Going through my Twitter feed this morning I saw the following retweet via Secular Outpost:
“Atheism does not require certainty. But we can be as certain the Christian god does not exist as Christians are that Thor does not exist.”
I assume that the original tweeter was intending to make a claim like this:
“Evidence for the existence of the god of Christianity is no better than evidence for the existence of Thor.”
Is this intended as a joke? Mere rhetoric? Or is there a serious claim here?
If there is a serious claim here then the tweeter has some work to do. You see, there is a vast literature defending the Christian God written by theologians (e.g. Wolfhart Pannenberg), philosophers (e.g. Richard Swinburne), scientists (e.g. Francis Collins), historians (e.g. Paul Maier) and biblical scholars (e.g. N.T. Wright). If the tweeter wants to defend this tweet as a serious claim, he should provide the evidence for the existence of Thor so the two can be compared.
Until he does that, this tweet isn’t anything more than a bad joke.
Edit: Jeff Lowder of Secular Outpost asked me to add an addendum noting that retweets do not entail endorsements.
