Debating the Kalam argument in a YouTube thread

A new reader to the blog read my article on the Kalam cosmological argument, and he decided to try it out on youtube here. He presented the argument PERFECTLY, and then he got some responses. He asked me to comment, so I will below. But I want you guys to comment, too! (UPDATE: Comment in this post – I don’t recommend commenting in YouTube discussions)

Anyway, here’s the page. (I didn’t watch the video)

And here’s his initial presentation of the argument:

1 Whatever begins to exist requires a cause
2 The universe began to exist
3 Therefore, the universe requires a cause

The cause for the universe (time, space, matter, etc) must be something entirely different (outside the realm of time, space, and matter) since a thing cannot be the cause of itself.

Now I’ll reply to his opponents, but you can reply too in the comments, because he’s reading this post, and we should all try to offer him our thoughts. At the end, I recommend some additional resources, all free online, to help everyone understand the details of this fine argument.

Responses to the Kalam argument

Here’s the first reply:

Just because we don’t know the cause yet doesn’t mean it’s not something scientific. I’m not saying it is, I’m just saying it’s possible.

By “scientific”, I am thinking that this challenger is hoping for a material cause, but the problem is that the origin of the universe is the origin of all space and matter – so no “scientific” cause is possible. So it is not possible that the origin of the universe was caused by something “scientific”, because it’s an absolute origin of all matter, and the physical laws that govern matter, as well. Tell him that there is only one kind of non-material entity capable of causing effects and that is a mind.

Here’s another reply:

What if the universe always existed? We don’t know that it has started to exist, we just know that it exists and that it has existed for very long. So it is possible that it has always existed. So that doesn’t prove anything.

I would ask this person why they hate science so much to deny the good data about the measurements of red-shift in light from distant galaxies, the helium-hydrogen abundance measurements, the cosmic microwave background radiation, the second law of thermodynamics, the star formation cycle, etc. As them what is wrong with science, and why must they push their religion (naturalism) on science?

Here’s another reply:

The same principle can apply to god as well, so this argument doesn’t prove or disprove either it is just pointless.

My response is that the cause of the universe causes the beginning of time as well, and so therefore the cause exists necessarily, outside of time. Things that exist outside of time are eternal, they don’t not exist at time t1 and then begin to exist at time t2. The cause of time’s beginning cannot come into being itself, because there is no t1 and t2 before time is created.

Here’s another reply:

uhm .. no, there is no definition of god like that and even if it is it’s invalid, why ? well mostly because apart from a book “The Bible” there is no real proof he existed, no one has seen him and I’ll wager that no one ever will, henceforth you cannot define something that you really know nothing about, something that might not even exist, it’s like saying that bigfoot is a mammal. you can’t prove that either since you haven’t seen it and don’t even know if it exists

Notice that onlinesid produced an argument for the existence of God, and now this guy is bringing in the Bible (red herring), no proof (red herring), why can’t I see God (red herring), no one knows anything about God (red herring and self-refuting), and bigfoot (red herring). This person is clearly brain-damaged and not one of the things he write is worth a response. Note: I am being mean, but you can’t be mean when you reply to him, you have to tell them to stay focused on your argument and deny premise 1 or premise 2.

And here’s another:

You assume that the universe began to exist.

We currently don’t know if it did or not; the present hypothesis is expansion from a single point that is infinitely small.

You also assume that the cause of the universe doesn’t have a cause. You need to account for the cause of the cause, and the cause of that cause, ad infinitum.

And on “God being outside of” reality, then he shouldn’t be able to affect reality in any observable way. God is untestable.

Again, tell him he is a science-hating flat-earther and ask which of the empirical evidences for the Big Bang he denies. We need to get off of his speculations and evasions and ask him to deny a premise or to deny some scientific data. As soon as he does, ask him for peer-reviewed data that refutes the scientific observations. The cause of the universe doesn’t have a cause because it is outside of time and doesn’t begin to exist. The premise is that only things that begin to exist require a cause. Regarding God not being able to cause effects, you should say that God is a mind and causes effects in time subsequent to creation the same way that humans cause effects using their wills on their bodies.

Here’s another:

It’s called the “Big Bang” hypothesis. Even simple Wikipedia will besufficient for an understanding of it. Or videos on Youtube, if you are that lazy and/or ignorant.

