of His Thought, p. 335)

Since Christianity represents a full assault on reason and man’s intellect, its adherents have no choice but to look to the achievements of non-Christian thinkers. They certainly have no intellectual claim to scientific achievements, this much is clear. Science is strictly a this-worldly concern, and Christianity teaches its adherents to put their heart in a magic kingdom beyond the grave and not to be concerned with the cares of this world. Even in the case of scientists, for instance, who profess faith in the Christian god, any achievements they may make in the field of science are made in spite of their Christian beliefs, not because of them. This is because Christian beliefs, as we have seen, are integrally mired in stolen concepts and other conceptual errors which inhibit the mind in its pursuit of knowledge and truth. It is only by compartmentalizing religious beliefs so as to segregate them from one’s activities in the real world, that these scientists are able to do anything, even drive an automobile.

Frame makes it clear that, so long as the believer can benefit from “the knowledge discovered by unbelieving scientists,” that knowledge is useful to the believer. And that’s fine as far as it goes. But if the believer should make use of that knowledge, he is compelled by his confessional commitment to discredit its source. Making use of such knowledge demands of the believer a colossal feat of compartmentalization, for now he must rationalize his use of knowledge while maintaining that the method by which it was acquired – cf. “the wisdom of this world [which] is foolishness with God” (I Cor. 3:19) and “hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the basic principles of this world rather than on Christ” (Col. 2:8) – is to be avoided for its satanic associations.

Notice how the pursuit of the unearned is intimately intertwined not only within presuppositionalism’s methodology, but also in its ambitions. This is most clearly evident in presuppositionalism’s deployment of pat slogans which are intended to bring any discussion with its opponents to a screeching halt. For instance, the presuppositionalist will claim that his god exists “because of the impossibility of the contrary.” Does he ever establish this alleged “impossibility of the contrary”? No, he does not, but he insists that it be accepted as a justified premise within his “argument” for his god’s existence. If the apologist himself believes it, he believes it for no clear reason.

The pursuit of the unearned is also evident in the emphasis on canned interrogative tactics rather than genuine arguments. We’ve all seen them before. Apologists will bully their opponents with questions like “how do you account for universal statements when you have only a finite mind?” or “how do you account for immaterial entities in a material-only worldview?” The goal of posing a series of questions and challenges to the non-believer in rapid-fire succession, as many presuppositionalists are wont to do, is not to acquire new knowledge from the non-believer; the presuppositionalist has already concluded that the non-believer is incapable of acquiring and validating knowledge in the first place. The apologist dispenses his playbook of readymade questions and over-worn challenges for the purpose of alleviating himself of his burden to defend his god-belief claims in any cogent manner and overwhelming his non-believing opponent with fabricated burdens which are specifically intended to be unanswerable, even though it is typically the apologist who wants the non-believer to accept Christianity’s religious claims, and not the other way around. The effect of all this suggests that the apologist hopes to break the non-believer down in the interest of extracting the confession “Duh, I donno, must be God did it!”

All these are expressions of the Christian’s love affair with the unearned. The non-believer is expected to accept unearned burdens (e.g., he may not identify himself as a “materialist” but the apologist insists that he defend materialism nonetheless), while believers reserve for themselves a free, undeserved pass when it comes to substantiating their bizarre and otherworldly claims. Surprisingly, it really irks them when their gimmicks are exposed.

Frequently, however, when some of the more astute apologists do try to contrive arguments for the existence of their god, we are presented with a swarm of issues that are so complex and full of subtle ambiguities that most people couldn’t follow them very well at all, let alone be persuaded by them that a god exists. The average pew-sitter, for instance, surely did not convert to Christianity because he is convinced that Christianity’s conception of a triune god somehow solves the problem of universals. Such arguments are ultimately intended to bamboozle by means of bewilderment, hoping to exploit the non-believer by steamrolling him with the impression that the apologist is so intelligent that he must be right. (The use of Latinate phrases is a favorite device for this.) The apologist appears to be presenting what looks like a logical case, but upon deeper examination his premises point to nothing. It is all part of an elaborate bluff designed to shield the apologist’s own evasions from detection and exposure. It seeks to do this by putting the non-believer on the run, pressuring him psychologically either to renounce his non-belief, or flee from the apologist in defeat. More often than not, however, it is the apologist who flees the debate, particularly when he finds a non-believer who’s happy to engage him and examine any argument (or pseudo-argument) he might present on behalf of his god-belief. When the slogans and jargon fail to cast their spell on spoilsport atheists, the apologist typically grows frustrated, either lashing out with condescending invectives, or abandoning the discussion altogether so that he can seek out other fish that will be easier to catch in his flimsy net.

by Dawson Bethrick

Faith as Hope in the Imaginary

I have already demonstrated how Christian faith involves belief without understanding. There is another component to Christian faith which is often ignored, especially by those who seek to defend Christian dogma. The New Testament itself tells us that Christian faith is aligned with hoping. Hebrews 11:1 makes this clear when it says that “faith is the substance of things hoped for.” Hope by itself is akin to wishing, only stronger, while the hope that informs faith is like the down payment on a major psychological investment. It is putting your heart into what you wish for, making a commitment to that wish as if it were real, bankable and imminent. The more unbelievable the better.

And what does the faithful believer hope for? According to the bible’s own teachings, he does not hope for things that he has perceived and knows are real. Romans 8:24 confirms this:

“For we are saved by hope: but hope that is seen is not hope: for what a man seeth, why doth he yet hope for?”

When a person hopes, he hopes for something he “sees” in his “mind’s eye,” that is, he hopes for something which he imagines. In the case of the Christian believer, he sets his hope on an afterlife, an eternity in a magic kingdom. Are these things real? Has he seen these things? According to Romans 8:24, he wouldn’t hope for them if he had already seen them. No, he imagines these things, and he has no alternative to imagining them. To have faith that these things are real is not simply to believe that they are real. Contrary to popular parlance, faith is not mere belief. One has faith when he puts his hopes in the things he imagines and purposes to act on those hopes. This way one can doubt, as most believers frequently do, but he can still have faith. Even if he does not always believe that his god is there looking out for him and guiding his steps through life, the believer can still act on the hope that the deity he imagines is really there, right beside him, the ultimate imaginary friend.

A hope that is continually indulged can easily become an obsession, and Christianity pressures the believer to invest himself in its faith program as an all-consuming obsession. Rick Warren, bestselling Christian author and mega-church pastor, explicitly incorporates obsession-generating practices into his teaching:

The Bible tells us to "pray all the time." How is it possible to do this? One way is to use "breath prayers" throughout the day ... You choose a brief sentence or a simple phrase that can be repeated to Jesus in one breath: "You are with me ... You are my God." Pray it as often as possible so it is rooted deep in your heart. (The Purpose-Driven Life, p. 89)

Prayer is the means by which the believer can commune, albeit one-sidedly, with an imaginary being. Talking to the imaginary makes it seem more real. If practiced consistently, the believer begins to feel like someone is actually listening. And he will take anything – even the barking of a dog – as a sign from the supernatural back to him.

