Stealing from God: Why Atheists Need God to Make Their Case Paperback – January 1, 2015

Dr. Frank Turek’s Stealing from God: Why Atheists Need God to Make Their Case is a powerful exposé of the fallacies atheists use to prove God doesn’t exist. To argue against God, Turek says that atheists are using aspects of reality that wouldn’t exist if atheism were true, i.e., if God didn’t exist.The first chapter is “Causality,” which is available free at his CrossExamined website. It begins with the cosmological argument:1. Everything that has a beginning has a cause.2. The universe had a beginning.3. Therefore, the universe had a cause.In chapter one, Turek demolishes physicist Lawrence Krauss’ book A Universe from Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather than Nothing. The “nothing” Krauss uses to explain where the universe came from is made up of quantum fluctuations, which are something, so Krauss misleads the reader. He says ‘nothing’ became unstable and produced everything!Atheists are materialists who believe everything consists of interconvertible matter and energy. In order to prove atheism is true, atheists have to steal from the nature of God in order to argue against Him. Turek uses the acrostic C.R.I.M.E.S. to explain the atheists’ fallacy that everything consists of matter. All the following things “are immaterial and rooted in God’s nature:”CausalityReasonInformationMoralityEvilScienceAtheists use most of these same qualities to prove atheism, but if God didn’t exist these qualities wouldn’t exist either and that’s why atheists’ arguments backfire on them. Turek explains why.He says his preferred debate question is “What better explains reality: atheism or theism?” He states, “Atheists can’t just identify what they think are deficiencies in theism. They must make a compelling case that everything has been caused by materials and consists only of materials, including the laws of nature, mathematics, and logic, morality and evil, among other immaterial entities, which he discusses.None of those are material. The beginning of the universe had to be immaterial if the Bord Guth Vilenkin theorem is true.Dr. Turek’s most potent point is “Since nature had a beginning, nature can’t be its own cause. The cause must be beyond nature, which is what we mean by the term ‘supernatural.’” According to Wikipedia, “Nature, in the broadest sense, is the natural, physical, or material world or universe.” Thus, nature is synonymous with the universe (see law of identity below).Because atheists are materialists, they accept only material explanations for everything that exists. However, there are many immaterial things whose source cannot be explained by material causes.The fine-tuning of the universe is immaterialMany features of the universe are fine-tuned. Stephen Hawking said, “If the rate of expansion one second after the Big Bang had been smaller by even one part in a hundred thousand million million [10^17], the universe would have collapsed before it ever reached its present size.”—A Brief History of Time p. 121Frank says, “If the gravitational force were different by one part in 10^40, our sun would not exist and neither would we. How precise is one in 10^40? It’s one part in 1 followed by 40 zeros. That’s one inch over a scale as wide as the entire known universe.” [p. 20]Dr. Turek does not list all fine-tuned features of the universe, such as strong and weak nuclear forces. It’s homework for us to discover them. The fine-tuning of the universe shows that its Creator must be supremely intelligent in addition to being spaceless, timeless, personal, and immaterial.The laws of nature are immaterialTurek wonders how material causes produce immaterial things like morality, evil, and the laws of causality, physics, logic, and mathematics. How could a godless cosmos bring such things into existence?The laws of nature would include the laws of physics and chemistry as well as the law of causality—something cannot begin to exist unless something causes it to exist.Laws of logic and mathematics are immaterialFrank includes the laws of logic in his list of immaterial things. They would exist even if the universe didn’t. For instance, the law of non-contradiction does not require the universe to exist. It exists because God does. God is not the author of confusion (1 Cor. 14:33), which is what would exist if the law of non- contradiction didn’t. Turek doesn’t list the three laws of logic, but J.P. Moreland does:The law of identity: P is P.The law of non-contradiction: P is not non-P.The law of the excluded middle: Either P or non-P.You may not realize it but we often use the law of identity. I have a friend who considers “the dragon, the serpent of old, who is the devil and Satan” (Rev. 12:9, 20:2) to be four separate individuals. When someone persists in breaking a law of logic, it might be impossible to convince them otherwise.Morality is immaterialObjective morality exists because God is the absolute standard of morality. Atheism has no standard on which to base morality, although some atheists, such as Sam Harris, have tried to establish an argument for objective morality. Frank sums up what the existence of objective morality tells us: God exists. He gives this syllogism to clarify his conclusion:1. Every law has a lawgiver2. There is an objective moral law3. Therefore, there is an