Nobody × Nothing = Everything? A Closer Look at Mark Clark’s Math

This post is part of our ongoing series examining Mark Clark’s book, The Problem of God, one section at a time. Each post critically analyzes Clark’s claims through the lens of reason, evidence, and The God Question’s core philosophy: we don’t begin with belief—we begin with curiosity. This installment responds to “Nobody Times Nothing Equals Everything?” (pp. 54–56).

Chapter Summary and Analysis:

In this section, Mark Clark lays out one of the most common arguments in modern Christian apologetics: the Kalam Cosmological Argument, restated in lay terms. His goal is to make the Big Bang appear to point undeniably toward God by arguing that:

Whatever begins to exist has a cause.
The universe began to exist.
Therefore, the universe had a cause.
That cause must be an immaterial mind—i.e., God.

To strengthen this chain of reasoning, Clark claims that science has ruled out the possibility of an eternal universe and that no reasonable alternative to divine creation can explain the Big Bang. He ridicules the “nothing hypothesis”—the idea that perhaps the universe just began without a cause—as irrational and anti-scientific. He even inserts an anecdote about a house alarm going off at night to illustrate how absurd it would be to believe “nothing” triggered an event.

But does this argument actually succeed?

What Clark Gets Wrong

Let’s examine his assumptions through The God Question’s Core Philosophy:

1. “Whatever begins to exist has a cause.”

This may sound intuitive, but it collapses under scrutiny. The notion of cause and effect is rooted in our experience of time and space—inside the universe. To say it applies before the universe existed (when time itself began) is speculative. The laws of physics—including causality—may not even apply at the boundary of spacetime.

Furthermore, in quantum mechanics, particles can and do appear to emerge from what we call a “quantum vacuum”—an energy field that is not nothing, but certainly isn’t a someone. So the simplicity of “everything that begins must have a cause” is misleading at best.

2. “The universe began to exist.”

It’s more accurate to say the observable universe appears to have originated in a hot, dense state ~13.8 billion years ago. But physicists are not unanimous that this marks an absolute beginning of everything. There are multiple theoretical models—such as the cyclical universe, multiverse, or quantum gravity proposals—that suggest our universe may have emerged from something else entirely.

The honest answer is: We don’t yet know.

3. “Therefore, the universe had a cause… and it must be a mind.”

This leap is unjustified and deeply theological. Clark equates “cause” with “conscious creator” based not on evidence but on desire—he wants a god at the origin. But to posit an immaterial, timeless, spaceless, changeless, all-powerful being as the simplest explanation is a textbook case of special pleading.

Worse, this “cause” is intentionally defined to be immune to the same scrutiny. Who or what caused God? Clark says nothing. The cause of everything must be something that didn’t need a cause—a mind that exists outside time. But this just shifts the mystery, it doesn’t solve it.

4. “Nothing caused everything = absurd.”

This rhetorical jab (“nobody × nothing = everything”) is effective in sermons but misleading in serious discussion. Cosmologists don’t claim that literal “nothing” caused everything. Instead, they admit uncertainty while exploring naturalistic mechanisms—none of which require a conscious mind.

Clark’s argument exploits the discomfort people feel when facing uncertainty. He prefers a wrong answer that feels reassuring to a humble admission of “we don’t know.”

What This Chapter Actually Proves

Clark’s entire chain of logic leads not to God, but to this:

“We don’t understand the origins of the universe completely, so let’s insert God into the gap.”

That’s not evidence. That’s a God of the Gaps argument, which has a long history of retreating in the face of progress. Lightning used to be divine wrath. Disease used to be demonic possession. Now, it’s the Big Bang.

If history teaches us anything, it’s that betting on “God did it” when science hasn’t yet answered a question is a guaranteed losing strategy.

The Problem of God — and Cosmology: Big Bang, Big Questions, Bigger Assumptions

The God Question is a blog committed to respectful but rigorous examination of Christian truth claims. This post is part of an ongoing series analyzing Mark Clark’s bestselling book The Problem of God—a work popular among evangelical apologists for its accessible defense of Christian belief. Each post highlights a specific claim or chapter, testing it through logic, science, history, and reason—all through the lens of The God Question’s core philosophy.

Cosmology & Big Bang

Mark Clark begins Chapter 2 of The Problem of God with the claim that the existence of moral law points to the existence of a divine lawgiver. He then pivots, calling cosmology—the study of the universe’s origin—the “second evidence” for God’s existence. Citing Immanuel Kant’s phrase “the starry hosts above,” Clark introduces this section with an air of reverence and inevitability. And yet, as with much of his apologetic method, the argument quickly reduces to a series of well-worn and misleading claims.

