Skip to main contentAccessibility feedback

5 Plot Holes for God

Sometimes, an internet atheist will buffet you with questions challenging God's existence. Now what?

My problem with theism is whether God exists or not. How do you know your religion is the right one? Are all religions valid? Why is it important to worship God if God exists? Can’t you live a virtuous life without expecting a divine reward? Why would the existence of God imply an afterlife?

See? There are too many plot holes in Christian lore for me.

If you’re confronted with a barrage like this (as I recently was), here is the first thing to consider: are these problems or questions? Should we think of questions as problems?

If so, then it’s difficult to make the case that theism or Christianity has any more problems than any other worldview. We could ask countless questions about a non-religious, naturalist perspective. (Naturalism is just a philosophically developed form of atheism, which denies the existence of God.) For instance:

  • How do qualitative experiences arise from unconscious physical matter?
  • How does directedness (in thought, behaviors of organisms, etc.) emerge in a world presumably devoid of purpose at the foundational level?
  • How does the principle of indifference, the basic philosophical assumption of atheism, ultimately lead to such marvelously complex and well-integrated structures?
  • How do things even continue to exist at all if they rest on an indifferent foundation? Why don’t things just descend into chaos or vanish entirely?
  • How do particles amount to meaning?
  • Where do moral obligations come from in a world produced by various combinations of atoms and Darwinian forces?

I think all the above are simply questions—some quite puzzling—but still merely questions. And naturalists might even have (somewhat) decent answers for some of them. So I don’t think much ground is gained simply by throwing rhetorical questions around. Both sides can generate such questions ad infinitum.

A problem, on the other hand, is something that creates a tension between commitments. A classic example is the problem of evil: If God is all-good, all-powerful, and all-knowing, then why is there so much suffering in the world? Although this issue is often framed as a question, it clearly reveals a tension among the three commitments. It’s not just seeing how things fit together, but seeing things that (probably) don’t fit together. (Of course, I think that is wrong: I think God and suffering can fit.)

Now, to each of the proposed “plot holes.”

1. How do we know God exists?Many philosophers, including myself, believe we have some strong arguments for the existence of God. Not everyone agrees, but surely everyone can investigate these arguments for themselves and see which, if any, he finds convincing. Aside from what I present in my book, here are some of my favorite arguments either for God or against the explanatory adequacy of naturalism:

I could name more. Some of these are stronger than others, but altogether . . . man. I just really do find the case for theism convincing, especially if we thinks the above thinkers have something halfway decent to say about the problem of suffering.

2. Why is it important to worship God if God exists?Presumably because God (as classical theists understand God) would be identical to the Good itself, and we are, by nature, made to know what is ultimately true and love what is ultimately good. Worship—part of our right relationship with God—is naturally perfective of us, since it is good for us (a matter of justice) to give others what they are due. If God exists, then he is due worship, since God not only is supremely good, but also gives to us every good thing we have entirely gratuitously, every ounce of our existence. We could not flourish without this appropriate relationship to God, any more than we could flourish without friendship in general.

Notice that this question concerns philosophical anthropology—the nature of the human person—as much as it concerns the philosophy of God.

3. How do you know your religion is the right one?Again, there are arguments!

For me, Catholicism is cumulatively evidenced through Church history, the lives of the saints, and hard-to-refute miracle accounts like Fatima. It also aligns with my philosophy of God, philosophical anthropology, and ethical considerations—the Incarnation and Atonement, the Catholic understanding of justification and sanctification, and Catholic sacramental theology. It all just makes a lot of sense to me, especially given my background philosophical beliefs, but I won’t get into all of that now.

Are these arguments good? Everyone has to assess them for himself. But this is important: just because God exists, that doesn’t mean any particular religion is true. Perhaps some religion is true (I think so!), but that is a separate, though importantly related, question. Many people accept belief in the existence of God through certain arguments but remain unconvinced of the truth of any specific religion. Mortimer Adler, one of my favorite thinkers, became a convinced theist some forty years before he became a convinced Catholic in his nineties.

Another point: People disagree about many things aside from religion. How do you know your politics is the right one? Your system of morality? Your epistemology (theory of knowledge)? I don’t think we want to say that just because there is disagreement, even widespread disagreement, there isn’t truth to be found. That’s a little too nihilistic for me!

4. Can’t you live a virtuous life without expecting a divine reward?Yes. But this is a simplistic view of the Christian moral life and afterlife. The beatific vision is about attaining moral perfection as a necessary condition for union with God (the Good) itself, not about receiving an unlimited number of candy bars. Heaven is the realization of our terminal freedom—freedom for excellence, perfected in virtue, in loving union with God—through our fallible freedom of choice in cooperation with God’s grace.

5. Why would the existence of God imply an afterlife?The afterlife is more implied by studying the nature of the human person and trying to answer whether there is an aspect of us that is 1) immaterial and 2) immortal.

This question is more related to modern issues in the philosophy of mind than in the philosophy of God. Nevertheless, on the assumption of theism and in light of the problems of sin and evil, many philosophers believe that the existence of God does imply an afterlife as a matter of justice, since God, being perfectly just, could not leave things as they are on this side of death. Notice that this is a probable consequence of the theistic theory, though it also receives, I think, significant evidence from other sources as well, like near-death experiences.

Obviously, this article is just a sketch. If nothing else, I hope it highlights two things. First, these questions are good, but they are also unoriginal. Unoriginality isn’t necessarily bad—we often ask the same or very similar questions as those who came before us. However, this should encourage some humility, as many others—often very intelligent people—have grappled with these questions and offered serious answers.

So we shouldn’t stop at simply having questions, because questions aren’t problems. They are opportunities for investigation—and, possibly, to discover truth.

Did you like this content? Please help keep us ad-free
Enjoying this content?  Please support our mission!Donatewww.catholic.com/support-us