Debate: William Dembski vs. Christopher Hitchens - "Does a good God exist?"

Last week I attended a debate between William Dembski and Christopher Hitchens, hosted by the Biblical Worldview Institute, a conference held by Prestonwood Christian Academy in Plano, Texas. The subject of the debate was "Does a Good God exist?"


William Dembski is a Professor of Philosophy at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, a senior fellow of the Discovery Institute, and has authored several books on Intelligent Design.

Christopher Hitchens is an English-American author and journalist, a public intellectual who has written several books in politics and religious criticism.

The audience was primarily the middle-school and high-school members of the private Christian school, and by itself it is impressive that the administrators would invite a well-known atheist to speak to the students. They certainly wouldn't have allowed the same at the private school I attended as a teenager. The debate was also open to the public for those interested. The comment was made that given the younger audience, the debaters agreed to shorten their statements, although the entire debate was still nearly three hours long.

There are two aspects to the debate I'll address: content and delivery. Debates are unlike essays or speeches, in that they invoke a sense of theater. A debater can have a rock-solid message, but if his performance is lackluster the message falls flat. Conversely, a natural showman can whip a crowd into a frenzy with mere platitudes and buzzwords.

Hitchens had the opening statement, whose content did not address the topic, does a good god exist, but was instead more of a justification for disbelief. He correctly explained that an expanding universe is evidence that this universe was not created for humanity's benefit, and he recommended Francis Collins' book The Language of God as a Christian's embrace of the Theory of Evolution. Hitchens shared that he disbelieves in God because he's opposed to the notion a permanent authority, "a king who cannot be opposed, a judge who can not be appealed." He encouraged the students to shed the ideas that we are the purpose of the universe and that we should be in thrall to a dictator.

Dembski's opening statement was almost entirely an argument against evolution by natural selection. His remarks made it clear that evolution leads to atheism, so his method of proving that God exists is to discount evolution. Dembski mentioned several well-worn statements about Intelligent Design as an alternative to evolution, such as the complexity of the cell and the patterns in nature.

Hitchens' rebuttal noted that atheism is nearly as old as humanity and has thus long preceded evolution. Hitchens wondered out loud why religious organizations are so hostile to scientific discoveries, and he also reminded the audience that millions of Christians around the world accept evolution as God's method of creation.

For Dembski's rebuttal, he agreed that atheism may predate evolution, but it doesn't predate naturalism, which is the larger threat to religion. Finally, Dembski began addressing the topic, the existence of a good God. First he claimed there are two problems we humans confront: a Problem of Evil, in which evil exists in a world managed by a good God, and the Problem of Good, the notion that good exists at all. Dembski asserted that the Problem of Good outweighs the Problem of Evil, but didn't spend much time defining the Problem of Good or why it is a problem at all. He also employed the time-worn argument that for us to declare God evil must mean that God violated a standard, but since God *is* the standard, the charge is incoherent. He also cautioned that our desire for evil to be eradicated *now* doesn't apply to a timeless God. Too bad for us time-bound humans, I suppose.

The debate moved to the Q and A section, where audience members submitted questions for the two speakers. Curiously, the Q and A devolved into a back-and-forth such that only a couple of questions were asked, but the moderator said that several of the questions were addressed during their repartee. However, the questions that the moderator asked also weren't related to the debate, but were questions about evolution or the Big Bang.

All in all, I was a little disappointed in Hitchen's content, although he certainly addressed the debate topic far more than Dembski. While Hitchens may have shortened his statements, I'm not sure he simplified his content for the young teenagers in the room. I've read several of his books and articles and while I can't fault his intelligence and sparkling vocabulary, given his British accent and obscure subject matter, I'm afraid most of his message went right over the heads of the Twitter-texting crowd.

However, Hitchens' performance made up for the obscurity of his message. Looking at him, you couldn't tell he was suffering from Stage 4 esophogus cancer with the exception of his fashionably hairless skull. He seemed strong and alert, and I was glad to see him strong and vigorous. Initially his performance was reserved, but grew more comfortable as the debate wore on, and his closing arguments were worth the price of admission. Dembski made the mistake of extolling the virtues of Mother Teresa (of whom Hitchens has a low opinion of) and by claiming the Nazis were secularists. These seemed to draw the ire of Hitchens, understandably not as comfortable arguing the ins and outs of evolution. Instead, he closed by encouraging the young people in the room to think for themselves and that any offer from God that you can't reject is not an offer but a threat.

However, all of my criticisms of Hitchen's content and performance are swept away in the lackluster display put on by Dembski. For starters, Dembski's comments were read directly from notes, and were about as interesting as you would expect when someone reads a speech at you. Furthermore, the notes appear to have been written for another opponent, namely Richard Dawkins. When arguing against evolution, Dembski quoted Dawkins several times, and even referred to Christopher Hitchens as "Richard . . . Hitchens" more than once. Dembski complained that once he started working with Intelligent Design his career began to suffer because, "Ideology rules the debate." Actually, Dr. Dembski, the reason your scientific career has suffered since you hitched your wagon to ID is because ID is bad science, not because you are a Christian. There are few countries in the world where it is more acceptable to be a Christian, so your martyr's plea falls on deaf ears.

In short, while both debaters' performance could have been more tailor-made for the audience, Hitchens won this debate handily. Dembski's performance was dull, barely addressed the topic, and was riddled with fallacies.

Debate: Is Christianity Rational?

I enjoyed listening to a debate on October 7th, 2010 between Jeremy Beahan (of Reasonable Doubts podcast) and Christian apologist Cliff Knechtle.  The topic was "Is Christianity Rational?"

Overall, I found Beahan's performance to be far superior to Knechtle.  Beahan calmly stated his case without emotional appeals, unlike Knechtle who spoke with the punctuated emphasis like a Baptist preacher, and who appealed to emotion more and more as the debate went on.  Beahan managed his allotted time much better, even ending his remarks before his time was up, whereas Knechtle continually went over time and had to be prodded by the moderator to finish his comments.  But that's about the performance, and one aspect of debates is that they are largely theater and oratory.

As for the content, Knechtle brought nothing new to the table that I haven't heard for decades from the likes of Josh McDowell and (to a lesser degree) Kent Hovind: God exists because we can see Design; Jesus really rose from the dead because we have eyewitness testimony; without God we can't have morality.  These are old, tired arguments that have been debunked countless times, some of them for millennia (ie, Euthyphro's Dilemma, Epicurus' God and Evil.)

Whereas Beahan's content was largely unoriginal, although he can't be blamed for that.  When an old rebuttal works against an old argument, there's little need to update the rebuttal.  In fact, the area where Beahan interjected new material was where he stumbled the most.  In response to Knechtle's Anthropic Principle as evidence that God favors humanity (by positioning Earth in such a choice location in the universe), Beahan responded by noting that the newly discovered planet orbiting Gliese 581 in that star's habitable zone.  Beahan asserted too much about that planet, stating that we know much about it's composition and rotation, when in reality almost nothing is known about the planet.  Beahan argued that with this planet capable of supporting life, therefore the universe is benign to life and the anthropric principle is too solipstic to take seriously.  But we're a long way from knowing much more about distant planets, and there are plenty of candidates in our own solar system for potential life (Mars, Europa, Titan, etc.)

All in all, Beahan handled himself well, did not preach, and did not resort to emotional appeals, compared to Knechtle, whom I found disappointing and irritating.

Free Will in Heaven

I've been involved in a long discusson online with an apologetic Christian. I can't precisely define why I do so--there's almost zero chance that either one of us is going to change our position, and the board is peopled primarily with atheists and agnostics, so I can't even count on planting seeds in lurkers' minds. But I still think it's fun.

Like most online discussions, the topic drifts--nature of the beast. You start off talking about last night's episode of Glee, and before long you've covered the viability of a crewed mission to Mars, Baltic state economics, and why do your fingers feel funny when you break off a nail?

In this case, the apologist--whom I'll call Sam--found himself trapped in a corner defending why God doesn't do more to make absolutely clear that he exists and that we'd better pay close attention to what he has to say to us. Of course, he hauled out that old chestnut, "God doesn't want robots." The idea being, God wants us to love him freely, not under compulsion or because it's patently obvious that he exists. For some reason, our love is worth more if there's a chance that we're just spitting in the wind. There has to be risk, after all, or else it's cheap.

While on the surface that might sound good, I wouldn't want to enter into a human relationship on those terms. I wouldn't want to be standing at the altar, watching my bride come down the aisle, and think to myself, "I wonder if she *really* loves me. This whole thing could be just a setup."

Anyway, back to God not wanting robots. Conceivably, God could make things much easier if he just programmed us to always obey, to love him on faith, and to never commit a sin, but according to Sam, that would be bad. Parents prefer children, not robots, so we have to have the freedom to reject God. Of course, anyone who says that has never seen someone on their hands and knees gently encouraging her roomba to get itself unstuck from under the dining room table.

