You'd laugh if I told you how much time I spent looking up whether that word is spelled 'unethical' or 'inethical'.  ...And I claim to be good at spelling.

So, Al Mohler, on his blog this week, posted a little ditty called, "Richard Dawkins Jumps the Shark".  That is a great title, by the way.  Apparently, after Mr. Dawkins' laughable attempt to lobby support for atheism, (Signs on buses, reading, "There's Probably no God".  Key word, 'probably'.) he has now gone to the Grow-an-Atheist end of the platform.  Basically, he's organizing a summer camp designed to help kids renounce God forever.  One wonders why he bothers.  Of course, since he also spent the time to write on the subject, (See, "The God Delusion" if you have a few spare hours that you don't mind never seeing again.) it seems clear that he's pretty big into trouncing God once and for all.  Why do I suddenly have images of a fly trying to attack a dog dancing in my head?  The dog is laughing, incidentally.  Yes, dogs do laugh, contrary to popular opinion (of course, if you disagree, I don't mind listening to you try to prove otherwise).

Anyhow, the article isn't quite as snappy as the title, but one snippet from a news article that Dr. Mohler quotes from caught my attention.  "...There will also be a £10 prize for the child who can disprove the existence of the mythical unicorn."  For some reason, I had thought that atheism was unable to disprove the existence of such things.  Googling, "atheism cannot disprove", I found a site appropriately named, atheism.about.com.  The article it brought up was called, "Atheism is Based on Faith?  Atheism Myths: Atheists Can't Disprove God & Have Faith in God's Nonexistence".  Link, if you care for a read: http://atheism.about.com/od/atheismmyths/a/faith.htm

The writer hadn't done his homework: His results are flawed because his understanding of the God of the Bible is flawed.  Basic principle: Bad foundation makes a weak argument.  I can't really blame him, though, since so many pastors get paid way too much to misrepresent truth about God every Sunday morning (or every other Sunday if it's going halves with the Skit Ministry).  I mean, really: If most professing Christians don't even necessarily affirm that the Bible is God's Word (I'm too lazy to look up the source on that, but if you really want it, drop me a comment about that), it's a bit hard to be upset when atheists misrepresent what Christianity believes.

You can skip the rest of this post if you want.  I don't want to make you miss the Home Shopping Network, after all.  I'm just going to be setting straight this poor deludee (is that a word?  It should be.  Deludee: One who is deluded) on the error of his argument.

"Myth: You cannot prove that God doesn’t exist; therefore, atheism is based on faith."  This is what he wants to disprove.  I suppose that if we stick to the basic premise, he succeeds, but his argument is mostly wrong.  The premise is about the only thing he does prove. 

Their response: "Often theists will try to place atheism and theism on the same plane by arguing that while theists cannot prove that god exists, atheists also cannot prove that god does not exist. This is used as a basis for arguing that there is no objective means for determining which is preferable because neither has a logical or empirical advantage over the other. Thus, the only reason for going with one or the other is faith and then, presumably, the theist will argue that their faith is somehow better than the atheist’s faith."  Actually, the last statement (in bold) is incorrect.  Some will, I won't.  Here's the incorrect assumption on his part: I do not have to prove my faith is better than his faith.  Paul affirms at the start of 1 Corinthians that we aren't necessarily smarter than they are.  Fact is, he says that God has chosen the foolish things of the world to put to shame the wise.  Problem: If we're foolish, how does God expect us to convert anyone?  Answer: He doesn't.  Christians proving their faith is great: Peter tells us to always be ready to give a defense of our faith.  But ultimately, that's not going to convince someone who is deadset in his opinion.  God's Word alone has the power to change men's (and women's) hearts (Heb. 4:12).

The author continues by admitting that the existence of God, without defining who God is, cannot be disproved.  He suggests that that is ours to prove.  But skipping that a second, he says, "Other propositions, however, can be disproven — and conclusively. There are two ways to do this. The first is to see if the proposition leads to a logical contradiction; if so, then the proposition must be false. Examples of this would be “a married bachelor exists” or “a square circle exists.” Both of these propositions entail logical contradictions — pointing this out is the same as disproving them.  If someone claims the existence of a god, the existence of which entails logical contradictions, then that god can be disproven the same way. Many atheological arguments do exactly that — for example they argue that an omnipotent and omniscient god cannot exist because those qualities lead to logical contradictions."  If someone claims the existence of an omnipotent and omnicient God, they are incorrect because such a being is logically contradictory.  I feel almost embarrassed actually answering this one, but here goes:  God is, by his very definition (omnipotent and omniscient) beyond our understanding.  If we consider for half a second: God created the world.  In the Bible, He claims to keep it running on a daily basis.  Also, consider the complexities of the world or even the human body.  If God is the God of the Bible and He does all that He claims to in scripture...you expect to be able to prove him with your mind?  You can't even fully contemplate His universe (not by a longshot, actually) and you feel competent to state that an omnipotent and omniscient God cannot exist?  

"Similarly, when a god is defined adequately, it may be possible to construct empirical or logical tests to see if it exists. We can look, for example, at the expected effects which such a god might have on nature or humanity. If we fail to find those effects, then a god with that set of characteristics does not exist. Some other god with some other set of characteristics may exist, but this one has been disproven.

One example of this would be the Argument from Evil, an atheological argument which proposes to prove that an omniscient, omnipotent and omnibenevolent god cannot exist alongside a world like ours which has so much evil in it. If successful, such an argument would not disprove the existence of some other god; it would instead merely disprove the existence of any gods with a particular set of characteristics."  Paragraph one, clear enough.  One issue I might take with it is simply that you assume that this God fits into your little black box.  Assuming he does, you might be correct.  The 'Argument from Evil'...Wow, what an uncatchy title.  Personally, I prefer, 'The Theodicy Dilemma'.  To answer that particular problem, I'd suggest looking up John MacArthur's closing sermon at the 2009 Shepherd's Conference (there's also a short write-up about it on my blog post about the '09 conference, if you can't get the sermon).  MacArthur proves that evil is not a problem from a biblical standpoint, and that God's glory (His and our ultimate end, the Bible tells us) is made greater through it. 

The author (who's name, by the way, is Austin Cline.  I thought that after calling him 'he' this whole post, the only decent thing to do was to include his name) is basically only out to prove in his article that we are incorrect to say that God cannot be disproved.  He used arguments to prove that God can be disproved if God is properly defined.  And I know I stated at the start that his premise is basically correct, but you can scratch that.  Depending, of course, on how God is defined, I don't believe it's possible to disprove God.  It is obvious that God is not like us.  To assume that we can disprove someone who cannot be seen or fully understood attaches a touch of the divine to our intelligence (which subsequently disproves atheism to some degree). 

Most of you found this post boring, but I figured I owed you one about now.  This is what you get.  Hope you're happy.