Last week, someone left a comment on one of my posts from a few years ago about Richard Dawkins that I should talk to Alex O’Connor. It was meant as a compliment. This person was impressed with my comments about Richard Dawkins, so he was basically saying he’d like to see me interact with the social media atheist celebrity Alex O’Connor. I am only vaguely familiar with him. I’ve occasionally seen snippets of him interviewing various people, and quite frankly, get bored within 5-10 minutes. In any case, I replied that I’m really a nobody and I doubt he’d care to interview me anyway.
Immediately, another person one who has trolled my blogs for years) jumped on the thread and said O’Connor would wipe the floor with me. Well, it got me interested in O’Connor. And so, I went on Youtube and found a video entitled, “Alex O’Connor’s 23-Minute Takedown of Christianity: This Speech Will Kill Your Faith.” Well gee, sounds like a doozy! I decided to watch the 23-minute video, takes some notes, and yes, write a blog post about it. Welcome to that blog post.
Who is Alex O’Connor?
Alex O’Connor is a 26-year-old guy from England who started as “Cosmic Skeptic” YouTube channel a few years ago that has gotten extremely popular—it has 1.64 million subscribers. Over the years, he has done many interviews of skeptics and Christians alike, and he has also numerous videos of his many debates of various Christians. Simply put, it seems that in the social media world of skeptics, he’s a rock star. He’s debated/interviewed Ben Shapiro, Dinesh D’Souza, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and many, many others.
He’s certainly not abrasive or offensive, like many of the “online skeptics” are. He comes across as a very proper, sophisticated, thoughtful, respectful Englishman. I though, have always found myself bored with him. Maybe it’s because I am now 55, but I can’t help but think, “26-years-old? He’s a kid!” Think back to when you were 26 and thought you had the entire world figured out. If you’re like me, you look back at your 26-year-old self, probably cringe a little, and say, “I had NO CLUE about anything back then!” And I’m sorry to say it, but O’Connor strikes me as a kid, a very sincere kid, mind you, who is “playing grown-up.”
And when I watched this video that supposedly was going to “kill my faith,” I came away thoroughly unimpressed. All his arguments struck me as just a rehash of so many other shallow arguments from other skeptics before his time. So, let’s dive in.
O’Connor begins his talk with a reference to Psalm 139:7-10: “Where can I go from your spirit? Or where can I flee from your presence? If I ascend to heaven, you are there; if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there. If I take the wings of the morning and settle at the farthest limits of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me fast.” He says that these verses are often used to reassure those who are seeking God that He is, indeed there. The problem, though, is that there are a lot of people (like him) who have been seeking God, but who find instead nothing there.
He then goes on to claim that atheism/naturalism gives a better explanation than religion of three issues: (1) the “divine hiddenness” of God, (2) the geographical predictability of religious belief, and (3) the unjust, gratuitous suffering in the world.
The Problem of Divine Hiddenness
When it comes to the “divine hiddenness” of God, O’Connor tells about his past. He was an altar boy, he got a degree in religion/theology, he has read and studied many, many books about religion and religious experiences, he’s visited many churches, he has talked with and even lived with believers for a time. But, despite all his investigating, all he has gotten is “radio silence.” Psalm 139 might say God can be found everything, but O’Connor says he has found nothing. He has sought God, but he never found God. He is, a “nonresistant non-believer.” Yes, there are “resistant non-believers” who simply have already made up their minds there is no God and will never believe. But O’Connor is a nonresistant non-believer. He’d love to believe, but he simply isn’t convinced God exists. He simply has never “felt the divine presence.” He says, “I have gone above and beyond what can be reasonably expected of any atheist who wishes to entertain the God hypothesis, and for my efforts I’ve been awarded radio silence.”
He then asks, “How can theism account for this [O’Connor’s] lived experience?” Either there is a loving God who is purposely hiding from O’Connor, or there simply is no God.
