Bad Atheist Arguments: I Just Reject One More God than You – Patheos

Fred is furious because some animal destroyed his garden. Hes considering and dismissing possible culpritsfrom aardvarks to zebraswhile our hero points out the clues for rabbits. Fred says that its not rabbits, either. Youve dismissed all those other animals? Well, he just goes one animal further.

This is a Christian response to another atheist argument in The Atheist Who Didnt Exist by Andy Bannister (part 1). This is supposed to mimic the atheist argument used by Richard Dawkins and many others that Christians reject hundreds or thousands of gods; why not just go one god further like the atheist?

Bannisters harsh critique: To describe this as a bad argument is to flirt somewhat casually with understatement.

Game on!

(BTW, Bannisters book is online at books.google.com here.)

Bannister illustrate the problem with several examples.

Bannisters next summarize the atheist argument: The argument leaks like a rusty colander and The argument is, to use a technical term from academic philosophy, bonkers.

No, whats bonkers is the idea that his examples are analogous to the subject at hand. A bachelor can be married to zero women, but a murder must have been committed by one or more murdererssee the difference?

All I see him doing is raising dust to cloud the issue... but then that might be the goal.

Bannister generalizes the argument: never pick something out of a collection because it leaves you open to the challenge, Hold on! You rejected all these other ones, so why not just go one further and reject them all? He phrases it this way:

You see, the underlying problem with the One God Less argument is that it goes too far. If the argument were valid, it would have a devastating consequence, namely that it would behave like a universal acid and erode all exclusive truth claims, be they in theology, law, or science.

It goes too far only when you force it there. Sometimes None of the above is a possibility and sometimes not. You can suggest that a Christian believe in zero gods, but you cant tell a vegan to adopt zero dietary regimes (they have to eat something).

Lets return to Freds poor garden, ravaged the previous night by some kind of animal. The constant fight of gardeners against animals that eat their crops is well understood. You know that something trashed Freds garden, so this had zero causes isnt an option.

How could this possibly be analogous to the religion case? Compare many animals with many religions. We know that all these animals exist. In sharp contrast, most religions must be false and they might all be. There are one or more causes of Freds damaged garden, while there could be zero or more gods that actually exist. Zero is absolutely not an answer in the garden case, while it is a very live option in the religion case.

Bannister now wants to argue that when you compare religions, Christianity comes out decisively on top. He begins by scolding his favorite atheist, Richard Dawkins.

Dawkins has made a fairly basic mistake, namely failing to notice that when multiple explanations are offered for somethingbe that a murder, a scientific theory, or a religious claimwe dont immediately assume that all are equally likely.

All religions have the same Achilles Heelsupernatural belief. If that single foundational assumption is wrong, then theyre all wrongall equally wrong and all in the same way. Only if the supernatural does indeed exist are the differences interesting and worth comparing. Without the supernatural, those differences are trivial, and Bannister does nothing to argue for the existence of the supernatural.

And then, in a startling addition to the conversation, Bannister states: It often comes as a shock to many atheists to know that there is surprisingly good evidence for God.

Woware we to finally get some argument to support his just-trust-me handwaving for Christianitys remarkable claims? Nope, just a link to Alvin Plantingas famous but oddly incomplete Two Dozen (or so) Theistic Arguments (nicely rebutted by Richard Carrier).

This will be a repeated frustration. Bannisters book attempts to criticize what he considers low-hanging fruit in the atheist garden while spending no time getting his own rundown house in order.

To be continued.

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Im a friendly enough sort of chap . . .Im not a hostile person to meet.But I think its important to realisethat when two opposite points of vieware expressed with equal intensity,the truth does not necessarily lie exactly halfway between them.It is possible for one side to be simply wrong. Richard Dawkins

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For the argument to be more analogous, they should be debating whether it was the Loch Ness Monster, a yeti, [a unicorn,] or a flying purple people-eater, and settling on the evidence indicating it was the Easter Bunny. commenter Greg G.

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(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 12/26/16.)

Image from Paul Stein (license CC BY-SA 2.0)

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Bad Atheist Arguments: I Just Reject One More God than You - Patheos