There's an issue that I perceive as
severely problematic by any theist
point that involves the fact that every
single person in this room, and in fact
every single person on this planet, is an
atheist many, many, many, many times over
in regards to the pantheon of gods that
have come before. And the reality is
that the people that believed in these
gods believed it with every bit of
fervency that anybody in here might
believe in, you know, the Abrahamic God.
And there's a problem there because none
of those gods are any less likely, quite
frankly, none of them are any less
rational. They're all irrational. The fact
of the matter is the possibility of Zeus
existing is no less likely than the
possibility of Yahweh. And I think it's a
serious problem that I think has to be
addressed and it never has been to my
liking ever. [Craig] It's easy to address. A
definition of atheism, remember I'm going
to read again from the encyclopedia of
philosophy. According to the most usual
definition, an atheist is a person who
maintains that there is no god, that is,
that the sentence "God exists" expresses a
false proposition. Therefore, in no sense am I an atheist.
Just because I deny the existence of
Odin and Thor and Zeus and Hermes
doesn't make me an atheist because to be an atheist you need to believe the
proposition there is no God. [Questioner] That's semantics; I'm sorry but that's semantics.
[Craig] No sir, it's not. This means that
you believe a universally quantified
statement, there is no such being as God,
and I don't believe that because I
do believe that there is a God. [Questioner] So
use a word other than atheist. [Craig] No; you
have been led astray by a common, sort of internet-infidel talking point that is
given to atheists to use against theists to
make it seem like the atheist claim is
less radical; that everybody is an
atheist about other gods. And that's
simply not true,
because to be an atheist you have to
believe there is no God at all, and I
don't believe that, so in no sense am I
an atheist. Now you've simply asserted that belief in Odin and Thor and
Zeus and so forth is no more rational or
irrational than belief in classical
theism. That's what this whole debate in
a sense has been about, and to show
that, you would have to refute all of my
arguments. And you're welcome to do that;
I think these arguments are sound
arguments and they're incompatible with
the existence of these deities that you
mentioned, so I'm willing to stand on the
evidence that I presented.
