Questions For Atheists: turnabout isn't an argument, and loaded questions don't prove anything

There is a real fairness point in that objection, and it cuts both ways — which is precisely the argument. If turnabout questions are illegitimate when Christians ask them, they are illegitimate when atheists ask them, and a good deal of the popular atheist case is exactly that kind of question.

1. Questions alone prove nothing, agreed. A question can only locate a disagreement; it cannot settle one. Christians who post a list of questions and call it a case have confused diagnosis with treatment. The command is to "make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you" (1 Peter 3:15) — a reason, not a rhetorical question.

2. Symmetry is fair, and it is not a dodge. Atheists ask Christians hard questions, and they should; the problem of evil and the violence of the Old Testament are not going away. The reverse is equally legitimate. Genuine dialogue is symmetric: if one side's questions count as evidence, so do the other's. What is unfair is treating your own questions as probative and mine as evasive.

3. The burden shifts with the claim. The burden of proof is not zero-sum, and it is not fixed to one team. Whoever asserts owes reasons. "There is no God" is a universal negative and carries a burden; "I see no evidence for God" is a report about the speaker and carries almost none. A lot of atheism slides between those two sentences without noticing.

4. The foundational questions are substantive. Asking how a purely material universe accounts for the laws of logic, the truths of mathematics, or moral obligation is not a trick. These are abstract objects with no mass, location, or causal power, and naturalists have spent decades trying to place them. The question is a real problem in metaphysics, and treating it as a gotcha is a way of avoiding it.

5. The empirical demand proves too much. "Show me empirical evidence for God" assumes that only empirical evidence counts — and that principle is not itself empirically testable. It is a philosophical commitment, held without the kind of evidence it demands of others. That does not make it false. It makes it a starting point, which is exactly what the Christian is accused of having.

6. Turn: your objection uses the method it condemns. "Turnabout isn't an argument" is itself a turnabout, and a good one — which proves the point. The objection only works because symmetric critique is legitimate. So the question is not whether we may ask each other hard questions; it is whether either side can answer them. That is a fair fight, and it is the only kind worth having.

7. Tone is commanded, not optional. "Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt" (Colossians 4:6), and "with gentleness and respect" (1 Peter 3:15). A question asked to humiliate someone is disobedience, whatever its logic. If these questions are ammunition rather than invitations, they have failed as Christian speech before they have failed as argument.

8. Here is the positive case, briefly. The universe had a beginning and therefore a cause (Genesis 1:1); it appears finely tuned for complexity (Psalm 19:1; Romans 1:20); objective moral duties point to a lawgiver; consciousness resists physical reduction; and the resurrection is a historical claim with early, named, checkable testimony. Those are arguments, not questions, and they can be examined one at a time.

Questions are how you find out where the disagreement actually is, and arguments are how you resolve it. A page of questions is a beginning. If it is presented as the ending, the criticism is fair, and the correction is to give the arguments — which is the work the rest of this site is trying to do.

Sources: Gregory Koukl, Tactics; William Lane Craig; R.C. Sproul; Stand to Reason.