I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist (7 page)

In short, contrary
beliefs
are possible, but contrary
truths
are not possible. We can
believe
everything is true, but we cannot
make
everything true.

This seems obvious enough. But how do we deal with the modern assertion that there is no truth? A couple of cartoon characters can help us.

The Road Runner Tactic

If someone said to you, “I have one insight for you that absolutely will revolutionize your ability to quickly and clearly identify the false statements and false philosophies that permeate our culture,” would you be interested? That’s what we’re about to do here. In fact, if we had to pick just one thinking ability as the most valuable we’ve learned in our many years of seminary and postgraduate education, it would be this: how to identify and refute self-defeating statements. An incident from a recent talk-radio program will demonstrate what we mean by self-defeating statements.

The program’s liberal host, Jerry, was taking calls on the subject of morality. After hearing numerous callers boldly claim that a certain moral position was true, one caller blurted out, “Jerry! Jerry! There’s no such thing as truth!”

I (Frank) scrambled for the phone and began to dial furiously. Busy. Busy. Busy. I wanted to get on and say, “Jerry! To the guy who said, ‘there is no such thing as truth’—is
that
true?”

I never did get through. And Jerry, of course, agreed with the caller, never realizing that his claim could not possibly be true—because it was self-defeating.

A self-defeating statement is one that fails to meet its own standard. As we’re sure you realize, the caller’s statement “there is no truth” claims to be true and thus defeats itself. It’s like saying, “I can’t speak a word in English.” If someone ever said that, you obviously would respond, “Wait a minute! Your statement must be false because you just uttered it in English!”

Self-defeating statements are made routinely in our postmodern culture, and once you sharpen your ability to detect them, you’ll become an absolutely fearless defender of truth. No doubt you’ve heard people say things like, “All truth is relative!” and “There are no absolutes!” Now you’ll be armed to refute such silly statements by simply revealing that they don’t meet their own criteria. In other words, by turning a self-defeating statement on itself, you can expose it for the nonsense it is.

We call this process of turning a self-defeating statement on itself the “Road Runner” tactic because it reminds us of the cartoon characters Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote. As you may remember from Saturday morning cartoons, the Coyote’s one and only quest is to chase down the speedy Road Runner and make him his evening meal. But the Road Runner is simply too fast and too smart. Just when the Coyote is gaining ground, the Road Runner stops short at the cliff’s edge leaving the passing Coyote momentarily suspended in midair, supported by nothing. As soon as the Coyote realizes he has no ground to stand on, he plummets to the valley floor and crashes in a heap.

Well, that’s exactly what the Road Runner tactic can do to the relativists and postmodernists of our day. It helps them realize that their arguments cannot sustain their own weight. Consequently they crash to the ground in a heap. This makes you look like a super genius! Let’s take the Road Runner tactic to college to show you what we mean.

The Road Runner Goes to College

The Road Runner tactic is especially needed by today’s college students. Why? Because if you listen to many of our university professors, they’ll tell you that there is no truth. What amazes us is that parents all over the world are literally paying thousands of dollars in college tuition so that their sons and daughters can be taught
the “truth” that there is no
truth,
not to mention other self-defeating postmodern assertions such as: 8220;All truth is relative” (Is
that
a relative truth?); “ There are no absolutes” (Are you
absolutely
sure?); and, “It’s true for you but not for me!” (Is that statement true just for you, or is it true for everyone?) “True for you but not for me” may be the mantra of our day, but it’s not how the world really works. Try saying that to your bank teller, the police, or the IRS and see how far you get!

Of course these modern mantras are false because they are self-defeating. But for those who still blindly believe them, we have a few questions: If there really is no truth, then why try to learn anything? Why should any student listen to any professor? After all, the professor doesn’t have the truth. What’s the point of going to school, much less paying for it? And what’s the point of obeying the professor’s moral prohibitions against cheating on tests or plagiarizing term papers?

