SOURCE:  http://www.wherethetruthhurts.org/tractsbooksread.php?w=15

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THE TRANSCENDENTAL REFUTATION OF ATHEISM

The clash between Christian theism and atheism is primarily a worldview clash. A worldview is a network of presuppositions.  One’s worldview is one’s view of reality.  The debate over the existence of God is not simply a debate over sensory evidence.  This is because our worldview determines what we will accept as evidence in the first place, what degree of certainty we require before we consider evidence authentic, and what options we will consider in our explanation of the evidence at our disposal.  The atheist, for instance, looks at the magnificent expanse of the universe and stands in awe at the wonders of time and chance and evolution.  The Christian looks at the same data and glorifies the God of the Bible, the Creator of heaven and earth.  The atheist looks at the fossil evidence and sees overwhelming evidence for the theory of macroevolution, whereas the Christian looks at the same data and finds evidence for the Genesis flood and considers macroevolutionary theory contradicted by the lack of intermediate species.  The Christian believes that answers to prayer and miraculous occurrences validate faith in Christ whereas the atheist resorts to the most likely naturalistic explanation and considers the power of the mind sufficient cause to explain those phenomena. 

One of the ways I know that He exists is His personal intervention in my life.  He has saved me, touched my life in a spectacular way, transformed me from sinner to saint, filled me with love and contentment and with His Holy Spirit.  You can’t convince a man that’s been to the moon that no moon exists.  I have tasted and seen that the Lord is good.  But the naturalistic atheist won’t consider this as evidence because there is no God and therefore it couldn’t have been God intervening in my life.  Perhaps it was a psychological aberration, a hallucination, or a freak of nature, but it couldn’t have been God because there is no God.  It is easy to see how each side looks at the evidence through the eyeglasses of its worldview.

The question that needs to be asked is, which worldview comports with reality, with human experience?  Which worldview provides the preconditions necessary to make the very debate of atheism versus Christianity intelligible in the first place? 

After debating this topic with atheists, I have had them admit that their worldview does not provide the metaphysical foundation of what they all do when they express moral outrage, employ logical analysis or inductive reasoning in scientific experiments or in their scrutiny of Christianity.  And they will simultaneously admit that Christianity does provide such a foundation!  Yet they still insist on an empirical and naturalistic basis that Christianity is false and atheism is true, all the while admitting that atheism cannot provide the basis for the assumptions they make in their very criticism of Christianity!  And who’s the one with blind faith?  The naturalist excludes supernaturalism as a premise rather than as a conclusion, and so he is unwilling to go wherever the evidence leads.  If they were, they would be led to the truth of Jesus Christ, because the transcendental evidence leads one inevitably to the Christian God.  As long as they remain stubborn in the face of such thorough refutation, they demonstrate that their problem is not a lack of knowledge, but rather, a hard, sinful heart.  The Bible confirms this truth: unbelievers are not ignorant, they’re not sincere seekers who just can’t find God, but rather, all sinners know the Creator but they’ve changed the truth of God into a lie for selfish reasons (Romans 1:18-32).  Truly, “the fool has said in his heart, there is no God.” (Psalm 14:1)

The Christian God can be proven by the impossibility of the contrary.  That is, reject the Christian God and no sense can be made out of moral obligation, moral indignation, the laws of logic, or induction, entities that are a part of the lives of all sane, intelligent human beings.  Only Christianity as delineated in God’s self-attesting revelation, the Holy Bible, provides the framework in which human experience is intelligible.  Atheism cannot make sense of anything, even the very arguments they bring forth to criticize the Christian faith!  The atheist need only be open-minded, tender-hearted, and be willing to go wherever the evidence leads in order to brave the paradigm shift that will lead to discovery of the truth.

MORAL OBLIGATION AND MORAL INDIGNATION AS PROOF FOR THE CHRISTIAN GOD

The existence of moral obligation and moral indignation cannot be made intelligible alienated from the existence of the Christian God.   An objective morality presupposes God as the founder of that law of good.  In the Christian worldview, the moral law is an idea within the divine reason of the eternal God, an idea that behavior that best affects the happiness of being is morally obligatory.  This moral law, summed up in love, is the standard by which God voluntarily governs Himself and impresses as obligatory upon the minds of those sentient beings He has created.

