Philosophy

The great skeptics and atheists — in their own words, and answered.

Headed by the Apologia Studio master seal ("Be Ready Always," 1 Peter 3:15). Philosophy has no seal of its own — by the owner's ruling it stands under the Studio's seal, beside the Science and the Scriptures room.

The Foundation: "The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge: but fools despise wisdom and instruction." — PROVERBS 1:7

The Warning: "Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ." — COLOSSIANS 2:8

The Model — Paul on Mars Hill (Acts 17): Philosophy is not new, and the church has answered it before. At Athens "certain philosophers of the Epicureans, and of the Stoicks, encountered him" (Acts 17:18) — and Paul did not run from them. He stood in the midst of Mars' hill, took their own altar "TO THE UNKNOWN GOD," and declared Him: "Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you" (Acts 17:23). God, he told them, "now commandeth all men every where to repent: Because he hath appointed a day, in the which he will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom he hath ordained; whereof he hath given assurance unto all men, in that he hath raised him from the dead" (Acts 17:30–31). That is the pattern of this whole section: hear the man fairly, in his own words — then answer him from the Scripture.

The First Resident: Before the skeptics, the section also houses the Epistemology study — how we know what we know, founded on Proverbs 1:7.

THE SEVEN AT A GLANCE

1. DAVID HUME — The Skeptic

1711–1776 · Scotland · Philosopher and historian

Who he was. A Scottish philosopher and historian whose Treatise of Human Nature and Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding set the terms of modern skepticism. Nearly every argument against miracles, design, and natural religion since 1748 is Hume's argument warmed over.

What he said.

"A miracle is a violation of the laws of nature; and as a firm and unalterable experience has established these laws, the proof against a miracle, from the very nature of the fact, is as entire as any argument from experience can possibly be imagined." — An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, §X "Of Miracles"

"That no testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind, that its falsehood would be more miraculous, than the fact, which it endeavours to establish." — An Enquiry, §X (his famous maxim)

"…instead of the usual copulations of propositions, is, and is not, I meet with no proposition that is not connected with an ought, or an ought not." — A Treatise of Human Nature, III.I.I (the "is/ought" passage)

"Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them." — A Treatise of Human Nature, II.III.III

Where it breaks.

His rule against miracles assumes the very thing under dispute. Hume builds the "laws of nature" out of uniform experience, then disqualifies any testimony that reports an exception — before the witnesses are even heard. But a miracle is not the claim that nature ordinarily runs otherwise; it is the claim that nature's Author acted. And Christianity, alone among religions, insists on being tried as testimony: Luke wrote "having had perfect understanding of all things from the very first," so that his reader "mightest know the certainty of those things" (Luke 1:3–4). Peter disowns the very category Hume assigns him: "For we have not followed cunningly devised fables, when we made known unto you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses of his majesty" (2 Peter 1:16). The risen Christ "shewed himself alive after his passion by many infallible proofs" (Acts 1:3) — and Paul rivets the whole faith to the fact, in public, where it could be checked: "And if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins" (1 Corinthians 15:17). Hume's maxim, applied evenly, would dissolve all ancient history into the same fire; applied only to Scripture, it is not a rule of evidence but a verdict in search of one.

His "is/ought" discovery is true — and it is ours. Hume saw clearly that no pile of facts about what is can by itself yield one ought. Exactly. That is why morality requires a Lawgiver, and why the apostle says of men who never saw Sinai that they "shew the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness" (Romans 2:15). Notice, too, Hume's own sentence about reason: it "ought only to be the slave of the passions" — an ought his own system cannot issue. The skeptic borrowed from the moral law to deny the moral law.

His dissolved causation leaves his own house unbuilt. Hume reduced cause and effect to habit of mind — yet he ate, wrote, and published as if causes were real. Scripture's answer is older and sturdier: "For every house is builded by some man; but he that built all things is God" (Hebrews 3:4); and the creation he examined daily testifies that "the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse" (Romans 1:20). To his credit, Hume kept a courtesy his followers dropped: "Be a philosopher; but, amidst all your philosophy, be still a man." We return the courtesy — and invite the man to the evidence.

The answer in one line: His rule would burn every history book with the Bible — and the resurrection rests on eyewitnesses, not fables.