Ideas have consequences. Good ideas have good consequences, and bad ideas have bad consequences. Indeed, many students realize the implications of these bad postmodern ideas and behave accordingly. If we teach students that there is no right and wrong, why are we surprised when a couple of students gun down their classmates or a teenage mother leaves her baby in a trash can? Why should they act “right” when we teach them that there is no such thing as “right”?

C. S. Lewis revealed the absurdity of expecting virtue from people who are taught that no virtue exists: “In a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.”
¹

The truth of the matter is this: false ideas about truth lead to false ideas about life. In many cases, these false ideas give apparent justification for what is really immoral behavior. For if you can kill the concept of truth, then you can kill the concept of any true religion or any true morality. Many in our culture have been attempting to do this, and the past forty years of religious and moral decline trumpet their success. Unfortunately, the devastating consequences of their efforts are not just true for them—they are also true for all of us.

So truth exists. It cannot be denied. Those who deny truth make the self-defeating truth claim that there is no truth. In this regard, they are a lot like Winnie the Pooh—they answer a knock at the door by saying, “No one is home!”

Now, let’s see how the Road Runner tactic can help us answer the skeptical truth claim that “truth cannot be known!”

CAN TRUTH BE KNOWN? KNOCK, KNOCK . . .

Evangelical Christians believe that they ought to obey Jesus’ command to “make disciples of all nations” (Matt. 28:19). In order to help Christians carry out this “Great Commission,” D. James Kennedy created a door-to-door evangelism technique called “Evangelism Explosion” (EE). If you’re a Christian, the EE technique allows you to quickly ascertain where a person is spiritually. After introducing yourself, you are to ask questions like these to the person answering the door:

1. Can I ask you a spiritual question?

And

2. If you were to die tonight and stand before God, and God were to ask you, “Why should I let you into my heaven?” what would you say?

Most people are curious enough to say yes to question 1. (If they say, “What do you mean by ‘a spiritual question’?” you go ahead and ask them the second question.) As for the second question, the EE manual predicts that the non-Christian will usually give the “good works” answer. You know, something like, “God will accept me because I’m basically a good person. I haven’t killed anybody; I go to church; I give to the poor . . .” In that case, the EE manual tells you to respond with the gospel (literally the “good news”): that all (including you) have fallen short of God’s perfect standard, and no good work can erase the fact that you’ve already sinned; but the good news is that you can be saved from punishment by trusting in Christ, who was punished in your place.

While this technique has been very successful, some non-Christians do not respond to the two questions as expected. For example, one evening I (Norm) decided to take EE to the streets along with a fellow member of my church. Here’s how it went:

Knock, Knock.

“Who’s there?” (A man came to the door.)

I stuck out my hand and said, “Hi! My name is Norm Geisler, this is my partner, Ron, and we’re from the church at the end of the street.”

“I’m Don,” the man replied, his eyes quickly sizing us up.

Immediately I jumped into action with question 1: “Don, do you mind if we ask you a spiritual question?”

“No, go ahead,” Don said boldly, apparently eager to have a Bible thumper for dessert.

I laid question 2 on him: “Don, if you were to die tonight and stand before God, and God were to ask you, ‘Why should I let you into my heaven?’ what would you say?”

Don snapped back, “I’d say to God, ‘Why
shouldn’t
you let me into your heaven?’”

Gulp . . . he wasn’t supposed to say that! I mean, that answer wasn’t in the book!

After a split second of panic, I offered up a quick prayer and replied, “Don, if we knocked on your door seeking to come into your house, and you said to us, ‘Why should I let you into my house?’ and we responded, ‘Why
shouldn’t
you let us in?’ what would you say?”

Don pointed his finger at my chest and sternly replied, “I would tell you where to go!”

I immediately shot back, “That’s exactly what God is going to say to you!”

Don looked stunned for a second but then narrowed his eyes and said, “To tell you the truth: I don’t believe in God. I’m an atheist.”

“You’re an atheist?”

“That’s right!”

“Well, are you absolutely sure there is no God?” I asked him.

He paused, and said, “Well, no, I’m not
absolutely
sure. I guess it’s possible there might be a God.”