Now apologists of course become noticeably squeamish when the topic of prayer comes up in debate. There are all kinds of reasons, we learn from them, why we should not expect prayer to make any actual difference in the world. But we already know this. For amusement, ask an apologist whether or not prayer can alter “God’s plan.” It’s a yes or no question that will typically not be answered in a yes or no fashion. Rather, what you’ll often get is cheap, uninformative ridicule from an incensed defender of hopes in the imaginary who suddenly finds himself incapable of affirming absolutes. Then we are told that prayer is about building a relationship between the believer and the ruling consciousness. In fact, it is a means of taking the propagandistic tactics from the church hall out into the street in the form of a reiterative verbal self-inducement device. The effect is to replace values-oriented motivation, which is worldly and selfish, with the motivation to stay on good terms with an imaginary being, regardless of the cost to one’s values.

John 12:25: “He that loveth his life shall lose it; and he that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal.”

Luke 14:26: “If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple.”

Clearly, for the believer, the imaginary is more prized than the actual, even when it comes to the human beings that are closest to him.

The purpose of getting into the habit of constantly praying to an imaginary being is to lose sight of the fact that what the believer is praying to is in fact merely imaginary, and also to marinade his mind in the depths of the devotional program with the hope that eventually he'll be convinced its teachings are true. Conviction is never perfected, which is the reason why constant repetition and reinforcement are needed. A significant philosophical outcome to this is that the believer loses the ability to distinguish between what is real and what is imaginary. If it is written in the holy storybook, then it’s true no matter what reason, science and technical experts have to say on the topic. And defending the holy storybook from criticism is a means by which the believer can become even further invested in its confessional demands. By this point, the believer has lost touch with genuine knowledge, and is suffocating in fantasy.

Now of course the believer still perceives and interacts with real objects in the real world, but the devotional program requires him to imagine supernatural powers "back of" those objects. The believer is not encouraged only to pray, but to “watch and pray” (cf. Mk. 13:33, Mt. 26:41, Lk. 21:36). The word “watch” here is code for imagining invisible magic beings “back of” everything in the universe. As Van Til put it, "I could believe in nothing else if I did not, as back of everything, believe in this God." (“Toward A Reformed Apologetic,” 1972) Anyone can imagine anything “back of” the objects he perceives, and if he lacks the philosophical principles by which he can distinguish between what is real and what is merely imaginary, he’s a prime candidate for Christian indoctrination, a fish waiting to be hooked, gutted, filleted and canned by the ministry of fishers. It is because anyone can imagine invisible magic beings “back of” the things he sees, touches and hears, that anyone can become a Christian. Just imagine that Jesus is real, and you’re on your way to faith. As John Frame acknowledged, “a person with a wish to be fulfilled is often on the road to belief.” (Apologetics to the Glory of God, p. 37) The gospel formula of promising the unearned to men, lures those who seek the unearned into its tangle of traps. And those who are trapped by Christianity’s confessional devices, end up steeping in resentment of those who still roam free.

The believer does not imagine only good invisible magic beings “back of” everything he sees and touches. Not in the least. Indeed, there are demons, devils and other evil magic beings “back of” the things the believer experiences too. These malevolent forces are blamed for the stubbornness of those awful non-believers, spoilsports as they are for them who prefer the imaginary over the actual. Every non-Christian, the believer is encouraged to imagine, is infested with these evil invisible magic beings who have beguiled them with worldly wonders and despicable delights. They are obsessed with non-believers, because the very existence of non-believers poses an incriminating challenge against their devotional program. For if its teachings were really true, how do you explain non-belief? The devotional program makes its attempts to explain this annoying fact, but they’re far from convincing, so by themselves they would not be enough. Non-believers are thus treated collectively, generally characterized as afflicted souls seeking deliberately to do evil, deliberately rejecting “truth,” as people without hope. Again, it’s all about hope, hope in the imaginary.

This is where the fear kicks in. The Christian devotional program requires the believer to take fear seriously. But he doesn’t fear the possibility of mundane accidents or common criminals. Rather, he fears things that are imaginary. He fears what he is told can happen after people die. And more than this, he wants other people to be consumed with this kind of fear, just as he is. So just as he puts his hopes in the imaginary, the believer also puts his hopes in fear. He hopes that by instilling fear in non-believers, they’ll either be converted or silenced, for he cannot stand their presence, and this is because he cannot stand being reminded that he’s been had. But to instill this fear in a non-believer, the believer’s going to have to get the non-believer to start imagining things, just as the believer did when he started out in the faith. Imaginative scenarios are often conjured to concretize the peril of the non-believer's imagined spiritual situation. Consider the following:

Suppose you were exploring an unknown glacier in the north of Greenland in the dead of winter. Just as you reach a sheer cliff with a spectacular view of miles and miles of jagged ice and mountains of snow, a terrible storm breaks in. The wind is so strong that the fear rises in your heart that it might blow you over the cliff. But in the midst of the storm you discover a cleft in the ice where you can hide.... (Why Faith Alone)

Now, I have never been to Greenland, and I have never attempted to explore a glacier, either known or unknown, even in good weather. Such things really do not interest me; I have better ways of spending my time. But I can certainly imagine myself in such a situation. By imagining such a situation, I can project myself into the perilous danger described here, an emergency in which the whole universe seems to have turned malevolently against me, with no course of action available for rescuing myself. The analogy is of course acknowledged by the Christian to be marginal, for in such a situation the danger is "merely physical," and the peril which the Christian has in mind is supposed to be "spiritual" - i.e., supernatural, with “eternal implications,” affecting one's "soul," etc.

So even if I imagine myself at the edge of an arctic glacier during a violent ice storm with neither shoe nor shelter, that’s not really enough imagining. I’m supposed to imagine something even worse than this. The believer wants me to wade deeper into my imagination, for only there will be found the kind of fear that he wants to take seriously. But how do you concretize something as woeful and dreadful as what the Christian wants you to take seriously? A materialist would not likely be impressed with the glacier scenario. He could easily say to it, “it would be the ride of a lifetime! The chest-pounding exhilaration of my last moments of life would be worth it all! And it would end as suddenly as it began. After all, when I’m dead, I’m worm bait anyway.” So such imaginative scenarios are in fact rather self-defeating for the apologist, for unless one blurs the distinction between the real and the imaginary, they tend to accomplish precisely the opposite end that is desired.

But the point that non-believers do not accept the believer’s religious premises seems to be lost on the believer. Instead, the believer, who dutifully recites the dogma that he has no righteousness of his own, casts himself in the dire scenario he describes, and there he imagines himself standing before a self-sufficient and holy deity, thinking "What command would I rather hear than this: 'Hope in my love!'?" Of course, it is easy to imagine that an imaginary being has demands and is capable of love, that it loves and provides and protects. Imaginary beings are capable of whatever the imaginer imagines it to be capable of. And if the only condition for salvation from the utter deficiency and depravity that believers imagine for man, is that the believer pretend that an invisible magic being will be there to save him and that its terms are that he put his hope in it, he will naturally want to call this "good news." For it really requires nothing from him other than that he desire the unearned and go along with the devotional program’s pretenses. It has no initial material cost, but it demands that he sacrifice his conscience and live a lie. It’s all downhill from there.

But it is not only good news for those who imagine themselves filthy, impotent wretches. It is also the glory of the imaginary deity to make only this demand upon the believer. Why? Because when he hopes in the imaginary he shows that the imaginary is strong and he, the believer, is weak; that the imaginary is rich and he is poor; that the imaginary is full and he is empty. For in fact, a man who substitutes the imaginary for the actual is in fact empty. When the believer hopes in an imaginary deity, he shows that he is the one who has needs, not the imaginary deity itself (Psalm 50:10-15; 71:4-6, 14).... Of course, the imaginary has no needs anyway, so the believer is on safe ground here.

The beauty of the gospel is that in one simple act of imagination (hoping that an imaginary deity exists and has cosmically taken custody of one’s soul), an individual can pretend that the religious message he hears is “good news” and that his deity gets the glory. That is why the believer can imagine that the deity takes pleasure in those who hope in his love – because in this simple act of imagining, he can imagine that his deity’s grace is glorified and that he as a filthy wretch has been rescued. This is the command of the gospel that keeps the object of imagination at the center – the center of its own affections and of the believer’s.


So why faith alone? Because in the mind of the believer, faith validates fantasy through his hope in what he imagines. The Christian devotional program provides, in the form of biblical verses intended to reassure the believer that the imaginary is real and comfort him in times of doubt and distress, the formulae for reinforcing the delusion that Jesus is real and in the believer's life. For this to be successful, it is crucial that the believer imagine that his god is present with him at all times, observing what the believer observes, and empathizing with his situation on a day to day basis.

"Draw nigh to God, and he will draw nigh to you." - James 4:8

If you imagine that Jesus is close to you, then, like any imaginary friend, Jesus will be close to you. As with anything imaginary, however, the imaginer has to make the first move. He needs to do the imagining first, and then the fantasy will reciprocate. This is why Christianity requires the believer to become as a little child. Children love to imagine. Only for the Christian, imagining is more than just playtime. He imagines, but also hopes that what he imagines is real. He hopes this so much that after a while, it almost does seem real to him. The result is a waking fantasy. For a notable example of this, see Carr vs. Cole.

“Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.” – II Cor. 5:17

The believer imagines that by simply adhering to the prescribed Christian devotional program, he has been metaphysically transformed from his old self to a new being, not simply refurbished, but wholly renewed. Of course, he's still the same person in reality, but he imagines he's different. He's still a biological organism, still needs to eat and sleep, still needs to put forth effort to achieve corporeal values without which he would die. So no change is visible, but that's because the change is imaginary. The imaginary and the invisible of course look very much alike.

"...lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world." - Mt. 28:20

The believer is to imagine that Jesus is always with him, and so long as the believer imagines that Jesus is with him, it seems to the believer that Jesus is really there, just like an imaginary friend. Interestingly, when believers in other deities imagine their deities, they do essentially the very same thing that Christian believers do: they imagine. A Muslim, for instance, imagines Allah. A Zoroastrian imagines Ahura Mazda. A Hindu imagines Brahma. A Lahu tribesman imagines Geusha. Etc. There is an unlimited constellation of invisible magic beings that can be accessed through the imagination. And just as the Muslim, the Zoroastrian, the Hindu and the Lahu tribesman have no alternative to imagining as a means of "knowing" their deities, the Christian believer has no alternative to imagining as the means of "knowing" his deity. And when he urges non-believers to "come to Christ," the Christian is in fact demanding that non-believers imagine Jesus and pretend along with him that Jesus is actually a real being existing in a supernatural realm, but also right there next to them too. The imaginary can be wherever the imaginer wants it to be. The reason why Christians become so upset with non-believers when they refrain from indulging in the imaginary, is because anyone can imagine anything he wants and believers are disturbed when people don't go along with the pretense. The believer wants his religious beliefs to be true, so he can't understand why others wouldn't want this as well and why anyone would resist confusing the imaginary with the real. And because he wants his religious beliefs to be true, he resents those who don't go along with the pretense that they are true. By its very nature, non-belief pours heaping coals on the mind of the bible-believer. This is why internet apologists have acquired the reputation for condescending attitudes, vitriolic defensiveness, contentiousness and pettiness.

“And as they were eating, Jesus took bread, and blessed it, and brake it, and gave it to the disciples, and said, Take, eat; this is my body. And he took the cup, and gave thanks, and gave it to them, saying, Drink ye all of it; For this is my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins. But I say unto you, I will not drink henceforth of this fruit of the vine, until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father's kingdom.” – Mt. 28:26-29

In the communion ritual, when the believer drinks wine, he's supposed to imagine that it's really Jesus' blood that he's drinking. And when he eats a wafer, he's supposed to imagine that it's actually Jesus' flesh that he's eating. In reality, he's really only drinking wine and really only eating a wafer. But in the Christian worldview, reality bends to serve the imagination.

“Don't you know that you are slaves of anyone you obey? You can be slaves of sin and die, or you can be obedient slaves of God and be acceptable to him.” – Rom. 6:16

Christians view all human beings as slaves, either as slaves to a good imaginary being, or to an evil imaginary being. Some strains of Christianity are more or less consistent with its overt deterministic implications and even characterize human beings as puppets in service to one or another imaginary being. It is good to let Christians speak for themselves on such matters, for in fact they are slaves to the imaginary. A Christian ministry, then, is an organization devoted to enslaving its members to imagination.

“And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.” – Mt. 10:28

The believer loves to imagine that an invisible magic being is waiting to judge and condemn people, especially spoilsport atheists, after they die. The believer obsesses over death just as he obsesses over fear and guilt. Death is so important that it occupies a central concern in his worldview. It serves as the standard to which he measures everything in life. This seems benign to him, even sensible, because he imagines death to be another realm, a realm of vindication for himself as a devotee of the imaginary, and vengeance on those who have the audacity to recognize that reality does not conform to anyone’s imagination.


Is this an unlikely analysis? Unfortunately not at all. Frightening situations, like the Greenland scenario we saw above and many teachings from the bible, can provide the mind with a working model for squelching one’s knowledge of reality to comport with what is imagined. We see this in Cornelius Van Til’s autobiographical account of his own childhood experience of investing himself in the theistic confession. Van Til tells us:

I can recall playing as a child in a sandbox built into a corner of the hay-barn. From the hay-barn I would go through the cow-barn to the house. Built into the hay- barn too, but with doors opening into the cow-barn, was a bed for the working-man. How badly I wanted permission to sleep in that bed for a night! Permission was finally given. Freud was still utterly unknown to me, but I had heard about ghosts and "forerunners of death." That night I heard the cows jingle their chains. I knew there were cows and that they did a lot of jingling with their chains, but after a while I was not quite certain that it was only the cows that made all the noises I heard. Wasn't there someone walking down the aisle back of the cows, and wasn't he approaching my bed? Already I had been taught to say my evening prayers. Some of the words of that prayer were to this effect: "Lord, convert me, that I may be converted." Unmindful of the paradox, I prayed that prayer that night as I had never prayed before. (Why I Believe in God)

There really was no one “walking down the aisle back of the cows,” and there really was no one “approaching [young Van Til’s] bed.” This was all something he imagined, and as he imagined, the distinction between what really was the case and what he imagined to be the case became increasingly blurred. This is evident from his own admission: “after a while I was not quite certain that it was only the cows that made all the noises I heard.” And as he lost sight of reality, he naturally became frightened, and it was here, in his highly charged emotional state, that he made his lifelong decision to surrender his mind to the imaginary. It is on this basis that he turned to his parents’ religious preachings, in prayer delving even deeper into the imaginary – an imaginary fix for an imaginary problem. Later in life Van Til was proud to tell us that “I had not in the least given up the faith of my childhood.” (The Defense of the Faith, p. 191) Which means: Van Til never learned how to distinguish the real from the imaginary, even as an adult. This is what Christianity does to the minds of human beings if allowed.

by Dawson Bethrick

God the Father: A God of Love?

