Now as a grown man who has put childish things behind me, I've been curious to see what Greg Laurie has to say about atheism, especially since atheists are more vocal as ever now. So I went on YouTube and did a search on Greg Laurie and atheism to come and find out that he has made a couple videos on atheism by interviewing a man named Dinesh D'souza.
The main question that I asked myself before I listened to the videos is what approach does Greg Laurie take in dealing with atheists? The videos are in interview format where Greg is asking Mr. D'souza questions regarding atheism but I don't doubt for a second that D'souza's responses are in fact the position that Laurie holds to. Let's break the questions and responses down on these videos and see what kind of approach that Greg is taking against atheism.
In the video, "What is an atheist", Greg asks, "What is an atheist?" The response given is 100% false, but typical. "An atheist is someone who asserts that there is no God..." I have covered this issue time and time again, my response now is pretty much the same. Atheism, in its pure form, is a negative position. It is the statement of, "I do not see enough evidence to justify what your saying as truth." That statement does not equate to, "I know what your saying is false." Atheism tells us nothing about the person's knowledge, only their belief. Also, responses like these is a deceptive attempt by the theist to put the atheist of the offensive, which is wrong. The reason why is because atheism is not selling anything, rather, were not buying into what theism is selling. This puts the theist in an uncomfortable position because it puts them on the offensive.
Then the video starts going on about the difference between agnostic and atheism which if they would have broken down the term atheist the same way they broke down the term agnostic they would not be in such confusion. Then they talk about two camps of atheists, the intellectual and the moral atheist. The moral atheists being the ones who say they don't like God and reject him because they feel he's a monster, whereas the intellectual atheist relies on science. But how he words his description of a "moral atheist" is deceiving because he states, "moral atheism is not I don't believe in God, but it's I don't like God." This is misrepresentation because even if people are driven to nonbelief because of how much a monster Yahweh is, they still nevertheless do not believe in that God. It's not as if the atheist secretly believes in Yahweh but rejects him. This is a gross misunderstanding and simply demonstrates that people like Greg and D'souza transpose their unwillingness to imagine for one second to doubt the existence of their beloved God unto other people.
Then they describe the "intellectual atheist" as one who says they have science and don't need God. With a little change in this wording, I would accept this as an accurate assessment of most atheists. Indeed, we do not see a need to invoke a God when we have a scientific explanations of how the universe works. Does it make any sense to invoke Zeus as the one who causes lightening when we already have a scientific explanation of the natural process that causes lightening? We invoke that which there is a rational justification for.
Going back to the "moral atheist", they state that when dealing with a moral atheist, it does no good to give them proofs of God's existence since they reject God because they are angry with him. This is false, because people who deny the existence of God based on evil in the world do so, not necessarily because of emotion, but because logically, a loving God is incompatible with an evil world. Which leads us to the next thing that was said in the interview in regards to a skeptic who invokes the argument from evil which was, "lets say my dad was a really important guy, like bill gates, and very loving and i look to him for help. Then i face a terrible problem in life and ask him for help but he doesnt help me. Do I then say my dad doesnt exist? Of course not, its not a question of his existence, but his character." But this analogy is inherently flawed because in this case, we already have solid proof that our dad already exists, so of course it would be irrational to question his existence. But in the case of a God, we have no evidence that such a being exists. And when the theist makes these claims about how God is, how he is good and loving, but yet we do not see evidence of goodness and love in the world, then it is perfectly rational to question the existence of that good and loving God.
If I were to say what he says we should say, that, "Oh I need to revise my opinion about my dad, in other words, this is not a debate about the existence of my father, but of his character" then this would still lead to the same problem. If my opinion on Yahweh is revised to me believing that he exists, but is just evil, then I am still an atheist in regards to the Christian. They have made a claim about the existence of a particular God Yahweh, my opinion on who Yahweh is has been revised so my Yahweh is different from their Yahweh. Since I lack belief in their particular Yahweh then I am still technically an atheist in regards to their version of God.
But that is of course silly because in order for me to simply just revise my view of God's character as opposed to questioning his existence, I have to already presuppose that he exists. Which is probably the root cause of the problem in this interview. They are working off the presupposition that God must already exist, as opposed to simply following the evidence.
