Luke, the wunderkind over at Common Sense Atheism, continues to be a tremendously salutary voice in the online conversation about God. Recently, Luke set out to kill a sacred cow, "one of atheism's most popular and resilient retorts", namely: "Who designed the designer?". This, he argues, simply is not a defeater to theistic arguments. I should add, what he offers with one hand, he takes with the other. "The problem with offering 'God did it' as an explanation is that such an explanation has low plausibility, is not testable, has poor consistency with background knowledge, comes from a tradition (supernaturalism) with extreme explanatory failure, lacks simplicity, offers no predictive novelty, and has poor explanatory scope." But returning to the more common objection, Luke points out 1) that we accept unexplained explanations in science, and 2) that if every explanation must be explained to count as an explanation, we end in an infinite regress and nothing is ever explained. It is the nature of the case that some explanations must be ultimate explanations. Both of Luke's points are well taken, and echo the responses offered by William Lane Craig and other theists to this common rejoinder. However, throughout, Luke characterizes the supposed conclusions to the natural theologian's premises as simply: "God did it". Luke undoubtedly knows that this is an oversimplification of such arguments when they are carefully articulated, that much like postulates in physics, their conclusions are of the form: some entity x exists with property p. We'll give it the name y. I do not mean to nitpick, and I understand the use of shorthand, but this distinction is critical in evaluating the appropriateness of a given explanation, the very subject matter of the post. My attempt at a constructive response follows.

An increasingly popular rhetorical meme in debates about God, it seems, is the idea that the theist is really on the same trajectory as the atheist. After all, the theist has also rejected every god, save one. Stephen Henry Roberts seems to have kicked this all off with: "I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours." Richard Dawkins echoes: "We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has believed in. Some of us just go one god further." Or, in Christopher Hitchens' words: "Everyone in this room is an atheist. Everyone can name a god in which they do not believe." However effective it is rhetorically, this doesn't strike me as a very trenchant point at all. As I see it, the question of God's existence is a fundamentally different sort of question than whether any one of the purported gods is in fact God. Allow me to draw an analogy. I believe that my mother is Margaret. She told me so and she's been around as long as I can remember. Not only do I believe that she is my mother, but also that none of the other countless candidates is. Say that I learn that in fact I was adopted and she has concealed this from me my whole life till now. I would be left without belief in any particular mother. And yet, I wouldn't for a second think that I didn't have any progenitor whatsoever. That is a different kind of conclusion, and I would still have reason to believe that I was birthed, that I didn't spontaneously emerge from, say, a dandelion. Likewise, the rejection of belief in God is not merely one of subtraction from the sum total of gods on offer, but more like choosing one kind of geometry over another from the beginning. Just as the reasons I have for believing that Margaret is my mother comprise a different set than those I have for believing I have some mother, so too are the relevant considerations for whether God is versus who God is.

The age old question of the existence of God has made headlines recently with Al Sharpton's debate with Christopher Hitchens and ABC's, Does God Exist? The Nightline Face-off. In the latter, Ray Comfort, a street preacher who is a regular fixture on Santa Monica's 6th Street promenade, and Kirk Cameron, of Growing Pains fame, argued in the affirmative. Brian Sapient and Kelly of the Rational Response Squad argued for the irrationality of belief in God. One could have hoped, considering the import of such a momentous question, that ABC might have sought out philosophers more up to the task, but that probably wouldn't have made for "good TV". Instead, the viewer was treated to a foursome of philosophical lightweights. There were some high points. Despite his malapropism, calling fundamentally philosophical arguments "scientific proof", Ray Comfort's articulation of the complexity of the human body as a part of his argument from design was eloquent enough. And Brian and Kelly delivered a number of zingers that left Ray and Kirk speechless. But mostly, at best, both sides offered sophomoric versions of the arguments that need to be reckoned with when considering the evidence for and against the existence of God. Fortunately, more capable thinkers have addressed this question more profitably. William Lane Craig is well known for arguing for the rationality of belief in God and a number of his debates with worthy opponents can be found online. His debate with Michael Tooley at the University of Colorado is especially worth reading. JP Moreland's and Kai Nielsen's debate, published in the volume, Does God Exist?, is still an excellent read and features commentary from a number of thinkers who add valuable insight. Many other relevant volumes line the shelves at Amazon.com, including Richard Swinburne's, The Existence of God, and George Smith's classic, Atheism: The Case Against God. Online, Wikipedia provides a helpful catalog of the arguments for the Existence of God. Tim Holt makes the argument for the existence of God in summary form at Existence-of-God.com as does All About God, weighing both philosophical and scientific considerations. The Secular Web provides the counterpoint with a roundup of logical arguments for atheism.