I then asked Sam a question, which drifted the thread in another direction: "Will believers have free will in Heaven?"

It's a simple yes-or-no question, but oh my the backflips Sam went through to avoid the implications. Here's the situation as I see it:

If the answer is No, future residents will not have free will in Heaven, then conceivably Heaven will remain a sinless existence forever, as we've been promised. But that wouldn't work, because then we would be the very robots that Sam asserts would be so bad here on Earth. You would have a hard time convincing anyone that its bad to be a robot for eighty years, but good to be a robot for eighty trillion years (and counting).

If the answer is Yes, Heaven's citizenry will indeed have free will, then it seems all but certain that Heaven will eventually descend into the sinful hellhole that is Earth. Of course, when I call Earth a sinful hellhole, I am employing the perspective of the evangelical Christian, not my own. Sin is a religious construct created to coerce and control believers. For some, the very existence of say, homosexuals, or rock music, or even hatless women in church is one more sign of the depravity to which this world has fallen simply because some guy and his wife ate a piece of fruit. That doesn't mean that, from my non-religious perspective, there is no injustice in this world, of course. But from the point of view of evangelical conservative creationist Christians, the existence in our world of cancer, thistles, even entropy itself, is all due to one man (Adam) who used his free will to disobey God.

So it stands to reason that, if two free-willed human beings living in Paradise can't keep from mucking things up for everyone, what possible chance will there be that the same thing won't happen with the millions of believers in Heaven? Sooner or later, someone's bound to do their own thing, and if Earth is any example, the rest of Heaven's residents will have to suffer the consequences. Except in Heaven's case, it will be infintely worse, since no one will die, putting their sinfulness to an end. It's one thing to live in a world in which Hitler is able to do his worst; imagine him letting loose forever.

Sam, of course, objected to this line of reasoning mightily. Even though I asked a Yes/No question--"Will believers have free will in Heaven?"--he couldn't just leave it at that. His first loophole was that the reason Adam and Eve used their free will for evil was because Satan was tempting them. Satan won't be in Heaven after the Rapture and Tribulation and all that, so it won't be a problem. Heaven will only be populated by people who have complete free will but never choose evil--they will WANT to be there, and they won't possibly WANT to sin.

Naturally, I had problems with that answer. First off, Genesis doesn't record that it was Satan in the Garden of Eden talking to Eve--it was merely a serpent. A walking, talking serpent. Taking this passage at face value (as evangelicals constantly urge us to do) Satan isn't anywhere on the scene. Christians have deduced that Satan took the form of the serpent in order to mess around with Jehovah's biology experiment. I suppose that's entirely possible when dealing with myth and allegory. But it makes God's curse on the Serpent for sticking his blunt nose where its not wanted a little tepid. Jehovah curses the serpent that he can't walk around anymore but has to crawl on his belly. And that should be a problem for an interdimensional being that can assume the shape of a non-existent animal--how? What happened, the serpent slithered away, then poofed to wherever Satan lives as he's waiting for Armageddon to spin up? You call that a curse?

Anyway, I didn't bring that up to Sam, because that was a side issue--the problems of taking myths literally--and not germane to the discussion. In response to Sam's defense of No Satan, No Sin, I came back with a two-pronged response. First, if Satan tempts others to sin, who tempted Satan to sin? According to the story gleaned out of The Book of Revelations, Ezekiel, but mostly Paradise Lost, Lucifer was the most perfect angel living in Heaven before God created the universe. Lucifer decided after who knows how long that he's tired of being number two, and so he convinces one-third of all the angels in Heaven to rebel against God. This results in a war in Heaven, which Lucifer naturally loses. He and his army are tossed out of Heaven; Lucifer takes on the name of Satan, the angels become demons, and they plan their next escapade to be launched from--well, wherever it is that's not Heaven and not Earth. I suppose it could be Hell, but it can't be all that bad if Satan is then free to play dice with God over the fate of Job, and to have philisophical discussions with Jesus in the wilderness. At any rate, Lucifer was a free-willed angel with no Satan around to tempt him to choose evil, and yet he chose evil. So why won't future Heaven residents do the same?

The second prong of my response to Sam's explanation of Satan, is that if all it takes to make a paradise with free-willed humans living in perfect harmony and no sin is for Satan to be removed from the picture, then why didn't God remove Satan from the Garden of Eden? Why did God allow Satan access in the form of a walking serpent or whatever in the first place? Already in history (and given the mythology, I use 'history' in the loosest sense of the word) we've had two scenarios in which perfect beings with free will chose to commit sin, so what's to keep the same thing from happening in the future?

In a nutshell, what can God do in Heaven that he can't do on Earth? If there really is some third answer to my Yes/No question, if there really is some way that God can set things up so that people can be not robots, and can have the ability to choose evil but never ever ever do so, then why didn't God just create that situation to begin with? Why did God make Earth, let humans muck it up with sin, kill himself so that a select few can end up in Heaven where everything is perfect forever, when he could have skipped several painful steps and just created people in Heaven?  That way, no one has to die, and even more importantly no one has to live in Hell forever because they didn't or wouldn't love an invisible God without hesitation. Wouldn't that have been the wiser choice, the more compassionate option, the more humane decision?

Those who stump for Heaven strike me as retirement village salespeople. They have a brochure that spells out how wonderful the amenities of your future retirement home will be, how you'll never want for anything, how you'll earn your life's reward wrapped in luxury and comfort. All you have to do is start making payments toward your future condo today, and keep making payments every month and every year until you retire. But no, you can't visit the village yet--only retirees are allowed inside the gated community. And you'll find no shortage of glowing endorsements from people who are already in the process of making their payments about how much they are looking forward to their future life of ease, but frustratingly, no one has ever seemed to be able to report from the inside. No one who actually lives there right now can tell you what it's like inside. In fact, and this is a little bit creepy, once a person checks into his retirement condo, he's never heard from again!

What further complicates the issue is that the architect of these retirement villages--the one who built them from the ground up, and who will be taking your monthly payments and using it to stock your spot with amenities--that guy turns out to be the same guy who built your house! And as you know perfectly well, your house sucks! It was built with shoddy construction techniques, fails electrical code in such a way that if you aren't always careful, you could kill yourself just turning on a light switch. Your house is drafty, leaks, has a suspicious-looking mold in several corners, and is infested with vermin. In fact, your dissatisfaction with your house is the biggest reason why you're even considering plunking down the cold cash for a spot in the retirement village in the first place--you can hardly wait to live in a home where the plumbing actually works as its supposed to.

So if the same builder who screwed up your house so badly is the guy in charge of your final destination, wouldn't you find that a little disquieting? If he couldn't build a decent house, what makes him qualified to build a decent retirement condo?

Oh, don't worry, says the salesman, the guy convincing you to get out your checkbook and sign the paperwork. There's a perfectly good reason why the builder wasn't able to build your home to perfect satisfaction--it's all the brother-in-law's fault. You see, the builder has this brother-in-law . . . . doesn't everybody? . . . who kept hanging around the building site when your home was being constructed. It was that guy--not the builder--who messed everything up. That guy was the one distracting the contstruction crew, and stealing tools, and swapping Grade A lumber with inferior grade particle board. If your house isn't satisfactory, then you can blame the brother-in-law. But he's not allowed on the construction site of your retirement village. Therefore, you can be certain that your retirement condo will be absolutely perfect, just like your home would have been if the brother-in-law hadn't been allowed to hang around. How many bedrooms can we put you down for?

Michael Shermer wants to believe

Michael Shermer, editor of Skeptic magazine, has just written his 100th column and it's a keeper.

What I want to believe based on emotions and what I should believe based on evidence does not always coincide. And after 99 monthly columns of exploring such topics (this is Opus 100), I conclude that I’m a skeptic not because I do not want to believe but because I want to know.

Ann Druyan said the same thing about her husband Carl Sagan: He didn't want to believe; he wanted to know.  To believe something is easy, but to know if something is true is much more difficult.  However, taking the extra effort to uncover the facts behind a claim rather than accepting it outright is the best method of avoiding swallowing lies or misinformation.

There is one mystery I will concede that science may not be able to answer, and that is the question of what existed before our universe began. One answer is the multiverse. According to the theory, multiple universes each had their own genesis, and some of these universes gave birth (perhaps through collapsing black holes) to baby universes, one of which was ours. There is no positive evidence for this conjecture, but neither is there positive evidence for the traditional answer to the question — God. And in both cases, we are left with the reductio ad absurdum question of what came before the multiverse or God. If God is defined as that which does not need to be created, then why can’t the universe (or multiverse) be defined as that which does not need to be created?

A debate I listened to recently between theists (Hassanain Rajabali & Michael Corey) and atheists (Dan Barker and Richard Carrier) hovered over this area. The theists asserted that God created the universe, and when the atheists asked for proof, the theists' response was mild offense. "It's obvious," they said, "and besides, science hasn't come up with anything better, have they."

