Do the Scriptures Refute the Case for God?
Do the Hebrew Bible and New Testament provide grounds not only for abstaining from believing in God but, further, for affirmatively believing that God does not exist? I think so. The list of moral outrages detailed in the sacred texts is so long that it ought to prompt believers to engage in the intellectual process that Auburn University philosopher Roderick T. Long (adapting John Rawls's phrase) calls "reflective equilibration." This is the procedure (used by Socrates) in which a person who encounters a logical disturbance in his web of belief undertakes to adjust at least one of the constituent beliefs in order to restore equilibrium to the web. Equilibrium, which will likely be temporary because new evidence in empirical matters can always arise, consists in the constituent ideas not conflicting with one another; they need not affirmatively support one another, but they must not conflict. This is "negative coherence," and it seems to be the best way to acq...