Why I Don't Have Enough Faith to be an Athiest.

Do Extraordinary Claims Require Extraordinary Evidence?

by Jason Dulle

A popular maxim advanced by naturalists and atheists is that “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” This maxim is often invoked in discussions about the existence of God and the resurrection of Jesus. These are extraordinary claims, they say, and thus require extraordinary evidence. Not surprisingly, those who advance this maxim think Christian theists have failed to provide the required evidence.

J.W. Wartick wrote a nice article questioning the truth of this maxim. He notes that on first blush the maxim seems obviously true, but upon further reflection it can be shown to be obviously false. Consider the claim that I am a giant pink salamander. This is an extraordinary claim, and yet the claim could be evidenced in rather ordinary ways. For example, one could come to my home and observe me. If I appear to be a giant pink salamander (one who talks and types), then the extraordinary claim is justified.

If one is not convinced by their eyes, then perhaps they could take a DNA sample and compare it to other salamanders. Such evidence is ordinary, but sufficient to verify the rather extraordinary claim that I am a pink salamander. It is false, then, that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. All that is required to justify an extraordinary claim is sufficient evidence.

Wartick notes some other problems with the maxim as well:

• It is ambiguous regarding what qualifies a claim as “extraordinary.” Does it mean improbable? If so, then many events are extraordinary (yesterday’s lottery numbers, a hole-in-one, etc.)The atheist should not be allowed to get away with labeling a claim as “extraordinary” (and thus raising the bar for its justification) unless he has a clearly defined criteria for what qualifies as an extraordinary claim and can demonstrate that the claim in question meets that criteria.
• It is ambiguous regarding what constitutes “extraordinary evidence.” Is it the number of evidences, or the persuasive power of the evidence? While it is clear that the epistemic bar has been raised, it is not clear as to how high it has been raised, or how it can be cleared. The ambiguity allows the atheist to dismiss any kind/amount of evidence the Christian theist presents as “not good enough.” Only if “extraordinary evidence” is quantified can it be determined if the epistemic bar is appropriate, or if it has been met.

Wartick speculates that what people mean by “extraordinary claims” is a claim regarding things that “can’t be observed in the usual fashion” or things that have “great existential import” to our lives. In regards to things that can’t be observed in the usual fashion, Wartick argues that we do not need extraordinary evidence to justify such claims, but a different kind of evidence (logical, philosophical) than we would employ for things we observe in a usual fashion.

In regards to things that have great existential import to us, Wartick takes a cue from William Lane Craig to argue that such claims should cause us to be more open to every piece of evidence in its favor than we normally would be for things that have little existential import. Citing Craig, he provides the following example: “[S]uppose you are diagnosed with a fatal disease and there was ‘some experimental evidence that a vaccine… might cure you, wouldn’t you be desperate to [try the medicine and] find out if that might save your life… rather than saying, ‘Well, this is such a life-changing situation that I’m going to be as skeptical as I can, and only take this medicine as a last resort when it’s been demonstrated absolutely that’ it will cure the disease.”

Let me finish with a possible tactical approach to responding to this maxim. When someone says, “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence,” respond by saying, “That is quite an extraordinary claim you just made. Do you have extraordinary evidence that justifies it?” Surely your opponent will object to your classification of the maxim as an extraordinary claim, but to show why it is not an extraordinary claim he will have to clearly define the criteria for what constitutes an extraordinary claim.

At that point you can debate the criteria and/or whether or not those criteria truly apply to the issue at hand (God’s existence, resurrection of Jesus, etc.). You could also respond by asking, “Why think extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence?” This will require him to justify the veracity of the maxim, and in the process give you a chance to expose its flaws. Perhaps you could even follow up by asking, “Why think extraordinary claims require anything more than sufficient evidence?”

I recommend that you read the article for yourself. It’s a short read.

Scientists Don’t Have a Clue How Life Began

by Jason Dulle

Those aren’t my words (although I concur with them). Those are the words of John Horgan, a science journalist and former editor of Scientific American. Horgan recently published an article in Scientific American discussing the dismal state of origin-of-life research. He describes the research as being at an “impasse,” and resorting to “far out…speculation” as exemplified by the theory of panspermia (life originated in outer space and was brought to earth).