The atheist who defends the myth of relative morality proposes his version of moral obligation just as vigorous as does the Christian theist proposes his.  “No one has a right to force his moral code on others.”  “Every one has the right to freedom of thought and opinion.”  “Tolerance of alternative lifestyles is virtuous.”  “The Catholic priests are wrong to molest little boys.”  “Christian churches were wrong to defend slavery in the American colonies.”  “Criminals shouldn’t be punished, but treated with compassion.”  “Women should have the right to choose to get an abortion.”  “People shouldn’t kill abortionists.”  “Society should care for the poor.”  “No one should discriminate against another because of his sex, race, or sexual orientation.”  The moral commandments of the atheists go on and on, and don’t you think for a moment that they are any less dogmatic about their moral code than the Christian theist is about the Bible’s.

You can give your opinion as to how you think men should live, Mr. Atheist, but that's all it is, consistent with your worldview, it's your opinion.  The question is, WHY should men live as you say?  Because of pragmatic concerns?  Because it’ll go better for them in this life if they do?  Well, what if they disagree?  Is it thereafter good for them to do as they wish without regard to their fellow man because, after all, there is no such thing as right and wrong, there is no future day of reckoning, and they think it's better for them in this life to do as they please rather than as you please? All you can do, atheist, is disagree, but you cannot, consistent with your worldview, have moral confidence in condemning immoral behavior.  Atheists, to condemn immorality, must borrow the worldview they reject, the Christian worldview, without which moral indignation makes no sense.

Moreover, there’s the commonly used “problem of evil” argument employed to refute the concept of a God: “If God is all-powerful and all-good, how can evil exist in the world?  Either He’s not all-powerful and couldn’t prevent it or else He’s not all-good and caused it or allowed it when He had the power to prevent it – or, there is no God!”  The fatal flaw in the “problem of evil” argument is that it assumes to be true what can only be true in the Christian worldview, the existence of evil!  When the atheist rails against the evils committed by professing Christians in the Inquisitions or the Crusades or when they bring up the pedophilia crisis within the Catholic priesthood, for instance, in order to refute Christianity, they’ve lost the debate.  For within the atheist universe, there is no problem of evil because there is no moral evil.  (There is a problem of evil in the theist universe, but not the atheist universe.  The problem is resolved by faith: God has a reason for everything that He causes or allows that is consistent with His love.)  The atheist who uses the “problem of evil” argument is like the philosopher who debates whether he exists or not, all the while presupposing his existence in order to debate in the first place.  He’s like the philosopher who debates whether air exists or not – imagine it! - profound, articulate arguments as to whether or not air really exist or not, all the while both debaters are breathing air as they huff and puff their arguments.  They atheist presupposes the very God he fights against when he brings forth his arguments to refute His existence!

When the atheist assumes the reality of evil or when they express moral indignation, they undermine their own profession and confirm the Christian worldview.  After all, how can the atheist, consistent with his worldview, condemn immoral behavior?  I know how he can do it inconsistently, that is, by assuming the existence of the Christian God, but how can he do it and be consistent with his profession?  The Nazi who thinks that blacks and Jews are a little bit further down the evolutionary tree and should be abused for the white man's benefit in accordance with Darwin's theory of the survival of the fittest - what atheist can condemn him and be consistent with his atheistic profession that all morality is personal and subjective?  That's his own personal morality and who are you to enforce your moral code down his throat?  Who are you, consistent with your worldview, to tell him that he is wrong to be racist and that he should not be a racist?  Oh, you can give your opinion, but annexed to your opinion is that your opinion is your opinion and his opinion is his opinion and no one has a right to say what's right and wrong for anybody else but himself.  Atheism is a house built on sand when it comes to providing a refuge for the discriminated.  Christianity, however, provides the moral foundation to condemn judging others according to involuntary attributes.

