When I try to think of what the best arguments for atheism might be, two immediate possibilities come to mind. The first is the problem of suffering and evil. How does a kind and loving God allow humans to suffer from natural disasters as well as our own evil deeds? Aren’t murders, rapes, and incest bad enough without some innocent people enjoying a lazy day at the beach being suddenly swept away by a seismic wave?
There is no valid human explanation for the problem of suffering because humans don’t like pain but do like pleasure. People never want to experience sorrow; they only want to feel joy. But without sorrow, how do we understand and appreciate joy? Without pain, does pleasure even exist?
For a moment let us consider the possibility of a supernatural Creator for this natural world we currently occupy…how could this Creator/God have some purpose for allowing pain and suffering in our imperfect world?
Sure He could, and we would still not have the mental capacity to understand the Grand Plan. Naturally, this raises a new question–is there a Grand Plan, or only the illusion of a Grand Plan? To answer that question, I would ask the reader to read my book, The God Conclusion. If expressed in the correct language, the origin of our universe can be reduced to two basic, binary options: the universe was either planned or unplanned.
If the universe was planned, we don’t need a true multiverse hypothesis, where an unlimited number of failed universes exist only to reduce the improbability of the universe we have and still don’t supply a cause for the effect known as the Big Bang. We only need a Creator/God with an intellect beyond compare to plan and orchestrate His creation. Not only does a Creator/God solve the problem of the Big Bang and cosmic inflation, He solves the problem of creating life from inanimate matter. God knew the precise composition of the universe He would need to create complex organic life. He perfectly timed the expansion of the universe (which the Bible describes with uncanny accuracy) and created DNA and life.
But if our universe was unplanned, we are forced to rely on the probability estimates provided by the experts for the origin of the universe, the early expansion of the universe, and the origin of life: spoiler alert, if you read my book, you’ll understand exactly how terrible the odds of success really are.
Imagine four people are playing cards with a brand new deck, which is shuffled and then five cards dealt to each player. What is the likelihood that all four players would be dealt a royal straight-flush without having to draw a single card? The odds of this happening would be incomprehensibly low, and yet those odds are infinitely better than the odds of a universe and life being created by random chance, by numerous orders of magnitude. In the event such a rarity actually occurred, someone would surely claim that the deck had been stacked because that is the most reasonable conclusion.
My counterargument to the problem of evil and suffering is freewill. Humans are given two fantastic gifts from God: the gift of life, and the gift of freewill. Because of these gifts, we are free to pursue happiness on Earth through material possessions, or eternal happiness by surrendering our freewill to spiritual versus carnal desires. We might choose to rent an apartment that unfortunately places us next door to a serial killer, or we might take a vacation to paradise and get eaten by a shark. To assume no God exists because bad things can happen to (mostly) good people seems rather foolish to me, especially when there is so much scientific evidence clearly indicating that a supernatural God exists.
The purpose of writing The God Conclusion was never about becoming a rich and famous author. The book was written to provide a sincere and intellectual response to Richard Dawkins and his book The God Delusion. I’m more than happy to gift a free ebook copy to every interested atheist who visits my Facebook page. I care far more about sharing the truth as I understand it than I care about earning material wealth or fame.
This brings me to the second best argument for atheism, which is that you don’t believe there is sufficient evidence to support belief in this supernatural Creator of mine and yet, you hate Him. Atheists love to judge God by His standards because they don’t have standards of their own. God forbids murder in the Ten Commandments, but He never forbade the legal execution of a criminal.
Most atheist visitors assume (correctly) that I am a Christian and thus my Creator/God is the God of the Bible. Guilty as charged, as they say in court. However, my book does not rely on the Bible for the evidence I then logically deduce provides overwhelming evidence that a supernatural Creator/God exists and even suggests you could call the Creator by any name you chose, as long as you don’t mind being wrong.
The “problem” with the God of the Bible is that He is perceived to be a cruel and vindictive God due to Old Testament passages regarding the fate of the Midianites found in Numbers 31:17, or the utter destruction of the Amalekites, as God ordered Saul to carry out in I Samuel 15:2-3.
I’ll be the first to admit that it sounds harsh when God commands Moses to kill every male Midianite, even the children, and every female who wasn’t a virgin. It sounds even worse when God orders the Amalekites slaughtered, not even sparing the infants or livestock.