The “evidence” for it is background electromagnetic radiation and the appearance that the universe is expanding. Among other things

The “mind” we perceive is the function of electrochemical impulses between our brain cells. We classify it as a “mind”. And as a physical system of reality, it is affected by physical reality..

Again ask him what is his scientific evidence that the universe is eternal, and ask him what is wrong with your scientific evidence showing that it isn’t eternal. You must make him make a claim and supply evidence for his claim. You need to buy a book called “God and the Astronomers” by agnostic Robert Jastrow and read it. It explains all the discoveries that led to the Big Bang, but get the second edition. Also, if he thinks that mind is biologically determined, then you need to explain that biological determinism makes rationality impossible, since all of our outputs are determined by inputs and DNA programming that has the goal of reproducing, not finding truth.

More challenges:

…The beginning of the universe need not be “God”. Could have been made by a pencil. Or could have always been, like a trigonomic function, repeating and diverging into two dimensions.

I think our boy is beginning to wear him down. He now thinks a pencil caused the entire physical universe to appear out of nothing. But the problem is that a pencil is made of matter and cannot have caused the beginning of all matter. But do go on and make him identify what he thinks the cause is. It can’t be in time, it can’t be matter.

More:

And the theist-point-of-view actually can in no way prove God because there are many OTHER ways it could have happened. A pencil could have been the original cause of the big-bang, or it could repeat like a trig function, eternally epanding, collapsing, expanding in another
dimension, etc.

He’s raising the oscillating model, which is falsified theoretically and observationally. In 1998, the discovery of the year was that the universe would expand forever. The oscillating model also faces theoretical problems with the “bounce” mechanism. Sid, if you still can, try your best in physics class, and take astronomy and physics in university, along with philosophy and logic. It will help you to have more fun in these debates and you’ll know more details.

More:

I did not say that the physical realm is all there is. (Thought there could be two realms, or more.) BUT asuming that an entity exists outside the physical realm and created this universe from that dimension IS illogical.

Ask him for a logical argument that proves that God cannot create matter out of nothing. These assertions need to be backed up with deductive arguments, with premises supported by scientific observations. You can’t just throw around that word “illogical”. It sounds like he is just saying “I don’t like it”. Make sure that you ask him for peer-reviewed papers for anything he says about science, and formal arguments for anything he says is “illogical”.

This time he argues quatum mechanics:

Small particles of matter, at least as I understand it, CAN be “created” from energy. The only real “trouble” is the creation of energy, which “god made it” faces the problem of “what made god?”…

If he wants to argue quantum mechanics, you need to remind him that virtual particles can only appear in a quantum vaccuum, which exists in space. It is not nothing. Also, virtual particles are not as massive as a universe, and those virtual particles only stay in existence for a fraction of a second. So this is not a good analogy for the origin of the entire physical universe.

Further study

You did well, you just need to be meaner in demanding that he bear his share of the burdern of proof. Ask him why you should accept his speculations and assertions, where are his arguments, where is his scientific evidence.

I think that this book would be a good one along with God and the Astronomers, second edition. But read this paper, too, and every William Lane Craig debate you can get your hands on, especially the one with physicist Victor Stenger (video, audio), the follow-up lecture at UC Boulder where Stenger is in the audience, and the second Craig-Dacey debate. When you’re done with that, listen to this lecture and this lecture (I know it’s similar to the first one, but tough!) and this lecture and this lecture. And study more physics if you’re still in school!

God meant for us to enjoy ourselves arguing in his universe. Jesus cured the paralytic to provide evidence for his claims. Similarly, we can use the evidence of nature miracles that science is just now discovering to get the same effect as though we could perform miracles. But we need to understand philosophy and physics down to the details.

Filed under: Mentoring , Apologetics, Astrophysics, Atheism, Big Bang, Big Bang Theory, Cosmic Microwave Background Radiiation, Creation, Debate, Debates, Edwin Hubble, Energy, Kalam Cosmological Argument, Laws of Logic, Laws of Physics, Lecture, Light Element Abundances, Logic, Materialism, Matter, Michael G. Strauss, Michael Strauss, Mike Strauss, NASA, Naturalism, Origin of the universe, Origins, Physics, Quantum Mechanics, Red Shift, Robert Nozick, Science, Scientific Progress, Second Law of Thermodynamics, Space-Time, Star Formation, Stellar Evolution, Stephen Hawking, Veritas Forum, Victor Stenger, Walter Bradley, William Lane Craig

John Piper’s questions to ask before you get married

Commenter McKenzie posted this link in one of the other posts. It’s famous theologian John Piper’s list of questions to discuss before a couple gets married.