The atheist cannot, consistent with his worldview, assert that kidnapping and raping little five-year-old girls is wrong.  They can give their opinion that it is wrong.  They can judge it to be illegal in our society.  But they cannot, consistent with their worldview, call it a moral evil.  In the society that has not outlawed pedophilia, they cannot provide a condemnation of it, and even in our society, they cannot, consistent with their worldview, condemn them whose personal preference is to break the law by raping five-year-old girls.  Atheists must assume that which they are trying to disprove in order to assume the reality of moral evil.  Thankfully, like all sane men, many atheists have moral indignation and roundly condemn the man in California who kidnapped a five-year old girl in early 2002 and raped her before killing her.  They condemn the Nazi Holocaust, and the kidnapping and enslavement of Africans by the colonials, the falsification of data in scientific studies, the 9/11 terrorist attacks against innocent Americans.  However, when they criticize immoral behavior without regard to the personal preference of the transgressor, or whether these acts were legal or illegal in that transgressor’s culture, or the way in which the transgressor was raised, or the democratic consensus of the day, they have presupposed objective morality (they’ve also assumed true the universal, invariant, and immaterial laws of logic and absolute truth, but more on that later).  The atheistic worldview cannot provide the preconditions necessary to confidently condemn these deeds, so when you condemn these deeds, Mr. Atheist, you presuppose Christian Deity, which alone provides the preconditions to make intelligible the testimony of reason and conscience.

Many atheists propose utilitarianism as the foundation of moral obligation.  Utilitarianism is the theory that all actions are to be judged by their consequences; “The greatest happiness of the greatest number” is the sole criterion for moral choice.  The utilitarian way of judging right from wrong has its place - indeed, it is Biblical to consider the consequences of your actions before you do it!  However, by itself, it is easy to see how this formula for morality falls short.  But my primary refutation of it is aptly demonstrated with this question: WHY is man obligated to pursue the course of action that takes consequences into account or produces the greatest happiness?  Because you think he should, Mr. Atheist?  And what of the man who thinks that he should pursue “negative outcomes”, Mr. Atheist?  Who are you to disagree with him?  What of the hedonist who thinks the happiness diminished in his victims’ lives is more than offset by the happiness that murdering and raping others brings to him?  What of the man who opines that producing the greatest misery is his moral obligation?  On what basis would you condemn these?  Oh, that’s right, you’d condemn them based upon your opinion.  It’s my opinion that chocolate is better than vanilla ice cream, but I suspect that you as well as I would refute a child molester with much greater enthusiasm than you would in arguing with him about which flavor of ice cream is better.  No, Mr. Atheist, you can’t live like moral obligation is just your opinion.  You’re not programmed that way.  In your instinctive condemnation of malicious behavior and your praise of benevolent behavior without regard to utilitarian concerns or the personal moral code of the offender, you show that you live like moral obligation is objective, not subjective.  In your affirmation of moral obligation and your practice of moral indignation, you affirm the Christian God, without which moral obligation and indignation would not comport with reality.

I have heard atheists argue that moral obligation is simply a description of how we evolved.  But that cannot be so.  It is not a description of how we act because we universally admit violation of it!  Rather, it is prescriptive: it does not describe a certain code of conduct, but rather, prescribes a code of conduct.  Moral obligation, like the laws of logic, are prescriptive and not simply descriptive.  Therefore, moral obligation is objective and not simply subjective. 

Lest I be misunderstood, let me freely admit that subjectivity is an attribute of the moral law – God holds us accountable for what we know in accordance with our nature and relations.  The conscience is not totally developed at birth.  As the intelligence develops, the sentient being becomes aware of how he wants to be treated and what kind of behavior results in happiness.  In this way, he comes to grip with his moral obligation to treat his neighbors and His Creator with benevolence so as to promote happiness.  Society and parental upbringing play important roles in the development of the conscience, but no sane person is justified for wrongdoing because of an immoral society or wicked parents.  The environment is an influence upon us but not a cause.  We have free wills and have the power of contrary choice in every temptation, and this is presupposed in all criminal justice systems just as it is presupposed in debate.  The moral law is external to self, objective, and universal inasmuch that it respects the motive and intent of the heart.  All men know that malevolent behavior is always objectively bad and wrong and benevolent behavior is always objectively good and right.  Outward behavior may differ, but moral obligation respects outward behavior only indirectly.  Moral obligation directly respects a state of heart.  Love is the sum of all of God’s law.  No man will be able to plead ignorance on Judgment Day, because he is fully aware of the state of heart that moral obligation impresses upon him.  All sane men know all they need to know to be obligated to love God and their neighbors as themselves.