“Whatever begins to exist has a cause”

Clark recycles the familiar Kalam Cosmological Argument—popularized by William Lane Craig—claiming:

Whatever begins to exist has a cause.
The universe began to exist.
Therefore, the universe has a cause (which he identifies as God).

It’s a tidy syllogism, but it carries massive philosophical and scientific baggage. For one, premise one—“everything that begins to exist has a cause”—is assumed, not demonstrated. In quantum physics, subatomic particles (like virtual particles) appear to come into being without any identifiable cause at all. Some physicists argue this undercuts the first premise entirely.

Second, while Clark confidently asserts that the universe “began to exist” 15 billion years ago, modern cosmology is less certain. The Big Bang represents a beginning of our observable universe—space, time, matter, and energy—but what (if anything) came before remains unknown. Physicists like Sean Carroll and Lawrence Krauss argue that asking “what caused the Big Bang?” may be a category error, akin to asking “what’s north of the North Pole?”

Clark fails to mention the range of cosmological models that don’t require a supernatural cause: vacuum fluctuation models, cyclic universes, multiverse theory, and more. Instead, he cherry-picks the version that supports his belief.

The Universe Had a “Birthday”

Clark writes that the universe “began to exist fifteen billion years ago,” and thus “has a birthday.” But a birthday implies a beginning in time. According to Big Bang cosmology, time itself began with the Big Bang—making the phrase “before the Big Bang” meaningless. Again, Clark applies language shaped by everyday human experience to a context (cosmic origins) where such language breaks down.

He then draws this conclusion:

“The cause must be mind, not matter, because matter itself began to exist at the Big Bang.”

But why must it be “mind”? Why not energy, or some still-unknown quantum field? This is argument by assertion, not evidence.

“That’s exactly what Christianity has been claiming from the beginning”

Here, Clark tries to claim cosmology for Christianity—suggesting that Big Bang cosmology confirms the Bible’s creation story. But Genesis depicts a firmament, a stationary Earth, a six-day creation, and light existing before the sun. None of this aligns with modern cosmology.

What’s more, Clark sidesteps the historical truth: for centuries, the church fought against emerging scientific cosmologies—from Copernicus to Galileo to Darwin. He also fails to mention that Georges Lemaître, the Catholic priest who first proposed the Big Bang, did so while insisting it should not be used to justify theological arguments.

“Nobody times nothing equals everything?”

Clark ends this section with a rhetorical jab, mocking secular explanations of origins as “nobody times nothing equals everything.” But this misrepresents what scientists actually say. Most do not claim the universe came from “nothing” in the philosophical sense; instead, they speak of a quantum vacuum or primordial state that does not equate to “nothing.”

Clark either doesn’t understand—or doesn’t care to accurately represent—those he disagrees with.

🧠 Final Reflection

Clark’s use of cosmology is not an honest inquiry but a clever repackaging of scientific mystery as theological certainty. Rather than follow the evidence wherever it leads, he frames the evidence to serve a preordained conclusion. And he does so without wrestling seriously with opposing views—from quantum cosmology to secular metaphysics.

If you want to explore real cosmological questions—without the theological bait-and-switch—look instead to physicists who admit what they don’t know. There’s more humility, and ironically, more awe, in their uncertainty than in any apologetic proof.

Do We Need God to Be Good?

INTRODUCTION

This blog is dedicated to a simple idea: Belief is not a virtue—and asking questions is not a sin.

If you’ve ever found yourself whispering your doubts or biting your tongue in church, you’re not alone.

Here at The God Question, we don’t preach—we probe. We examine what’s claimed, compare it to what’s actually known, and ask what best explains the difference.

You don’t need certainty to be curious. You don’t need faith to care about truth.

All you need is a mind willing to think, a heart willing to feel, and the courage to ask the next honest question.

Do We Need God to Be Good?

A Response to the Claim That Evolution Can’t Explain Morality

Can evolution explain why we care for others? Why we risk our lives for strangers? Why we feel revulsion at racism or injustice? According to many theists, including the author of The Problem of God, the answer is no. In a section titled “Is There an Evolutionary Explanation?” the argument goes like this:

Evolutionary morality is just “selfish genes” dressing up as altruism.
Darwinian logic led to eugenics and even the Holocaust.
If morality came from nature alone, we wouldn’t feel strongly against racism, injustice, or cruelty.

It’s a powerful emotional case. But does it hold up?

Let’s explore this claim using The God Question’s Core Philosophy:

What is claimed? What is actually known? And what best explains the difference between the two?