“So you’re not really an atheist, then—you’re an agnostic,” I informed him, “because an atheist says, ‘I know there is no God,’ and an agnostic says ‘I don’t know whether there is a God.’”

“Yeah . . . alright; so I guess I’m an agnostic then,” he admitted.

Now this was real progress. With just one question we moved from atheism to agnosticism! But I still had to figure out what kind of agnostic Don was.

So I asked him, “Don, what kind of agnostic are you?”

He laughed as he asked, “What do you mean?” (He was probably thinking, “A minute ago, I was an atheist—I have no idea what kind of agnostic I am now!”)

“Well, Don, there are two kinds of agnostics,” I explained. “There’s the
ordinary
agnostic who says he
doesn’t
know anything for sure, and then there’s the
ornery
agnostic who says he
can’t
know anything for sure.”

Don was sure about this. He said, “I’m the ornery kind. You can’t know anything for sure.”

Recognizing the self-defeating nature of his claim, I unleashed the Road Runner tactic by asking him, “Don, if you say that you can’t know anything for sure, then how do you know
that
for sure?”

Looking puzzled, he said, “What do you mean?”

Explaining it another way, I said, “How do you
know
for sure that you can’t
know
anything for sure?”

I could see the lightbulb coming on but decided to add one more point: “Besides, Don, you can’t be a skeptic about everything because that would mean you’d have to doubt skepticism; but the more you doubt skepticism the more sure you become.”

He relented. “Okay, I guess I really
can
know something for sure. I must be an
ordinary
agnostic.”

Now we were really getting somewhere. With just a few questions, Don had moved from atheism through
ornery
agnosticism to
ordinary
agnosticism.

I continued, “Since you admit now that you
can
know, why
don’t
you know that God exists?”

Shrugging his shoulders, he said, “Because nobody has shown me any evidence, I guess.”

Now I launched the million-dollar question: “Would you be willing to look at some evidence?”

“Sure,” he replied.

This is the best type of person to talk to: someone who is willing to take an honest look at the evidence. Being willing is essential. Evidence cannot convince the unwilling.

Since Don was willing, we gave him a book by Frank Morison titled
Who Moved the Stone?
²
Morison was a skeptic who set out to write a book refuting Christianity but instead became convinced by the evidence that Christianity was indeed true. (In fact, the first chapter of
Who
Moved the Stone?
is called “The Book That Refused to Be Written.”)

We visited Don a short time later. He described the evidence presented by Morison as “very convincing.” Several weeks later, in the middle of a study of the Gospel of John, Don accepted Jesus Christ as his personal Lord and Savior.

Today Don is a deacon in a Baptist church near St. Louis, Missouri. Every Sunday morning, for years, he’s driven the church bus through the local neighborhood to pick up those kids whose parents wouldn’t come to church. His ministry has special meaning to me (Norm) because two men like Don (Mr. Costie and Mr. Sweetland) picked me up with a church bus more than 400 times—every Sunday from when I was nine until I was seventeen. I was in a position to accept Christ at seventeen largely because of that bus ministry. I guess it’s true what they say, “What goes around comes around,” even if it’s just the Sunday school bus.

CAN ALL RELIGIONS BE TRUE?

The moral of the EE story is that complete agnosticism or skepticism is self-defeating. Agnostics and skeptics make the truth claim that truth claims cannot be made. They say that truth can’t be known but then claim that their view is true. You can’t have it both ways.

So we’ve established that truth can be known. In fact, it’s undeniable. But so what? Can’t all religions be true? Unfortunately, it’s not just the secular world that’s confused about this question; even some church pastors have trouble with it.

Seminary professor Ronald Nash heard of a good example of this. He told us of a student of his who went home to Bowling Green, Kentucky, for Christmas break a couple of years ago. While on break, this Bible-believing student decided to be adventurous one Sunday and attend a church that he had never attended before. But as soon as the pastor uttered the first sentence of his sermon, the student realized he had made a mistake—the pastor was contradicting the Bible.