As many of our long – suffering readers know, the world’s one and only apologetics satire site is run by Gen Z apologists. So, we are at that wonderful college age where young people are said to be losing their faith in droves. For the last couple of years, I have gone to a local community and technical college, that thankfully does believe in free speech, and opposing voices are not silenced. However, challenges to the faith came up rather regularly.

Ordinarily, I like to write satire, except on those rare occasions when I feel that I really do have something different to say. This is one of those occasions. When confronted with an atheist professor, or fellow student who is challenging the existence of God, I generally use a variation on the same argument. I realized I have never published, or even taken the time to write down what it is I use.

When in discussion with a belligerent professor, it is often pointless to take them on in their chosen field. So, if (as has happened to me) you are going back and forth with an earth science professor, don’t try to rattle off evidences for God from the sciences. The professor almost certainly has you outgunned, as evidenced by the fact that you are there to learn from him and not the other way around. What you want is something simple, and something that goes straight for the metaphorical jugular and avoids the tit for tat arguing about obscure and largely irrelevant details.

So, here it is. This isn’t meant to be a philosophical or exhaustive treatise; it is a blog article written from one underground Christian to another. It should go without saying that I did not come up with any of this, I am merely condensing it.

Here is the question I would encourage every Christian student to ask when in a discussion with an atheist, whether student or professor.

Why do you believe that you can understand the universe?

I’ll let C.S. Lewis explain the basic problem with an atheist claiming that they can understand anything about the world from an atheistic worldview.

“Suppose there were no intelligence behind the universe. In that case nobody designed my brain for the purpose of thinking. Thought is merely the byproduct of some atoms within my skull. But if so, how can I trust my own thinking to be true? But if I can’t trust my own thinking, of course, I can’t trust the arguments leading to atheism, and therefore have no reason to be an atheist, or anything else. Unless I believe in God, I can’t believe in thought; so I can never use thought to disbelieve in God.

Most (but not all) atheists are either materialists, or functional materialists. Materialism simply stated is the belief that only the material or physical world exists. At risk of oversimplification, when wondering if something is material, just ask yourself how much it weighs? Something material, if put on a scale, would register and a little number would pop up telling you exactly how much it weighs. Immaterial things, by contrast, cannot be weighed. By and large, you cannot see them, taste them, touch them etc. They exist, but they aren’t physical.

So, to C.S. Lewis’s point, how much do your thoughts weigh? Half a pound? Five pounds? Ten pounds? So, when the materialist claims that the immaterial world (i.e., things that cannot be put upon a scale) does not exist, they are inadvertently denying thought of any kind, because you quite simply cannot weigh your thoughts.

Okay, that was the easy bit. Now let’s take our scale and weigh the law of non-contradiction.

At this point you are thinking:

Wait what? Weigh the law of non-contradiction? First of all, what is the law of non-contradiction, and how in the world could I weigh it?

The law of non-contradiction states that two mutually exclusive things cannot be true at the same time. So, to use a relevant example, God cannot both exist right now and not exist right now. One possibility logically excludes the other. This is why atheists get so excited about Bible contradictions, because it violates the law of non-contradiction. The law of non-contradiction is what is called a logical absolute, which means it is universal (meaning it exists everywhere), absolute (meaning always true) and immaterial. See, we are back to material and immaterial again.

And now the time has come to ask our materialist friends how much the law of non-contradiction weighs.

Yes, I have asked atheist friends that question before. Most give me a confused stare. And for good reason. The law of noncontradiction weighs nothing because it is not material, rather it is immaterial and therefore doesn’t exist by definition on a materialistic view of the world. The very idea of logical fallacies, and therefore rationale discourse is dependent upon these immaterial laws that shouldn’t exist in the world atheists tell us we are living in. This is a drastically oversimplified variation of what is known as the Transcendental argument for God’s existence.

Most atheist students on college campuses have never thought that deeply about their worldview. Most Professors have never thought that deeply about their worldview. By simply asking them what makes them believe they can understand the world in which they live, and forcing them to take their worldview seriously, we undermine the very foundations of reason itself.

Below, I am going to put some links for further reading and listening. Everything I said in this article, is fleshed out in these debates/ articles.

David Wood vs. Michael Shermer. Dr. Wood’s opening statement is the single best twenty-minute defense of the existence of God I have ever heard. It is where I get my one question from. Take twenty minutes and listen to what Dr. Wood has to say. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xKd2Ht5Bs-k

Here is the online article when it comes to the Transcendental argument. Have it handy. It is far more thorough than my brief overview. https://carm.org/defending-the-faith/the-transcendental-argument-for-the-existence-of-god/

David Wood, Anthony Rogers, and Vocab Malone did a livestream a number of years ago, in which they discussed the transcendental argument at length. It is worth listening through the whole thing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rbNekDQqP0w

Finally, the classic debate between Dr. Greg Bahnsen and Gordon Stein. It was originally Dr. Bahnsen in this debate who showed the world just how devastating this argument truly is. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fegBF-jyrBY