Response to Loftus #1

John Loftus is a former-pastor turned atheist who now writes and speaks in defense of atheism. He has been writing on his blog, Debunking Christianity, a series he has called “Reality Check: What Must Be the Case if Christianity is True?” These are a series of seemingly unbelievable ideas that, according to Loftus, all Christians must believe. I am going to blog through all of these (so far he’s up to 23 posts) with my responses and then do my own series “Reality Check: What Must Be the Case if Naturalism is True?”

1) There must be a God who is a simple being yet made up of three inexplicable persons existing forever outside of time without a beginning, who therefore never learned anything new, never took a risk, never made a decision, never disagreed within the Godhead, and never had a prior moment to freely choose his own nature.

I don’t think any rational Christian believes that God is simple. God does not have to be simple. Through God’s omnipotence, He can show himself in a simple way so that we, His creation, can understand Him, but that does not make Him simple. When I am talking to my 18-month-old son, I do not speak the same way that I speak to my graduate advisor. I speak simply to my son so he can understand me. That does not mean that while I am speaking to him all my speech and thoughts must be simple.

An infinite being who created the universe and exists beyond the limits of time and space would appear to us, who are finite beings living within a linear timeline, as having the characteristics that Loftus mentions above. The fact that he exists outside of time and never learned anything new does not sound like a challenge to me. This sounds like commonly accepted attributes of an eternal and omniscient God. The laws of causality demand that there must be something that exists eternally (an un-caused first cause) to stop infinite regress (more on this on a future post). I think some atheists (actually most people, atheist or not) have trouble with the concept of a being who already knows everything and does not need to learn anything new. To me, these sound like necessary attributes of a being who is powerful enough to create the universe. The concept of learning something new is a human concept, and an attribute (i.e. omniscience) which can never apply to humans can sometimes be uncomfortable. Once my son is old enough to start asking questions, I will have the answers to nearly all of them (I hope!) and he might think that I know everything. But the difference between God’s knowledge and mine is so much greater than that between my knowledge and my son’s.

The arguments that God “never took a risk, never made a decision, never disagreed within the Godhead, and never had a prior moment to freely choose his own nature” are human attributes that don’t necessarily apply to an infinite being. I think that Loftus is trying to say that because God already knows the future the concepts of risk and choice do not apply to Him. Choice does not involve knowledge of the future, it involves desire. A little while ago I had a choice to make: Michelle and I went to my favorite restaurant (Red’s) and I had to choose between the burger and the chopped salad. I knew that I was going to get the burger, I always get the burger. In fact, before we were seated Michelle told me that she knew I was going to get the burger. Just because both I and Michelle already knew that I would order the burger does not mean that I did not make the choice to order the burger.

The main problem with Loftus’ argument is that he is looking through atheism glasses. He already assumes that God does not exist and then interprets the data. He calls this a control belief. Christians have the same kind of control belief; Christians assume that God does exist and then interpret the data. And this is the way it has to be. God can neither be proved or disproved; we must start with an assumption either way. Atheists/naturalists are no less impartial than Christians/theists. Atheism/naturalism does not build a better case than Christianity/theism, they just view the data through different glasses. In this case, Loftus assumes that there cannot be an infinite deity who created the universe and therefore these attributes of omniscience and eternality are irrational. I start with the assumption that there must be a God and omniscience and eternality must be attributes of this God.