Tag Archives: Atheism

News

Theist David Wood debates atheist Michael Shermer: Does God Exist?

Leave a comment
Two bears fight it out, and may the best bear win!
Two bears fight it out, and may the best bear win!

Details:

On October 10th, 2016, David Wood (Christian) debated Michael Shermer (Atheist) on the topic “Does God Exist?” The debate was sponsored by Ratio Christi. In the course of the debate, Wood and Shermer discussed the Scientific Revolution, design arguments, cosmological arguments, moral arguments, the problem of evil, skepticism, and methodology.

The video:

The debate starts at 6:30, following introductory remarks. I was ordered to summarize this debate by my good friend Eric, who said this: “I’m a little less than halfway through the David Wood vs Michael Shermer debate, but it’s amazing. If you summarize it you will sound super snarky but you will actually be doing honest reporting.”

I’m only going to summarize the opening speeches which went until 47:40.I linked to the rebuttals and cross-examination below. I did love the debate, and thought that both sides had great speakers who kept to their times, and were on topic and effective. As always with my snarky paraphrase of the atheist, you should listen to the recording to see what was actually said. I try to present their argument with the spin removed.

Wood’s opening speech:

The scientific revolution was started by Christian theists:

  • Science requires three assumptions: 1) that the universe can be understood, 2) that human beings can understand it, 3) that it is good for human beings to understand the universe.
  • Christians produced an explosion of scientific discoveries during the 16th and 17th century
  • In their writings, these Christian theists explained that their scientific investigation was grounded in their Christian worldview, and was seen as a form of worship and learning from God
  • It is easy to do science now that the scientific method is widely accepted, but the challenge was to come up with the method and make the first discoveries – Christians did that
  • Atheism does not ground the assumption that the universe is understandable – it’s an accident
  • Atheism does not ground the assumption that humans could understand the universe – we are just random accidents that don’t have free will and our consciousness is an illusion
  • Atheism does not ground the desire to understand the universe, the earliest scientific discoveries had no practical benefit
  • Theism grounds all 3 of the requirements of the scientific enterprise: the universe is made by a rational mind, human beings are made in the image of God – inheriting free will and rationality, knowledge of God (the highest God) can be obtained from the natural world (the Bible says so in Psalm 19:1 and Romans 1)

The testing of the scientific hypotheses confirmed theism:

  • scientific progress confirmed the origin of the universe out of nothing
  • scientific progress confirmed the fine-tuning of the universe for the existence of complex embodied intelligent life

Atheism doesn’t ground the scientific method:

  • the three elements of the scientific hypothesis, which was birthed by theism, have been confirmed by repeated use of the scientific method
  • the three elements of the scientific hypothesis, which are not grounded in atheism, have been confirmed by repeated use of the scientific method

Shermer’s opening speech: (snarky paraphrase with spin removed)

An atheist about one more God than you:

  • There are lots of different religions, just like there there are many answers to math questions, and so that means that none of them can be true.
  • Just like you, I deny lots of wrong answers to math questions, but I just go one answer further and deny the right answer

Response to David Wood:

  • Well, in most of these European countries, you had to be a Christian or they would burn you at the stake, because it was against the law to be an atheist
  • So, since there were only Christians on the face of the planet in every country since the beginning of time (since that was the law everywhere, at all times, and in all places) then OF COURSE Christians invented science since they were the only ones who ever existed
  • The fact that the earliest scientists credit their Christian worldview for starting them on the path of making scientific discoveries “is irrelevant” (direct quote). “You might as well point to the fact that they are all dog owners. It’s irrelevant.” (direct quote)

Atheism is just a lack of belief in God:

  • Atheism, which has the definition a belief in the non-existence of God, actually means a lack of belief in God
  • I like my made-up definition, because then I don’t have to give any reasons or science to show that atheism is true
  • I just describe my psychological state, not objective reality, and that allows me to not have to defend my worldview

The burden of proof:

  • David has to produce evidence for his view of reality
  • I don’t have to produce evidence for my view of reality

The scientists that David quoted never discovered anything:

  • Those early scientists never discovered anything
  • They believed that thunder was God bowling
  • Newton and Copernicus and Galileo and the other famous scientists just said “I can’t figure it out” and “God did it” (direct quote)

The progress of science shows a natural explanation for everything:

  • The progress of science in the last 50 years has overturned the origin of the universe from nothing, and upheld the eternal universe favored by naturalists
  • The progress of science in the last 50 years has reduced the number of constants and quantities that have to be fine-tuned
  • The progress of science in the last 50 years has reduced the complexity of the origin of life from libraries biological information, molecular machines and miniature factories to simple jello that was formed in a warm pond

Who made God?

  • You can’t explain the origin of space and time and matter by appealing to a cause that is spaceless, eternal and non-material
  • Why can’t the universe be the thing that doesn’t need to be created (i.e. – it is eternal, and did not begin to exist 14.5 billion years ago, as every scientist says)

Why is there evil?

  • On atheism, the universe is an accident, and there is no objective standard of morality
  • Therefore, no atheist can call anything good or evil objectively
  • God allows human evil and natural evil
  • I have looked into the repercussions of evil throughout time and space for every act of apparently gratuitous evil and I can confirm God does not have a morally sufficient reason for allowing human evil and natural evil, and I keep the reasons in my garage at home, but you can’t see them because they are invisible, and they are undetectable by any other means

Christians used to believe in witches

  • Look at me quoting the Bible in the one place it mentions witches!
  • I believe the parts that make Christianity look bad, but not the early creed in 1 Corinthians 15:3-8 which is accepted as eyewitness testimony by the most skeptical atheist historians

You can repent at the last minute and get eternal life, that’s not fair

  • Not sure how an atheist misunderstanding Christian doctrines that can be explained by people who have read C.S. Lewis books is an argument against the existence of God

Christianity celebrates human sacrifice

  • Christians believe in human sacrifice because Jesus had to die for the sins of everyone
  • I’m pro-abortion and think that killing 56 million children is a great thing though

The doctrine of atonement makes no sense

  • How could God the Father accept the death of God the Son as a sacrifice for sin?

The rebuttals

I did not summarize the rebuttals, but I did watch them and link to them at the start of each speech.

My thoughts

First, I was very pleased with David Wood’s performance in this debate. I would have liked more focus on the scientific evidence for the origin of the universe and the fine-tuning, and fewer quotations from scientists in the opening speech. The rebuttals were good. And his performance in the Q&A was worth listening to.

Shermer’s first rebuttal gave me the impression that he was not interested in grasping truth through science, but just pushing away the science of today with speculations about the science fiction of tomorrow – might, maybe, let’s say, etc. He’s not a skeptic, he’s a speculator. Theists go wherever the evidence leads, we decide based on the evidence we have today. His attempt to underwrite objective morality by appealing to feelings wasn’t convincing. In the Q&A, he takes the standard atheist view that the nothing that preceded the universe is really something.

UPDATE: Triablogue reacts to the debate here.

Polemics

Why is the universe so big, and why is so much of it hostile to life?

1 Comment
Chris Kyle, Navy SEAL
Chris Kyle, Navy SEAL, can hit a very small target from a mile away – very improbable

Review: In case you need a refresher on the cosmological and fine-tuning arguments, as presented by a professor of particle physics at Stanford University, then click this link and watch the lecture.

If you already know about the standard arguments for theism from cosmology, then take a look at this post on Uncommon Descent.

Summary:

In my previous post, I highlighted three common atheistic objections to to the cosmological fine-tuning argument. In that post, I made no attempt to answer these objections. My aim was simply to show that the objections were weak and inconclusive.

Let’s go back to the original three objections:

1. If the universe was designed to support life, then why does it have to be so BIG, and why is it nearly everywhere hostile to life? Why are there so many stars, and why are so few orbited by life-bearing planets? (Let’s call this the size problem.)

2. If the universe was designed to support life, then why does it have to be so OLD, and why was it devoid of life throughout most of its history? For instance, why did life on Earth only appear after 70% of the cosmos’s 13.7-billion-year history had already elapsed? And Why did human beings (genus Homo) only appear after 99.98% of the cosmos’s 13.7-billion-year history had already elapsed? (Let’s call this the age problem.)

