Here’s Why Philosophical Arguments are Unconvincing

Photo: Pascal Müller

Let’s say we grant the cosmological, ontological, and all those other -logical arguments for the existence of God. So far, this God only “exists” in our minds; he is purely theoretical. How do we then show that this God exists in reality?

Does this God we’ve just demonstrated interact with our world in any way? How would we know if it did? How do you tell the difference between a miracle and a natural phenomenon that we simply don’t yet understand, or a miracle and a simple fraud?

So far, we have no mechanism for showing that a deity has ever been the cause of a phenomenon in our world. It’s just the default for whatever bizarre event or unlikely occurrence that people want to ascribe to it. The march of progress has always been supernatural explanations giving way to natural ones, not the other way around.

Let’s say you’re a homicide detective, and you have a string of unsolved murders on your hands. In the absence of any strong suspects, you posit the existence of the “Murder Genie,” a supernatural entity that by definition commits all murders. Problem solved, right? No, of course not! You actually need evidence connecting the murders to the Murder Genie before you can close the case!

You can’t define or argue something into existence. At the end of the day, it either exists or it doesn’t, and all this sophistry isn’t making God any more real. Proving a deist god is like holding an expired winning lottery ticket. Congrats, I guess you technically “won,” but that’s about it. Nothing has changed, nothing has been accomplished. If God acts like he doesn’t exist, I’ll act like he doesn’t exist as well.

Christian Music Retrospective, aka Abstinence is the New Sex

Welcome to part 2 of a ?-part series where I make peace with the Christian songs that prevented me from discovering Nirvana until 2002.

Superchick, “Barlow Girl”

We met these sisters Barlow’s their last name
Ordinary girls they don’t live in the fast lane
They don’t rate with the guys that score
Cause they don’t flaunt what the boys want more

Christian teenagers have it rough. When you’re being told your natural hormones are simultaneously a gift from God and a gateway for Satan, sometimes your trendy Ex-Masturbator T-shirt just isn’t enough to stem the tide. Thankfully, groups like Superchick are there to remind you that abstinence is, like, totally cool and stuff.

They don’t date they won’t date
They wanna see how they’re gonna grow up
Who they’re gonna be
But in the meantime they might feel unloved
When all the girls around them are hooking up

As an official representative of Boys, I can confirm that dating leads inevitably to the mortal sins of mixtapes and Non-Committal Make-Outs (aka NCMO – thanks, Christian college!).

All the boys in the band want a valentine from a Barlow Girl
Boys think they’re the bomb
Cause they remind them of their mom

Freudian vibes aside, if I were using the Mom Standard to rank women, then I’d be ensuring any potential dating partner has her casserole game on point.

No girl should feel she has to trade
Her body for love or be an old maid
And yes there are guys who are willing to wait
Ask a Barlow girl on her wedding day

Credit where credit’s due, it’s not the worst idea to remind teenagers that high school relationships don’t really matter in the long run (CW dramas notwithstanding), but the issue is always presented as if there’s no happy medium between chastity and promiscuity. Why do millions of Christian teens think their only options are complete suppression of their sexuality and wanton indulgence of it? It’s this kind of thinking that leads to abstinence-only education, and the shortcomings thereof.

Maybe instead of deceiving them, we try giving teenagers the information they need to make wise choices regarding sex. If they decide on their own that it’s not worth the risk, good for them! But if they decide to have safe sex with a steady boyfriend or girlfriend, should they be threatened with the same hellfire as a mass murderer?

See also: Rebecca St. James, “Wait”

4Him, “Can’t Get Past the Evidence”

You broke into this world of mine
Stole my heart, you robbed me blind
While I wasn’t looking at all,
Without a warning or a sign,
It seems You caught me by surprise
Now I know the reason why Love is the alibi

As an erstwhile apologist, I appreciate it when Christians argue from evidence, not from gut feelings or “faith.” Even if their evidence is faulty, at least they’re coming at the God question from a logical foundation. So when the extremely 90’s-named 4Him declares that they “can’t get past the evidence,” they must be talking about something solid, something that will put those know-it-all atheists in their place, right? Let’s find out!

This particular song takes the novel angle of describing God with criminal metaphors. In this scenario, I’m not sure what love is supposed to be an alibi for. “No, you see I couldn’t have been at the scene of the burglary, I was in Todd’s heart the whole time!”

And I can’t get past the evidence,
I can’t get past the proof,
I can’t get past the evidence
It’s impossible to do
I can’t get past the evidence
And I can’t deny the truth
I can’t get past the evidence of you

The chorus makes it clear: mountains of evidence point to the existence of God. Will 4Him give us any examples? I sure hope so!

We look for pieces on the way
To fix the puzzle of this place
Is there an equation to life?
But in the midst of every day
There’s a clue there is a trace
A remnant of love remains
I’m ready to rest my case

You see, science thinks it knows everything with its fancy “experimentation” and “figuring stuff out,” but can it explain LUUUVV?? (Insert mic drop here.)