At no time during the debate were miracles mentioned, or the efficacy of prayer, or the problems of evolution.  No, the primary focus was on the state of the universe 15 billion years ago and how it came to be that way, something that cosmologists are currently puzzling out.  It's as though the theists have conceded almost everything to science and are now desperately hammering against what could be called "the weaknesses of cosmology." Richard Carrier who advocated the Black Holes-Multiverse method couldn't offer positive evidence for the model, but nothing in our physical world rules it out.  But the theists would have nothing to do with it. No, the universe must have been created by God because there's no evidence for Black Holes creating baby universes. What would Michael Shermer have said about that?

In both cases, we have only negative evidence along the lines of “I can’t think of any other explanation,” which is no evidence at all. If there is one thing that the history of science has taught us, it is that it is arrogant to think we now know enough to know that we cannot know. So for the time being, it comes down to cognitive or emotional preference: an answer with only negative evidence or no answer at all. God, multiverse or Unknown. Which one you choose depends on your tolerance for ambiguity and how much you want to believe. For me, I remain in sublime awe of the great Unknown.

I'm with you, Mr. Shermer. Count me in with those who are satisfied with the Unknown.  I don't trust my emotions enough to judge truth by them.

Reasonable Doubts on "Faith and Reason"

One of my favorite podcasts is Reasonable Doubts—the Skeptical Guide to Religion, hosted by Jeremy Beahan, Luke Galen, and David Fletcher. Typically the three men speak with each other on topics of atheism, religion, and skepticism, discussing current events and apologetics.

Recently the three Reasonable Doubtcasters were guests of the internet radio show called “Faith and Reason” hosted by Bill Freeman. Freeman and his two co-hosts identified themselves as liberal Christians, and based on some of their expressed ideas they would indeed find themselves in hot water with many fundamentalist Christians, such as the idea that the beginning chapters of Genesis are not to be taken literally or that God may not be benevolent.

As is so often the case when believers and non-believers sit down together to discuss important issues, a lot of time was wasted circling around the proper terminology. It’s difficult to coherently discuss issues of religion and philosophy if the parties can’t agree on the definitions of key terms, such as ‘faith’ or ‘belief’ or even ‘God.’ The Reasonable Doubt podcasters carried themselves off well, in my opinion, in the face of Freeman’s claims that Atheism requires Faith and other misrepresentations.

Early in the broadcast the Problem of Evil was mentioned, and here was where I grew most frustrated. Freeman seemed to feel that the Problem of Evil was merely a thorny conundrum, a necessary but unfortunate byproduct of humanity’s lack of the right technology to uncover the solution. He acknowledged that philosophers and laypersons alike have been wrestling with the Problem of Evil for twenty-five hundred years.

When a theologian addresses the Problem of Evil, he has several options. He can suggest a technical answer, such as the Solution of Free Will. Often this answer fails to satisfy skeptics because it raises further problems. The second option is to redefine the terms, such as declaring that maybe God is not omniscient after all, or God is not concerned about our suffering enough to do anything about it. This answer fails to satisfy believers because it then diminishes God. No one wants to worship a being unworthy of worship. Some have argued that there is no suffering in this world—an answer satisfying to nobody.

The third option is then to punt to mystery, which is what Freeman did here. I’ve heard this tone before, back when I was a Christian. For Freeman, that lack of solution is somehow the proof that it’s such an important question. A theologian might say, “Our finite minds are too limited to understand the ways of God, and we can rest in the hope that one day we will be enlightened when we sit at the feet of Jesus in His glory.” When properly voiced with hushed reverent tones, such grave platitudes are meant to comfort believers. But for skeptics like me, they come across as an exasperated parent scolding a child, saying “Don’t ask silly questions.”

Listening to the podcast, I grew frustrated that the Reasonable Doubtcasters didn’t press Freeman on this issue, because there’s a fourth solution to the Problem of Evil, one that atheists know and believers won’t dare admit: Release your belief in God. It’s only the assertion that an all-powerful, all-knowing, benevolent God exists that the Problem of Evil arises in the first place. The Problem can be eliminated by setting aside the assertion.

Here’s an example of the issue I’m talking about. How can Santa Claus visit all the homes in the world to distribute presents in a single night? Well, we can try to answer this difficult question technically, by invoking worm-holes and the manipulation of the space-time continuum. But this answer fails to satisfy because it raises further technical issues, such as how does one man have the ability to pull off such feats?

Or we can redefine terms, declaring that Santa Claus is not a real person but just a spirit of the gift-giving season, and that when humanity unites in the spirit of Christmas it can circle the globe. But that answer would never satisfy a child who wants to sit on Santa’s lap and set out milk and cookies on Christmas Eve.

The third option is the most popular one—punt to mystery. Declare that Santa Claus has magical powers that we can’t comprehend. One might even use a bit of stick to enhance the carrot by suggesting that inquiring too deeply in the ways of Santa can lead to no presents on Christmas morning. “Believing is Seeing” as the story goes.

Of course, we all know how to solve the Problem of Santa’s round-the-world trip, and that’s by not believing in Santa Claus. It’s not a solution to the problem—it’s an elimination of the problem itself. The problem wouldn’t have existed to begin with if Saint Nicholas had not been deified into a globe-trotting elf. Likewise, the question, “How can a Good God allow Suffering in our World?” can never be properly answered—our best minds have been chewing on the question for 2500 years. But the question can be eliminated entirely when we relinquish our belief in God.

Of course, that’s not to say that there is no suffering in this world—there most certainly is. But it’s our problem to address, not God’s. We do this by studying our world thoroughly so that we can eliminate suffering caused by natural events, such as disease, earthquakes, and famine. And we do this by improving ourselves and our relationships with each other, by studying human psychology, systems of economics, and by cultivating love. None of these require a worship of a supernatural being to accomplish, particularly when such a being causes more problems than it solves.

Debate: Michael Shermer vs. Eric Hovind

Dr. Michael Shermer, editor of Skeptic Magazine, engaged in a radio debate on Creationism vs. Evolution against Eric Hovind, son and heir apparent of "Dr. Dino" Kent Hovind. The full podcast can be heard here, or you can listen to a sample below:



Not much new material here, for those who are interested in the subject. Shermer gives a good account for his support for evolutionary science, although he allows himself to get dragged down rabbit trails by Hovind too often. Of course, that's easy to do, because Hovind is like his father, quick to insert a half-dozen canards and outright falsehoods regarding Creationism, Evolution, Biblical authority and textual criticism in one go. If you thought Piltdown Man, and Julius Caesar can't be combined in a single sentence, then you haven't hear a Hovind speak.

When the show hosts or callers asked questions of Hovind, most often his answer was to invite the questioner to buy or obtain one of his DVDs, something even the sympathetic show hosts mentioned as a point against Hovind.

One of the callers asked Shermer a question that's been asked and answered countless times: Why aren't any transitional species found in the fossil record but always fully formed? Shermer answered the question adequately, stating that many, many fossils have been found of transitional species, but the question likely stems from a problem of definition. How does the questioner define "transitional species"? Ray Comfort defines it as two existing (and incompatible) species somehow mashed together, like a duck with a dog's head.

Of course, no evolution scientist has ever postulated such a species, living or dead. This is a cartoon version of Evolution. It would be like debunking gravitational theory by watching cartoons of the Road Runner and Wil E. Coyote.

Every species is a transitional species, just like every ring of metal, when connected to others in a line, becomes a "link" in a chain. Some transitional species are more apparent than others. Certain crickets can differentiate from each other by as little as the songs they employ to find mates, yet when they are fossilized they appear identical. Other species are clearly intermediates between different types of species, such as the feathers and other bird-like characteristics on the lizard Archaeopteryx.

As for the definition of the term, "fully formed," I suspect the Creationist is insisting on being shown birds with only one wing, or horses with three legs and one stump. Again, the theory of evolution doesn't postulate that such species exist, except as mutations within established species. Such errors of gene copying typically don't live long enough to reproduce due to their enormous disadvantage.

Thus, the Creationist has protected herself by insisting on evidence that does not and can not exist, ensuring she will never have to change her mind, or even worse, admit that they were wrong once. And yet they believe in Creationism on even scantier evidence, namely, the writings of an ancient book written in a pre-scientific society.

Does God Exist? - Friel-Barker Debate - Audience Q & A

The last segment of the debate was Question from the Audience. The moderator read questions that were written down by audience members earlier to both participants, alternating between Barker and Friel. This segment was very disappointing to me. I will admit that the format of the segment allowed for more informality, but I was disappointed that the moderator could not keep control, allowing both participants to engage in one-on-one arguments with an audience member and not answering the questions given but rebutting the other's previous answers. Also, I was disappointed in both Friel and Barker interrupting each other's alotted time with comebacks and rebuttals, Barker especially. Most of all, I was disappointed in both participant's answers to some of their questions.

