Introduction

This is an expansion of a shorter review on Goodreads, since Goodreads allows only about half the words I had used.

I am an atheist. I have given this book a one-star rating because of my disappointment at not finding anything of substance. Given that the author received a masters degree in Christian Thought and Apologetics and was director of the Center for Christian Worldview and Apologetics, I thought there would be something that might challenge me.

In this book, the author has provided a loose outline of some reasons why people don’t believe in God, and has provided some responses to those reasons. He also gives a bare overview (a few paragraphs each) of the other major religions and belief systems.

The actual ‘10 Answers for Atheists’ section gets just 18 pages. I can’t hold that against the author, as it was likely the publisher who chose the title. After that, we get to the 10 ‘ghosts’, which he says will haunt atheists if you share them. Some of these are essentially the same as the questions/answers. He carries on, with rebuttals for 30 ‘objections’ that atheists might have. As before, some of these are repetitions or restatements of the answers/ghosts.

t’s good that the author is trying to get people to think, even if he’s getting them to think things that are a bit silly. He encourages people to be reasonable, friendly, and not angry in their arguments. As he says early on, it is important for Christians to understand atheists in order to respond to them. He also mentions a few (very few) positive things about atheists. If more Christians read this book, debating with them would be more interesting and I wouldn’t have to educate them about their own religion. They would probably even be able to convert some wavering atheists.

The Origins of Life, the Universe, and Everything

Several times throughout the book, he puts forward the Cosmological argument which: “. . . claims that everything that has a beginning has a cause. Since the universe has a beginning, it must have had a cause. The best explanation of the cause is God.” It feels like a waste of my time to even respond to this, and yet somehow some people find it to be convincing. All this argument does is move that “uncaused cause” back one step. If everything needs a cause, then God also would need a cause. So who/what caused God? God’s big brother? And if you say that God did not have a beginning, so therefore did not need a cause, you could just as easily say that the universe did not have a beginning and so did not need a cause. There are other criticisms of the cosmological argument, but this is the one I like the most.

He also brings around our old friend the Watchmaker argument. Briefly, it goes, “If you found a watch in the middle of the desert, you wouldn’t assume it just happened, would you? It’s complex, it had to have been created.” This has the same flaw as the cosmological argument (along with some new ones that I won’t get into): The watchmaker (‘God’) is at least as complex as the watch (universe). So if the watch had to be designed because it is complex, then the watchmaker also had to be designed. So who designed God? And if you can accept that God always existed and did not need to be designed, you can accept the same for the universe.

In one of the Objections, he addresses ‘directed panspermia’, the idea that life on Earth was started by aliens from space. He says, “Think about this and you’ll see that this doesn’t solve the problem of the origins of life; it just puts it back somewhere else. How did the space aliens originate?” I wish he saw that here is making the same argument that also refutes his own repetitions of the Cosmological and Watchmaker arguments: “How did God originate?”

Alex McFarland’s The Meaning of Life

It is clear that the author believes that God gives life meaning. He even says that “without God, there is no objective reason to remain faithful to your spouse, or sacrifice for family.” Throughout the book, he uses ‘objective’ to mean something like ‘beyond humanity,’ which is not the common use of the word. There are many objective reasons for people to remain faithful to their spouses, including the cohesion of society and maintaining a supportive framework for your children. I don’t think these reasons are necessary though, since I believe that loving and being committed to your spouse is a good reason. I guess that’s enough for me.

He says that empiricism (the view that experience is the only source of knowledge), nihilism (the idea that nothing has any ultimate meaning), and humanism (the philosophy that focuses on the potential of individual humans and humanity as a whole) do not account for humanity’s desire for meaning. 

I believe he fundamentally misunderstands nihilism when he says, “Nihilists claim they deny that anything has value or meaning, but don’t they value this information?” Nihilists say there is no higher or eternal meaning, but any individual can still find or create their own meaning or values. Many times throughout the book, he claims that because humans feel things instinctively or strongly, those feelings must have come from God, and here he says that “Nihilism goes against all of humanity’s natural instincts [. . .] to find meaning.” I think we can agree there. Humans naturally seek meaning, in an ultimately meaningless universe. And just because we have an urge for something doesn’t mean it is truly good or useful for us. For example, the urge to consume sugar has led to many diseases. Humanity’s urges to have a bunch of stuff has led to terrible pollution and the extinction of thousands of species. We have many urges which we evolved for a different time that do not serve us well in all cases.

