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| Motivated atheism: "We don't want none of that God business here, thankyou very much!" |
Does Humanity Need a God Who Doesn’t Exist? asks fundamentalist theme park supremo Ken Ham in a blog post dated December 2025. After posing the question Ken goes on to say....
KEN: Is God just an evolutionary necessity? I was recently sent an article titled “The God Construct: Why Humanity Needed God Though God Need Not Exist.” The abstract of this “atheistic, scientific-philosophical perspective” applied to the idea of God says:
This article argues that humanity created the concept of God to address deep psychological and social needs, even though no empirical evidence requires a God’s existence. Drawing on the philosophy of religion and cognitive science, we demonstrate that belief in gods arises from evolved cognitive byproducts (e.g., hyperactive agency detection and theory of mind) and existential motives (such as meaning, order, and comfort in the face of death and suffering). From an atheistic, scientific-philosophical perspective, we contend that God is a cultural construct (‘man needs God’) rather than a necessary metaphysical being. Logical analysis (e.g. the problem of evil and ontological arguments) supports God’s non-necessity, while empirically humans with strong God-belief report greater purpose and reduced death anxiety (Cranney 2013). We argue that religion fulfilled survival functions (community cohesion, moral regulation) but did so via God-concepts as symbolic projections. In sum, the God-idea met human needs, not vice versa. This thesis is supported by interdisciplinary evidence from evolutionary psychology, anthropology, and analytic philosophy. [emphasis added]
MY COMMENT: Ironically I don't necessarily disagree with most of that abstract! If for the moment I put on my evolutionary hat (which I don't wear all the time) then I can accept that humans have evolved in such a way that their cognitive, temperamental and emotional needs precipitated an existential crisis which motivated a search for meaning & purpose and ultimately lead to the construction of divinity in various forms; hence the jargon "cultural construct". I would also accept that as far as limited human understanding is concerned God has no known logical necessity.
But, and here is the big "but", an evolutionary account about the human need for the divine can be taken as empirical evidence which can then readily be incorporated into a theistic world view. Viz: From the theistic evolutionists world view it is easy to claim that the evolution of the "God shaped hole", a void which humanity seeks to fill, is God's way of revealing himself to the evolved world.
Ironically, the thesis of the above abstract may not actually be that popular among some motivated atheists. Why? Well, its tantamount to admitting that theism is not some random human foible of relatively recent origin but a deeply ingrained human trait inextricably intertwined with evolution; a product of an emerging conscious cognition capable of self-awareness, self reflection and in need of existentialist assurance.
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I wonder if the author of the abstract really understands the role of evidence? All evidence is subject to interpretation (*1); it is just that some of the simpler and very accessible ontologies (like Hooke's law and chemical precipitates) provide us with prolific empirical evidences at will; the high organization of this empirical data then allows us to embody natural information in succinct algorithms.
As we move from elementary ontologies to more complex and less accessible ontologies, such as human beings themselves, their societies and their histories, their cosmogonies etc. the vexed question of how to interpret sparse and less accessible data comes very much to the fore. And if that is true of commonplace objects (albeit objects which are very complex and of greater epistemic distance) then we would expect it to be even more true, if it exists, of the Transcendent. I discuss this more fully elsewhere: See here for example. Compounding the problem is that evidences for God are often found in private experiences and epiphanies that are not easily shared.
God's apparent lack of logical necessity is true as far as we are concerned but this may be down to a perspective effect of finite cognition and epistemic limitations, limitations which mean we are unable to wrap our minds around a full understanding of God which would unable us to appreciate his logical necessity. This problem even surfaces in atheism...
In my series on conceited blowhard Richard Carrier we found even him accepting that beyond what appears to us as the unnecessary contingency of our own cosmos there are logical truths out there which cannot be done away with. Therefore he argued that the cosmos didn't come from nothing; at the very least certain logical truths hold eternally. He then went on to erroneously use probability theory as if it were one of those logical truisms, thus allowing him to generate universes at random. But while his identification of what is logically true was in error, the idea that the universe is created and upheld by some underlying logical truism is not out of the way.... although I would regard attempts like Anselm's ontological argument and the first cause argument as weak and even invalid proofs of God's existence... but I would accept the underlying motivation to get at the logical truism behind the cosmos.
