Background

Not all arguments for atheism are created equal. A good argument is always useful, regardless of one’s stance on a subject. Good arguments always help lead to the truth, either by being true, or by inciting a better response. Some arguments for atheism are seriously compelling and are worthy of exploration on their own merits, but certainly not all. They exist on a scale, ranging from austere to glorified schoolyard quips.

There are two types of arguments for atheism. The first are the kinds which play defense by casting doubt on a premise in a formal theistic argument. This would include things like existential inertia. Of course, I contend with those sorts of arguments in my cosmological proof of God’s existence, my argument from consciousness, or my description of the infamous five ways, so reintroducing all of them here would unnecessarily convolute my list. This list only includes the alternative: common arguments which seek to advance atheism on its own merits or intrinsic probability.

This page beings my list of five tiers of arguments for atheism. The list includes five categories: good, mildly misguided, kind of smug, superiority complex, and euphoric. This descending scale will include an explanation of each bucket as well as a reflection on each of the arguments within. On this page, I will have the first tier of arguments for atheism, the ones which are seriously compelling and deserve proper responses. Since this will be lengthy, I’ve split the bad arguments onto a second page. A link to the rest of the list will be at the bottom of this page.

Good Arguments for Atheism

These following arguments are sensible reasons to doubt – serious problems theists need to address. And of course, I will spend much more time addressing these arguments than the ones which follow in the second article.

(1) If God is both benevolent and omnipotent, then how could evil exist?

This answer requires a little exposition. The classical theological syllogisms have formulas that go something like this. (1) things exist; (2) some things exist because other things make them exist; (3) but if all things depend on other things to exist, nothing could exist; (C) so there must be one thing which exists self-sufficiently. And then there are some logical inferences made about the nature of this “self-sufficient” being, which more and more clearly resembles God as the argument continues.

Two such inferences need to be described for this argument. First, there can only be one self-sufficient being. For if there were two, then their separate identities would rely on there being some distinction between them. But if one depends upon a distinction and the other does not, the distinction must be gratuitous. But anything which relies upon a gratuitous distinction for its identity cannot be self sufficient. So, there can only be one self-sufficient being. Second, a self-sufficient being must be totally complete, lacking in nothing. After all, “self-sufficient” definitionally means “not lacking in this particular area,” but the particular area we speak of is existence itself. Completeness of existence is supreme completeness, total realness.

The corollary to this is that only God can be complete, for all other beings – as a matter of logical necessity – must at least lack self-sufficiency. So, all created things necessarily exist on a scale of perfection and imperfection. A man’s movement is more perfect than a rock because he can self-propel. A man without a limp moves more perfectly than one with a limp. And a very fast man more than a very slow one. A man who could fly would be even more perfect, and so on. But we can see from these examples that imperfection is not actually a “created” thing, it is only an absence. Likewise, evil is the absence of some good which is normally present. But in order for anything beside God to exist, there must be beings which lack some goods sometimes. Hence, within the scale of being there is evil.

But even so, should God not at least prevent the evils which are possible to prevent? For example: God cannot create man without man lacking self-sufficiency, but He could prevent man from ever, say, needing a limb amputated. He could! But to suggest God has an obligation to do so is to judge God as if He were a human – He isn’t. A man must always prevent evils which are within his power to prevent – but that’s because he is human. God created the human moral universe; He is not Himself bound by it. This is a simple category error – it would be like asking how God created ex nihilio when He has to obey the law of conservation of energy. The answer is… He doesn’t have to obey the law of conservation of energy. He made that rule… ex nihilo.

But even so – why does God not fix everything voluntarily, even if no precept dictates that He must? God permits evil for the sake of manifesting His glory in the particular manners He deems fitting. It is similar to how I “permit myself” to languish at work for the sake of feeding my family. I don’t desire the languishing for its own sake, nor does God “desire” evil for its own sake. Rather, God permits the sin of the persecutor to make manifest the glory of the martyr, because it is fitting that a martyr be a real martyr. This He does not for His own sake – for creation can never add anything to God, much like my dreams can never add anything to me – but for the sake of the martyr, whom He loves with a special love.