2. IMMANUEL KANT — The Man Who Fenced Off Heaven

1724–1804 · Germany · Philosopher of Königsberg

Who he was. A German philosopher whose Critique of Pure Reason redrew the map of what reason claims to know. Let the record be accurate: Kant was no simple atheist. He undertook to dismantle the classic proofs of God's existence — and then kept God anyway, as a necessary postulate of the moral life. This dossier answers the dismantling, which is the part of Kant the atheists inherited.

What he said.

"I have therefore found it necessary to deny knowledge, in order to make room for faith." — Critique of Pure Reason, Preface to the Second Edition, B xxx (Kemp Smith translation)

"A hundred real thalers do not contain the least coin more than a hundred possible thalers." — Critique of Pure Reason, on the ontological argument: existence is not a predicate a concept can contain

"Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the oftener and the more steadily we reflect on them: the starry heavens above and the moral law within." — Critique of Practical Reason, Conclusion (Abbott translation)

"…it is morally necessary to assume the existence of God." — Critique of Practical Reason, Part I, Book II, Chapter II, §V, "The Existence of God as a Postulate of Pure Practical Reason" (Abbott translation)

Where it breaks.

He confessed the project in his own preface. Knowledge had to be denied — deliberately — so that a certain kind of faith could have the room. But biblical faith is not what fills the vacancy where knowledge failed: "And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent" (John 17:3). God has not hidden Himself behind the machinery of our minds. "God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, Hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son" (Hebrews 1:1–2). "No man hath seen God at any time, the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him" (John 1:18). "And we know that the Son of God is come, and hath given us an understanding, that we may know him that is true" (1 John 5:20).

The thalers answer a definition, not the living God. Kant was right that you cannot argue a being into existence by packing existence into its definition. Scripture never tries. It argues from what God has done — in creation (Romans 1:20) and in history, climaxing in a resurrection God gave "assurance unto all men" of (Acts 17:31). You do not refute a king by analyzing the word "king"; you look at his acts.

His two wonders preach our sermon. The starry heavens above him: "The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork" (Psalm 19:1). The moral law within him: the law "written in their hearts" (Romans 2:15). Kant stood in awe before both witnesses and then forbade them to testify. Worse, his postulated God can command but cannot pardon — pardon would take a revelation, and revelation is what the fence was built to keep out. The gospel answers the moral law's demand with the moral Lawgiver's own payment: Christ "gave himself a ransom for all" (1 Timothy 2:6), and God's invitation to the reasoner still stands: "Come now, and let us reason together, saith the LORD: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow" (Isaiah 1:18). Kant was right that God's thoughts tower over ours — "For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts" (Isaiah 55:9). He was wrong that the high God cannot make Himself known. He has.

The answer in one line: God is not trapped behind our categories — He has spoken, and His Son has declared Him.

3. FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE — The Prophet of the Void

1844–1900 · Germany · Philosopher

Who he was. A German philosopher, a pastor's son who became Christianity's most poetic enemy. The Gay Science, Beyond Good and Evil, and The Antichrist announced the death of God and the revaluation of all values. He saw further into the consequences of unbelief than any atheist who came after him — which is why his honesty is so useful against them.

What he said.

"God is dead! God remains dead! And we have killed him!" — The Gay Science, §125 ("The Madman")

"God is dead:—but as the human race is constituted, there will perhaps be caves for millenniums yet, in which people will show his shadow.—And we—we have still to overcome his shadow!" — The Gay Science, §108

"There is master-morality and slave-morality… Slave-morality is essentially the morality of utility." — Beyond Good and Evil (1886), §260 (Helen Zimmern translation)

"What is good? Everything that heightens men's feeling of power, the will to power, power itself." — The Antichrist, §2

Where it breaks.

"God is dead" is a diagnosis he mistook for a discovery. Read the madman closely: the charge is against men — "we have killed him." Nietzsche was announcing that Europe had stopped believing, and he trembled at it: God's shadow, he admitted, would be shown in caves for thousands of years. The obituary has been written many times since; the tomb, meanwhile, is still empty and the church still preaching. The God pronounced dead is the God who "hath raised him from the dead" and thereby "given assurance unto all men" (Acts 17:31). Men cannot kill the living God; they can only say in their hearts that He is gone — and Scripture named that speech long before Nietzsche: "The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God" (Psalm 14:1).