When talking about empiricism, he says that things like beauty and justice actually exist, even though they can’t be objectively touched and measured. I’m surprised that he thinks beauty exists outside of the human mind. As the saying goes, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. If there is no beholder, there is no beauty. As for justice, we know that this idea has been created by humans and has varied among societies through the centuries. Even within the same societies there is variance, like in the USA when some people think that a painful death is a just punishment, while others think that the death penalty is the height of injustice. It can be very uncomfortable to accept the idea that justice is not something concrete and objective, so instead some people turn and run in the other direction, saying that their idea of justice is the one, true, objective, transcendent justice.

“. . . [Humanism] concentrates on the positive aspects of humanity and seeks to better all of society (which is again ironic, as its adherents don’t believe in God and see no meaning in reality) . . .” Again, a fundamental misunderstanding of this belief. I like and dislike many things, some due to my nature, some due to my upbringing, some due to society, but all without having one eye on eternity. I do see meaning, but it doesn’t come from any supernatural source. I want things to be better for people, here and now.

Continuing on this topic, he quotes 17th century philosopher Pascal who says (paraphrased) that because we have a craving for happiness it means that we were once truly happy, and that the emptiness inside many people can be filled only with God. This is as absurd as saying, “I have a craving for chocolate, therefore I was once truly full of chocolate, and now only the god of Chocolate can satisfy me.” As it happens, I have been truly full of chocolate and feeling near-to-vomiting because of it. Even the God of Chocolate cannot save me. 😩

In one of the Ghosts, he comes to the point of it: “Without God or any moral meaning, there’s no purpose to human existence. The result is a deep sense of despair and hopelessness.” Many people have suggested this before: In Fear and Trembling, Søren Kirkeegard said, “If there were no eternal consciousness in a man, if at the bottom of everything there were only a wild ferment, a power that twisting in dark passions produced everything great or inconsequential; if an unfathomable, insatiable emptiness lay hid beneath everything, what would life be but despair?”

Albert Camus responds to Kirkeegard (and therefore to Alex McFarland) in The Myth of Sisyphus, when he says,“Seeking what is true is not seeking what is desirable. If, to escape the anguished question: ‘What would life be [without God]?’ one must, like the donkey, feed on the roses of illusion, rather than resign oneself to lies, then the ungrounded spirit instead prefers to adopt Kirkegaard’s answer without trembling: ‘despair.’” 

It would be better to feel despair because of the truth, than to feel happiness because of a falsehood. Maybe Mr. McFarland would feel despair or hopelessness without God. I can only say that I don’t feel despair or hopelessness. I feel pretty good. But even if I didn’t, that would not make Christianity a suitable alternative. If the truth causes despair, it is still true. Avoiding the truth for temporary happiness is like telling your child that their dead dog went to join the circus so you don’t have to see them cry. 

Evolution or Design?

He makes many statements about evolution, and poses many questions. In general, I think he just doesn’t understand evolution. “How learned behaviors are passed on genetically is not explained, as if learning to become a concert pianist would somehow guarantee my ancestors [sic] a career at Carnegie Hall.” That’s not how it works. Some people are naturally predisposed to one thing or another. When they pass on their genes, their children are likely to be predisposed to that thing, and might even be moreso. After dozens of generations of people who have the natural skills that go towards being a concert pianist (say, long fingers, good hand-eye coordination, strong memory, etc.), you’ll have people who are even more predisposed to being a concert pianist. But the interactions and possibilities are so complex, that it’s just a little nudge in that direction–nobody is guaranteed to be a concert pianist.

He gives us the argument from design; the argument that if you think things are designed by God, they must have been. I’m not a scientist, so I’m not going to try to talk about how the flagellum did or didn’t evolve. I think the problem here is that you look at things which support your argument of design, but not anything which does not support it. My back hurts all the time. Can’t sit too much, can’t stand too much, can’t lay down too much, can’t walk too much. Our minds are susceptible to all kinds of logical fallacies – it takes a lot of work just to not be stupid. Wisdom teeth grow in and often just have to be taken out by a dentist anyway. We have a whole universe entirely devoid of life except for one tiny speck of a planet. Sometimes you bite the inside of your own mouth. People get depressed just by thinking. Even on the most suitable parts of Earth, we still get easily sunburned by our own star, which then causes cancer. I’m being facetious, but you can surely think of many things about the world and life which don’t seem designed that well.