objective moral lawgiverThe conclusion of this argument must be true if the argument is both sound and valid. As Frank did, could we make a similar argument for the existence of God from the laws of nature? Let’s see:1. Every law requires a lawgiver2. The 2nd law of thermodynamics is a natural law3. Therefore, the 2nd law of thermodynamics requires a lawgiverTheists identify the lawgiver in both arguments as God. When someone constructs a syllogism, as in the above examples, both premises must be true, and the premises must have a causal relationship with the conclusion. Dr. Turek gives an excellent example of how the law of causality applies to the immaterial realm.It can’t be that easyThat’s really scary. It can’t be that easy, or can it? That reminds me of something Norman Geisler and Frank Turek included in their book, I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist on p. 61:"In a philosophy class I (Norm) was teaching, I pointed out the flaws in Kant’s philosophy this way. I said, “First, if Kant claims that he can’t know anything about the real world (the thing in itself) then how does he know the real world is there? And second, his view is self-defeating because he claims that you can’t know anything about the real world while asserting that he knows that the real world is unknowable!” One student blurted out, “No! It can’t be that easy, Dr. Geisler. You can’t destroy the central tenet of the last hundred-plus years of philosophical thought in just a couple of simple sentences!” Quoting my favorite source— The Reader’s Digest— I responded, “‘ That’s what happens when a beautiful theory meets a brutal gang of facts.’”So, is logic really that easy? Follow the laws of logic to their brutal end to find out. Immanuel Kant broke the law of non-contradiction.Evolution devalues human lifeHey Roger, this is God!Frank recounts reading atheist Roger’s remarks online. Roger said that he would believe in God if he looked up in the sky right now and saw written in the sky, “Hey Roger, this is God. I certainly do exist! Now stop all your whining down there!”When William Lane Craig dialogued with Lawrence Krauss, Krauss said “If I looked up tonight, if the sky is clear and the stars rearrange themselves to say in Aramaic, Hebrew or English… ‘I am here,’ then it would be worth thinking about.” That’s as far as it would go with most atheists.Frank explains in several places that atheism is an irrational superstition. If clouds were arranged to say, “Hey Roger!” or if the stars spelled out, “I am here,” because of their presupposition of naturalistic materialism, atheists would have to suppose that there is a natural explanation for those heavenly messages and never admit that God caused it. They might suggest that either crafty humans or aliens were responsible but would never admit God had done it. They simply cannot “allow a divine foot in the door” as Richard Lewontin remarked.Stealing from God is an excellent place to begin building a library of well-informed apologetics (defenses). As Peter wrote, “Sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts, always being ready to make a defense to everyone who asks you to give an account for the hope that is in you, yet with gentleness and reverence;” (1 Peter 3:15, NASB95).The rest of Stealing from God includes these topics:ReasonInformation and IntentionalityMoralityEvilScienceFour Points of Mere ChristianityGod Will Not Force Unbelievers into HeavenReasonThe chapter on reason begins with the question, “Bad Religion or Bad Reason?” The main point of this chapter is “not to show that all arguments for atheism fail,” but rather “to show that all arguments for anything fail if atheism is true.”At the University of Wisconsin in Madison, Turek was confronted by someone who wanted to refute his argument that a spaceless, timeless, immaterial God created the universe. He wanted to know if anything else was spaceless, timeless, and immaterial. The answer was the laws of logic. His challenger then said that the laws of logic don’t really exist. Frank pointed out that the challenger was using one of the laws of logic to prove him wrong—the law of non-contradiction, which says that opposite ideas cannot both be true at the same time in the same sense.Information and IntentionalityThe gist of chapter 3 is, “God’s signature is not just in the cell, it’s in all of creation. God is as necessary to the universe as a band is to music. Once the band stops playing, the music is over.”Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft, said that human DNA is like a computer program, but far more advanced than any existing software.In Signature in the Cell, Stephen Meyer states that the origin of the DNA code cannot be explained naturally. Where did the information in DNA come from? Among other things, DNA codes for 20,000-25,000 different proteins. Meyer points out that the abiotic development of DNA, RNA, and proteins is a “chicken or the egg” conundrum. DNA needs RNA and proteins to replicate and to be transcribed into messenger RNA and other regulatory RNAs. RNA needs DNA for its source code and proteins to produce DNA, RNA, and other proteins. Proteins need proteins, DNA and RNA for their production. Additionally, messenger RNA must be translated to produce proteins, and this requires proteins to aid in the process. How these three interdependent systems could have developed by time and chance is a major problem for evolutionists.