Fifth Rebuttal
THE BURDEN OF PROOF AND ATHEISM
Reminiscent of the abandoned "Burden of Proof" is Adams' peculiar comments about atheism. He states:
"Without the statement by a human 'God exists' there is no concept of God. (Similarly, without the statement 'Infinitely powerful invisible gnomes exist' there is no concept of infinitely powerful invisible gnomes.) The 'default' belief is a lack of belief. Until the existence of something is proven to us, we are logically justified in lacking a belief in it."
Of course this ignorance is surfaced in the fact that Adams never bothered to respond to the classic textbook citations I gave about the burden of proof. As I have been representing the consensus of logicians, I have been constantly pointing out why the burden of proof is to be shared in these circumstances, not to be placed solely on either side, by both sides of the dispute. The writers of a widely used logic handbook, Brooke Noel Moore and Richard Parker, note, "In most cases, the initial plausibility of the claim itself determines whether the burden of proof should fall more on those who advance a claim or more on those who object to it. A claim's initial plausibility is determined in turn by how it 'fits' with our background knowledge" (Critical Thinking, 3rd Edition, Mayfield Publishing Company, California, 1992, p. 193). It is on this basis can we agree with Adams that, "In other words, you would not think that it was up to you to prove that [gnomes] didn't exist, but that it was my job to prove that they did." What he has not demonstrated is the fallacious idea that "All positive claims have the burden of proof ex hypothesi." Why Adams insists on going against the flow is beyond me. The second problem with Adams' statement here is that it is absurd to dismiss the existence of God because without a conception of God there can be none. But this makes the mistake of reification. Nobody is suggesting that a concept leads to the existence of something. However, something may exist that is not conceptually apprehended. For example, we have no conception of the reality of an electron passing through a Stern-Gerlach magnet and having the inherent probability of having an "up" spin or a "down" spin. Schrodinger's Cat illustration demonstrates the conceptual difficulty with such a realist view of quanta, considering that the wave-particle's "spin" is attributed to an observer after the measurement process. But even if this were true, in reality we do have a conception of God laced in the cosmological argument I gave. So not only is Adams completely wrong on this issue, it makes no difference if he is right.either.
So Adams insists on, "If no proof is given, we are justified in lacking a belief in God." Again, this is just not right. Can I say that breakfast did not exist for me today because I have no proof to show to anyone? Not at all. Neither can the scientist in Contact dismiss her experience because the physical evidence was unequivocally against her. Really, Adams is just begging the question anyway by suggesting that evidence has not been given in the first place. But this is what is in dispute. And as Moore and Parker point out, such issues require evidence on both sides and only special circumstances warrant the positive claimant to be on the defensive. I am still waiting for more arguments for atheism apart from the failed problem of evil.
That having been said, can Adams make the case that atheism is really the mere lack of belief in a god? He can but he would not be advocating atheism here. He challenged me to refute atheism and prove theism, but he has in reality only been proving agnosticism. In atheist Paul Edwards' standard work on the subject of philosophy, The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, atheism is defined as the view that there is no God. But if Adams is only maintaining the "lack of belief in a god" then he has joined the wrong debate.
So, what about the gnome analogy? Do the qualifications of the gnome, as given by Adams, now give it a background? Not in the least. He says, "Ok, I now state that my infinitely powerful, invisible gnome created the universe one morning by sneezing." Here, Adams has clearly made the gnome thesis ad hoc by supplying new information that accounts for its existence. In the case of God, however, His explanatory power is existent in its original hypothesis and deducible from the evidence (i.e. timelessness, incorporeality, personality, omnipotence, etc . . .). The move Adams is making is something like this: I believe that some surgeons in the Philippines can remove cancerous tumors without surgery. But when we subject the alleged tumors to DNA testing, it turns out to be a chicken liver or pig entrails. So, instead of admitting the defeating evidence, the surgeon now happily exclaims, "Wow! Not only can I remove tumors without surgery but I can transform them into chicken livers and pig entrails." As long as Adams continues to modify his gnome hypothesis, there is nothing the evidence can touch. But perhaps he is suggesting that instead of God it is really the gnome who brought the universe into existence. I submit that we ought to take one step at a time. Occam's Razor demands that we ought not over-postulate more to a cause than what the evidence suggests. If, after further analysis of the Big Bang, the gnome's existence is vindicated through some means then we can begin investigating such a concept. The Christian concept of God best fits the evidence for a creator/designer of the universe. It is Adams who has gone far beyond the evidence by smokescreening this debate with stories about gnomes. What about God? Prove his non-existence since I am here to debate that issue.
By now the reader has probably understood that Adams is only attacking the methodology of evidence and not the evidence itself. In yet another example, Adams makes another straw man:
"Ahhh, now we get to the quick of it. Mr Guthrie's proposed 'literary frame of reference' here is the bible. He is basically saying here 'the bible says God exists'. I'm glad he brought this up, because it is an often-used argument which is severely flawed. The bible cannot be proof that God exists, because that proof would be based on a circular argument."