The atheist rebuts the notion that morality is objective with evidence of differing codes of morality in different nations and cultures.  First of all, this is no refutation of Christianity because Christianity teaches that all have sinned against this objective law of good and therefore we would expect to find instances where sin was justified and legalized.  We would expect to find similarities in the moral codes of different societies as well as differences, because there is one Creator who impressed His law on our hearts and minds and we have all sinned against Him.  More or less, men’s laws and institutions generally express this supreme, universal law of good just as they universally confess their failure to comply with moral obligation. 

Furthermore, this rebuttal assumes that all codes of morality are morally equal, and this is something that even the decent atheist, as morally depraved as he might be, cannot accept.  Is the clitorectomies of little girls, the execution of abortionists and atheists and gays, and the discrimination of women in Arab nations morally equivalent to the traditions of the west in these matters?  Is the slavery of non-Arabs in Arabic societies morally equivalent to the west’s respect for human rights?  Was the Aztecs’ practice of skinning a virgin and putting her hide on the high priest to wear as a robe morally equivalent to western traditions of the fair treatment of women?  Were the Inquisitions in which Wiccans were burned at the stake morally acceptable, Mr. Atheist?  The atheist freely expresses his dogma here – “Of course not!…”  Then typically will come a long string of harsh criticisms of the evils of religious totalitarianism.  In so doing, the atheist’s worldview is contradicted and the Christian God is proven, for without Him moral indignation is nonsensical.

Our discussion about morality should make it ever so clear to the reader that the concept of a Supreme Lawgiver is CRITICAL in order to make human experience and conscience’s testimony intelligible. God’s laws are given to us for our good, and those that break God’s laws will be damned for it.  Though they’ve been deceived by their society or parents to think that their malicious behavior was acceptable, though they escape conviction and punishment in this life, though it be legal in the society in which they live, God will judge them on Judgment Day according to HIS law.  He has revealed this law to all men through conscience and intelligence and the created order, and so all men are without excuse.  Furthermore, this law is confirmed in the written word through the Holy Bible.

The Christian God can be proved by the impossibility of the contrary.  The Christian worldview uniquely provides an explanation for the universal laws of morality, laws that all men universally assume and yet no other worldview can adequately metaphysically support.  God is supremely intelligent and eternally complicit with his own law of love, and He impresses His laws upon the heart and mind of beings He has created in His image.  The sane atheist cannot escape the reality of God anymore than he can speak or breathe.  Indeed, the existence of God is the sine qua non of reality.

THE LAWS OF LOGIC PROVE THE CHRISTIAN WORLDVIEW

When the atheist employs the laws of logic to try and refute Christianity, Christianity has already won!  When the atheist assumes that which his worldview undermines and which Christianity supports, in his arguments against Christian theism, he has become his own worst enemy.  Universal, unchanging, and immaterial entities like the laws of logic have a firm foundation in the context of Christian theism.  Atheism cannot account for them.  Atheism undermines them.

Atheism is naturally naturalistic.  That is, atheists deny the existence of the supernatural.  "I will only believe what my five senses tell me!” they insist.  My response is: Which of your five senses told you that?  The truth is that their empiricism (that they can only know what their senses tell them) cannot be empirically sensed, and so it doesn’t meet their own criteria for reality and so is self-refuting.  They insist: “No faith in the unseen and unsensed is necessary in order to explain everything in the universe!"  I rebut, Which of your five senses told you that, that sense experience is all that is needed to explain things?  If the atheist responds that his senses told him then he engages in circular reasoning.  If he says that something other than his five senses told him then he refutes himself. 

The fact is that atheists do not arrive at their naturalism as a conclusion, but rather, it is their unproven, unverified premise, which is easily falsifiable with transcendental scrutiny.  Their empiricism (their theory of knowing) and their naturalism (their theory of reality) do not meet their own criteria for credibility, and so they are self-refuting.  Transcendental inquiry leads to supernaturalism, but the atheist is unwilling to go where the evidence leads, because he has excluded that option before an examination of the evidence has even commenced!