“The discovery of ribozymes supported a hypothesis, known as the RNA World Hypothesis, that earlier forms of life may have relied solely on RNA to store genetic information and to catalyze chemical reactions….Although the ribosome is made up of both RNA and protein components, structural and biochemical analyses revealed that the mechanisms central for translation (the process of assembling a peptide chain based on a RNA sequence) is catalyzed by RNA, not protein. This suggests that the use of RNA by early lifeforms to carry out chemical reactions preceded the use of proteins.” (from a well known website)Meyer gives a fuller explanation and refutation of this hypothesis in Signature in the Cell. The probability of such a system’s developing by chance, however, is vanishingly small – another issue Meyer covers. If you’re interested in his arguments, much of his material is available online at his website, and on YouTube, see the four-part series “Intelligent Design under Fire.”Morality – stealing rights from GodDr. Turek begins chapter 4 with, “You can know what a book says while denying there’s an author. But there would be no book to know unless there was an author. Likewise, atheists can know objective morality while denying God exists, but there would be no objective morality unless God exists.”Turek puts the issue of morality in a nutshell: “… if justice doesn’t exist, then neither does injustice. After all, something can’t be not right unless something really is right. If God doesn’t exist, and we’re merely the mindless, purposeless products of biological evolution, then morality is subjective. Which means that the rape and murder of your child isn’t really unjust. If you think it is, then that’s just your opinion.”Atheists have to steal free will and morality from God in order to hold people responsible for their evil behavior. Our society once adhered to the moral absolutes revealed in the Bible, but has since drifted away to nearly amoral judgment. It has become increasingly difficult to find anyone at fault for any criminal act, no matter how heinous.Our civilization is crumbling. Mass killings and suicide seem to be on the increase. I believe aberrant sexual behavior is becoming the norm, e.g. NAMBLA, the North American Man/Boy Love Association is currently on the edge of our society, but just like same-sex marriages, this deviant behavior is now acceptable to a small, but growing, minority because morality is no longer based on God’s unchanging character. The rule of law is turning into situational ethics. What was once considered evil is now called good and vice versa. (Isaiah 5:20)Still, Turek informs us, there are certain things some atheists find unacceptable, and atheist writers such as Sam Harris are trying to establish absolute morality based on what is the ultimate good for our species. Who decides that? Based on Darwinian presuppositions of what is superior and inferior racial stock, in the 1920s and 30s undesirable people were sterilized. Hitler accepted this idea and believed the Jewish race had to be obliterated because he thought it was inferior and interbreeding with them would negate many generations of evolution.Humans are created with an inborn sense of right and wrong (Romans 2). Even most atheists would agree that raping children is wrong.Evil: Does Evil Prove Atheism?Turek’s main point for this section is, “Good reason provides all the information we need to see that the very existence of evil is a contradiction for atheism. If evil is real, then atheism is false.”Atheists often raise the issue of evil as evidence that God does not exist, but exactly the opposite is the case. The existence of evil shows that God does exist. Dr. Turek used to doubt the existence of God because of evil. Evil was a problem for Augustine too, because he reasoned thus:1. God created all things2. Evil is a thing3. Therefore, God created evilAugustine eventually realized the second premise is false. Evil certainly exists, but not on its own. It exists as a lack of good. “Evil is like rust in a car: If you take all of the rust out of a car, you have a better car; if you take the car out of the rust, you have nothing.”Evil is an intractable problem for atheists, however. There are two types of evil. There is moral evil where humans hurt others, and there is the evil of natural events that bring about suffering and death, e.g. earthquakes and tornadoes. Christians are not the only ones who have to explain both types of evil; every worldview has to explain the existence of evil. Some world religions deny evil exists, saying it’s just an illusion. Other religions try to explain how evil and God can coexist. Atheists tend to deny there is good or evil, using the “illusion” argument. Then “they are outraged by the great injustices and evil done by religious people in the name of God.”Atheists, however, can’t espouse both opinions. Either evil and good exist, or neither exists. If good and evil exist, then God must exist because the standard for what is good must be absolute, otherwise it’s just human opinion. In that case, anything can be considered good or evil, and that’s exactly where our society is today, deciding what is good and what is evil based on the shifting sands of human opinion. Is what