Just one week prior to the publication of Horgan’s article, science writer Dennis Overbye published an article in the New York Times on the same subject. He reported on an origin-of-life conference at Arizona State University in which two dozen top-ranking scientists from a variety of disciplines converged to discuss the problem. While Overbye touted the RNA World hypothesis, he noted that “one lesson of the meeting was how finicky are the chemical reactions needed for carrying out these simple-sounding functions,” and “even if RNA did appear naturally, the odds that it would happen in the right sequence to drive Darwinian evolution seem small.”

It’s not often that the public is made aware of the fact that scientists have no adequate naturalistic explanation for the origin of life, so it’s refreshing to see this being discussed by ideological opponents in venues as important as the New York Times.

The Biblical Teaching on Judgmentalism: Setting the Record Straight

by Jason Dulle

Christians are often accused of being judgmental by non-Christians—and sometimes, even by fellow-Christians. Indeed, it’s not uncommon to even hear non-Christians quote Jesus’ words in Matthew 7:1 against Christians: “Judge not, lest you be judged.” (even if they’ve never read a page from the Bible in their life!) I am persuaded that both the church and the culture at large have failed to understand the Biblical teaching on judgmentalism. Before I explain, let’s look at a few more Biblical passages often cited in support of non-judgmentalism:

1 Cor 4:3-5 But with me it is a very small thing that I should be judged by you or by any human court. In fact, I do not even judge myself. 4 For I am not aware of anything against myself, but I am not thereby acquitted. It is the Lord who judges me. 5 Therefore do not pronounce judgment before the time, before the Lord comes, who will bring to light the things now hidden in darkness and will disclose the purposes of the heart. Then each one will receive his commendation from God. (ESV)

1 Cor 5:12-13 For what have I to do with judging outsiders? Is it not those inside the church whom you are to judge? 13 God judges those outside. “Purge the evil person from among you.” (ESV) [talking about executing punishment]

James 4:11-12 Do not speak evil against one another, brothers. The one who speaks against a brother or judges his brother, speaks evil against the law and judges the law. But if you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law but a judge. 12 There is only one lawgiver and judge, he who is able to save and to destroy. But who are you to judge your neighbor? (ESV)

Most people understand judgmentalism to refer to anyone who tells another person that what s/he is doing is wrong; i.e. an expression of moral disapproval. There are two reasons we can be confident that this is not the meaning of these passages. First, it is a contradiction to tell a person they are wrong for telling other people they are wrong. Secondly, Jesus, Paul, Peter, James, and other Biblical writers often expressed their moral disapproval of a host of behaviors and attitudes. Indeed, in one of the verses just quoted (1 Corinthians 5:13) Paul instructed the church to exercise judgment against the erring brother! So what does the Bible mean when it says “judge not?” The Biblical notion of judgmentalism refers to “an inappropriate sense of moral superiority over another because of that person’s moral failures,”[1] and/or a premature/inappropriate pronouncement regarding someone’s eternal destiny.

While people like to focus on Jesus’ statement in Matthew 7:1 not to judge, they fail to read on further in the chapter where Jesus called certain individuals “pigs,” “dogs” (7:6) and “wolves in sheep’s clothing” (7:15)! John records Jesus as commanding us to make judgments: “Stop judging by mere appearances, and make a right judgment” (John 7:24). What Jesus was opposed to was not making moral distinctions between right and wrong or calling a spade a spade, but rather a critical and judgmental spirit stemming from a sense of moral superiority.

In Matthew 7:3-5 Jesus said, “Why do you see the speck in your brother’s eye, but fail to see the beam of wood in your own? 4 Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me remove the speck from your eye,’ while there is a beam in your own? 5 You hypocrite! First remove the beam from your own eye, and then you can see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.” (NET) Here Jesus warned against heaping criticism and condemnation on others without first examining our own behavior (hypocritical judgment). He was speaking in particular of religious leaders who harshly condemn others for moral failures while justifying their own. Jesus didn’t have a problem with someone pointing out the speck in his brother’s eye, but He wanted it to be done in the proper order: first take care of your own moral shortcomings, and then you can proceed on to pointing out the shortcomings of others. That’s why Jesus said “First remove the beam from your own eye, and then you can see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.” This is not a call for non-judgmentalism, but rather for a proper ordering of judgment: judging ourselves before judging others (self-examination before others-examination). Jesus requires that we make moral judgments, but we must convey those moral judgments in love, and only after we have examined ourselves to make sure we are not passing judgment hypocritically.