The fact is that atheists, like all sane persons, assume things everyday that cannot be derived through sense experience.  The laws of logic, for instance, are assumed in order for the atheist to process sense data and experience in the first place.  In order for the atheist to get his arguments against Christianity off the ground, he assumes the veracity of the universal, invariant, and immaterial laws of logic.  Can the atheist taste, smell, touch, see, or feel the “law of contradiction” (that A does not equal non-A), for instance?  No.  His worldview cannot make sense of what he does when he speaks his first sentence, "I am an atheist..."  At that point, he's lost the debate, because in assuming the laws of logic (“law of identity” in this case), he himself has become one more piece of evidence that the Christian God is real, for without God, there can be no universal, invariant, immaterial laws of logic in the first place.

Atheists notoriously beg the question repeatedly when asked to reconcile their dependability on logic with their atheistic presuppositions.  One atheist insisted, “The basis for logic, science, induction, and reasoning is that the material world exists and can be tested objectively.”   That’s like saying, “The basis for logic is logic,” or “The basis for objective science and the objective uniformity of nature and the objective laws of science is objectivity.”  The acknowledgement of the objectivity of the laws of logic presupposes the Christian worldview in the first place!  To admit that objective testing is possible presupposes an attainable objective truth.  To even state that the immaterial world exists as a fact presupposes the Christian worldview!  The atheist can only be certain that the immaterial world exists because of his presupposing of that which only the Christian worldview can account for.  The atheist cannot account for universal, invariant, immaterial laws at all.  How can the atheist, consistent with his worldview, account for unchanging laws in a constantly changing universe?  He can’t.  His worldview undermines what is he doing!  Admission of objectivity in the laws of logic or the external world is an admission that the atheist is secretly reliant on the Christian Deity in order to argue against the Christian Deity. 

David Hume said that there was no empirically verifiable basis for the trustworthiness of our senses in experiencing the external world – our senses are trusted beforehand, a priori; the dependability of our senses is presupposed.  Hume went on to profess, consistent with his strict empiricism and his naturalism, that the existence of the external world had no basis therefore in reason or logic!  He was reduced to such absurdity by sheer consistency with his false premise.  Bertrand Russell tried to save the sciences from the skepticism of Hume, but ultimately was reduced to the same skepticism of the external world by consistency with his starting premises.  Strict empiricism and strict logical positivism descends to absurdity if consistent, and they are inconsistent to admit the objectivity of the external world.  It is completely arbitrary for the atheist to admit the existence of the universal, invariant, immaterial laws of logic and yet reject the existence of the eternal, unchanging, immaterial God Almighty.  Most do admit the reality of the external world and the laws of logic, however, they cannot come to this conclusion apart from presupposing God in their reason and logic, in their scientific induction, and in their objective data that presupposes objective truth.  The atheist presupposes that which strict empiricism and naturalism refutes in order to make his case against the Christian God. 

Some atheists argue that the laws of logic are conventions agreed upon by men, that they are not univeral, invariant, and immaterial.  However, if this were true, then that democratic consensus who agreed to make illogic “logical” by, for instance, determining contradictory statements to have equal truth value, or by considering falsified data to be acceptable for scientific studies, would be just as logical as those who held these basic laws of logic to be dependable.  This cannot be so.  Laws are not conventions or human creations, whether they are the laws of logic or laws of science.  Gravity existed before Newton studied and documented it just as the laws of logic existed before the Greeks wrote textbooks on logic.  Logicians study logic, just like biologists study biological organisms, but logicians did not create logic any more than biologists created biological organisms.  “A” does not equal “non-A” even if there are no humans around to document it, even if whole world of disagrees or cannot comprehend the proposition. 

