Over the years I've met many a fundamentalist Christian online looking to troll atheists. I am technically an atheist, since I don't believe in gods, though I don't usually identify as one. I identify as a pragmatic naturalist. I see naturalism as an epistemic philosophical stance which argues that the natural world is all that we can know, since the only channel for gathering information we have is sensory experience. I have concluded, after decades of consideration and hanging out with mystics, that there are no supernatural realms, forces, or beings. And I broadly accept accounts from evolutionary psychology about what makes the supernatural seem plausible (see especially Barrett 2004).
I assert that gods, along with unicorns and time travel, are part of the human imaginarium rather than a part of nature. We cannot study gods as we might study a natural phenomenon, because there are no natural phenomena unequivocally associated with gods. The closest we ever get to gods is the anthropological study of how belief in gods affects the behaviour of believers.
However, belief in powerful supernatural beings is more or less ubiquitous across human cultures. Despite the protestations of Buddhist modernists, this includes all Buddhist cultures. While Buddhists do not worship a creator, most Buddhists do worship Buddha or some other figure as a powerful supernatural being. Intercessory prayer to Guanyin is a major feature of the history of the Heart Sutra, which I spent 12 years researching in forensic detail. And gods of various kinds feature on almost every page of the Pāli suttas: from major Vedic gods like Brahmā and Indra (Sakka), to autochthonous gods like yakkha and kinnara.
When asked about his first act in reforming the Chinese state if he were made Emperor, Confucius opted for clarification of terminology. I like this. As a naturalist, I don't capitalise the word "god" because I don't accept the privileging of this idea or any one version of it. Since gods all seem to have conventional names, I prefer to use these. Thus, I write about "Jehovah" rather than "God". By refusing to frame this essay in terms of "God", I consciously reject the Christian framing of the discussion. This is also consistent with not identifying as an atheist. Despite writing about some Christian ideas that are part of my cultural heritage, I'm not a Christian, and I don't accept the validity of any Christian interpretation of mythology or doctrine.
This essay is about some of the ways that Christians, or more precisely Christian theologians have defended their ideas about Jehovah. Not that an omnipotent, omnipresent, and omniscient being, with a notable penchant for smiting his enemies, needs defending from puny humans. Nonetheless, many such apologetics have been offered over the last 2000 years. Clearly, Christians felt the need to defend Jehovah long before science began to erode the foundations of all religions.
Jehovah or Yahweh is the creator god of Christians and Jews, sometimes also known as El "god" or El Shaddai "god of the mountains, god almighty". In the Semitic languages, al or el is used the way we use "god" in English; it's a generic title. In Hebrew scripture, Yahweh's name is printed as a sequence of consonants: YHGH. Yahweh is a scholarly reconstruction of the vowels. The actual pronunciation was deliberately suppressed. It was replaced with euphemisms like Adonai "Lord" when scriptures were read aloud, and the real pronunciation was eventually lost. In Hebrew, Yahweh is also referred to as Elohim (a plural used to suggest greatness), El Elyon “God Most High”, El Roi “God Who Sees”, El Olam “Everlasting God”.
By contrast, the name Jehovah was invented by Christians. It is a mongrel that combines the consonants of YHWH with the vowels of Adonai. A quirk of linguistic history resulted in the first (short) a becoming e. The name Jehovah is consciously avoided in the New Testament, where it is typically replaced by Greek Kyrios "Lord" or Theos "God". Thus, it is convenient to distinguish Yahweh, the Judaic god, from Jehovah, the Christian god.
Of course, Jehovah is not the only creator god in world mythology. There is also Allah, which is not a name but a title. Allah also means "god" and is linguistically related to the Hebrew El. Culturally, Arabs and Jews trace their ancestry to the mythical figure of Abraham; hence, we refer to "the Abrahamic religions", but the similarities end there. Yahweh and Allah are two different gods, from related cultures with related languages, whose followers both call them "God". Other creator gods include: Ahura Mazda, Brahmā, Marduk, and many more. Not all cultures have a creator god, but there are many that do. And as we will see, this simple fact is consequential for theological arguments.
Moreover, there are something like 10,000 different sects of Christianity, and many of the schisms were the result of arguing about Jehovah or the nature of Jehovah. So we need to be a bit wary of seeing Christianity as monolithic.