The following description of the Christian god was sent to me by a faithful believer, but what is stated here is by no means unique to this individual believer. It tells us all we need to know about the Christian worldview in a nutshell:

He allowed His own Son to be tortured, mocked, spit upon and beaten beyond recognition, then crucified on the cross to die for your sin, my sin and the sins of all mankind.

What father allows "his own son to be tortured, mocked, spit upon and beaten beyond recognition, then crucified on the cross to die" for someone else's misdeeds? Answer: the first member of the Christian trinity allows this. And it is apparently proud of doing so.

Christians refer to the god described above as a “Father,” and rejoice in counting themselves among its “children.” They claim that their god is a "God of love," and its greatest act of love is said to be the sacrifice of its own son. Its son was the ideal man, they say, flawless in every possible way, morally, spiritually, intellectually, etc. And this innocent son’s father deliberately sacrificed it for the sake of totally depraved beneficiaries. This god’s greatest act of love, then, was the sacrifice of the ideal for the sake of the non-ideal.

Christian witnesses clearly take delight in telling non-believers about how their god sacrificed its own son, as if we would find this attractive in some way. Believers find it attractive because ultimately they seek the unearned and do not understand the relationship between love and values, and between values and human life. They think love finds its greatest expression not only in sacrifice, but also in death. For in Christianity, the two are wedded in a marriage arranged in heaven. "Greater love hath no man than this," it is written in John 15:13, "that a man lay down his life for his friends."

Who desires that his friend lay down his life for him? Who would want to gain from the sacrifice of someone he calls "friend"? Who in good conscience could live with the knowledge that his friend gave up his life so that he could... do what? And who would want to be the friend of someone who expects such sacrifice as a term of friendship?

As a parent myself, I would never allow what the Christian describes above to happen to my child. In fact, on my understanding of love, it would be an utter contradiction to say that a parent who did allow this to happen to his child, loves his child. To call the destruction of something you value “love” is to destroy the concept of love by obliterating its genetic roots. For values are the genetic root of the concept of love. But clearly Christianity divorces the concept of love from one's values, for the sacrifice of values - i.e., their surrender to something beneath them - is the ideal according to the Christian scheme of things.

Even more, it would be anathema to good parenting to look to someone who willingly allows such things to happen to his own child as a model of good parenting. Good parenting requires one's devotion to values, not the willingness (or, as we find in the Christian gospel formula, the eagerness) to sacrifice values. Indeed, love is devotion to one's values, not indifference, not animosity, not what the Christian gospel formula models.

So the question now comes to, who would want to become a child of a father whose love is expressed by sacrificing his own son? Who would want a "father" who allows such carnage to happen to his own child to become his adopted parent? A Christian would. So who would want to become a Christian? Someone who sees the sacrifice of one’s only son as an act of love.

Carnage is obviously very important to this god, in spite of the religion's emphasis on "the spirit." For without carnage, its "plan" could never be fulfilled. Carnage is integral to the plan. Without carnage, there is no salvation. Believers typically try to justify this by saying that carnage is what gave rise to the need for salvation in the first place. But this only shows how hard they've fallen for the scam. For if you posit a perfect creator, how can you have any imperfection in its creation? If there is any imperfection in the creation, its creator could not, by definition, be perfect. With an omnipotent creator, any flaw is traceable back to the creator. The Christian notion of "perfect" is just another stolen concept.

And notice the implications this has for the Christian view of justice. Justice in Christianity involves sacrificing the ideal for the sake of the non-ideal; and its model of justice enshrines the punishment of the just for the crimes of the unjust. Meanwhile, opportunity (i.e., "grace") is extended to the unjust to escape their rightful penalty, which means those perpetrators of crime who sanction this twisted view of justice, need not pay for their crimes. On the Christian model of justice, the good must be sacrifice for the sake of the evil.

How is any of this just? What father would consider it "just" to turn his own child over to a squad of vicious thugs for the express purpose of being "tortured, mocked, spit upon and beaten beyond recognition, then crucified on the cross to die"? Christianity calls such a father "a God of Love." It calls its god "merciful,"

Now someone who admits to choosing to believe that such a being exists, to choosing to worship a father whose greatest act of love is the sacrifice of his innocent son for the sake of guilty criminals, acknowledges in his admission that it is simply a matter of choice, that his belief is ultimately arbitrary. This “love” that the Christian has for his god who sends its own son to die a convict’s excruciating death, is the ultimate presupposition, the “heart commitment,” of the Christian worldview.

And people wonder why we're concerned about the state of the world...

by Dawson Bethrick

The Double Whammy

A visitor to my blog, apparently a Christian, recently left an excited comment under the moniker “TruthTRUTH” attempting to defend the claim that his god exists with a very common approach. (It’s always curious to me why God’s self-appointed representatives conceal their identities with monikers like this one.)

TruthTRUTH’s approach has two distinct steps. First he proves that his god exists by arguing that the universe needed a creator, and quite coincidentally his god happens to be its creator. "Stuff doesn't pop out of thin air," he writes. The second step is that one cannot disprove the existence of his god simply because we don't "perfectly understand its nature," and "because it isn't tangible or even explainable." Significantly, he puts love, thoughts and emotions into this same category, suggesting that "just because you can't show someone else your thoughts, or explain exactly what a thought even is, doesn't mean thoughts don't exist."

We can call this an example of the “double whammy” approach to apologetics: it seeks to produce a proof as well as preempt certain avenues of disproof. Seems simple enough, doesn’t it? The first step establishes that the desired deity must exist, and the second step establishes that one cannot disprove its existence. But how well do these arguments fare? In the course of my interaction with TruthTRUTH’s comments, I will show that both steps are riddled with insuperable problems, problems that are easily avoided by adopting a position which, to the disappointment of theists, is incompatible with theism.

So without any further ado, let's jump in and take a look at TruthTRUTH's apology.

TruthTRUTH wrote:

Dawson, you make some very compelling arguments. But who created humans? The universe? Who created that very first particle that ever came into existence?

I would recommend some serious premise-checking here. Why suppose that the universe was “created”? Why suppose that “the very first particle that ever came into existence” was “created”? Why even suppose that there was a “very first particle that ever came into existence” in the first place? And why think a person (implied by the use of the interrogative pronoun ‘who’) “created” these things? What does “create” mean anyway? Why suppose that there was a time when the universe or particles or anything that exists did not exist? If we suppose that there was a “very first particle that ever came into existence” (a supposition that I would like to see argued for), why suppose there was some pre-existing person “who created” it? Your questions make assumptions which need support, but here you ask these questions apparently unaware of this fact.

The issue that is being raised here is one of starting point. I see two options here: either we start with existence, or we start with non-existence. If we start with existence (as my worldview does), then there’s no puzzle to sort out here – no need to come up with an explanation for existence. It’s only if we start with non-existence (as TruthTRUTH apparently thinks we need to do) that we need to come up with an explanation for the obvious fact that things do in fact exist.

TruthTRUTH writes:

You speak of reason. Here's my reasoning.

Okay, let’s take a look at it.