If the laws of logic were a human convention, then I can just start a new convention and reject the old, can’t I?  Okay, I’m starting a new convention: “Atheists are Christians!  There!  That’s now logical and to say atheists are non-Christians is heretofore illogical!”   Now, would you accept that as logical if I happened to get a country of imbeciles to agree with me?  No, a logical atheist would not.  The point is plain: laws of logic are universal, invariant, immaterial rules by which we judge all propositions and data.  They are transcendent in origin and quality, because they reflect the laws by which God’s own intellect and actions are governed and by which those made in His image should be governed.  He is the necessary precondition to make sense of the laws of logic, as well as induction, morality, and reality in general.  Furthermore, no sane person can live like logic is merely conventional.  Debate itself presupposes that there are universal and invariant laws of logic.  When each debate opponent tries to convince others of their view, they presuppose the attainability of objective truth through universal laws of logic and deny determinism.  Even if they deny the freedom of man’s will in theory, the debater in practice admits that men have free wills and can be intellectually persuaded to disregard certain views to adopt others.  So atheists who debate Christians are their own worst enemies.  In agreeing to debate, they have lost the debate.

Some have argued that the laws of logic are simply descriptive of how our minds evolved.  However, the laws of logic do not describe how we think so much as it describes how we should think.  If logic was primarily descriptive as they propose, then the philosopher who begged the question would be just as “logical” as the one who did not, the mathematician who thought that the shortest distance between two points was an arc would be just as “logical” as the one who thought it was a straight line, the scientist who believed that the sun did not exist would be just as “logical” as the one who did.  Disagree with it in theory if you like but you cannot live like that, Mr. Atheist – your theory is contrary to universal human experience.  Logic is an universal, invariant, immaterial entity which is presupposed, that is, embraced as true beforehand, in all of our studies - in calculus, geometry, astronomy, grammar, quantum physics, philosophy, epistemology, anthropology, all the way to the simple things of life like baking bread and telling your wife that you’re going to the pharmacy to pick up your Haldol prescription. J  The laws of logic are like mathematics: objective and external to self.  They are not dependent on a democratic consensus or vote.  General agreement that the sun rotates around the earth does not make it true any more than philosophers who beg the question and vote that they are logical are really being logical.  A tree is not a bird even if no humans are around to document it.  The laws of logic are prescriptive in philosophy as well as all of the sciences and literature, as all men intuitively know and demonstrate for us when the scientist instructs and corrects the ignorant, or when the philosopher instructs and corrects those that beg the question, or when the mathematician instructs and corrects the child who thinks 1 + 1 = 3, or when you try to correct the bad arguments of the theist. 

Only the Christian worldview can account for immaterial laws of logic, because the universe was made by God who governs logically and expects and empowers intelligent creatures to learn about his universe in a reasonable fashion and govern themselves logically.  So in order for you to get your arguments off the ground, Mr. Atheist, you have to presuppose God, and your guilt for resisting the Christian truth that you cannot completely abandon in practice only accumulates until the revelation of God’s wrath on you on the Day of your Judgment.

INDUCTION PROVES CHRISTIAN THEISM

Induction is an inference from particular, observed instances to a general law or conclusion.  Scientific data can conclude, for instance, that a certain number of times in the past water has boiled at 212 degrees Fahrenheit at sea level, but it cannot assume that it was always so in the past or that it is so throughout the world today or that it will be so in the future without employing induction.  Scientists perform inductive reasoning when they take a limited set of empirically-proven facts and apply it to the whole and make generalizations.  Induction assumes the uniformity of nature: that as the world was yesterday, it is today, and will be in the future.  Causes that produced certain effects yesterday, all things being the same, will produce identical effects tomorrow.

Induction is more evidence for the existence of the Christian God.  Only the Christian God can account for what all sane scientists do when they employ inductive reasoning to perform studies and draw conclusions, when they brew their tea, shampoo their hair, put gasoline in their S.U.V.s, or don sunscreen before going golfing.  The atheist worldview not only fails miserably to account for induction, but it actually undermines it!  Atheistic scientists assume scientific induction every day, but they must "borrow" the Christian worldview to do so.  The Christian worldview’s foundation for induction is that a personal, intelligent God sustains the created order.  The Christian God can be proved from the impossibility of the contrary.  Without God, you couldn't prove anything!  Without God, there could be no induction, just like without God you could not justify moral judgments or laws of logic.