Here’s the section on theology:

• What do you believe about…everything?
• Perhaps read through the Desiring God Affirmation of Faith to see where each other is on various biblical doctrines.
• Discover how you form your views. What is the reasoning-believing process? How do you handle the Bible?

The last line there is important because I think that if I got married, I would have to have some way to win my wife over to my point of view on areas where she did not agree with me. I think that there is only one way to do that, and that’s by trying to convince her to study the issue and to see if her views change in my direction as a result of studying. So during the courtship, I would want to try to change her mind by having her study things with me.

I don’t believe that people can change their minds by an act of will. The only way to change a person’s mind is to give them space to consider arguments and evidence on both sides of a question. At least, that’s how I come to my beliefs about things. Anyway, I think that this question “how do you form your views?” is very important because it the person forms their views by studying, then I will have a way to move forward when we disagree about things.

Here are some other questions that would be fun to discuss:

• What is the meaning of headship and submission in the Bible and in our marriage?
• How do you understand who and how often sex is initiated?
• What about school? Home school? Christian school? Public school?
• Should we have a television? Where? What is fitting to watch? How much?
• What makes you angry?
• How do you handle your frustration or anger?
• Who is the main breadwinner?
• Should the wife work outside the home? Before kids? With kids at home? After kids?
• What are your views of daycare for children?
• What determines where you will locate? Job? Whose job? Church? Family?
• Is it good to do things with friends but without spouse?
• What will you do if one of you really likes to hang out with so and so and the other doesn’t?
• How do you think about exercise and healthy eating?

I think that it would be so much fun to talk about things like this in a relationship where both people were trying to see how and whether a marriage would work. It seems to me that these are the kinds of topics people should talk about when courting, and they should definitely not be focused so much on having fun. I tend to talk more about apologetics stuff with women, because I want to assess whether they can protect the children’s worldviews.

One thing that has always driven me crazy is when people say that they are looking for a spouse with whom they have many things in common. I disagree with this approach! Marriage is like a job, and you need particular skills to do it. Two narcissists may have narcissism in common, but that doesn’t qualify them to be happily married. A much better approach is to take a list of questions like Piper’s list and talk through them over a period of time.

You know what’s fun? A man and a woman talking seriously about how to get married and raise children. I’m a software engineer, and I love to design software. Thinking about how to marry and have children is fun for me, because it’s like software design. Identifying the challenges and solving all the problems that might come up is really interesting.

Filed under: Mentoring , Chrisitanity, Christian, Christian Living, Courting, Courtship, Dating, Family, Husband, Interview, Man, Marriage, Marry, Match, Match-Maker, Match-Making, Matchmaker, Matchmaking, Questions, Relationship, Theology, Wife, Women

You should read Theodore Dalrymple’s “Life At The Bottom” for free online!

That’s right. I bought the book and gave it to my Dad, because Thomas Sowell endorsed it. My Dad read this book and he loved it. I read the book and I loved it. And now my co-workers are borrowing it from me.

What’s it about? Well the author is a psychologist in a hospital that deals with a lot of criminals and victims of crime. So he gets to see the worldview of the “underclass” up close, and to understand how the policies of the compassionate secular left are really working at the street level. The theme of the book is that the left advances policies in order to feel good about themselves, even though the policies actually hurt the poor and vulnerable far more than they help them. And the solution of the elites is more of the same.

The whole book is available ONLINE for free! From City Journal!

Table of Contents

The Knife Went In 5
Goodbye, Cruel World 15
Reader, She Married Him–Alas 26
Tough Love 36
It Hurts, Therefore I Am 48
Festivity, and Menace 58
We Don’t Want No Education 68
Uncouth Chic 78
The Heart of a Heartless World 89
There’s No Damned Merit in It 102
Choosing to Fail 114
Free to Choose 124
What Is Poverty? 134
Do Sties Make Pigs? 144
Lost in the Ghetto 155
And Dying Thus Around Us Every Day 167
The Rush from Judgment 181
What Causes Crime? 195
How Criminologists Foster Crime 208
Policemen in Wonderland 221
Zero Intolerance 233
Seeing Is Not Believing 244

Lots more essays are here, all from City Journal.