The Geographical Predictability of Religious Belief
O’Connor then points to the fact that 95% of people in Saudi Arabia are Muslim, while 95% of the people in Thailand are Buddhist. Is God hiding his face from some groups of people, but not others? Therefore, if theism is true, “God has a lot to answer for.” O’Connor is very troubled by the fact that, according to Christianity, one’s place of birth seems to be “a reliable statistical indicator of how likely you are to be saved.” By contrast, according to atheism/naturalism, if religion is an entirely man-made phenomenon, then the idea that different regions have developed their own religions makes complete sense.
The Issue of Unjust, Meaningless, Gratuitous Suffering
O’Connor ends his talk by focusing on suffering in the world. He says that if there can be seen any kind of “meaningless suffering” in the world, that is enough to call God’s existence into question. He acknowledges that one can argue that major, intense suffering can be sometimes found to have a beneficial value for a person and make us into better people. But he doesn’t focus on that. Instead, he points to the common, everyday sort of suffering like stubbing your toe, or being caught out in the rain. Those insignificant “sufferings,” though, mean nothing. They are forgotten in a day or two—they contribute nothing to the development of the soul. Why would God allow a kind of suffering that is of no value, doesn’t mean anything, and is soon forgotten?
Finally, O’Connor mentions animal suffering as well. Animals suffering in the wild. Right now, there is a deer trapped under a tree, suffering and starving. Why would God allow that? But “This is exactly the kind of things we should expect to see if the natural world is an amoral arena of accidentally existing organisms fighting with each other to stay alive.” Indeed, O’Connor says, this kind of suffering is expected in a naturalistic world where humans and animals alike are just developing and evolving.
Is My Faith Destroyed?
Did this 23-minute video destroy my faith? Absolutely not. Not only did it not destroy my faith, I found O’Connor’s three points to be rather shallow, dare I say juvenile.
First, let’s look at the issue of “divine hiddenness.” O’Connor makes a very big deal about how much he has read, studied and investigated the “God hypothesis.” But despite his sincere efforts, he has only been met with nothing, “radio silence.” Therefore, he concludes that since he, a really, really sincere nonresistant nonbelieving 26-year-old Englishman with a YouTube channel cannot find God, that must mean God doesn’t exist. It doesn’t matter if 95% of the world’s population is convinced of God’s existence; it doesn’t matter that there are millions and millions of people who do, in fact, feel God’s presence—O’Connor own, subject opinion trumps all of that.
Objectively-speaking, that is simply a horrible argument. It’s not even an argument. It boils down to, “No, I don’t think so, because…just because.” If anything, the fact that almost every society in human history, and the overwhelming majority of human beings, does have, in fact, some form of belief in God/the gods—something that is not shared with any other organic species in the natural world—carries more weight than the “lived experience” of one man. That isn’t to say that alone is “proof” of God’s existence, but if O’Connor is going to base his conclusion on his own, subject “lived experience,” then the “lived experience” of billions and billions of people throughout human history carry more weight.
Second, let’s look at O’Connor’s claims about geography and religious belief. Again, I find it to be very shallow. Of course, geography will often determine what religion/religious tradition one grows up in and probably accepts. But his claim that, according to Christianity, geography is a statistical indicator of whether or not one will be saved, is (there’s no other way to say it) incredibly stupid and ignorant. There is nothing the Bible that says that.
If anything, Paul, when talking about his fellow Jews, says that election was never based geography or race, but it had always been based on faith. Most of his fellow Jews, even if they were Torah-observant, were not saved because they weren’t doing it out of faith. A remnant of Israel was part of the “Israel of God,” but that “Israel of God” consisted of those from among both Jews and Gentiles who responded to God through faith. I’m also reminded of what C.S. Lewis said in Mere Christianity, namely that even though we know that it is through Christ that people are saved, but nowhere in the Bible does it say only those who’ve heard of Christ can be saved. Christians believe that who respond to God in faith, given the amount of revelation they have received, will be saved. Based on their faith, Christ’s work will be applied to them, and they will be saved. This points to something that goes beyond mere organized religion. The outward show of any religion means nothing if it is not accompanied by faith.
