Yesterday, I blogged about a discussion between the Daily Wire’s Michael Knowles and some young secular left women, on the @Whatever podcast. I talked about the view that one woman had, that arguments for God’s existence and Christianity in particular were nonsense. But another woman said that Christianity doesn’t make your risk of divorce any lower, so there’s no benefit to being a Christian, and seeking out a Christian spouse. Is she right?

Let’s take a look at some data from a study, so we can really see what the evidence is.

Here’s something from the Institute for Family Studies:

When trying to understand how much people value something, economists pay particular attention to the value of what people give up in order to estimate how much they value what they get in exchange. Money is a common metric for value, but time is another metric that is sometimes easier to use. When it comes to Christianity, people are often reluctant to discuss how much money they contribute to their churches but are more forthcoming when asked how much time they spend on religious activities. Economists who study religion often use the frequency of church attendance as a proxy for the strength of an individual’s religious beliefs.

Using this line of reasoning, we can divide the American population into two groups: 1) the “devout,” or those who attend church two to three times a month or more; and 2) the “non-devout,” or those who attend church once a month or less. The following analysis used data for people ages 25 to 54 from the General Social Survey (GSS).

So, the first point is that secular left feminists are unlikely to get married at all, and that’s because marriage is moral rational in the Christian worldview than it is in the secular leftist worldview:

Here, it is clear that marriage rates have been falling for the population as a whole. But those who attend church on a regular basis are significantly more likely to marry than their less devout peers. Breaking this analysis down further by race,² we see higher rates of marriage among regular church attenders in both white and black populations.

There appear to be social and economic forces occurring over time that are causing decreased marriage rates for all Americans. But for both black and white Americans, marriage is falling significantly faster for people who do not attend church regularly. This is creating a growing gap in marriage rates between the devout and non-devout over time. And the widening gap in marriage may indicate a growing separation of shared culture between the devout and non-devout.

People think that they can just chop the God out of Christianity, and the same morals will just continue as before, with no rational foundation for it. But marriage involves a loss of personal freedom to pursue pleasure, at least in the short-term. Atheism is about hedonism. That’s why atheists support abortion – because when someone else gets in the way of their pleasure, they think murder is a fine way to keep the good times rolling for themselves. It’s what Darwin called “survival of the fittest”, and this is what atheists believe. When atheists are faced with a conflict between their own happiness, and the loss of personal freedom that marriage requires, they choose not to get married. That’s why atheist states have such low marriage rates.

Marriage itself is self-sacrificial – you’re making a safe place for children to have stability, at your own expense. So that’s the first difference between church-attending Christians and secular left feminists – marriage rates. It’s no use complaining when you are a hedonist that you can’t find a good spouse to marry. You’re a hedonist, and you’re looking for a hedonist to marry. That’s not the kind of person who enters a commitment that requires self-control and self-denial. You might as well expect two psychopaths to run a successful business together than to expect two morality-deniers to get married and stay together.

Far-left Pew Research that 64% of members of a couple of Christian denominations are married. But for atheists, it’s a measly 36%. Atheists don’t get married.

OK, and what did they find about the divorce rates of these different groups of people – devout and non-devout?

This:

The article says:

The figure above shows that divorce rates are significantly lower for white Americans who attend church regularly and this difference remains significant across all decades.

A previous study out of Harvard University reached the same conclusion:

Considerable research over the last two decades has been devoted to the relationship between religious participation and health and well-being. Our research on this topic at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health links religious service attendance to a number of better health outcomes, including longer life, lower incidence of depression, and less suicide. Our work also indicates that religious service attendance is associated with greater marital stability—or more specifically, with a lower likelihood of divorce.¹

We are not the first to study the relationship between religious service attendance and the likelihood of divorce. In fact, a number of studies have found similar results: namely, that those who attend religious services are about 30 to 50 percent less likely to divorce than those who do not.²

It’s really important for young people to make sure that the actions they take today are taking them towards the goal they want to reach tomorrow. Young people, especially women, seem to have a disconnect between their words and actions. They say they want marriage. They say they want to avoid divorce. But their actions in the moment take them closer and closer to not marrying at all, or divorcing if they do marry.

Young people, especially women, love to make decisions on the basis of feelings. They need a “spark” in order to know that a person is “their person”. The person that “the universe” has “manifested” for them to be effortlessly happy. They expect a tall, tattoo’d atheist with a criminal record for domestic violence to marry them, and make them live happily ever after. Why? Because there is a spark. There are tingles. There is a feeling in the moment. And surely, choosing what you want in the moment will get you long-term results, right? That’s why the marriage rate is declining. Does anyone have the courage to tell these young fools the truth?

I like to watch shows where people debate how modern radical feminism has affected dating, marriage and parenting. One show I watch clips of is the @Whatever podcast. The co-host is a very conservative Christian. Recently, one of the liberal women on the panel walked off the set when the co-host said he would not have bedroom fun with a trans woman.