My favorite passage

The only bad thing about reading it online is that you miss one of the best quotes from the introduction. But I’ll type it out for you.

The disastrous pattern of human relationships that exists in the underclass is also becoming common higher up the social scale. With increasing frequency I am consulted by nurses, who for the most part come from and were themselves traditionally members of (at least after Florence Nightingale) the respectable lower middle class, who have illegitimate children by men who first abuse and then abandon them. This abuse and later abandonment is usually all too predictable from the man’s previous history and character; but the nurses who have been treated in this way say they refrained from making a judgment about him because it is wrong to make judgments. But if they do not make a judgment about the man with whom they are going to live and by whom they are going to have a child, about what are they ever going to make a judgment?

“It just didn’t work out,” they say, the “it” in question being the relationship that they conceive of having an existence independent of the two people who form it, and that exerts an influence on their on their lives rather like an astral projection. Life is fate.

This is something I run into myself. I think that young people today prefer moral relativists as mates, because they are afraid of being judged and rejected by people who are too serious about religion and morality. The problem is that if you choose someone who doesn’t take religion and morality seriously, then you can’t rely on them to behave morally and exercise spiritual leadership when raising children.

An excerpt

Here’s one of my favorite passages from “Tough Love”, in which he describes how easily he can detect whether a particular man has violent tendencies on sight, whereas female victims of domestic violence – and even the hospital nurses – cannot or will not recognize the signs.

All the more surprising is it to me, therefore, that the nurses perceive things differently. They do not see a man’s violence in his face, his gestures, his deportment, and his bodily adornments, even though they have the same experience of the patients as I. They hear the same stories, they see the same signs, but they do not make the same judgments. What’s more, they seem never to learn; for experience—like chance, in the famous dictum of Louis Pasteur—favors only the mind prepared. And when I guess at a glance that a man is an inveterate wife beater (I use the term “wife” loosely), they are appalled at the harshness of my judgment, even when it proves right once more.

This is not a matter of merely theoretical interest to the nurses, for many of them in their private lives have themselves been the compliant victims of violent men. For example, the lover of one of the senior nurses, an attractive and lively young woman, recently held her at gunpoint and threatened her with death, after having repeatedly blacked her eye during the previous months. I met him once when he came looking for her in the hospital: he was just the kind of ferocious young egotist to whom I would give a wide berth in the broadest daylight.

Why are the nurses so reluctant to come to the most inescapable of conclusions? Their training tells them, quite rightly, that it is their duty to care for everyone without regard for personal merit or deserts; but for them, there is no difference between suspending judgment for certain restricted purposes and making no judgment at all in any circumstances whatsoever. It is as if they were more afraid of passing an adverse verdict on someone than of getting a punch in the face—a likely enough consequence, incidentally, of their failure of discernment. Since it is scarcely possible to recognize a wife beater without inwardly condemning him, it is safer not to recognize him as one in the first place.

This failure of recognition is almost universal among my violently abused women patients, but its function for them is somewhat different from what it is for the nurses. The nurses need to retain a certain positive regard for their patients in order to do their job. But for the abused women, the failure to perceive in advance the violence of their chosen men serves to absolve them of all responsibility for whatever happens thereafter, allowing them to think of themselves as victims alone rather than the victims and accomplices they are. Moreover, it licenses them to obey their impulses and whims, allowing them to suppose that sexual attractiveness is the measure of all things and that prudence in the selection of a male companion is neither possible nor desirable.

Often, their imprudence would be laughable, were it not tragic: many times in my ward I’ve watched liaisons form between an abused female patient and an abusing male patient within half an hour of their striking up an acquaintance. By now, I can often predict the formation of such a liaison—and predict that it will as certainly end in violence as that the sun will rise tomorrow.

At first, of course, my female patients deny that the violence of their men was foreseeable. But when I ask them whether they think I would have recognized it in advance, the great majority—nine out of ten—reply, yes, of course. And when asked how they think I would have done so, they enumerate precisely the factors that would have led me to that conclusion. So their blindness is willful.

Go read the rest! This is pure wisdom. And by wisdom I mean an awareness and familiarity with the objective moral that binds human action.

