Are Theists the Only People Who Have the “Burden of Proof”? By J. Warner Wallace

I don't presume to speak for others a lot but in this case I'll make an exception this article by J. Warner Wallace is a much needed answer to an often used tactic by many Atheists who like to avoid producing evidence for their bold claims!

Are Theists the Only People Who Have the “Burden of Proof”?

As an atheist, I rarely found it necessary to defend my position when talking with friends who believed in the existence of God. After all, my Christian friends were the ones who were making a claim about an invisible Being; certainly the burden of proof belonged to them rather than me.

 I simply held the “default” position: There’s no need to defend the absence of something that appears to be absent! From my perspective, theists alone were the ones who needed to make a case. My position as an atheist was self-evident.

This approach almost always put my Christian friends in a defensive position. They found themselves struggling to assemble the evidence while I simply criticized the validity of each piece of their case. I never stopped to think that I might also need to make a case for what I believed, and my Christian friends were unable to demonstrate my responsibility to do so.

Today, as a Christian who has been involved in the examination of evidence for the past 25 years, I understand that atheists also have a burden of proof.

All of us, in attempting to explain the world around us, move from a plethora of questions to a single responsibility: There Are Many Questions Atheists and theists both agree that the big questions of life are numerous.

 How did the universe come into existence?

Why does the universe exhibit the ‘appearance’ of ‘fine tuning’?

How did life originate?

Why does biology exhibit the ‘appearance’ of ‘design’?

How did human consciousness come into being?

Where does ‘free will’ come from?

Why are humans so contradictory in nature?

Why do transcendent moral truths exist?

Why do we believe human life to be precious?

 Why do pain, evil and injustice exist in our world?

 While atheists and theists have their own list of unanswered questions, we all agree that there are many important issues that need to be examined. There Are Only Two Kinds of Answers In the end, the answers to these questions can be divided into two simple categories:

 Answers from the perspective of philosophical naturalism (a view I held as an atheist), or answers that accept the existence of supernatural forces (a view I now hold as a theist).

Atheists maintain that life’s most important questions can be answered from a purely naturalistic perspective (without the intervention of a supernatural, Divine Being). Theists argue that the evidence often leaves naturalism ‘wanting’ for answers while the intervention of an intelligent, transcendent Creator appears to be the best inference. In times like these, the theist finds it evidentially reasonable to infer a supernatural cause.

 There Is Only One Shared Responsibility Both groups share a singular burden of proof. If theists are going to posit God as the answer to some (or all) of the questions I’ve described, we are going to have to argue for His existence and activity.

If atheists are going to argue that adequate answers exist without the need for God, they are at least going to have to provide sufficient naturalistic explanations. In either case, both groups (if they are honest with themselves) will have to shoulder the burden of proving their case.

The burden of proof is not limited to the theist; all of us need to be able to make a case for our choice of answers. One side defends supernaturalism, the other defends philosophical naturalism. The nature of the questions (and the limited categories of potential answers) ought to motivate all of us to decide which of the two explanatory possibilities is most reasonable.

While atheists are sometimes un-persuaded by the arguments for God’s existence, they are still woefully unable to provide coherent and adequate answers to the most important questions of life related to the cause of the universe, the appearance of design, the origin of life, the reality of human free will and the existence of transcendent moral truth.

Theists aren’t the only ones who have to answer these questions. If naturalism is true, naturalists have their own unique burden of proof.

 

 J. Warner Wallace is a Cold-Case Detective, a Christian Case Maker, and the author of Cold-Case Christianity

 

Below, this women explains WHY she has no burden of proof for her CLAIM there is NO God!

 

 

 

 

Here's a very interesting take on Atheists who lead Christians along in order to DECONVERT them, please don't be stupid and receive their doubting spirit into your heart or they will win!

 

 

 

 

 

In my experience on Sodahead.com where I debate Atheistic thought I have found a FEW good debates where we both learned something usable but for the most part the Christian does waste a lot of valuable time on "trolling morons" who have no understanding that wasn't given too them by other trolls online!

Using LOGIC to dismantle Atheistic thought: WOW! What a debate!

You've heard the nonsense coming from the mouths of skeptics who do not like to reason, or answer questions of faith......they avoid this in a postmodern world by this type of reasoning, we live in a postmodern condition, we create our own reality based upon our own internalized preconceptions. So why then is it that I must prove anything to you if that's true, you should just take it at face value since it's my reality, aren't all realities valid in the world? If not why not?

And that being the case there is no longer one objective truth, we are free to create our own personal truth. There's no absolute right or absolute wrong in society any more just an infinite number of equally valid stories, of course that would never include biblical truth would it?

Why does the Law of Logic exist at all if any set of values are equal? Is it really logical to believe all views at once? How can anything be true in a lasting sense if nothing is grounded in something and doesn't that force Atheistic thought aside as no more valid than any other thought?

WHAT ARE THE LAWS OF LOGIC?

Logic is a proper or reasonable way of thinking about or understanding something , a particular way of thinking about something , the science that studies the formal processes used in thinking and reasoning.

The law of identity: 

Everything that exists has a specific nature. Each entity exists as something in particular and it has characteristics that are a part of what it is.

The law of non-contradiction: 

There are arguably three versions of the principle of non-contradiction to be found in Aristotle: an ontological, a doxastic and a semantic version. The first version is about things that exist in the world, the second is about what we can believe, and the third relates to assertion and truth. 