His "slave morality" charge collapses at the cross. Nietzsche read Christian meekness as the revenge of the weak against the strong. But the morality he mocked was not invented by slaves grasping at power; it was embodied by the Son of God, who had all power and laid it down: "Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant… and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross" (Philippians 2:6–8). Christ Himself drew the contrast Nietzsche missed: the rulers of the Gentiles "exercise lordship over them… But so shall it not be among you: but whosoever will be great among you, shall be your minister… For even the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many" (Mark 10:42–45). Biblical meekness is not weakness resenting strength; it is strength bridled by love — "Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth" (Matthew 5:5). And Nietzsche's alternative, the will to power enthroned, has been tried by every tyrant since Cain; the century after him ran the experiment at scale.

His consistency convicts the comfortable atheists. Nietzsche despised Christians who abandoned the faith — and he despised just as much the unbelievers who kept Christian compassion, equality, and care for the weak while denying the Christ those virtues came from. On his own showing, you cannot kill the root and keep the fruit forever: "Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools" (Romans 1:22). Choose honestly, then: Nietzsche's void, or the mercy of Christ. There is no stable third ground, and Nietzsche — to his credit — said so.

The answer in one line: The God he buried keeps raising the dead — and the meek, not the mighty, inherit the earth.

4. BERTRAND RUSSELL — The Teapot Philosopher

1872–1970 · Britain · Philosopher, logician, mathematician

Who he was. A British philosopher and mathematician, co-author of Principia Mathematica, whose 1927 lecture "Why I Am Not a Christian" became the template of popular atheism for a hundred years. Its arguments are still repeated verbatim on street corners today — which is why they are answered here.

What he said.

"I think all the great religions of the world — Buddhism, Hinduism, Christianity, Islam and Communism — both untrue and harmful." — Preface (1957) to Why I Am Not a Christian and Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects

"Religion is based, I think, primarily and mainly upon fear." — "Why I Am Not a Christian," 1927

"If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to disprove my assertion provided I were careful to add that the teapot is too small to be revealed even by our most powerful telescopes." — "Is There a God?", essay written for Illustrated magazine, 1952

Where it breaks.

Fear is where fallen man starts; it is not where the gospel leaves him. Russell aimed at religion as cringing before the unknown. But the apostle John — who watched men try to kill the faith and fail — states the Christian's actual relation to fear: "There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment" (1 John 4:18). "We love him, because he first loved us" (1 John 4:19). The martyrs did not sing in prison because they feared death; they sang because death had been beaten. Russell refuted a caricature and never engaged the thing itself.

The teapot is a trick of definition. Russell defines God as a small undetectable object inside the universe, then notes there is no evidence for the object. But the God of the Bible is not an object in the cosmos — He is its Maker, and the Christian claim was never "you cannot disprove Him." It is that evidence has been given: a creation that declares Him (Psalm 19:1), a conscience within every man (Romans 2:15), Scriptures open to inspection, and a resurrection announced with named witnesses who were still alive to be cross-examined (1 Corinthians 15:3–8). The teapot was invented, by Russell's own design, to leave no trace. The God of Israel left a Book, a people, an empty tomb, and a church that outlived the empire that crucified its Founder. The burden of proof is not symmetrical when one side brings exhibits.

"Untrue and harmful" is a verdict the evidence won't carry. Russell listed Communism among the harmful "religions" — and the century that followed filled its graves under regimes built on official atheism, while the faith he called harmful was quietly keeping the commandments he himself lived by: "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself" (Matthew 22:39); "Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction" (James 1:27). Where professing Christians did harm, they did it by breaking their Lord's commands, not by keeping them — "Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good" (Romans 12:21).

The answer in one line: Perfect love casts out fear — and the evidence for God is not a teapot but a universe, a conscience, and an empty tomb.

5. CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS — The Poison Charge

1949–2011 · Britain / America · Journalist and author

Who he was. A British-American journalist, the most quotable of the four men called the "New Atheists." His god Is Not Great (2007) announced its whole argument in its subtitle — and he issued the same challenge in debate after debate: name one moral action a believer can perform that an unbeliever cannot.

What he said.