Book reviews

• The Age of Bad Ideas
• Review of Life at the Bottom

Filed under: Mentoring , Alcohol, Child Abuse, Children, City Journal, Club, Cohabitation, Compassion, Crime, Criminiology, Culture, Domestic Violence, Drug Abuse, Drugs, Elitism, Equality, Feminism, Free, Full Text, Incarceration, Learn, Life at the Bottom, Mental Health, Moral relativism, Morality, Multi-culturalism, Objective Morality, Online, Parenting, Pathology, Police, Political Correctness, Prison, Punishment, Rehabilitation, Theodore Dalrymple, Therapy, UK, Underclass, Violence, Wisdom

Does a man’s decision to marry negatively impact his service to God?

I found this post while browsing on Parchment and Pen, by C. Michael Patton. In it he discusses how his wife Kristie responded to his interest in making sacrifices to become a missionary in Europe. First, let’s take a look at what he wrote, then I’ll comment. This post is the meanest thing I have ever written on the blog. Please don’t read it, especially if you are a woman.

Now I don’t know any of the details of Mike’s life, so I am just using his words as a springboard to make some points of my own. Nothing mean I say applies to Mike or his family. I am trying to talk about my own experiences trying to reconcile my faith with women.

Mike starts admirably by explaining how, as a married man with two children, he became excited about a plan for preaching and defending the gospel in places like Europe, where there are very few Christians evangelizing.

He writes:

When I got home, Kristie attempted to probe for the passion and the source of my excitement. I held back some naively thinking it was going to be a surprise. I wanted to walk her through all I had learned and let the excitement build in her as it had in me. I told her everything we had been learning doing my best to work without the pins. I explained to her how much of a famine for the Gospel existed in other parts of the world. Then, when the time was just right, I gave her the “good” news: “We are going to be missionaries!!!”

I don’t think Mike’s expectations on his wife are realistic given my experiences with Christian women. And his wife did end up rejecting his plan to become missionaries in Europe.

Now I’ll talk about my experience, not about Mike’s story. In my experience, women often (70%) approach Christianity as a subjective experience, not as objective knowledge. So that means that they are not going to find what is written in the Bible as more authoritative than their own feelings, which they may be projecting onto “God” without the benefit of logic or evidence. That is why most women are usually not very interested in Christian knowledge, like theology or church history, and especially apologetics. In my experience, what this means is that they are less interested trying to convince people that Christianity is TRUE.

Most women in the churches prefer subjective experiences like singing, community, prayer, rituals, etc. Many women resent the idea that Christianity might be objectively true, because the truth of Christianity would limit their ability to invent their own version of Christianity based on their intuition. Many are certainly not interested in learning about God as he is, and then in shaping their lives to serve him in the most effective ways, regardless of the cost. Many prefer to spend their time reading fiction, like Stephanie Meyer instead of evidential stuff, like Stephen Meyer. Dan Brown stuff is also popular because it allows them to doubt the Bible when the Bible disagrees with their intuitions.

So the problem is that the Bible seems to be calling for bold action to evangelize and persuade others, but women seem to be more interested in more subjective, inward-focused activities that make them happy.

Note: there are exceptions of course. I know one women who read Signature in the Cell (!). Another woman I know read FOUR Tom Sowell books in two months. Actually some of the strongest denunciations of Christian women comes from other Christian women. One woman once told me that she never attended all-women Bible studies, and another told me angrily that her women’s group spent more time on arranging the table settings than in choosing the speaker for an event! As well, the best book on the Christian worldview is written by Nancy Pearcey. Etc. And of course, there’s Michele Bachmann, who asks her husband to take her to hear Ravi Zacharias for her BIRTHDAY PRESENT.

Mike continues:

Since then I have seen this situation more times than I can count. It is usually always the same: a zealous husband who has become embittered against his wife because she will not follow him in his zealousness. One good friend just got a divorce because his wife did not want to become a missionary. He thought it was the Lord’s will and he believed her unwillingness was keeping him from a “greater good.” Now, after the divorce, his immaturity has disqualified him from taking that step even by himself. Another friend is becoming embittered toward his wife because her focus is elsewhere. Their marriage is suffering. I could tell many more stories, but I don’t want to betray anyone’s confidence.