Finally, O’Connor’s claim that stubbing your toe or being caught in the rain is somehow proof that God doesn’t exist is just odd…beyond odd. It’s nonsensical. Note what lays at the root of this argument. O’Connor really is saying, “If God exists, then human beings should not experience any minor discomfort or inconvenience in life. Therefore, since we do, God must not exist.” The only way for that argument to work in any sphere of argumentation is to root it in a denial of reality itself. “If there is a God, then reality shouldn’t be the way reality is, because I imagine that if there is a God, then reality wouldn’t be the way it is.”
That isn’t a logical argument. That is a hamster wheel of circular illogic.
What I am Forced to Conclude
For years, I read books by Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, and numerous other “new atheists” who made a whole range of arguments against the existence of God. They all seemed petty, shallow, and juvenile arguments wrapped up in a whole lot of arrogance and self-righteous certainty on the part of theses authors. They were obnoxious as they were certain of their moral superiority of those idiotic Christians. O’Connor doesn’t come across as obnoxious at all. Nevertheless, it’s the same kind of shallow argumentation.
Now, when I wrote my book analyses of those books by those atheists, I tried to keep my criticisms and critiques on the level of focusing on the evidence and logical reasoning. Over and over again, I concluded that not only did their arguments logically fell apart, but these men displayed a shockingly ignorant understanding of both the Christian faith and the Bible. They were, in fact, basing their shallow arguments on cartoonish caricatures.
But I left it at that. I purposely veered away from saying things like, “The reason he is an atheist is because he really is in rebellion against God.” But now that I’m a bit older, although I wouldn’t say it that way, I find myself not being able to get away from a conclusion like that. I’m sorry, but many of the “new atheists” and “skeptics” who make a living out of their skepticism on their social media sites do seem, at bottom, not to be as “sincere” as they like to claim.
O’Connor might say he is a “nonresistant nonbeliever,” but something just feels off to me. Now, I’m sure as soon as I say that, some nonbelieving skeptic will jump down my throat and say something like, “How can you say that? How can you doubt that he’s being sincere? He just honestly doesn’t believe! How dare you question his sincerity!”
But I’m sorry, all these skeptical, atheistic arguments against God’s existence seem to be to be like a fish denying the reality of the dry world outside of the pond. The fish says, “I won’t believe in that existence unless you can show it to me here in this water of this pond.”
“But every time you popped up to the surface for air, you are breathing in part of the reality of that world.”
“No. My breathing system and that oxygen on the surface of the pond is just evolutionary development to help us fish live in this water, along with my gills…that’s all. There’s nothing beyond that surface.”
“But in this natural, evolutionary development, there have been water-creatures who have evolved into land-animals and are now living in that dry world above the surface.”
“No, I can’t see it from where I am swimming in this pond. It doesn’t exist. I’m really being sincere in my conviction that unless you can prove to me the existence of an outer dry world here within the wetness of this pond, I will not believe in the existence of that dry world. I have to be convinced on my terms and conditions.”
And that, I believe, is the heart of the problem for so many. They will only “believe” if God fits what they want God and this world to be like. They will only believe in God if it is on their own terms and according to their particular presuppositions about reality. And yes, that equally applies to anyone in any religion, including Christianity. Even if you grow up in a Christian culture, unless you go beyond the simplistic ceremonies and outward religious actions of that Christian culture—unless you really step out in faith and seek God beyond your borderlands of comfort and self-assurance—unless you, like Abraham, “leave your land” and journey to a land that God will show you, you’ll never step out in faith.
And so, I’m sorry, but I don’t think O’Connor is quite as “sincere” as he presents himself to be. Again, he comes across as a very nice, pleasant guy, but he’s made quite a good living rehashing tired, old skeptical arguments that never go beyond cheap caricatures and emotional, subjective appeals. He’s gotten to meet quite a lot of famous people and has gotten a lot of notoriety himself. I don’t want to sound mean, but it’s what I have to conclude. You can read and study all you want about God in Haran, but unless you venture out into the wilderness, you won’t find Him. Sure, you’ll hear the invitation, but you won’t venture out into the wilderness, because, you know, “There’s nothing really there.”