1. What Is Claimed?

The book argues that:

Morality rooted in evolution is not “real” morality—it’s utilitarian at best, dangerous at worst.
Natural selection cannot explain true altruism or our revulsion at cruelty.
Because of this, moral law must come from God—a transcendent being who has “stitched” love and goodness into our souls.

2. What Is Actually Known?

Here’s what science, anthropology, and evolutionary psychology suggest instead:

Reciprocal altruism is a well-documented evolutionary strategy found in many species, including humans. It helps social groups survive—not because it’s “fake,” but because cooperation works.
Genuine empathy is observable even in infants and some non-human primates. While its origins are biological, the experience is real. You don’t have to believe in God to feel compassion.
Group morality evolves and matures culturally. Over time, human societies have expanded their moral circles—from tribal kinship to universal human rights—not because of divine command, but because of growing awareness and reasoned reflection.
The horrors of eugenics and Nazi ideology weren’t inevitable results of evolution—they were corruptions of Darwinian ideas, shaped by political, religious, and racial ideologies. Blaming Darwin for Hitler is as misleading as blaming Jesus for the Inquisition.

3. What Best Explains the Difference?

The problem here is a false dichotomy: either morality comes from God, or it’s meaningless. But that’s simply not true.

Morality can—and does—emerge naturally from our shared humanity:

From our evolved capacity to feel,
From our reason to reflect,
From our experience of suffering and joy.

We don’t need a divine lawgiver to recognize that cruelty is wrong or that compassion matters. We only need to be conscious, to listen honestly to what it feels like to be hurt, to be helped, and to help others.

The impulse to lay down one’s life for a stranger isn’t proof of God—it’s proof of the depth of our shared connection.

🚫 A Final Word on “Favoured Races”

The book also points to Darwin’s subtitle—The Preservation of Favoured Races—to suggest that evolution is inherently racist. But this is a dishonest reading. In the 19th century, “races” often meant varieties or subspecies, not ethnic groups. Darwin opposed slavery, and his work undermined the idea that humans were specially created in racial hierarchies. Using his book to justify racism is both historically and morally wrong.

So, is there an evolutionary explanation for morality?

Yes—one rooted in connection, compassion, and consciousness.

And that’s not just “good enough.”

It’s actually beautiful.

There Really Is a Right Answer?

This post is part of our ongoing series examining Mark Clark’s book, The Problem of God, one section at a time. Each post critically analyzes Clark’s claims through the lens of reason, evidence, and The God Question’s core philosophy: we don’t begin with belief—we begin with curiosity. This installment responds to “What Dawkins Gets Wrong” (pp. 47–48).

🧠 The Core Claim: God Is the Source of Morality

Mark Clark argues that our sense of right and wrong is not learned, not evolved, and certainly not secular—it’s divine. Citing Romans 2 and referencing Harvard biologist Marc Hauser’s famous moral thought experiments, Clark insists that our moral instincts are “written on our hearts” by the Christian God.

He concludes that objective morality must exist—and therefore God must exist too.

But this entire argument hinges on a flawed assumption: that moral intuition can only come from a divine source.

🔬 What Hauser’s Experiments Actually Reveal

Marc Hauser’s research, particularly his scenarios involving trolley dilemmas, reveals that religious and nonreligious people respond nearly identically to complex moral choices. That’s not a sign of divine fingerprints—it’s a sign of shared human cognition.

Clark acknowledges this fact, but then tries to twist it into a theistic argument: if atheists can recognize moral truths, it must be because God hardwired them to do so. But that’s not what the evidence shows.

In truth, Hauser’s work undermines the need for religion in ethics. If belief doesn’t affect moral judgment, then God is irrelevant to moral reasoning.

⚖️ Is There “One Right Answer” in Morality?

Clark compares ethics to math. Just as people can be wrong about 2 + 2 = 4, he argues, people can be wrong about right and wrong—but that doesn’t mean a correct answer doesn’t exist.

But this analogy fails.

Math is built on axioms and logical rules. Morality is shaped by culture, experience, and empathy. Comparing the two is like comparing a chess rulebook to human suffering. One is formal; the other is human.

Even if objective moral values did exist (a highly debated idea), that still wouldn’t point to God. And certainly not Clark’s God, whose moral track record in the Bible includes slavery, genocide, and divine tantrums.

💬 Dawkins, Misrepresented

Clark criticizes Richard Dawkins for suggesting that morality doesn’t require God—but Dawkins’ point is precisely that: morality doesn’t require God. And that point is backed by data, reason, and centuries of moral progress despite religion, not because of it.

