Talking to teenagers about atheism

9 talks good dads have with their children

1. "Dad, if everything had a cause, what caused God?"

Everything *contingent* had a cause... But God is the Necessary, Self-Existent Being. He didn't have a cause. The question makes no sense. It's asked by atheists who don't educate themselves.

2. "Dad, why can't the universe just be brute fact?"

The universe is contingent, not necessary, so it can’t be a brute fact. Yes, we know it had a definite beginning in time - that's why atheists resisted the Big Bang. But this is *really* about what sustains it right NOW.

3. "Dad, are the senses the only source of knowledge?"

No, the trustworthiness of your memory is an intuition, and it's the basis of knowledge. You can't prove it without assuming it. And the axioms of maths and necessary truths of morality are ALSO intuitions.

4. "Dad, why can we know things like 2+2=4 is necessarily true in all possible worlds?"

Because your mind isn't reducible to your brain, and it didn't evolve. It's also why you can understand the concept of triangularity even though there are no perfect triangles in the world.

5. "Dad, are experiments the only way we find out truth?"

Yes, in science. But the truth that in science we do experiments wasn't ITSELF established by any experiment. Science always depends on philosophy. And science can't explain why science is possible.

6. "Dad, is matter all that exists?"

No. But even if it was, where did it come from? And why is it ordered how it is? Anyway, not even the properties of matter are matter, and free will means materialism is certainly false. That's why materialists deny it AND deny reason.

7. "Dad, is a religion just a social instinct?"

If so, where did the instinct come from? And why is murder, for example, necessarily wrong? The instinct theory can't explain why there are moral facts that couldn't have been otherwise.

8. "Dad, does evolution mean there's no God?"

No, the Church says you're free to believe in it. But you don't have to. The evidence from the fossil record isn't great. And your mind didn't evolve. Plus why is there a universe ordered in such a way to give rise to life?

9. "Dad, if God is good, why do bad things happen?"

Physical evil turns our minds away from fleeting things so we focus on eternity. It also calls forth heroism. I let you suffer. And moral evil comes from the abuse of free will, but even then God can draw good out of it.