the most fallacious debate: why we shouldn't be baited by the "God isn't real" argument
ah, yes, the debate of the century must fall for 'tis no debate at all
“Faith is being sure about what we hope for, being convinced about things we do not see.” -Hebrews 11:1 (EHV)
Lately, YouTube has been feeding me content that it presumes is doing a quite good job at keeping me engaged. It is true to say that I have momentarily paused on such livestreams, but not out of any interest in engaging in the discussion myself.
These livestreamers1 have found a glorious type of content that is bound to engage the majority of the more than 80% of people in the world who are theists and believe in some sort of god or creator. This is, as I’ve called it, the most fallacious debate, where these individuals sit on YouTube or TikTok livestreams for hours, challenging anyone who does not agree with their claims that “God doesn’t exist” or “God is imaginary” to debate with them and prove them wrong.
From a worldly perspective, I can somewhat commend them for their ingenuity regarding engineering such an engaging argument - what better way to get people talking than by challenging the very worldview that they hold dear to their heart and are ill-equipped to defend regarding the premise that they have set. Yet, also, I find this problematic, all the same with regard to my fellow brothers and sisters in Christ who may be left feeling insufficient and doubtful regarding a debate whose premise is so blatantly fallacious that it is particularly ridiculous for us to engage with it in the first place. So, it also, in the meantime, preys upon the weak in faith who ride in with valiant effort and walk away with feelings of remorse or anger when they recognize their deficiency or are cut off in the midst of the discussion.
The very problem of this debate lies within proof, and why we cannot prove in absolute terms that God most certainly does or doesn’t exist. It’s the very reason I started this post with a verse from Hebrews that talks about the reality regarding our beliefs as Christians. Now, this may seem particularly frustrating for the rookie apologists roaming around, but apologetics are not meant to prove things as being absolutely true. Rather, apologetics are a counter defense to offer validity to our worldview in an environment that seeks to discredit the views of Christianity with an alternate worldview. This worldview, in particular, has garnered support from the majority of the scientific community, which I would like to coin as “Chucky D. & Co.”
Yes, our good ol’ philosopher Darwin, whose theory is based less in fact and more in what we can’t observe, but could reckon with via thought experiments (aka, “science” fiction). However, this is a great starting point because it brings us to the definition of theory vs. law and the fact that science is less about absolutes than you thought it was.
You see, humans are exceptionally good at making generalizations and using inductive/deductive reasoning as the easy rule behind explaining everything.2 The problem is… things don’t quite work that way in reality. Just because in one instance an egg comes from a chicken, that doesn’t mean that all eggs come from chickens or that all eggs come from birds, even. Such reasoning is good for entry-level observations, but we can’t hold absolutes in this environment.
Science cannot prove that something is true; it can only prove that certain explanations for a phenomenon are false and demonstrate that others are consistent with what we observe. However, for those explanations that demonstrate what we have realized through observation are not to be reckoned as absolutely true.3 Rather, they are the best explanations that we currently have for the phenomena that could be discarded if our evidence started supporting another explanation better. That means the laws of gravity and thermodynamics could even be disproven at any time, despite the fact that we call them “laws.” The reason, however, that we call them scientific laws in the first place is because they have maintained such consistency without any challenging explanations for such a long period of time that it is rather unlikely that any evidence will come along to dethrone them.
We should also consider scientific theories. For example, both the Big Bang and Creationism are theories that attempt to explain the origin of life, and each has certain amounts of evidence that help to support the likelihood of their occurrence. The problem is, we will never be able to prove/disprove these theories because they both deal with phenomena that we are unable to observe. Humans are unable to go back in time and observe the birth of our universe - it’s just impossible. Even in the biblical creation timeline, humans were created after everything else, so even Adam and Eve couldn’t have witnessed via observation that God created everything around them.
This brings us back to the premise of the argument regarding God’s existence, and the simple thing is that we can’t scientifically show that God does exist.4 We also shouldn’t expect to be capable of doing this since we’re trying to finitely measure the infinite. We cannot comprehend or understand the supernatural in natural terms. However, on the flip side, we also can’t prove that God doesn’t exist since we would have to disprove every scenario in which he does exist. We would have to be omniscient to be definite in saying that God doesn’t exist, which is impossible for us because we are limited beings. Even if such individuals who hold this stance argue about the absence of evidence for God, they cannot say that this is evidence of God’s absence.
So, truthfully, we can only behold God by faith, and we can only reject his presence by the lack thereof. At the end of the day, that’s really what we’re dealing with here, so it’s fallacious to attempt to have an argument in which we can define absolutes regarding God’s existence. The definite declarations that “God doesn’t exist” or that “God does exist” are wrong. We must say, “I believe that God doesn’t exist” or “I lack faith in God’s existence” if we are not convinced that he exists, or we must say “I believe that God exists” or “I have faith in God’s existence.”
This is also why I have a problem with the misuse of apologetics in the aim to prove that the Bible is true or inerrant, for we are incapable of doing so. As the author here, I will admit that I personally believe that the Bible is true and inerrant and I believe that God is real and exists, but I cannot prove those things by reason - I can only prove those things by faith, which is personal and intimate, making it something that I cannot gift or pass on to somebody else.
So, at the end of the day, you are not going to convince someone of God’s existence - only God can do that through faith. You are not going to convert someone through apologetics, well executed or not, because it’s God’s work through his Word that is capable of doing that, and not your feeble discourse.
However entertaining it is to watch these arguments and however confident you might feel in defending your worldview, remember, with the established premise in these circumstances, you cannot do what you intend to do. Your faith is being sure about what you hope for, and is the evidence for you, and only you, about the things you cannot see with your physical human eyes. Your faith is for you, and you need not feel upset if you cannot change a heart that has been hardened.5
If you want to know who these individuals are in particular, the two YouTube has shown to me are @Deconstruction_Zone and @Allegedly-Ian. They really need a visit from the Fallacy Police.
Here’s an article about inductive and deductive reasoning, just in case you’re curious about what I’m referring to there: https://www.dictionary.com/e/inductive-vs-deductive/.
To prove that I’m not insane to say this (or rather to suggest that there is evidence that this claim is not unreasonable), here’s something about the scientific method and why our hypotheses must be falsifiable to be valid: https://www.khanacademy.org/science/biology/intro-to-biology/science-of-biology/a/the-science-of-biology.
Even when I asked Gemini (Google’s LLM), it supported me in why we can’t prove/disprove God’s existence (most notably, disprove): https://g.co/gemini/share/cfbe45782a9a.
If you have other questions, leave a comment or just Google it. If anything, you surely must have taken away that you aren’t omniscient and that I’m not omniscient either, and Google is the closest thing we have to omniscience, and even Google doesn’t know everything…