Is skepticism even rational at this point?

The Christian God has always been defined as timeless, immaterial, and who caused matter into existence. Skeptics continue to claim, however, that there isn’t enough evidence to warrant reasonable belief in the existence of God. With modern science, I believe that denying the inferences to God can only be sustained by playing skeptical games. Let me explain why.

I am reading the currently released English translation of an international bestseller, originally written in French (2021) by Michel-Yves Bollore and Olivier Bonnassies. The research is comprehensive. Their purpose is not to defend a particular religious belief. The authors unpack how in the history of science inferential indicators of God were often discouraged, but not for scientific reasons. In God, the Science, the Evidence: the Dawn of a Revolution, they explained:

“Our ability to accept a claim, scientific or otherwise, depends on more than rational evidence. . . The phenomenon is particularly acute when one broaches the subject of the existence of God, because what is at stake is not just some point of scientific data but the very meaning of our life… For many people, the desire to be free and autonomous … takes precedence over everything else. Their inmost-self recoils from this idea of God: to defend itself, it mobilizes all its intellectual resources to oppose the search for truth and to protect its own perceived independence and freedom.” ^[1]

“This phenomenon” of defending skepticism when challenged by the subject of God was also critiqued by the authors saying, “instead of stimulating thoughtful discussion, the subject often provokes reactions ranging from annoyed indifference to ridicule, contempt, and even violence.”^[2] I am being convinced that a skeptic is suppressing inferential knowledge of God for personal reasons. Furthermore, it’s not difficult to discern how the rhetorical games of skepticism are necessary to keep denials going.

Observed phenomena are available to everyone, and a theist makes inference to God as the best possible explanation by what is measured. If a skeptic were to acknowledge, for example, that our exquisitely fine-tuned planet was perfectly intended to accommodate human habitation and thus a reasonable inference to a designer and not chance, it would be rationally verifiable. Conversely, a denial cannot be verified apart from skeptical rhetoric that the inference is unconvincing. The apparent game carries on with immeasurable speculations by insisting that a future explanation could arise, which sounds like anything but God rhetoric.

I am not suggesting that skeptics are deliberately lying, but it seems that modern science is introducing a serious conversation about God and skepticism is desperately resorting to playing games. This game has incentives, however. The French researchers observed that skepticism “mobilizes all its intellectual resources to oppose the search for truth and to protect its own perceived independence and freedom.”^[3] Accordingly, I believe that theism and, in particular, Christian faith are “perceived” as a threat to the skeptic’s “independence and freedom.”

C. S. Lewis once commented that, “The real trouble about fallen man is not the strength of his pleasures but the weakness of his reason.”^[4] Humankind has tasted sin, and reasons that Christian faith isn’t as exciting. So any offer to discover “the way, the truth, and the life” is avoided because it implies the end of doing whatever pleases. Nevertheless, the message of sin and God’s grace has persisted for two thousand years and will never go away. Jesus said prophetically, “my words will not pass away” (Matt. 24:35). In our times, the conversation is becoming unavoidable. Online influencers are making a career of playing games with the Good News in order to escape the haunting accountability.

Yet skepticism cannot even qualify itself. Even if it were to state exactly what it expects of Christian faith in order to be convinced, this necessary condition can never result in a conclusion that will satisfy a skeptic. To illustrate, let’s suppose one expects pertinent particulars of the Resurrection event to be placed under a microscope and confirming data to emerge. Even if that were to somehow happen, a skeptic could remain unsatisfied by insisting that future information may arise and nullify the results. Pathetically, skeptical games even opt for philosophical inconsistency to support its unshakable and pre-determined commitment to avoid the rule of God. The “not enough evidence” rhetoric has become part of a necessary game.

Nonetheless, countless skeptics have genuinely accepted the Christian faith. A skeptic reading this would say that Christians have also reneged. The difference, though, is that a skeptic has transitioned into a newly discovered worldview of grace that was previously unknown, whereas a believer reverts back to past behavior and embraces already known skeptical thinking. There is no special discovery in a believer’s turncoat. So, a skeptic accepts Christ and has the glorious eureka experience, but a recanting believer returns sadly to the same old. It’s also a real conviction of mind and heart for the repentant skeptic, whereas a believer’s reversal was likely based on being influenced by skeptical games.

Christians should continue to encourage the conversation, while being cognizant of skepticism’s proclivity to play rhetorical games. Even so, trolling, ridiculing, and scoffing rhetoric should be ignored outright as it betrays a lack of intellectual rigor. Proponents of the Christian faith often ask skeptics, “If you somehow knew that it was true, would you become a Christian?” This question is raging as modern science is making materialism irrational, and demanding a serious answer. After all, “The Lord is not … wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance”(2 Pet. 3:9).

1.  Rebecca M. West and Christine Elizabeth Jones, trans. (Palomar: Luxembourg, 2025), 29-30.
2. Ibid., 30.
3. Ibid.
4. Wayne Martindale & Jerry Root, eds. The Quotable Lewis (Tyndale House: Wheaton, 1990), 212.