Barker was asked, "How does morality exist without God?" Barker responded that morality is not a thing that can either exist or not exist, but a label for our actions in the world. He argued that moral people seek to minimize harm, which requires reason, not obedience to rules. When it comes to deciding what to do and when, humanists follow standards whereas religionists follow rules.

Friel was asked, "If evolution is untrue, why is there so much evidence for it?" Friel responded as expected by claiming there was no evidence because science can't reproduce the entirety of evolution in a lab. Of course, science can't reproduce the Genesis creation event in a lab either, so perhaps that never happened. Science can't reproduce a global flood in a lab so we can close the books on that one as well.

Friel then rebutted Barker's previous answer by claiming that morality is much more than just minimizing harm but by doing right vs. wrong. He deplored Barker's situational ethics by stating, "I hope a masochist and a sadomasochist don't become President and Vice-President or we're all in big trouble." This made zero sense to me.

At this point an audience member complained that Friel wasn't answering the question, and he shot back that he did answer the question but had more time left so he thought he'd rebut Barker's morality answer--an unfair move. Either the answers should stand as they are or Barker should have been given the opportunity to defend his answer.

Friel relented to audience complaints by re-addressing the evidence for evolution by excoriating the Fossil Record. "Quick, someone bring me a transitional fossil--they are all fully formed." This naturally raises the question of what Friel considers to be a transitional fossil. If a species exhibits both traits of lizards as well as birds, could that be a transitional species? If so, take a look at archaeopteryx. What about a species with traits of both fish and amphibians? If so, then consider tiktaalik. Traits of both non-human apes and modern humans? Here's homo rudolfensis.

But Friel later explained what he means by a transitional species: "Show me the one that has a half a wing on one side and a full wing on the other. They don't exist, they'd be on the cover of Time magazine." No evolutionary biologist has argued that a transitional species is anything like this. The very term "transitional species" is misleading in that since all species evolved from older, more primitive species, then all species are transitional. What's more, a species with half a wing would be at a severe disadvantage to it's two-winged brethren and thus would be far less likely to reproduce. If we showed Friel any modern-day examples of organisms with stunted limbs, he would probably write those off as freaks of nature (freaks of an intelligent designer?) and say they don't count.

Barker was asked, "Why do we exist?" Barker answered, "My mother and dad fell in love and had sex." While this might answer the question why Barker exists, the question was why do we exist, and given the context of the debate it's clear the questioner was referring to 'we' as 'the human race.' When an audience member complained that he didn't answer the question, Barker replied that he did and wouldn't clarify further. This was bad form on Barker's part, in my opinion.

Friel was asked, "Why would an all-loving, all-powerful god create human beings and allow them to suffer so that he could be worshiped and given credit for anything that goes right?" Friel responded that it was a false question. He claimed that what we call suffering is not really suffering. Saint Augustine argued that creation was created to be perfect but when God restores the world from evil it will be even better. This is a contradiction--how can something be better than perfect? Friel skirted the question by insisting that if we agree that something is evil it must require a moral law-giver. The question was not about where do we get morality, something Friel had already covered. It was why does God allow suffering--is it really just so that he can get praise when he fixes it? Friel downplayed what we consider to be suffering--it might be a test from God, or it could be the results of our own mistakes. How dare we puny humans call something suffering when God is doing it for a good reason. That's cold comfort for parents who bury a dead child, but that's Friel's answer. "This is His Story," Friel concluded. "That's where we get the word 'history'." This is flat-out incorrect. "History" is a derivative of the Greek word 'histor' which means one who knows or sees. It has nothing to do with God having his way with us in order to garner our lavish praise.

I was pleased to hear both Barker and Friel discount Pascal's Wager when asked about it. Pascal's Wager is, Barker said, Argument from Intimidation and leads to selfish morality--just pick the religion with the worst hell and subscribe to it in a effort to beat the odds.

Friel was asked, "Do you believe believers and non-believers have different standards when claiming to know something?" Friel claimed they do, because believers don't have faith, they have knowledge of God. While this may sound true, it can be countered by other believers. The Christian knows in his heart that Jesus is alive; the Muslim knows in his heart that Allah is the one true God; the atheist knows in his heart that God does not exist. How do we tell who's right? Personal experience is an experience for only one person and can not be objectively evaluated.

Friel was asked, "If God created something out of nothing, where did God come from? If God always existed, why couldn't the universe have always existed?" Friel asked back incredulously, "You believe the universe always existed?! Everything has to have a start." Apparently Friel didn't hear the question: If everything has to have a start, then who or what started God? Why not skip a step and claim that the universe has always existed? Yes, this might make the question, "Where did the universe come from" an unanswerable one, but an unanswerable question is better than an unsupportable answer. Appealing to God as the origin of the universe is answering one mystery with another bigger mystery.

Friel immediately changed the subject (again) and questioned Barker's activities with the Freedom From Religion Foundation, which works to keep church and state separate, sometimes by bringing lawsuits against government agencies using tax dollars to engage in sectarian activities. Friel simply stated, "They sue to get God and prayer out of public schools." This is, of course, an outright lie. How a small non-profit organization can keep an omnipresent deity out of a school building is hard to understand, and public school students are not denied the right to pray, read scriptures, or discuss their religion provided they don't interrupt classroom instruction. The FFRF and other secular advocacy groups have worked to prevent teachers and administrators, acting on behalf of the government, from promoting and endorsing religious doctrine. I daresay that if Friel had a child in public school, and that child's mathematics teacher said, "Class, before we begin, lets roll out your prayer mats and bow to Mecca five times while praising the one God Allah and his most favored prophet, Mohammed," then Friel would be first in line to "get God out of public schools." Friel wants public schools to be drenched in religion--so long as it's his religion.

Friel then rattled out an obviously memorized blizzard of statistics that can be laid at the feet of a United States Supreme Court decision to end public school's sectarian prayers in the early 1960s: "The population of the United States has gone up 42%, but violent crime is up 560%, teen violence up 400%, illegitimacy up 400%, STD's are up, there have been 28 million abortions, 28 million wounded, 28 million dead, teen suicide is up 200% . . . Congratulations!"

While it is true that the United States has grown more violent in the recent decades, Friel failed to prove that the rise in violence is due to public school teachers leading their classes in Christian prayers every day. This is a fallacy called post hoc ergo propter hoc or, 'after this, therefore because of this.' The rise in violence also followed the Civil Rights movement, the beginning of the Beatles' legendary music careers, and the launching of the first American weather satellite in orbit, but I don't think that Friel would associate the rise in violence with those events.

What's more, what are we to make of the 28 million abortions cited, given that only a small percentage of abortions are performed on school students? What does he mean by 28 million wounded? Are we blaming household and workplace accidents on the lack of public school prayer? What about the 28 million dead? Are senior citizens dying in nursing homes at a skyrocketing rate because the Supreme Court ruled public-school-endorsed sectarian prayers as unconstitutional? And is it just a coincidence that all three items are the same number?

That violence has risen in the United States throughout the entire twentieth century--not just since the 1960s--is beyond question, but the reason likely stems from many factors. In addition, violent crime has been actually decreasing since the early 1990's and it isn't because prayer was restored in public schools.

Blaming atheism for violence is a common tactic by religious believers and is not supported by evidence. Non-believers comprise anywhere from 5% to 15% of U.S. population, depending on how surveys are conducted, yet they comprise a disproportionate percentage of the prison population (0.21%). The United States, the most Christian nation in the G-8, also has the highest murder rate, whereas Japan, the most atheistic nation in the G-8, has the lowest murder rate. Louisiana has America's highest church attendance rate and also twice the national average murder rate. Atheism is not the cause of violence.

Amusingly, at this point the moderator finally interjects Friel's sermon to reiterate that he didn't answer the question as given. "If God created something out of nothing, where did God come from? If God has always existed, why couldn't the universe have always existed?"

Friel attempted to use two laws of Thermodynamics to explain his case. The first law--matter is neither created nor destroyed--and the second law--disorder increases over time. Friel attempted to forstall objections by saying that he understands the difference between an open system and a closed system but, he says, "it makes no difference." Of course he doesn't want it to make a difference--if it did, it would undercut his argument. "There must be something above the universe to put it in order," Friel asserts. Which of course raises the obvious follow-up question, "What was above God to put him in order?" If you say something else, then you have infinite regress. If you say 'nothing,' then your statement that everything must be ordered by something else is incorrect. If you make an exception for God, then you are guilty of special pleading. Friel is backed in a corner in every way.

