SHAPIRO: Debunking Atheism

During the early 19th century, so the story goes, French astronomer Pierre-Simon de Laplace was having a conversation with French emperor Napoleon, explaining to him his theory of the beginnings of the universe. 

“Where does God fit into all this?” Napoleon supposedly asked. 

“I have no need of such a hypothesis,” de Laplace replied.

God, according to atheists, is an unnecessary hypothesis. The universe just is. 

We just are. 

There is no reason to search for a Creator, to posit that He cares about us, to suggest that there is some Higher Power that bridges the gap from what is to how things ought to be. 

Now, atheism is more than mere agnosticism, which suggests that it is impossible to know whether God exists. By that definition of agnosticism, many religious people are agnostic – although we have come to understand agnosticism as the generalized indifference to the question of God. Atheism, however, adamantly opposes the idea of a God who stands behind nature. Atheism often claims that religion corrupts mankind, that the notion of a God blinds men to the truths around them, that science is directly opposed to the idea of a Creator. In reality, none of these things are true.

God: The Unnecessary Hypothesis?

Let us begin with the idea that God is an unnecessary hypothesis. It is difficult to imagine an argument in which God is utterly unnecessary. That is because all human logic is rooted in certain basic assumptions about the nature of the world and about reason that are completely unmoored from the dictates of evolutionary biology. Let us examine just a few. 

First, we make claims of objective truth – truth that exists independent of human minds. How does such truth exist? Based on the dictates of evolutionary biology, our ability to comprehend a “truth” should really be no more than our ability to think whatever is most evolutionarily beneficial for us and our genetic descendants. But we don’t believe that we think 2+2=4 because it is most evolutionarily beneficial. We believe that 2+2=4 always and everywhere because it is true. And that bespeaks a truth beyond the merely material. 

Second, we make claims with regard to morality. But what is morality without a baseline assumption that human beings have inherent worth? Even utilitarian philosophies – the attempt to ignore moral right and wrong in favor of consequentialist outcomes – has to assume something about what makes an outcome good or bad. And that has moral premises that have to be assumed. The belief in any moral oughts requires us to believe unprovable truths that must descend from outside ourselves.

Third, we live as though we believe in choice – as though we are capable of making decisions in some way based on our own will. What in materialism would allow for such choice? How would such choice come about?

God is necessary for these thoughts – or at least the possibility of God. Trash God altogether, and you cannot explain why you would believe in objective truth, or morality, or your own ability to choose.

Does Logic Forbid God?

There are those atheists who claim that logic ought to forbid God – that belief in God is not merely un-evidenced but actually irrational. In the words of Adam Gopnik writing for The New Yorker, those who are atheists have “a monopoly on legitimate forms of knowledge about the natural world.” But that isn’t true. There are many religious believers who acknowledge scientific bases for knowledge but also knowledge that the scientific method itself is unprovable, unless you take for granted that the search for an objective truth is possible – an assumption the scientific method itself forbids. 

As it turns out, there are a bevy of logically consistent arguments offered on behalf of God. Take, for example, the First Cause proof advanced by Aristotle, as refined by Thomas Aquinas. Edward Feser lays out the argument in his book Five Proofs for the Existence of God. The argument goes something like this: