A theist’s response to Ravi Zacharias’ “6 Questions To Ask An Atheist.”

Thank you Kelly for sending my first article to address. It is Ravi Zacharias’ “6 Questions To Ask An Athiest.” It has apparently been answered by some atheists online, but I would like to provide a theist’s response to his thoughts. You can find the article at the bottom of: http://www.rzim.org/media/questions-answers/. 

First, though, let me remind you that Ravi Zacharias is no fool. He knows enough about philosophy and logic to make a convincing argument for…anything. He could probably argue both sides of the God debate equally well. That’s important to keep in mind because it’s an indicator that his skill in argumentation is doing more conversion work for Christianity than what may be called ‘Truth’. Don’t forget Kant’s caution that thinking is not being, but it presupposes being. In other words, logical relations are not real relations, and it is possible for a person to convince you of something that is NOT true. Ravi Zacharias is a professional, and it comes as no surprise that he is an expert in polemics and public debate. Don’t weigh the worth of your ideas in a conversation with him. This angel of light has years of experience on you, and he is trained to eat you alive. He is the champion of Christian fundamentalism, and he is paid to do one thing, win debates. We cannot forget this. Yes, he is a basic Bible believer, a traditional Christian in most respects and is committed more to Christ more than his reason; but he is a warrior. Watch out.

But, as I have said, that doesn’t make him or anyone else right. Shakespeare had it right half a millennium ago: “The truth will out.” We may now see gaps in Zacharias’ arguments, but the rifts will tear wider as the years go along. I don’t begrudge him making a living while strengthening his own faith and others with him, but his absolutism and exclusive view that anyone who does not believe like he does is condemned by God and destined for eternal torment is medieval.

With that in mind, I’d like to provide one theist’s response (my own) to Zacharias’ specious six-point put-down of atheistic faith/non-faith. Do be fair, he does provide a short preface which states, “These questions, then, are meant to be a part of a conversation.  They are not, in and of themselves, arguments or "proofs" for God.” But this is, very clearly, misleading in that he is certainly using them as a prelude to ‘proofs’, and his own answers are patently inserted into the questions themselves (eg., “If there is no God, the big questions remain unanswered…” and “If we reject the existence of God, we are left with a crisis of meaning…”). So we can go ahead and bump fists if that’s what he wants (why not?), and move right to defending against his very obvious attacks.

1. If there is no God, “the big questions” remain unanswered, so how do we answer the following questions: Why is there something rather than nothing?  This question was asked by Aristotle and Leibniz alike – albeit with differing answers.  But it is an historic concern.  Why is there conscious, intelligent life on this planet, and is there any meaning to this life?  If there is meaning, what kind of meaning and how is it found?  Does human history lead anywhere, or is it all in vain since death is merely the end?  How do you come to understand good and evil, right and wrong without a transcendent signifier?  If these concepts are merely social constructions, or human opinions, whose opinion does one trust in determining what is good or bad, right or wrong?  If you are content within atheism, what circumstances would serve to make you open to other answers?

First of all, Ravi, SLOW THE *&%! DOWN! Keep flailing like that and you’re going to kill us all! Why does he remind me here of the dude in the book ‘Unbroken’ that freaked out in the life raft, ate the whole store of chocolate, and just sat there with chocolate smeared on his face, empty candy wrappers on his lap, and a guilty look on his face. He died first by the way. So why do I mention this? Because Ravi has his brain and tongue in high gear, and it’s hard for me to think that it’s ever been anything but. He rushes to conclusions, a very common cognitive distortion, and expects everyone else to as well. You’ve got to keep your head brother, or we’ll all die. I know we all want quick, simple, just-add-water solutions, but in my experience, life isn’t simple. Math isn’t simple. Science isn’t simple. Love isn’t simple. Why do you want to simplify all the ultimate answers of Life, The Universe, and Everything? Because he’s scared. Yeah, well we all are bro. He wants to apply a quick-salve to the panic of his own and others, and frankly, it certainly seems that Christianity can do that. It’s been doing it for 2,000 years. But simple answers answer simple problems, mostly problems of immediate survival. How to thrive, well that is a question that the Bible hasn’t solved so well for modern unbelievers and believers alike. I know this is just an abstract that is concentrated for believers to print on a card and keep in their pocket, but let’s not pretend this doesn’t represent the type of overgeneralization, labeling, disqualifying of the positive, and other such things that characterizes a Christian’s evangelical techniques. It’s completely characteristic.

A few other problems he rushed to conclusions about: the big questions remain unanswered, death is the end, these concepts are merely social constructions, and that there is opinion we can hold that is not a human opinion.  It’s so funny how Christians say that we cannot know anything except what God tells us. But is that knowledge still human? Yes, they say, but it is given by God. Yes, I say, but is it still held by an imperfect human? Yes, but it is given by God, so it is perfect. And….does no one else see that this is nonsense?

There are big questions which have everyone scratching their heads, but Christianity doesn’t solve all of those, it just pushes them back ad infinitum. If their answer to ‘why us’, is ‘God’; then what is the answer to ‘why God’? There is none. They’ve just pushed their questions back further, but what they have done is lost interest in the question after a point. They’ve gained enough of an answer to satisfy them and help them lead a ‘meaningful’ life, even if all meaning is not made clear to them. Yet they push and push and push others to feel beholden to answer what they themselves don’t feel the need to answer. I think this understanding is enough to unhinge the hubristic undercurrent and ‘zing’ of the above questions.

2.    If we reject the existence of God, we are left with a crisis of meaning, so why don’t we see more atheists like Jean Paul Sartre, or Friedrich Nietzsche, or Michel Foucault?  These three philosophers, who also embraced atheism, recognized that in the absence of God, there was no transcendent meaning beyond one’s own self-interests, pleasures, or tastes.  The crisis of atheistic meaninglessness is depicted in Sartre’s book Nausea.  Without God, there is a crisis of meaning, and these three thinkers, among others, show us a world of just stuff, thrown out into space and time, going nowhere, meaning nothing.

Paul Tillich’s work is relevant in understanding the courage of existentialism and writers like Nietzsche, Sartre and others. These writers faced the unknown, tackled cultural ignorance and taboos that most Christians, if they really and genuinely read these works to learn and not to gloat, would appreciate and hail as valiant. Sartre’ Nausea was a testament to the failure of many answers provided by secularism AND religiosity. Christian belief isn’t exempt here. Anyone with a claim to knowledge or understanding as a source of joy and meaning is arraigned, and the Christian Apologist movement would be the first be adjudicated. You’re not quite out of the crosshairs Ravi! And if Sartre is truly, as a person and not a persona, afraid that the universe and we in it are going nowhere, and mean nothing, then you ought to see some light in the fact that this man is standing in the dark of nothingness and facing his greatest fear. Is that not noble to you? Would you rather a man cast himself into the abyss as soon as stare into it? Wouldn’t that fact that he still chose to be alive reveal itself as an affirmation of self in spite of the supposed meaninglessness all around self? You see nothing valuable in this? I’m left to assume that Ravi, if he didn’t have someone whispering in his ear all the time that he was worth something, would cease to believe it immediately, and would cast himself into the pit and cease to be.

3.    When people have embraced atheism, the historical results can be horrific, as in the regimes of Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot who saw religion as the problem and worked to eradicate it?  In other words, what set of actions are consistent with particular belief commitments?  It could be argued, that these behaviors – of the regimes in question - are more consistent with the implications of atheism.  Though, I'm thankful that many of the atheists I know do not live the implications of these beliefs out for themselves like others did!  It could be argued that the socio-political ideologies could very well be the outworking of a particular set of beliefs – beliefs that posited the ideal state as an atheistic one.

You know better Ravi. Are you stereotyping, even while admitting that you’re stereotyping? Ha ha! Maybe dude is just not very introspective or something. Remember the mote, remember the mote!! Stated simply, I don’t blame all Christians for the Inquisition or expect them all do such things. C’mon.

4.    If there is no God, the problems of evil and suffering are in no way solved, so where is the hope of redemption, or meaning for those who suffer?  Suffering is just as tragic, if not more so, without God because there is no hope of ultimate justice, or of the suffering being rendered meaningful or transcendent, redemptive or redeemable.  It might be true that there is no God to blame now, but neither is there a God to reach out to for strength, transcendent meaning, or comfort.  Why would we seek the alleviation of suffering without objective morality grounded in a God of justice?

Again, this questions starts with two assumptions. One, that evil and suffering are in ‘no way’ solved, and two, that there is a complete solution anywhere evident. First, I think feeding people is a solution, isn’t it? Evil might be solved in part by people not killing each other so much, right? So…what are you even talking about? If Ravi is interested in a complete solution for all time, that’s nice. We all are. The burden of proof is certainly on him since he hasn’t quite brought anything that solved the world’s problems, not even close since Christianity has actually been responsible for a lot of the evil in the world. Ravi may even be perpetuating evil as we speak for refusing to validate others and only propagating his own exclusivist views. That doesn’t seem like a good solution.