Do you, Gary, and Lee still have your round table sessions down here?
It’s probably fair to suggest that the video title was not O’Conner’s idea and it is somewhat hyperbolic.
Convincing an indoctrinated Christian their beliefs are nonsense and not based on evidence is unlikely to have such people deconvert ing in droves.
As one who believes in the bodily resurrection of the Bible character Jesus of Nazareth you should understand this more than most.
And consider your Heresy of Ham: I wonder how many thousands contacted you expressing their heartfelt appreciation for showing them how much of a disingenious arse is Ken Ham?
From my understanding religious deconversion is not usually a single lightbulb moment and immediately throwing in the towel.
Furthermore, as apologists have yet to present any new arguments to defend their faith O’Conner is merely offering his own take on dismantling them, which he does rather well, especially when one considers the best Christian Apologetics has to offer is the likes of Turek, Craig and Strobel.
Probably best to regard O’Conner as the New Kid on the block.
And if the likes of Hitchens and Harris didn’t / don’t move the needle for you then O’Conner probably won’t either.
This is not to say his take is not worthy of consideration or his facts are not on point but rather the beliefs he is countering are so ingrained that they are currently immune to evidence and reason.
That said, my initial observation regarding the likely outcome of you and he having a debate/discussion still stands.
After all, he showed up William Lane Craig for the despicable person he truly is and hardly broke sweat.
😊
His arguments were not good, by any stretch of the imagination. If you think his arguments in this video are good, then perhaps you are the indoctrinated one.
Me indoctrinated?
As I am an atheist THAT remark is very funny!
Atheists can delude themselves into indoctrinated thinking, just like anyone else. And if you think O’Connor’s arguments are convincing, that is telling. They’re not good arguments.
And what exactly do you consider I am indoctrinated with?
The rehashed atheist/skeptic “arguments” that are prevalent in those circles nowadays. Even if I was an atheist, I would admit that O’Connor’s arguments in this video are pretty shallow and unconvincing. It’s the same thing with, let’s say, Ken Ham. Only indoctrinated YECists think his arguments for a young earth are good. No clear-thinking, objective person will think either Ham’s or O’Connor’s arguments are that convincing.
But this is not what indoctrination means.
To clarify: You accept the resurrection and all that this encompasses because you consider you are a sinner etc etc.
This belief is based on zero evidence but you accept it as fact. Now that is the definition of indoctrination.
No, I believe in the resurrection because of a number of things, one of which is I find the NT accounts to be historically reliable. I don’t blindly believe in the resurrection. I am historically, logically convinced that what the NT is claiming really happened in history.
But belief is personal and your belief is certainly not based on evidence.
Belief in anything involves more than just personal bias. Your belief in anything is going to be based on your experiences and actual things that happen in the real world. I believe Jesus rose from the dead because, based on the textual evidence of the New Testament, I find it to be a trustworthy witness to history. And, being a human being, I believe God communicates and influences through things like my conscience.
Thus what I “believe/feel inside” correlates and corroborates what I study and investigate on the “outside” (i.e. historical evidence).
“I believe Jesus rose from the dead because, based on the textual evidence of the New Testament, I find it to be a trustworthy witness to history.”
The Biblical claims of the resurrection are not supported by evidence and I suspect the reason for your acceptance of the claim are largely emotional/cultural.
Agreed. But she is no lightweight and her perspective is a scholarly approach which is definitely food for thought.
Maybe, but I’m never going to pay $100 for a book! haha
The are a few videos online that you may find engaging.
The letters are fiction.
This is a short excerpt of his debate with DeSouza…
https://youtu.be/96BFlNajMDc?si=mHSXk5X4CKQ5nP2I
On a different but not completely unrelated note, have you ever read/reviewed Nina Livesey’s (current) book on Paul?
Nope, I haven’t heard of her.
She makes a very plausible case for the fictive nature of all Paul’s letters.
What do you mean by “fictive nature”?
