This was something that I was considering making a video on for my YouTube channel and then, I decided it would be much better doing it here. This was published on the website for the Houston Baptist University and frankly, it’s just a mess of bald rationalizations for why God is an explanation that isn’t just absurd.

But we like that kind of thing, so let’s go take a look.

The article starts off with a statement and a question. “Prove to me that God exists.” and “What would you take as an acceptable level of proof?” This isn’t a new thing at all, it’s been asked numerous times, both to me and many other atheists.

We always have answers.

Of course, this really starts to look like one of those ridiculous “questions atheists can’t answer” when we clearly can, and do, answer them easily. It’s just not the answer that they want.

Anyhow, I’m just going to select some parts to respond to and if you want to see the absurdity that this article is, go read the whole thing for yourself.

This article goes into a lot of detail where they go wrong though. they say:

Usually, when skeptics ask us Christians for “proof,” they are usually calling for “scientific proof ” for God’s existence, objective moral values, the soul, or life after death.

You will notice that I usually don’t ask for “scientific proof”. I ask for objective proof. I want something that I can fairly evaluate without having to hold a particular belief in their conclusion first. They can’t provide any and that causes them problems because, without some way to fairly evaluate their claims, how could they possibly have come to the conclusion that their claims are true?

Instead, they like to pretend:

Such critics assume that Christians and other theists have a special burden of proof to bear to show that God exists.

No, not a special burden, just the same burden that anyone making any claim has. If someone claimed that Bigfoot was real, I’d expect them to produce the same sort of evidence that I’d want to see from anyone claiming a god. There are no double standards and that’s the problem with the religious. They expect special dispensation for their faith and sorry, they’re not going to get that.

Then they go into “scientism”, which is really a theist way of saying “we can’t meet our burden of proof and it’s unfair to expect us to try!” They are desperate to get away from having any burden because they have no means whatsoever to meet it and that’s the problem they need to face. If they can’t show how they’ve rationally come to the existence of a god, any god, why should we  think they have a good reason to believe it? We’re not going to accept your say-so, which is really what they want us to do. It  goes right back to the questions I constantly level at the religious. How do you know that and how have you objectively tested your assertion to verify that it’s actually so? Those are questions that they simply cannot answer.

Cutting through a good deal of debate, we can say that knowledge has three components: it is (1) a belief that is (2) true and (3) has warrant (or, others might say, justification): warranted true belief. Now, essential to knowledge is that a belief be true. So I cannot rightly say, “I know that the earth is flat” or “I know that circles are square.” You can believe false propositions or statements, but you cannot know them.

Indeed, but we need to see HOW you know these things, in order to declare them as a justified true belief. Someone can say “I believe in invisible, intangible, universe-creating pixies and that’s a justified true belief!” Well, justified by what? Where is your evidence? That’s the same question that we’re asking to the religious. How have you independently justified this and how can I do the same thing?

Of course, they have no answers to that. because their only “justification” is faith. They really believe it, therefore it has to be true, but that  does absolutely nothing for me. I have no reason to think that your faith accurately depicts the state of objective reality. You have to produce something that I can examine in order to come to that conclusion.

They just can’t do that.

The believer can have plenty of good reasons for belief in God—even if not absolute, mathematically certain ones. A helpful way to make a reasoned case for God’s existence is to ask: which context makes the best sense of important  features of the universe and of human existence? For example, we are aware of the existence of consciousness, free will or a presumed personal responsibility, personhood, rationality, duties, and human value—not to mention the beginning, fine-tuning, and beauties of the universe.

Except they run into a problem because there is no direct, demonstrable causal link between any of those things and any real, existing god. You could assert that those things can be accounted for by Odin or Krishna or Bobo the Tree God. They could come from space aliens. They could come from the aforementioned magical pixies. You can’t just assert that a thing is responsible, you have to be able to demonstrate it and the religious, as we all know, simply cannot.

Further, a lot of the things on that list, they aren’t demonstrable in any objective way. They are just subjective assertions that have no basis in verifiable reality. There is no demonstrable fine-tuning to the universe. As Richard Dawkins once said, and the religious absolutely hate, “The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.” The religious don’t like that but it is true nonetheless. The religious are desperately trying to get to an emotionally-comforting conclusion where none, demonstrably, exists. This is because the religious position is, at its core, one of emotion, not intellect. They want to feel special when, in reality, there’s no reason to think that is so.

Then, of course, they go on to wrongly define terms because, what else are they going to do? They need to cast atheism as diametrically opposed to theism when, in fact, it is anything but. This is just the religious desperately trying to shift the burden of proof by pretending that everyone is just like they are, even though we’re not.

Second, Scriven’s description does not allow for any distinction between atheism and agnosticism. So what is the difference? The agnostic does not know whether God exists or not. Let’s say the agnostic believes that evidence for God is completely lacking and that the evidence favoring atheism is also completely lacking .

There is no evidence in favor of atheism because atheism isn’t making any claims. It’s looking at the claims of the religious and saying “we are not convinced that what you are saying is true”. But of course, this puts all of the pressure on them and they can’t have that, so they’d rather run around with the goalposts and try to tell atheists what we believe instead of simply asking us. They don’t really care what we have to say. They care what gets them off of the hot seat.

