I'd like to say a few words about self-refuting atheistic claims.
What is a self-refuting statement? It's one that contradicts itself, and thus, cannot possibly be true. A prime example is the statement, "All claims are false." If all claims are false, then so is the claim that all claims are false. Ergo, the statement is erroneous, and thus, no rational person would believe that all claims are devoid of truth.
Ditto for the statement, "Everything I say is a lie." If every single thing I say is a deliberate deception, then why should you believe me when I claim to never tell the truth? Obviously, that claim refutes itself.
I often say that such statements self-destruct. Greg Koukl of Stand to Reason would say that they "commit suicide." A logician would say that they can be disproven via reduction ad absurdum. Either way, the point is that these claims undermine their own foundations, thereby proving themselves to be false.
Sadly, such claims are rather common in atheist and anti-Christian rhetoric. Who among us has not heard the claim, "Nothing is absolute" (or alternately, "Everything is relative")? If nothing is absolute, then the truth of that statement is not absolute either. In other words, the claim that "nothing is absolute" is not absolutely true. That argument crumbles under the weight of its own self-contradiction.
Here's a more subtle example. What about the statement, "One should never criticize another person's morality"? That statement is itself a moral judgment; after all, there are a great many people whose morality prompts them to make such judgments. Hence, one cannot put forward this tenet without implicitly condemning another person's moral worldview.
What about the statement, "One shouldn't say that another person's beliefs are wrong"? This is merely a subtle rephrasing of the previous claim, and is guilty of the same failing. What if I think it's okay to criticize someone else's beliefs? If you utter the statement in question, are you not saying that my belief is wrong?
In upcoming articles, we shall explore more examples of self-refuting (yet all-too-common) anti-Christian claims.
