Setting the Record Straight: A Reply to John D. Mueller’s Atheism: Pro and Con

In March 2022, John D. Mueller published an essay titled Atheism: Pro and Con at the Ethics & Public Policy Center (EPPC). That piece is framed as a response to version 2 of my draft paper, Do Euthyphro-Style Dilemmas Provide a Decisive Refutation of Theistic Metaethics? (Interested readers may read version 4 of the paper on Academia.edu.) What follows is a clarification of the record and a reply to Mueller’s claims.

1. Context: The History of a 'Discussion' That Never Happened

I uploaded a discussion draft of my paper to Academia.edu, clearly labeled as such and explicitly requesting that it not be cited. Academia.edu notified other users who had expressed an interest in metaethics of the paper and auto-created a "discussion" page linked to it. I recall seeing comments from Mueller and others, but was shocked to discover that Mueller had uploaded his own paper to Academia.edu responding to the discussion draft. Because none of the comments on the discussion page engaged with my essay, I decided to delete the entire discussion page. 

Fast forward to today (09/06/2025). I discovered that Mueller republished his “response” on the EPPC site, but added the misleading heading “Jeffery Lowder’s Final Reply.”  That section links to the now-deleted Academia discussion page, as though it were evidence of my engagement with him. Readers are left with the impression that I replied to Mueller and then retracted my reply.

That never happened. The only “discussion” was Mueller posting his response on Academia and then later on the EPPC website.

For the record:

• I never replied to Mueller on Academia.edu.

• I never posted, and therefore never deleted, any “final reply.”

The only “discussion” was Mueller posting his response on Academia and then later on the EPPC website.

2. The Euthyphro Dilemma: What Mueller Concedes

Early in his essay, Mueller writes:

“But since Lowder wisely does not endorse Plato’s dilemma as uniformly valid, I confine myself…”

That is a concession. My paper surveys a range of theistic metaethical theories — global divine command theory, modified divine command theory, divine nature theory, and others — and assesses the reach of Euthyphro-style dilemmas against them. I explicitly do not claim the dilemma is a universal refutation. Mueller acknowledges this. Which means: in terms of what my paper actually argues, he registers no disagreement.

3. Naturalism vs Theism: My Debate with Frank Turek

Mueller also links to my 2018 opening statement from a debate with Frank Turek. That statement, now available at Secular Frontier, lays out a structured case for naturalism over theism. In it, I defend three contentions:

1. The best explanation is the one with the greatest balance of intrinsic probability (modesty + coherence) and accuracy (evidential fit).

2. Naturalism is intrinsically more probable than theism.

3. Naturalism is a more accurate explanation than theism, supported by seven evidential lines:

• Existence of physical reality

• Success of science without the supernatural

• Biological evolution (BONES: Biogeography, Organs, Natural selection, Embryology, Stratified fossil record)

• The biological role and moral randomness of pain and pleasure

• Mind–brain dependence

• Neurological bases of empathy and apathy

• Nonresistant nonbelief

Mueller engage none of these arguments. Instead, he replaces them with a rhetorical “scoreboard”:

“All you have offered is the unsupported and unsupportable assertion that God cannot exist or create a universe because you say so. Let’s review the score:

Time — Universes
(t = 0) — 0
(t > 0) — 1

The evidence favors Creation.”

This “scoreboard” bears no resemblance to the Bayesian framework or evidential lines I actually argued. To readers unfamiliar with my work, his summary misrepresents my position. My Euthyphro paper does not claim, presuppose, or even suggest that God “cannot” exist. The person making unsupported claims about what “the evidence” shows is Mueller. To say “The evidence favors Creation” without argument is, in effect, to claim that God exists because he says so. 

Because Turek made a similar claim in our debate, here I will simply repeat what I said in rebuttal in that debate:

Turek likes to say: “Atheists think no one created the universe out of nothing, and I don’t have enough faith to believe that.” My reply is simple: I don’t either, which is why I don’t believe that. As physicist Sean Carroll emphasizes, we must distinguish between the Big Bang model (an extraordinarily successful account of the evolution of the universe from very early on) and the Big Bang event (a hypothetical singular moment we know almost nothing about).

Cosmologists can trace the expansion of the universe back to the Planck Era, just after the start of expansion, but what happened at the start of that era remains unknown. Thus, we know that the universe’s expansion had a beginning, but we don’t know whether the universe itself did.

Turek appeals to Einstein’s General Relativity, as if it proved the universe itself had a beginning. But that overstates the case. As Carroll explains:

“The Big Bang [event] is a prediction of general relativity, but singularities where the density is infinitely big are exactly where we expect general relativity to break down—they are outside the theory’s domain of applicability.”

In other words, general relativity describes the universe up to the Planck Era, but not beyond. Using it to infer that the universe itself had a beginning exceeds the theory’s domain.

That is why Mueller’s scoreboard—“at t = 0 there were zero universes, at t > 0 there is one”—doesn’t follow. It assumes precisely what cosmologists caution us against assuming: that the Big Bang event was the absolute beginning of the universe itself.

I have always accepted the data in support of the Big Bang model, but I have never thought it was a "killer" piece of evidence for theism. In fact, I don't think it is evidence for theism at all. I thought that when I was a theist. I thought that when I was an agnostic. And I think that now as an atheist. 

4. The Bigger Problem

In both his response to my Euthyphro paper and his comments on my debate opening, Mueller consistently avoids the arguments. He does not address my taxonomy of theistic metaethics. He does not engage the arbitrariness or triviality problems facing divine-command accounts. He does not interact with the Bayesian framework or the seven evidential lines favoring naturalism. 

This is particularly disappointing coming from a scholar at the Ethics & Public Policy Center, an institution whose mission is to “apply the riches of the Jewish and Christian traditions to contemporary questions of law, culture, and politics.” Surely, a serious application of those “riches” to the philosophical questions I raise would involve more than rhetoric and sidestepped arguments. Instead, Mueller substitutes autobiographical testimony (“I used to be an atheist”) and the unsupported claim that atheism is “untenable.” That may serve as an apologetic appeal, but it does not qualify as a philosophical rebuttal, nor does it fulfill his institution's stated purpose.

5. Conclusion

Serious debate requires engaging with arguments as they are actually presented, not substituting caricatures or rhetorical flourishes. Mueller concedes my main thesis — that Euthyphro-style dilemmas are not universally decisive — and then changes the subject. When he links to my debate statement, he ignores its arguments and portrays me as offering only an “unsupported assertion.”

That is misleading. Readers who want to see my actual case can read it here: Opening Statement from My Debate with Frank Turek.

I welcome substantive engagement, but engagement means addressing the arguments, not ignoring them and not giving the appearance of a back-and-forth exchange that never took place.