Matthew Henry once said “No man will
say “There is no God” 'till he is so hardened in sin that it has become his
interest that there should be none to call him to account.” As I began reading the accounts of H.J.
McCloskey, I found myself circling and underlining facts in his article that I
found to be absurd, because he had no proof and facts to back up his beliefs. I
have no reason to believe that Mr. McCloskey was living a lifestyle that was
immoral, as Matthew Henry might, but I found myself asking what he had gone
through to cause such a hurt and pain in his heart. Without God he has to be experiencing
a hole there, that nothing else can fill. I found myself highlighting facts
that I don't agree with in his article and saying to myself that this is not
true, or where is the proof for your statement. The purpose of this paper is to
take a dive into the article by H.J. McCloskey, review it and refute it. My
personal view on atheism is that many people believe there is no creator or God
because of the evil in the world. How can they believe in a God that would send
people to Hell even if they are good? By saying that, they are still saying
that there is a God and that evil does exist and it had to start somewhere. So
my outlook on atheism is that there is no such thing and it cannot exist. My
goal is to write, not only as a Christian, but as a 3rd party reader
of this article. The points I will discuss in this paper are to explain how
there still can be a God in light of the “proofs” against God discussed by
McCloskey, refute McCloskey's cosmological arguments against God, review his
teleological arguments and find proofs against them, discuss McCloskey's
problem of evil argument, and refute the statement of atheism being comforting.
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According
to Merriam-Webster Dictionary, the definition of proof is “the cogency of
evidence that compels acceptance by
the mind of a truth or a fact.”
Proof is an important word. It can be the deciding factor between guilty or not
guilty in a murder trial or the difference in a large scale embezzlement case.
Proof is a word that many people throw around and misuse when they don't agree
with a certain belief or lifestyle. Phrases such as “Where is your proof?” or
“Can you prove that?” are common in any religious debate. H. J. McCloskey
states in his “On Being an Atheist” article that his peers “...attribute too
much importance to the role of the proofs of the existence of God as a basis
for religious belief; that most theists do not come to believe in God as a
result of reflecting on truths...” I would have to disagree. While I do agree
that my faith as a Christian is mostly going on faith, I have to also use my
head in thinking about proofs for God. There are 3 aspects to use to best argue
my case. The “Best Explanation Approach” is an approach that uses the best
explanation for certain cases, cases that we have yet to understand, in Science
and life; that only an ultimate designer argument can explain. An example would
be a Mother's milk production. According to BabyCenter.com, one of the
beginning things that has to happen to a woman that is going to begin breast
feeding is “The developing placenta stimulates the release of the hormones
estrogen and progesterone, which in turn stimulate the complex biological
system that makes milk production possible.” How does
our body know how to do this? There is no scientific experiment to best describe
how a woman's body knows how to start producing milk to feed her offspring, it
just does. The “Best Explanation” is that her body was designed that way.
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Another example would be gravity.
Here in the northern North American region, we are a little above the equator,
and we are really upside down at most times. How do we keep from falling off
the planet and floating into space? Well, we have gravity that keeps our feet
on the ground. It would be frightening if we just floated everywhere, and to think
that anytime I can go floating off into space with no oxygen. The “Best
explanation” for this is that a designer and creator made the world this way.
Another aspect to argue my case is the “Cumulative Case” approach. It is true that
there is a lot in this universe that we cannot explain. There are a lot of
scientists in a lot of labs around the world trying to find the answers to life's
mysteries. No one proof or argument can bring us closer to a proof for the
existence of a higher being or God. But an accumulation of all the cases together
moves to reason that there is an ultimate designer and creator. An accumulation
of many different cases put together that are unexplainable have to move to an
answer that says that it was just made that way. There are too many questions
in our universe that are just unexplainable and put them all together and there
is only one answer. The third case I want to bring up is the “Minimalistic
Concept of God.” At the point with no answers, you have to come to the same
conclusion that there is an intelligent creator that designed all the
complicated things of this universe. It is true that you cannot argue for God,
but you can argue for the complicated designs of the human eye, the habits of
animals, or the complications of nature.
C.
Stephen Evans discusses in his book “Philosophy of Religion” the need to
believe in a creator or being. He uses the argument that 1) Some contingent
being exists, 2) If any contingent being exist, then a necessary being must
exist (because contingent
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beings require a necessary being as
their ultimate cause,) 3) Therefore, there exists a
necessary being (which is the
ultimate cause of the existence of contingent beings.) Many will
see this argument as proof that there is a being or group of beings that exist,
but it could be anything from aliens to mythological gods of days past. But
Christians believe in God, so this would be a cosmological argument for us.
There are some arguments to this case. One of them states that the world has always
existed and there was no beginning. The problem with this argument is that
matter decomposes. If you take a table, a normal oak table, and let it sit for
a millennium, what will happen? That table will decompose. Matter is not
infinite. All the arguments against the case for a higher being all come back to
the fact that there must be some type of higher being. This still does not
prove God, but it does prove a creator. McCloskey claims in his article that
this argument does not hold up. He says that cosmological
argument “does not entitle us to postulate an all-powerful, all-perfect,
uncaused cause.“ I say why not? I say where is your proof to the non-existence
of a being? He claims to want proofs on an all-powerful being, he is the proof.
An all-powerful creator must exist for us to be here. We cannot simply exist in
time, and then cease to exist. Something had to have happened for us to exist.
Scientifically speaking, we could not have just always existed. As Gerry J.