But where in the world did he come up with the idea that one of my arguments for theism is that the Bible says "God exists"? I gave one argument to defend my position and another given by Adams himself: (i) The cosmological argument, and (ii) the moral argument. But here he is critiquing my usage of a "literary frame of reference" as sole evidence for a claim. Now, I did not say that a literary frame of reference was sole evidence of God's existence, but that these references conjoined with other evidences about God's existence produce credibility when taken together. What I was addressing was strictly a historical hypothesis. For example, if a friend of mine said that a war broke out in Australia over the color of koala bears, I would probably not automatically consider it background information to suggest that it is true. However, if I overheard a conversation in a grocery store where I could only make out the words "Australia", "bears" and "a war", then this recent event would best be understood in the frame of reference of my friend. He may be right and now I have some theory I can go out and investigate. Similarly, I simply pointed to the Bible in order to draw a historical frame of reference. But the gnome has no literary background information and has no frame of reference historically by which one could go by.
SOME RED HERRINGS ABOUT THEISM
Although Adams continues his dialogue about the biblical literature, he now introduces some irrelevant arguments against God's existence. Instead of attacking theism, they attack Christianity. Keep in mind that these arguments could be given by Mormons, Buddhists, Hindus, and even Deists, and have no affect on dismissing theism in general.
He says:
"Christians must take either one of two positions on the bible. Either...
(i) They must accept that every single word in the bible is infallible truth. These type of christians end up looking stupid, becuase they have to accept major logical fallacies as being the Word of an all-knowing God. For example, they would have to simultaneiously accept that all men were descended from just two people (Adman and Eve. This would have entailed Adam and Eve's children having sex with one another in order to provide the next generation). In other parts of the bible, however, there are words written strictly against sex within ones own family. Yet a strict christian must accept both 'God says it is bad to have sex with your own family' and also 'God planned life in such a way that every single man is descended from a family whose members had sex with one another'.
(ii) The second type of Christian is the one who says that the bible is mainly true but some parts are 'analogies, not fact' or are 'illustrative and not _really_ true'. Since they choose which parts are true arbitrarily, we would be equally justified in saying 'I choose that every section is analogous and none of it happened.' as they are in saying 'There wasn't really Adam and Eve. but the rest is basically true'"
Let me make two points here. First, none of these things preclude the existence of God. The hermeneutical structure of the Bible allows for a variety of interpretations on peripheral issues of doctrine. So it makes no difference theologically if one believes that God used evolution to create living things or that God literally created Adam and Eve as our First Parents, or such things as these. Secondly, I think the variety of interpretations give the Christian an advantage here. He can be open to the evidence where it leads him. If more evidence suggests a more allegorical interpretation of biblical events, then the Christian can assent to the new findings. But the atheist is committed to his world view. For example, the atheist has no model available to him for the origin of animal and human species except evolution. As Alvin Plantinga once pointed out, evolution is the only game in town for the atheist. So it makes no difference how fantastic the evidence is, he simply has to adhere to such an incredible model.
He notes further down in his rebuttal, "Christians do a quite remarkable job of changing their beliefs from one moment to the next to adapt to whichever new piece of scientific evidence emerges." But this is not true. For centuries theology had always been the handmaiden of philosophy and gave it great advancements. St. Augustine taught in De Genesi (a commentary on Genesis) that the "days" of creation were long periods of time and that through the rationes seminales (a divine potency) certain organisms would spring forth from previous ones. He taught this 1, 500 years before Darwin! Further, Christians have always expected science to vindicate the Bible by showing that the universe began to exist (in agreement with the classical creatio ex nihilo). In our Post-Modern era of a post-Rationalistic society, nobody can even agree on the role of science anymore. By eliminating concepts that base epistemic research into scientific investigations one simply concocts a model of science arbitrarily. Now we have Operationism, non-rational Realism, non-rational non-realism, the Nomological Model, eclecticism, Thomas Kuhn's paradigm-shifting model, and other models of science that deviate significantly from what was originally believed. This is far from advancing science as a methodological discipline in epistemology and shows that atheism is really responsible for its indecisiveness about scientific truth.
But never is the existence of God even called into question on these allegations about Christianity.
NO GOOD REASONS TO FAVOR ATHEISM AS TRUE
Adams continues to object to God's existence on the basis of gratuitous evil. I had mentioned that this is begging the question. He also suggested that heaven is a possible world and that God could have created this for us as this world. I responded that heaven is the outcome of a possible world and not a possible world itself. Now he adds that this is "a false distinction. If God was capable of creating heaven, he could basically have skipped the 'Earth stage' and just created everyone directly in heaven. The fact that he didn't do this implies either that he wishes for us to suffer in this less-than-perfect Earth, or else he was incapable of creating a heaven for us to live in, in which case he is not a God." But God cannot reward us for actions that have not been actualized. He simply cannot grant us payment of everlasting life because we would have acted a certain way. Heaven is given to those who have actualized the right decision. After all, would it be right to punish someone who was going to murder someone but did not because he was kept from doing it even though they would have gone through with it? Not at all. Such persons are only labeled "attempted murderers" and not "murderers." The difference in charge is fundamental.