I think Ben Shapiro and Matt Walsh both played the audio from that exchange on their popular podcasts, which you can see here:

Daily Caller wrote about it, too. I know that these shows have vulgar language, but I enjoy watching them because it’s fun to see feminists running into the consequences of their own choices.

Anyway, Daily Wire host Michael Knowles showed up to debate the lady who walked off the @Whatever set. They call her “RageQuit Keeko”. For those of you who do not play games, a rage quit is when someone is playing a multi-player game, and loses, and then quits the game in a rage. I watched the whole 5-hour debate with Knowles and Keeko on Saturday, while playing a new game that Rose bought me. (Saturday is for playing games, walking, doing chores and lifting weights!) The speakers covered a lot of interesting topics. I never got bored.

I want to embed a few clips from the 5-hour show, then talk about one in particular. (Warning: some very vulgar language at times – not for kids!)

Transgenderism:

Feminism:

Promiscuity:

Abortion:

And this is the one I care about the most – about the existence of God:

So, the first thing to point out is that Michael Knowles is 1) Catholic and 2) has a degree in English. So you’re not going to get the sophisticated arguments of William Lane Craig, or the discussion of scientific evidence of Stephen C. Meyer, etc. out of him. Most Catholic “apologists” just repeat slogans from Aquinas, and that’s what Michael does. (There are some exceptions, like Jay Richards and Michael Behe) But the funny thing is, even these simple, outdated Catholic slogans – using one and two syllable words – are literally incomprehensible to “RageQuit Keeko”. She dismisses them as world-salad at best, or insanity at worst. It’s like she’s never heard a single argument for the truth of Christianity (e.g. – the kalam argument, or cosmic fine-tuning) that didn’t already assume the Bible was true, or use religious-sounding language.

So why blog on this? Well, elsewhere in the debate, Keeko explains that she was raised Catholic, and then threw it all away. And what’s interesting is that her reasons appear to be 1) a revulsion for Christians judging other people for their sin, and 2) a variety of intellectual objections to Christian truth claims. Whatever happened in her Catholic upbringing, it sure didn’t work to make her resistant to the culture. Did anyone have a defense of pro-life, or a defense of man-woman marriage, or a defense of pre-marital abstinence? Unlikely. Did anyone have answers to her intellectual objections to the Bible, God or Jesus? Very unlikely.

The response to the secular culture from most popular Bible-talkers is just ineffectual hand-wringing (Al Mohler, Alistair Begg) or sophisticated-sounding capitulation (John Piper, Tim Keller). Nobody seems to know how to make a logical argument for core Christian truth claims, and then back it up with mainstream science or history. No one has even read J. Warner Wallace or Sean McDowell, much less Stephen C. Meyer or N. T. Wright. Most people in church just talk about Disney, Netflix, vacations, sports, etc. The best Christians authors to read, they say, are the dumbed-down ones who make you feel good. After all, isn’t Christianity about feelings and community? If Keeko encountered this approach to discussing the truth of Christianity, then no wonder she left.

So in the 5-hour episode, I noticed a few arguments against Christianity raised by the young secular left feminists:

• any talk about religion is literally nonsense talk
• there are many different religions, so how could any one be true?
• the Bible has been changed many times
• all objections to abortion or gay rights are religious in nature
• religion is not necessary for me to feel good / be liked
• religious people divorce at the same rates as non-religious people

(Some of those might be from other clips, I watched so many while playing my new game). In general, I think it would be a good idea for people raised in the church to understand that Christianity is not intended to make them feel good or be liked. They seem to think that if they can feel good and be liked without it, then they don’t need it.

The point is that these objections are not being addressed head-on by the church. When you attend church, there is no question and answer. The pastor speaks, and everyone says Amen. The choir sings. There is no homework. No one discusses any of these topics at church or at home. And if you go to Bible study, it’s feminist leftist Beth Moore asking “how does this verse make you feel?”. All of the simple objections that young people eventually encounter in the culture can easily be defended using simple books from people like J. Warner Wallace, Sean McDowell, Paul Copan, Frank Turek, Scott Klusendorf, Katy Faust, Michael Licona, etc. I can recommend so many 200 page introductory-level books on these topics, but the pastors never seem to want to equip the flocks.

And what about the parents? Most parents (who are the main defenders of Christianity for their children) again find a way to make the status quo sound pious and virtuous. Parents always have a reason why the best way to protect their kids from the culture is to pray about it, or to do fun activities, or send them to youth group. The answer can never be “let’s sit down and read this Sean McDowell book chapter by chapter, and talk about it.” They always want to spiritualize doing whatever it is that they want to do “God told me to pray about your doubts.” I just find it ridiculous that parents and pastors think that children can develop a Christian worldview without settling questions about God’s existence and Jesus’ resurrection and objections to Christianity using the ordinary tools of an educated, practical, private-sector-working adult: reason and evidence.