"How Religion Poisons Everything." — The subtitle — the stated thesis — of god Is Not Great (2007)

"In whose name is more slaughter committed in the world: God, or liberty, or progress, or science or Darwin?" — Interview, NPR All Things Considered, 2007

"name me an ethical statement made or an action performed by a believer that could not have been made or performed by a non-believer." — Introduction to The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Nonbeliever (2007), p. xiv — his standing moral challenge, issued across his debates: he added that he had as yet "had no takers."

Where it breaks.

Scripture said "religion can be poisoned" first — and named the poison: sin, not God. The prophets scourged empty, corrupt religion centuries before Hitchens (Isaiah 1; Amos 5), and Christ pronounced woes on the religious frauds of His day (Matthew 23). Men poison wells they did not dig. But the thing itself, as its Founder defines it, is this: "Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world" (James 1:27). Its whole law is two sentences: "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind… Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself" (Matthew 22:37–39). Its badge is unmistakable: "By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another" (John 13:35). Where men shed blood in Christ's name, they did it against His explicit orders — "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you" (Matthew 5:44) — orders He obeyed toward His own executioners: "Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do" (Luke 23:34).

His slaughter question answers itself against him. In whose name was more slaughter committed in the bloodiest century on record? The regimes that officially enthroned atheism — in the name of progress, of science, of the new man — industrialized murder beyond anything the Inquisition could have imagined. The constant in every age is not the creed on the banner but the heart under it: of mankind generally, not of believers only, it is written, "They are corrupt, they have done abominable works, there is none that doeth good" (Psalm 14:1). Hitchens diagnosed the disease correctly. He blamed the only physician.

The moral challenge cuts the hand that throws it. Very well — one act commanded of believers as believers: to forgive, bless, and pray for the men who are actively persecuting you, because your crucified Lord did it first and commands it still (Matthew 5:44; Luke 23:34). Others may imitate the act; the command, the example, and the power to obey it come from Christ alone. And notice the deeper problem: the challenge assumes a moral standard by which acts can be ranked — a standard Hitchens wielded constantly and his materialism could never supply. Men know right from wrong because "the work of the law [is] written in their hearts" (Romans 2:15). He spent a career appealing to a law he said had no Lawgiver.

The answer in one line: Sin poisons everything — and the Christ he blamed is the only cure ever offered for it.

6. RICHARD DAWKINS — The Delusion Charge

b. 1941 · Britain · Evolutionary biologist

Who he was. An Oxford evolutionary biologist whose The God Delusion (2006) became the best-selling atheist book of the age. Its core arguments — that God is a cruel fiction, that the universe shows "blind, pitiless indifference," and that a Creator would Himself need creating — are answered in order.

What he said.

"The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction…" — The God Delusion, ch. 2, "The God Hypothesis" (opening words of the charge)

"The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference." — River Out of Eden, ch. 4, "God's Utility Function" (1995)

"We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further." — The God Delusion, ch. 2

And his central argument, paraphrased faithfully (ch. 4 of The God Delusion, "The Ultimate Boeing 747"): anything complex enough to design a universe would itself be so complex that it would demand the very same explanation — so God almost certainly does not exist.

Where it breaks.

The "unpleasant character" is a verdict reached by excerpting. Dawkins reads the Old Testament's judgments stripped of their setting: a holy God judging nations whose iniquity had ripened over centuries of patience. The same Testament carries God's own self-description toward the wicked: "As I live, saith the Lord GOD, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked; but that the wicked turn from his way and live" (Ezekiel 33:11). The New Testament shows the heart behind the judgments: the Lord is "not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance" (2 Peter 3:9); "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life" (John 3:16); "For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved" (John 3:17); "But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us" (Romans 5:8); "For the Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost" (Luke 19:10). Judge the whole book, and the character on trial is not the one in Dawkins's summary.

"No evil and no good" dissolves his own book. If the universe has at bottom no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, then The God Delusion's moral fury at religion is, by its own account, just chemistry clearing its throat — one more blind, pitiless process. But Dawkins cannot write two pages without appealing to the very court he abolished. The Christian explanation of why he — and every man — keeps doing so: the moral law is real, God-given, and inescapable (Romans 2:14–15), and the ordered, intelligible universe he studies is precisely what a made thing looks like: "the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead" (Romans 1:20).