Friends (and especially young zealous husbands or soon to be husbands), don’t make the mistake of having your passion for ministry end your marriage. You first ministry is your marriage. If you don’t get that, you are not qualified for ministry. In the spirit of Priscilla: Do you not think that God is powerful enough to call you both into ministry or do you think he only has enough power to call one of you? If so, then he is not a God worth your time anyway. In short, if God does not call your wife, he is not calling you. Period.

Well, I agree with Mike that once you get married, unless you’re married to Jan Craig, then you can pretty much kiss your ministry good-bye. You have to uphold your marriage first, and God comes second. If your wife blocks your ministry, then you’re stuck with no ministry. He’s right about that. Which is why I don’t get married. What many women want, in my experience, is to make you like them so much that they can control you. But if they see that you are resisting and evaluating them critically, they give up and move on to easier prey. Many women have no intention of trying to help you to achieve your vision. You are just a tool in their toolbox for pursuing happiness.

What does the Bible say in 1 Cor 7:1-28?

¹Now for the matters you wrote about: It is good for a man not to marry.

⁸Now to the unmarried and the widows I say: It is good for them to stay unmarried, as I am.

⁹But if they cannot control themselves, they should marry, for it is better to marry than to burn with passion

²⁵Now about virgins: I have no command from the Lord, but I give a judgment as one who by the Lord’s mercy is trustworthy.

²⁶Because of the present crisis, I think that it is good for you to remain as you are.

²⁷Are you married? Do not seek a divorce. Are you unmarried? Do not look for a wife.

²⁸But if you do marry, you have not sinned; and if a virgin marries, she has not sinned. But those who marry will face many troubles in this life, and I want to spare you this.

And in Matthew 19:12, Jesus says:

¹²For some are eunuchs because they were born that way; others were made that way by men; and others have renounced marriage because of the kingdom of heaven. The one who can accept this should accept it.”

I have seen theologian after theologian explain these verses away, rather than incur the wrath of women in the audience. But it seems to me the verses are pretty clear. Don’t marry. (Note: there are exceptions – I think a marriage to Michele Bachmann would be an ennobling experience).

The only virtuous reason for a man to get married is when he is convinced that he can do better for God with that woman by his side than they can do as singles. Once a man gets married to someone who wants to live a secular life of pleasure, he’s stuck – he can’t break up the marriage to save his ministry. Mike is right about that. So that’s why I say again to men – DON’T MARRY! Marriage gets in the way of your commitment to God, unless you are very careful to find a wife who will support you in your ministry.

Look at Mike’s bio page:

I am Michael Patton, the primary contributor to the Parchment and Pen blog. I do a lot of stuff and love teaching theology. In fact, I have been blessed enough to be able to make my living doing so. I am married, have four kids (two girls and two boys). Got married to the most beautiful gal in the world.

If you click through, you will see a picture of his wife in some sort of beauty pageant. But right away I am concerned because I am suspicious of women who enter beauty pageants.

Now forget Mike’s pretty wife, and let me make a comment about men and sexual attraction.

Most Christian men become interested in women because of sexual attraction (unless you’re me, and you have visions of little homeschooled William Lane Craig and Michele Bachmann clones dancing in your head). I think that many men today rely far too much on physical attraction, they start the physical contact way too early which destroys their objectivity. And most men don’t take the time to screen women to see whether their stated beliefs are grounded. They just take the women, and their stated beliefs, at face value. And what this means is that God is being left out of the relationship – his needs don’t matter. What matters is the physical attraction.

I have a friend with a PhD in physics who is an elder in his Calvinist church. His wife has never read an apologetics book. Not even The Screwtape Letters. She says that logic and evidence don’t apply to Christianity. She knows God through her intuition, not through the Bible, because the Bible was written by men. And Christianity is really about doing whatever she wants to be happy. She reads Dan Brown and she gave him Dan Brown to read, too. She doesn’t believe in Hell, and she thinks Jesus was married. She views her husband as a tool for serving her. She has a pretty appearance, so  he never screened her statements of faith. His eyes were blinded by a sexual attraction.

One of my friends has married well, and his wife is 100% perfect in every way. They had a good long courtship, with pre-marriage counseling, and were very strict about physical contact. (They were both virgins when they married in their late 20s). And that is the only way to do a courtship – they put God’s needs first and they knew exactly what vision they were pursuing. I think that men need to look for women who treat God as a real person, with a distinct character of his own. (She was a missionary for a year in a very nasty part of the world). On her evening off from being a stay-at-home mom, she answers apologetics questions for unbelieving seekers. This woman was screened very well.