Paul’s teaching is in line with Jesus’. Paul asked the Corinthians, “For what have I to do with judging outsiders? Is it not those inside the church whom you are to judge?” (1 Corinthians 5:12) According to Paul it is the duty of Christians to judge the behavior of fellow-Christians. Earlier in the same chapter Paul demanded that man who was having a sexual relationship with his step-mother be “turn[ed]…over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord,” (1 Corinthians 5:5) even declaring that he had judged him (1 Corinthians 5:3). Not only did Paul express his moral disapproval of this man’s actions in no uncertain terms, but he even prescribed that he be punished for his wrongdoing.

Judgmentalism is wrong, but moral judgments themselves are inescapable, morally justified, necessary, and integral to the Christian worldview. So the next time you are accused of violating the Biblical command to “judge not” for making and expressing moral distinctions, set the record straight regarding the Bible’s teaching.

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[1]Paul Copan, “Who Are You to Judge Others?”—In Defense of Making Moral Judgments” available from http://www.rzim.org/publications/essay_arttext.php?id=9; Internet; accessed 05 August 2005, citing Caroline J. Simon, “Judgmentalism,” Faith and Philosophy 6 (July 1989): 275-287.

Are you an Overcomer, or just a Survivor?

by Jonathan D. Hodges

Life is a journey that takes us through the best and worst of times, and it places us in situations which we often have little control over. This being the case, it is our daily and habitual decisions which determine our future - more often than the unavoidable and uncontrollable factors.

As a follower of Christ, you are continually faced with choices which will either strengthen or weaken your relationship with God. Although it’s easier to follow your own will and feed your own lusts, as a Christian you have made your decision and there is no turning back. Yes, you will fall, and yes you will rise up again.

But how often you fall and how long it takes you to get back up are decisions that only you have the power to make. Are you truly an Overcomer, or just a Survivor?

An Overcomer builds a resistance to those traps which would drag him down, by refusing to fall into them. When he does, he quickly gets back up again and strives to grow even more in the Lord.

A Survivor is more careless, and does not have the fortitude to continually resist those things which separate him from God. When the Survivor falls, he often becomes burdened with guilt and sorrow for what he’s done, and sometimes lacks the ability to forgive himself – though knowing that God has already forgiven him.

One of the most rewarding experiences of this journey is being able to have the strength and the will to be an Overcomer: where you continually grow in the wisdom of Jesus Christ - instead of simply surviving one day, or Sunday to the next.

Why is there so much evil in the world?

by Jason Dulle

In days gone by many atheists thought the existence of evil in the world disproved theism. Largely due to the work of philosopher Alvin Plantinga, however, most professional philosophers now concede that the presence of evil in the world does not disprove the existence of God (unfortunately, lay atheists failed to get the memo). As atheist and J.L. Mackie came to admit, “Since this defense is formally [i.e., logically] possible, and its principle involves no real abandonment of our ordinary view of the opposition between good and evil, we can concede that the problem of evil does not, after all, show that the central doctrines of theism are logically inconsistent with one another.”

No longer able to use the mere existence of evil as evidence against God’s existence, atheists began to argue that the amount of evil in the world makes the existence of God unlikely. “Why,” they ask, “is there so much evil in the world?” James Corman and Keith Lehrer are representative of this modified argument:

If you were all-good, all-knowing, and all-powerful, and you were going to create a universe in which there were sentient beings — beings who are happy and sad; enjoy pleasure; feel pain; express love, anger, pity, hatred — what kind of world would you create? Being all-powerful, you would have the ability to create any world that it is logically possible for you to create, and being all-knowing you would know how to create any of these logically possible worlds. Which one would you choose? Obviously you would choose the best of all the possible worlds because you would be all-good and would want to do what is best in everything you do. You would, then, create the best of all the possible worlds, that is, that world containing the least amount of evil possible. And because one of the most obvious kinds of evil is suffering, hardship, and pain, you would create a world in which the sentient beings suffered the least. Try to imagine what such a world would be like. Would it be like the one which actually does exist, this world we live in? Would you create a world such as this one if you had the power and knowhow to create any logically possible world? If your answer is “no,” as it seems it must be, then you should begin to understand why the evil of suffering and pain in this world is such a problem for anyone who thinks God created this world. This does not seem to be the kind of world God would create, and certainly not the kind of world he would sustain. Given this world, then, it seems we should conclude that it is improbable that it was created or sustained by anything we would call God. Thus, given this particular world, it seems we should conclude that it is improbable that God – who if he exists, created this world ­­– exists. Consequently, the belief that God does not exist, rather than the belief that he exists, would seem to be justified by the evidence we find in this world.^[1]

The claim that God’s existence is improbable given the amount of evil in the world is a much more modest and tenable argument, but it too is problematic. In his debate with Clancy Martin, J.P. Moreland made the point that asking why there is so much evil in the world is an iterative question; i.e. it can be asked over and over again, without any answer being sufficient.^[2] If there was only half the amount of evil in the world, the question could still be asked, “Why is there so much evil in the world?” Indeed, if the amount of evil was cut in half again, the question could still be asked ad infinitum. It quickly becomes apparent that the real issue is not the amount of evil, but the presence of evil in the world altogether. Ultimately, then, the argument against God based on the amount of evil in the world is just a restatement of the general problem of evil.

