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Brandon Minter Dr. Lockhart PHIL 201 4 March 2013 Response to H.J McCloskey H. J. McCloskeys article On Being an Atheist makes many claims against religion and Christianity in particular. McCloskey often makes attempts in his article to destroy the arguments used for the case of God, but is normally ill informed or simply using some heinous fallacy in arguing against it to make the claim, or proof, seem invalid by looking at it with a shaded presupposition. This is ultimately the downfall of the credibility of the article itself. McCloskey often speaks of the arguments and calls them proofs. When McCloskey does so it is almost in a mocking manner; so much that it attempts to draws the readers attention away from the context of the argument to give them this presupposed sense of oh here goes these religious freaks again talking about proofs. This in itself discredits his arguments, but continuing past that, youll see that his counter arguments are just not sufficient and the way he describes the proofs are often ill informed misconceptions. McCloskey attempts to portray God as a malevolent powerful being or that he is a well-intentioned muddler, that the creator and ruler of the universe is ether not a god but an evil spirit (McCloskey 64) This is a sad counter argument because it is only using some of the claims that religious philosophers make, not all of them, and out of all these claims it only uses the ones least agreed upon. The counterargument completely disregards human responsibility and only shows God having participated or removed himself from evil proper, but does not show God stepping in as a graceful and merciful being. In a sense, it is McCloskey waving his finger at God shouting, How could you cause or

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let all of this happen without providing some sort of salvation from it? The defeat is in the statement itself. As the religious philosophers claim, if God did not indeed cause evil, then the only way He can be responsible for it is to not provide a method of salvation from said evil, which even then requires mercy and grace considering that this God could have brought about complete Justice and let the world suffer the consequences of its actions. Another one of the flaws in McCloskeys counter-arguments is that he describes how the world existing in itself is not a proof for some sort of divine creator. C. Stephen Evans and R. Zachary Manis describe an argument that McCloskeys argument does not hold up to. In their book Philosophy of Religion they describe that the earth and its dwellers are contingent beings, and with contingent beings there must be a necessary being. This necessary being, in the Religious view, is God. Although the argument is on a broader scale and not as specific as many of the religious claims, it is an argument that McCloskeys statement about the worlds existence not being valid for an argument in the case of a creator cannot match. McCloskey is also overgeneralizing his statements about the Cosmological argument. Evans and Manis state that, [b]y itself, the [Cosmological] argument only seems to show the existence of a necessary being that is the cause of the universe. (Evans and Manis 77) This description of what the Cosmological argument is does not describe the issues that McCloskey brought up. This is because McCloskey was stating that the Cosmological argument makes claims that it truly does not. In his response to the teleological argument, McCloskey states that the argument itself needs Indisputable examples of design and purpose. (McCloskey 64) This argument at its simple claim is correct in form. However, any argument that does not have some sort of metaphysical proof is only an epistemological argument and does not hold up in practice. If one were to say, I love bananas but this person never ate bananas, it would only be a claim that

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could be taken at face value, it requires much faith in order to believe it. This relates to McCloskeys interest in the Indisputable in many ways. First this claim must hold up in all areas of ones belief system, not just what the one who is making the claims problems with other arguments. McCloskey seems to believe arguments for types of theories of evolution, in which it is very evident that there are almost no indisputable facts. Even if McCloskey recognizes that these theories have many facts that are not indisputable, it is still shows some sort of faith that he would have to take to validate for him that his opinion of the matter is correct. Since he would have to take certain things up faith, which also describes in the article as a flaw in the religious system, he cannot hold the same standards to other arguments if his metaphysical beliefs are not also held to the same standard. This is how McCloskeys arguments are selfdefeating. When regarding this Evolutional theory that has been discussed, McCloski believes that is does not include the need for a creator. This is still not sufficient to his own argument. If this theory were true, there still is some need of a being to kick start the process. Even with all the processes that include much detail about how the earth and its inhabitants came to be where they are today, there is still the fact that the process is too complicated for random chance. Even with random chance, such as a dice game, there still has to be some sort of rules for that random chance to exist. In order for those rules and laws to exist, there must have been someone to create them. Even the most complicated atheistic evolutionary theory can be defeated by the simple question, where did that come from. It is almost like a childs persistent question to get to the root of all things. Once the question is asked enough, any person has to state that there must have been some form of creator, no matter what kind they believe it is. Their argument against this question process when the question goes back far enough to the answer of a creator is to ask,