Having said all this, let me also say that evolution does not disprove that there is a God or a Creator. It does go pretty firmly against a Christian God taken in the literal Biblical sense of creating humans in a day, but you can certainly believe in some kind of creator while also believing in evolution (theistic evolution).

Reasoning Seasoning

“If all reality is merely the product of time, chance and undirected processes like Darwininan evolution, then how is it even remotely possible that we can trust our own reasoning?” Human reasoning evolved to help us survive on this planet, so we can trust that it is generally suitable for us. Even so, human reasoning is often very faulty, and we make mistakes all the time. It took countless generations before we came up with things like the scientific method which give us guidelines to follow.

He says that “[b]lind chance hardly explains design, much less our ability to reason and make sense of reality.” Reason has evolved, not through blind chance but through natural selection. Since it has evolved in us on this planet, it helps us to make sense of our world. Since it is a product of evolution, it is not perfect.

We can’t even trust our eyes all the time. How about the Müller-Lyer illusion?

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Two parallel lines, one of which ends in outward-pointing arrows and the other which ends with inward-pointing arrows, appear to be different in length to human observers. Even when you know the lines are the same length, they look different. This is also an argument against design. Our eyes can’t even reliably tell that two lines are the same length.

Prophecy Schmophecy

He briefly talks about what he considers to be evidence from prophecies in the Bible. I was particularly interested to investigate this. An undeniable prophecy in the Bible is something that would really make me have to reconsider my atheism. So let’s have a look at the three prophecies listed. I assume he has led with the most believable and reliable prophecies. 

He says that Daniel 2:37-42 foretold the governments of Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece, and Rome, in order. What do the scriptures actually say? (I have used the King James Version here since I prefer its language, but feel free to reference others for yourself; as far as I know they are the same in their meaning but may use slightly different wording)

“[. . .]He has given them into your hand, and has made you ruler over them all—you are this head of gold. ³⁹ But after you shall arise another kingdom inferior to yours; then another, a third kingdom of bronze, which shall rule over all the earth. ⁴⁰ And the fourth kingdom shall be as strong as iron, inasmuch as iron breaks in pieces and shatters everything; and like iron that crushes, that kingdom will break in pieces and crush all the others. ⁴¹ Whereas you saw the feet and toes, partly of potter’s clay and partly of iron, the kingdom shall be divided; yet the strength of the iron shall be in it, just as you saw the iron mixed with ceramic clay. ⁴² And as the toes of the feet were partly of iron and partly of clay, so the kingdom shall be partly strong and partly fragile.”

The writer of Daniel doesn’t mention any government or country by name here. No mention of Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece, or Rome. You can interpret it that way, sure. You could interpret it lots of ways. ‘The kingdom shall be partly strong and partly fragile’ i.e. like every kingdom that has ever existed. Like most prophecies, it’s vague and can suit your needs. Some parts aren’t vague, where it says the ‘third kingdom . . . shall rule over all the earth.’ McFarland says that this kingdom represents Greece, which we know only ruled over a relatively small area around the Mediterranean and some parts of Asia–not even close to all the earth. This is not evidence.

Next, we move on to Isaiah 44:28-45:1.

“That saith of Cyrus, He is my shepherd, and shall perform all my pleasure: even saying to Jerusalem, Thou shalt be built; and to the temple, Thy foundation shall be laid. Thus saith the Lord to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have holden, to subdue nations before him; and I will loose the loins of kings, to open before him the two leaved gates; and the gates shall not be shut;”

At first glance, it does make you feel a little funny. How could Isaiah know the name of king Cyrus from 200 years in the future, unless it was through divine power? But then you remember that you can just look this stuff up, and you find out that there is good reason to suspect that the latter parts of Isaiah were written by a different person. In other words, it’s not a prophecy, somebody just wrote it down after it had already happened. It would be great if there was anybody mentioned by name in the Bible who was supposed to do something after the Bible had been verifiably written and assembled (say, anytime after A.D. 400). There isn’t, because it’s not possible.

And finally, he says that Psalm 22 describes crucifixion hundreds of years before it was invented. So, does it? Let’s see the exact quote he has given:

“Dogs have surrounded me; a band of evil men has encircled me, they have pierced my hands and my feet. I can count all my bones; people stare and gloat over me. They divide my garments among them and cast lots for my clothing.”

