About this Blog

I am a negative atheist.  That means, I'm a skeptic with a tentative conclusion.  I will stick to the null hypothesis until I have a reason not to.

Many people don't understand what this means.  In science, someone begins by asserting a positive statement like "I can fly."  Then an experiment is designed to determine if they really can fly - like putting a parachute on their back and having them base jump off a cliff to see if they can fly before deploying the parachute.

After 50 or so successive jumps, we have our data.  Now, we need something to compare it with.  This is where the Null Hypothesis (NH) comes in:  "I cannot fly."  We then use our data to compare the alternative hypotheses.

In statistics, the only way to support our hypothesis is to refute the NH.  Therefore, we must assume that our hypothesis is false until we find evidence to the contrary.

When one person has enough evidence to move their conclusion to the hypothesis (that is, they believe the positive statement), the onus for then proving to the rest of the community that the hypothesis is true rests solely on the shoulders of the person who believes.  Those holding to the NH are not required to submit proof, because you cannot prove the negative.  (How would one prove that they cannot fly, but by trying to fly to show they cannot?)

Thus, when applying this to the God question, we must reject the positive assertion (God is real.), and hold to the NH (God is not real.) until we have evidence to the contrary.  When one person feels they have enough evidence to accept the hypothesis (God is real.), they then have the responsibility to present that evidence to the rest of us who are holding to the NH.  

They must also understand that their evidences will be tested for legitimacy and strength based on scientific controls.  What constitutes evidence?  Testable, demonstrable, empirical data.  One's personal experiences and anecdotes do not qualify.  

When testing the God question, we must have an honest desire to follow the evidence to its most logical conclusion - wherever that may take us.  We must not start at the conclusion we wish to be true.  This is the most common fallacy Christians are guilty of committing.  (The second being the use of personal experiences and anecdotes - ie: I feel the spirit.)

This also means we must have both sides of an argument honestly and accurately presented.  So I do not fear reading books about Christianity any more than I feared reading atheist books when I was a Christian, because I am honestly seeking the truth.

While there is no shortage of apologists shredding the atheists' books online, there does seem to be a shortage of honest critiques of religious works.  A cursory search for "critique of The God Delusion" will bring up 616,000 web pages as of April 2013 (I'm sure the number is still growing).  But my initial search for a critical review of "The Reason for God" was an overwhelming number of people raving about this book - something I flatly disagreed with.

Thus - the idea of this blog was born.  I will be reading the apologists books, and I will critique them and post the results here.

This will be slow going for the most part.  It takes me a long time to read these books because frankly, many of them make me angry, the logic is so messed up that it's hard to sort it all out, and they are so chock full of logical absurdities, fallacies and the like that I have to recharge my brain by reading something more cerebral (like Hume or Eliot), or something more for fun.  

Hang in there - I'm just one person trying to make a difference in the discourse.  =D

Critique of Tim Keller's "The Reason for God"

This book would be great for an ‘ardent believer’ who is looking for a way to justify his claim, or a doubting believer who needs encouragement, or an agnostic looking for a reason to believe Christianity.  However, the informed skeptic will not be persuaded by this book because it has several major flaws.


First, it is insulting to skeptics.  It refers to them as emotionally hysterical, dishonest and lacking integrity. 

“Emotions and rhetoric are intense, even hysterical.  Those who believe in God and Christianity are out to ‘impose their beliefs on the rest of us’ and ‘turn back the clock’ to a less enlightened time.”

“There is no integrity in (refusing to think out the implications of an empty Cosmic Bench). … (Although) it is dishonest to live as if he is there and yet fail to acknowledge the one who has given you all these gifts.”

If I wrote a book billed to Christians containing reasons why they should be skeptical of their beliefs... and started out my book saying their dogma was hysterical nonsense that preys on the fear of death... and then spent about 8 chapters misrepresenting Christian theology... and finally claimed that their assertion in a God when they can’t prove one is dishonest and shows their lack of integrity... only to go on and talk about how humble I am – the Christian would not likely find much value in my book (and rightly so). 