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where did the creator come from? When one would reply an answer such as God, the person would counter that with a question such as who created God then? and think that they have won the argument. Unfortunately for them they have just shown their own ignorance. The definition of God and the explanation of a divine being is Something without creation. Their question can be rephrased with this definition such as, who created this substance that has no creation? This argument is self-defeating. With this in mind, it seems more plausible that the same being that created the laws for random chance to happen, could have guided the process instead of leaving it up to random chance. If this being is powerful enough to create the rules for something that is so complicated, they are powerful enough to run the process in a way that is not complicated at all to them. When McCloskey argues that the imperfection and evil argues against divine purpose and design he is simply missing the point. Something can be corrupted and still be valid for its divine purpose. For example, a mobile device is constructed to contact others and receive information. This device works perfectly for its original purpose. A person can take this device, however, and us it to do things that are considered evil or sinful. Does this mean that the device is obsolete and that its creator does not exist? Of course not, it simply means that the creator should morally provide some sort of way to counteract this modification to the original design of the device. In the Christian aspect, mans original purpose is still installed, but has been corrupted. Because of this, God has provided a solution to counteract this corruption, Salvation through His Son Jesus Christ. Although McCloskey claims that the occurrence of evil and the existence of God are contradictory, he is simply wrong in that statement. It seems that his biggest flaws, as with many atheists, are to find a problem, stop, and never try to dig deeper to find a solution. This is why,

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even though it is advertised differently in the world, Theism has the upper hand. Atheism takes arguments, finds problems with them, and stops. Theism, however, continues to find solutions to these problems, not only theologically, but philosophically as well. Whereas the Atheist only has philosophy and their version of science, Christianity can answer questions on a philosophical, scientific, and theological basis. Back to the original claim of the occurrence of evil contradicting the existence of God, Evans and Manis state that it is not necessary to know Gods actual reasons for allowing evil or to be able to explain why God allow the evils He does. It is sufficient to know that there are possible reasons why and all-good, omnipotent being might allow evil, if one wishes to show the occurrence of evil and the existence of God are not logically contradictory. (Evans and Manis 167) Atheists see for themselves that there is a contradiction and stop there. Instead they should ask if their contradiction is valid and make attempts to prove themselves wrong until there are no answers left. This is simply due to laziness and lack of good philosophy. Philosophy itself is a Greek compound word for the love of wisdom. If someone does not love wisdom enough to try to gain more when they are at a stopping point, they do not love wisdom, they are blissful in their ignorance. The atheist might ask well what are some of the reasons God would allow evil? One of the reason could be simply explained that experience will always be a greater impact than simple knowledge. For example, a young child with no experience might be told not to touch a hot pan or stick a fork in an electrical socket. When the child asks why, a parent might respond that it is dangerous and could cause pain. The child knows this epistemologically, but not metaphysically. Because of this it is almost inevitable that the child will commit the act even when not asked to. This will cause pain and possible an injury. The child will learn from this because he or she now has the experience. Another example involving humanity is the state of good without

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experiencing evil. One cannot truly know what good is if they have not known metaphysically what evil is. Here is an example. A man has never experienced an injury in his life. He lives very carelessly because he does not truly know the state of blessing that full health is. One day the man breaks his arm and must wear a cast for months. This causes pain, discomfort, and longterm effects. Once the man is out of the cast, he seems to appreciate his hand a lot more. This is the same with humanity. God knew our heart before we existed and because of that, he knew that we would not appreciate perfection and a world without sin if we had not experienced the opposite. Gods angels sure did not appreciate this type of existence considering that one third of them left that life with no ability to return. Even if God had done what McCloskey so arrogantly suggested in making man biased to freely choose good, man still would not appreciate this goodness. This one reason why God could let evil exist, to make Salvation that much sweeter. In concluding his article, McCloskey restates that Atheism is more comforting than Theism. This is just not true in any form. It has often been said that the smartest atheists after finding out the end means to atheism, end up committing suicide. I dont see how this is more comforting knowing that there is only one chance at life, that it could be over at any second, and that the end result is the grave compared to a method of religion that claims there is hope for a perfect world after the grave. William Lane Craig in his article The Absurdity of Life Without God says this, Biblical Christianity therefore provides the two conditions necessary for a meaningful, valuable, and purposeful life for man: God and immortality. (Craig 86) It is truly absurd to think that anyone would be much happier meeting the grave at the end of a rope or steel barrel compared to an eternal life with a Loving God. Practically this response to McCloskeys article will not convince anyone who is not pursuing the love of wisdom. If someone is looking to find an agreement to what they believe

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and it is contradictory to this response, even if this response is more valid, they will ultimately choose their own belief due to their pride. McCloskey was highly respected in the community of his realm of education, but because he did not truly pursue the love of wisdom in which we transliterate with our word philosophy he was nothing more than a person looking to justify his own personal issues with the creator. Bad philosophy starts when a person stops pursuing further wisdom, and that seems to have been the case with H. J. McCloskey

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Works Cited Craig, William Lane. Reasonable faith: Christian truth and apologetics. Rev. ed. Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway Books, 1994. Print.

Evans, C. Stephen, and R. Zachary Manis. Philosophy of religion: thinking about faith. 2nd ed. Downers Grove, Ill.: IVP Academic, 2009. Print.

McCloskey, H. J.. "On Being an Atheist."Philosphy 201 Course Content 1 (1968): 62-69. Print.

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