Atheism’s Dilemma

The conflict of opinion between the atheist and theist is a foundational and deep-seated one that arises from major disagreements over the nature of reality. The atheist believes that God does not exist while the Christian theist believes, in accordance with Scripture, that God exists and has revealed Himself through the person of Christ. The atheist’s rejection of God, however, does not come without its consequences. It is undeniable that the affirmation of the existence of God grants the theist certain metaphysical and epistemological resources that allow him to explain various aspects of reality and human experience. In rejecting God, the atheist does away with a lot of these resources and must then find alternative explanations for the reality we experience. Many atheist thinkers have taken on this task and believe that they have completed it quite successfully. Unfortunately, there are far more serious problems that the atheist has to face due to his rejection of God. One of such problems is an epistemological dilemma. 

By rejecting the existence of God, the atheist is forced to grapple with the horns of an epistemological dilemma: he must choose between exhaustive knowledge (omniscience) and total ignorance (skepticism). In this work, we shall be focused on exploring how and why this dilemma arises as a result of atheistic commitments.


Theism, Atheism, and Mystery

Let Theism be the view that a self-sufficient, self-conscious God exists. If Theism is true, then this God is metaphysically ultimate. He is metaphysically ultimate in the sense that He is the sole foundation of all being. Being ultimate, all that exists would depend wholly upon Him. Simply put, the theistic perspective is that to be is to be determined by God. There is nothing that exists - no fact that obtains - that is independent of God’s creative activity.

Being wholly rational and self-conscious, this God had a comprehensive plan for creation. Reality is the way it is in virtue of this eternal plan. No fact can catch God by surprise because everything has been planned out, and no external force can thwart God’s plan. For the theist, then, rationality precedes factuality. It is God’s rational plan that precedes and determines the facts that obtain in the universe. Without (divine) rationality - without God’s eternal plan - there would be no facts. Due to God’s exhaustive pre-determination of all things, God’s knowledge of creation is eternal, exhaustive, and analytic. Hence, given Theism, knowledge of facts precedes the instantiation of facts. Therefore, God is all-knowing. He knows all things because He determines all things.

The above considerations of the metaphysical ultimacy of God, the priority of rationality over factuality, and the exhaustiveness of divine knowledge all serve to rule out any element of mystery from a theistic scheme. Certain things may be mysterious to the human mind, but this mystery is contingent on God. For God, there is no mystery since all facts depend on Him.

The atheist rejects the theistic scheme briefly explicated above. He denies that a self-sufficient, self-conscious God exists. For him, there is no Person upon whom all things in the universe depend. For him, the facts that obtain do no obtain in virtue of God’s creative activity. For him, there is no eternal, comprehensive, and rational plan that precedes and determines the facts of the universe. Therefore, for the atheist, factuality precedes rationality. As a whole, the facts of reality are independent of any agent’s rational activity. There is no exhaustive pre-determination of all things if the atheistic scheme is correct. As a result, given Atheism, the instantiation of facts precedes knowledge of facts. If any subject is to know the facts of the world, then that knowledge must come after the facts have already been instantiated. Therefore, the atheistic scheme allows for mystery. Unlike Theism, the mytery on Atheism is not contingent on a wholly rational being. Rather, this mystery transcends all rational agents. The mystery is rooted in the nature of the universe. Because noone exhaustively pre-determines all things, noone can possess exhaustive foreknowledge of all things. And without exhaustive foreknowledge of all things, it is always a mystery what facts will be instantiated. Instead of the self-sufficient, self-conscious God of Theism, it is mystery that is metaphysically ultimate given an atheistic view of reality.


Mystery and Universals

The atheist’s commitment to the ultimacy of mystery presents an epistemological problem with the knowledge of universals. Human knowledge cannot be had in terms of particulars alone. The human mind cannot avoid thinking in generalities. All acts of predication make reference to some universal or general concept. Even our cognitive acts of individuation - identifying some discrete object as a certain kind of thing - requires knowledge of universals or generalities. I cannot identify a thing as a goat if I have no familiarity with the concept of a goat. But familiarity with the concept of a goat requires me to know the criteria of application for that concept. And the criteria of application for a concept ultimately boils down to generalities.

Similarly, scientific laws are generalities and they play a crucial role in our understanding of the world. Extrapolations, predictions, deductions, and the like would not be possible if we did not possess some general statements or universal truths. Generalities and universals are what relate individual facts together so that we can make sense of them and synthesize new knowledge from them. All this to say that universals play a crucial role in our epistemic endeavours.

But a commitment to the ultimacy of mystery presents an insurmountable difficulty. This difficulty can be seen when the question as to how we can acquire knowledge of universals or generalities is raised. There are two possible answers to this question. The first is that we acquire knowledge of universal truths through empirical experience of the world. The second is that we acquire knowledge of universal truths wholly apart from any empirical experience. Both these answers are problematic to the atheist.

The problem is that the atheist is not omniscient, and his empirical experience is not universal in scope, and therefore he has no way to know if any universal statements he possesses are actually true. This problem is aggravated by his commitment to ultimate mystery. Since reality is ultimately mysterious there is no telling what facts would be instantiated, and as such he cannot make any unqualified universal statements about reality. 

If the atheist, given his commitments, cannot know any universals or generalities, and these are necessary for knowledge of anything, then the only way for the atheist to have knowledge is if he knew everything. Only if he knew everything could he be confident in the truth of his universals. Hence, on the atheist scheme, either man is omniscient or ignorant - there is no middle ground.


P.S.: this brief article above is a thought I develop further in my latest book, The Best Argument for Christianity. I highly recommend picking it up if you want to learn more about this subject. Grab it here.

God Bless!

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