The Boeing argument only lands on an idol. It assumes God is an assembled object — parts fitted together, like a jet, late in a process. The God of Scripture is not assembled, not a product, and not late: "Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God" (Psalm 90:2); "the everlasting God, the LORD, the Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary" (Isaiah 40:28); "I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord, which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty" (Revelation 1:8). Everything that begins needs a cause; God did not begin. "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth" (Genesis 1:1) is not embarrassed by the question "who created God?" — it is the answer to it.

"One god further" confuses furniture with the house. The gods Dawkins dismisses were creatures inside the world — sun, storm, and sea dressed up. The Christian God is the Maker of the world itself. Discarding Thor does not move you one step toward discarding the Creator, any more than discarding a hundred forged banknotes moves you toward discarding money. Going "one god further" from the creature-gods lands not at the Creator but at nothing — and nothing is the one explanation that explains nothing.

The answer in one line: The God of the Bible is not a made thing needing a maker — He is from everlasting to everlasting.

7. SAM HARRIS — The Measuring Rod

b. 1967 · America · Author and neuroscientist

Who he was. An American author and neuroscientist whose The End of Faith (2004) opened the New Atheist wave. The Moral Landscape (2010) argues that science alone can determine human values; Letter to a Christian Nation (2006) pressed the dilemma that God must be either impotent or evil. All three arguments are answered below.

What he said.

"If God exists, either He can do nothing to stop the most egregious calamities, or He does not care to. God, therefore, is either impotent or evil." — Letter to a Christian Nation (2006)

"Questions about human values are, in principle, questions about the well-being of conscious creatures." — The Moral Landscape (2010), the book's thesis

"Religious faith is the only sector of human discourse where the imperatives of reason, resolved long ago, are systematically ignored." — Harris, writing on The End of Faith (2005)

Where it breaks.

The dilemma has a third door, and it is four thousand years old. Impotent or evil — Harris never opens the door Scripture sets before him: a holy and sovereign God who permits evil for a season, judges it in righteousness, and — the part no other god on offer has ever done — entered the suffering Himself. The book of Job faced Harris's exact dilemma and ended not with God explained away but with God vindicated and the sufferer restored. And the cross stands as the permanent answer to "He does not care": "But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us" (Romans 5:8). Notice, too, the smuggled premise: Harris measures God against a standard of care that Harris himself supplies — borrowed, once again, from the moral law he says needs no God.

The moral landscape needs a surveyor. "Well-being of conscious creatures" sounds like measurement until the questions start: Whose well-being outranks whose? Why should the strong sacrifice for the weak — nature's whole curriculum says otherwise? Who defines "well-being" when cultures disagree? Every answer Harris gives is a moral law he did not find in a laboratory, because it was already "written in their hearts" (Romans 2:15). A thermometer measures temperature faithfully; it cannot tell you what the temperature ought to be. When every man becomes his own standard, Scripture has already run that era and recorded its fruit: "In those days there was no king in Israel: every man did that which was right in his own eyes" (Judges 21:25). And it warns the measurers directly: "Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness" (Isaiah 5:20).

His "faith" is a word the Bible doesn't use that way. Harris defines faith as belief held without evidence, then refutes the definition. Biblical faith is "the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen" (Hebrews 11:1) — trust resting on evidence: on a creation that speaks (Romans 1:20), on fulfilled prophecy, on an empty tomb examined by witnesses. God's own posture toward reasoners is an invitation: "Come now, and let us reason together, saith the LORD" (Isaiah 1:18). The Bereans were commended as "more noble" precisely because they "searched the scriptures daily, whether those things were so" (Acts 17:11), and the standing order to every believer is "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good" (1 Thessalonians 5:21). What Harris actually ignores is the evidence — and the apostle had a label for dressing a worldview up as settled science: "oppositions of science falsely so called" (1 Timothy 6:20).

The answer in one line: A measuring tool cannot write the standard — Harris weighs morality on a scale God built.

The close of the whole section: "Who will have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth. For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus; Who gave himself a ransom for all, to be testified in due time." — 1 TIMOTHY 2:4–6. These seven men were brilliant, and every one of them is a man Christ died for. We answer them the way Paul answered Athens — not with hatred, but with the declared God and the risen Christ.