Atheists profess a devotion to the scientific method, but even the scientific method assumes things that cannot be proven or tested by the scientific method.  If all facts require verification by the scientific method in order to be believable, then the scientific method itself is not believable, because it assumes things that cannot be verified by the scientific method!  The scientific method assumes things that the atheist’s naturalism cannot support: immaterial, unchanging, universal entities, like laws of logic, the laws of nature, and even morality (falsifying data would be immoral in light of the scientific method).  So, in appealing to the scientific method to defend the worldview of naturalism, the atheist must first assume the worldview of Christianity, which alone provides the metaphysical framework for the assumptions in the scientific method.

Atheists profess devotion to empirical facts to make scientific conclusions, but scientific conclusions are based upon more than bare facts.  All scientific experiments and conclusions assume the uniformity of nature in inductive reasoning.  Atheism not only fails to provide the foundation on which the uniformity of nature is dependable, but their empiricism and naturalism refute the idea of unchanging laws in an ever-changing universe.  Even if the assumptions of induction were true in spite of naturalism’s refutation of them, how could the atheist ever know of them with their empiricism?  How can their naturalism account for unchanging, uniform laws of nature in an ever-changing universe?  How can their empiricism account for inductive reasoning?  Can they through finite sense experience alone assume a universal, or through their limited sense data affirm the uniformity of nature, upon which all inductive reasoning is based?  The assumptions necessary for induction are not obtained through any of their five senses or the five senses of those experts upon whose testimony atheists rely, because no person(s) has checked the boiling temperature of water at every place on the earth, for instance, and no person has done so in the future.  The uniformity of nature is taken “by faith” (if I may use that term in its broadest sense) – the atheist believes what he has not seen.  His five senses haven’t confirmed induction, and proof is impossible because of our inherent limitations.  Induction is assumed a priori, before an examination of the evidence, in spite of the fact it doesn’t meet their naturalistic or empiricist criteria for reality.  So naturalism and empiricism fail miserably to provide the basis for induction.  The atheist’s acceptance of some things he hasn’t seen, like the uniformity of nature, and his rejection of other things he hasn’t seen, like God, is completely arbitrary.  He’s assumed the uniformity of nature to make sense of the universe, but why doesn’t he also assume God to make sense of the uniformity of nature?  He is completely arbitrary and insincere.  Oh! the hypocrisy of those atheists who demand empirical data and scientific fact from the theists to prove their God exists when at the same time they assume things all the time they cannot prove, things whose foundation only exists within the Christian worldview!  Atheists are living contradictions.  They have their feet planted firmly on thin air!

I ask the atheist to provide a foundation for the laws of logic and induction.  I ask the atheist to provide the basis for his claim to absolute truth – a principle the atheist assumes when he judges Christianity to be false and atheism true.  I ask the atheist to provide the metaphysical framework for his moral indignation – so aptly demonstrated by the atheist when he judges Christian creationists for falsifying data.  Aside from smoke and mirrors, he can’t.  The Christian God is the necessary pre-condition to the intelligibility of human experience – the atheist’s experience as well as the theist’s.  God is proven from the impossibility of the contrary.  His reality is irrefutably demonstrated transcendentally.

I challenge you atheists.  If you’re going to dig in your heels and fight the Christian “magical sky gawd” myth, then bite the bullet!  Be consistent!  And then, welcome to the barbarism of Hume!  Consistent empiricism and naturalism, that rejects all unsensed and non-empirical data, disintegrates ultimately into the skepticism of Hume, who rejected even that sense data was dependable, because there never was any empirical evidence that the sense data was reliably linked to what the brain perceives.  This connection has always been assumed valid by all humanity, Hume admitted, but he said that this was without basis in logic or reason.  Reject God as the necessary precondition of reality, and it's reductio ad absurdum!  If you don’t have the courage to brave consistency with your worldview, then at the very least reject your inadequate naturalistic worldview and search for a worldview that you can live out consistently!  The validity of induction is only confirmed within Christian worldview, the constancy of a created order over which God governs.  The Christian worldview is the only worldview, or network of presuppositions, that is internally consistent, that can make human experience intelligible, and can provide the preconditions necessary for the assumptions that we all make with our moral judgments, the laws of logic and debate, and scientific induction.

