Argument

Atheism vs the Christian God

Intro

Atheism, in the form that matters most for this comparison, says nature is all there is. There is no God, no soul that survives death, and nothing behind the universe. Matter, energy and the laws of physics are the whole story. This view is called naturalism. The Christian answer is that a personal God made nature, holds it in being, and has acted inside it, above all by raising Jesus from the dead.

Both are big claims about everything. So the fair test is not "which side has the burden of proof?" but "which picture makes better sense of the world we actually live in?"

Atheism gets some things right, and Christians should say so:

• It rejects superstition. Christians also reject lucky charms, magic and gods made of wood and stone.
• It is honest about suffering. It refuses to pretend that pain is not real or not terrible. So does the Bible, which is full of people crying "how long?"

But when the two views are compared question by question, the Christian God explains more:

• Why there is something rather than nothing.
• Why the universe began, and why its laws are finely set for life.
• Why minds exist that can know truth.
• Why some things are truly wrong, not just disliked.
• Why the early followers of Jesus were sure they had seen Him alive after His death.

It also offers more. Naturalism says the murdered child is never vindicated and every loss is permanent. Christianity promises justice, mercy and a resurrected life with the God who made you.

Quick reply for a live conversation: "If nature is all there is, then nature has to explain why it exists, why it began, why it is fine-tuned, why your mind can be trusted, and why cruelty is really wrong. That is a lot to ask of matter. A personal God explains all of it, and the resurrection is evidence He has actually shown up."

◎ See this page's graph and discover linked topics →

Cheatsheet

The 30-second reply:

Atheism says nature is all there is. Christianity says a personal God made nature. Ask which one explains more. The universe began, it is fine-tuned for life, it obeys mathematical laws, it contains conscious minds that can reason, and we all know some things are truly evil. Naturalism has to call each of these a brute fact or a lucky accident. The Christian God explains all of them, and the resurrection of Jesus is historical evidence that He has acted. Naturalism also offers no justice for victims and no hope beyond the grave.

The fast facts:

1. Existence. Naturalism must treat the universe as needing no explanation. Theism explains it by a necessary, personal Creator. See Contingency Argument.
2. The beginning. Standard cosmology dates the universe to about 13.8 billion years ago, and whatever begins to exist has a cause. See Kalam Cosmological Argument and Big Bang.
3. Fine-tuning. The constants and starting conditions of physics fall in narrow life-permitting ranges. See Fine-Tuning Argument and Multiverse.
4. Mind and reason. Charles Darwin himself confessed a "horrid doubt" about whether convictions produced by an evolved mind can be trusted (letter to William Graham, 1881). See Argument from Reason and Argument from Consciousness.
5. Morality. Lewis: "A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line" (Mere Christianity, Book 2 ch. 1). See Moral Argument.
6. The resurrection. The death of Jesus, the empty tomb and the disciples' experiences of Him alive are the core of a historical case Christianity offers for inspection. See Argument from the Resurrection.
7. The ending. Russell admitted that on his view all human achievement is "destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system" ("A Free Man's Worship," 1903). See World Religions Compared by Their Ultimate Ending.

The 4 strongest counter-moves:

• "Atheism is just a lack of belief. I don't have to prove anything." If you only lack belief, fine, but then you are not claiming nature is all there is. The moment you say it is, you hold a worldview and it has to explain the world like any other. See Atheism is a Belief and Agnostic Retreat Defeater.
• "Science explains all of this without God." Science explains how nature behaves. It assumes that nature exists, is orderly and can be understood by minds. Those are the very things in question. See Argument from Intelligibility and God of the Gaps Objection Defeater.
• "The problem of evil disproves a good God." Evil is the strongest atheist argument, and it deserves a real answer (see Master objections below). But to call anything truly evil, you need a standard of good that naturalism struggles to supply.
• "God is an unnecessary extra. Occam's razor cuts Him out." The razor says not to multiply entities beyond what is needed. One God explaining the beginning, fine-tuning, mind, morality and the resurrection is simpler than a stack of separate brute facts, or an unobserved multiverse. See Occam's Razor and Theism Has Low Priors Objection Defeater.