It seems that just about any argument a person has for the non-existence of God you label as juvenile or illogical. So, I was wondering if you could give us an example of a mature, logical argument for the non-existence of God. Or, is the idea of God not existing so “inconceivable” (must be spoken as Vizzini would) that no such argument exists?
I say that in regard to the logical coherence of the argument. If someone says, “Based on my subjective ‘lived experience,’ I’ve never ‘felt’ God, therefore God doesn’t exist,'” that is simply a really bad argument. It would get an “F” in a debate or rhetoric class.
And yes, i do find most arguments to be illogical, and many of them are juvenile and based on caricatures of the Christian faith.
The fundamental problem with all of them is that they are treating God as a “thing” to be scientifically proven. The very calling it “the God hypothesis” is weird to me.
And when it comes to something like morality as being an indicator of God, skeptics trot out “oh, that’s a product of evolution.” The problem with that is evolution is, by definition, about biological changes, not non-material things. The argument is a twisting of what evolution is.
Ultimately, I’ve never come across a good argument for the non-existence of God. I understand feelings of uncertainty and doubt…we all of that. But that should lead to humility and more of a sense of wonder in that humility. But to confidently go around, declaring there is no God and making objectively poor arguments strikes me as hubris. It is a denial of a central part of one’s humanity.
All that said, I dont think there is a mature, logical argument for God’s non-existence. I’ve never come across one.
To convincingly argue for God’s non-existence, you’d have to argue for the meaninglessness of everything. If humans didn’t exist, and all we had was the natural world and all other forms of life, then yes, it would just seem to be random, evolutionary, organic, carbon-based life forms. There would be no actual MEANING to anything.
But that is not what we find. We have us–human beings–who make arguments, look for meaning, have a sense of morality, etc. We are wholly unique. And the act of making a meaningful argument for the meaninglessness of life is, in and of itself, a reputation of the notion that everything is meaningless.
Simply put, the very existence of human beings is an argument FOR God’s existence.
I’ve rambled enough. Lol
“Simply put, the very existence of human beings is an argument FOR God’s existence.”
Really? And the evidence for this is….?
The evidence is…human beings and their ability to contemplate beauty, art, music, law, morality, etc. etc. That is completely unlike anything else in the natural world. None of those things are apparent anywhere else. You don’t have cheetahs debating the morality of hunting antelope. You don’t have monkeys crafting symphonies or writing novels. There is something wholly unique about human beings, namely their consciousness and awareness of things beyond the natural world and mere material existence.
Unique we may well be but this is not an argument for your god, Yahweh.
It is an argument for the existence of a greater being with whom human beings have a connection with in some way. Once you acknowledge that–that there might really be a God–that is where you then look at what the different religions say, and then you reason out which one makes more sense.
No, it isn’t an argument for a greater being at all.
To assert this requires evidence of which you have absolutely zero.
I think we need to be cautious about ascribing these particular qualities to humans only. The more we observe the natural world, the more we find similar forms of behaviour in other animals. Perhaps not to the extent of humans, but they do exist such that its a matter of degree. Written language was the major innovation of humanity. A recent quote I heard: “humans are rare, not special.”
The letters are fiction.
Not addressed to a genuine addressee.
That is certainly NOT a consensus view of NT scholars. Such a claim actually flies in the face of that accepted consensus.
https://lutherwasnotbornagaincom.wordpress.com/2025/09/07/the-great-inconsistency-in-conservative-christian-apologetics/
Have you looked into Graham Oppy’s arguments against God at all? Even the big Christian philosophers like Craig and Ed Feser say he’s probably the most formidable proponent of atheism alive today.
And the reason I said you should talk to O’Connor on that other post wasn’t because I thought you should debate him or anything, I just thought you might find it refreshing to talk to an atheist who is open to polite discussion, as opposed to the cringey New Atheists and some of the characters in your comment sections here.
A well-written article. You have a way of using just the right words to describe things that I’ve been thinking about but sometimes struggle to articulate.
One question, the clips in that video look reasonably old (though the video itself is recent). Have you watched any of Alex O’Connor’s newer stuff? He almost sounds like a Christian himself these days sometimes.