Beyond the shadow of a doubt
I see the light
I’m a victim of a love I can’t deny
I’ll be the first to testify,
That I can’t get past the evidence of You

More on love here, but also another crime comparison. If one is a “victim” of love, does that make love a crime? Are my parents love criminals? If God is love, and love is crime, then is God crime itself? The math checks out.

And I can’t get past the evidence,
I can’t get past the proof,
I can’t get past the evidence
It’s impossible to do
I can’t get past the evidence
And I can’t deny the truth
I can’t get past the evidence of you

I’ll say this: while I don’t think the existence of a concept of love is evidence in God’s favor, it’s probably a more interesting subject for a song than, say, the cosmological argument. That said, if William Lane Craig ever dropped an album, I’d Spotify that in a heartbeat.

Book Review: There Is a God

Christians love themselves a good “get.” Whenever a notorious celebrity or outspoken atheist converts to the faith, from Alice Cooper to Jeffery Dahmer, believers point to them as examples of the life-changing power of Christ. Antony Flew is one such name that I’ve seen dropped multiple times in Christian apologetic texts, podcasts, and YouTube videos. Flew was a well-known atheist writer and debater for decades, but his 2007 book There Is a God claims that all it took to become a theist was obeying the Platonic maxim to “follow the argument wherever it leads.” So what arguments were responsible for Flew’s famous change of heart?

Flew is a philosopher by trade, and he understandably views the God question through this lens. However, when it comes to other fields of study, Flew behaves like a child who hasn’t learned to share; he demands these other fields respect the domain of philosophy while simultaneously using philosophy to encroach on those fields.

Early in the book, Flew sets ground rules for scientists who wish to engage in philosophy, declaring that “a scientist who speaks as a philosopher will have to furnish a philosophical case.” This is a fine sentiment on its own, but Flew doesn’t seem to understand when it is appropriate to speak as a scientist and not a philosopher. For instance, Flew does not believe that origin of life questions can be answered by life science:

How can a universe of mindless matter produce beings with intrinsic ends, self-replication capabilities, and “coded chemistry”? Here we are not dealing with biology, but an entirely different category of problem.

This error in categorization leads Flew to to believe we have a “reason for doubting that it is possible to account for existent life-forms in purely materialistic terms”. He goes on to quote a number of scientists who acknowledge (honestly) that we don’t know how life arose on this planet, and concludes that the “only satisfactory explanation” is an intelligent designer. Sometime, despite being a neophyte theist, Flew has already mastered the “science doesn’t know, therefore God” cliché.

Flew employs the same cliché when discussing the idea of the multiverse. Once again, Flew points to the lack of scientific consensus on this issue as support for theism. However, his critique that multiverse theory “explains everything and yet nothing” rings hollow when “God did it” theory has the same shortcoming.

This isn’t the only time Flew demonstrates a knack for classic apologetic mistakes. He masterfully assaults the strawman of the scientist with the atheistic bias, decrying the “dogmatic atheism” of scientists trying to “preserve the non-theistic status quo.” Flew’s collaborator, Roy Abraham Varghese, ups the rhetoric in the book’s first appendix by claiming that “a deliberate refusal to ‘look’ is responsible for atheism of any variety.” Has Varghese never encountered atheists like myself who have searched for God and found nothing?

Flew is happy to quote-mine scientists when they support his views, but he has some basic misunderstandings on key scientific questions. He has bought wholesale into the “monkeys with typewriters will never randomly produce Shakespeare” argument against evolution, ignoring the point that natural selection is not as random as he thinks.

Additionally, several of Flew’s arguments boil down to “laws require a Lawgiver,” a circular argument that cannot be used as evidence for said Lawgiver. Flew frequently uses loaded language to point towards a creator god he has yet to demonstrate. He asks, “Who wrote the laws of the nature?” as if we already know there is a “who” to write them. He claims that “if you accept the fact that there are laws,” you must then ask the question, “What agent (or agents) brings this about?” Once again, when did we establish that there is, in fact, an agent who brings anything about?

Flew then makes a leap in quoting Swinburne to assert a “personal God with the traditional properties” must be said Lawgiver. This is worth noting, because it’s one of the few places in the book where Flew comes off as anything other than a deist. Flew never publicly declared himself a Christian, so if you are a Christian reading this book looking for a dramatic conversion story, you will be disappointed in that regard. Flew does admit that “the Christian religion is the one religion that most clearly deserves to be honored and respected,” but he outsources the heavy apologetic lifting to N.T. Wright in the second appendix.

I finished There Is a God with a base level of respect for Antony Flew. He has, if nothing else, walked the walk while risking his livelihood and academic reputation. I’ve made the same journey, albeit in the opposite direction, and while I disagree with Flew’s conclusions, I admire his intellectual honesty more than I do, for instance, Sean McDowell, the apologist son of an apologist who appears to simply be following in the family business. That said, I believe Flew’s lofty credentials do not counterbalance the faulty arguments and misinterpreted evidence that ultimately lead to his change of heart.