More Mike stuff is here.

UPDATE: When I say DON’T MARRY, I really meant “don’t marry without sharing your vision with your prospective mate first, and make sure that she is on board with it”.

Filed under: Mentoring , Abstinence, Apologetics, Chaste, Chastity, Chivalry, Choosing a Mate, Christian, Christian Man, Christian Marriage, Christian Woman, Christianity, Christians, Courtship, Dating, Feminine, Femininity, Feminism, Friend, Friendship, God, Godly Man, Godly Woman, Holiness, Husband, Jesus, Love, Marriage, Men, Men's Rights, Parenting, Recognitiion, Relationship, Respect, Roles, Romance, Romantic, Sex, Sex Difference, Single, Theology, Trust, Understanding, Virgin, Virginity, Wife, Women, Writing

Why do atheists like Dan Barker abandon their Christian faith?

Unbelievable’s latest radio show featured a discussion with former Christian Dan Barker, the founder and co-President of the Freedom From Religion Foundation.

The MP3 file is here. (60 minutes)

I thought that I would make some general comments about why I think that many people leave the Christian faith, and what you should be careful of in order to avoid following in Dan Barker’s footsteps, specifically.

Basically, there are four major reasons why people leave Christianity.

1. They want to do something immoral with impunity. This type of person wants to do something immoral that is forbidden by Christianity, like pre-marital sex. They dump Christianity in order to feel better about seeking happiness in this life, apart from God and his moral duties.
2. They want to pursue happiness in irresponsible ways. This type of person thinks that God’s job is to save them when they act irresponsibly while pursuing happiness. When God disappoints them by not giving them what they want in order to be happy, they leave the faith.
3. They want to be loved by people, not by God. This type of person thinks that Christianity is a tool that they can use to become popular. When they first try to articulate the gospel in public, they find that people don’t like them as much, and they feel bad about offending people with exclusive truth claims that they cannot back up using logic and evidence. So, they water down Christianity to get along with atheists, liberal Christians and other religions. Finally, they jettison Christianity completely and focus on making everyone feel good about whatever they believe.
4. They don’t want to learn to defend their faith. This type of person is asked questions by skeptics that they cannot answer. Usually this happens when people go to university after growing up in the shelter of the Church. The questions and peer pressure make them feel stupid. Rather than investigate Christianity to see if it’s true and to prepare to defend it in public, they dump it so they can be thought of as part of the “smart” crowd.

Now listen to the discussion and see if you can identify some of these factors from Barker’s own carefully-prepared words. He is trying very hard to make himself look honest and moderate, because he wants Christians to be sympathetic with his story and his motives for leaving Christianity. But I think that there is enough in his statements to construct a different hypothesis of why he left Christianity.

I’ve grouped the data by risk factor. (These are not his exact views)

Non-rational, emotional approach to Christianity

• he was raised in a devout Christian family where he probably wouldn’t have faced skeptical questions
• he converted to Christianity at age 15 as a result of a religious experience, not a serious investigation
• his idea of God was probably idealized and uninformed, e.g. – a loving God who wants us to be happy
• he wandered around from church to church preaching, with no fixed address or source of income
• he earned money by collecting “love offerings” from churches where he performed his music
• he wrote Christian songs and Christian musicals, but nothing substantive on apologetics and theology
• he worked in three churches known for being anti-intellectual and fundamentalist
• there’s no evidence that of any deep study of philosophy, science and history during this time

Desire to gain acceptance from non-Christians

• he began to notice that some people were uncomfortable with sin and Hell
• he began to avoid preaching about sin and Hell in order to make these people comfortable
• he watered-down the gospel to focus on helping people to be happy in this life
• his manic approach to Christian ministry was challenged by the “real life” needs of his growing family
• he met liberal pastors while performing his music in their churches
• he found it difficult to disagree with them because they seemed to be “good” people
• he watered down his message further in order to appeal to people across the theological spectrum