LIKE ATHEISM, ISLAM AND HINDUISM CRUMBLES UNDER TRANSCENDENTAL SCRUTINY

I have sought to prove not only that there is a God, but that the God of the Bible is He.  Let us briefly touch on other theistic worldviews to show that these worldviews do not comport with reality either. 

First, Islam.  Muslims hold that Allah’s sovereignty is unlimited.  That is, he can do ANYTHING, without any limitation whatsoever.  He can make a circle square, he can be himself and not be himself simultaneously, he can defy the law of logic (make A = non-A simultaneously, for instance), he can abrogate previous revelations and change, etc.  Muslims will consistently defend this absolute sovereignty of Allah.  This worldview, therefore, undermines the house of human experience.  It destroys the foundation of morality, the laws of logic, and the uniformity of nature, because Allah could have changed his mind a moment ago.  Moral obligation, the laws of logic, and the uniformity of nature would not be dependable within this worldview. 

The Bible says, however, that there are at least two things that the God of the Bible cannot do: He cannot lie and He cannot deny Himself.  There are limitations that the Christian God imposes on Himself within the Christian framework: He voluntarily constrains Himself to be logical, reasonable, and benevolent; furthermore, He is consistent.  Muslims presuppose that which their worldview cannot account for when they express confident moral indignation, and when they rely on the laws of logic and scientific induction.  Only the Christian worldview can make human experience intelligible.

In Hinduism, reality is maya, which holds all things to be illusory.  There are no distinctions between things, between subject and object, in the Hindu worldview.  Of course, just in stating their worldview, they violate it, for they presuppose subject and object distinction, and it is impossible for them not to.  However, in the Hindu worldview, there’s no difference between evil and good, there’s no difference between illogic and logic – all is illusory.  The universe is a dream of one of their deities.  It is self-evident how this undermines the house of human experience, like atheism, and makes knowledge impossible.

In conclusion, anti-theism presupposes theism.  And like atheism, practitioners of Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism frequently assume things that only the Christian worldview provides and which their worldviews undermine.  These anti-christ worldviews do not provide the preconditions to reality.  They are internally inconsistent, and fall from their own weight very easily like a deck of cards in a hurricane.  They do not provide the foundations necessary to make sense of moral obligation and moral indignation, the laws of logic, or induction, upon which all science is based.  The Christian God is proven from the impossibility of the contrary.  Reject the God of the Bible and you’re reduced to absurdity. 

AFTERTHOUGHT

In response to this tract, many-an-atheist will doubtlessly conjure up another logical argument to refute mine.  A very logical argument indeed.  And what will be assumed in their counter-argument?  The firm foundation of logic.  What is assumed in this assumption?  The Christian God, without which logic cannot be universal and unchanging, and the free will of man to reject or accept your persuasion.  Objective truth will be assumed in the atheist’s rebuttal.

Your naturalism, Mr. Atheist, cannot account for the laws of logic any more than it can account for objective truth, and your empiricism could never know of the laws of logic even if they were real in spite of naturalism's failure to account for them.  In effect, your very counter-argument to rebut me assumes the Christian God against whom you so diligently and foolishly fight!

You're too shallow, Mr. Atheist. That's why you can't see the truth of God in what you so hastily, and without basis, assume in your very own argument against the Christian God!  You're like the fellow tormented by thirst who sees his reflection in the pool and admires his cosmetic veneer rather than looks beyond the mirror to the life-giving liquid.  Jesus is the living water which if who man who thirsts will drink freely as he may, he shall have rivers of living water flow from his own bosom!  Be silent, parched mouth, long enough to see the ripples in the water from the pounding of the arguments you breathe forth.  Hear what you are saying, then hear what He says, for without Him your argument is impossible.  Then drink and never thirst again!

Be converted, oh atheist reader, to ALL the truth, beyond that which you arbitrarily assume, to all the truth of God.  You are a fallen man with a depraved intellect whom Christ shed His blood on the cross to redeem, both spiritually and intellectually.  Believe in Him, and be forgiven.  Forsake Him to persist in your stubbornness and sin, and you will be damned.