Reciprocal concessions (grant the small point, then collect a bigger one):

• Grant: superstition is real and should be rejected. Now collect: the Bible rejects it too (Isaiah 44 mocks the man who carves a god from the same log he cooks with). Rejecting false gods is not the same as showing there is no true one.
• Grant: suffering is real, and the easy answers are often cruel. Now collect: if suffering is truly bad and not just unpleasant, you are measuring it against a real good. Naturalism has to explain where that standard comes from.
• Grant: many atheists are kind, honest and morally serious. Now collect: Christianity predicts that, because the moral law is "written in their hearts" (Romans 2:15, ASV). The question is not whether atheists can be good, but what makes good real.
• Grant: science works brilliantly. Now collect: it works because the universe is orderly and our minds can grasp it. That is what you would expect if one rational God made both.

The closing line:

Naturalism asks matter to explain why it exists, why it began, why it is tuned for life, why it can think and why it should be good. Christianity says a Person did it, and then walked out of a tomb to prove He is still involved.

In full

Atheism, strictly, is the denial that God exists. In debate it usually travels with metaphysical naturalism: the thesis that the natural world, the space-time universe and whatever physical reality underlies it, is all that exists, so that there are no gods, souls, or supernatural agents. See Naturalism, Atheism, Materialism and Secular Humanism for its forms. Its most capable defenders do not claim to explain everything. Philosophers such as Graham Oppy argue that naturalism and theism must both stop somewhere, and that naturalism stops sooner, with fewer kinds of thing, so it is the simpler view. Physicists such as Sean Carroll (The Big Picture, 2016) argue that the universe may simply exist, without any external cause, and that this is a coherent place for explanation to end.

The Christian doctrine of God holds that God is one being in three persons, the necessary and personal Creator of everything else out of nothing (Creatio ex Nihilo), who sustains it moment by moment, gave it its laws, made human beings in His image (Imago Dei), and has acted in history, decisively in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus.

This page does not re-argue each case for God. Each has its own page. It sets the two worldviews side by side on the big questions, and argues abductively: the Christian God is the better explanation of the whole set of facts, and also the better hope. That is the method of the Cumulative Case for Christian Theism: no single clue settles the matter, but many independent clues pointing the same way do.

Side by side

Argument structure

Master objections to the whole argument

MO1: "The problem of evil. A good and all-powerful God would not allow this much suffering."

• This is atheism's strongest argument and the one most worth taking seriously. Hume restated Epicurus's version in Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (1779, Part X), and J. L. Mackie argued that God and evil are logically incompatible ("Evil and Omnipotence," 1955).
• Many philosophers, atheists included, now judge that Alvin Plantinga's free will defense (God, Freedom, and Evil, 1974) answered the strict logical version. The live debate is the evidential version, classically William Rowe's (1979): even if God and evil are compatible, so much pointless-seeming suffering makes God unlikely. See Problem of Evil, Free Will Defense, Evidential Problem of Evil Defeater and Skeptical Theism.
• Christianity does not deny the force of the question. It shares it: "O Jehovah, how long shall I cry, and thou wilt not hear?" (Habakkuk 1:2, ASV). Its answer is not that evil is unreal, but that God has entered it at the cross and will end it (Revelation 21:4). See Why Doesn't God Intervene Objection Defeater.
• And the objection costs naturalism something. On naturalism, suffering is not wrong, only painful, and no victim is ever vindicated. Dawkins was candid: the universe has "precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference" (River Out of Eden, 1995, ch. 4). The protest against evil makes more sense on theism than on the view it is offered for.

MO2: "Divine hiddenness. If God wanted a relationship with me, He would make Himself obvious."

• J. L. Schellenberg argues that a perfectly loving God would not allow nonresistant nonbelief (Divine Hiddenness and Human Reason, 1993). This is a serious argument, not a debating trick. See Divine Hiddenness and Divine Hiddenness Objection Defeater.
• The Bible admits the experience: "Verily thou art a God that hidest thyself" (Isaiah 45:15, ASV). It also says God has left clear evidence (Romans 1:20) and promises to be found by those who seek (Jeremiah 29:13).
• A God who wants love, not mere belief, has reason not to overwhelm. Belief that God exists is not the goal; trust is. And Christianity claims God did make Himself visible, in a person: "he that hath seen me hath seen the Father" (John 14:9, ASV).

MO3: "Parsimony. Naturalism posits less, so it should be preferred."