For some reason, the moderator asked three different questions of Barker to explain his background of moving from a Christian to an atheist, which was two questions too many. Each time Barker had to explain that not only was he a Christian, he was a super-Christian, engaging in numerous Christian acts. This was no doubt to overcome Friel's ad hominem attack against Barker for being a false convert. I also speculate that some in the audience wanted to know Barker's religous background in order to dispel it. It's far too common for Christians to dismiss the beliefs of other Christians on the grounds that they aren't biblically correct. So if Dan had said he was raised a Catholic, the Protestants would have concluded he wasn't a real Christian, but if he said he was raised a Protestant, the Catholics would have reached the same conclusion. That's just speculation, of course, but that was the way I thought of deconverted Christians when I was a believer. "Oh, you didn't belong to my narrow doctrinal denomination? Well, no wonder you don't believe in God anymore." Again, that's just my speculation.

Friel was asked, "What about a third option--polytheism?" He started off by naming other religions, most of them monotheistic, and embarassed himself with his lack of fundamental knowledge of all of them. "If you live in China, you probably believe in Buddha." (An audience member complained that Buddha was not a god, to which Friel replied, "Whatever.") "If you live in India, you can carve out one of 280 million pieces of wood and worship it." (Never mind that Hindus do not worship pieces of wood.) "Or you can worship some Native American deity. (Many Native Americans worshipped the monotheistic Great Spirit.) "Or if you're in Saudi Arabia you can be told that Jesus doesn't exist and that he was just a prophet, not God." (A contradiction in one sentence, unless Friel believes that prophets don't exist.) "If all of these religions were true," Friel continued, "then God would have to be schizophrenic in order to accomodate all the different worshippers."

But again, the question was not, "Aren't all religions true?" The question was, "What about polytheism?" There are good arguments against polytheism which can be made by a montheist like Friel or an atheist like Barker. Why Friel didn't answer the question as asked is puzzling.

"Either all the other gods are right," Friel concluded, "or Jesus is right, or they are all wrong, but they can't be all right. Jesus won't allow for it."

Classic question-begging. First Friel dismisses the possibility of polytheism and just starts comparing different religions, so he ignored the question entirely. Next he listed the options in his fallacious trilemma: A) All the other gods are right (even though they are mutually exclusive and by definition can't be all right.) B) Jesus is right (Friel's obvious choice.) C) They are all wrong (which would be Barker's and the atheist's position.) "But they (the three options) can't be all right, because Jesus won't allow for it."

So according to Friel, since option A is logically incoherent, we have to choose option B--Jesus is right--because that's the only one that Jesus will allow. (But what about option C?) Yes, the Gospel of John has Jesus saying that he is the only way to God. But did John quote Jesus accurately? Difficult to say. And how did Jesus know that he was the only way to God? Who told him that? Again, difficult to say. Most importantly, is Jesus really the only way to God. The answer depends on whether you've already accepted Jesus, which begs the question. Mohammed said that he was the only way to God as well--does that mean the Christian is wrong and the Muslim is right?

The final question was offered to both participants: "Do you really think you can change someone's mind tonight?" Barker answered first and fell into a classic trap that I saw coming right away. He answered Yes, because in his experience of debating and advocating atheism people have later contacted him and thanked him for pointing out problems with their beliefs. Whether they fully deconverted to atheism or just eliminated bad thinking from their faith, they improved their minds.

The more he went on, however, the more Barker assumed an arrogant and dismissive tone, accusing hostile audience members of being ignorant of their bible and lying to themselves if they haven't had doubts in their "heart of hearts." Any gains he might have made advocating freethought and skepticism that night were possibly snuffed by this cold-hearted and insulting position.

Friel, however, finished with a win, saying that No, he can't change anyone's mind. He had been advocating all evening that God has to have the credit for everything--even the evil and suffering in our lives that God himself creates for us--so naturally he would claim that only God can change a person.

*******

All in all, I ranked the quality of this debate a 5 out of 10. While I generally agree with Barker's position on the question, "Does God exist?" I was disappointed in some of his performance, and I outright winced hearing some of his responses. However, Barker did raise the standard objections to the claim that God exists, such as the problem of evil.

Friel, however, as the theist, had the burden of providing evidence for the existence of God. As such, he brought two pieces of evidence to the debate, which he repeated several times. First, God created the universe. (And who created God? "Nobody, because then that wouldn't make sense.") Second, we have a conscience. (And what about other religion's adherent's consciences? "They don't count because they aren't worshipping Jesus.") The rest of Friel's content consisted of sermonettes describing God. "He loves you and He died for you and He will send you to Hell if you don't believe all this and He has to have the credit for everything or He gets really peeved." This is as pointless as attempting to prove the existence of Santa Claus by describing his red suit, his magical sleigh and the names of his reindeer. A description of something is not evidence of something.

Friel also resorted to numerous threats in order to sway the audience to his view, and his
double-standard was obvious. The everlasting torture chamber called Hell is reasonable justice for victimless crimes such as blasphemy and disbelief, according to Friel, but if Barker complained about Hell's injustice, then Friel countered he wasn't trying to threaten anyone--and then later he would do exactly that by pleading with the audience that God won't always be patient with us. Either Hell is something to be saved from or it isn't; you can't have it both ways. If we are upset that people who, say, jaywalk should receive the death penalty, then we ought to be equally upset with whoever decided that jaywalkers deserve the death penalty. Friel wants people to be repulsed by Hell, but he doesn't want people to be repulsed by the very God who sends them there. It's irrelevant that God provides an escape clause from his justice--particularly since it involves the bloody torture and death of an innocent man--since if it wasn't for God's primitive and barbaric sense of justice in the first place there would be no need for redemption.

As a result, I have to conclude that Friel lost the debate. There may be a god--the question certainly wasn't settled during this debate--but Friel did not bring a sufficient case.

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Does God Exist? Friel-Barker Debate - Closing Arguments

The debate wound to a close with Closing Statements, Dan Barker first followed by Todd Friel.

"Hell is not reasonable justice," Barker began. He emphasized that we don't treat our children the way we are told that God will treat us. We don't send our children to the gas chamber for their faults, particularly for not flattering our egos. We don't even torture legitimate adult criminals. The punishment should fit the crime.

Barker potentially alienated the room by declaring that Friel's sermons might work for "weak believers." Sin, Barker explained, is an artificial concept invented by the religious. "If salvation is the cure for sin," Barker quipped, "then atheism is the prevention." By not acknowledging certain behaviors as sinful, an atheist has no need to feel guilty for those behaviors. While true, this can be misleading. Both believers and non-believers agree that murder, rape, theft, certain forms of lying, etc. are morally wrong even to the point of requiring punishment. Believers call these actions sins but they also include other strictly religious actions as sins, such as blasphemy and impiety. Naturally, atheism can be seen as a prevention of the second type of sin, not the first. By not emphasizing the difference, Barker left open the possibility that he is advocating licentiousness.

Barker ended his segment deploring Friel's arguments and declared that if Friel honestly believed what he said he did then he was both morally and intellectually bankrupt, a pointless and possibly ad hominem attack on Friel.

Friel ended the Closing Arguments segment with a long emotional appeal and contradicted himself repeatedly. He said he wasn't there to threaten us. He said he wasn't there to scare us of hell, then immediately said that we should be horrified by it. He never addressed Barker's objections that Hell is not reasonable justice or that infinite punishment for finite sins is morally bankrupt. Instead, he focused on his assertion that God has offered to save us from Hell.

According to Friel, God is merely a rescue worker offering to save us from a Hell that God has no control over. And yet again, according to Friel, Hell is real (despite that Friel offers zero evidence that Hell exists), God is not to be "trifled with" (another threat) and that if we are scared of Hell then that's a good thing. This despite the fact that he opened the exchange saying he wasn't there to scare us about Hell. So which is it?

"Lose the presuppositions," Friel pleads. In other words, just believe it. Don't think too much about it, just believe that you're a horrible sinner that offends God with every thought, but God magnanimously stifles his offense to offer us a means to overcome the fact that he's offended by us.

The question under debate was "Does God exist?" It was not, "Does Christianity offer value?" or "What does the Bible say about the human condition?" Barker began the debate refuting Friel's arguments but ended with emotional responses to Friel's dogma. Friel began the debate offering some evidence for the existence of God and ended it with a plaintive altar call to accept his narrow flavor of Christianity: "God should give you Hell but he offers you Heaven and if you will call out to him, he will hear you . . . Think of Jesus Christ dying for you, which will crush your heart and lead you to godly sorrow and repentance." All unproved assertions. What Jesus Christ, a crushed heart, or repentance have to do with the existence of a supernatural deity is left unexplained.

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Does God Exist? Friel-Barker Debate - Barker Questions

Next came Barker's questions for Friel. Barker's first question was if Friel knew in advance that 9-11 was going to happen and could stop it at no risk to himself, would he do so?

"Of course," Friel said immediately.

"Well," Barker replied, "then you're nicer than God."

Excellent first question from Barker, encapsulating the Problem of Evil. Friel wanted to stop 9-11, but couldn't do so because he's not omniscient nor omnipotent. If God is omniscient and omnipotent but chose not to prevent 9-11, then he's not omni-benevolent and in fact is less benevolent than Friel. But of course, Friel can't agree to that.