To make this point clear to an interlocutor you might ask, “Would you cease complaining about evil if the amount of evil was reduced in half? What about if it was reduced by 72%? How much evil in the world would you say is acceptable?”

There is an even deeper problem that often goes unnoticed: How does one even go about quantifying evil? As Plantinga notes in God, Freedom, and Evil, evil is not the kind of thing that can be quantified. It wouldn’t make any sense to say “that act contained 35 turps of evil.” This is not to say it’s impossible for there to be a world in which fewer evil acts/events occurred. There could be, but that point is irrelevant. God could have created a world containing no evil by creating a world without any free creatures at all. The relevant question, however, is whether He could have created a world containing free creatures that not only contains less evil, but the same amount of proportional good. As Plantinga notes, it’s not at all obvious that this was possible. It could be that our world contains the most amount of good and the least amount of evil possible for free creatures. This is a logically coherent explanation to why this world contains the amount of evil it does. Admittedly, such a proposition cannot be proven, but neither can it be disproven. As William Lane Craig notes, our epistemic finitude prohibits us from being able to properly evaluate such grand cost-benefit calculations. God, however, is not limited in this way. So long as it is logically possible that the amount of evil in the world is necessary to obtain a maximal amount of goodness, the argument against God’s existence based on the amount of evil in the world fails.

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^[1]James W. Cornman, Keith Lehrer, and George S. Pappas, Philosophical Problems and Arguments: An Introduction, 3d edition, 1982; available from http://www.ditext.com/cornman/corn5.html; Internet; accessed 06 October 2009.

^[2]J.P. Moreland, debating philosopher Clancy Martin on the question, “Does the Christian God Exist?” December 1, 2005 at St. Joseph, MO.

Evolution: Theory or Fact?

Which Bible Version should we use?

There is no scientific evidence for God?

written by Jason Dulle


Atheists love to assert that there is no scientific evidence for the existence of God. I have a couple of thoughts on this. First, how do they come to this conclusion? Generally speaking, this conclusion follows from their definition of science. They define science as the search for naturalistic explanations for natural phenomena. If science is defined so as to a priori exclude agent causation as a valid explanation for any natural phenomenon, then it is no surprise that “science” will never yield any evidence for the existence of God. It can’t by definition. To put it in the form an argument, the atheist reasons as follows:

1 Science is the search for naturalistic explanations for natural phenomena
2 God is a supernatural explanation
3 Therefore, God is not a scientific explanation
4 There can be no scientific evidence for a non-scientific explanation
5 Therefore, there is no scientific evidence for the existence of God

Why should we accept premise 1 to be true? Why define science in such a way that it only allows for naturalistic causes for natural phenomena? Why not open up one’s explanatory options to include intelligent agency? If the evidence points to a naturalistic cause, fine. But if the evidence points to intelligent agency, why not conclude that some intelligent agency is responsible? The best explanation should not be excluded a priori based on some arbitrary definition of science. If one does not restrict their definition of science to disallow intelligent causation, then the claim that there is no scientific evidence for God ceases to hold water. There is plenty of scientific evidence for the existence of God including the origin of the universe, the origin of life, and the fine-tuning of the physical constants for a life-permitting universe.

Secondly, even if there was no scientific evidence for the existence of God, what would that matter? After all, science is equipped to measure the physical, not the immaterial. In the same way we would not expect to be able to see an invisible man if such a being existed, we should not necessarily expect for there to be physical evidence of an immaterial being. The fact of the matter is that science is not the only source of knowledge. Philosophy is another source of knowledge. And unlike science, philosophy is equipped to evaluate metaphysical concepts such as God. So long as there are good philosophical reasons to believe in God, then theism is rationally justified. One need not have scientific evidence for His existence. We can be thankful, however, that we have both philosophical and scientific evidence for the existence of God.

Check out the link to Jason's website