Argumentation in the Absence of Evidence
The fact is that Jehovah is not a natural phenomenon even in theory. Christian beliefs place him before, outside, and above nature (the super in supernatural means "above"). Christians have never really defended Jehovah based on direct empirical evidence. There are a number of standard theological defences of Jehovah. In what follows, I look at a dozen different approaches, giving a brief overview followed by some comments on what each approach fails (which they all do).
Cosmological arguments infer Jehovah from motion, causation, or contingency as a first cause or necessary being. These arguments originate in Greek philosophy (Aristotle, ca. 4th BCE) and are adapted to Jehovah by Philo (ca. 20 BCE – ca. 50 CE) and medieval figures such as Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274).
First cause arguments are powerful, but they don't point to Jehovah in particular. Rather, by adopting oversimplified, linear models of causation, they arrive at a dilemma: either there is a first cause, or the universe is infinitely old. And since they believe, a priori, that the world was created at a point in time (by Jehovah), and is thus not eternal, they assume that Jehovah was the first cause. But there is nothing in this argument that says that the first cause was Jehovah rather than, say, Allah, Ahura Mazda, or even some non-supernatural force. That said, causation is neither simple nor linear: everything is interacting with everything else, all at once. So this argument fails establish the existence of Jehovah.
Incidentally, Brahmins already anticipated this kind of infinite regress argument in the Bṛhadāranyka Upaniṣad, probably composed around the 8th century BCE, where Yajñavalkya cuts it off by saying "Don't ask too many questions, Gārgī, or your head will shatter apart" (BU 3.6). In my view, we have to risk head-shattering and keep asking questions.
Teleological arguments infer Jehovah as an intelligent designer from order or purposiveness in nature. Early versions of such arguments already appear in Plato (d. ca. 348/347 BCE) and the Stoics (4th–3rd ca. BCE). They became standard in medieval and early modern "natural theology". Intelligent design arguments have become popular amongst educated Christians in the 21st century.
These kinds of arguments proceed from the twin assumptions that the world was created and that a creation requires a designer. Nothing about the universe, per se, suggests that it was created. Creationism is a belief. And as my readers know, belief is a feeling about an idea.
Notably, the fact of evolution shows that no designer is needed. Organisms evolve over time through random mutation and natural selection: no design is involved, and thus no designer is required. Moreover, having a designer would have resulted in more efficient and effective designs, whereas our bodies are all too obviously kludged together over millennia.
Historical arguments proceed from alleged "historical" acts such as miracles, covenants, or fulfilled prophecy. They arise in early Jewish and Christian apologetics (1st – 3rd c. CE), associated with figures like Josephus and Justin Martyr. Such arguments presuppose that scripture is historical rather than mythological. This is not a tenable stance to take. Religious storytelling may well incorporate historical elements, real geography, and so on, but this doesn't make it a witness to history.
This style of argumentation is also common amongst Buddhists and philologically-oriented Buddhist Studies scholars who wish to assert the historicity of the Buddha despite the lack of anything a historian would call "evidence" (See Attwood 2023). As David Drewes (2023: 404) pointed out recently:
Everything that makes the Buddha a Buddha is supernatural: his discovery of the Dharma by his own power; his understanding of karma, the geography of the world, the structure of the cosmos, the path to liberation, and the makeup of living beings and the material world; his freedom from desire; his omniscience; his thirty-two marks; his special characteristics and powers.
Scripture is always mythological. It is seldom, if ever, a reliable historical source, except as reflecting the view of the people who wrote the scripture down.
Apophatic arguments propose that Jehovah must exist while exceeding all finite description, making him accessible only through negation. They originate in late antique Neoplatonism (3rd – 6th century CE) and enter Jewish and Christian theology via figures like Pseudo-Dionysius (fl. 500 CE).
This is not really an argument for Jehovah, per se, since it explicitly assumes his existence. Apophatic arguments are only a workaround for his being supernatural and thus indescribable. Again, this approach doesn't single out Jehovah from the plethora of creator gods, for whom all the same claims to supernatural puissance are made.
Ontological arguments claim that conceiving Jehovah as a maximally great or necessary being entails that he must exist, because existence is a perfection that such a being cannot lack. This style of argumentation originated with Anselm in the 11th century and was later reformulated by Descartes (1596–1650) and Leibniz (1646–1716).