"They deserved to die," Friel explained. "God is just, he can do what he pleases, and he is right for doing so because he knows the difference between right and wrong."

This is a stunning admission. 3,000 people were brutally killed on 9-11 because they deserved to die. Friel declares that God deliberately withheld his miraculous power ("he can do what he pleases,") because he wanted them all to die. Why? "Because he knows the difference between right and wrong," Friel explains. Of course, this is a non-answer. According to fundamentalist Christians, everyone knows the difference between right and wrong. After all, it was claiming knowledge of good and evil that got Adam and Eve in trouble in the Garden of Eden, and the Apostle Paul wrote that God's law is written on our hearts so that we are without excuse (Romans 2:15).

So the only difference between God and men is that God can do whatever he wants to us and we can't hold him responsible. And yet, Friel declares that God is "right" for doing so. We see that there is nothing that God can do that Friel would declare to be wrong. Good, bad, or indifferent, if God does something--or not do something, as in the case of 9-11--then we must declare it to be good. This destroys the very concept of good. If everything a being does has to be declared good, then how can we honestly say that being has chosen the right thing to do?

We can't even place blame on the nineteen hijackers because, according to Friel, it was good for their victims to die. Does that mean if any of them survived their attack, we would let them go free? And yet Friel said that if he could, he would have stopped them. But why, if their victims deserved to die and God wouldn't stop them for a good reason? Why would Friel do something that would obviously be counter to the will of God? What does Friel know about right and wrong that God doesn't?

Friel leaps from justifying God's inaction for preventing evil in our world to justifying the existence of Hell. He explains that the victims deserved to die because they were sinful. We all are sinful and have offended an infinite God. Hell is not torture, and it's not punishment, it's reasonable justice. "Are you opposed to jails?" he asks. "Should we just let rapists go free?"

This is absurd. If a man commits a rape, we remove him from society so he won't be a threat. But we don't torture him. We don't set him on fire and keep fanning the flames forever. No one possibly deserves an infinite punishment for a finite crime. By connecting these dots, Friel asserts that the three thousand victims of 9-11 were equivalent to rapists. Yet he doesn't explain why we don't punish these people for their rape ahead of time.

But it's not just rapists and murderers. According to Friel, "all liars will have their place in the Lake of Fire because his goodness demands it." Friel paints his God as a pagan barbaric totalitarian who is only appeased by sacrifice, be it animal or human.

Sometime in the next few minutes, someone, somewhere is going to be brutally murdered, and God won't stop it. Friel will state that that's okay. That person deserved to be murdered because he's so sinful--he's offended an infinite God so no punishment is too much to satisfy him. This is the logical conclusion of Friel's Calvinism and it is an offensive barbarism to me.

Barker, however, failed to highlight any of these natural points. Perhaps he felt that Friel had hung himself with his own rope. Barker missed a wonderful opportunity to expose Friel's contradictory and cruel views about good and evil by focusing on failed prayer. He asked Friel if he would at least admit that "most" of the victims of 9-11 were Christians who had prayed for God's protection and that their prayers failed. Friel refused to take the bait.

"There are three answer God gives," Friel explained. "Yes, No, Something Else." This is the standard answer to the problem of Unanswered Prayer--define any result as an answer. Barker missed another opportunity to highlight the absurdity of this position. A person praying will get the same three results if he makes his prayers to Mount Rushmore. Friel justifies his response by appealing to mystery, claiming that what looks like a bad thing to us is just because of our limited perspective. God sees the whole picture, and can decide that even if we suffer (say, be brutally murdered?) the end result is a good thing. Again, God can do whatever he wants to us, and we have no right to complain because he's smarter than us.

Friel distracts Barker by accusing him of once being a false Christian, deceived by "the modern gospel." This is, of course, a pointless ad hominem attack against Barker. The apostle Paul wrote that "If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart God raised him from the dead, you will be saved." Barker did both repeatedly for years. He confessed, he believed, and he was a Christian. Nothing else. There's no qualifier that you have to believe until you die or else it wasn't real. This is shifting the goalposts, equivalent to saying that any married couple that gets divorced must not have really been in love to begin with, on the false theory that people in love never get divorced.

If we take Friel's argument to it's logical extreme, then Friel is not a Christian either. Years ago, both Friel and Barker claimed to be Christians. Barker deconverted, and now Friel declares that Barker wasn't really a Christian. Therefore, no one can really be called a Christian unless they live their entire life without deconverting. Since Friel is still alive, he may deconvert from Christianity sometime in the future. Until he dies without deconverting, we can't honestly call him a Christian. Barker said the same thing: "If I wasn't a real Christian, then no one is."

Of course, Friel would vehemently deny that he's not a Christian, suggesting that once again that he holds himself as the Absolute Standard. He's a Christian, and he decides who is and is not a Christian.

Barker continued the questioning about evil, further highlighting Friel's odd views: "Why did God create evil?"

At first, Friel understood that Barker was quoting Isaiah 45:7: "I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things." But he denied that was the true meaning of the verse by illustrating that since cold is the absence of heat and darkness is the absence of light, therefore evil is merely the absence of good, so God can't be considered to have actually created a thing called evil. Barker countered that the Hebrew word for create was the same as what was used in Genesis when God created the earth. Friel relented by quickly agreeing that it was the same word.

So with that admission, Friel announced that God created evil. He went on to state that the fact that God created evil didn't bother him. We might see a situation (loss of a job, death of a child, etc) and call it a bad thing, Friel explained, but God says, 'I'm just, I'm righteous, I'm in control' and God causes that evil to happen for his eternal glory. Ultimately, he continues, it doesn't matter if there is evil in this world because after a future judgement day, there will be a healing and no more evil.

Again, this paints a horrible picture of Friel's God. God allows evil in the world--he created it to begin with--and if we suffer that's okay because God will look good sometime in the distant future when he fixes it. This would be akin to a doctor releasing a virus that he developed into a city, causing death and suffering to countless people, all for the purpose of receiving praise and accolades when he later distributes the vaccine. We would have no words strong enough to condemn anyone who did such a thing, but for God we are asked to call him just and righteous.

This is the description that Friel gave of God. Very few Christians that I know of would agree with this barbarism, but its the God that Friel preached, and there was healthy applause from the audience after making these claims.

I was very disappointed, therefore, when Barker let this opportunity go by unchallenged. Friel's answer to the question, "Why did God create evil," was "Because he'll get the credit for fixing it." Barker decided, however, to move into more philisophical realms by asking a question about falsifiablity. After much stumbling--which must have been slightly embarassing for Barker . . . Friel felt badly enough for him he actually had to help Barker phrase the question--Barker asked, "Which statement, if true, would falsify your hypothesis (that God exists)?"

After some more confusion between the two parties, Friel finally settled on the statement that if the universe didn't exist, then God does not exist.

"So," Barker clarified, "if nothingness existed, there would be no god."

"It would be a start," Friel replied. "God's proof is creation. We're here, so we had to come from somewhere."

Here Barker lost another perfect opportunity. If Friel is correct, then he would have to admit that before the universe existed God did not exist, and if God did not exist then he could not have created the universe. The universe exists, therefore God could not have created it.

But Barker didn't point that out. When Friel said the universe had to come from somewhere, Barker merely asked, "Why?" All this did was allow Friel to set Barker up as an anal post-modern philosopher, asking such questions as 'How do we know we really exist?' A much simpler answer would have been to point out the absurdity of saying the universe had to "come from" somewhere. This implies that there exists a type of warehouse of universe parts, and that God selected the parts he wanted and used them to create the universe. Of course, if the universe came "from" somewhere, then that implies a place and time, which by definition could not exist before the universe existed. Just like we can't travel any further south than the South Pole, the universe can't exist in a time and place before the universe existed. It's a meaningless statement. If the Creationist imagines God existing alone somewhere and then deciding to create a universe and then thinking how to create the universe and then speaking the universe into existence, this implies a sequence of events in time before time existed.

Barker redeemed himself slightly by pointing out that if the universe must have come from somewhere then so must God. Where did God come from?

Friel finished out the debate by explaining that it was a fair question. However, according to Friel, if time exists, then something must be eternal because otherwise we could ask who created God, and then who created that God, and who created that God, ad infinitum. This is an excellent point, and I'm not sure why Friel made it because it undermines his very argument. Friel understands the problem of infinite regress, and he solves it by declaring that it doesn't count in his case. He rejects Barker's argument that the universe is eternal by saying the universe had to have been created by someone, but he claims that God doesn't suffer from the same constraint because then we'd have a logical fallacy. He solves the fallacy by declaring the fallacy doesn't exist.

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Does God Exist? Friel-Barker Debate - Friel Questions

The third segment of the Friel-Barker debate "Does God exist" consisted of each participant asking the other free-form questions. Friel began by asking Barker a series of questions and accepting the answers without comment:

Friel: Do you really believe Something came from Nothing?