In fact, they didn’t find much value in the man who happily embodied that example (Christopher Hitchens), as many of them publicly celebrated when he lost his life to cancer.  It’s also worth noting that Richard Dawkins gets obscene hate mail from mainly Christians, and he broadcasts himself reading them on YouTube.  Worth a look.



Second, Keller has dealt himself a serious blow to his credibility by intentionally misquoting or misrepresenting prominent atheists.

The nature of a skeptic is to research, look stuff up, and admit they don’t know when they don’t know.  It floors me that Keller thought he could get away with this in the age of Google and information overload.

In chapter eight 'The Clues of God,' Keller is trying to show that there is evidence of a singularity from which the universe outwardly exploded. He quoted Stephen Hawking as saying:

"Almost everyone now believes that the universe, and time itself, had a beginning at the Big Bang."

What Keller fails to mention is that the very next sentence in that book after the quote given is:

"It is perhaps ironic that, having changed my mind, I am now trying to convince other physicists that there was in fact no singularity at the beginning of the universe – as we shall see later, it can disappear once quantum effects are taken into account."

It has been said that Keller was only using Hawking’s statement to show that many scientists believe in the Big Bang as a creation event, and is not using it to show that Hawking believed in a singularity.

However, this quote was used in the same paragraph where Keller attempts to assert that there is evidence for a singularity, and the actual assertion is the very sentence before.  What he’s saying is, “The singularity is the evidence for creation – and look!  This really famous atheistic scientist and nearly all his cohorts believe in the singularity too.”

Hawking was making the statement in the negative.  As in, “unfortunately, all these scientists believe in a singularity.”  Keller presents this quote in the positive – as in, “everyone agrees that the singularity is evidence for a creation event.”   Therefore, I submit this as disingenuous and misleading.

Unfortunately, the average reader is not going to know (or look up this quote and discover) that Hawking does NOT believe in the singularity as a beginning.  They are also not likely to know that this science is outdated (1998) and the current thought, as a result of String Theory (2006), considers the Big Bang to be an inflation, versus a creation, event.  Instead, they will likely recognize Hawking’s name as a leader in physics, and accept Keller’s version of his quote as accurate.

Additionally, in chapter 9 'The Knowledge of God,' Keller quoted Raimond Gaita, an athiest thinker, as 'reluctantly' writing:

Not one of (these statements about human beings) has the power of the religious way of speaking... that we are sacred because God loves us, his children.

His actual quote is:

Not one of (these secular examples of sacred) has the simple power of the religious ways of speaking.  Where does that power come from? Not, I am quite sure, from esoteric theological or philosophical elaborations of what it means for something to be sacred. It derives from the unashamedly anthropomorphic character of the claim that we are sacred because God loves us, his children.

It has been presented that Keller was only illustrating what the religious ways of speaking are, and not trying to misrepresent Gaita’s quote.

I reject this rationalization.  Keller is saying “even this atheistic writer feels compelled to admit that the religious version of sacred is more powerful because we all know God loves us as his children.”  After all, the whole point of this chapter was to show that we all have an innate knowledge of the Christian God.

Again, Gaita meant this as a negative statement, as in “it has nothing to do with theology or philosophy, but how they define their deity.”  Keller mutilates the quote, creating a misleading positive statement.

Just like Hawking’s quote, the average reader is not going to go look up Gaita’s quote (especially since Keller’s version of this quote is more prominent with a Google search), but rather trust Keller's version of the quote, never knowing the actual position of this atheistic thinker/writer.

In addition to this, he misrepresents the positions of George Williams, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Stephen J. Gould and more.  Either he’s completely ignorant of modern moral philosophy, or he willfully ignores it.  Based on what I see, I believe the latter.



