Atheistic Presuppositions

This is something I wrote years ago. I found it recently and thought I'd post it. Yeah, it's a little unpolished, but in case you haven't noticed, everything I post is!

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The events of September 11 have shaken many Americans to the core. While no one rejoices at this tragedy, many atheists and skeptics have happily used it to attempt to further their cause. The cause of the atheists and skeptics is to deny the existence of God, or at the very least, to place it in extreme doubt. God can not be "proven" to exist using the natural order they would tell us, as if limiting a discussion of the supernatural to the natural in any way made sense.

However, in addition to attempting to limit all discussions to the natural order, the atheists and skeptics also have a reliable old friend they bring out at every opportunity to cast doubt on the possibility of God's existence. This "friend" is known as "the problem of evil."

The argument goes something like this: The God of the Bible can not exist if evil exists in the world. (And the events of September 11 were indeed evil, as we all know). That is because the Bible teaches that God is all good, with no mixture of sin or evil, and that God is all powerful, and can cause to happen or not happen whatever He desires. If God desires only good, and can do anything at all, then there should be no evil in the world. Since there most assuredly is evil in the world, then it is impossible that such a God could exist.

According to many an atheist and skeptic, this is the one argument a Christian simply can not get around, and it is almost universally one of the main reasons many unbelievers are unbelievers. How can an all-good and all-powerful God sanction evil or allow evil to exist? Obviously, an all-good and all-powerful God would not allow such. Yet evil exists. Therefore, God, at least the God of the Bible, must not exist.

Unfortunately for the unbeliever who clings to this line of reasoning, he has not thought out all of the implications tied to the making of that argument, particularly in light of his reluctance to even discuss things beyond the natural realm. The very concept of "good and evil" is itself outside of the natural realm, and hence should be off limits to the atheists who claim to only believe what can be empirically verified.

The problem for the atheist goes much further than this, however. To understand how much further it goes, we will need to briefly discuss the atheistic presuppositions.

The impossibility of a world without God

Everyone has presuppositions, that is, underlying worldviews that provide the foundation for, and inevitably bias, his views on any topic. The Christian presupposition is that the God of the Bible exists, that He is all-good, all-powerful, and so forth. He created the world out of nothing by His mere power in the span of six days. He providentially controls whatsoever comes to pass.
The atheist's presupposition is that no God exists. Nothing outside of the natural order - that is, things that can be seen, heard, smelt, tasted, and felt - can exist.

Right off the bat the atheist has a problem. For, if this world which we live in exists, which it obviously does, then from whence did it come? They deny the possibility of a Creator, yet can not explain the very existence of our universe. In order for our universe to be here as it is now, there are only two possibilities. One, that it, in some form or other, has always existed for all of eternity past; or two, that it began to exist at some point in history. Both of these possibilities are impossible for the human mind, using natural assumptions, to fathom. We can not even begin to imagine the very concept of an eternity past. Additionally, the second law of thermodynamics simply (when viewed through the lens of naturalistic presuppositions) will not allow the universe to have existed for an eternity. The amount of energy in the universe is finite. The second law of thermodynamics tells us that, left free of outside input, energy passes from a useful form to a non-useful form. That is, things go from order, to disorder. Over an eternity, obviously the order or usefulness of the energy in the universe, will long since have been completely dissipated. Unless…

Unless the amount of energy, space, and matter in the universe is itself infinite. Now, can the human mind fathom an infinite amount of space, energy, and matter, which has eternally existed? Of course not. Is there a natural explanation to such a thing? Of course not.
The second option is really no better for the atheist. There, he has to assume that the universe did not exist until some certain point in history, then it began to exist. How does he explain this phenomena, using only naturalism? He can't.

