Biblical Apologetics: Debunking Atheism

I will begin this article with a quote from Claudia Pavonis: “How is it that a man borne from nature can use his intelligence to somehow come to the conclusion that the nature he is borne from is unintelligent? This is the very definition of an oxymoron,” and a quote from Isaac Newton: "In the absence of all other evidence, the thumb alone would convince me of God's existence." As these quotes suggest, the evidence for God, Creation, and Intelligent Design is so apparent that denying it reduces one's worldview to absurdity. My main goal in this article is to demonstrate that for a naturalist or atheist to conclude that God doesn't exist, God must exist. Therefore, atheism and naturalism are self-refuting worldviews. In other words, atheism self-destructs, much like Islam, as I showed in my previous article.

Atheists often present themselves as being on neutral ground, inviting theists to board their "airplane" to argue for the existence of God. Many theists fall into this trap, and no matter how they argue, they ultimately end up at the unbeliever’s destination. The real neutral ground, however, is where both parties acknowledge the existence of God, because without that acknowledgment, no one can make knowledge claims or prove anything, as I will demonstrate.

It's clear that in order to reason or reach a conclusion, one must have the ability to reason, which is typically referred to as 'intelligence' or 'intelligibility.' If nature is all there is, with no intelligent design behind it, then our thoughts must be bound by the laws of nature. This would mean we can’t possess free will, intelligence, or the ability to reason. Our thoughts would be as insignificant as chemical reactions elsewhere in nature. If there is no God, then all that exists is time and chance acting on matter. In this scenario, the difference between my thoughts and an atheist's thoughts would be no different than the difference between shaking a bottle of Mountain Dew and one of Dr. Pepper—you simply fizz atheistically, and I fizz theistically. This means that atheism isn’t held because it’s true or neutral, but rather because of chemical reactions in the brain beyond one’s control. Without God, everything becomes meaningless.

Many people instinctively understand this, even if they can’t fully articulate it. They get that without God, nothing has ultimate meaning, even if they struggle to express why. Rejecting this truth requires significant intellectual and emotional effort, which is unhealthy. Most atheists I’ve spoken with either acknowledge this truth or refuse to debate their epistemology, suppressing the truth to the point where they deny the existence of truth itself and claim relativism, while still making knowledge claims. This contradiction is common, and their reaction is similar to that of Muslims when faced with the self-refuting nature of their worldview; they either become angry or attempt to change the subject. People often feel threatened by arguments that challenge their deeply held beliefs, and instead of confronting them, they choose to ignore them. This is cognitive dissonance in action.

Atheists may respond with, "This is a strawman definition of atheism. Atheism is simply a lack of belief in God, gods, or the supernatural due to a lack of evidence. Your argument is based on ignorance—saying, 'I don't know, therefore God exists'—a version of the god-of-the-gaps argument. You're shifting the burden of proof." This is a misrepresentation of my argument, but I will address it. First, it doesn’t matter how atheism is defined—an atheist is living according to a belief that there is no God, which makes it a worldview. They might claim their worldview allows for God, but they interpret all evidence through atheistic presuppositions, which always lead back to atheism. I’m not arguing from ignorance; I’m arguing for the impossibility of the contrary, to show that atheism is self-refuting. For an atheist to refute this, they must demonstrate how their worldview can account for intelligence or intelligibility. They can’t, and they know it. In fact, they argue from ignorance by assuming things that can never be justified within their worldview. If you press them, their epistemology will be revealed as a series of unsubstantiated assumptions that cannot be justified by their view of the world.

Finally, this is not shifting the burden of proof. The burden of proof presupposes truth and a method for knowing the truth, which requires intelligibility—something that an atheistic worldview cannot provide. If you're an atheist and you understand this argument, you have no choice but to abandon your current worldview and begin exploring deistic or theistic worldviews, acknowledging that God or some form of the supernatural is not only real but necessary for intelligibility. Without this, even your ability to reason would be questionable, and you'd have no reason to trust your cognitive faculties to seek the truth.

