A village atheist trope makes the following challenge to Christians: have you disproven the existence of Allah, Manitou, Quetzalcoatl, Ra, Shiva, Thor, Zeus, &c.?
There are lots of problems with that objection:
i) It cuts both ways. Why is that supposed to be a problem for the Christian but not the atheist? Has the atheist run through the entire list of gods and individually disproven the existence of each one? Why is it incumbent on a Christian to do that but not an atheist? Either it's a problem for both or for neither one.
ii) Does an atheist think you must eliminate every conceivable alternative to know something or be warranted in what you believe? Has the atheist evaluated every school of thought in Eastern and Western philosophy? We all take intellectual shortcuts.
iii) I'm unaware of any appreciable evidence for the existence of Quetzalcoatl, Ra, Shiva, Thor, Zeus, &c. The onus is not on me to disprove something for which there's no discernible evidence.
> Has the atheist evaluated every school of thought in Eastern and Western philosophy?
ReplyDelete~ I have been given the following line by an Indian atheist: "Have you read the Koran? Have you read the Bhagavad Gita? Have you read ... etc. So how do you know that thats not the truth?"
The problem with South Asian atheists is that they might actually have examined a lot of religions. So if you throw it back to them and ask them if they've read the Koran, Lotus Sutra, etc, they might say that they have. Some even might have.
My answer at the time was something of the following sort: If I am taking a multiple choice exam where only one answer can be right then if for a given question, when I start looking at the choices, and right away see that (A) is correct, then I do not need to process or even look at the rest.
Aside: I have seen a RC theologian argue that the very concept of the Christian God eliminates all other possibilities.
Of course, we can discuss some of these options. The dilemma for the Muslim is that Muhammad presents himself as a successor to the Biblical prophets. So Islam can't be true unless the Judeo-Christian tradition is true. If, however, Islam contradicts the Judeo-Christian tradition, then Islam is falsified by the Judeo-Christian benchmark.
DeleteTo my knowledge, Hinduism has varied concepts of the divine. There's a pantheistic concept. On that view, ultimate reality is impersonal. If so, how can that ground things that require a personal foundation? If abstract objects are mental entities, then they must inhere in a suitable mind.
Then there's folk Hinduism, which is polytheistic. But a plethora of finite gods can't be the ultimate source of reality, since they are contingent beings in their own right.
Then there's the atheistic view that the Hindu "gods" are human projections. But that's not a religious alternative to Christianity.
In the case of Christianity we have a decisive demonstration of God's power which happened in a very particular historical setting and which was recorded by people who were obviously familiar with that setting. Furthermore, we really can't explain the origin of Christianity unless we concede that the first Christians firmly believed in this demonstration of God's power.
ReplyDeleteThat is the standard which any other religion has to reach if is to rival Christianity. Admittedly, I have not researched all other religions but there are certain shortcuts that I can take. If another religion never had widespread success, that would tend to disqualify it. A demonstration of God's power would be waste of time if it didn't have a widespread impact.
Of course, it is possible that I am looking at things in the wrong way. Perhaps Zeus is the true God. But if Zeus never bothered to demonstrate his power in a way that would leave a clear trace in the historical record then he can't blame people for not believing in him today.
This atheist objection avoids the central question: is there an all-powerful, all-knowing God or not? There are plenty of philosophical arguments in the affirmative. Likewise, there are arguments against the existence of lesser gods like Zeus that are not all-powerful and all-knowing. Thus, there is no need to argue for or against every example of each type. (For a good discussion around this topic, see William Lane Craig.) If an all-knowing, all-powerful God exists, the question becomes what are His other specific attributes, His plan of salvation for humans (if any), and so forth. Does the Bible get it right, the Koran, some other religious text, or none of the above? That will get you into arguments concerning the reliability of various religious texts, which the Bible will win hands-down.
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