• Simplicity counts, but it is weighed against explanatory power. A theory that is simple because it explains less is not better.
• Naturalism's apparent economy is bought by leaving several things unexplained: why anything exists, why it began, why the constants are tuned, why minds are conscious, why duties bind. Each becomes a separate brute fact.
• Theism posits one additional entity, a necessary personal God, and that one posit explains all of them. See Occam's Razor and Theism Has Low Priors Objection Defeater.

MO4: "This is God of the gaps. Science will fill these gaps eventually."

• The arguments here are not from what science has not yet explained, but from what science itself discovers (a beginning, fine-tuning) and what science presupposes (an orderly, intelligible world, and trustworthy minds). See God of the Gaps Objection Defeater.
• Many founders of modern science, Kepler, Boyle and Newton among them, were believers who expected nature to be lawful because they believed in a Lawgiver.

MO5: "Religion is wish-fulfillment. You believe because you want heaven."

• Wanting something does not make it false any more than it makes it true. The argument has to be judged on its evidence. See Religion Is a Crutch Objection Defeater.
• The charge cuts both ways. The atheist philosopher Thomas Nagel admitted in The Last Word (1997) that he hoped there is no God. Desires exist on both sides.
• Christianity is an odd wish. It includes judgment, self-denial and a cross (Luke 9:23).

Premise 1, Something exists, and the universe began

Affirmative case

1. Things exist that do not have to exist: stars, planets, people. Their existence calls for an explanation in something that exists by necessity. See Contingency Argument and Principle of Sufficient Reason.
2. On standard cosmology the universe began about 13.8 billion years ago, and the Borde-Guth-Vilenkin result indicates that any universe that has on average been expanding cannot be extended infinitely into the past. See Big Bang and Borde-Guth-Vilenkin Theorem.
3. Whatever begins to exist has a cause. See Causal Principle and Kalam Cosmological Argument.
4. The cause of all space, time and matter must be beyond space, time and matter, immensely powerful, and able to choose to create. That fits the God of Genesis 1:1: "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth" (ASV).
5. Naturalism has two options: the universe came from nothing with no cause, or some deeper physical reality is eternal and needs no explanation. The first denies the causal principle; the second still faces the question of why that reality exists and why it produced this universe.

Anticipated objections

1. "Then who made God?"
2. "Quantum events happen without causes, so the universe could too."

Rebuttals

1. The argument says whatever begins to exist has a cause. God, by definition, did not begin. The atheist also has to stop somewhere with something uncaused; the question is whether that stopping point is a blind physical state or a necessary, personal God.
2. Quantum events happen inside space-time, governed by physical laws, in a quantum vacuum that is not nothing. They do not show that a universe can come from literal nothing. See Quantum Fluctuations Are Uncaused Objection Defeater.

Premise 2, The universe is finely tuned and lawful

Affirmative case

1. Many physicists, believers and unbelievers alike, recognize that a number of constants and initial conditions fall in narrow ranges that permit life. Small changes would yield a universe with no stable atoms, no stars, or no chemistry. See Fine-Tuning Argument.
2. The options are physical necessity, chance, or design. No known physics makes the values necessary, and the odds against chance are vast.
3. Nature also obeys elegant mathematical laws that the human mind can discover. Eugene Wigner called this "the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in the natural sciences" (1960). See Argument from Intelligibility.
4. A rational Creator explains both: "O Jehovah, how manifold are thy works! In wisdom hast thou made them all" (Psalm 104:24, ASV).

Anticipated objections

1. "There are infinitely many universes. We are in one where life is possible, because that is the only kind we could observe."

Rebuttals

1. The multiverse is not observed and may not be observable. It also needs its own fine-tuned generating mechanism to produce universes with varied laws. Positing countless unseen universes to avoid one God is not the more economical choice. See Multiverse.

Premise 3, Conscious, reasoning minds exist

Affirmative case

1. We are conscious. There is something it is like to see red or feel pain, and no description of neurons firing captures it. See Argument from Consciousness.
2. We reason. We hold beliefs because they follow from evidence, not just because physical causes produced them.
3. On naturalism, our faculties were shaped by unguided processes that reward survival, not truth. Darwin felt the "horrid doubt" about whether such convictions can be trusted (letter to William Graham, 1881). Plantinga argues that if naturalism and evolution are both true, we have reason to doubt our reliability, including our belief in naturalism (Where the Conflict Really Lies, 2011). See Argument from the Reliability of Reason and Argument from Reason.
4. The atheist philosopher Thomas Nagel concluded that consciousness and reason are not explained by the standard materialist picture (Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False, 2012). He did not become a theist, but he conceded the problem.
5. Christianity explains both: God is spirit and reason, and made human beings "in his own image" (Genesis 1:27, ASV).