Third, this book is peppered with errors.  He has three major categories of errors.  First, he misuses terminology like secular, moral relativism, and irony.  This is not forgettable.  An informed skeptic is going to know these words.  An uninformed but honestly seeking skeptic will look them up.  An uninformed skeptic who doesn’t care to do their homework is low hanging fruit. 

Second, he uses outdated science.  Hawking’s theories were from the 90s, and other quotes and references were from even earlier.  What about current science and philosophy?  String Theory came out two years before this book was published.  Informed skeptics are going to know this information, and will reject any of his arguments that are based on old evidence.

Third, he uses many kinds of logical fallacies.  While the most popular was begging the question/assuming the answer (our existence is proof of God’s existence, morality is proof of God’s existence, etc), he was also known to use:

·         ad hominem - taking this position makes you dishonest and lacks integrity, therefore your premise is false

·         ad ignorantiam - we can’t explain it, thus God exists

·         ad populum  - so many people believe it’s true, so it must be true

·         argument from authority - mostly CS Lewis, too much CS Lewis for a book not written by CS Lewis

·         argument from final consequence - the universe seems fine-tuned for life, therefore there must be a creator

·         argument from personal incredulity - life is too complex to have happened from blind chance, therefore God exists

·         confusing the unexplained with the unexplainable - we cannot explain it, therefore God exists

·         false analogies – no-see-ums in the tent, looking directly at the sun to study it, and AASM/LGBTA analogies

·         false dichotomy - us believers versus those nonbeliever camps in the introduction of the book

·         No True Scotsman - those people who would do those things are not ‘real’ Christians

·         non-sequitor - a positive statement about atheism is automatically a negative statement about Christianity

·         reductio ad absurdum - believing in no god makes napalming babies morally relative

·         straw men - Keller does not know his audience whatsoever and spends inordinate amounts of time defending beliefs that don’t belong to skeptics

·         tautology - Jesus died for our sins because the Biblical Jesus says he did in the Bible

·         moving goal post – this just proves how great God is

·         tu quoque - you say Christianity is nothing more than an asserted belief, but so is yours 

It’s shocking to me that anyone would find this many errors reasonable.



Fourth, he does not address modern skeptic claims, like:

·         Infinite Regression

·         Increasing Improbability

·         Extraordinary Claims Require Extraordinary Proof

·         Increasing Responsibility

·         Irreconcilable Characteristics (perfectly just/perfectly benevolent, omniscient/omnipotent)

·         Natural Explanation

·         String Theory

·         Possession of Onus

Lastly, I’m not convinced he knows what a skeptic really is.  Make no mistake – this book was billed to skeptics as a way for them to evaluate their doubts in the same way they evaluate belief.  Check the back of the book!

Timothy Keller addresses the frequent doubts that skeptics, and even ardent believers, have about religion.

Not “as well as ardent believers.”  He said he addresses doubt that ardent believers can have, but doubts that skeptics traditionally claim.  If you take this clause out of the sentence, you’ll see this perfectly.  If he meant it for skeptics and doubters, he would simply say “addresses the frequent doubts that skeptics and believers have about Christianity.”  Additionally, most of the advertisements for this book on the internet have directed it toward the skeptics who are not believers.

The last four chapters are basically an overview of Christian apologetics, written from the position of someone who thinks he’s won the argument already.  I found nothing new, as I had decent teaching on these doctrines already.  Most skeptics are either going to know it already, by nature of their seeking both positions - or they'll be informed but not convinced by it.

However, his celebration is premature.  The only skeptics this book will persuade are disingenuous about their claims to not really know if there is a God, thus having a preference for a deity... or the ‘low hanging fruit’ I mentioned earlier who would prefer to take a position out of ignorance and can be easily persuaded by bad evidence.

Therefore, I give this book a 1/5.  I give him one star for what appears to be an honest attempt, but I cannot in good conscious give him any more than that as a result of his multiple fatal errors in logic, reasoning and argument.