Why Do 76% of Students Walk Away From Church During College

A: Will I see you in church tomorrow?
B: No, not really.
A: Why?
B: I don’t see any reason to go.
A: But you’ve been going there for twenty years.
B: I know. But look at it. There are hypocrites there. I don’t see any difference between churchgoers and people who don’t go. Do you?
A: Well, we’ve had good times there. You have friends there.
B: They’re full of rules. I don’t want to hear them anymore. It keeps me from enjoying life. Besides, why do you even believe in God? There’s no proof. None. I bet you don’t even know who made God.
A: I still think it’s a good thing.
B: Seriously, look at all the evil in the world. And the evil in church history. There’s just no proof. It’s like believing in the Easter Bunny. At least the Easter Bunny gives candy.
A: There’s evil everywhere. You can’t blame God.
B: We don’t need God. We’re just matter and brain chemistry. When we die, we die. So I want to enjoy life now. What has God ever done?
A: How do you think you got here? Look around.
B: Things pop into existence. You should read A Universe from Nothing by Lawrence Krauss. Who needs Jesus when a star died for you? Life may have come from aliens anyway.
A: Do you really believe that?
B: Of course. Even Richard Dawkins has talked about that possibility.

The dialogue above is fictional, but it reflects real conversations happening every day. Notice how scattered the objections are. They move quickly from hypocrisy to morality to science to mockery to personal freedom to famous scientists.

Most conversations about God do not follow a careful structure. They are emotional, reactive, and layered with assumptions.

In the brief hypothetical, we encountered:

• The hypocrisy objection
   
• The problem of evil
   
• The “who made God?” question
   
• The claim that there is “no proof.”
   
• Appeals to scientific authority
   
• Naturalistic explanations of origins
  
   

These are not all the same type of objections. Some are moral objections. Some are philosophical. Some are scientific. Some are psychological. Treating them as if they are identical leads to confusion.

When someone says, “There are hypocrites in church,” they are making a moral observation. But hypocrisy does not determine whether Christianity is true or false. A belief is not disproven because all of its followers fail to live consistently.

When someone says, “I just want to enjoy life,” that is not an argument against God. It is a statement about personal desire. Recognizing the difference between emotional frustration and logical argument is essential.

The conversation also references A Universe from Nothing. In that work, Lawrence Krauss discusses how the universe could arise from what physics describes as “nothing.” However, the “nothing” described in modern physics is not nothing.  It involves quantum fields, laws, and lots of energy. When talking about nothing, to me, means what rocks daydream about.

Likewise, citing Richard Dawkins does not automatically settle the debate. Appeals to authority fallacy are not substitutes for argument. Even if a respected scientist holds a view, the reasoning behind the view must still be examined. In this specific case, Dawkin’s tosses out the infinite regression fallacy. The suggestion that life came from aliens merely pushes the question back further. If aliens seeded life here, where did those aliens originate? The ultimate question remains. Dawkins 

The question “Who made God?” assumes that God is a created being. God is a necessary, uncaused being — not one more object inside the universe. If God were made, He would not be God in the classical sense. The question misunderstands the definition before it critiques it. If not for God, nothing else exists.

What we are describing is apologetics. The word comes from the Greek term apologia, meaning a reasoned defense, similar to a legal defense in court. It does not mean apologizing. It means explaining and defending truth claims rationally.

Apologetics is not about winning arguments or embarrassing skeptics. It is about learning to think clearly, recognize assumptions, and respond respectfully. As Scripture says in 1 Peter 3:15, believers are to be ready to give a reason for the hope within them, yet to do so with gentleness and respect. The emphasis is not merely on having answers, but on how those answers are delivered.

Conversations like the one above can create doubt, especially when objections are thrown rapidly and confidently. But confidence is not the same as correctness. Volume and mockery are not arguments.

Careful thinking requires slowing down, defining terms, and examining assumptions and. That is the purpose of this site: to equip readers with the basic tools of deductive and inductive reasoning, to recognize logical fallacies, and to infer a conclusion.

Another professor who is truly gifted at manipulation is Richard Dawkins. He’s a well-known atheist who has made a very comfortable living ridiculing religion—especially Christianity. His latest book, Outgrowing God, is aimed at a younger audience and suggests, ever so insultingly, that they are now “grown up” enough to walk away from superstitions and myths. He confidently proclaims that there is no evidence for God. Professors, of course, base their lives purely on logic and science… right?
Not exactly.