I haven’t seen any of his newer stuff. Like I believe i said in the article, I’ve never followed him to begin with. I just happened to see that particular video and commented on it.
That’s fine. I only mentioned it to say that he has changed a lot over the last couple of years. I would recommend, if you’re interested of course, checking out an interview he did with John Lennox a few months ago.
He’s on a journey.
Hi There,
I have a question for you if you have time, but wanted to give brief background for context.
I spent most of my life as a very militant(angry) progressive athiest, although after 35 years of researching, “what are the roots of human violence” I am now fairly conservative and on the fence about God. IF he does exist, I’m certain Christianity is the only religion that could be true but I’m not sure he exists.
So having said that, with regards to alex’s comments on not finding God, I feel the same way as him and am a bit confused by your comments. What do you mean by this:
“You can read and study all you want about God in Haran, but unless you venture out into the wilderness, you won’t find Him. Sure, you’ll hear the invitation, but you won’t venture out into the wilderness, because, you know, “There’s nothing really there.””
I understand where he is coming from, I’ve tried to look at the evidence and continue to learn, but I simply don’t have any belief at all. I can’t convince myself, I don’t feel or experience any connection.
But perhaps I don’t understand what you are all talking about when you talk about Faith, maybe I’m completely missing the point.
I would have expected to “feel” something, or have some kind of epiphany, encounter, something…anything. But nope, nothing.
What other approach can one take “other” than to keep reading and studying until some new understanding might appear? What do you mean by venturing out?
The fact that the bible doesn’t say that geography is a reliable statistical source, doesn’t mean that it isn’t. It just is. There is no going around that. It is a fact, wether the bible says it or not. You can just say that it is based on faith and not geography, but if you were born in Thailand, you would have been a buddhist and thus an atheist with high probability. why is it that these people are so less likely to be saved? It seems incredibly unfair for a loving and just god who wants everyone to know him. And the same goes for other countries. Also, no one is born religious, everyone is born atheist. It is from the moment that parents start indoctrinating their children that that gets changed. If this wouldn’t happen, everyone would be atheist, as is the default position, because there is no sufficient proof for a god.
On the other hand, the fact that he “rehashes” these arguments, is just because there hasn’t been any good, evidence based answers to religion’s problems raised by atheists.
you also say that “It doesn’t matter if 95% of the world’s population is convinced of God’s existence” on the problem of divine hiddenness. My first answer to this would be that all these people believe in so many different gods. One of them is right or none of them are right, they cannot all be right. This 95%, which is actually closer to 85% of the world population, is not unified in something. You cannot use this as an argument because you undermine yourself. They all claim that they have felt, seen or heard god, but they all give a different name to that god. This is why it is unbelievable to people who haven’t expierenced it themself. You can say you feel the presence of jesus or something like that, but someone in the middle east will say it is Allah.
Also, it doesn’t matter how many people believe in something for it to be true. there was a time where everyone on earth believed the earth was flat and the sun circled around the earth, but we found out that that is just not the case. Religion is taken down step by step through scientific evidence. It tries to find new things to hold on to en tries to fit it inside of the religion by reinterpreting scripture or saying that it is metaphor, although in earlier times, these scriptures were taken literally.
So it matters how many people believe something and why they believe it…or it doesn’t…depending on if you can use the situation to cast doubt on Christianity. Got it.
I would suggest sticking to reddit and not trying to critique actual scholars, since Joel has addressed every silly part of your comment in other posts, if you bother to look.
Your comment raises a cluster of important issues—religious geography, divine hiddenness, religious disagreement, indoctrination, and the relationship between science and religion. These deserve careful treatment rather than slogans on either side.
1. Geography, birth, and salvation
It is certainly true that religious affiliation correlates strongly with geography. Christian philosophers and theologians do not deny this; in fact, it is one of the most discussed issues in contemporary philosophy of religion. But acknowledging correlation is not the same as granting your conclusion.