Ignorance of Christian apologetics

• he began to think that if there are many different views of religion, then no view can be correct
• he was not intellectually capable of using logic and evidence to test these competing claims to see which was true
• he decided to instead re-interpret Christian truth claims as non-rational opinions, so they could all be “valid”
• he became a theological liberal, abandoning theism for an impersonal “ground of being”
• he embraced religious pluralism, the view that all religions are non-rational and make no testable truth claims
• he began to see God as a “metaphor” whose purpose is to make people have a sense of meaning and purpose
• he jettisoned God completely and focused more on helping people find meaning and morality apart from God
• seems to think that religion is about having a “great life”, and felt that you can have a “great life” without religion
• seems to think that religion is about being “good”, and felt that you can be “good” without religion
• religion makes people feel bad by telling them what to do instead of letting them do anything they want
• religion makes people feel bad by telling them what is true, instead of letting them believe whatever they want
• religion makes people feel bad by telling them that God will hold them accountable for their beliefs and actions

So what do I think happened?

I think he abandoned his faith because he wanted people to like him and because he needed to be invited to liberal churches in order to make money to pay for the “real life” needs of his family.

He seems to have thought that Christianity is about having his needs met and being liked by others. I think he wanted to feel good and to make people feel good with his preaching and singing. He seems to have become aware that the exclusive claims of Christianity made other people feel offended, so he cut them out. He hadn’t studied philosophy, science or history so that he would have been able to demonstrate to other people whether what he was saying was true. It’s hard to offend people when you don’t really know whether your claims are true or not, and when you don’t know how to demonstrate whether they are true or not.

I also think money was a factor. It seems to me that it would have hurt his career and reduced his invitations from liberal churches if he had kept up teaching biblical Christianity. In order to appeal to a wider audience, (like many Christian singers do – e.g. – Amy Grant, Jars of Clay, etc.), he would have felt pressured to water down the unpleasant parts of his preaching and singing. Lacking apologetics skill, he instead abandoned his message. He needed to account for his family’s needs and “real life”, and exclusive truth claims and Hell-talk would probably have reduced his ability to do that. It seems to me that he should have scaled back his extreme schedule of preaching and singing, and instead gotten a steady job so that he could afford “real life” and a family without being pressured into altering his message.

Life isn’t a fairy tale. God isn’t there to reward risky behavior. We need to be more shrewd about financial matters so that we have the ability to not care about what people think of us. Look at this blog. I work all day as a senior software engineer with two degrees in computer science so that I can refuse donations. I save most of what I make in case a tragedy strikes. Since I am financially secure, I can say what I think, and disregard anyone who wants me to change my message because they are offended. Becoming a Christian isn’t a license to behave irrationally and immaturely with money. For some people, (like William Lane Craig), stepping out in faith works. But if it doesn’t work, it’s better to retreat and re-trench, rather than to compromise your message for money.

Barker didn’t seem to make any effort to deal intellectually with typical challenges like the existence of Hell and religious pluralism. He just wanted to be liked by people instead of being liked by God. He seemed to have thought that being a Christian would make him happy and that other people would all respond to him and like him without having to do any work to explain why Christianity is true. But that’s not Biblical. When the singing and preaching is over, you still have to know how to give an answer to non-Christians. But Barker couldn’t give an answer – not one that allowed him to retain his beliefs. He had not prepared a defense.

What does Dan Barker think about Christianity today?

Many atheists today are interested in eradicating public expressions of Christian beliefs in the public square, because they hate Christianity and believe that Christians should not be allowed to make them feel bad by exercising their rights of free speech. Is Dan Barker one of these militant atheists?

Well, take a look at this video, in which he objects to a nativity scene and demands that an atheistic denunciation of theism be posted alongside it. In the video, Barker explains that the nativity scene is hate speech, and that the baby Jesus is a dictator. He seems to be totally oblivious to the the idea that if Christianity is true, then it doesn’t matter whether it’s mean and exclusive. And this seems to me to have been his problem all along, from the day of his “conversion”.

So the real question is this: is it true? Barker seems to be much more interested in asking “is it nice?” and “will it make me happy?”.

Filed under: Mentoring , Apologetics, Apostasy, Arguments, Bible, Biblical, Church, Dan Barker, Debate, Deconversion, Ethics Without God, Evidence, Faith, Fideism, Former Christian, Freedom From Religion Foundation, Fundamentalism, Goodness Without God, Hedonism, Irrational, Laws of Logic, Logic, Moral Argument, Moral Foundations, Morality, Non-Rational, Pastor, Postmodernism, Preaching, Reason, Religious Pluralism, Secular Humanism, Singing, Song