Not all atheists are arrogant. Some of them are like my friend The Faithiest Atheist -- honest seekers of truth, and with a sense of humor. The more "normal" the atheist is, the more likely that person will be to sincerely engage in serious conversation with someone who doesn't share their existing worldview. When I speak of the arrogance of atheism, I'm primarily talking about the academic types. For example, Richard Dawkins once famously said that he would refuse to debate Dr. William Lane Craig because "it would look good on his CV (curriculum vitae), but not so good on mine." Never mind the fact Dr. Craig would probably eat him alive in a formal debate. As Sam Harris famously quipped, Dr. Craig has put the fear of God into more than one atheist. Even so, if Dawkins will not even condescend to speak with one of the most famous and well-respected Christian apologists in the world, what chance would I have of gaining an audience with the (self-) esteemed biologist? The correct answer is, none whatsoever. Never in a million years would a man like Richard Dawkins deem any opinion I might wish to share with him as being worthy of his time. In his mind, he occupies a different stratum in society, one where intelligence and academic credentials are carefully vetted before entry is allowed. My personal thoughts and opinions are literally beneath a man of his stature. As a result, I've never made a concerted effort to communicate with Mr. Dawkins, other than perhaps a random email or two over the years, but none written with the expectation that he would … [Read more...]

In order to believe in strict materialism, which is a variant of atheism, you simply can't believe in reality as a whole. If you are a strict materialist, you must reject any evidence of a spirit, or soul. Therefore, phenomena like corroborated veridical NDE events must either be explained away or simply denied to be real, no matter how compelling that evidence might be. The material brain and spiritual mind must be deemed inseparable because the alternative smacks of religious implications. You can only acknowledge that subset of reality that confirms to your existing worldview, which can never hope to explain the sum total of reality without requiring the abandonment of logic and reason when it comes to the best explanation for a given event. No matter how implausible, luck must always be the default answer to every question in an unplanned universe, whether the question is regarding the origin of the universe, the origin of life, or the origin of intelligence. If properly understood, atheism is the same thing as nihilism. Our bodies are nothing more than organic bags of chemicals that code for protein, and our thoughts are delusions produced by chemical reactions. If there is no God, and therefore no objective source for intelligence, then intelligence must be assumed to have arisen from unintelligent sources. If strict materialism, or monism, is true, then there is no rational explanation for the intelligence being used to convey these ideas. If the universe has no purpose, the only reason we can say the universe exists is luck. We cannot invoke some "laws … [Read more...]

From our perspective within the universe, time is linear. The past has already occurred, and the present is happening right now. As you read these words, the present is becoming the past. Once an egg has been broken, time cannot be reversed to a point where the egg is unbroken once again. The past is comprised of historic events; the present is comprised of current events. But what is the future? Is the future knowable? Can the future be predicted? In terms of statistical probability, the past is a historical event, and therefore has a probability of 100 percent. We may not be aware or we may have incorrect data regarding the events that took place on March 7, 1801, but we can be (reasonably) sure that March 7, 1801 occurred, and was preceded by March 6, 1801 and followed by March 8. Only if we allow for the possibility that far-fetched explanations are equally plausible (such as, the suggestion that we live in a simulation created yesterday and we've been programmed of false memories of every day before yesterday) can we even question the veracity of the prior claims about March 7, 1801. Twenty four hours later, the present had become March 8th and the past was now March 7th. On that day the future would be March 9th. Today all three of those dates are now in the past. But what if someone on March 7th predicted an event on March 8th or March 9th, and that prediction came true? The specificity of the claim would determine how credible we interpret the prediction to be, wouldn't it? For example, on March 7th, John Smith could predict that a bank would be … [Read more...]

Here's the truth, unvarnished -- nobody really knows much of anything with absolute certainty. We think we know, but we don't know. For example, without a DNA test, you don't know with absolute certainty that your parents really are your mother and father. There have been well-documented cases (albeit rare, but they do exist) of babies being accidentally switched at birth by the hospital. The odds are dramatically in favor of your mother and father being your real biological parents, but it isn't an absolute certainty until the DNA tests have been performed. I'm not saying DNA tests are absolutely necessary -- nine times out of ten the eyeball test is good enough, but on the other hand, looks can be deceiving. Many people believe they can make certain claims with absolute certainty: claims such as "God exists!" or "God does not exist!" or "climate change is real" or "evolution is a fact" or "the moon landing was faked" or "the Earth is flat" or "there are only two biological sexes", which are all knowledge claims that can never be proved beyond reasonable doubt to the complete and total satisfaction of another human being who arbitrarily disagrees with the original knowledge claim. None of them can be proved, meaning there are zero exceptions. In my book The God Conclusion I endeavor to make and reinforce this point, saying the probability that a supernatural God exists can be demonstrated to be extremely high using only logic and scientific evidence to argue my case, but I make it emphatically clear that the existence of God cannot be proved beyond all … [Read more...]