Anticipated objections

1. "Consciousness emerges from complex brains, and true beliefs help survival, so evolution would favor reliable minds."

Rebuttals

1. Saying consciousness "emerges" names the puzzle; it does not solve it. See Consciousness Emerges from Neurons Objection Defeater. And survival rewards useful behavior, which can come from false beliefs as easily as true ones. Reliable reasoning about mathematics, metaphysics and the far past goes far beyond what survival required. The naturalist trusts reason; the theist can say why.

Premise 4, Some things are objectively wrong

Affirmative case

1. Torturing a child for fun is wrong, and it would be wrong even if everyone approved of it.
2. Objective moral duties need a foundation that is not just human feeling, evolutionary history or social agreement. Each of these could have been otherwise, and none of them can make something truly wrong. See Moral Argument.
3. A perfectly good, personal God supplies that foundation. The moral law is real because it reflects His character, and we know it because it is "written in their hearts, their conscience bearing witness therewith" (Romans 2:15, ASV).
4. Lewis's own path out of atheism ran through this point: "My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line" (Mere Christianity, Book 2 ch. 1).

Anticipated objections

1. "Morality comes from evolution and empathy. We don't need God to be good."
2. "Euthyphro: is something good because God commands it, or does God command it because it is good?"

Rebuttals

1. Atheists can be good, and often are. The question is not whether they can know or do good, but what makes good real. Evolution explains why we have moral feelings; it does not make those feelings true. See Evolution and Empathy Ground Morality (Defeater), Subjective Morality Defeater and Moral Anti-Realism Defeater.
2. Neither horn. God's commands flow from His nature, which is goodness itself. The standard is not arbitrary and not outside God. See Euthyphro Dilemma Objection Defeater.

Premise 5, The resurrection of Jesus has serious historical evidence

Affirmative case

1. Christianity is testable at its center. Paul wrote: "if Christ hath not been raised, then is our preaching vain, your faith also is vain" (1 Corinthians 15:14, ASV).
2. A set of facts is granted by a wide range of critical historians: Jesus died by crucifixion; His followers sincerely believed they saw Him alive afterward; the persecutor Paul and the skeptic James were changed by similar experiences; and the message was proclaimed early, in Jerusalem. See Minimal Facts Argument.
3. Paul passes on a very early summary: Christ "was buried; and that he hath been raised on the third day according to the scriptures; and that he appeared to Cephas; then to the twelve; then he appeared to above five hundred brethren at once" (1 Corinthians 15:4-6, ASV).
4. Natural explanations (hallucination, theft, wrong tomb, legend) each fail to account for the whole set. The resurrection explains it. See Argument from the Resurrection and Resurrection of Jesus.
5. Naturalism can only rule this out in advance. If a God who made the universe exists, raising a man from the dead is not beyond Him.

Anticipated objections

1. "Dead people don't rise. Any natural explanation, however unlikely, beats a miracle."

Rebuttals

1. That is true only if naturalism is already assumed. Premises 1 to 4 give independent reason to think a God exists who could act. Given that, the question becomes historical, and it should be answered on the evidence. See Stolen Body Hypothesis Defeater and Argument from Miracles.

Premise 6, Christianity offers what people most need

Affirmative case

1. People need justice for evil, mercy for their own failures, lasting meaning, and hope in the face of death. See Argument from Purpose Meaning and Hope.
2. Naturalism, by the honest testimony of its own defenders, offers none of these finally. Russell: all the achievements of the ages are "destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system." There is no judgment for the tyrant who dies comfortable, and no reunion with the dead.
3. Christianity offers all of them at once: a Judge who will "bring every work into judgment" (Ecclesiastes 12:14, ASV), a Savior who is "just, and the justifier of him that hath faith in Jesus" (Romans 3:26, ASV), and a promise that "death shall be no more" (Revelation 21:4, ASV).
4. Paul saw the alternative plainly: "If the dead are not raised, let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die" (1 Corinthians 15:32, ASV).

Anticipated objections

1. "What you'd like to be true doesn't make it true. I'd rather face a hard truth than a comforting lie."