This does not describe crucifixion. There’s piercing of hands and feet, sure (not essential to crucifixion, though it did often happen). But dogs surrounded you, evil men encircling you, being able to count your bones, those aren’t essential parts of a crucifixion, and the actual essential part, the tying/nailing to a cross is totally missing. 

These so-called prophecies are just nonsense.

Here’s the sort of prophecy that a skeptical, rational person would accept: “Barrack Obama will be president of the United States of America in 2009 A.D.” It wouldn’t necessarily make me believe in God, but it would definitely make me believe in the supernatural and the possibility of prophecy. There is nothing to that level of specificity in the Bible, because it’s not possible.

On a similar theme, the author claims (by referencing Norman Geisler) that the Bible makes “statements that would reveal knowledge about the way things work beyond the knowledge of the day.” (I believe this implies scientific knowledge.) A few pages later, he says he’s shown that the Bible does make those knowledge-revealing statements, which he did not show–as far as I can tell, he didn’t even mention it other than this single quote. There is no advanced knowledge in the Bible.

This one gets its own heading

He addresses an Objection which says that lots of people haven’t even had an opportunity to hear the gospel, and it wouldn’t be fair for God to send them to Hell. I was expecting some spiritual gymnastics here, but I was instead genuinely surprised by his direct and callous response. He says that everybody knows God exists and so they are accountable (i.e. it’s okay to send them to hell), citing Romans 1:18-2:12 – “For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities–his eternal power and divine nature–have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.” This is not an effective argument, it’s just citing a Bible verse. It’s clearly nonsense, since all people obviously do not believe that these “invisible qualities” have anything to do with God; some people have took them to mean Allah, Buddha, atheism, etc. This interpretation would also make the Great Commission (where Jesus tells his disciples to teach all nations) absurd and unnecessary. 

Black and White

Like the meaning of life, the author believes that morality also comes from God. He claims “We’re all aware of objective moral laws. These objective moral laws are beyond us. The best explanation of their source is a moral lawgiver–God.” We aren’t all aware of objective moral laws. Think back through history, you can find people with very different morals from you. How about the human sacrifices of the Aztec empire? How about the race-based slaveholding society of early 19th century USA? People at the time thought their behavior was perfectly moral, and in the latter case even justified it with their religion. Spiders eat their siblings as soon as they are hatched. That suits spiders. It wouldn’t suit humans, and we would call it immoral. We have found the things that suit us and our societies and called it morality.

He quotes C.S. Lewis regarding evil and suffering: “But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line.” C.S. Lewis didn’t know how he got the idea of just and unjust, and as often happens with people when they don’t understand things, they say, “It was magic/God did it.” I’m not an evolutionary psychologist, so please make some allowances for me, but it seems reasonable that humans, being social creatures, are well-served by having ideas about what is right and wrong. By way of analogy, I don’t know where I got the idea of balance, but that doesn’t mean God did it–it’d be tough to get around without having balance, so it’s something that evolved.

In one of the Ghosts he brings back our good friend Pascal. Here he tells us how the philosopher said that people do both great and terrible things, and they do the great things because they are made in God’s image but they do the terrible things because of the Fall. This was a new one for me. I don’t see how it could make any sense. Try applying it to a different subject: Dogs do great things (saving their owners) and they also do terrible things (killing innocent people), but it doesn’t follow that they are made in the image of Dog-God or had a Dog-Fall. Humans evolved to behave in these ways, and our behavior is caused by a complex interaction of genetics, upbringing, and circumstances.

The Passion of the Christ

In one of the Objections, he says “. . . atheists need to offer some reasonable explanation for Jesus and what He did.”  It pains me to say so, since I admire many things that Jesus taught, but a plausible explanation is that he was mentally ill. There have been dozens and dozens of people that believed they were a special prophet or the Messiah or the Second Coming of Christ or even God, including Charles Manson, Sun Myung Moon, José Luis de Jesús, David Koresh, and Haile Selassie (former emperor of Ethiopia).

As for Christ’s claimed miracles, there is no evidence. Even the writers of the Gospels do not claim to have witnessed the miracles. They were written down secondhand by people who were likely credulous and already predisposed to believe in supernatural things.