Clark’s attempt to turn secular moral behavior into proof of divine authorship is like claiming GPS satellites prove the Earth is flat—he’s using the evidence to argue against what the evidence actually shows.

🔍 Final Thoughts: What Looks Like God Isn’t Always God

Clark wants to believe that if morality feels objective, then it must come from God.

But human beings can feel deeply about things that aren’t true. Intuition is not evidence. Consensus is not revelation.

What’s needed is not a divine lawgiver, but an honest reckoning with how morality really works: it evolves, it adapts, and it thrives best in freedom—not faith.

Do We Need God to Know That Eating Your Sister Is Wrong?

📘 About This Series

This post is part of a daily response series to The Problem of God: Answering a Skeptic’s Challenges to Christianity by Mark Clark. The series critically engages with each chapter and section of the book, examining Clark’s arguments through the lens of reason, historical evidence, and The God Question’s core philosophy: what’s true doesn’t fear investigation.

Today’s post responds to content found in pages 45-47 of the book — the section titled “What If They Ate Your Sister?”

If you’re just joining us, you can view all prior entries in this series on The God Question blog at https://godordelusion.com/the-god-question/. The God Question is a blog that investigates Christian claims with clarity, courage, and calm. We believe truth can withstand scrutiny—and that real meaning doesn’t require pretending to know what we don’t.

Can we know that something is morally wrong—even if we don’t believe in God?

Mark Clark doesn’t think so.

In Chapter 2 of The Problem of God, Clark tells a story from his time at Michaels craft store. An atheist co-worker claimed that morality is culturally constructed. To test him, Clark asks: “What if a jungle tribe tortured and ate your sister? Could you really say that’s wrong?” The implication is clear: If you don’t believe in objective morality, you must accept that cannibalism is just a matter of taste.

But this argument falls apart under scrutiny.

It relies on shock—not reason. Clark knows we’ll recoil in horror at the idea of someone eating a loved one. That horror, he argues, proves the existence of a moral law, which in turn proves the existence of a lawgiver—God.

But this is emotional sleight of hand. Just because something feels deeply wrong doesn’t mean it requires a supernatural explanation. Our moral instincts are real—but they’re also explainable through biology, psychology, and culture. Evolution favors cooperation and empathy. We’ve learned, over centuries, that causing harm leads to chaos.

Clark’s argument also creates a false choice: Either you believe in God, or you believe nothing is really wrong. That’s simply not true. Secular ethics offers a rich tradition of moral reasoning based on harm reduction, shared values, and reason—not divine command.

And ironically, history shows that religious people—including Christians—have often used “God’s law” to justify moral atrocities: slavery, holy war, racism, subjugation of women. These weren’t moral advances—they were cultural norms disguised as divine mandates.

So the real question is this: Do we need God to explain why torturing people is wrong?

No.

We need empathy, intelligence, and a commitment to human dignity. And those are available to believers and non-believers alike.

A clear, clever breakdown of moral development from a secular point of view.

The Problem of God’s Existence–(Chapter 2, Part 1): The Evidence of Morality?

📘 This post is part of a continuing response series to The Problem of God by Mark Clark. Each day, we examine one section of the book and critically respond using reason, clarity, and The God Question’s core philosophy: what’s true doesn’t fear investigation. Today’s entry addresses Chapter 2 (pp. 41–45), including the introductory setup and the first major argument: The Evidence of Morality.

🚲 The Setup: Personal Injury as Proof?

Clark begins with a story from childhood—being pulled on Rollerblades behind a bike, ignoring his mother’s warnings, and eventually getting injured. The lesson he draws? He didn’t believe her until he had evidence. He concludes this shows why he’s “always been that way.” A skeptic until shown otherwise.

But the story ironically undercuts the point he’s building toward.

He claims to be persuaded by evidence—yet the book itself isn’t offering scientific evidence for God. It offers apologetics. And as we’ll see below, his moral argument is built not on data or empirical support, but on intuition, anecdote, and assertion.

⚖️ The Moral Argument: C.S. Lewis in the Waiting Room

Clark’s first major claim in Chapter 2 is familiar: moral values prove God. He leans on C.S. Lewis (as many apologists do), citing Mere Christianity and the universal experience of people saying “That’s not fair!” as evidence that humans recognize some kind of absolute moral law.

He then adds layers:

Observations of his kids arguing about fairness.
A zoo encounter where strangers cut in line.
The idea that morality must come from a transcendent source—i.e., God.
Rejection of moral relativism as “logically bankrupt.”

But let’s examine this claim more closely.

