"Ridicule Them and Show Contempt"

Twenty Questions Atheists Struggle to Answer

Pete Saunders
 
For my answers to the questions below see the following links:
Questions 1-6
Questions 7-11

For others' answers see here

Earlier this week I was involved, on and off, in a wide-ranging 24 hour twitter conversation which has been storified by Dr John Cosgrove under the title ‘Creation, Evolution and Gosse’.

It covered such matters as the origin of man, the evolution of language, the dating of early civilisations and the historicity of the genealogies and the flood narrative in the book of Genesis.

As is usual most of those involved were atheists who follow me on twitter and regularly mock and ridicule my commitment to Christian faith and values.  Again, as is usual in these discussions, it was primarily atheists asking the questions and me giving answers whilst they tweeted my responses with great delight to their followers with accompanying comments such as ‘facepalm extravanganza’.

On Friday night and Saturday morning I asked in return two questions (2 & 7 in the following list) which thus far none of them has attempted to answer despite posting around sixty responses to me in the intervening period whilst I was off-line.

This, in my experience, is the usual response by atheists nowadays in keeping with Richard Dawkins’ recent call to them not to engage in discussion but rather to ‘ridicule and show contempt’ to Christians and their beliefs.

Anyway, I said yesterday that I would post a list of twenty questions that, in my experience, atheists either won’t or can’t answer. So here is an initial list below. There are many more.

I am not, in posting these, saying that atheists have no answers to them, only that as yet in over forty years of discussion with them I am yet to hear any good ones.

Coherent responses are welcome in the comments column below (See my own responses to questions 1 to 6 and 7 to 11).

Twenty questions atheists struggle to answer

1.What caused the universe to exist?

2.What explains the fine tuning of the universe?

3.Why is the universe rational?

4.How did DNA and amino acids arise?

5.Where did the genetic code come from?

6.How do irreducibly complex enzyme chains evolve?

7.How do we account for the origin of 116 distinct language families?

8.Why did cities suddenly appear all over the world between 3,000 and 1,000BC?

9.How is independent thought possible in a world ruled by chance and necessity?

10.How do we account for self-awareness?

11.How is free will possible in a material universe?

12.How do we account for conscience?

13.On what basis can we make moral judgements?

14.Why does suffering matter?

15.Why do human beings matter?

16.Why care about justice?

17.How do we account for the almost universal belief in the supernatural?

18.How do we know the supernatural does not exist?

19.How can we know if there is conscious existence after death?

20.What accounts for the empty tomb, resurrection appearances and growth of the church?