Another common atheist defense is: "Okay, fine. I can't account for logic, intelligibility, or rationality, but neither can YOU! I can't know the truth, but neither can YOU!" This is the tu-quoque fallacy, and in making this argument, atheists admit that debating is pointless because there’s no such thing as truth—or if there is, we can't know it—which itself is a truth claim. They don’t realize that they are contradicting themselves. By making these statements, they refute themselves repeatedly and intellectually dishonestly claim that an all-knowing Creator cannot reveal the truth to us in a way that we can know. They fail to see that appealing to an omniscient God doesn't lead to circular reasoning, which is based on question-begging assumptions and blind faith.

To recap, it’s easy to get atheists to admit that according to their worldview, morality is subjective; in fact, most atheists already agree with this. With a little more effort, we can show that everything in their worldview is subjective and a matter of opinion, and no one can prove anything. Psalm 14:1 says, "The fool has said in his heart: 'There is no God.'" Proverbs 18:2 says, "Fools find no pleasure in understanding but only delight in airing their own opinions." And Proverbs 26:4-5 gives us guidance on how to answer the fool, which is essentially what I’m doing here: rather than allowing the conversation to proceed based on opinions, I aim to demonstrate the folly of denying God.

I’ll conclude this article with a quote from David Wood of Acts 17 Apologetics. His argument addresses atheists who try to justify their reasoning by appealing to Darwin's Theory of Evolution, random mutation, and natural selection. He argues, “Many atheists believe that argumentation can prove God doesn't exist. But if Naturalism is true, human reasoning ability is unreliable on a fundamental level and can’t prove anything, let alone theological or metaphysical claims. Hence, Naturalism is self-refuting, for it undermines any confidence we might have in our ability to defend it. If we are to trust our reasoning ability, it must be grounded in something other than random mutation and natural selection. Theism offers such a foundation.”

Biblical Apologetics: Debunking Islam

What about Islam? What about the Quran? How do you know Muslims aren't right, and you're not heading to their Hell? You've probably heard these questions from skeptics, haven't you? It's often a reaction to Pascal's Wager. For those who aren't familiar, Pascal's Wager is a weak argument some Christians use, claiming that if unbelievers are right, no one will know, but if Christians are right, unbelievers will lose big time. The problem with this argument is that Christianity isn't the only religion claiming to be the only way to God—so, what about Islam?

Islam is unique in that it strictly teaches that it is the only way, and those who reject it will go to Hell. In this post, I aim to demonstrate that Islam is a self-refuting religion that has to borrow from Judeo-Christian Scriptures to make its case. Notice that I won’t be using the promotion of violence in the Quran or Hadith against Islam, as is common in Christian and non-Christian opposition. Using violence in an apologetic context is an example of the argumentum ad baculum fallacy. Simply because a religion promotes violence doesn’t mean it’s false. Disliking something doesn’t make it untrue; concluding that it is, is a non-sequitur.

Before continuing, let's address the question: "Is Allah the same God that Jews and Christians worship?" This is a tricky question, and the answer isn’t as clear-cut as many would want. A short answer is yes, Allah is the same God. "Allah" is simply the Arabic term for God, even used by Arab Christians. However, what about the famous Islamic saying, often seen on flags like those of ISIS or Saudi Arabia, "There is no God but Allah"? There is indeed a more generic Arabic term for "God," "Elah," used in this oath. I personally believe "Allah" is a specific name rather than just a generic word for God, derived from Aramaic, the language from which modern Arabic comes. Historical and archaeological evidence suggests that Allah was the chief deity worshiped by the Meccan pantheists before the advent of Islam.