❌ What Clark Gets Wrong About Morality

1. A shared sense of morality doesn’t require a supernatural source.

Clark assumes that because people share common moral instincts, they must be wired by a moral lawgiver. But that conclusion doesn’t follow. Evolutionary psychology explains these instincts well: empathy, fairness, loyalty, and justice evolved in social species to increase cooperation and survival. These adaptive behaviors became deeply embedded in our biology—not because a god wrote them into us, but because they worked.

2. He ignores the cross-cultural diversity of moral frameworks.

Clark cherry-picks examples where most modern people agree (“don’t cut in line”) but ignores where morality diverges—gender roles, caste systems, slavery, honor killings, child discipline, dietary laws, sexual taboos. These aren’t random differences—they reflect culture, geography, historical context, and social structures. If morality were truly “absolute” and God-given, wouldn’t we expect far more consistency?

3. He falsely equates moral feeling with moral fact.

Clark writes: “We feel like we should care… We know it’s wrong to drop napalm on babies…” But this is emotion—not evidence. Moral intuition is not moral ontology. Feeling that something is wrong doesn’t make it objectively so in a metaphysical sense. And if you define “objectivity” that broadly, you can make anything a pointer to God—from hunger to gravity.

4. He never addresses the Euthyphro dilemma.

This ancient critique—Is something good because God commands it, or does God command it because it is good?—goes unmentioned. It exposes the fatal circularity of grounding morality in God. If God is the source of morality, then “good” becomes whatever God says—even if it includes genocide, slavery, or eternal torture. But if morality is separate from God, then God is not its source—he merely affirms it.

🧠 The God Question Rebuttal

We don’t need to believe in an invisible being to explain why we say “that’s not fair.” We need only understand:

Our evolutionary past
Our social conditioning
Our empathy and tribal psychology
Our need for cooperation and group cohesion

Morality is a human construct rooted in our biology, shaped by our culture, and evolving alongside our societies. It’s not flawless, fixed, or universal—but it’s real. And it doesn’t require a moral lawgiver any more than language requires a divine linguist.

The question isn’t “How do we know right from wrong?”

It’s “What happens when we stop pretending that morality proves anything about God?”

A 5-minute animated video that explains the secular foundations of morality—and why goodness doesn’t need a god.

📚 Next Up: “What If They Ate Your Sister?”

Yes, that’s the actual title of the next section in The Problem of God, and yes—we’ll be responding to it next.

Chapter 1 Rebuttal: The God of the Gaps and the Apologetics of Evasion

This post is part of an ongoing series at The God Question blog, critically responding to Mark Clark’s apologetics book, The Problem of God. In each entry, we analyze Clark’s claims one section at a time—and offer an honest, evidence-based rebuttal rooted in presence, reason, and clarity. This response covers Chapter 1 (pp. 23–39), where Clark tackles the so-called “problem of science.”

What Mark Clark Claims

Chapter 1 of The Problem of God aims to counter what Clark calls the “myth” of conflict between science and faith. He accuses atheists of misunderstanding both and argues that:

Science and Christianity are not only compatible, but Christianity is the best foundation for science.
Many of the most important scientific discoveries were made by Christians.
Atheism requires more faith than belief in God, especially when it comes to the origin of the universe and the fine-tuning of physical constants.
The “new atheists” misrepresent science and push an agenda of moral relativism and meaninglessness.

Clark frames science as a tool that points to God, insists that materialism can’t explain consciousness or morality, and positions Christianity as the most reasonable worldview.

What the Evidence Actually Shows

While Clark’s tone is confident, his arguments crumble under scrutiny.

1. He misrepresents both science and atheism.

Clark routinely builds strawman versions of secular thinkers. He caricatures atheists as arrogant, meaning-denying nihilists and paints science as a neutral enterprise that is most “at home” in a Christian worldview. This is revisionist apologetics, not honest engagement.

2. His “Christian roots of science” argument is irrelevant.

Yes, many early scientists were religious—but that proves nothing about the truth of Christianity. Most were religious because that was the dominant culture, not because Christianity produced scientific thinking. In fact, science advanced most when it began challenging church dogma, not submitting to it.

3. He relies heavily on the “God of the gaps” fallacy.

Clark argues that because science doesn’t (yet) fully explain the origin of the universe, consciousness, or morality, God must be the best explanation. This is classic “God of the gaps” reasoning: plug in a deity wherever knowledge is incomplete. It’s not only intellectually lazy—it’s dangerous. It turns faith into a placeholder for ignorance.

4. He misuses “faith” as a rhetorical weapon.

Clark claims atheists have “faith” in materialism or science. But this is a false equivalency. Scientific models are provisional, based on evidence, and subject to revision. That’s the opposite of religious faith, which demands belief despite a lack of evidence—or in defiance of it.