Even with this second option, the unbeliever is faced with such difficult questions as "Is the universe finite, or infinite?" The mind goes into spasms at the thought of either. The thought of an infinite universe is inconceivable to us. Yet, if it is finite, we must ask, why does it not continue beyond its limits? How can it possibly have a physical end? The human mind is not capable of comprehending the answers to these eternal riddles. The consistent atheist knows this and admits it. The ultimate origins and extents of our universe are not part of the realm of natural science, and therefore can not be commented on by scientists. How convenient! The scientist can only look at and analyze what can be sensed. With this admission, though, the atheist has just given away the game. For at this point, it can be said that the existence of God is at the very least as plausible - to the atheist himself - as is His non-existence.

The atheist, however, then continues with his presupposition that God does not exist, even though it is admittedly outside of his self imposed limits to say so. At this point, he has to conjure up a way in which not only does the universe exist, (a fact that he can not explain using naturalistic limitations), but he also has to explain how the planet earth has come to exist in all its splendor and all of its various levels of life forms.

Obviously, without an intelligent, designing force behind it, the only explanation for the development of our planet, and the various life forms on it, is that somehow order has come out of chaos. How? Well, according to the atheistic assumptions, it has basically been a long series of random chances that have had the cumulative effect of producing what we now see. Random chance bringing order out of chaos is the only explanation the unbeliever has. This is the basis of evolution.

Granted, they attempt to find in the natural order of things a mechanism that causes this. But, tracing this mechanism back to the very origins of the universe is futile to even think about. Granting for the sake of argument only that such a mechanism exists, how does one explain its existence in a universe of unexplained origins, with no intelligence behind it to "jump start" such a mechanism?

Further, the atheist must then admit, for he has no other option, that he himself is the product of order from chaos by the process of random chance. His very thoughts are not in any way spiritual, nor do they in any way have any deep meaning to them, because the spiritual does not exist. They are instead nothing more than electrochemical impulses.

In conclusion then, when the atheist thinks about anything, according to his own creed all that is occurring is an electrochemical process, brought to order out of chaos, through a process of random chance. There is no basis for any type of morality here. In fact, he sits teetering on the fence between being and non-being. Obviously, an electrochemical impulse is not a being. It is a thing. As for other people and objects around him, what guarantee does he have that they exist either, and are not merely the result of some electrochemical process in his own mind? The world of the atheist is fraught with uncertainty!

Back to the problem of evil

Now, this brings us back to our original intent. This atheist that we have just described, sits on his self-constructed throne and tells us that God can not exist because of the problem of evil. However, the question must now be asked, on what basis does the atheist say there is such a thing as good and evil? To begin with, good and evil are supernatural terms, not naturalistic ones. Additionally, since the atheist, and everyone else for that matter, is simply a product of random chance, with no supernatural authority behind it and no spirituality, the very concept of good and evil does not even exist. On what does the atheist base his idea of good and evil? He absolutely can not base it on his own presuppositions, which have been described above. Therefore, he must borrow these concepts, and their definitions, and their foundations, from the theists. He has to assume a theistic worldview in order to argue against it. Surely this can be clearly seen as a precarious position.

Further, after borrowing the worldview of the believer in order to attempt to use it against him, the atheist goes one giant step further. He now says that using his enemies' definitions, which by his own presuppositions must be totally alien to him, he can by his own intellect (which is simply an electrochemical impulse derived from chaos by random chance), define what type of God could or could not exist under those definitions. That is, while his own worldview teaches that he is nothing but the product of random chance magically producing order out of chaos, with no loving or intelligent Being behind it, he now tells us that his intellect is the final judge of what type of omnipotent, omniscient, all-good, all-loving being may or may not exist.

No doubt, the atheist who so argues is terribly blind to his own arrogance and ignorance, as well as to the precarious perch he is sitting on. He reminds us of countless cartoon characters we have see who run off of a high ledge, and remain momentarily suspended in mid-air with no support whatsoever under them. Once they look down and realize that they have no support, they immediately start a free fall.

Likewise, the atheist thinks he is safe and supported fully. However, when he examines the very presuppositions he bases his belief on, then realizes that using his own presuppositions he can not begin to make sense of the world, and that he must borrow the presuppositions of his avowed enemies in order to argue against them, then he will realize that he is about to free fall.
I would advise him to open his Bible and begin studying it. In that situation, it would make and excellent parachute!