Barker: Yes.

Friel: Do you really believe Jesus Christ didn't exist and walk the planet?

Barker: Yes.

Friel: Do you have all knowledge?

Barker: No.

Friel: Do you care if you live or die?

Barker: Yes, most of the time I love life except when sometimes I'm so sick I think I'd rather die.

This was a puzzling exchange, and I don't understand why Friel took up precious time to ask what seemed to be basic information questions. Later in the segment his questions took on more of a "Stump the Atheist" tone, which is to be expected, but these initial questions weren't like that at all. I can only speculate, but I wonder if Friel was attempting to poison the well, to get an unsympathetic audience to hear Barker admit out loud such traditionally blasphemous statements such as that he doesn't believe in an historical Jesus.

Next, Friel launched a series of multiple questions regarding evolution, all of them following the same "Which came first" format.

Friel: Which evolved first, the digestive system, the food, the appetite, the ability to find food, digestive juices, or the body's ability to resist its own digestive juices? Which evolved first, the drive to reproduce or the ability? The male or the female? The bones, ligaments, tendons, blood supply, or the muscles to move the bones?

Barker answered all these questions adequately given our current understanding of natural selection. Essentially, Friel is arguing again for Irreducible Complexity, which I responded to earlier. No matter how Barker could have answered these questions, Friel would have declared the answer to be wrong, because his worldview demands that interworking body parts have to pop into existence fully formed by a creative designer, even though the fossil record clearly indicates that the interworking body parts co-evolved together. Friel wants us to imagine that the Theory of Evolution declares that a human head was rolling around on the ground, not able to find food very well, when suddenly it "evolved" a body which lumbered off into the distance, so let's all laugh at that comic piece of absurdity! But again, that's a caricature of natural selection that no evolutionary scientist has ever posited, so pointing and laughing at it is a waste of time. It's like thinking that the theory of gravity must be false because everyone knows that Wile E. Coyote can't hover in the air after walking off a cliff.

It's curious to me that Friel is attempting to use the concept of Irreducible Complexity to question the entire Theory of Evolution when Michael Behe, the Christian biochemist who first posited IC in his book Darwin's Black Box has said that he accepts the basic concept of Natural Selection and believes that humans descended from more primitive primates. In other words, Friel would disagree with Michael Behe while using his arguments. But that's just one of the corners into which young-earth creationists have painted themselves.

Friel continues demonstrating his lack of understanding of evolution with his next question.

Friel: Suppose we take a car factory and we remove all the kinks and bad parts out of the assembly line, how many runs would they have to run to produce an airplane? You can't turn a car into an airplane; you can't turn one thing into another.

Barker: Yes you can, through natural selection.

Barker has received a lot of criticism for his answer, both at the debate via derisive laughter from the audience, and later on the web after the debate was made public, and I agree his answer doesn't make sense at first appearance. I suppose, however, we could put this one under the category of Ask-a-silly-question-get-a-silly-answer. Friel sets up a scenario of an optimized factory and wonders if the products of the factory will change without human intervention. I missed this crucial difference the first time I listened to this debate. When Barker answered "Yes you can," I believe he was answering a different question, namely, "Can a car be changed into an airplane?" and of course the answer is yes. First, add a pair of wings, install a more powerful engine, remove unnecessary weight, etc. It may not be an ideal airplane, but it would be more like an airplane than a car.

But that wasn't what Friel was asking. He wasn't asking if one thing can be designed into another by intelligent designers. He was asking can a single organism "change" into another. He picked a spectacularly bad example to illustrate his point, because cars are not living organisms and thus cannot reproduce. But again, the theory of evolution has never claimed that a single living organism changes into another during its lifetime. Evolution only happens via reproduction, when the following generations are genetically different from their parents and from each other.  

Friel is is no position to question evolution if he hasn't taken the time to understand it. Barker correctly ended the exchange by pointing out that millions of Bible-believing Christians accept the facts of evolution despite Friel's cartoon caricatures.

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Does God Exist? Friel-Barker Debate - Friel Rebuttal

Friel began his rebuttal by asking Barker how many fingers he was holding up. When Barker answered 'four,' Friel concluded that "the human eye seems to be working pretty well to me." This was followed by much applause from the audience.

Friel commits a logical fallacy here. In his opening remarks, he stated that the human eye was too complex to have evolved and was thus evidence of an intelligent designer. When Barker explained that the human eye was a poor example of intelligent design, Friel's one-liner rebuttal was to demonstrate that Barker's eye was good enough to see his fingers. This ignored what Barker had explained was that we also have a complex brain that has to expend resources to compensate for our blind spot. Since other species are able to have an eye without a blind spot, their brains don't have to plug it in with added resources, thus making their design more efficient.

Furthermore, Barker's eye is not able to see in the infared like the eyes of reptiles, nor does it come with a transparent eyelid for seeing clearly underwater like the eyes of beavers. Friel's logic problem is equating "good enough" with "perfect," something he would never accept in other circumstances. If Friel bought a car that belched black smoke, jarred his teeth on smooth roads, and dribbled copious amounts of oil on his driveway--but it operated just well enough to get him to work--he would never declare the engineer of his car to be a good designer, particularly since there are other automobiles on the road that appear to work much more efficiently.

Based on photographs of Dan Barker that I've seen, he doesn't appear to need vision correction. Had Friel asked me how many fingers he was holding up, I would have taken off my glasses (I'm near-sighted), squinted at him, then declared that I couldn't count them because my eyes were inexpertly designed to see at that distance, thus skewering Friel's argument.

Friel's argument stems from ignorance and incredulity. Friel is impressed with the complexity of the human eye and can't think of how natural selection could have evolved it. Since Friel can't think of it, then no one can think of it, therefore it never happened. Friel sets himself up as the Absolute Standard by which all complex ideas are to be judged. He proves this by continuing with more questioning about the eye:

"How did we know there was anything to see? Which evolved first, the eye or the brain to receive the signal? The eyelids or the cornea?" Friel lists the major parts of the eye which work in conjunction and concludes, "No way did the eye evolve by chance."

Again, no evolutionary scientist has stated that anything evolves by chance. Chance and Natural Selection are not the same thing. We know and have confirmed that mutations happen from one generation to another. Some mutations are beneficial, most are neutral or harmful. Those mutations that assist an organism to live long enough to reproduce are passed on. Friel's listing of body parts is Irreducible Complexity, the principle that any organism or body part that uses multiple parts can't have evolved. IC has yet to gain purchase in the scientific community because it is based on faulty premises. Body parts need not always be working in conjunction even if they are so now, and organisms can exist with limited or rudimentary body parts that later evolve complexity. The first true eyeball to evolve did not come with a complex retina and cornea--those evolved later because they provided comparative advantages.

Friel then announces a mock auction of his wristwatch, declaring it to be evolved. His proof? "Because nobody saw it evolve." Friel seems to be saying that because no one has sat over a cage and watched an animal sprout a new body part therefore evolution never happened. The problem is, no evolutionary scientist has ever suggested that that is how evolution occurs. Organisms don't evolve--the genes you are born with are the genes you die with. It is species that evolve, over generations. What's more, scientists have observed speciation in the lab using short-lived organisms such as bacteria, so it's incorrect to say that no one has ever observed evolution.

"Evolution is an insult to the intelligence," Friel declares, which itself is an insult to the vast majority of people--including countless Bible-believing Christians--who accept the tenets of evolution based on the preponderance of evidence.

Friel tells a long joke involving a breached calf appearing to have run into the back of the mother cow, presumably to illustrate that looking at some issue from the wrong angle can lead to wrong conclusions. He then questions the entire field of cosmology by declaring that the idea that Nothing became Something to become Everything is absurd. The problem is, he's correct, but in the wrong way. Cosmologists state that the Big Bang theory is not a creation event but rather an expansion event--the entire contents of the universe were compacted into a single point which then expanded, cooled, and condensed into the stars and galaxies we know today. As far back as we can observe, there has always been Something. What happened before the Big Bang is still being explored. Cosmologists don't know--not with certainty, for sure--but Friel doesn't know either. To say that Nothing became Something is a caricature, just like Friel caricature's of Evolution, and caricatures are all too easy to disprove.

Friel continues the caricature by observing that when we wake up from sleep our hair isn't in better condition then when we went to bed. In other words, disorder always increases. First off, it isn't correct that our hair necessarily becomes more disordered in bed. A woman could go to bed with a complicated hairstyle that defies gravity due to the use of petroleum products, but wakes up with her hair comparatively ordered, pressed flat and close to the head from the pillow.

But despite that poor example, Friel is arguing from the Second Law of Thermodynamics which of course is a incorrect application of that law. Friel knows the difference between a closed and open system--he states as much later in the debate--but he wants to ignore the difference in order to advance his argument. Closed systems, argues Friel, increase in entropy, therefore open systems (such as the universe itself) must also increase in entropy. This is, of course, incorrect, and Friel appears to know better.

