I wish I could say that Justin at Consider Atheism has posted some more of his thoughts on the Problem of Evil and how to refute my defeater of it, but unfortunately they are the embarrassingly weak responses of Dawson Bethrick. I suppose that is at once both good and bad. On the one hand, it is good that such a train wreck didn’t come from his own brain. But it is bad, on the other hand, that he didn’t approach the problem with critical thinking of his own, despite my hope that he would, choosing instead to publish Bethrick’s response (but mostly in Justin’s own words).

Originally Bethrick tried to save Justin’s argument by using Isaiah 45:7 to prove that evil is indeed something God creates. Justin was rather enlivened by this passage and brought it to my attention in the comments area of my first article. And I proceeded to show him why he should probably not get too excited about arguments that Bethrick uses by showing him what the passage is actually talking about. And as to be expected, Bethrick responded (at Justin’s site). I was going to send Justin a private email about this and tell him that he would score critical thinking points if he could identify what was wrong with Bethrick’s response. But it seems I didn’t get off work soon enough, for by the time I got home Justin had uncritically regurgitated the train wreck in a new blog post, so now this gets to be done in public instead. Readers of the Aristophrenium know that I don’t mind dismantling logically bankrupt arguments from atheists who pretend to esteem reason—to put it kindly—but I was really hoping to save Justin the embarrassment because I like him. “Before you invest yourself in Bethrick’s response,” I was going to write him, “evaluate it critically for logical flaws.” Anybody can teach people what to think, but I want to teach people how to think, and few things achieve that goal quite like learning how to critically evaluate an argument.

But if he wishes to do this publically, I’m willing to oblige him. Let’s have a look.

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Justin, a young man from Canada, started a brand new blog called Consider Atheism. Although I don’t remember how I stumbled upon his blog, it has garnered my interest for two reasons: he is Canadian and purports to defend Atheism. (And there is also the fact that he is young, which means he is still teachable.)

One of the first posts to elicit a response from me regarded the Problem of Evil (which most people know is my favourite subject). The following is the sum of our discussion.

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Over at a blog called An Atheist Debater is an author who attempted to tackle what he thoughtfully considers to be “one of the most useless and easily refutable” arguments for the existence of God: the Argument from Design. According to this gentleman, the teleological argument “is so ridiculously fallacious it’s laughable.” What I intend to explore here are two things. First, did he succeed at proving it commits a fallacy? And second, did his own argument commit a fallacy?

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Fundy Atheists Say the Darndest Things

“You don’t seem to get it. Atheists don’t assert a positive claim, so they don’t shoulder any burden of proof.”

This is true—and it is false. It depends on what the person means because it is actually an incomplete sentence: a positive claim about what?

If this is said by an agnostic atheist and what he means is that his view does not assert a positive claim about the non-existence of God, then in that sense the statement is true. But in a more important way the statement is false because for all atheists (including agnostic ones) a positive claim actually is being asserted: that “God is not required.” And so when an atheist is being asked to shoulder the burden of proof (i.e., to show the proof or rationale for atheism), that’s the positive claim he’s being asked to defend. He is not being asked to prove that God doesn’t exist—unless he makes such a claim—but he is being asked to prove that God is not required; i.e., that things like truth or knowing or morality, etc., can be comprehended intelligibly under a godless framework while corresponding with and explaining the facts of human experience .

But it’s also amusing to note that both “assert” and “positive claim” actually mean the same thing. It is actually an awkward way of saying that atheists make no assertions (e.g., “Atheists do not assert an assertion”)—which is how he ought to phrase it, because then the inherent problem with this objection would be more apparent to the atheist, one would think.

Usually I don’t bother paying any attention to The Bahnsen Burner, a blog run by an Atheist named Dawson Bethrick, and it would take less than five minutes at his site for a person to see why. It has almost nothing to do with the actual merits of his arguments and everything to do with the fact that locating and identifying an argument within his landslide argumentum verbosium is just too laborious a task. I share the same view as Joshua Whipps over at Choosing Hats: until Bethrick decides to express arguments or criticisms with succinct perspicuity instead of proof-by-verbosity, [1] I simply can’t be bothered to engage his material. It requires more time than I have available.

The only reason that I am even aware Bethrick had recently tackled my “Arrogance of Atheism” articles [2] is because one of our staff members, Mathew Hamilton, directed me to it. I would have otherwise never known. And so for Hamilton’s sake alone I have reviewed Bethrick’s piece, shouldering the laborious task of locating and identifying his arguments in order to respond to them. I shall not repeat this endeavour (even though Bethrick will probably be unable to resist carving out an entertaining albeit verbose Chewbacca Defense), as this response will suffice to demonstrate that there is nothing new under the sun when it comes to the bankruptcy of Atheist objections.

And no, Bethrick, our staff will not publish your loquacious tomes in the Comments field to this (or any other) article. Comments must be composed with succinct perspicuity. If you want to do a verbal dump, there is always The Bahnsen Burner—where no one has to see it unless they masochistically want to. I will return to ignoring you, although you are free to continue directing traffic here by writing about our articles.