I will give Dawkins credit for one thing: when scientific answers fail him, his imagination steps in like a superhero. Scientists now admit that forming a single-celled organism by chance in 13 billion years is, well, unreasonable. So when mud, crystals, lightning, gases, and all the usual suspects can’t do the job, who swoops in to save the day? Space aliens! Yes—extraterrestrials. According to Dawkins, the distinguished professor turned “Extraterrestrial Detective” (PET Detective), alien engineers are apparently a respectable scientific explanation.

Sure, one might reasonably assume he has mountains of research, advanced equations, and decades of data to support this extraterrestrial hypothesis. After all, he’s a brilliant scientist working at a prestigious university.
 Not exactly.

Our PET Detective confidently claims that ETs seeded life on Earth—conveniently the same ETs who live so far away we can’t see them, can’t detect them, and, fortunately, don’t need to worry about them showing up because they definitely can’t survive the trip. But don’t think too hard about where these super-advanced aliens came from. That’s easy: evolution. The magic word. Evolution did it. Case closed.

Now, I hate to be a “science denier,” but if the universe allegedly hasn’t been around long enough for even a single cell to form naturally, how did ET get such an impressive head start? Again—no problem! Evolution did it faster for them. Somehow, these aliens navigated a slow, blind, unplanned, disorganized process with miraculous speed and then became so intelligent that they turned around and started life on our planet.
Not exactly.

Everyone has blind spots ( a cognitive bias), but some people’s blind spots are practically black holes. Bias, of course, is being partial or unfair in one’s judgment. In Dawkins’s case, the blind-spot bias is severe. And he admits as much. In a conversation with philosopher Peter Boghossian, the PET Detective exposes just how deep the blindness goes.

Boghossian: “What would it take for you to believe in God?”


Dawkins: He explains that even if he heard a booming divine voice or witnessed a Second Coming-style event, the most probable explanation would be a hallucination—or a magic trick by David Copperfield. He claims the supernatural explanation is “incoherent” and suggests that a “non-supernatural Second Coming” could just be… aliens.


Boghossian: “So what would persuade you?”


Dawkins: “Well, I’m starting to think nothing would.”

So the self-proclaimed champion of evidence admits that no amount of evidence would ever convince him. A minor problem for a scientist who claims to “follow the evidence wherever it leads.”

Although Dawkins insists there is no evidence for God, there is far more evidence for God’s existence than for Dawkins’s brilliant alien engineers. Arguments like the Kalam, Leibniz, and Teleological arguments have followed logical rules and been debated for centuries. There’s also historical evidence for the resurrection. Strangely, Dawkins offers no equally rigorous arguments for extraterrestrial masterminds.

But hey—science, righ

How well does our “PET Detective” actually understand logic and logical fallacies? In the video, he accuses Ben Stein of “begging the question.”(That is a type of logical fallacy.) But is that accusation accurate? No, it isn’t. Stein merely asked a question, and asking a question is not the same as committing the fallacy of begging the question.

“Begging the question” is also called a circular argument in which the conclusion is assumed in one of the premises. The professor seems confident in his understanding of the term, but he is entirely mistaken. A simple example of begging the question would be: 

We will discuss logic at another part of this site, but for now, a deductive argument has pieces of information called premises and a conclusion.

Premise 1: God does not exist.

Premis 2: I’ve looked for God and don’t see him.

Conclusion: God does not exist.

The reason this is a fallacy (something that sounds logical) is that the conclusion is also in the premises. Elsewhere on this site, we look at logic and logical fallacies. I give two pieces of information: premises 1 and 2. 

Another problem arises with the claim about aliens and the origin of life: it leads to an infinite regress ( logical fallacy). Richard Dawkins proposes that life began on Earth within a span of a few billion years—a scenario he suggests is unlikely without help. Enter the hypothetical aliens. But this explanation raises a new problem: did those aliens have to go through a slow evolutionary process? If intelligent life can emerge only through a slow evolutionary process, then the aliens themselves would also have to evolve slowly, who in turn would require a slow evolutionary process, and so on. This results in an infinite regress. This is a series of events with no beginning. 

Since PET is well known and a professor at a well-known university, it seems reasonable to believe him, given his position of authority. When we follow his evidence and logic, we surprisingly find he has none.

Another fallacy is an appeal to ignorance (logical fallacy). Can I or anyone else prove aliens wrong? No, so he must be right. 

Biases and logical fallacies can distort anyone’s reasoning. If we cannot recognize them, we leave ourselves open to deception. The purpose of this website is to teach readers how to identify biases and spot fallacious arguments. For a clearer understanding of these fallacies, consult the brief and accessible explanation provided on this site’s logic and reasoning page.