Rebuttals

1. Agreed, and this premise does not stand alone. The case for truth is Premises 1 to 5. Premise 6 adds that the view which best explains the world is also the one that answers the human heart. That fit is itself a clue: "he hath set eternity in their heart" (Ecclesiastes 3:11, ASV). See Argument from Desire and Argument from the Unlivability of Nihilism.

Scripture on God and the natural world

The Bible does not ask people to believe against the evidence of nature. It points to nature as evidence:

• Creation declares a Creator. "The heavens declare the glory of God; And the firmament showeth his handiwork" (Psalm 19:1, ASV).
• God's power is visible in what He made. "The invisible things of him since the creation of the world are clearly seen, being perceived through the things that are made, even his everlasting power and divinity" (Romans 1:20, ASV).
• The universe did not make itself. "By faith we understand that the worlds have been framed by the word of God, so that what is seen hath not been made out of things which appear" (Hebrews 11:3, ASV).
• The faith rests on a public event. God "hath given assurance unto all men, in that he hath raised him from the dead" (Acts 17:31, ASV).
• God can be found. "Ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart" (Jeremiah 29:13, ASV).
• Without God there is no lasting hope. Paul describes life "having no hope and without God in the world" (Ephesians 2:12, ASV).

Live-cite kit

Scripture:

• Genesis 1:1, God created the heavens and the earth.
• Psalm 19:1, "The heavens declare the glory of God" (ASV).
• Romans 1:20, His "everlasting power and divinity" seen in creation (ASV).
• Romans 2:15, the law "written in their hearts" (ASV).
• 1 Corinthians 15:14, "if Christ hath not been raised, then is our preaching vain" (ASV).
• Acts 17:31, "he hath given assurance unto all men, in that he hath raised him from the dead" (ASV).
• Revelation 21:4, "death shall be no more" (ASV).

Scholarly:

• Bertrand Russell, "A Free Man's Worship" (1903): human achievement "destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system."
• Richard Dawkins, River Out of Eden (1995): "nothing but blind, pitiless indifference."
• C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (1952): the crooked line needs a straight one; Miracles (1947), ch. 3, naturalism undercuts reason.
• Charles Darwin, letter to William Graham (1881): the "horrid doubt" about trusting an evolved mind.
• Thomas Nagel, Mind and Cosmos (2012): an atheist concedes materialism cannot explain mind.
• Alvin Plantinga, God, Freedom, and Evil (1974) and Where the Conflict Really Lies (2011).
• Gary Habermas and Michael Licona, The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus (2004).

Aphorisms:

• "Atheism asks matter to explain why it exists, why it thinks and why it should be good."
• "You can't call a line crooked without a straight one."
• "If your mind is an accident, why trust it to tell you so?"
• "Naturalism is honest about death. Christianity is the only one with an answer to it."
• "The question isn't who carries the burden of proof. It's which picture fits the world."

Tactical notes

• Find out which atheism. "I see no evidence for God" (lack of belief) and "nature is all there is" (naturalism) need different approaches. Ask: "Do you think nature is all there is, or are you just unconvinced so far?"
• Honor what is true. Superstition should be rejected, suffering is real, and many atheists are honest and morally serious. Say so first.
• Compare explanations, not burdens. Shift from "prove God" to "which view explains the beginning, fine-tuning, mind and morality better?"
• Take evil seriously. Do not rush to a formula. Grieve first, then ask what makes evil evil.
• Land on the resurrection. Arguments for a Creator open the door; the empty tomb shows which God walked through it. See Cumulative Case for Christian Theism.
• Make it personal at the end. "If Jesus did rise, what would that mean for you?"

See also

• Atheism, the view in full, with its varieties
• Naturalism, the metaphysical claim that nature is all there is
• Secular Humanism, naturalism as a way of life
• Cumulative Case for Christian Theism, how the separate arguments combine
• Kalam Cosmological Argument and Contingency Argument, why the universe needs a cause
• Fine-Tuning Argument, the life-permitting settings of physics
• Argument from Reason and Argument from Consciousness, the problem of mind for naturalism
• Moral Argument, why objective duties point to God
• Argument from the Resurrection, the historical case
• Problem of Evil and Divine Hiddenness, the strongest atheist arguments
• Argument from Purpose Meaning and Hope, why hope points beyond naturalism
• World Religions Compared by Their Ultimate Ending, every worldview's ending side by side
• Deism vs the Christian God, the next step: a Creator who stays involved
• Pantheism vs the Christian God, the other alternative to a personal Creator