TruthTRUTH writes:

A. Stuff doesn't pop out of thin air.

I agree. That’s one reason why I don’t accept the “creation ex nihilo” idea. It’s a fantasy that is based on a falsehood. Besides, if we start with existence rather than non-existence, then there’s no need to suppose that anything had to “pop out of thin air” – existence already exists.

TruthTRUTH writes:

It comes from a source. Babies come from their mommies, Plants grow out of the ground, factories must be built by hands.

But even in each of the examples given here, we have things coming from other things that already exist. The material that a mommy’s body uses to manufacture a baby already exist. Similarly with plants: seedlings use water and nutrients to grow into plants. Again with factories, men build factories from materials they gather from the earth. There’s no example here of anything coming into existence from non-existence; we never observe things coming into existence from nothing. The source of the specific objects mentioned in the example here is: existence, not non-existence.

TruthTRUTH writes:

B. Thus we can trace back all of creation, if we must.

On the contrary, everything traces back to existence, not “creation.” You yourself admitted that “stuff doesn’t pop out of thin air.” Every “new” thing (be it babies, plants, factories, or what have you) are in fact re-arrangements of pre-existing materials. Find one example of something that “pops” into existence. You won’t find one. To say that the universe is an example of such a thing begs the question, and is thus invalid. Also, since ‘creation’ assumes the fact of existence (especially in that it requires a creator to do the creating in question), it assumes what it is trying to explain, namely existence. Thus it commits the fallacy of the stolen concept: it asserts a concept (namely ‘creation’) while ignoring its genetic roots (in this case the fact of existence).

Futher reading:

Basic Contra-Theism
Theism and Its Piggyback Starting Point
Responding to Pavielle
Responding to Chris

TruthTRUTH writes:

Suppose the following, which many believe to be true. We evolved from primates, who evolved from ... etc. etc. all the way back to microscopic bacteria in the ocean. Who created that bacteria? Where did it come from?

In the case of the ancestry of organisms, we see that each species evolved from some previously existing species. In other words, nothing is “popping” into existence from nothing in such a case. In fact, I see no reason why we should not suppose that the first or original species did not come from something that already existed as well. After all, the elements which we find in living organisms are also found naturally occurring in non-living things - such as carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, iron, and other elements. So it seems a tall order, one that exceeds the bounds of credibility, to suggest that the first species (assuming there was a “first species”) came into existence from nothing. As I pointed out above, we never observe something coming into existence from nothing, so why postulate such a phenomenon when, granted certain illicit premises, we seem to have been backed up against a wall? Moreover, why suppose there was a person “who created” the original bacteria that you propose here? In other words, why suppose that some act of consciousness was necessary to bring these things into existence, even if we grant the untenable premise that they did come into existence?

You ask where that original bacteria came from. That’s easy: they came from existence. However, the creationist finds this answer unsatisfying. The creationist posits a creation of these things because he doesn’t want to begin with existence; this would annul his religious beliefs. Instead, he assumes that we need to begin with non-existence. But since deep down he recognizes that beginning with non-existence is utterly nonsensical, he posits a supernatural consciousness which “creates” these things. But this presupposes precisely what he didn’t want to grant in the first place, which is: existence, my very starting point. Otherwise he posits not only a consciousness which has nothing but itself to be conscious of (a clear contradiction in terms), but also a consciousness which doesn’t exist (given his presumed starting point of non-existence). Yes, the more we explore TruthTRUTH’s reasoning, the more unpluggable holes we find in it.

TruthTRUTH writes:

Or take the Earth. Our solar system came from a giant explosion called the big bang. But the big bang assumes particles already existed. Who created these particles?

Again, why suppose anything was created in the first place? The assumption that they were created could only be reasonable if first we assume that nothing existed at some point in the past. But why suppose this? Again, why begin with non-existence, when we know for a fact that existence exists? And supposing we accept non-existence as our starting point, why suppose that a person was need to “create” these particles? If non-existence is our starting point, how can we posit the existence of a creator who creates these things? You want to ask where these particles come from? My answer is: they came from existence. The only alternative to my answer is to say they came from non-existence, but you yourself have already gone on record affirming that “stuff doesn’t pop out of thin air.” The alternative you want to go with – “creation” – really isn’t an alternative to existence; it’s a way to try to have your cake (deny existence – hence the need to explain existence) and eat it, too (affirm existence – by imagining a person “who created” it all). But this is internally incoherent due to the self-contradiction which this assumption attempts to smuggle into the argument.

TruthTRUTH writes:

C. Thus it is impossible to escape the reality that at some point, way back along the line of creation, there is an "Un-caused cause".

If there is such a thing as an “un-caused cause,” it would be existence. This is not only metaphysically necessary, it is also conceptually sound, for the concept ‘cause’ presupposes existence. We can know this because causality is the necessary relationship between an entity and its own actions: in order for there to be any action, there must be some entity which does the acting, and for any entity to act, it must first exist. In other words, there could be no causality apart from or outside of existence. So my position, as atheistic as it is, is secure with the notion of an ‘uncaused cause’ so long as it recognizes these fundamental, undeniable truths.

But somehow your “reasoning” took you elsewhere, to something we can only imagine. For you stated:

This uncaused cause is GOD.

Now, the word “god” is typically supposed to refer to some supernatural, conscious being. And yet, where is the reasoning to support the premise that the things you’ve been asking about find their source in a form of consciousness? What supports the assumption that they were "willed" into existence? What supports the assumption that there exists a consciousness with the power you attribute to this being whose existence you affirm? We do not find any example of a consciousness possessing such power in nature, this much is certain. So what inputs give content to the concept ‘consciousness’ such that we can validly suppose that such power exists? As I have pointed out before, I can imagine such a consciousness, and I suspect that this is what theists are doing. But this means that their god is imaginary. If you protest at this point and declare that your god is not imaginary, that you do not apprehend it by means of imagining it, then by what means do you discern it? Do you perceive it? If so, what does it look like? Do you conceive of it? If so, what facts does it integrate? Does it name something that you have awareness of directly, or does it name something whose existence can only be inferred? If the former, then what is this mode of awareness that gives you direct apprehension of what you call "god"? If the latter, I hope you have something better than the “uncaused cause” argument you’ve put forth, because I’ve obliterated that one already. In the final analysis, we only learn of this god's alleged existence from those who believe that it exists (or who want it to exist), not from the being itself (which, according to the legends we read in the NT, is able to make itself known to human beings). None of this bodes well for the theist.

TruthTRUTH writes:

Whether you call this being, Blakko or Jehovah, or whatever, THERE IS A CREATOR, since there is a creation. How can there not be a creator? What is the alternative?

These things you name, Blakko and Jehovah, are imaginary. The imaginary is not real. You point to existence, and then affirm that it was created (without arguing for this premise), and then conclude that there must have been a creator (which you can only apprehend by means of imagination). And if you affirm that anything that exists needed a creator, who created the creator? Why arbitrarily stop with one creator? You may say that there can be no infinite regress. Fine. That still doesn’t explain why you stop with the first creator. How would you know when it’s time to stop? It could be the second, tenth, 82nd or 5,291st iteration of a prior creator which is the original “uncaused cause.” How would you know when you've finally reached the "uncaused cause"?