To cut to the point, if we dig too deep, we might say that no, Allah is not the same God as worshipped by Jews and Christians, nor is it a generic term for God in Arabic. I believe Arab Christians may have been misled by their language on this matter. But setting aside these complexities, we can agree that Allah of the Quran claims to be the same God that Jews and Christians worship. Therefore, it's logical to assume that Muslims "think" they worship the same Abrahamic God. However, even if they do worship the same God, it doesn’t mean they are saved, because according to the Gospel, worship alone doesn't save us from sin. True worship is a privilege that brings us into God’s presence, but that’s a separate issue.

Now, any rational person would agree that if Allah of the Quran claims to be the same God worshipped by Jews and Christians, the Quran should align with both the Jewish and Christian Scriptures. The reason for this is simple: new revelations fulfill old ones. In Christianity, the New Testament is the fulfillment of the Old Testament, also known as the Tanakh. Christianity doesn’t claim that the Hebrew Bible has been corrupted or changed, as this would undermine Christianity itself. Instead, Christians use the Hebrew Bible to prove that the Gospel fulfills what was promised in the Old Testament and is a new revelation from God.

The question is: does Islam follow the same logic? The answer is no, it does not. The teachings in the Quran contain contradictions to both the Jewish and Christian Scriptures, so much so that Muslims claim the Bible has been corrupted. This claim violates basic logic and common sense and undermines Islam and the Quran, proving to any rational person that Islam is self-refuting.

It gets more interesting. The Quran includes verses that affirm the inspiration, preservation, and authority of the Judeo-Christian Scriptures. Allah commands Muhammad to let Christians judge the Quran by the Gospel, and in one place, Allah even tells Muhammad to ask the "People of the Book" (Jews and Christians) if he doubts the new revelations. This is shocking and raises the question: how can there be over a billion Muslims in the world? The answer is simple: most Muslims haven’t even read their own book, let alone the Bible. Unfortunately, the same is true for many Christians. People are often blindly following the crowd. But what about the leaders of Islam? The ones who study these issues and still promote the Quran? How can they not see this contradiction? The answer is cognitive dissonance—people would rather stick with their beliefs than think critically.

One might object, asking, “What about you? Don’t you see contradictions in the Bible? Isn’t the God of the Old Testament different from the God of the New Testament?” These objections would be valid if Christians claimed the Hebrew Bible had been corrupted and then picked and chose passages to support the New Testament, as Muslim apologists do with the Bible. But that’s not what Christians claim. For every alleged contradiction in the Bible, whether in the Old or New Testament, there’s at least one explanation; you just need to research it. People who raise objections like these haven’t studied the issues. They are following the crowd, just like many Muslims.

To recap, the Quran affirms the inspiration, preservation, and authority of the Judeo-Christian Scriptures. Yet it contradicts those Scriptures on fundamental doctrines like Jesus' death, resurrection, and deity. By affirming Scriptures that contradict Islam, the Quran self-destructs. I recommend watching a video by David Wood, called The Islamic Dilemma. Google it and it should come up!

My Background & Testimony

Everybody has a story. Everybody is on a journey. Everybody is seeking the ultimate truth. Everybody is looking for the ultimate purpose in life. I wasn’t exempt either until I finally found what I was looking for. Where do I start? It’s kind of a long story, and the last thing I want to do is bore my readers with the details. So, without further ado, let’s get straight to the point.

I’m Persian by descent, from Tehran, the capital of Iran. I was born and raised in a devout Muslim family—the Shiite sect of Islam, to be specific. The name my parents chose for me was the name of the founder of Islam, Mohammad. Like everybody else, I learned and practiced Islam, and at the time, it seemed like the only legitimate religion in the world. This was mainly because of how people are indoctrinated by the mainstream media, schools, and the lack of free speech; almost all Islamic states in the world are pretty isolated. I could never completely believe in everything written in the Quran. I always had philosophical and theological questions that were left unanswered. I remember how the idea of eternal conscious torment was something I could never grasp; I couldn’t understand how and why God would send people to a place called Hell instead of punishing them and then ending their existence. I couldn’t see how the traditional Hell—one that even the majority of Christians seem to believe in—could be a just punishment.