It’s very annoying to me. Parents and pastors act as though church attendance is going through the roof. They think that Christians are improving their worldviews to be more Biblical. How is that happening? It must be happening by magic, because it sure isn’t happening by effort and planning. When are we going to accept that the Billy Graham fundamentalist piety way of raising Christian kids isn’t working, and we’re going to have to settle down and read some science, history and philosophy in order to counter these objections that come out of the mouths of these young adults?

This is why Christianity has lost its place in the public square.

(Image source)

What I often see among atheists is this tendency to set up expectations of how God would have acted and then complain that he doesn’t met those expectations. I don’t think that this is a good way to argue against a religion, because it’s subjective. God isn’t obligated to comport with atheist expectations. A much better way of evaluating religions is to test the claims each makes against evidence.

So in this post, I wanted to show how a reasonable person can evaluate and reject different worldviews using evidence.

Falsifying a religion using science

Consider this argument:

1. Hindu cosmology teaches that the universe cycles between creation and destruction, through infinite time.
2. The closest cosmological model conforming to Hindu Scriptures is the eternally “oscillating” model of the universe.
3. The “oscillating” model requires that the universe exist eternally into the past.
4. But the evidence today shows the the universe, and time itself, had a beginning at the big bang.
5. The “oscillating” model requires that the expansion of the universe reverse into a collapse, (= crunch).
6. In 1998, the discovery of the year was that the universe would expand forever. There will be no crunch.
7. Therefore, the oscillating model is disconfirmed by observations.
8. The oscillating model also faces theoretical problems with the “bounce” mechanism.

Notice how the oscillating model is falsified by mathematics and experimental evidence. Remarkable, when you remember how the public schools would play Carl Sagan videos which promoted this no-Creator model of the universe.

The absolute origin of the universe out of nothing is also incompatible with atheism, Buddhism, Mormonism, etc. because they also require an eternally existing universe.

Atheism in particular is incompatible with the universe “coming into being”, because that would be a supernatural cause – a cause that created the natural world. According to the Secular Humanist Manifesto, atheism is committed to an eternally existing universe, (See the first item: “Religious humanists regard the universe as self-existing and not created.”). If something non-material brought all existing matter into being, that would be a supernatural cause, and atheists deny that anything supernatural exists. The standard Big Bang theory requires that all the matter in the universe come into being out of nothing.

Falsifying a religion using history

Consider this argument:

1. To be a Muslim, you must believe that the Koran is without error.
2. The Koran claims that Jesus did not die on a cross. (Qur’an, 4: 157-158)
3. The crucifixion of Jesus is undisputed among non-Muslim historians, including atheist historians.
4. Therefore, it is not rational for me to become a Muslim.

I’m going to support the premise that Jesus was crucified by citing historians from all backgrounds.

Consider some quotes from the (mostly) non-Christian scholars below:

“Jesus’ death as a consequence of crucifixion is indisputable.” Gert Lüdemann

“That he was crucified is as sure as anything historical can ever be.”  J.D. Crossan

“The passion of Jesus is part of history.” Geza Vermes

Jesus’ death by crucifixion is “historically certain”. Pinchas Lapide

“The single most solid fact about Jesus’ life is his death: he was executed by the Roman prefect Pilate, on or around Passover, in the manner Rome reserved particularly for political insurrectionists, namely, crucifixion.” Paula Fredriksen

“The support for the mode of his death, its agents, and perhaps its co-agents, is overwhelming: Jesus faced a trial before his death, was condemned, and was executed by crucifixion.” L.T. Johnson

“One of the most certain facts of history is that Jesus was crucified on orders of the Roman prefect of Judea, Ponitus Pilate.” Bart Ehrman

That’s 7 famous historians: 3 atheists, 3 Jews and 1 moderate Catholic. The atheists, Ludemann, Crossan and Ehrman, have all debated against the resurrection of Jesus with William Lane Craig. Johnson is the moderate Catholic, the rest are Jewish historians. The Koran was written in the 7th century. That is why no professional historian accepts the Koran as more authoritative than the many earlier Christian and non-Christian sources for the crucifixion story. Many of the sources for the crucifixion are dated to the 1st century. It’s not faith. It’s history.

I have seen debates with Muslim scholars, and I have never once heard them cite a non-Muslim historian to the effect that Jesus was not crucified. To my knowledge, there is no (non-Muslim) historian who denies the crucifixion of Jesus in his published work.

Can Christianity be falsified by science or history?

Yes. If you prove that the universe is eternal than would falsify the Bible’s claim that God created the universe out of nothing. That would be a scientific disproof. If you could find the body of Jesus still inside a tomb, that would falsify the Bible’s claim about a resurrection. That would be a historical disproof. The nice thing about Christianity is that we make lots of testable claims. When someone claims to be a Christian, it’s a good thing if they can show how they arrived at that conclusion. Being able to square God’s existence with science, and Jesus’ resurrection with history are two crucial steps to showing the reasonableness of Christianity.