2. If God is benevolent, why is there gratuitous suffering?

The argument above may be philosophically satisfying regarding the “existence” of evil, but it seems weak in the face of the experience of evil. That is, evil may in some sense be logically acceptable, but does that really explain pediatric bone cancer? Or the Holocaust? Or animal suffering? These seem completely unnecessary. Surely God Almighty is creative enough to have avoided them?

Let’s first look at the human relationship to suffering. We are perfectly happy to suffer for the sake of things we love. People enjoy going to the gym, earning money, things of that sort. But we actually value suffering for the sake of another even more; selflessness is probably the highest ideal there is, and is usually considered the path to true happiness. In Man’s Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl shares that while he was imprisoned in a concentration camp, those who served others through work or relationship remained happy. Desmond Doss heroically rescuing 75 wounded soldiers at Okinawa inspired multiple books and movies. The French “Reign of Terror” was ended by a group of nuns who sang hymns on their way to the guillotine. Although these stories are horrifying, they are also beautiful.

Now we clearly recognize the beauty and joy in suffering when we understand the purpose of it. So, what if God simply sees purpose in suffering, even when we don’t? What if there simply is no such thing as gratuitous suffering? Now, some will say that the idea that all suffering has a purpose is subjective or unprovable. But if this is true, then it is also true of the idea that there is gratuitous suffering. As such, advancing the gratuity of some certain type of suffering as evidence God does not exist is, though emotionally powerful, just a case of question-begging. If an atheist can point at suffering that seems meaningless to advance their theory, I can just as easily point at suffering that seems meaningful to advance mine.

3. Atrocities in holy books.

This argument usually targets the Tanakh (“Old Testament”) or the Quran. Contrary to what some will say, these aren’t just bad things recounted in a neutral, historical fashion. God gives positive commands that are deeply troubling to modern sensibilities. In the Tanakh, the entire book of Joshua is about the genocide of the Canaanites who inhabited the Promised Land. After the fun little story where the Jews march around the walls of Jericho to topple them, “they killed everyone, men and women, young and old… They even killed every cow, sheep, and donkey… Finally, they set fire to Jericho and everything in it” (Jos. 6:22-25). God commands that slave-beating is only punishable if it results in death (Ex. 21). Deuteronomy has instructions for taking a woman from a conquered territory in marriage, permitting her a month to grieve; it also instructs the stoning of recalcitrant sons (Deut. 21).

Now, entire books have been written on these topics, but for the purposes of this article, I’m just going to share a simple principle that’s helpful with passages like these: if some divine command may have context or justification that one may either not be aware of or which merely causes subjective discomfort, then it does not challenge God’s existence, nor even the truth of a certain religion. These passages could just mean that God’s action is unintuitive sometimes.

As for the Tanakh, there are functionally endless plausible justifications for these “atrocities.” One may point out that the Canaanites were unbelievably wicked, that God patiently waited for 400 years for them to repent before executing justice (Gen 15:16), that God has the unique right as the giver of life to take life as He pleases, and that sparing them en masse would’ve inevitably meant rebellion or the Jews being negatively influenced by them. One may point out that the conquered women whom the Jews married were taken from cultures of child sacrifice and ritual rape and given marital dignity in a culture with an extraordinarily liberal concept of human rights and a divine mandate to protect the marginalized. A Christian may add that in Matt. 19 Jesus explicitly says that certain laws given to Moses were imperfect concessions, training wheels God had to employ due to humanity’s sinfulness.

But the Quran is rather a different story. It claims continuity with the bible, but takes many steps backwards from the Gospel. Jesus prohibits even looking at a woman with lust (Matt 5:28); Mohmmad teaches that Heaven is a place of endless sex with virgins (44:51-54, 38:52, 52:17-20, 55:56, 56:22, 56:35, 78:33), permits sex with children (65:4), slaves (33:50, 23:5-6, 70:29-30, 8:69), slaves with living husbands (4:24), and allows polygamy with up to four wives (4:3). Mohammad, who is the supposed exemplar of perfect moral conduct for all times (33:21), marries his adopted son’s wife and justifies it on the basis that adopted children aren’t real children (33:37), marries many more than the four-wife limit, and keeps many sex slaves (33:50).