3. If the universe was designed to support life, then why does Nature have to be so CRUEL? Why did so many animals have to die – and why did so many species of animals have to go extinct (99% is the commonly quoted figure), in order to generate the world as we see it today? What a waste! And what about predation, parasitism, and animals that engage in practices such as serial murder and infant cannibalism? (Let’s call this the death and suffering problem.)

In today’s post, I’m going to try to provide some positive answers to the first two questions: the size problem and the age problem.

Here’s an excerpt for the size argument:

(a) The main reason why the universe is as big as it currently is that in the first place, the universe had to contain sufficient matter to form galaxies and stars, without which life would not have appeared; and in the second place, the density of matter in the cosmos is incredibly fine-tuned, due to the fine-tuning of gravity. To appreciate this point, let’s go back to the earliest time in the history of the cosmos that we can meaningfully talk about: the Planck time, when the universe was 10^-43 seconds old. If the density of matter at the Planck time had differed from the critical density by as little as one part in 10^60, the universe would have either exploded so rapidly that galaxies wouldn’t have formed, or collapsed so quickly that life would never have appeared. In practical terms: if our universe, which contains 10^80 protons and neutrons, had even one more grain of sand in it – or one grain less – we wouldn’t be here.

If you mess with the size of the universe, you screw up the mass density fine-tuning. We need that to have a universe that expands at the right speed in order for the matter to clump together to form galaxies, stars and planets. Too fast, and you get no clumping. Too slow, and the whole thing re-collapses into a hot fireball. You need stars and planets to have a place to form life – a place with liquid water at the surface, and more.

And an excerpt for the age argument:

(a) One reason why we need an old universe is that billions of years were required for Population I stars (such as our sun) to evolve. These stars are more likely to harbor planets such as our Earth, because they contain lots of “metals” (astronomer-speak for elements heavier than helium), produced by the supernovae of the previous generation of Population II stars. According to currently accepted models of Big Bang nucleosynthesis, this whole process was absolutely vital, because the Big Bang doesn’t make enough “metals”, including those necessary for life: carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and so on.

Basically, you need heavy elements to make stars that burn slow and steady, as well as to make PEOPLE! And heavy elements have to be built up slowly through several iterations of the stellar lifecycle, including the right kinds of stellar death: supernovae.

Read the rest! These arguments come up all the time in debates with village atheists like Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins. It’s a smokescreen they put up, but you’ve got to be able to answer it using the scientific evidence we have today. They always want to dismiss God with their personal preferences about what God should or should not do. But the real issue is the design of the cosmological constants that allow life to anywhere. That’s the part that’s designed. And that’s not a matter of personal preference, it’s a matter of mathematics and experimental science.

One last parting shot. If God made the universe have life everywhere, the first thing atheists would say is “See? Life evolves fine by itself without any God!” The only way to recognize a marksman is when he hits a narrow target (not hostile to life) from a wide range of possibilities that have no value (hostile to life). We don’t credit Chris Kyle for hitting the wall above an Islamic terrorist from a mile away, we credit Chris Kyle for hitting an Islamic terrorist a mile away. The design is not how much of the universe is hospitable to life versus how much is hostile to life. The design is in the cosmological constants – where we are in the narrow band that is hospitable to life and not in the huge regions that are hostile to life.

You can read the best explanation of the design argument in this lecture featuring Robin Collins. That link goes to my post which has a summary of the lecture. He has a new lecture that I also blogged about where he extends the fine-tuning argument down to the level of particle physics. I have a summary of that one as well.

Polemics

If you accept Jesus and become a Christian, will God make you happy?

1 Comment
Navy SEAL Matthew "Axe" Axelson
Navy SEAL Matthew “Axe” Axelson

This is a wonderful, wonderful post from Amy Hall, who writes for the Stand to Reason blog.

