"5 Reasons: Why I Still Believe in God" - DAY 50

Day 50 – the strategy of atheistic debate

Atheism is a disease of the soul before it is an error of the mind.  –PLATO

Let me add a few comments about atheistic arguments in general. There is a certain pattern to them. First, the atheist will attempt to provide rational reasons why he could be right and the theist wrong. This is what we saw yesterday in the first two rebuttals to the Argument from Human Characteristics. But if there is no rational answer or the ones available seem a bit farfetched, the atheist will proceed to distract the theist from the main issue. He will raise questions that appear relevant to the subject at hand but, on further reflection, can be shown to be irrelevant. His third answer yesterday is a classic example. It is an attempt to divert us from the main subject, the presence of positive human traits, to another—the presence of negative ones. It is used, of course, because the atheist can explain the latter but cannot account for the former. The intention here is to get us off track, to divert our attention from the immediate road ahead. The theist must be alert to this tactic, recognize it when it comes, and expose it as nothing other than the atheist changing the subject.

Take, for example, the criticisms voiced by the eighteenth century skeptic David Hume concerning the Argument from Design.¹ When told that the universe, like a watch, must have a designer, he first tried to present rational alternatives. He argued that the universe could be more like a wild plant than a watch. It could sprout on its own and show evidence of design, yet not require a designer. It could expand, then die, then sprout again, just as day lilies do year after year. What Hume was alluding to is a universe that needs no creator because that universe is eternal, forever recycling itself, forever expanding and contracting, forever creating itself anew. That this is a rational alternative to the Argument from Design has already been noted (Day 21), as has been the fact that it tends to conflict with recent scientific evidence pointing toward a finite universe. 

If Hume had stopped there, he would have begun and ended on a rational note. But he did not stop there. He proceeded to resort to a diversionary tactic. He argued that the universe, instead of being created by an Intelligent Designer, might just as well have been the best effort of a committee of lesser gods or the first effort of a baby god. By saying this, Hume conceded the existence of a designing force behind the universe then evaded the issue by calling into question the credentials of the designer(s). He attempted to avoid the subject at hand (whether a god exists) and redirect the focus to an entirely different subject (what this god is like). His response was no different than that of the young boy who, when caught with his hand in the cookie jar, tells his mother he intended to feed them to the dog. The boy's explanation does not in any way change the main issue (that his hand is in the jar); in fact, he concedes to her that it is. His statement to her is merely an attempt to distract her from that main issue. I doubt that he is successful. His mother is too smart to fall for that clever ploy. So should we be when the atheist, caught in a theological predicament, tries to evade the question at hand.

Daily Quotation

Jules A. Baisnee, ed., Readings in Natural Theology (Westminster, Md.: Newman, 1962), 149.

¹Fearing imprisonment, Hume left unpublished his Dialogues Concerning Natural Religions, in which he launched his counter-attack on the Argument from Design that is summarized in today's reading.