This is all too obviously circular. It relies on the a priori belief that Jehovah is a being, rather than, say, a fictional character. And it assumes the characteristics that Christians attribute to Jehovah are real characteristics.
Ontological arguments have the same problem as the cosmological argument. Nothing about the "greatest being" points to Jehovah unless we assume that Jehovah is the greatest being. The argument cannot distinguish Jehovah from other "supreme beings".
Moral arguments claim that objective moral facts or duties require Jehovah as their ground or lawgiver. While antecedents exist, the recognisably philosophical form emerges in the 17th –18th centuries with Hugo Grotius (1583 – 1645) and Immanuel Kant (1724 – 1804).
The idea that morality has to be imposed from an external source is an assumption. And this idea finds political expression in Thomas Hobbes, one of the most influential English philosophers. Hobbes was born as the Spanish Armada sailed to England, and lived through the 30 Years' War and the English Civil War, leaving him with a very jaded view of humans. He came to believe that being at war is our natural state and that humans require a tyrant to force them to stop being violent. This is ironic because the wars Hobbes lived through were very much the result of the ruling classes fighting over who got to be the tyrant.
In fact, as Frans de Waal (2013) and his colleagues have shown, morality emerges from evolving to be a social species. We can unpack morality from just two capacities that are shared by all social mammals and many social birds: empathy and reciprocity. (see also The Evolution of Morality, 18 November 2016). We don't need gods or tyrants.
Moreover, once again, even if we were to stipulate that morality was an externality, this would not point to Jehovah in particular, only to a supernatural "law giver". Which could just as easily be Ahura Mazda or Marduk.
Arguments from religious experience treat experiences interpreted as encounters with Jehovah as prima facie evidence. They are articulated explicitly in early modern philosophy (17th – 18th c.), notably by John Locke (1632 – 1704) and Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768 – 1834).
This is a style of argument for the supernatural that I have frequently encountered amongst Buddhists. We know that religious practices often lead to hallucinations. I have particularly drawn attention to the common phenomenology of sensory deprivation and meditation (See Attwood 2022). Beyond this, common religious practices—such as fasting and sleep deprivation—heighten susceptibility to hallucinations.
When religieux experience hallucinations, or even just altered states, they interpret these through the lens of their religion. So, again, the arguments for Jehovah from experience are circular because they take Jehovah to be axiomatic.
I already noted in my exposition on time that experiencing timelessness, or being in a seemingly timeless state, is not the same as actually being outside of time. Experience does not easily translate into metaphysics.
Thomas Metzinger's treatment of out-of-body experiences is a paradigmatic example of refuting arguments from experience. He not only shows that his mind never did leave his body, but his alternative rational explanation is so powerful that he can now reliably induce out-of-body experiences in naive subjects under laboratory conditions.
Argument from revelation: Appeal to the authority, coherence, or fulfilment claims of texts taken to be revelations of Jehovah. They developed in late antiquity (1st – 4th c. CE) alongside canon formation and apologetics.
This is a wholly circular argument based on belief in Jehovah. Many Buddhists fundamentalists make the same kind of argument about the Buddha and Buddhist scripture. Scripture is only considered authoritative by believers. This is not an argument that can carry any weight outside of fundamentalist cults and sections of religiously inspired academic Buddhist Studies (see Attwood 2023).
Pragmatic arguments seek to justify belief in Jehovah by its practical or existential benefits rather than demonstrative proof. These arguments originate with Pascal (1623 – 1662) in the 17th century and gain prominence in modern sceptical contexts.
This is largely a reference to Pascal's wager. Pascal's argument was that one cannot know for sure if Jehovah exists or not. But if he exists and if Christian descriptions of his behaviour are accurate, then one can make a calculation of risks and rewards involved. And Pascal concluded that the inconvenience of being a Christian is massively outweighed by the risk of eternal damnation and the promise of infinite rewards.
Note how much work "if" is doing in these sentences. Pascal's wager makes sense if the only choices are Christianity and atheism. The calculus breaks down when we acknowledge that other supreme beings are claimed to exist. And after all, other religions with other gods are no more or less plausible than Christianity is. What if we bet on Jehovah, but "God" is actually Marduk or Zeus? There is no clear wager here.
Arguments from reason or intelligibility claim that logic, rationality, or the intelligibility of the world presupposes Jehovah as a rational source. They are largely modern (19th–20th c.), reacting to naturalism and materialism.