Friel then agrees with Barker that Christians are failing when it comes to issues of morality and ethics (such as divorce) but the reason is simple, he asserts. "They never understood the Ten Commandments and God's Law." Here Friel commits the No True Scotsman fallacy, stating that if a Christian doesn't behave the way he thinks she should, then she wasn't a true Christian to begin with. This is, of course, absurd. Not even Moses, Jesus, and Paul could agree on the principles of marriage and divorce, so to blame Christians for not agreeing is unfair. Once again, Friel sets himself up as the Absolute Standard--he knows the right thing to do in all situations. Anyone who disagrees is either living in sin or not a true Christian.

"Hell is not a threat," Friel continues, "Hell is Reasonable Justice." Friel makes an unwarranted leap from declaring that no one wants violent criminals to walk the streets to declaring that anyone who disbelieves in God deserves to go to an everlasting torture chamber.  

"If God did not punish us he would not be loving," Friel states. "Love and justice go together." This is also incorrect. A criminal judge does not both love the accused and judge the accused's case. If a judge found himself presiding over an accused person that he loved--his own son, for example--he would rightly recuse himself. Barker and Friel get more into the morality of Hell later in the debate.

Next Friel addresses Barker's distrust of the Bible for matters of truth and morality. He stated that Barker relied on G.A. Wells for biblical scholarship.  

Barker interrupted by saying, "I don't rely on him."

"You quote him," Friel quipped back, followed by laughter and applause from the audience.

I have to ding Barker here for interrupting Friel during his rebuttal, as that shouldn't be allowed by the debate rules. However, Friel did direct his statement toward Barker as a casual question, to which it would be natural to respond. Friel did it again shortly thereafter when he said, "Correct me if I'm wrong, Dan, but if I've read right you don't believe in the existence of Jesus," which would be another natural point to allow Barker to respond when technically he wasn't supposed to. Combining these interchanges along with the applause and cheering from both sides of the audience shows that this debate quickly became informal, particularly since the moderators of the debate never stepped in to enforce any rules.

As for Friel's response, "You quote him," meaning G. H. Wells, I know from reading Barker's work that he also quotes Jesus and Adolph Hitler if he feels it will help him make his argument. Friel disparages Wells' lack of education and credentials, calling Wells' work "fringe scholarship," but Barker also referred earlier to Bart Ehrman who most certainly has the education and credentials to criticize New Testament documents.

Friel then goes on to compare historical documents. First he asks Barker if he believes that Julius Caesar existed. When Barker nods affirmative, Friel chortles wickedly, "Oh really!" He declares that "this is how we test whether or not a manuscript from antiquity is authentic." He states that there is a 1000-year span between the the accepted date of when Julius Caesar wrote The Gallic Wars and the existence of our oldest copy, and we only have 10 of those. He states that there is a 1200-year gap between when Plato wrote his tetralogies and we have only seven copies. For the New Testament, it was written between 40 AD and 100 AD, and our oldest copy is dated to 125 AD, a difference of only 25 years. Number of copies? Fifty-six hundred in the original language, nineteen thousand in other languages. "If you believe in Caesar," Friel concludes, "you can trust the Bible," again to thundering applause from the believers in the audience.

There are several problems with this entire line of argument. First, what Friel doesn't tell his audience is that we don't have the original manuscripts of the New Testament, nor the copies of the manuscripts, nor the copies of the copies of the manuscripts. The oldest copies we have are three generations removed from the originals, some of those are mere scraps containing only a couple of verses from one book. What's more, textual criticism has found that no two of those copies are identical. All of them have differences from each other, some minor, some major. Entire passages of the New Testament, from the final sixteen verses of Mark to the Gospel of John's story about the woman caught in adultery, were inserted into later copies and do not appear in the older, more reliable manuscripts.

Second of all, even though there is "only" a 25-year gap between a copy and the original (interesting how Friel only counts the lower range--it could be as high as 85 years if his figures are correct), comparing the New Testament to Julius Caesar or Plato is a false comparison. For one thing, we are not asked to worship Julius Caesar. We are not asked to stake the fate of our eternal soul on the teachings of Plato. If Caesar's The Gallic War turned out to be a complete fabrication, that wouldn't disprove that Caesar actually existed because of the other lines of evidence, such as neutral historical reporting and the writings of hostile enemies of Caesar, neither of which exist in the case of Jesus of Galilee. And even if we could conclude that Caesar never actually existed, that would be irrelevant to a twenty-first-century person.

Third, the proximity of a copy to its source has no bearing whatsoever on the accuracy of the source. An error-filled manuscript could be well-preserved and copied, and it would still be an error-filled manuscript. A large gap between a source that's been lost to us and to its nearest copy means that we can have little trust in the integrity of the copy. Even New Testament scholars have found that passages are changed as copies are passed down from one generation to another. Friel would have us believe that if there's a small gap between a missing source document and its oldest copy, then we have to trust the source as error-free. But he would never accept this claim with regards to any other religion.

Joseph Smith translated the golden plates given to him by the angel Moroni in 1823, and the Book of Mormon was published in 1830. That's a gap of only seven years. L. Ron Hubbard wrote Dianetics in 1949 and it was published in 1950, a gap of only one year. But I don't think that Friel is going to convert to Mormonism or Scientology based on that "evidence" because he doesn't think those works are reliable, no matter how well preserved and copied they were. But he wants everyone to accept completely the Bible--including the first book of the Old Testament which has a gap of as much as three thousand years between the time of its reported events and its final form--based on the same fallacious thinking.

Finally, Friel makes an emotional appeal coupled with a threat. "Just be simple," Friel pleads. "Lose your presuppositions and if you'll read the Bible it's so obvious." He claims that if we read the Bible without skepticism we'll see it's true. Even if we don't, he warns, we'll glorify God either way, either when "the smoke of your torment rises before the Lamb for all eternity," or when we live forever with God in heaven because he has forgiven us.

In other words, Believe or Burn. Don't question if the Bible is accurate and true--just believe it and then you will see the Bible is accurate and true. And if you don't, you'll spend all eternity in a torture chamber while Jesus looks on in pleasure. How anyone could then say that this same God loves us and forgives us is beyond me. It's this same threat that has tormented people for centuries, so terrified of hell that even Bible-believing Christians agonize over the possibility that they are damned ("Not all who call me 'Lord, Lord' will see the kingdom of heaven.")

Again, Friel asks us to do what he would never do himself--a classic case of hypocrisy. Friel would never drop his presuppositions against Islam, reading the Koran like a child and just believing in its teachings, or else die with the knowledge that the smoke of his torment in the Islamic Hell will rise up and glorify Allah. Nor should he. But he wants you and me to do the same for Christianity.

Friel was asked to bring evidence that God exists. Having failed to do that, he then pleads with one hand and clenches a fist with his other and expects us to uncritically accept his assertions or else pay the everlasting price.

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Does God Exist? Friel-Barker Debate Analysis - Barker Rebuttal

Barker began the rebuttal series, asking why humans should humble ourselves before God. After all, God might have something to learn from us, much as parents learn from their children. This is, in my view, an unfruitful argument, as it would be impossible for a believer in omniscience to admit that it has *anything* to learn, let alone from sinful humans.

Barker noted that Friel argued from the Bible, but Barker declared that the Bible is contradictory, filled with errors and mistakes of science, and contains bad moral advice. He illustrated the two different orders of Creation in Genesis chapters one and two.  He mentioned Bart Ehrman's Misquoting Jesus to illuminate the poor provenance of the modern Christian Bible, highlighting the gross errors and additions made to early manuscripts.

Barker could have done more with this argument, however. He could have asked rhetorically if the Bible ceased to exist, would God then cease to exist? The Christian church survived two to three hundred years without a formal New Testament, proving that faith in God is possible without relying on the Bible as a source.

Barker admitted that we know that microphones are designed, but he correctly stated that intelligence is not the only way to design something. Furthermore, if the universe appears designed, then God's mind must also be designed. The designer needs a designer, yielding infinite regress. Naturalists, however, argue that we should stop with what we know--the universe, and not introduce more complex parts unnecessarily.

All arguments for God, Barker states, boil down to God in the Gaps. For most of human history, if we didn't know how something worked, God was responsible. Believers point to science's lack of understanding as proof that God exists, when in reality, science has learned more and more, closing more and more gaps, leaving God with less and less to do. Isaac Newton felt that the order of the solar system must have had a divine origin, whereas modern science has proved Newton wrong.  

Barker also briefly explained that Friel's illustration of the human eye was a bad example of intelligent design. The human eye has a blind spot where other organisms do not. Either God likes those other organisms--like squid and octopi--better than us, or God is a clumsy designer. The human body, asserted Barker, appears to have been put together by natural selection, one long series of "good enoughs" after another.

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