Another point made in the article:

Third, the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. As I noted earlier, if evidence for God is lacking, the more logical conclusion to draw would be agnosticism. After all, it is possible that God exists even if evidence for God were nowhere to be found. In this case, we should suspend belief, which would amount to mere unbelief, but, as we have seen, that is different from disbelief ( i.e., atheism). Why think we are obligated to disbelieve?

That can be said of anything. There is no evidence that invisible, intangible, universe-creating pixies don’t exist. That doesn’t mean that they do. It’s why we don’t make decisions when we are lacking corroboratory evidence. I won’t believe in Bigfoot until I have been presented with sufficient corroboratory evidence that Bigfoot actually exists. What I might want to be true is entirely irrelevant to what is actually true. It all comes down to who can present the best intellectually-convincing evidence and the religious come nowhere close. I’m sure they think they do, but they have nothing that they can present and thus, no case that  can be made for how they’ve made an intelligent, coherent or critically-evaluated decision, based on evidence. It’s all just wishful thinking and wishful thinking doesn’t get anyone anywhere.

Fourth, what if belief in God is “properly basic,” even without supporting evidence?

That’s just a claim though. How do you establish that? It’s just a claim that can be made about literally anything. “Invisible, intangible, universe-creating pixies are properly basic!” Yeah, says who? We just keep going around and around in circles without ever establishing anything worthwhile. If the Christian thinks they can just declare God to be “properly basic” why can’t the Muslim do the same thing for Allah? Or the Hindu for Krishna? Or the Scientologist for body thetans? Where does it stop?

Fifth, to claim God and Santa Claus are on the same level is a flawed comparison. We have strong evidence that Santa Claus does not exist. We know where Christmas gifts come from. We know that humans—let alone, elves—do not live at the North Pole. We can be pretty confident that a human Santa, if he existed, would be mortal rather than ageless and undying. This is evidence against Santa.

You have nothing of the sort. Because we can play the same  games that the religious do with their imaginary friends. Santa Claus is magic. You can’t see him at the North Pole because he and his workshop are invisible and intangible, at least unless he wants you to see it. You’ve been a bad boy or girl, that’s why the only presents you get are from your parents. Can you prove that anyone has ever gotten presents from Santa? Well, no, but that’s a matter of faith. If you don’t have faith, why should he come and leave you anything? And I find it absolutely absurd that they’d say “humans are mortal” when they believe in a magical man-god that rose from the dead. Maybe Santa isn’t human. Maybe Santa is a demi-god. How would you know? This isn’t evidence against Santa because we, like the religious, can just make things up to explain our way around the objections. They’re not actually making any worthwhile points.

There are two kinds of agnostic: (1) the ordinary agnostic, who says, “I would really like to know whether God exists or not, but I do not have enough to go on” and (2) the ornery (!) agnostic, who says, “I do not know whether God exists or not—and you cannot know either.”

The victimhood complex here is laughable. This isn’t a matter of agnosticism, it’s a matter of epistemology. How do you know what you know and how can you tell the difference between things that you know and things that you simply believe? I don’t think most theists actually can make that delineation. It’s true because they want it to be true, not because it is true, independent of their feelings. They don’t like us pointing that out so they call us names when we don’t fall for their emotional diatribe. Sad, isn’t it?

As mentioned earlier, evidence for God’s existence is widely available through creation, conscience, rationality and human experience. What is more, the biblical faith—unlike other traditional religions—is checkable; it opens itself up to public scrutiny. If, for example, Christ has not been raised from the dead, the Christian faith would be false, Paul argues in 1 Corinthians 15. Indeed, the Scriptures routinely emphasize the role of eyewitnesses, the importance of public signs and wonders to prompt belief (Jn. 20:30-31), and other historical evidences for all to consider.

Yet again, they are just making assertions that they cannot back up. These are just empty claims that don’t actually mean anything. They are assuming a creation without demonstrating a creation and further, they are assuming their god done it without ever being able to back that up. They desperately want their religion to be true, thus they blindly believe that Jesus had to come back from the dead, otherwise their religion wouldn’t be true.

I trust that people can see just how idiotic that actually is. Of course, none of this impresses the skeptics, which is why they don’t want to talk to the skeptics. How do they know any of this? They don’t. It’s just wishful thinking masquerading as fact. They simply blindly believe whatever it says in their big book of mythology and since they cannot accept that their faith might be misplaced, they can’t look into it farther than that.

Beyond this, it gets into a summary where they think that they can define what atheism means, wrongly, of course, then they try to shift the burden of proof away from themselves because it’s just too difficult to manage. This is one of the more ridiculous religious screeds that I’ve seen and I could have gone into much more detail tearing it apart, but what’s the point? The fanatics, such as those that  go to Houston Baptist University, they’re not going to listen anyhow. They’re not interested in truth, only in their own childish emotional comfort.

Because that’s what this is really all about. Acting like children. It’s absurd in the extreme.