5. He ignores the actual history of science-religion conflict.

Clark waves away centuries of religious opposition to scientific discovery—from Galileo to Darwin—as irrelevant or misunderstood. But these weren’t small bumps. They were structural confrontations between revealed dogma and evidence-based inquiry. To claim otherwise is to whitewash history.

The God Question Perspective

Chapter 1 of The Problem of God ultimately reveals more about Clark’s strategy than about science. He’s not trying to present a rigorous case—he’s trying to reassure Christians who feel threatened by science. He offers the illusion of intellectual safety without doing the hard work of real intellectual honesty.

But The God Question is not afraid of complexity.

We affirm that:

Wonder doesn’t require worship.
Beauty doesn’t require a creator.
Morality doesn’t require commandments.
Consciousness doesn’t require a soul.

And when we allow science to speak for itself—without shoving in a God—we begin to see reality more clearly. We begin to grow up.

📚 In Case You Missed It: Section-by-Section Responses

The Plantinga Effect: When Apologists Dress Up in Lab Coats
Whose Faith Is Blind?
The Science That Didn’t Say What He Said It Said
Faith, Proof, and the Apologetics of Misdirection

⏭️ Coming Up: Chapter 2 – The Problem of God’s Existence

In the next chapter, Clark tackles the big one: Does God even exist? Unsurprisingly, his answers rely more on emotional appeal and tired apologetics than honest inquiry. But don’t take my word for it—come see for yourself.

The Godless Future That Wasn’t — and the Boundaries Science Never Crossed

This blog post is part of our ongoing series responding to The Problem of God by Mark Clark—a book widely promoted in Christian circles as a thoughtful defense of faith. Here at The God Question, we examine Clark’s arguments critically, engaging each section with honesty, clarity, and presence. Our goal is not to deconvert anyone, but to challenge assumptions, sharpen thinking, and invite deeper reflection. This post addresses the final sections of Chapter 1, pages 37-39: “The Myth of the Secular Society” and “The NOMA Principle.”

🛰 “Star Trek Got It Wrong”: A Straw Man Secularism

Clark opens with a familiar tale: the confident prediction that modernity would erase God. His example? The original Star Trek series—a future imagined without faith, where science had seemingly made religion obsolete. He contrasts this with The Next Generation, where some characters express spirituality.

The point he wants to make is that secularism didn’t win—and perhaps it never truly had the upper hand. But what’s missing here is nuance.

Yes, some futurists once imagined that religion would wither. Yes, belief in God remains widespread. But the assumption that scientific progress ought to lead to a rejection of God is itself a caricature—not a serious secular argument. Most critical thinkers today don’t argue that science automatically eliminates religion. They argue that science offers a better, evidence-based process for understanding the world—and that many religious claims fail under its scrutiny.

The “myth” here isn’t secularism; it’s the straw man version Clark has created. He reduces complex sociological trends to an oversimplified failure of prophecy, as if disproving one cultural prediction somehow validates theological truth.

🔬 The NOMA Principle: A Line in the Sand

Clark then tackles Stephen Jay Gould’s well-known concept of NOMA—Non-Overlapping Magisteria—the idea that science and religion occupy distinct domains. Science handles the natural world; religion deals with morality, meaning, and metaphysics.

Clark doesn’t attack NOMA directly so much as work around it. He says, essentially: sure, science can’t disprove God, but it can still point us toward him. He quotes scientists and theologians who believe the complexity of the universe suggests design, and he appeals to Paul’s letter to the Romans as evidence that the real issue is not a lack of evidence, but a willful suppression of the truth.

This is where Clark doubles down on his theme: people don’t reject God because the evidence is weak—they reject him because their hearts are darkened. They see the signs, but prefer to believe something else.

But let’s be clear: this is not an argument. It’s a psychological accusation. It bypasses any meaningful engagement with the critiques raised by science or secular thought and instead assumes what it needs to prove—that God exists, that his signs are everywhere, and that disbelief is rebellion.

🧠 Science Isn’t Silent — It’s Honest

Clark’s treatment of science is selective. He quotes Allan Rex Sandage, the Christian astronomer, to suggest that the greatest minds are driven to belief. But he glosses over the fact that most leading scientists—especially in fields like evolutionary biology and cosmology—are not theists. Even when he mentions that belief is higher among natural scientists than among social scientists, he stops short of reckoning with why that distinction might exist, or what kind of “God” is being affirmed.

And while he rightly notes that science can’t disprove God, he misses the larger point: science doesn’t need to. It simply withholds belief until evidence emerges. That’s not rebellion—it’s integrity.