First, Christianity has never taught that salvation depends merely on accidental birthplace or exposure to a specific label. From Paul (Romans 2) to Aquinas to Vatican II to modern Protestant theologians, there is a long-standing distinction between:
General revelation (God known through conscience, reason, and creation)
Special revelation (God known through Scripture and Christ)
The New Testament explicitly affirms that God judges people according to the light they have, not the light they lack (Luke 12:48; Romans 2:14–16). This directly undercuts the claim that a Thai Buddhist is automatically “less likely to be saved” due to geography in a morally arbitrary way.
Second, your argument assumes a zero-sum model of salvation—as if God either saves only those with optimal historical luck or is unjust. Classical Christian theology rejects this framing. The question is not “Were you born in the right country?” but “How do you respond to truth, goodness, and grace as it confronts you?” That response may take culturally different forms without implying divine unfairness.
2. “Everyone is born atheist”
This is a definitional sleight of hand. Infants are not atheists in any meaningful philosophical sense; they are pre-theistic. They lack developed beliefs about nearly everything—morality, mathematics, personal identity, or science. Calling this “atheism” empties the term of content.
More importantly, cognitive science cuts against your claim. Research in developmental psychology (e.g., Justin Barrett, Paul Bloom) consistently shows that humans have natural dispositions toward:
Teleological reasoning (seeing purpose)
Agent detection
Moral realism
These tendencies do not prove God—but they do show that atheism is not the default cognitive position in the way you claim. Atheism, like theism, is a reflective position arrived at through interpretation, not a neutral baseline free of assumptions.
3. Indoctrination cuts both ways
The “indoctrination” argument is symmetrical. Children are also inducted into:
Naturalism
Scientism
Moral relativism
Political ideologies
No worldview is transmitted in a vacuum. The question is not whether formation occurs, but whether the beliefs formed are true and justified. Calling religious formation “indoctrination” while treating secular formation as neutral is question-begging.
4. Divine hiddenness and religious disagreement
You are correct that religious believers are divided, and no serious Christian denies this. But disagreement alone does not imply nonexistence. Philosophers recognize this as a weak inference.
There is deep disagreement in:
Ethics
Metaphysics
Political theory
Even the interpretation of scientific data
Yet we do not conclude that morality, reality, or the external world do not exist.
Moreover, Christianity does not claim that all religious experiences are equally veridical. The Christian claim is that God has acted decisively in a public, historical way—in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth—precisely to anchor faith in history rather than subjective feeling alone (1 Corinthians 15).
The fact that Muslims call God “Allah” does not undermine Christianity. “Allah” simply means “God,” and the disagreement is about who God is and how He has acted, not whether people are reporting random, unrelated experiences.
5. Popular belief is not the argument
You are right that truth is not determined by majority vote. Christian apologists who cite widespread belief are not making a proof, but a contextual point against the claim that God is utterly hidden or inaccessible.
The flat-earth analogy fails because:
Ancient people did not universally believe the earth was flat (that is a modern myth)
Scientific models were revised because of new explanatory power, not because religion was “taken down step by step”
Christian theology has always distinguished between core doctrinal claims and ancient cosmological assumptions. Reinterpretation is not ad hoc retreat; it is how all serious intellectual traditions survive engagement with new knowledge—including science itself.
6. “No good evidence-based answers”
This assertion is simply false. Whether one finds them persuasive is another matter, but there exists a vast body of rigorous, peer-engaged Christian philosophy addressing precisely these issues—Plantinga on epistemology, Swinburne on probability, Wright on history, Aquinas on metaphysics, and many others.
To say “there are no good answers” usually means “I am not convinced by the answers,” which is a very different claim.
—
Conclusion
Your concerns are understandable, but they rely on several assumptions that Christianity itself does not hold: that salvation is geographically arbitrary, that atheism is a neutral default, that disagreement negates truth, and that religion retreats only out of desperation.
Christian faith, at its best, does not ask people to abandon reason, history, or moral intuition—but to follow them further than reductionism allows.
Disagreement remains—but it is far from the knockdown refutation you suggest.