You ask what the alternative to a creator is? Easy: Existence. Begin with existence, and there’s no need to posit a creator before it. Indeed, if you attempt to posit a creator before existence, you’re still positing existence, the thing you say that needs a creator. Thus your reasoning shipwrecks on the rocky shore of stolen concepts. Not a very good way to conduct your reasoning.

TruthTRUTH writes:

Our universe is so vast its size [it] is incomprehensible.

It’s pretty big, yes. As for comprehending it, we begin by identifying it with generalities. The concept ‘universe’ itself is a case in point: it is a concept that is so wide in its scope of reference that it includes everything that exists. In fact, even if one could prove that “God” exists, it would exist as just one more entity in the universe, subject to scientific examination just as everything else that exists in it is. To exclude “God” from the access of scientific examination would be to say that it has no objective identity, which would put us right back into the realm of the imagination.

TruthTRUTH writes:

Similarly it is difficult to understand the nature of God.

Well, that’s certainly the case, especially when “the nature of God” seems to vary from believer to believer. Even within Christianity, there are so many different views of what its god is, what it does, what it doesn’t do, why it does what it does, why it doesn’t do what it never does, etc. Incidentally, that is exactly what we would expect to be the case if in fact “God” is simply imaginary. And no believer has ever given me any good reason to suppose it is not imaginary.

TruthTRUTH writes:

But you cannot deny the existence of some power, some force, SOMETHING that created all of this around us.

Why can’t I deny such claims? If I don’t think they’re true, you bet I’m going to deny them. And if their defenders can’t avoid conceptual errors (such as the stolen concept I exposed above) when they display the “reasoning” they use to conclude that such a “power” exists, then all the more reason to deny their claim. As I have pointed out before, I don’t have faith in “God” for the same reason I don’t have faith in square circles.

TruthTRUTH writes:

Or are you supposing that we all popped out of thin air, Dawson?

I have never affirmed anything even remotely approaching the view that "we all popped out of thin air." As I have always maintained, I begin with existence, not with non-existence. Therefore, your god is out of a job, flat and simple.

TruthTRUTH writes:

That's not a very compelling "reason".

Tell you what, since you’re so interested in dealing with compelling reasons, what is your compelling reason to suppose that the universe needed to be created by an act of consciousness? This is something theists typically like to gloss over.

TruthTRUTH writes:

And if we didn't pop out of thin air, where did the universe come from?

First, let’s clarify what we’re talking about. As with most theists who argue for a beginning of the universe, you offer no definition for ‘universe’, even though you’ve used the term several times now. Because of this, it remains unclear what exactly we're talking about. So

I’ll offer my own: universe is the sum total of everything that exists. Given this definition, it is both nonsensical and self-contradictory to assert the existence of something outside the universe. Why? Because if something exists, it is part of the sum total of everything that exists by virtue of its existence. So, where did the universe “come from”? The word “where” would point us to a place. But every place that exists, exists in the universe (for reasons stated). The question performatively contradicts itself by asking us to accept the hidden premise that a place exists outside of the sum total of everything that exists. So the question is invalid. What’s the alternative? As I’ve stated already: Begin with existence, and there’s no problem. The universe didn't come from anywhere, because it didn't "come" to begin with. There has always been existence, which means: there has always been a universe.

TruthTRUTH writes:

Furthermore you're most popular argument seems to be this: "How can you separate God from your imagination?"

That is a question, not an argument. And since theists seem very hard-pressed to answer it, it's all I need. Vytautas could not answer it. At this point, I need no argument; if a simple question like this is enough to bring theism to a shattering crumble, why would I need to argue anything? I ask the question, and sit back and watch the entertainment.

TruthTRUTH writes:

I would pose this question to you, my friend: Do you believe in love? Rage? Envy? Of course you do. But please, distinguish to me where the love ends and your imagination begins.

Okay, I’ll explain it to you. Both the emotions which you list and imagination are faculties of consciousness, and thus have some commonality as such. But emotions and imagination are distinct from each other. First let’s look at emotions. Emotions are non-volitional reactions to new information that we learn as we understand that information relates to our values. If new information promotes my values (e.g., my wife bought me a new pair of pants, I’m getting a big tax refund this year, my daughter said her first words, etc.), my emotions respond positively: e.g., gratitude, relief, excitement, joy, etc. If the new information reveals a threat against my values (e.g., my wife got into an auto accident, I have to pay big time in my tax return, my daughter hurt her finger), my emotions respond negatively: concern, worry, anxiety, panic, frustration, etc. The new information is something I discover (rather than imagine), and the values they impact are actual (not imaginary).

Now let’s look at imagination: Imagination is the volitional process of selectively rearranging inputs we have discovered in ways that we do not perceive. Let's look at an example. I imagine a skyscraper that is 400 stories tall. Although I have seen skyscrapers, there is no such thing as a 400-storey skyscraper in existence, but I can imagine one nonetheless. My imagining it is a volitional process: I can choose to vary the inputs at this point, since I own the imagination, since it is a function of my consciousness. I can imagine the skyscraper being 410 stories, or 267 stories, or anything else I wish. I can imagine it has panorama elevator banks, that it has bay windows, that it is glass and steel, that it has gargoyles mounted on the corners, that it is square, or domed, or a jumble of different shapes. I can imagine it existing in a big city such as New York or Singapore, or in the middle of a barren desert, or even on the moon. Since I am in control of what I imagine, I can vary its attributes as I please.

Emotions do not respond to our volition in this manner. If I get a bill from my doctor for $100,000.00 for a routine check-up, I can't help but feel at the very least baffled by this. I certainly wouldn't experience joy, nor could I choose to be happy about this. I may initially suppose it's a mistake and experience amusement, but if I initially thought it was legitimate I couldn't choose to feel joy; joy is not an emotion one experiences when he learns that something is threatening his values. Emotions are non-volitional in this sense, unlike imagination. It is because of this fact - that emotions are involuntary - that certain commands contained in the bible indicate to me that its authors did not have a very good understanding of the human mind. The commandment that we "love our neighbor as ourselves" is a case in point. Love is not subject to commands. I cannot choose to love my neighbor when I know that he abuses his children, can't hold a job, beats his wife, lets his dogs poop on my lawn, etc. I can say I love him, but this would be a pretense, a lie, and I'm simply too honest for that. If I don't love someone, I'm not going to say I do love him. And someone like I just described, I would not love, even if an invisible magic being demanded that I love him.

So there is a significant distinction here between the emotions one feels and the things he imagines. However, in both cases, we have awareness of these things directly and immediately, and understand them through introspection. They are not entities that exist apart from us; they are an integral part of our experience. You won't learn about these things from the teachings in the bible. For more information on this, see my blog Lord Oda's Problem With Pain.

TruthTRUTH writes:

This line of reasoning is a simple cop out.

It is? How so? Consider: if someone comes to me and says that some invisible magic being created the universe, and he goes on to say that this being is imperceptible, beyond any capacity of mine to perceive, that I must have "faith" to believe in its existence, and that "everything in this universe is proof of God" (such as Peter claimed), how is my question about how I can distinguish between what he's claiming and what he's merely imagining a "cop out"? What exactly am I copping out of by asking this kind of question? And why is there so much difficulty in answering it?

TruthTRUTH writes:

You can't disprove something just because you can't perfectly understand its nature.