Again, the Quran claims continuity with the Gospel. The Quran also claims that it’s the final word from God; nothing else is coming (Quran 6:38, 6:114-115). This puts its moral teachings in a self-contradictory position. If Islam is true, God’s perfect and final intention is explicitly not the monogamy and chastity taught in the Gospel, but child marriage, polygamy, slave prostitution, and raping the wives of living men you’ve bested in battle. God’s chosen moral exemplar was first a virgin carpenter, and then a pedophilic warmonger with 12 wives and countless bondwomen. Again, my argument is not merely that I don’t like these teachings, but that they make no sense considering Islam’s claim to have taken the torch from the Gospel. Needless to say, I think that’s a pretty good argument against Islam, but it doesn’t challenge religion in general, and certainly not God’s existence.

4. Why doesn’t God just make it clear that He exists?

To borrow an example from Ed Feser: imagine a skeptic investigating Romeo and Juliet. After reading it dozens of times, he confidently asserts that there is no such thing as Shakespeare. Why does he say this? Because he cannot find Shakespeare anywhere in the book. Now, this error is not due to lack of diligence, but fundamental confusion about what an author is. An author stands outside the order of the novel, and the novel itself insists upon the author’s existence. So, I agree with the skeptic that no particular line in Romeo and Juliet proves Shakespeare exists, and I agree that no particular created thing necessarily proves God exists. But this does not mean that either of these authors are hidden. In fact, as Romeo and Juliet plainly and ubiquitously does attest to an author just by being what it is, so does creation.

Although there are many complex, formal proofs of God’s existence (see here), the basic deduction is very simple: reality is the way it is, and there should be a reason for that. There are things which exist but could be other than the way they are, which implies a creator; there are chains of simultaneous causal regressions, which implies an uncaused cause; there are laws of nature cohering the universe, which suggests a lawgiver. Although Romeo can doubt almost anything going on in the story, the one thing he can never doubt is the author setting it all in motion. Likewise, God, far from being hidden, is knowable through clear, intuitive, accessible logical deductions… which is literally the least-hidden a thing could possibly be.

5. Where is Australia?

I colloquially call this argument “where is Australia?” but it applies to a whole domain of similar questions. The basic formula is this: God had the opportunity to mention something no one was aware of in scripture. The discovery of that thing however many years later would prove the scripture. For example, if Jesus went into a discourse about a 3.2m mi² landmass in the middle of the Pacific and Indian Oceans, the discovery of Australia would prove that was a real, undeniable prophecy.

Except, it wouldn’t. A magic trick unrelated to the content of the holy book wouldn’t prove anything. If the Gospels said something like this, Muslims would say it proves the Quran is true, as they believe God is responsible for parts of the Christian Bible. Jews would say it was inspired by a demon to lead people astray. Atheists would say ancient people must have been more geographically aware than we thought. Ok, say instead the Gospel included a theory of gravity. For anyone to even understand what the authors were talking about, they’d have to explain the theory of gravity – but, then it would look like they just figured it out using science. On the other hand, were it presented in a simplistic fashion it would be called a lucky guess. There’s no winning move here.

If we’re going to talk about prophecy, why not prophetic vision related to the actual domain of holy books? The Gospel doesn’t teach about gravity, but it does teach about compassion for your enemies. Christianity was the first religion with an existential quest to unify disparate cultures. It replaced the virtues of power and conquest with humility, love, and selfless sacrifice. It sided with traditionally marginalized groups like women, children, and those in poverty. Doesn’t this sound like the very basis of modern civilization? Doesn’t that strike you as an improbably extensive and revolutionary series of teachings to come from a first-century carpenter? By my lights, that’s more prophetic than random trivia.

Conclusion

These arguments are ones which every theist and atheist ought to ponder. Again, no good argument is a waste – such a thing always leads closer to the truth. But as I said, not every argument for atheism is good. To descend from the heights of logic into the depths of fallacious pretentiousness, continue the list here.