Hitler did good or evil? If there is no absolute good based on God’s character, then anyone’s opinion is valid. What is good one day can be considered evil the next. In other words, if evil and good are what an individual or society says they are; there is no objective, immutable standard—such as God.Turek says, “Well, atheists can’t have it both ways. Either evil exists or it doesn’t. If it doesn’t exist, then atheists should stop complaining about the “evil” religious people have done because they haven’t really done any. They’ve just been ‘dancing to the music’ of their DNA [as Richard Dawkins points out]. If atheism is true, all behaviors are merely a matter of preference. On the other hand, if evil actually does exist, atheists have an even bigger problem. The existence of evil actually establishes the existence of God.”He also says there can be good without evil, but there can’t be evil without good; and there can’t be objective good without God.C.S. Lewis was once an atheist who thought evil disproved the existence of God. As he thought it through, he realized he was stealing from God to argue against Him. Lewis wrote, “…My argument against God was that the universe seems so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust?”This is true of all atheists. In order to complain against evil, they have to steal from God’s character, apart from which their argument makes no sense.Science: Science Doesn’t Say Anything, Scientists Do“To say that a scientist can disprove the existence of God is like saying a mechanic can disprove the existence of Henry Ford. While there is certainly evidence from science to support theism, the most important point for this chapter is not that science supports theism, but that theism supports science. In other words, theism makes doing science possible. We wouldn’t be able to do science reliably if atheism were true,” explains Turek.People, including scientists, gather information and interpret it according to their worldview, which can be faulty. For an example, he reviews the evidence that was raised by the prosecution during the O.J. Simpson trial: Simpson’s blood found at the murder scene; Ron Goldman’s and Nicole Brown’s blood found in Simpson’s bronco; the bloody gloves – one found at the scene, the other found at Simpson’s house; the bloody footprints found at the scene and in Simpson’s Bronco. Despite this evidence, the jury decided that Simpson was not guilty.Turek recounts this evidence to show that science doesn’t say anything, scientists do. Scientists gather data and interpret it. Science doesn’t do that, scientists, do.The worldview of the jurors is what produced the not guilty verdict for Simpson. Because of their experience with police bigotry, most Blacks polled in the U.S. felt that prejudiced cops manipulated the evidence. Therefore the black jurors’ worldview led to their conclusion that Simpson was not guilty.Because of their worldviews, atheists and theists interpret information concerning the origin of the universe, the origin of life, and the origin of new life forms differently. They start with opposing philosophical assumptions, therefore they come to opposite conclusions about origins based on the same evidence. Atheists and theists don’t have differing theories about many other scientific issues. There are not atheist and theist theories about electricity or gasoline engines. It’s easy to verify these theories by observation and repetition. However, the topic of origins is more controversial because origins cannot be observed and cannot be repeated in the lab.

Frank demonstrates how atheists can 'know' what is right and wrong, but cannot justify their right/wrong beliefs without the existence of God.Otherwise, the Holocaust could not be said to be category 'good' or 'bad', but just 'different'.Without God, all morality is subjective.Yes, if God exists, then He has the ultimate authority.Turek does not go into all the details for the Christian God; he appeals to theism, which is a step in the right direction, but does not go all the way.I understand Turek's appeal to use rational thinking to describe how we cannot justify truth without God, but to go further into one's journey, I would also suggest someone read"Cold Case Christianity".Frank's stong area is philosophy, so he seems to purposely not dip his feet too far into biology, cosmology, or other fields of apologetics, which I can understand.There are lots of Christian apologetic books that touch on the various areas of apologetics, but Turek's is the best I have found so far on philosophy.Folks who have debated Turek seem to often use emotionally charged rhetoric which has logical rebuttals, but cannot be rebutted in the short period of time that a debate allows,so he usually seems to stick to the areas of philosophy in his book.One such example is a debate where an atheist cited a number of Old Testament laws and commands that God gave under an old covenant(that God made with Old Testament Jews) that Christians are not under today.ie.) God is a jealous God, where the argument is made that God is merely acting like a false god as Zeus who gets angry when folks don't worship him.Since we are created in the image of God, we can actually feel the emotion of jealousy.We have a fallen sin nature so any attributes that God has (justice, righteousness, love) are all