When talking about the resurrection of Christ, he says the evidence is “staggering” and “extensive.” He lists the empty tomb, the supposed post-resurrection appearances of Christ, the changed lives of early Christians, and that early Christians continued despite being severely persecuted. I want to particularly address the post-resurrection appearances of Christ, because here the author says Jesus appeared to 500+ people and cites I Corinthians 15:5-8: “⁵ . . . and that he appeared to Cephas, and then to the Twelve. ⁶ After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers and sisters at the same time . . .” This was written by Paul, that much we can agree on. Paul did not know Jesus. Paul did not see this supposed appearance to 500 people. I believe we can agree on those things as well. Paul is only writing down something someone else told him–this is not reliable evidence.

The author says that the resurrection of Christ must have happened, because “Why else would so many men and women be willing to give up their lives? Would they do it for a lie?” People would die for a lie they thought was true. People die for Hinduism. People die for Islam. That doesn’t mean their beliefs are true, it just means they believe it strongly.

Christians are very impressed by the crucifixion and resurrection, and Alex McFarland naturally likes those things too. “Isn’t that remarkable? [. . . ] The loving God of the universe cared so much for us that He came to us, reached out and did the unthinkable through Christ–He died for us.” This is not remarkable. People die for other people all the time (and they really die, they don’t come back three days later.) If I could ‘die’ and then come back after three days, and by doing so save billions of people now and in the future, I would. I think many people, maybe even most, would do the same. It would be hard, but I think I could do it, and even Jesus complained “take this cup from me,” so I should be allowed some complaints along the way.

The Bible as a Source of Truth?

He often presents the Bible as some kind of “proof” when it is nothing of the sort. For a Christian, sure, you can accept it. But who else would? For example, when talking about Islam he says one of the reasons it “fails as a worldview” is because Muslims believe on judgement day you’ll actually be judged for your deeds, while the Bible says (Ephesians 2:8-9) “For by grace are ye saved, through faith, not by works, etc. etc.” Okay, but who is this going to convince? Only Christians believe that this verse has anything to do with truth. It is not any kind of argument against Islam. It only makes sense of you assume the Bible is true, which most people do not.

In the section about polytheism, he asserts “. . . there is abundant evidence that there can be only one god (we will examine this evidence in chapter 7).” I read chapter 7 twice, and this ‘abundant’ evidence somehow slipped past. He then asserts that God must be “infinite, eternal, and unchanging,” giving only his opinion and an unconvincing logical sequence as evidence. In addition, (paraphrasing) “The gods of polytheists have human characteristics and imperfections, so that is evidence that they are invented by humans.” I happen to agree that the gods of polytheists are invented, just as the gods of monotheists (e.g. Christians) are invented, but this is not a convincing argument in favor of God. The Christian God also has many human characterists and imperfections – anger, love, revenge, happiness, satisfaction, grief, regret, jealousy, etc.

But what about archeological evidence? There are many things which the Bible mentions which we know are true, they are verifiable. For example, the city of Jericho was real, King David was real, the Hittites were real–don’t make me list them all, just know that were dozens and dozens and dozens of real people and places listed in the Bible, which I think we can all agree on. This supports certain parts of the Bible as having been written by real people at a certain historical time, but the author goes even further and says that it’s evidence that everything in the Bible is really true and really trustworthy. The argument he presents is the same as someone saying this: “Richard Dawkins mentions Oxford University which is an undisputably real place, therefore the things he writes about evolution are true.” Joseph Smith really did verifiably live in New York and Ohio and makes reference to those places in his writings, but that doesn’t mean it’s true when he says an angel told him the location of golden plates covered in writing which he translated into the Book of Mormon. To be clear, just because Ezekiel wrote about Jerusalem (which is a real place, you can fact-check this!)  doesn’t mean that he really was visited by angels that had wings and four heads (one eagle head, one human head, one cherub head, one lion head) and were covered in eyes from heads to toe.

In a response to one of the Objections, he says “Other religions may make claims, but [. . .] Christianity doesn’t make claims without real evidence.” He claims this and similar things repeatedly. The evidence may be convincing to people who really want to believe or are not critical, sure. But it is not real evidence. It is not believable. Still, he says “Given the extensive evidence we have reviewed, we can stand with Paul in saying Christianity is indeed ‘true and reasonable’” even though what he calls extensive evidence at that point was just seven scant pages of unconvincing suggestion and opinion.

Conclusion

Towards the end of the book, he says this:

I leave that quote without comment.