The law of the excluded middle: 

According to this law, every quality either belongs, or does not belong, to a given nature. There is no logical compromise, or exception, and no middle alternative. It is this law which accounts for Aristotelian logic's hierarchical nature. For if there is a single nature for every class, that which has more of that essential quality will be judged superior to that which possesses less. Based on the law of excluded middle, the concept of the hierarchy of values is established.

This law states that not only is X, X, and that X is not non-X, it adds that X is X and nothing in between. 

Study of inference and argument. Inferences are rule-governed steps from one or more propositions, known as premises, to another proposition, called the conclusion.

A deductive inference is one that is intended to be valid, where a valid inference is one in which the conclusion must be true if the premises are true.

All other inferences are called inductive.

The basic laws of logic govern all reality and thought and are known to be true for at least two reasons: 

(1) They are intuitively obvious and self-evident. Once one understands a basic law of logic, one can see that it is true. God made all things using these laws as their base and denying it only makes you look pathetic and uninformed!

(2) Those who deny them (Atheist's) use these principles in their denial of them, demonstrating that those laws are unavoidable no matter what you believe and that it is self-refuting to deny them.

This debate above is a masterful use of these laws of logic which only make sense under the christian worldview and must be borrowed by the atheist or the evolutionist in order to argue their worldview, proof that Romans 1:20-23 is absolutely true.

 Those who claim to believe in logic have to understand that they are using the very proof that God exists to argue he doesn't. Circular reasoning and begging the question are the usual fair whenever you borrow from one beliefs proof's to even have a reason for your own argument to exist because reason and logic are not existent in a naturalistic worldview.

Without God nothing can be proven since chemical accidents by chance have no logical conformity, nature has conformity to certain laws it was not nor could it be that way by pure gamble, a roll of the dice no matter how many billions of decades you roll, the statistical monstrosity is to large an edifice to surmount. There is absolutely nothing logical for instance about random DNA growing into present day DNA since DNA must be fully formed from the beginning, that is scientific fact, how could some DNA form then the rest over millions of years, how would we see, hear, have a heart beat, walk or crawl without FULLY formed DNA to begin with. 

Nature has proven Darwin wrong so often it's actually humorous to watch people defend him. Nature is irreducibly complex even at the smallest level, the universe as well is so well designed that we would not exist if even one thing were out of order at any time. The earth is finely tuned to the Nth degree something macro evolution would completely undo in seconds from inception if not sooner! 

The laws of logic are immaterial not material and therefore only sensible when used by a mind which is also immaterial , ie God, his created minds in us. We use logic because we were created in the image of an immaterial being, who is timeless, space-less and all powerful thus we have an immaterial soul and spirit confined within a material body. 

Even the atheist was made with this basic creative process, speaking from a bible point of view, therefore they are using what God gave them (LOGIC AND REASON) to rule against his existence which is kind of like using your brain to reason against the fact that you think and therefore you do not exist in reality.

A materialistic universe based in naturalism does not work from logic, but rather from primal instinct, a "mind" which is non-material must use non-material logic to cause us to reason, using logic to prove how things work, without logic there would be no science or evidence because the material can only be understood by the immaterial mind. In order to use logic one must use reasoning and in order to use reason one must have a material container and that is your brain.

The human BRAIN is merely the vessel which contains the immaterial soul where reasoning and logic are thought through and realized. There is absolutely no way this ability came about by random chance, in effect I could ask why do we think like this rather than by simple 

How can use "moral arguments" against God, morals are immaterial and therefore cannot be used by someone who believes that our entire nature is made up of chemicals that randomly fell into place over billions of years. 

How could reason and logic have developed by complete accident and even amount to anything at all?  They cannot account for logic from a Darwinian standpoint since logic is conformity to basic ideas of moral assent not accidental thoughts that fire and misfire without control whatsoever. 

Did the first life on earth use logical thought or did logical thought evolve? If it evolved how did the primitive beginning life ever survive? If it did how did it evolve being immaterial in nature, existing in our soul contained within our brain container? 

Naturalism can only explain physical natural existence not immaterial soul and spirit, so it evades logic to even attempt to use logic since the immaterial has no place within a naturally explained world by their own rules.

QUESTIONS? YES I HAVE MANY!

1.)

 The natural world through macro-evolutionary processes does not use nor need logic so where did it originate? It is evident that micro-evolution or rather the true variation within God's "kinds" from which all species developed is the only splinter of truth with which logic works. But even with this simple example of fact the skeptic must fight logic extending this beyond any reasonable scientific basis to macro-evolution which has NO basis in science!

"The intellectual and practical activity encompassing the systematic study of the structure and behavior of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment."

2.) 

How could a 'distinct system' of immaterial understanding and logic develop THROUGH a process so limited to natural solutions for life?

3.) 

Where in the world did our "brains" develop immaterial (soul) powers like thinking, reasoning and problem solving if we came up from lesser life forms that manifest none of these? 

4.) 

Why is it that Mankind and God are the only beings that utilize such a thing as logic, reason, and moral foundations? And that being true, how is it that man can utilize the very gift of God's logic to deny his existence?

5.) 

Why is it that Atheists must resort to BORROWING from "immaterial logical thinking" in order to try and explain why the "immaterial world" spirit and soul doesn't exist, when the clear rule of logic is non-contradiction?

IT'S CLEAR THAT LOGIC IS A CHRISTIAN BASED IDEA AND OPERATES WITHIN THE GOD GIVEN PROCESS OF SPIRIT AND SOUL WHICH THE NATURALIST HAS NO EXPLANATION FOR!

Seems like the Atheist's Catch 22 to me, damned if they use it and damned if they don't!