Answering Atheism - How to Make the Case for God with Logic and Charity

by Trent Horn

Theologians since Aquinas have argued that because God has no moving parts, and does not fragment his thoughts like we do, then he is absolutely simple. God is simply a perfect, infinite disembodied mind.

time, memory, and bodily perception can’t be detected by sight, hearing, taste,

touch, or smell. They simply have to be felt.

1. The memories I have of the past actually occurred and were not created along with the rest of the world five minutes ago. 2. Other minds exist, and the people I see are not sophisticated robots. 3. Time moves in one direction from the past through the present and into the future.

Anthropologist Solomon Asch writes, “We do not know of societies in which bravery is despised and cowardice held up to honor, in which generosity is considered a vice and ingratitude a virtue.”

Reason is like a knife. It is a neutral tool that can be used for either good or evil. Therefore, we need a standard beyond reason itself to ground what is objectively right and wrong.

The law of gravity says that, all things being equal, an object pushed over a cliff will fall and hit the ground below. But the law of morality says that it is wrong to push grandma over the cliff. Since laws of nature cannot be disobeyed, and moral laws can be disobeyed, it follows that morality is not a mere law of nature.

longer have a foundation in God. The most satisfactory response to the Euthyphro dilemma is to “split the horns” of the dilemma and say that right and wrong flow from God’s perfect character, and not his will. An act isn’t good because God commanded it, and neither did God command the act merely because the act is good. God commanded the act because he is the Good!330 Because God is a perfect and infinite being who exists without limit or flaw, then he will necessarily only command good acts that correspond with his perfect nature.

“In God, power, essence, will, intellect, wisdom, and justice are all identical. Nothing therefore can be in God’s power which could not be in his just will or his wise intellect.”

William Lane Craig

Why pick God’s nature as definitive of the Good? The answer is that God, by definition, is the greatest conceivable being, and a being which is the paradigm of goodness is greater than one which merely exemplifies goodness. Unless we are nihilists, we have to recognize some ultimate standard of value, and God is the least arbitrary stopping point.

Also, as classical theists such as Aquinas have observed, since God is the fullness of being and lacks nothing, he would have to be perfect goodness. Since evil is nothing more than a lack of being, and God is by definition the fullness of being and lacks nothing, he would have to be good by definition.336

Without a supernatural source for our end or “moral design,” there is no way to say that when they are immoral humans are not functioning properly (because they could be rational and still be immoral). But a supernatural source, or a perfect transcendent person who embodies moral goodness

would explain our intrinsic worth and moral design. Since naturalism denies we were meant for anything, it can never ground objective morality.

mysterium tremendum et fascinans

Of course, if I experience God, that may be good evidence for me to believe in him, but it isn’t good evidence for other people, because they cannot access my experience and judge it for themselves. Because personal experiences of God are subjective and cannot be examined like objective evidence, we should not condemn non-believers for not having them. Consider the words

Deep down, some people reject God because they say to themselves, “I’ve done bad things in my life. I’d rather not believe in God and have to face what I’ve done.” The problem is that you still face whatever you’ve done every time you take a hard look in the mirror. What makes Christian theism so amazing is that God is infinitely

merciful to us, despite our sins. No matter what sin you have committed, God desires to give you grace so that you can become a new man or woman in Christ.350

Atheist Louise Antony makes this point well when she writes: There are things one loses in giving up God, and they are not insignificant. Most importantly, you lose the guarantee of redemption. Suppose that you do something morally terrible, something for which you cannot make amends, something, perhaps, for which no human being could ever be expected to forgive you. I imagine that the promise made by

many religions, that God will forgive you if you are truly sorry, is a thought that would bring enormous comfort and relief. You cannot have that if you are an atheist.351 What if

Christian thinker Blaise Pascal wrote: This is what I see and what troubles me. I look on all sides, and I see only darkness everywhere. Nature presents to me nothing which is not matter of doubt and concern. If I saw nothing there which revealed a Divinity, I would come to a negative conclusion; if I saw everywhere the signs of a Creator, I would remain peacefully

in faith. But, seeing too much to deny and too little to be sure, I am in a state to be pitied.352 Pascal is describing a condition in which the seeker knows too much to reject God’s existence but is still too unsure to say he exists. It is at this point where Pascal suggests a decision based on common sense, or a kind of “wager,” would be the most prudent thing to do. Pascal says, “Let us weigh the gain and the loss in wagering that God is. Let us estimate these two chances. If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager, then, without hesitation that He is.” This approach to belief in God is called Pascal’s Wager.

According to Pascal, the believer has nothing to lose in ...

exists, because either he is right in his belief and will inherit everlasting happiness or he is wrong and will never know he was wrong (sin...

For the unbeliever, if God does not exist he gains nothing (just like the theist), but if God does exist he will lose everything. So Pascal says that it is most prudent to believe in God, s...

If we Christians do not passionately pursue a personal vocation to holiness, then unbelievers with whom we share our faith will be right to ask, “What is it that breathes fire into your arguments and makes a living faith for them to defend?” Ultimately it is not mere knowledge of God, but acknowledgement of God and his power and goodness, that transforms us into the people we were meant to be.

P1. Whatever begins to exist must have a cause for its existence. P2. The universe began to exist. C. Therefore, the universe has a cause for its existence.

there were no beginning, then reaching the present moment would be like counting to zero from

negative infinity.”381

P1. Whatever exists at a certain time and never existed before that time has a cause. P2. The universe existed 13.7 billion years ago and never existed before that time. C. Therefore, the universe has a cause. The critic

So, will there be a “Big Crunch,” or will the universe expand forever? It appears to be the latter, since so-called “dark matter” and “dark energy” make up 96 percent of the matter in the universe. This strange matter has enough mass and gravitational force of its own to keep the universe expanding forever.390

bunch