📘 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 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.
God or Delusion? 