What Clark ultimately reveals is the apologetic impulse to reframe science as not only compatible with faith but actually confirmatory of it—to use its discoveries as indirect evidence for a divine mind. But in doing so, he avoids addressing why so many scientific findings undermine traditional religious claims: a young Earth, a literal Adam and Eve, a global flood, and even the special creation of humans all collapse under the weight of evidence.

📌 The Real Problem: Not a Lack of Evidence, But a Lack of Honesty About the Evidence

Clark ends with Paul’s words in Romans: “For although they knew God… they became futile in their thinking.” He says the real issue is suppression, not skepticism.

But the real issue is this: Science has changed our understanding of the universe in profound ways. And for many of us, the gods of ancient texts no longer fit that universe. It’s not that we suppress the evidence—it’s that the evidence leads us elsewhere.

We didn’t darken our hearts.

We opened our eyes.

Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism–A Response

📘 Introduction for Blog Series Readers

This post is part of a daily series responding to The Problem of God by Mark Clark—a book that attempts to defend Christianity by critiquing science, reason, and secular worldviews. In this entry, we’re examining pages 34–37 from the chapter The Problem of Science, where Clark leans on philosopher Alvin Plantinga’s argument that if evolution and naturalism are true, then our cognitive faculties can’t be trusted. This post continues our project here at The God Question—a blog that exists to challenge inherited beliefs, reexamine dogmas, and invite clarity in place of confusion.

To read other posts in this series, visit: godordelusion.com\thegodquestion

🧩 Clark’s Argument: A Quick Summary

In this section, Clark presents what’s often called the Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism (EAAN). It goes something like this:

Evolution only selects for survival, not truth.
Therefore, if naturalism is true and our brains evolved solely through evolution, our beliefs might not be reliable.
As a result, we can’t trust our reasoning—including belief in evolution itself.
This is presented as a self-defeating view. If your mind evolved from purely natural causes, why should you trust it?
To support this, Clark quotes Alvin Plantinga and even Charles Darwin, who once expressed a doubt about the trustworthiness of human reason given its origins.

The implication is clear: if you want reliable thinking, you need God.

🧠 Why This Argument Fails—And Why It Still Persists

1. It’s a Strawman of Evolution and Cognition

Plantinga’s argument—and by extension, Clark’s—is deeply flawed. It assumes that survival and truth are mutually exclusive, but that’s simply not true. In many real-world scenarios, accurate models of the world help an organism survive. Misjudging the location of food, predators, shelter, or other agents would lead to death—not reproduction. Evolution does favor usefulness, but often truth is useful.

2. Science Has Corrective Mechanisms

Clark frames naturalistic thinking as “blind,” but science is not a lone mind guessing in the dark. It’s a collective, cumulative system of testing, peer review, prediction, and falsifiability. Plantinga’s argument ignores the tools we’ve built to overcome cognitive bias: experimentation, statistics, review, and replication. These don’t depend on a divine origin—just consistency and feedback.

3. It’s the Ultimate Double Standard

If our minds can’t be trusted under naturalism, what makes them trustworthy under theism? Clark wants to say, “If God made your brain, it works.” But this assumes the very thing in question—a trustworthy, intentional designer. If we’re misled under evolution, couldn’t we also be deceived by God? Why should a mind made by divine design be assumed reliable without any evidence?

And let’s be honest: if Christian minds are so reliable, why are there tens of thousands of denominations? Why do believers disagree about virtually every major doctrine?

4. Darwin’s Quote Is Misused

Darwin’s “horrid doubt” is often used to show he questioned his own theory. But this is a cherry-picked, rhetorical quote taken from a letter. Darwin was engaging in philosophical reflection, not scientific denial. He didn’t abandon his trust in science. He continued to rely on empirical observation to understand the world, and his legacy shows that clearly.

5. This Argument Is Philosophy in Disguise

The EAAN sounds scientific, but it’s not. It’s a philosophical sleight of hand—trying to make science look self-defeating by redefining “truth,” ignoring empirical tools, and offering a false choice: either God made your brain, or you can’t trust it.

But the actual choice is between a rigorously tested method of inquiry (science), and an assumed supernatural guarantee with no built-in way to test error or illusion.

🧭 Closing Thought

Plantinga’s argument, recycled here by Clark, might feel clever at first glance. It plays on doubt and uncertainty—a favorite tactic of religious apologetics. But what it offers in mystery, it lacks in substance. The real question isn’t whether our minds are perfect; it’s whether our methods are improving.

Science doesn’t pretend to be infallible. Religion does. That’s the problem.