She writes:

I had a brief interaction with an atheist on Twitter a couple of weeks ago that unexpectedly turned to the issue of suffering when she said:

You clearly never had a time you were hurt. I don’t mean sick. I don’t mean heart broken. I mean literally a near death experience or rape or abusive relationship…. You can keep floating on a [expletive] cloud thinking Jesus will do everything for you but it’s a lie. What makes you so special?

That surprised me at first because it didn’t seem to have anything to do with the tweet she was responding to, and I was confused as to why she would assume I’d never been through anything traumatic. But then in subsequent tweets, when she revealed she had been raped, it became clear that her trauma had played a central role in her becoming an outspoken, obviously angry “antitheist.” She’s a self-described antitheist now because she thinks Christianity teaches Jesus “will do everything for you” to give you a perfect life, and now she knows that’s a lie. The rape proved her understanding of Christianity false.

So it made sense for her to reason that since I believe Christianity is true, I must still be under the delusion that Jesus is making my life special, which means I obviously never encountered any evil or suffering to shake that delusion.

All right, readers. I don’t want any of you to be thinking that if you become a Christian that these things should be expected to happen:

  • you will feel happy all the time
  • you will be able to sense God’s secret plan for your life through your feelings
  • God’s secret plan for your life will automatically work, even though it’s crazy
  • God will give you a perfect spouse and lots of money without you having to do any work
  • you get permission to do things that that make you happy, even if they are expressly forbidden by the Bible
  • you don’t have to do anything that makes you feel bad (e.g. – go to work), because God wants you to be happy

No! Where do people get this idea that if they convert to Christianity, then God will become their cosmic butler?

Amy has the answer: (emphasis mine)

Hear me, everyone: This is a failure of the church.

A friend of mine who was deeply suffering once said to me that many Christians are in for “an epic letdown” when they realize their preconceived notions about what God is expected to do for us are false. Pastors who preach a life-improvement Jesus are leading people down this precarious path to disillusionment.

If suffering disproves your Christianity, you’ve missed Christianity. The Bible is filled with the suffering of those whom God loves. The central event of the Bible is one of suffering. Love involves suffering. “We know love by this, that He laid down His life for us; and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.” That means suffering.

It’s the church. It’s all the singing about happy things and having of happy feelings and happy preaching designed to make us feel good. I would say the comforting devotional reading doesn’t help to make us any tougher or more practical, either. People seem to use Bible study and devotion as a way to artificially create good feelings of happiness, peace and comfort, instead of just doing hard things to serve God. I don’t think it’s a “spiritual” Christian thing to read A. W. Tozer, etc. just so that you can feel comforted and spiritual. That stuff just gives you a false sense of safety about your precarious situation. God’s job is not to prevent you from suffering. In fact, even if you make really smart, practical decisions, you can expect to get creamed anyway.

Please take 15 minutes and read the book of 1 Peter in the New Testament.

Here’s a summary from GotQuestions.org:

Purpose of Writing: 1 Peter is a letter from Peter to the believers who had been dispersed throughout the ancient world and were under intense persecution. If anyone understood persecution, it was Peter. He was beaten, threatened, punished and jailed for preaching the Word of God. He knew what it took to endure without bitterness, without losing hope and in great faith living an obedient, victorious life. This knowledge of living hope in Jesus was the message and Christ’s example was the one to follow.

Brief Summary: Though this time of persecution was desperate, Peter reveals that it was actually a time to rejoice. He says to count it a privilege to suffer for the sake of Christ, as their Savior suffered for them. This letter makes reference to Peter’s personal experiences with Jesus and his sermons from the book of Acts. Peter confirms Satan as the great enemy of every Christian but the assurance of Christ’s future return gives the incentive of hope.

Practical Application: The assurance of eternal life is given to all Christians. One way to identify with Christ is to share in His suffering. To us that would be to endure insults and slurs from those who call us “goodie two shoes” or “holier than thou.” This is so minor compared to what Christ suffered for us on the Cross. Stand up for what you know and believe is right and rejoice when the world and Satan aim to hurt you.

Recently, I blogged about how suffering is compatible with an all-powerful God, so you might want to read that too if you missed it.