But then I am reminded that the Midianites led the Israelites into worshipping false idols at Baal Peor. Numbers 31:16 explains exactly what the Midianites did to earn the wrath of Yahweh — they even caused the people of Israel to suffer from a plague for worshipping false gods. As for the Amalekites, they attacked the Israelites from behind during the Exodus. Who usually forms the rear of a large caravan? The very old and very young. In the other words, the Amalekites attacked the weakest and most vulnerable of the Israelites as they were moving through their territory.
When I spoke with my friend The Faithiest Atheist (Richard Suttles) on a recent episode of The God Conclusion podcast, I gave him several possible answers to the problem of God’s judgment. The answer he liked was my speculation that Moses could have added to God’s commands because in the New Testament Jesus says that divorce came from Moses, not from God.
If Moses embellished the commandments of God to allow for divorce when God never approved of divorce, what else had Moses added? What I neglected to mention was that Moses was dealing with the Midianites, but it was Saul whom God commanded to wipe out the Amalekites for what they had done to Moses and the people of Israel during the Exodus.
As I see it, the atheist has two questions to answer. Does any sort of God exist in any way, shape, or form? I believe my book provides the best answer to the question of God’s existence because it uses scientific evidence and applied logic, not ancient prose. The evidence for God is overwhelming, in fact. The second, remaining question is, which God is the right one?
Is it Brahma, the Hindu god of creation? Is it Odin, or Allah? Or is it Yahweh? The answer to that question is well beyond the scope of my book. My book only provides evidence for an anonymous Creator/God. It says nothing about His identity.
Even so, I do believe in the Christian God of the Old Testament and New Testament. I believe in a God who could have commanded the utter annihilation of the Midianites and the Amalekites without a second thought as to what some puny human in the 21st century might think about it after the fact. Why? Because if God exists, He thinks He’s God.
Who are we, to question the wisdom of God?
In our conversation, I ultimately told my friend Richard exactly what he wanted to hear, which was a way to interpret Old Testament scripture without believing God’s judgment can be swift and severe. By suggesting that Moses could have added to the Old Testament to explain the harsh treatment of the Midianites, I gave my atheist friend the “easy” out.
He neglected to follow up with a crucial question: what do I believe? I would have told him I believe Moses could have added to God’s commands to His people, or Moses could have told them exactly what God said. We don’t know all of what the Midianites or Amalekites did to deserve the wrath of God, but in my opinion it would be foolish to assume that nothing could merit such harsh treatment. It’s a fifty/fifty proposition in my mind.
However, when push comes to shove, I tend to lean toward the literal interpretation of the biblical text after what I learned from a Bible study of Genesis. The story of Abraham and Isaac found in Genesis 22 never made any sense to me until I studied Genesis 21 for the first time before rereading Genesis 22 once more. With only one minor assumption, the text in Genesis 22 could be true and make sense with God remaining loving and just.
In the event Moses was only doing what he was told, we would be assuming the authority of God to judge God Himself by claiming that such an event would amount to mass murder without knowing every detail. The problem is that in order to judge God, we must judge God by the standards He created. If you have something and I think I need it, why shouldn’t I just take it?
It’s only a crime if you get caught, right?
We have learned the hard way that secular judgment often leads to mass murder: remember Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot? They “murdered” about eighty million people or so, except it wasn’t murder because they were also the controlling legal authority and said it wasn’t murder to kill them. Mao and Stalin never suffered any consequences for killing millions of people.
If there is no intelligence or power above human intellect, all morality is relative and Stalin, Mao and their ilk were not wrong to commit genocide because it suited a political goal. If all morality is relative, a crime (or a sin) is only wrong if we get caught and punished for it. If we have power and authority, we can even say what is and isn’t a crime regardless of whether it is right or wrong. If we are the controlling legal authority, what we say is right is right, and vice versa.
You’ve got to steal from the morality of the God of the Old Testament in order to judge Him. But if you want to question the wisdom of the God of the Old Testament, you’d better be absolutely certain He’s the wrong God.
The only way we could possibly judge God to be evil or cruel is if we knew what happened to the Midianites and Amalekites after they were slaughtered. Where would the (relatively) innocent children spend eternity? If they were condemned to Hell and lost any opportunity to repent because God had them killed, then you may have a point in saying God is unjust or cruel.
Since we don’t know with certainty what happens to people when they die, we are left to speculate, and humans make lousy guessers. If you believe in God, trust Him. If you don’t believe in any God, read my book and you will find plenty of evidence for an anonymous God.
I’ll even give you a free copy. All you have to do is ask and you will receive provided I have a Facebook connection with you, or an email address for you.
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