Doubt as Dogma?

📘 About This Series

Today’s post responds to content found in pages 32–34 of the book — the section titled “Alternate Beliefs.”

If you’re just joining us, you can view all prior entries in this series here: godordelusion.com\thegodquestion

🔄 Doubt as Dogma?

Responding to the “Alternate Beliefs” section in Mark Clark’s The Problem of God

In the section titled Alternate Beliefs, Mark Clark pushes forward a common apologetic move: turn the charge of “faith without evidence” back on the skeptic. He claims that secularism, skepticism, and naturalism are not neutral or rational at all — they are simply other belief systems, with their own faith commitments.

According to Clark, skepticism itself becomes a kind of “narrow-minded dogma” — a refusal to commit to spiritual truth disguised as intellectual humility.

Let’s walk through his arguments and test their substance.

1. 🌀 Reframing Skepticism as Just Another Belief System

Clark opens by asserting:

“Skepticism is itself a set of narrow-minded and dogmatic beliefs.”

He argues that choosing not to believe is still a belief — that avoiding metaphysical claims is itself a metaphysical position. And he calls this “the inherent irony” of secularism: it teaches its own set of doctrines (e.g., naturalism, finality of death) with just as much faith and dogma as religion.

❌ What’s the flaw here?

Skepticism isn’t a belief system. It’s a method.

Skeptics don’t claim certainty that there is no God.
They ask, “What evidence supports this claim?”
If there is none, they withhold belief — not out of dogma, but caution.

Clark tries to equate caution with closed-mindedness. But skepticism, properly understood, is the opposite of dogma. It is open to truth, but requires justification.

2. 💬 The Sam Harris Straw Man

Clark quotes Sam Harris:

“Atheism is not a philosophy; [nor] even a view of the world; it is simply an admission of the obvious.”

He uses this as an example of the arrogance of skeptics who believe their view is neutral — while denying they’re simply trading one belief system (Christianity) for another (secular humanism or scientific naturalism).

But this misses the point.

When Harris says atheism is “an admission of the obvious,” he’s reacting to the extraordinary nature of theistic claims. Believing that a first-century Jewish man rose from the dead and is alive today requires more than just a philosophical framework. It requires evidence.

Harris — and others like him — are not claiming omniscient neutrality. They are saying: If you want me to believe that, show me something.

3. 🔃 Doubting Resurrection = Just Another Belief?

Clark turns to Timothy Keller’s quote:

“You cannot doubt unprovable Christian belief A, except from a position of faith in unprovable non-Christian belief B.”

This is clever, but misleading.

Clark argues that those who doubt the resurrection do so because they are already committed to the “unprovable” belief that people don’t come back from the dead. But this reverses the burden of proof.

Here’s the difference:

The claim “dead people stay dead” is not a belief. It’s an observation of universal human experience.
The claim “this particular person came back to life” is an extraordinary claim that demands evidence.

Refusing to believe something until it’s demonstrated is not a competing belief system. It’s rational skepticism.

4. 🌌 Science Is Changing — Therefore Miracles?

Clark appeals to quantum mechanics and changing models of the universe to suggest that the old rules — like Newtonian physics or Darwinian evolution — no longer bind us to a worldview in which miracles are impossible.

But this is another rhetorical move, not a substantive argument.

Quantum mechanics may challenge our intuitions, but it doesn’t suddenly make walking on water or rising from the dead plausible. Complex doesn’t mean chaotic. Scientific revision doesn’t equal supernatural permission.

Clark is arguing: “We used to be wrong, so we can’t say we’re right now.”

That’s not humility — it’s an invitation to believe anything.

5. 🧠 Cultural Hegemony and Miracles

Clark quotes Craig Keener, who says that ruling out miracles is:

“Not an act of neutrality… but an act of cultural hegemony.”

This is meant to sound profound — like Western secularism is just another colonial tool used to crush spiritual voices. But again, it dodges the real issue.

The reason people rule out miracles isn’t cultural oppression. It’s that miracles have not been demonstrated in a reliable, repeatable, evidence-based way.

If miracles are real, show them. Don’t blame Western culture for not embracing unverifiable anecdotes.

🔚 Final Thought: The Difference Between Open-Mindedness and Gullibility

Clark wants to argue that skeptics are just as dogmatic as believers — that refusing to commit to a spiritual claim is itself a kind of belief.

But this is wordplay, not argument.

A refusal to believe without evidence is not faith.

A demand for evidence is not dogma.

Doubt is not a rival religion.

It’s precisely because we care about truth that we withhold belief until the case is made. That’s not close-mindedness. That’s intellectual integrity.