perverted(twisted) with the onset of the sin.As a fish thrives better in water than on land, God knows that we humans thrive best when we worship and follow Him.So God's jealousy of people following idols instead of Him is in of itself and 'others' focused and not a selfish ambition since the uncreated God needs no one.There's much more to that rebuttal, but you get the point.The truth is often not the emotionally appealing one.After watching Turek's debates, if I was going off of emotional appeals(yes, our emotions can lie to us), he lost a good number of debates.But if going off a rational, truth based appeal, his arguments were pretty solid.A Christian who tries to stay in the lane of 'theism' to prove points is basically like a boxer fighting with one hand behind his back.Theism is enough to get you in the door, but you really need the person of Jesus to get all the way through.I can undertand the appeal and audience Turek is trying to reach, though.There are folks who will run or not even want to talk/debate at the mention of Jesus.They feel it's a waste of time, i suppose. Or entirely disproven in their minds since they don't believe in the supernatural.So if the only way to get folks to be willing to debate is by only using rational thought via 'theism', i suppose that's a start.Turek makes the case that if our philosophy and assumptions are not correct before we start science, our results are going to have inherent flaws built in.ie.)Turek says that if a house's foundation is bad, it doesn't matter how good everything else was constructed and that it doesn't take a person who knows all things to discover a big crack in the slab.Another key takeaway from Turek's book is that science doesn't say anything, scientists do.If COVID taught us nothing, it's just that. So-called scientists made lies they knew were true.Science in and of itself does not demand the truth be told.I've heard atheists say that 'science' has a self-correction system build-in so that it is possible for folks in the 'science' community to be proven wrong.There is the assertion from atheists that they do not want to touch the topic of God because it is by nature irrefutable in that no one can prove God does not exist.They want theists to prove that God does exist instead.Turek's book was too long to include every field of Christian apologetics, but if someone wanted to have proof that God exists, that evidence does exist.See "Cold Case Christianity" by J Warner Wallace.There is strong(not weak) evidence that Jesus Christ resurrected Himself from the dead.Only God can do that.All other world religions I've studied have a dead god last time I checked.Frank touches on the 'problem of evil'.Last time I checked, the 'human flourishing' argument falls flat on its face in that those humans whose genetics supposedly get them to be sacrificial in helping others means they die and don't get their DNA propogated.So why do we have any of those people around today?Macro evolution, from all accounts that I've searched so far, amounts to sounding very much like the fairy tale-like, children stories that atheists accuse Christianity of.Folks see a bunch of bones and then start making up stories.Turek doesn't go into depth about biology (except a bit on DNA), but sticks mostly to philosophy."Keeping your Kids on God's side" was a pretty good read that I found had expounded even further in areas of biology than Turek went into.Unless we know the intention of the inventor, it's hard to criticize whatever the inventor/creator made.So the universe going into heat death might not be so bad an idea if we knew the intent.Turek said in one debate that God gives us general reasons for why bad things happen, but not for every specific case (ie. a baby passed away).Only a mind who can see past/present/future all at once could possibly make sense of making something good come out of bad.But then again, without God, we can categorize things as 'good' or 'bad', but cannot justify our stance.The theory of macro evolution could mean that rape and murder are okay one day after all.I also found it amusing that Turek brought about the claim that if there is no non-material part of us, then we are left to rely on saying things such as:"I'm gay because I have a gay gene" in my DNA.Whereas someone else could claim "I have the gay basher gene".See where that goes? You already know that secular society would be against the person who supposedly had the gay-basher gene, but they have no justification for their belief.If we are 'moist robots' who have no non-material agency, then why should we trust our own thoughts?They are then predetermined. by that logic, why do we punish any wrongdoers of crimes if it's just something in their DNA that made them do it?That's just silly.So called 'science' claims that if we just give enough time, 'science' can explain everything, including brain thoughts (and that God isn't needed to explain any of it).Sounds a lot like the 'faith' that atheists accuse theists of.Turek appeals to the 'what we know' instead of appealing to the "God of the gaps' theory, contrary to the claims of others.Again, Turek's book is great for pointing out some seriously faulty logic that folks out there have, but to arrive at the pinnacle of theism,one would need to go further and get to the evidence of Jesus' resurrection via "Cold Case Christianity".