Hughes puts it in his article The Cosmological Argument for the Existence of
God; “But surely universes cannot just happen, just appear without any
explanation, any more than pink elephants or tartan sheep can. Something must
have produced it, something external to the universe itself.”
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McCloskey goes on to say in his
article that “evolution has replaced the need for a
designer.”
For arguments sake, let’s say I agreed with McCloskey and believe that we have
evolved from a single micro-organism, to primates, to what we are today. The
theory of evolution is based on survival of the fittest. Beings that evolved
did it because they learned a new technique or change that made them better,
and passed those skills on to their offspring when they breed. Each new
organism learns something new and passes it on, and that is how we have made it
to what we are today. Now, this is what we have to believe, that there is
intelligence in those organisms. Where did that intelligence come from? That
intelligence had to be designed at some point. How did the organism know what
was better for them and learn how to survive? It had to start somewhere; matter
cannot just exist with intelligence formed out of goo. Take for example a tree,
a tree releases seeds and grows other trees. If a “parent” tree was cut down
and the “child” tree sees this, the parent passes unto its offspring the need
for survival and the next generation of trees learns how to attack its
attackers. This is absurd, right? Reminds me of the Lord of the Rings clip with
the fight between Mordor and the forest. Those movies are fantasy and so is the
notion that there is not a designer that made that organism intelligent at some
point.
McCloskey goes on to blame the
existence of evil as being a reason there is no God. McCloskey states “We must
conclude that he is either a malevolent powerful being or that he is a
well-intentioned muddler, that the creator and ruler of the universe is either
not a god but an evil spirit or a well-intentioned finite being whose
limitations result in very disastrous consequences.” He also goes on to say “It
is true that morally evil acts
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and
accidents may hurt us or our loved ones, and render us in need of comfort and
support,
but since, for the reasons alluded to earlier, God must be held ultimately
responsible for these too.” This sounds more like McCloskey wants to blame all
evil doing on God. So my rebuttals to these statements are to ask him where our
free will is. I would rather be able to do bad things once in a while, than to
always be controlled by God or any other higher being. One argument to free
will from atheists in the omniscience of God. How can we have free will if God
already knows all? I will use my daughter for an example. I have a small
daughter at home who I am teaching things, such as don't put your fingers in
the socket or touch hot things. I tell her all the time not to touch the stove
when it is hot. But I also know that at some time, my daughter will touch that
stove out of curiosity. She has free will. I know it will happen and I know
that she will do it anyway, but she made the choice to touch the hot surface.
God knows that even though He tells us to not do something, that it can still
happen. Do I think God knows that I will repent? Yes, I think He does. God
wants to give me that option to repent or not to repent. Does God know that I
will lie again sometime in my life, sure He does, it is my human nature. Does
He know when it will happen, I think so. But He wants to give me that
opportunity to prove Him wrong, just like I want to give my daughter her chance
to prove me wrong that she will listen to my warnings. The problem is evil
exists, but so does free will. I would rather not be controlled like a puppet.
We cannot blame all of the world’s misgivings on God not changing them. To me
this sounds more like whining than trying to prove a fact. God let this happen,
God let that happen; when do we start taking responsibility for our own
actions? Free will is also used for good. In Philosophy of
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Religion C. Stephen Evans, it states “God also allows humans to act freely
because,
without
doing so, humans could not be morally responsible agents, capable of freely
doing good by responding to and loving their neighbors and Creator.” If I do
things for good, I want to know that I am doing them for my love of Christ and
what He has done for me, not because I have a God doing these things for me.
In response to McCloskey stating
that atheism is more comforting than having a God, he has to mean that you have
a void in your heart. To me it sounds as if there is pain there. While reading Reasonable
Faith: Christian Truth and Apologetics by William Lane Craig, there was a
statement that stood out to me. This statement says “Modern man thought that
when he had gotten rid of God, he had freed himself from all that repressed and
stifled him. Instead, he discovered that in killing God, he had only succeeded
in orphaning himself. For if there is no God, then man's life becomes absurd.”
With nothing to live for and do good works for, what is the meaning of doing
good works? What is the purpose to life? As William Lane Craig puts it in his
article on page 72 “...what ultimate meaning can be given to his life? Does it
really matter whether he existed at all?” If you do good works in this life,
they are to have a purpose. I had an atheist friend of mine tell me that
Christians live to die, while atheists live while they are living. I agreed
with him, we do live to die. We serve our purpose here on the Earth to try and
serve the Lord, and one day the Lord will reward us for that. I am not saying
that all I do is for a reward, but is not our purpose to serve God and to live
for God, to share the gospel and to do good? Craig puts these works as relative
significance and ultimate significance, what is the significance to your work
if you do it? What purpose does that good deed serve? It will
VIII
be good
for the moment, but what is the longer lasting effect to a good work done as an
atheist?
This would not be comforting to me to know that my deed ultimately is not
significant. Also, the thought of dying would frighten me as an atheist. What
would happen to me when I am gone? Would I just cease to exist and people would
forget about me? As a Christian, I know that one day I will experience paradise
because that is what the Lord has told me. I wouldn't be able to imagine dying
without knowing that I was not going to paradise.
I have discussed many reasons to
believe in a god or the God over atheism in this paper. I tried to view a lot
of these cases as a bystander, and not solely as a Christian. To me there are
too many proofs to NOT believe in God or a god. There are too many cases in
which all the circumstances tilt the scale to a god side. The best defense for
a god is in our everyday life. The way we breathe, the way our heart beats, the
way we see, the way we eat; everything points to a divine creator.