Again, this is simply a circular argument that treats Jehovah as axiomatic. Moreover, it also suffers from being Jehovah-centric. The criterion of intelligibility does not distinguish between supreme beings. What if Ahura Mazda is the supernatural being required to make the world intelligible? In that case, Jehovah contributes nothing.
Argument from consciousness: Hold that subjective experience or intentionality cannot be adequately explained without reference to Jehovah. This line of argument is mainly late modern (19th–20th c.), tied to debates over physicalism.
I have expounded at length on how consciousness is a useless legacy concept that no one can define. It cannot be used as the basis of an argument without a consensus on what it means. And no such consensus exists. Worse, consciousness is an abstract concept. An ontological argument based on abstractions is an oxymoron.
Again, the failure of science to adequately explain being conscious of experience does not point to Jehovah per se. If some supernatural input is required, then why not invoke Baal or Marduk? There's nothing special about Jehovah.
Argument from beauty or value seeks to infer Jehovah from irreducible aesthetic or axiological features of reality. It becomes explicit in the 18th–19th centuries, especially in Romantic and post-Kantian thought.
Here, Jehovah is presupposed to be a viable explanation of beauty or value. This, in turn, presupposes that Christian descriptions of Jehovah are accurate. Proponents also presuppose that Jehovah has no competition from other religions. They also presuppose that aesthetics, like morality, must be imposed on us from the outside rather than emerging from within us.
This is both a classic god-of-the-gaps argument and something more. There is a gap in our explanations of axiological matters into which Christians shoehorn Jehovah. But the failure of science, history, and philosophy to explain beauty in a satisfactory way is not an argument for Jehovah. It's just a gap in our understanding of the world.
In fact, simply invoking Jehovah doesn't explain anything. If you presuppose that Christians accurately describe Jehovah, then this, effortlessly, explains everything. And the rest is just details we needn't bother with. No one ever says how Jehovah explains beauty. No mechanisms are presented. And thus, in the end, nothing is explained by invoking Jehovah.
Conclusion
In my experience, science is not the preferred tool for critiquing religion (and most religieux don't understand scientific arguments anyway). Rather, my preferred tool is historical perspective.
For example, the majority of arguments for Jehovah are vitiated simply by acknowledging that other supreme beings are proposed by other religions, and on exactly the same basis. All of these arguments about Jehovah seem to presuppose that Jehovah is the only choice of god that we have. If we step outside Christian parochialism and acknowledge that other religions exist, then arguments for Jehovah are trivially invalidated in almost every case. None of the traditional Christian arguments that they claim point to Jehovah's existence is capable of singling out Jehovah from the plethora of available gods.
When the existence of Jehovah is axiomatic in your thinking, then your reasoning will always arrive at the conclusion that Jehovah exists. Because axioms are what we take to be true a priori and they become the criteria by which we validate conclusions. When we presuppose Jehovah, then any conclusion which seems to affirm the existence of Jehovah is judged to be true. And this circular, and thus invalid, logic is present in all of the traditional arguments for Jehovah.
Finally, when Jehovah is treated as an ultimate explanation of life, the universe, and everything, then invoking Jehovah becomes a way of shutting down awkward discussions or obfuscating ignorance. Simply saying "God" explains everything does not actually explain anything. An explanation generally involves pointing to causal sequences of events. Which Christians have never been able to do.
Such arguments begin very early on in the history Christianity . And they have been persistently employed and updated down to the present. Christians appear to know that there is an ongoing question and keep trying to come up with ways to shut down the discussion. Nevertheless, the discussion is ongoing.
~~Φ~~
Bibliography
Attwood, Jayarava (2022). "Sensory Deprivation and the Threefold Way." Unpublished essay. https://www.academia.edu/83896358/Sensory_Deprivation_and_the_Threefold_Way
Attwood, Jayarava (2023). "On Historical Methods in Buddhist Studies and the Disputed Historicity of the Buddha." Unpublished essay. https://www.academia.edu/121900443/On_Historical_Methods_in_Buddhist_Studies_and_the_Disputed_Historicity_of_the_Buddha
Barrett, Justin L. (2004). Why Would Anyone Believe in God? Altamira Press.
Waal, Frans de. (2013). The bonobo and the Atheist: In Search of Humanism Amongst the Primates. W.W. Norton & Co.
