William Lane Craig's five points refuted - Addendum

There was a strong reaction on the interwebby thing to my refutation article on William Lane Craig’s '5 points'. Many thought it was brilliant, while some felt disappointed that I didn’t disprove the existence of god. This is not what I believe or set out to show. It may be impossible to do, and is an exercise in futility. It is often extremely hard (or even impossible) to disprove something. Whether that is god, fairies, dragons, or the flying spaghetti monster. We therefore must rely on proof, not 'dis-proof'.

 Here is a summary of what I’m saying in regards to WLC’s 5 points: 

-        Cosmological and teleological arguments: He has made a number of assumptions here; putting words in the mouths of atheists, that we believe the universe came ex nihilo for example. My main point here is that even if these arguments pointed to a designer, he has provided no evidence that it is Yahweh. It could be Zeus. Or Vishnu. Or even a deistic god. It is not up to atheists to disprove nonsense. It is up to believers to prove their belief. In proving Yahweh, WLC has failed miserably. Before criticizing WLC’s atheistic opponents, we need to realise that it’s not their job to disprove him. Then we may as well all work on disproving fairies.

-        Moral argument: WLC again makes assumptions such as the existence of an objective morality, as well as absolute good and absolute evil. These things have not been proven. And not all cultures have seen rape and child torture as wrong – especially not the land from whence his Bible came. And once again, even if successful, this argument does not point to his god (Yahweh).

-         Resurrection of Jesus argument: ALL of WLC’s arguments here come from the Bible. We KNOW for a fact that the Bible is unreliable due to allegorical and ambiguous language, variant texts, and numerous contradictions with itself, history and archaeology. To believe then what the Bible says about miraculous events is madness – it can’t even be trusted for more mundane events.

-        Warm fuzzy feeling inside argument: This appeal to emotion is completely subjective and has no place in a discussion of evidence. I feel embarrassed for him. He looks less like a serious academic, and more like a Jesus salesman.

 Once again, from his 5 points, 4 of them (1,2,3 & 5) could refer to ANY god. This makes his argument incredibly weak, as he must prove the existence of HIS god, not Osiris. Only point 4 (itself incredibly weak, as the Bible is extremely unreliable as a source for historical evidence) makes it obvious that we’re discussing Christianity, but even then doesn’t make it obvious that we’re discussing Yahweh. Many Gnostic Christians for example hold that Yahweh is the bad guy of the New Testament, while Jesus is the son of the 'true god'. The Septuagint (Greek version of the Old Testament) also seems to make it quite clear that there are other gods, at least one of which is higher in rank.

 So why praise WLC and his terribly ineffective arguments? Why be so harsh on his atheist opponents? Do people know what atheism is? Atheism is not an ideology – one of WLC’s biggest errors. He shifts the burden of proof onto atheists, as if they need to prove their point. But atheism needs no proving; it is not a religion, ideology, belief system etc. It makes no positive assertions. It is simply a rejection, or (I like to stress the passive nature of it) the NON-ACCEPTANCE of an idea. Indeed, we are all atheists. He is an atheist towards the millions of Hindu gods for example.

 Before we praise WLC, look for all the nasty and ignorant things he says in his debates. I nearly fell off my chair when he criticized Christopher Hitchens for acting as if atheism meant some sort of a-theism… As Hitch rightly pointed out, that’s what it means! WLC doesn’t even know the meanings of the words he uses (note: WLC is not a linguist). Atheism is not a positive assertion that there is no god (which is what WLC wants atheism to be, allowing him to shift the burden of proof). And the atheists that do say this are at risk of being labeled dogmatic. We ought to be OPEN to the existence of some sort of god (be it theistic, deistic, pantheistic, or something else), but must not accept someone’s idea of god without evidence. Heck, I’d like there to be a god, some sort of quasi-deistic god would be nice. But there’s just no good evidence to believe in any sort of god. Except of course the god of my naturalistic pantheism – a synonym for the universe.

 William Lane Craig also confuses the terms science and atheism. He points to (what he believes are) erroneous scientific ideas and says, “See, atheism is wrong!” Once again, atheism is not an ideology, it has no beliefs, and it makes no positive assertions. Even if science got something wrong, atheism hasn’t got anything wrong. Science and atheism are not interchangeable terms. While many atheists are scientific, and most scientists are indeed atheists, the theories of science are not the doctrines of atheism.

 The onus isn’t upon us non-believers to disprove anything. That’s shifting the burden of proof. Furthermore, WLC or any other Christian debater will only have succeeded when they:

a) Prove the existence of a god

b) Prove the existence of the Judeo-Christian god, Yahweh

c) Prove that Yahweh is the supreme god as they claim

 I highly stress c). Even if a) and b) were proven true (though thousands of years of trying has yielded no success) we still need to know whether Yahweh is indeed the supreme god, before we all change our lives for him. Keep in mind that Semitic and Gnostic mythologies both agree that Yahweh is a lesser god. The Bible itself hints at this. Semitic mythologies show Yahweh to be one of 70-odd gods under the higher god El, while Gnostic mythologies portray Yahweh as the demiurge, an imperfect god who created an imperfect world. And this demiurge is the bad guy of the New Testament (Satan?) who opposes the son, or manifestation (Christ), of the true Almighty God.

 So far, after thousands of years of trying, we still have no compelling reason to believe that Christianity is true. These are not the words of a person who merely hates Christianity, or religion in general. Having been a Christian for most of my life, I still (kinda) wish that Christianity were true.