Apart from my questions, I always found following the Sharia almost impossible and often found myself guilty of breaking its rules repeatedly. But I didn’t give up until I moved to Australia to study. After I arrived, I gradually broke more rules, and within a year, I decided to let go of Islam completely and become a Deist. In case you don’t know, Deism is the belief that there is most definitely a God/Creator, but that all religions are man-made and untrustworthy. I felt pretty comfortable with that position and made all sorts of friends. Deep down, I still knew what was right and wrong, and I often found myself doing what was wrong. Feeling guilty before God is a very unpleasant experience, as you all know. No matter how much you suppress the truth, there will come a time when you can’t suppress it anymore, and the convictions can sometimes be crippling. In my conversations with God, I would often point the finger at Him, asking, “Why did You create me? Why do You let me live? Why don’t You just end my life? I feel like I can’t be who You want me to be; You expect too much from me!”

Anyway, I graduated from university, found a job, and was waiting for my permanent visa when a movie about the Bible caught my attention. I decided to watch it. I have to admit, the movie touched me profoundly; it was as if God was speaking to me through it. At the time, I had many convictions in my heart—not for breaking the Sharia, but for breaking the very basic laws of morality that I believed were written in my conscience. I was also dealing with a worsening physical injury. The movie broke me down into tears. All of a sudden, I was madly in love with Jesus. I knew He was different from anyone else in history. But that wasn’t enough, was it? Surely, I needed to research and determine how much of this movie was based on historical facts. What could I really know about Jesus?

The idea of Jesus being called the Son of God was troubling to me, perhaps because I had been strictly taught by the Quran that it’s blasphemous to associate a partner with God or call Jesus the Son of God. Beyond that, the idea of God having a Son went against almost everything I believed about God and His unity.

So, I started extensive research. I watched a couple of debates, and after the second one, it was almost as clear as day that Islam was wrong on many levels—it just didn’t make sense. Islam seemed to steal from the Bible, which it considers corrupted, to make its case. Whether the Bible has changed or not, Muslim apologists in these debates seemed dishonest, often taking verses from the Bible out of context to support their arguments. But that wasn’t enough for me. I read parts of the Bible, and its words deeply affected me. I became confused as hell. On one hand, Islam seemed like a cult; on the other hand, something was holding me back. I thought to myself, “If Islam is a cult, then perhaps all religions are cults. Or perhaps there’s no God at all?”

As soon as the thought of atheism arose, a voice yelled through my conscience, as if I was speaking to myself, saying, “You know that God is real. Regardless of what any religion says, you can’t deny Him.” I found myself talking to God, saying, “God, I can’t say You don’t exist. Among all the people in history who have claimed to be sent by You, I’m finding it hard to say Jesus was a phony. Please help me, God. I can’t know what the truth is. I’m lost, and words can’t explain how desperate I am. I’m certain that I cannot know the truth unless You reveal it to me.”

Immediately after this conversation, I stopped crying. A profound peace came over me, and I somehow knew that Jesus is the way. I decided to follow Him immediately. It may seem like a hasty decision since I hadn’t read the whole Bible yet, but I trusted my intuition. The experience of God’s presence was real—it was like nothing I had ever experienced in my life.

That night, I had the strangest dream. I was being beaten by an evil character who threatened to kill me if I didn’t return to Islam. Crying and yelling, I declared that I had made my decision and would never go back to Islam. When I woke up, I realized I had never experienced such peace. It was as if a demon had left me.

Of course, the journey wasn’t easy. I encountered intellectual and emotional challenges, faced good arguments against Christianity, and grappled with doubt. But every time I prayed, I felt reassured of the truth of Christianity. Through this process, God also taught me how to intellectually address those arguments, and I plan to document some of that in this blog.