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Several years ago, long before this site ever existed and once hosted somewhere long since dead, I had written a very pointed and brief thought-piece about “The Arrogance of Atheism.” It had garnered the attention of Austin Reed Cline, a Regional Director for the Council for Secular Humanism and editor of the Atheism section of the About.com web portal, who had published an excoriating and profoundly inaccurate review of my article. Some time last year I decided to resurrect that piece and republish it here, and to include not only Cline’s rebuttal but my response to him as well.

Around that same time I extended an invitation for Cline to interact with me on the response I had composed. His response can be found in the comments to the relevant article at his portal here, and the remainder of this article is my answer to him.

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Back in December of 2009, Mitchell LeBlanc of UrbanPhilosophy.net composed what he thought to be a possible disproof of the existence of God. The following day I had posted a rebuttal in response to his disproof. Given the exquisitely complex manner in which he formulated his argument, it isn’t really surprising that many people struggled to wrap their head around what exactly his argument was positing. As it usually goes in these things, the argument made good sense to LeBlanc himself, who said he was “amazed at the misunderstanding” that resulted. I’ve been in those shoes myself at times, when an argument is perfectly clear to me but the way I shared it with others left them baffled and confused. As I’ve said elsewhere, that is one of the primary reasons I blog; it allows me to constantly refine how I articulate myself, so that it becomes accessible to a larger and larger audience. I am always searching for ways to bring my language down from the mountain peaks of philosophy to the valleys of English. (I’m getting better, but I’ve still got a long way to go.)

The argument

To briefly refresh our minds, allow me to repeat what his argument had been. (And we must keep in mind that it targeted the biblical God.)

(1) If God exists, then God is necessarily omnipotent and necessarily triune.

(2) If God is necessarily omnipotent, then God necessarily can bring about any logically possible state of affairs.

(3) If God necessarily can bring about any logically possible state of affairs, then God necessarily can bring about a state of affairs that is brought about by a being that is not necessarily triune.

(4) If God necessarily can bring about a state of affairs that is brought about by a being that is not necessarily triune, then God is not necessarily triune.

(5) Therefore, God does not and cannot exist.

As I pointed out in my rebuttal, this argument does not belong to LeBlanc so much as it belongs to atheologist Michael Martin, [1] with LeBlanc substituting “triune” for every instance that Martin used “omniscient.” Given the doctrine of divine simplicity, such a substitution should be acceptable for the Christian.

What Martin was trying to show, and by extension LeBlanc, is that the existence of God is disproven by reason of logical contradiction; i.e., that God cannot exist. He takes two particular attributes of God and attempts to show that a contradiction results. In the case of this argument, those attributes are omnipotence and triunity.

As indicated in my aforementioned rebuttal, (1) and (2) are not contested since they reflect orthodox Christian doctrine. With regard to (3), LeBlanc later informed me that “a being that is not necessarily triune” would be some human, such as Bob who in some way caused flooding in Toronto (e.g., “Ryft on ‘A Possible Disproof of God’s Existence’”). Consequently, my previous rebuttal loses its traction, since I hadn’t understood that a secondary being was playing a relevant role (i.e., I’d thought God was the only being employed in his argument). But his argument is not saved by this clarification, since the derailment occurs now at (4) instead.

The analysis

We can accept (1) and (2), and it seems we can also accept (3) if it is predicated on God bringing about a state of affairs that was brought about by Bob. However, it’s not at all clear how (4) should follow. If God should bring about (principal cause) a state affairs that is brought about by Bob (instrumental cause), [2] how does it follow that God’s nature is thereby identical to Bob’s nature? That is, how did God become not triune by virtue of Bob being not triune? LeBlanc does not say, nor is it immediately obvious.

Perhaps LeBlanc rejects there being any distinction between types of causes, such that God is said to be the instrumental cause of all effects. If that is the case, then I think it becomes obvious how (4) follows. But if God is the instrumental cause of all effects, then all effects (or states of affairs) amount to “God in motion”—which in essence amounts to panentheism and is dramatically antithetical to God as revealed in the Bible (who the argument is intended to address, i.e., it qualifies as a straw man). So if that notion and its presuppositions are what is proposed by (4), then it must run afoul of such doctrines as aseity, necessary being, divine simplicity, transcendence and so forth, which tell us that necessarily nothing of God’s nature is identical to his creation. What God ordains should come to pass (principal cause) is a product of his nature; however, the means by which it comes to pass (instrumental cause) is a product of his creation which he exists independent of. So Bob by nature is not necessarily triune, but this has no bearing on whether or not God by nature is triune.

Hopefully I have not misunderstood his argument still. We’ll have to wait and see how he responds to find out if I’ve grasped his point aright.

References

1. Michael Martin. Atheism: A Philosophical Justification. Temple University Press, 1990. p. 310 (as cited by LeBlanc).

2. Bob: instrumental cause that is itself an effect; contingent. God: principal cause that is not itself an effect; necessary. So, not identical; i.e., distinguishable types of causes.

