November 15, 2017
As
an atheist, I rarely found it necessary to defend my position when talking with
friends who believed in the existence of God. After all, my Christian friends
were the ones who were making
a claim about an invisible Being; certainly the burden of proof belonged
to them rather
than me, right? As an atheist,
I simply held the “default” position: There’s no need to defend the absence of
something that appears to be… absent! From my perspective, theists alone were
the ones who needed to make a case. My position as an atheist
was self-evident. This approach
almost always put my Christian friends in a defensive position. They found
themselves struggling to assemble the evidence while I simply criticized the
validity of each piece of their case. I never stopped to think
that I might also need to make a case for what I
believed, and my Christian friends were unable to demonstrate my responsibility
to do so. Today, as a Christian who has been involved in the examination of
evidence for the past 25 years, I understand that atheists also have a burden of proof. All of
us, in attempting to explain the world around us, move from a number of
questions to a singleresponsibility:
There Are Many Questions
Atheists
and theists both agree that the big questions of life are numerous. How did the
universe come
into existence? Why does the universe exhibit the
‘appearance’ of ‘fine tuning’? How did life
originate? Why does biology
exhibit the ‘appearance’ of ‘design’? How did human
consciousness come into being? Where does
‘free will’ come from? Why are humans so
contradictory in nature? Why
do transcendent moral truths exist? Why do we believe human life to be
precious? Why does pain,
evil and injustice exist in our world? While atheists and theists have their
own list of unanswered questions, we all agree that there are many important issues that need to
be examined.
There Are Only Two Kinds of Answers
In
the end, the answers to these questions can be divided into two simple
categories: Answers from the perspective of philosophical naturalism (a view I
held as an atheist), or answers that accept the existence of supernatural forces
(a view I now hold as a theist). In other words, there are only two kinds of
forces that could account for the universe and everything in
it: impersonal forces (as available in
a philosophically natural worldview), or personal forces (as available in a
worldview that is open to the existence of a super/extra/supra-natural Being).
Atheists maintain that everything in the universe (and all of life’s most
important questions) can be explained from a purely naturalistic perspective
(without the intervention of a supernatural, Divine Being). Theists argue that
the evidence requires the intervention of a personal, intelligent, transcendent
Creator.
There Is Only One Shared
Responsibility
Both
groups, therefore, share a common burden of proof. If theists are going to posit
God as the answer to some (or all) of the questions I’ve described, we must be
able and willing to provide evidence for the existence and activity of a
personal, Divine Being. If atheists are going
to argue that adequate answers exist without the need for God,
they must also be able and willing to provide evidence for the sufficiency of
impersonal, naturalistic forces. In either case, both groups (if they are honest
with themselves) must shoulder the burden of making their case. The burden of
proof is not limited to the theist; all of us must make the case for
our choice of causes. One side defends supernaturalism, the other defends
philosophical naturalism. One side argues for a personal, supernatural cause,
the other for a purely impersonal, naturalistic set of forces.
The
nature of the questions (and the limited categories of potential answers) ought
to motivate us to decide which of the two explanatory possibilities is most
reasonable. While atheists are sometimes unpersuaded by the arguments for God’s
existence, they are still woefully unable to provide coherent and adequate
answers to the most important questions of life related to the cause of the
universe, the appearance of design, the origin of life, the reality of human
free will and the existence of transcendent moral truth. Theists aren’t the only
ones who have to answer these questions. If naturalism is true, naturalists have
their own unique burden of proof.
J. Warner
Wallace is a Cold-Case
Detective, Christian Case Maker, Senior Fellow
at the Colson Center for Christian Worldview, and
the author of Cold-Case
Christianity, Cold-Case
Christianity for Kids, God’s
Crime Scene, God’s
Crime Scene for Kids, and Forensic
Faith.
This article first appeared at J.
Warner’s ColdCaseChristianity.com
website.