5.    If there is no God, we lose the very standard by which we critique religions and religious people, so whose opinion matters most?  Whose voice will be heard?  Whose tastes or preferences will be honored?  In the long run, human tastes and opinions have no more weight than we give them, and who are we to give them meaning anyway?  Who is to say that lying, or cheating or adultery or child molestation are wrong –really wrong?  Where do those standards come from?  Sure, our societies might make these things “illegal” and impose penalties or consequences for things that are not socially acceptable, but human cultures have at various times legally or socially disapproved of everything from believing in God to believing the world revolves around the sun; from slavery, to interracial marriage, from polygamy to monogamy.  Human taste, opinion law and culture are hardly dependable arbiters of Truth.

Assumption again. We don’t lose standards. They may be flexible as Ravi seems to not fully understand, but they are standards none-the-less. Again, does Ravi have anything better? I’m guessing he hasn’t exactly claimed to have coffee with God on a daily basis, so he’s hoping that we revere the very human ‘voices’ of the saints of old as equivalent to divine afflatus. The burden is again on Ravi to show that these men’s voices weren’t men’s voices or ‘human tastes and opinions’ at all, which, for all the ecclesiastical hullaballoo about it being true, is still absurd. Even if an inhuman God was to speak, it is still human ears, minds, hearts that would have to receive it to tell their human brothers and sisters that it is an inhuman command not made or fully understood with human minds. What? Seriously?

If there has ever been negation of human worth and a complete depreciation and even abjuration of human possibility, it is in these notions. “Despisers  of the flesh” is what Nietzsche called them. They loathe their blood and their brain, and regret coming to life. They are affront to God, but worse, they are an insult to themselves. They stink in their own nostrils. All of their years is a running from life, a seeking of the ‘thing-after-this-life’ which will take it all away like a bad memory. They say that nothing here is sure, or good, or trustworthy, or fully controllable, or manipulatable. They aren’t kings, they aren’t gods, so they want nothing to do with it. Death makes them hate life. This desire of these true ‘nihilists’ for it all to be over is nothing short than revealing their desire to have all things dependent upon and subservient to them. They can’t wait to be in heaven where nothing can hurt them, or inconvenience them, or thwart them in any way. God’s joys will be their joys, God’s victory their victory, God’s power their power, God’s sleep their sleep. They are very proof of what Sartre adduced, that all humanity want to be gods.

6.    If there is no God, we don’t make sense, so how do we explain human longings and desire for the transcendent?  How do we even explain human questions for meaning and purpose, or inner thoughts like, why do I feel unfulfilled or empty?  Why do we hunger for the spiritual, and how do we explain these longings if nothing can exist beyond the material world?

Assumption again. If there is no God we don’t make sense? Didn’t we or anything make sense before we met God? Then what is our frame of reference for making sense of God? Would God make any sense without some sense of a sense of sense? Complete and utter sophistry to substantiate the claims of orthodox Christianity. Brother, if you can’t trust your self in any way, then you can’t trust your choice of God or your reason that seems suddenly trustworthy and remarkably astute in its vindication of him. You have hated your arms, legs, circulation, bowels, liver, eyeballs, neocortex, and senses for so long, your forget what you owe to them. Without them you couldn’t be confused or disoriented, or convinced. Meaning, or that lack of meaning, would hold no meaning. Stop hating yourself so much. You’re not lovable because God doesn’t want to torture you any more, and others aren’t pathetic fetid, carnal-garbage-piles because they don’t seem to want to love a God who tortures those who don’t love him.

As far as the questions above, nobody has perfect answers to anything, because we don’t hold all knowledge in the universe. Logical contrarieties might in fact be the effect of the world we understand not being a closed system. There’s more. Most of us know that and believe it. You seem to want to get to the “infinite with a single leap”, or what Nietzsche calls a ‘death leap’, but I don’t think it’s working better for you than what some others are doing is working for them. I don’t exactly see that you’ve been bailed out of anything.

Stop pretending that your answers are better than everyone else’s. Maybe they’re better than some, but that might seem that way for a variety of reasons. You’re so-called ‘answers’ sound more like cop-outs since you consistently admit that you don’t trust yourself. You’d rather trust people who lived 2,000 years ago to tell you what is true and what is not. And oddly enough you think they’re not subject to the same limitations of human opinions as all us other poor suckers.

Not buying it Ravi. Keep playing.

Send more questions!