Marshall Brain wades through several passages in the Bible that have rather interesting forms of marriage–namely, arranged marriages or forced marriages as resulting from a rape–and concludes that God is imaginary. It is a stretch to conclude that God is imaginary just because the Bible contains difficult passages, yet that is the conclusion that this website has jumped to time and time again as they expose Bible difficulties.

It is further a stretch to assume that God approves of every action in the Bible. Much of the time, the Bible is frank about human sin and is explicit about God’s wrath against sin, which means that God most certainly does not approve of every action found in the Bible.

The first example is King David, who has seven wives listed in the Bible. The Bible calls King David a man after God’s own heart, so Brain then assumes that God’s stamp of approval is on the polygamy. King David is called a man after God’s own heart despite the fact that he committed adultery and murdered the husband of his mistress. Those actions were specifically punished, so God does not approve of everything that King David did on this earth.

Now we quote some of the Mosaic Law, which Christians are no longer bound to. Since those things are no longer in force, I will skip to the meat of the argument:

Why do Christians ignore all of these other forms of marriage, which are quite clearly allowed in the Bible? Why do Christians not kill people who break the commandment forbidding adultery as the Bible demands? Because God is imaginary. If God were real, Christians would do what the Bible actually tells them to do.

Christians ignore these forms of marriage because they are part of the Mosaic Law, which is no longer in force. Jesus said that divorce is not allowed, and appealed to the original created order. That is what we do today: appeal to the original created order of marriage–one man, one woman. The Law doesn’t represent the ideal situation, but it does point to the ideal situation.

Christians do not kill people who violate the Law because the penalties are no longer in force. The penalties exist to show how severely God views things like adultery, not as an excuse for us to be vigilantes.

Bottom line: This does nothing to prove that God is imaginary, it only proves that the Bible contains some difficult passages with cultural norms that are no longer in force these days.

Marshall Brain states four marks that someone is a true Christian:

1. They pray quietly (Mt 6:5-8)
2. They live quietly (1 The 4:11-12)
3. They do not have wealth (Mt 6:19-21 and 19:21)
4. They are accompanied by signs and wonders (Mk 16:17-18)

Brain concludes that no minister lives by these, nor is accompanied by the appropriate signs and woders, therefore God is imaginary.

First, Matthew 6:5-8 was discussing praying for show. Earnest prayer, if prayed publicly by a minister, is reasonable to exclude from this proscription.

Second, this passage from 1 Thessolonians was addressed to average Joe Christian, not a pastor. The pastoral letters of 1 Timothy and Titus contain proscriptions for elders and deacons (and pastors by extension).

Next, we’ve touched on the wealth issue before. There is no conflict between accumulating wealth and being a Christian; Christ commands us to not depend upon that wealth.

Finally, those signs and wonders were given only to apostles, not to every Christian. We do not expect Christians, regardless of faith, to be able to drink poison or handle dealdly snakes.

The historical truth of the Resurrection of Jesus is the only thing that is necessary to prove Christianity. The ability of its members to adhere to every letter of the Bible is never part of the truth claims, nor any apologetic that I’m familiar with.

In the first of three bonus “proofs” that God is imaginary, Marshall Brain compares God and the pagan deity Baal using the story found in 1 Kings 18:16-40. The story concludes with Baal being proved imaginary by Elijah and the prophets of Baal being killed.

Brain then concludes the following:

What should we do today when, upon calling on God to show himself, nothing ever happens? As we saw in proof #1 and proof #2, praying to God has absolutely no effect. Asking God to display any sort of supernatural force in public (like, say, lighting a fire) has absolutely no effect. God has absolutely no effect in our world today.

What we should do is exactly what the people in the Bible did with Baal. The lack of any evidence for God’s existence should lead us to the obvious conclusion that God is imaginary, just like Baal is imaginary.

This assumes that God has no effect on the world around us. If one accepts naturalistic materialism, as Brain does, then one would conclude exactly that–God is imaginary. But naturalistic materialism has its own problems, and is not the worldview that most people accept.

God has had a profound effect on the world around us, and those effects are chronicled for us in the Bible.

The apostle Paul has said that men are “without excuse” for not seeing the evidence in favor of God’s existence. That is, the very universe in which we live.

This further assumes that because we know a little bit more than the ancient people about the world around us, that God somehow becomes unnecessary. The ancient people are explicitly called “inhuman barbarians.” The question is this: do we really expect that anything has a supernatural explanation, or does God exercise his sovereignty over natural processes? I would say the latter, and the Bible backs me up:

I am God, and there is none like me, declaring the end from the beginning  and from ancient times things not yet done, saying, ‘My counsel shall stand,  and I will accomplish all my purpose,’ calling a bird of prey from the east, the man of my counsel from a far country. I have spoken, and I will bring it to pass; I have purposed, and I will do it. (Is 46:9-11, emphasis added)

Given these facts, it is unreasonable to conclude that God does not exist based on the fact that we see natural processes at work. We expect to see that, based on Isaiah.

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At a close friend’s wedding, I met her grandfather. He told me that he met God personally, and that God had spared him from an early death in order to tell everyone he met what he saw in that encounter. To meet this man and hear his story, there is no doubt that he is sincere, that he is rational and sane, and that he truly believes that he had an encounter with God.

It is my sincere belief that Marshall Brain would blow this story off as a hallucination, or something similar. Why? Because it contradicts the point of his final proof–that Jesus doesn’t appear to anyone today. This is simply false–Jesus can and does appear to a select few people in each generation.