I'm under no obligation to disprove any claim, especially if the person issuing the claim can't prove it in the first place. Moreover, if he claims that something exists but fails to identify a clear and reliable method by which one can distinguish between the thing he claims exists and what he may merely be imagining, then I reserve the liberty to take solace in the fact that he may very well be delusional. Besides, it's not a matter of understanding the nature of what is claimed; theists use concepts to describe their god, concepts whose basis could only be the real world in which we live to the extent that those concepts are legitimate. So as long as those concepts have objective meaning, I have no problem understanding what is being claimed. The problem arises in that they use these concepts, concepts which originate in the finite, corporeal, natural and corruptible realm to describe something that is supposed to be infinite, incorporeal, supernatural and incorruptible. Legitimate concepts find their legitimacy ultimately in what we perceive and the process by which we formed those concepts. Concepts whose basis is the natural world and the natural process we use to form them could have no reference to something that allegedly exists in some alleged realm contradicting the natural world.

TruthTRUTH writes:

Nor can you disprove something because it isn't tangible or even explainable.

See above. Again, there's no need for me to disprove something that is real: if it's real, it's real. Also, there's no need to prove that the non-existent doesn't exist: if it doesn't exist, it doesn't exist, no matter who believes it exists. If theists have a hard time proving that their god exists (which has historically been the case, hands down), and there are good reasons to suppose that theism is invalid (as has been shown in both my writings and in the writings of other contrapologists; ask if you want references), then my task on the matter is done. It's at this point that theists start berating me personally for "arrogance" and other "sins," or - as TruthTRUTH himself will do below - issue pious threats of doom and gloom.

TruthTRUTH writes:

Try explaining to someone how anguish feels after a loved one passes away. Its very difficult to do, yet we all recognize the existence of anguish in our world today.

This is a learning experience which most individuals have faced to one degree or another by their early adulthood. Anyone who has lost anything - especially if it is a prized possession - understands firsthand the kind of emotion that accompanies such loss. But I want to make an important point here: our emotions are integrally bound to our values, and values are selfish in nature (see here; Christians are notoriously reluctant to admit this fact). If you lose something that you value, your emotions consequently respond accordingly: you feel grief, sadness, disappointment, etc., to one degree or another. Our emotions respond according to how our circumstances affects us personally. That's because we are not indifferent about our values. If values were selfless, as many Christians have insisted to me, then I wouldn't care what happened to them, I'd be indifferent about them. It's because values are selfish that what happens to our values effects our emotions the way it does.

Now back to the topically relevant point at hand: Isn't it curious how Christian apologists treat emotions as if they were analogous to their god? This is the card that TruthTRUTH plays while objecting to the challenge that he as a theist demonstrate that his god is distinguishable from something he is only imagining. Clearly he thinks there is some commonality between his god as an object of knowledge and his cognitive functions as an object of knowledge. What exactly makes them so similar? Theists tend to think of them as similar because our thoughts and other mental functions are said to be "immaterial," and coincidentally so is "God." In his debate with Gordon Stein, Greg Bahnsen similarly groups his god and what he called "abstract entities" into the the same general category, the common denominator being that both "abstract entities" and "God" are "immaterial entities." To say that something is "immaterial," however, is unhelpful in informing us of its identity, for it only tells us what something is not, not what it is. So again, if the Christian god is comparable to "mental entities," how is it distinguishable from something that the mind fabricates? The "immaterial" label also emphatically raises the question: How do we have knowledge of something that is "immaterial"? An even more primitive consideration would be: By what means do we have awareness of something that is "immaterial"? This question is topically relevant because we are constantly being told by Christians that we should not expect to perceive their god by means of our senses, and the reason for this is that it is "immaterial" and thus not subject to sense perception. These questions have been stubbornly difficult for theists to address in any clear manner, and I suspect there are good reasons why it's been so difficult.

By objecting to the challenge that I have raised against theism, theists are essentially saying that their god is not merely a thought or fantasy of theirs. And yet, their first line of defense is to compare the nature of their god to the nature of thoughts and other mental phenomena (such as emotions). Both are said to have the same characteristic - "immateriality." But what distinguishes them? This is the question I have posed. They treat their god as if it were an entity which exists independent of human cognition. But that's just the point in question here, so asserting this to be the case would simply beg the question and fail to move the theist closer to addressing the challenge that's been put before him.

TruthTRUTH writes:

When you're at a McDonald's thinking to yourself, "Hmmm, do I want a Big Mac or just a Coke?" are you simply "imagining" these thoughts, or are they real?

The thoughts are real - they are a function of one's consciousness, and consciousness is real. But the Big Mac and Coke that I'm think about in my mind are imaginary. My hope is that, whatever I do end up getting in the order I place is significantly like what I imagined. They are distinguishable though: actual burgers and fries will fill my stomach, but imaginary ones will not. But I've learned to be careful here at fast food joints. For instance, I don't like pickles and I don't like whipped cream. When I imagine a burger, I don't imagine any pickles in it. But many places add pickles as a standard part of the burger's build. Just because the burger I imagine has no pickles, does not mean that the burger I'm served will have no pickles. Again, existence holds primacy over consciousness. So I have to remember this in my orders. Also, I love milkshakes, but while the milkshake I imagine has no whipped cream, many places as a matter of routine top their milkshakes off with whipped cream, which I find annoying. So I have to keep this in mind when ordering.

TruthTRUTH writes:

Just because you can't show someone else your thoughts, or explain exactly what a thought even is, doesn't mean thoughts don't exist.

Since this defense is continually being raised, we must ask: What does this have to do with the topic at hand? To the extent that this is relevant, it confirms the essence of my critique. Thoughts are a function of one's consciousness, and consciousness is an attribute of human beings. I do not deny that human beings exist, or that they are conscious, so I certainly don't dispute that human beings can think. But this is not analogous to the theistic claim. Theists are not saying that their god is merely a thought (if so, they would be openly conceding my criticisms of theism). Rather, they claim that their god is an independently existing entity, a being which is "extra-mental" as one might say. So apparently it is supposed to be like other entities (such as rocks, flowers, automobiles, etc.) in that it exists independent of human consciousness, but it is also supposed to be like thoughts and emotions in that it is "immaterial" or "non-physical" or "incorporeal." Many theists suggest that we can "know" this god by consulting some kind of "internal witness" provided by the presence of a "Spirit" which presumably infallibly testifies of its existence and will for one's life in his "heart."

Unfortunately, one could make this kind of claim about anything he imagines. For instance, I can imagine that an invisible magic being - call it Bathuko - resides in my "heart" and guides my steps in life. I can easily interpret everything in my experience to conform with this imagination. If the phone rings, for instance, my choice to answer it and say hello are in accordance with Bathuko's will. If my boss invites me to a meeting, my choice to accept the invitation and attend the meeting is in keeping with Bathuko's will. After all, if Bathuko created my "heart" in the first place (I'm free to imagine this as well), then why wouldn't I suppose that what my "heart" decides to do is in keeping with Bathuko's will? I can also imagine that things that happen outside my control are actually being controlled by this same invisible magic being. If I get a raise in my salary, it's Bathuko's way of rewarding me and encouraging me to continue following his will. If I am struck with cancer, it must be Bathuko's will that I learn certain lessons in this life. If I am cured, it was Bathuko's will, not the chemotherapy I underwent, which effected the cure. Etc.