Adams also does not understand why God has "more rights" than human beings when he states, "I still fail to see why that means he has more rights than us and it is permissible for him to say 'I don't care if you're dying of cancer. I don't want to remove suffering and I'm not going to.'" But this is just a caricature of who God is when he suggests that God does not care about His creatures or does not want to remove suffering. Nothing can be further from the truth. But nothing here calls God's existence into question either. I already maintained that the two statements "God exists" and "evil exists" are not logically incompatible and that God could have a morally sufficient reason for allowing certain sufferings. On this point, Adams has never adequately addressed the compatibility of God and evil. Instead, he changes his focus to "Well, gratuitous evil exists." In this retreat I only see question-begging because you would first have to assume that God did not exist in order to make evil gratuitous in the first place. And he never bothered to respond to this.
But, Adams suggests, maybe God's existence is incompatible with His omnipotence and the ability to create a rock so big that God cannot lift it. I responded by noting that such rocks are conceptually contradictory and would have no existential reality beyond mutually exclusive terminology. So Adams adds that "a true God, being truly omnipotent is not constrained to acting within any physical or logical boundaries." But this is absurd as well. In God's very nature lies the essence of logical reasoning. So, to suggest that God could "rise above" logic is like asking God to "rise above" His own essence. This is not a feasible task either. It is logically incongruous. So I think Adams is getting more desperate in proving atheism by using these sorts of skeptical remarks.
But we still have no reason to think that atheism ought to be the favored world view.
TWO GOOD REASONS TO SUGGEST THAT THEISM IS TRUE
After I gave the cosmological argument, I had received only two responses. (i) I was questioned about whether or not God needed a cause, and (ii) the Big Bang theory was critiqued. I have to commend Adams on his silence on the impossibility of an actual infinite because there really just is no philosophically feasible way to suggest otherwise. But Adams has not dealt with my response to the oscillating universe model he gave. Instead, we get another list of bad arguments intended to show that special creationism is disconfirmed by the Big Bang. I find this to be a situation where Adams does not walk away from an argument, but runs rapidly away from it. After his red herring response that Christians change their beliefs from time to time about scientific issues (which I addressed above), He states:
"It is not atheists, but christians who lead campaigns in several US states to introduce 'creation teaching' in schools, teaching children that the Universe is only 6,000 years old. The evidence of the Big Bang supports what atheists have been saying all along 'God did not craeate [sic] the World'. It is the christians who have been back-tracking and revising their beliefs from 'God created Adam and Eve on Earth at the centre of the Universe' to 'God created the Earth, only not at the centre of the Universe' to 'God created life on Earth, which evolved to form man' to 'Actually, God created the Big Bang, which created the Earth, which allowed life to evolve into man. And no, it wasn't anywhere near the centre of the Universe' To suggest that Christians have been supportive of Big Bang theory is quite laughable."
As the reader can plainly see, there is no response to my objection to the oscillating universe model here. Even more embarrassing for Adams is that while he had objected to the Big Bang theory before, he now suggests that atheists have believed this all along! Sid Jones (in his comments about this debate) is absolutely right. Adams just bounces around seeking areas he can address without sufficiently attacking my arguments or defending his. As to the statement made by Adams here, there are two problems that need to be addressed. First, the book of Genesis allows for an interpretation of either a young universe or an old one. Notice that Genesis 2 telescopes all of creation into one "day." This means that the "days" mentioned may be Hebrew terms signifying long periods of time. As I noted before, St. Augustine believed this around 300 A.D. and so this is not a "new" view causing Christianity to retreat. Secondly, neither the Bible nor Christianity teach that the earth is at the center of the universe. The fact that many people held to the Ptolemaic cosmology in general did not mean that it was encapsulated in the creeds of Christendom or in the Bible somewhere. I guess Adams is just going to dismiss the Big Bang issue altogether and avoid the two questions completely: (i) Where did the universe come from? (ii) Why does the universe exist instead of nothing? If I were an atheist, I would be grinding my teeth at these sorts of responses Adams gave to the cosmological argument given.
In retrospect, I have given objections to Adams' two arguments against God's existence (the Epicurean argument from evil and the argument from gratuitous evil) and have given the cosmological argument supporting the existence of God. Unfortunately for atheists, Adams has decided not to address the cosmological argument which entails that the universe must have come from a personal cause who is timeless and incorporeal. Unless and until Adams responds to it in his final speech, we have no reason to dismiss the existence of God and every reason to think that theism is the best view.