In the first few chapters of The Purpose Driven Church, pastor Rick Warren emphatically states several times that God “spoke to him.” By reading the story of the early beginnings of Saddleback Church, there is no doubt that Rick Warren was moved by something special to build the largest church in the United States. Rick Warren, like my friend’s grandfather, had a personal encounter with God.

No doubt Marshall Brain would dismiss this as well, even though the story of Saddleback Church’s beginning would have too many coincidences to be anything but divine intervention.

My own wedding came together in less than a month. Most weddings take a year or more to plan. We were able to have the wedding of my wife’s dreams, planned an executed within a month. Now maybe everything that came together did so by coincidence, but that is an awful lot of coincidences. My wife and I began our marriage with a personal encounter with God.

Despite having fertility problems and being ill during ovulation, my wife and I were able to conceive our daughter on the first try. Could this also be a coincidence? Sure, but an awful lot of things had to work in our favor in order for that to be mere coincidence. I believe that it is another personal encounter with God.

Jesus may not physically manifest himself in our presence and speak to us, but he makes himself known in other ways, as I have illustrated above. We encounter him through the circumstances and people in our lives. We see his work through the church.

If a prophet or a dreamer of dreams arises among you and gives you a sign or a wonder, and the sign or wonder that he tells you comes to pass, and if he says, “Let us go after other gods,” which you have not known, “and let us serve them,” you shall not listen to the words of that prophet or that dreamer of dreams. (Deut 13:1-3ff)

First, the prophet must speak consistently with the revealed Word of God, or else the people of God are not to listen to him.  And:

You may say to yourselves, “How can we know when a message has not been spoken by the LORD ?” If what a prophet proclaims in the name of the LORD does not take place or come true, that is a message the LORD has not spoken. That prophet has spoken presumptuously. Do not be afraid of him. (Deut 18:21-22)

Secondly, the prophet’s words must come true.  If it doesn’t come true, the people need not be afraid of that prophet.  The penalty, as prescribed in the Mosaic law, for a prophet who speaks the Lord’s name in vain or speaks in the name of other gods, is death.

I’m not advocating the death of any of the people in the example videos.  As explained elsewhere, we are not under this law anymore–it is written for our instruction.  The death penalty only shows how serious an offense it is to speak the Lord’s name in vain in this way.

Instead, I’m calling for a critical examination of each video, asking if the message in the video is consistent with the revealed Word of God in the Bible.  I think that we can all agree that there is no consistency between the Bible’s message and these videos.  We can also agree that these people are not exemplary of the human race itself.

Instead, let’s look at the people who do meet the criteria of consistency with the Word of God.  By contrast, these folks are reasonable and intelligent people.  They are exemplary of the human race and they serve God with all of their minds and hearts.  People like Billy Graham, Norman Geisler, Lee Strobel, William Lane Craig, and Gary Habermas.  Of course Marshall Brain doesn’t want people to think about examples like that because they hurt his case against God.  But, this isn’t a case against God.  It is a case against crazy people who presume to speak in God’s name.

The advantage of the first option [that there is no creator of the universe] is that it is self-contained. The complexity arose spontaneously. No other explanation is required.

The problem with the second option is that it immediately creates an impossibility. If complexity cannot arise without intelligence, then we immediately must ask, “Who created the intelligent creator?” The creator could not spring into existence if complexity requires intelligence. Therefore, God is impossible.

As I’ve already explained elsewhere, God is eternally self-existent.  There was never a time when He didn’t exist, and so therefore no creator is required.  God is a necessary being, the universe and everything in it is merely contingent to God’s existence.

On the other hand, if you live a selfish life, you gain nothing by living that life when you die.  If God exists, then you will be punished for an eternity in hell.  The unbeliever has everything to lose, while the believer loses nothing.  It is much better to believe in God and live the requisite lifestyle.

Marshal Brain’s refutation of Pascal’s Wager is known as the many gods argument.  It would be valid if all religious claims had equal validity. They do not. There is vastly more evidence for the Christian God than for any other deity that humans supposedly “imagined.”

Brain asserts, “Non-believers, in contrast, live moral and loving lives without having to resort to delusion. Non-believers are normal human beings who embrace reality rather than delusion.”  So far, I agree.  Nonbelievers can live moral and upstanding lives without religion.  Brain continues, “As a result, they live much healthier lives.” Here we disagree. Research shows that believers live healthier than do nonbelievers. Atheism leads to higher rates of suicide and depression.

Brain then goes on:

The fact that there are so many gods proves that all of these gods are imaginary. If there actually were an all-knowing, all-powerful, all-loving “god” in any form, he would be obvious to everyone and we would all align on him. His existence would be undeniable and impossible to hide.

The apostle Paul disagrees with this assertion. In fact, he says the evidence that there is a God is so overwhelming that it leaves men “without excuse” to believe (Rom 1:20). As for God’s behavior, if Brain believes that this is the best way for God to act, then the burden of proof is on him to show why an omnicient, omnipotent being would behave any other way than He already is.

Very true.  As an intelligent person I do see that.  Brain’s own words mean that the killings the Bible describes were just and perfect judgments from God, not episodes of senseless mass murder.

Brain never takes into consideration that all humans are sinners (Rom 3:23) and the wages of sin is death (Rom 6:23).  These unrepentant people that God killed were only getting what they themselves had earned by a lifetime of sin and ignoring God.

In order for this proof to work, Brain would have to show that such mass murder was unwarranted.  He does not.  He only assumes that we will get that picture in our heads.  He also presumes to know more than God, who is omniscient and knows all the outcomes of every possible alternative choice in any given situation.  The burden of proof is on Brain to show that this wasn’t the best option.