5 Plot Holes for God

Michie · Jan 5, 2025

Sometimes, an internet atheist will buffet you with questions challenging God's existence. Now what?

My problem with theism is whether God exists or not. How do you know your religion is the right one? Are all religions valid? Why is it important to worship God if God exists? Can’t you live a virtuous life without expecting a divine reward? Why would the existence of God imply an afterlife?

See? There are too many plot holes in Christian lore for me.

you’re confronted with a barrage like this (as I recently was), here is the first thing to consider: are these problems or questions? Should we think of questions as problems?

If so, then it’s difficult to make the case that theism or Christianity has any more problems than any other worldview. We could ask countless questions about a non-religious, naturalist perspective. (Naturalism is just a philosophically developed form of atheism, which denies the existence of God.) For instance:

How do qualitative experiences arise from unconscious physical matter?
How does directedness (in thought, behaviors of organisms, etc.) emerge in a world presumably devoid of purpose at the foundational level?
How does the principle of indifference, the basic philosophical assumption of atheism, ultimately lead to such marvelously complex and well-integrated structures?
How do things even continue to exist at all if they rest on an indifferent foundation? Why don’t things just descend into chaos or vanish entirely?
How do particles amount to meaning?
Where do moral obligations come from in a world produced by various combinations of atoms and Darwinian forces?

I think all the above are simply questions—some quite puzzling—but still merely questions. And naturalists might even have (somewhat) decent answers for some of them. So I don’t think much ground is gained simply by throwing rhetorical questions around. Both sides can generate such questions ad infinitum.

Continued below.