B.H. Carroll’s Pastoral Theology
Southwestern Journal of Theology
Volume 58, No. 2 – Spring 2016
Managing Editor: W. Madison Grace II
By Norman L. Geisler and Daniel J. McCoy. Grand Rapids: Baker, 2014. 192 pages. Paperback, $14.99.
Atheists believe they have the upper hand on Christian theists because in the atheists’ view atheists rely solely on logic and reason. But is this the truth? Do atheists properly apply both logic and reason upon their own claims and are they consistent in recognizing and addressing any inconsistencies? Norman Geisler, Christian apologist, and his coauthor, teacher, and minister Daniel McCoy, refute the atheists’ claim of superior employment of logic and reason by exposing how atheists contend for two opposing positions that cannot both be simultaneously true. Geisler and McCoy maintain that atheists hold conflicting beliefs and violate the law of non-contradiction. They go on to contend that the atheists’ arguments are self-defeating and violate the laws of logic and reason which are the very standards to which atheists appeal against Christian theists.
Often atheists present the reality of evil as a dominating factor for a logical and reasonable position to reject Christian theism. The argument is often based on the following logic: “If God was truly moral, he would not [action] and God does [action], therefore God is not truly moral” (2). Atheists cannot blame God since in their view He does not exist. While advocating this position, atheists maintain that their personal freedom demands that if they were to consider the possibility of the Christian God, it is not acceptable for this God to require human submission, bestow favor, authorize death, require faith, attach guilt, prescribe rules, administer punishment, grant pardon, send people to hell, or bring them to heaven. The atheists’ argument is a position that only accepts human autonomy and rejects theonomy. Failing to distinguish the differences between freedom and autonomy, atheists reject God’s ability to address this issue through the conscience of humans. Geisler and McCoy take as their thesis that the fatal flaw in atheistic thinking is reflected by asserting that (a) God should fix the problem of evil; that is, the problem of evil needs divine intervention, and on the other hand (b) God should not intervene in or interfere with anything; that is, divine intervention is evil.
The authors contend the view of atheists is as follows: if moral evil exists, it must be God’s fault that it exists. Atheists maintain that there is no excuse for God not to stop it, prevent it, or protect humanity from it. In saying that if God exists, it is His fault that moral evil exists, atheists make it all God’s problem and deny that this problem has either a human origination or that humanity is squarely and rightly responsible for its cause and effects. In doing so, atheists have come to value their human autonomy and have discarded the ability to understand the most significant questions and issues of life.
Dismissing the reality of God as Creator, a transcendent ruler from outside their own experiential framework, atheists categorically reject the possibility of such a God. Atheists declare that if the existence of the Christian God was hypothetically assumed for the sake of argument, atheists would desire neither submission nor favor from Him, even though these two possibilities are the only possible ways one could interact with such a being. Atheists claim that the Christian conception of faith is, in essence, a withholding of knowledge from mankind and that for God to require human faith would be an immoral act. Instead, atheists choose to place their faith and trust in humanity at large and upon science. Not willing to accept responsibility for the situation of evil, atheists claim they are not guilty, rejecting the claims of God (Rom 3:23).
In their view, God’s direction and will for human life needs not to be considered because if He had wanted humans to obey these directions, God should have made us less prone to disregarding them in the first place. If He is truly God, surely He could have designed us either (1) better from the outset or (2) not be concerned with such petty things as our sin in the first place. Atheists maintain that the Christian’s God never has any right to be angry with His creation; thus, atheists maintain that if God did exist, humanity would be justified in being angry at Him. Atheists view any punishment of mankind as bad, rejecting any offer of pardon and atonement from God. Atheists believe that hell and heaven are not real places; they are simply a fictitious invention of Christians used to trick the gullible into good behavior and deter bad behavior. For atheists, any paradise must exist in the only real world that he has experienced to date—the natural world.
Geisler and McCoy respond to all this by stating that the atheist has two major inconsistencies. The atheist must first “either (a) drop the argument appealing to the problem of moral evil or (b) drop the arguments claiming that God’s interventions to fix the problem of moral evil are immoral.” Additionally, the atheist must also “stop labeling as immoral those interventions that the Christian God proposes, while simultaneously claiming that their counterparts on the societal level are not immoral” (133).
In short, atheists needs to reexamine their use of logic and reasoning because the Christian theist has placed his faith and trust in the One who is the basis for all logic and reasoning—the eternal logos—Jesus Christ.