But the problem with all this is that the Christian god is supposed to be independent of any human mind, such that it would still exist even if there were no human beings to know of its existence. So using thoughts as an example case, as many theists commonly do, in fact only confirms that my criticisms are well placed. And since the Christian god does whatever the believer says it does (notice how quick believers are to explain why their god won't heal amputees, for instance), the likelihood that his god is simply a figment of his imagination is simply too compelling to ignore.

TruthTRUTH writes:

Thus it is with God.

There you go, then! All the more reason to suppose that my challenge for theists to distinguish between what they call "God" and what they are merely imagining is right on target. I know of no good reason to suppose that independently existing entities enjoy the same kind of epistemological privacy that our cognitive functions do. And even then, one's own cognitive functions are not hidden to oneself. Consciousness can be its own object, but only secondarily so - that is, only if one is first conscious of something else to begin with.

TruthTRUTH writes:

Simply because the nature of his being is indiscernible does not thereby disprove his existence.

I have already pointed out in three blog posts (see here, here and here) why I as an atheist do not have any burden to disprove your god's alleged existence. If you want to call your god "indiscernible," that's fine; one can make this kind of claim about anything he imagines. The problem is that theists fail to explain how we can distinguish between what they call "God" and what they may merely be imagining. I'm of the opinion that they fail at this challenge because there really is no distinction to begin with.

TruthTRUTH writes:

If that were the case, love and every other emotion, every thought, everything that makes us human would be a figment of our imagination.

This doesn't follow. For one, emotions and thoughts are not mind-independent entities. But what theist would allow that his god's existence depends on his mind, like emotions and thoughts do? In fact, it is precisely because believers use psychological phenomena like thoughts and emotions as the case in point for their theistic defenses, that the suspicion that their god is merely imaginary is raised and confirmed. Besides, your point here hazards yet another stolen concept by proposing that thoughts and emotions are "a figment of our imagination." Imagination makes use of our faculty of thought, so it would both assume and deny its own genetic roots to say that thought is a figment of our imagination. My position avoids such pitfalls precisely because it maintains fidelity with the proper orientation between a subject and its objects.

TruthTRUTH writes:

We haven't begun to understand the world around us.

Indeed, with the worldview theists assume, they are simply not equipped to understand the world around us.

TruthTRUTH writes:

Just 500 years ago science and reason said the world was flat!

Supposing that were the case (and many would contest this), how would we know that this assumption (that the world is flat) is wrong? Because "we haven't begun to understand the world around us"? That dog don't hunt.

TruthTRUTH writes:

From the tiniest of particles, which we have base elementary theories to explain, to the vastest reaches of deep space, which we know almost nothing about, mankind is far from an "expert" regarding the universe.

I see. So, in other words, "mankind" is ignorant, and therefore we should posit a god to fill this void in our knowledge? Appeals of this nature only confirm that the god of the gaps argument hasn't quite gone out of style with theists in today's world.

TruthTRUTH writes:

So if the Christian God is omnipotent, infinitely larger, and more powerful than our universe (which we do not understand), how could you possibly expect believers to fully explain to you the mysteries of God?

I don't expect Christians to explain "the mysteries of God" to me. Nothing would bore me more. I simply ask how I can distinguish between what they call "God" and what they may merely be imagining. This is far more entertaining. Anyone can imagine an invisible being that is "omnipotent." So how do I know you're not simply imagining something and claiming it's real, when in fact it simply isn't?

TruthTRUTH writes:

Although the analogy isn't perfect, it gets my point across: love is like God. You cant really explain it, but you know its there. [sic]

This only means that theists cannot answer my challenge. Here TruthTRUTH explicitly puts his god in the same camp as psychological manifestations like love. The problem with this move is that love is not an independently existing entity, while the Christian god is supposed to be extra-mental, extra-psychological, existing independent of human cognition. When I die, for instance, my loving will stop, and so will my other psychological experiences. But what Christian is going to say that his god stops existing when he does? Again, as I've stated, just by pointing to psychological phenomena as analogous to their god, theists essentially give away the game. They're basically telling us that their god is imaginary without coming out and openly admitting this to be the case.

TruthTRUTH writes:

And you know he's there too, Dawson. Look inside you, look at what makes you human. Therein lies the truth.

Statements like this only confirm my case. If I introspect (i.e., "look inside" myself) I can examine the functions of my own consciousness. But if I ignore the fact that what I'm examining at this point is my own consciousness, and allow myself to blur the distinction between the actual and the imaginary, then I can go along with such pretenses as this. But as I've pointed out, I'm simply too honest to say that something is real that I know is not real. Inside me is just parts of me, not a universe-creating, reality-controlling deity.

TruthTRUTH writes:

You may choose to denounce Christian theology (although I wouldn't recommend it, for you're sake), but to deny any higher power, any supreme being, any constructor or creator, is not only foolish. Its unreasonable. [sic]

Here we have a most predictable resort to threats. Since TruthTRUTH senses deep down that his apologetic is dismally weak, he chooses to end his plea with a pronouncement of impending doom if his faith assertions are questioned instead of uncritically accepted. But is it truly unreasonable to deny claims like those that Christians have been making for the better of 2,000 years? Obviously I don't think it is unreasonable. In fact, as I see it, any concern for preserving a commitment to reason would compel us to reject what Christianity teaches, precisely because what it teaches is contrary to reason. TruthTRUTH calls this "foolish," and yet what is "foolish" according to a worldview which teaches that the universe was created by the will of an invisible supernatural being who "took on flesh" and sojourned the earth in 1st century Palestine? We would do well to keep matters in perspective when we start entertaining accusations of unreasonableness and foolishness.

Conclusion: TruthTRUTH’s double whammy apologetic fails. His argument to the conclusion that the universe had a beginning or needed to be created, which constitutes the first step in his defense of god-belief, ignores the fact that our only alternative to existence as our starting would be non-existence as our starting point. This is relevant because the existence of the universe (which is the sum total of that which exists) is alleged to having been created. If we begin with the universe, then there’s no reason to posit a creator of the universe. Similarly, if we begin with existence (as Objectivism holds we should), then there’s no good reason to posit a god which is responsible for creating existence. The tacit premise in the first horn of the double whammy is that we must begin with non-existence, and it is upon this premise that the theist feels compelled to find an explanation for the obvious fact that existence does in fact exist. The presence of this premise is evident in the dichotomy, central to TruthTRUTH’s reasoning, that either “stuff... pop[s] out of thin air” (i.e., spontaneously “comes into” existence), or it was “created” by a conscious being (i.e., the Christian god or what have you). Beginning with existence as our starting point does away with such false dichotomies before they're even proposed.

In the second step of TruthTRUTH’s double whammy apologetic, he in fact confirms the relevance of my challenge that theists should explain how we can distinguish between what they call “God” and what they may merely be imagining, by putting his god on the same level as human psychological phenomena, which he accomplishes by resorting to a category of defenses which assert that his god’s existence cannot be disproved just as we cannot disprove emotions, thoughts, and similar aptitudes of human consciousness. So if the theist can liken his god to psychological phenomena (such as emotions like love) in an attempt to insulate his claim that it exists from disproof, why can’t we ask him to identify some process by which we can distinguish his god from those very mental phenomena to which his defenses compare it?

Sadly, we have another example of a theist objecting to skeptical inquiry while undermining his own objections.

By Dawson Bethrick