Themelios Project

Over the past several weeks I have been listening to some audio lectures by the late Dr. Greg L. Bahnsen, a strong defender of the Christian faith and an highly skilled apologist.  Throughout the series (Defending the Christian Worldview Against All Opposition) Dr. Bahnsen outlined numerous tools Christians can use when defending their faith, in addition to providing examples of how to use them when witnessing to people who hold particular worldviews.  One of the worldviews he touched on was materialistic atheism.
 
I’ll be honest.  Before I listened to this series of lectures, atheism was one of the opposing worldviews that intimidated me the most.  However, after Dr. Bahnsen pointed out just a few of the numerous inconsistencies in atheism, this supposedly daunting worldview was revealed as a muddled confusion of illogical fallacies.  I know that sounds a bit strong, but when the façade of superiority is stripped away, that’s honestly about all there is left.  In order to keep with the Themelios Project tradition of writing relatively short posts, this week I’ll share two of the four inconsistencies in the atheistic worldview that Dr. Bahnsen presented.  Next week we’ll check out the other two.

1. The Problem of Inductive Inference
 
The title “inductive inference” is essentially just a fancy way of describing the process of drawing conclusions from past information.  For example, I use inductive inference when I pour a glass of milk.  Based on my past experiences of milk-pouring, I can assume that the milk will remain in the glass once it leaves the bottle.  However, as strange as it seems, the consistent atheist would be unable to share in this belief.  Atheism holds that there is no order in the universe, and therefore all events are simply results of random chance.  As a result, the atheist would be unable to accept that something that happened yesterday will happen the same way today.  Consequently, the atheist cannot be consistent with what he claims to believe and say that the milk will remain in the glass when you pour it again.  For all he knows, it might shoot across the room when you tip the bottle.  If random chance governs everything, you can’t accept past information about a specific event as relevant to the present.

2. Inability to Employ Logic and Concepts in Reasoning
 
According to atheism, matter is all that exists.  No spiritual realm or anything of that sort, just things that are made entirely out of matter.  However, this belief can cause a lot of problems when considering ideas and concepts like humanity, justice, and even the laws of logic.  So what’s so difficult about those sort of things?  Consider the fact that you can’t really touch,smell, see, hear, or taste any concept or idea.  Obviously, then, they’re not material.  Because concepts and ideas are immaterial, the consistent atheist cannot let them into his worldview.   He believes that matter is all that constitutes reality, and is therefore forced to reject anything he can’t interact with using his five senses.   Accordingly, even something as fundamental as logic has to be chunked.  The consistent atheist, therefore, is essentially unable to use reason, the very thing his worldview prides itself on embracing.

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Check back October 9th for part two…