Introduction

When it comes to arguments for atheism, that is, arguments for the non-existence of God, [1] none are considered so compelling as the Problem of Evil category of arguments—not only by atheists but for some reason also by many Christians. It is my contention that such a state of affairs exists for one overriding reason: that much of the general public (atheists and Christians alike) have not been taught how and therefore don’t know how to evaluate arguments critically. Starting around the turn of the last century and persisting to present day, as a society we all at once fell for the seductive allowances of postmodernism, shifted our obligations from family and society to radical individualism, and laid out a minefield of political correctness that a person dares trespass only on pain of being ostracized. “To argue for truth today is to stir an immediate debate,” noted Ravi Zacharias, “as if a heresy of devilish proportions has been invoked.”

So critical thinking skills, as instruments of evaluating truth claims and arguments, have incrementally lost value as items for our mental toolbox—especially since almost by definition they imply the existence of objective truths. If truth claims don’t or can’t describe reality objectively, always falling short of the task for one reason or another, then the tools for discerning objective truth claims grow rusty from disuse. Much more can be said on this, however I don’t wish to digress.

But for those who know what ‘validly’ means and how to reason accordingly, those who can tell the difference between an assumption and a conclusion, who are familiar with and can recognize errors in reasoning (fallacies), the more we interact with arguments for atheism the more we discover that none of them validly prove the non-existence of God, including the Problem of Evil versions. For a constellation of other reasons, I think this is why Greg Koukl, in his most recent Mentoring Letter, encouraged subscribers to engage criticisms head-on. “Sometimes it’s better to move towards an objection rather than away from it, to embrace a charge rather than run from it,” he writes. “In other words, don’t run from the problem; run towards it and defuse it. Don’t evade; invade.  Embrace it, undermine its relevance, and take the wind out of its sails.” [2]

In an effort to evaluate my position under the fire of critical scrutiny, I have recently begun engaging in a series of debates on Problem of Evil arguments for atheism, where my opponent is invited to defend whatever version thereof he or she feels best proves the non-existence of God. This article shall examine the first of these debates, which took place at the Debate.org web site. [3] As these debates conclude, at that site or some other location (e.g., message board, email, etc.), I will post another article here at the Aristophrenium evaluating the results thereof. Until it is defeated—assuming it even can be—I will continue to maintain my resolution, that “there are literally no versions of the Problem of Evil argument that succeed at proving the non-existence of God.”

Note: In all my arguments, on this and any other matter, the term ‘God’ always refers to God as revealed in Christian scripture canon (viz. the 39 books of the Old Testament and 27 books of the New Testament) and possessing all the commonly recognized attributes thereof (e.g., trinitarian, omnipotent, righteous, sovereign, etc.). I have no interest in defending, nor do I even recognize the legitimacy of, any deity other than the God of Christian theism.

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Mitchell LeBlanc, owner of UrbanPhilosophy.net and Philosophy of Religion student at University of Toronto, has recently proposed “A Possible Disproof of God’s Existence,” which is basically a slight reformulation of an argument presented by Michael Martin about twenty years ago, [1] wherein LeBlanc simply replaces all instances of “omniscient” with “triune” instead. In this argument he attempts to prove that God does not exist—indeed cannot exist—by reason of a logical contradiction. Whether or not his argument achieves its aim shall be the subject of this brief article.

Although I will not be analyzing Martin’s argument directly here, I will be doing so indirectly since LeBlanc’s argument is essentially identical to it; therefore, any criticism that applies to one will apply to the other. The argument LeBlanc constructs is as follows:

(1) If God exists, then God is necessarily omnipotent and necessarily triune.

(2) If God is necessarily omnipotent, then God necessarily can bring about any logically possible state of affairs.

(3) If God necessarily can bring about any logically possible state of affairs, then God necessarily can bring about a state of affairs that is brought about by a being that is not necessarily triune.

(4) If God necessarily can bring about a state of affairs that is brought about by a being that is not necessarily triune, then God is not necessarily triune.

(5) Therefore, God does not and cannot exist

What LeBlanc is attempting to argue for here is that God possesses attributes which logically contradict each other. To fashion an argument which proves that God cannot exist is something of a Holy Grail to many atheists, and continues to be every bit as elusive as that mysterious chalice. In this argument LeBlanc reaches out to grasp it but finds only air, for his argument commits a substantial error in reasoning.

Given the first two premises (which must be given, as we are confronting orthodox Christian theism), his third premise ought never obtain; i.e., in order to obtain (3) LeBlanc is forced to contradict (1) and (2)!

How so? Consider what it is that (3) asserts: that God necessarily can bring about some X such that it was brought about by a being that is not necessarily triune. But given (2) which defines omnipotence as being able to “bring about any logically possible state of affairs,” and given (1) which defines God as “necessarily triune” (it is not logically possible for God to not be triune), we therefore observe that (3) contradicts these very premises—so that it is not God who vanishes in a puff of contradiction but rather LeBlanc’s argument.

[1] Martin, Michael. Atheism: A philosophical justification (1990), pg. 310, as cited by LeBlanc.