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Now let's see how Ken reacts...
KEN: In other words, there’s no convincing evidence that God exists; but we needed him, so sometime in our evolutionary past, mankind invented a God or gods to serve our purposes. But do you realize that, in making his argument, this atheistic author has already defeated his very premise? Okay, what do I mean by that?
Well, he admits his research comes from an
atheistic perspective: He believes everything is material and everything
evolved by materialistic (non-supernatural) processes over many millions of
years. In this worldview, there cannot be anything immaterial. And yet he is
applying logic and reason to make his arguments. But logic and reason are not
material! They are immaterial . . . and the immaterial can’t exist in his own
worldview.
MY COMMENT: It is simply not clear to me what is meant by materialism and materialistic processes. In my view such notions are incoherent and it is likely they have their origins in the bogus God vs natural forces dichotomy; they are crypto-deist categories. I've argued against this sham paradigm many times in connection with the North America Intelligent Design (NAID) community (See here). It is no surprise to see that Ken has been influenced by this error.
Material objects, so called, exist because the high organization of our sense data allows us to mathematically define material objects such as stars, planets, people, minds, computers, atoms, and fundamental particles etc. geometrically. Beyond those mathematical constructions we are hard put to it to identify the true nature of the thing-in-itself which supports the high organization of our experience. For Christians of course that thing-in-itself is, whatever its ontological nature, created and sustained by God.
Because of the incoherence of the "material" category, Ken's statement that logic and reason are not material! They are immaterial . . . and the immaterial can’t exist in his own worldview is unintelligible. It is the very organization of the creation which facilitates our notion of logic. Ergo, an atheist too can appreciate logic and reason although atheism would not, of course, attribute the origin of that organization to a rational creator God. For example the atheist Galen Strawson who has no idea where it all came from, as a last resort throws his hands up and declares that the organized cosmos "just is". Well, Christians (such as myself) can't really complain too strongly about that because for us God "just is" as per Hebrews 11:6. Ken, as is his wont, is putting his own ideas into the mouths and minds of his antagonists - a bad habit of his whether his antagonist is a Christian or atheist. (See here and here).
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KEN: In a chance, random universe, laws of logic that apply to everyone everywhere don’t make sense. Why would randomness produce immaterial laws that don’t change? In order to make his argument, this atheist has to borrow from a biblical worldview because it is only the eternal God of the Bible, who is logically consistent, never changes, and can account for laws of logic. He is borrowing from the very worldview (or theism, at least) that he is arguing against! The very fact that he can argue at all shows he is wrong.
MY COMMENT: Defining randomness itself is quite a challenge of logic; randomness certainly doesn't do away with logic; in fact it needs logic to be understood. But I think I get what Ken is trying to say: Randomness is the antithesis of the high organisation which facilitates enunciation of those very successful laws of nature. If that's what Ken really means then its true those laws make the natural world an intelligible place and make logic possible. But beyond those descriptive laws the deeper logical reason for the cosmos remains an enigma, not withstanding Richard Carrier's botched philosophy of probability. As Galen Strawson appears to acknowledge that's where atheism's questions hit an impenetrable barrier.
I'd accept what Ken is trying say in as much a Christianity has played a role in helping us to appreciate the stability, organisation, rationality and consequent knowability of the cosmos. This is the a priori feature which motivates science.
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KEN: We didn’t invent God. God exists outside of time and space. He
created us by the power of his word and then revealed himself to us through his
perfect Word and his Son, Jesus Christ, who came to offer his own life in our
place so we could be forgiven and spend eternity with him.
KEN: And don’t forget, man can’t escape the fact
that “that which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it
evident to them. For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes,
both His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being
understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse” (Romans
1:19–20 LSB).
*1 The view I express here is similar to but not the same as Ken's bigoted presuppositionalism. Human beings most often work abductively, trying to fit the evidence to some a priori world view which successfully interprets that evidence. But unlike Ken's quasi-cult artistry which threatens all but damnation on antagonists, our world views should not be regarded as immutable; if a world view struggles to make sense of the cosmos (such as YEC) then it must be abandoned and a new world view developed. Contrast that with the absurdities of YEC fundamentalism which according to Ken must be held onto on pain of all but excommunication from the faith.
