Tom's Rebuttal

Here's my first rebuttal to John's arguments against the Christian God (see www.thechristiangod.blogspot.com).



Loftus's arguments are typically question-begging and uniformly unsound.

To believe in the Christian God, it is necessary and sufficient to believe:a) A theistic God exists who created the universe and its inhabitants.b) God is three persons: Father, Son, Holy Spirit, all of whom have all of the divine attributes.c) The Son entered earth as Jesus, who was executed and resurrected to save human sinners from eternal separation from God (Hell).

To disprove God, Loftus must disprove either a, b, or c.

1) Even if parts of the Bible were mythical, this would only falsify God if they showed a, b, or c mythical. None of Loftus's examples do that; they're red herrings.

Moreover, Loftus's argument against Genesis begs the question: why believe the universe is as ancient as he says? Even so, there are plausible interpretations of Genesis accomodating a billions year-old universe.

Loftus cites no evidence of Eden-like stories predating the Genesis tradition. Concerning Egypt and Canaan, the absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence. Only the latter can falsify these. Besides, historical evidences do buttress them.

2) He gives no argument showing it's problematic for the Trinity to always agree. Moreover, he's wrong, since they won't disagree on what is true (omniscient) or what is good (omnibenevolent). What would they disagree about?

He says there's no God without beginning or end, since everything we experience has beginning or end. But this is false or question-begging: things like moral law, numbers, sets, propositions, universals, etc. seem to exist without end or origin.

Why believe our uniform experience shows order growing incrementally? Seems false: the universe's order was inherent in its origin (big bang or creation). Many believe the origin of mankind and beasts occurred instantaneously. Are they wrong? Also, our experience only shows contingent order (sometimes) grows incrementally. But why believe God is contingent?

Loftus never explains why God's immateriality disallows His acting in the world nor why His having all knowledge without learning it is problematic. How does he know that time is a “function of movement and bodily placement?” Philosophers of time would disagree. Lastly, I don't believe God is timeless, thus circumventing Loftus's argument in that regard.

Why believe God would do the same thing we would in every moral circumstance (e.g., burning child)? A doctor cuts someone open if they need surgery. I wouldn't, because I don't have a doctor's knowledge. God may deal with evil in a different way, because His knowledge isn't limited like ours (e.g., he may allow evil so good we can't foresee will ultimately result).

Loftus gives no reason to believe it's necessary to “weigh temporal alternatives” and choose who one is to be a person.

3) God demanded that certain wicked peoples be killed because they would ruin His plan to save others throughout history from eternal punishment. God accomplished the greater good through these commandments.

Loftus fails to document his claims that God commanded the rape of women, mistreatment of slaves, or frivolous divorce. Also, why is the blood sacrifice of animals evil?

Why think there's no cogent explanation of Jesus's atoning for sins? Why believe there's not enough evidence to believe Jesus is Savior?

4) How does Loftus know that God could create some other natural system or reveal Himself more clearly to us and yet not end up with a worse balance of good vs. evil in the universe?

5) Believing God revealed Himself in the Bible is not essential to believing the Christian God exists (see a, b, and c). This last argument is irrelevant.

Debate Begins

On May 22, John W. Loftus uploaded his opening statement for our debating regarding the Christian God. The entire debate can be found at www.thechristiangod.blogspot.com.

I will cross-post each contribution here as the debate goes. Here are John's opening arguments:



1) The Bible is filled with mythic folklore. Here are just a few examples: There isn’t any way to harmonize the creation accounts in Genesis with the age of the universe, granting the time necessary for galaxy, star, solar system, earth, animal, and human formation. The stories of Adam & Eve, Cain, the pre-flood ages of men, and the flood itself have no basis in historical fact. There are similar polytheistic stories like these which predate Genesis by as much as 350 years. Since older sources are to be considered the more reliable sources, then a monotheistic God was not involved, if these events happened at all. There is also no archeological evidence for the Israelites in Egyptian slavery for 400 years, or of their wilderness wanderings for 40 years, or of their conquest of Canaan.

2) I find it implausible to believe that a Triune God (3 persons in 1 who always agree?) has always and forever existed without cause and will always and forever exist (even though our entire experience is that everything has a beginning and an ending), as a fully formed being (even though our entire experience is that order grows incrementally), without a body (and yet acts in the material world), in a timeless existence (and yet creates time), having all knowledge (who consequently never learned anything), and who is the source of all complex information found in the details of the makeup of this universe. This God purportedly has all power (but doesn’t exercise it like we would if we saw a burning child), and is present everywhere (and who also knows what time it is everywhere in our universe even though time is a function of movement and bodily placement). How is it possible for this being to be called a "person," who thinks (which demands weighing temporal alternatives), and who freely chooses who he is and what his values are (even though we never find a time when such choices were made by him)?

3) This barbaric God commanded that witches and people who worship other gods should be killed. He commanded that men should rape women in the spoils of war, and even commit genocide. He allowed people to own slaves which could be beaten within an inch of their lives. He commanded that men should divorce their wives simply because they had a different religion, and women were pretty much defenseless without a husband. He demanded blood sacrifice in order to forgive sins. There is no cogent explanation for how Jesus’ death atones for our sins. He will eternally punish those who don’t see enough evidence to believe in Jesus, while not providing enough of it to believe.

4) The world this God created is not like the world we would expect to find if a good God exists. There is too much natural suffering in it for man alone to be blamed. The law of predation is simply unnecessary. If God exists he could’ve made us all vegetarians and made edible plants grow like weeds do today. If God exists he could end the wars between religious faiths by revealing himself more clearly in this world.

5) God revealed himself in a historically conditioned book before the printing press, even though almost anything can be rationally denied in history, even if it happened. For an omniscient being, he chose a poor medium to do so. I challenge Tom to find one passage in God’s OT revelation to be considered a prophecy (and not wish fulfillment) of the life, death, or resurrection of Jesus which singularly points to him.

The Good Fight vs. Debunking Christianity

Atheist author John W. Loftus a blogger at Debunking Christianity (www.debunkingchristianity.blogspot.com) has in fact agreed to debate yours truly in a small exchange.

The title of the debate is simply, "The Christian God: Is the Evidence Against Him?" The gist of the engagement will be whether or not there is good evidence to conclude that the Christian God is non-existent. John says yes; I say no.

This will be a short event: John's opening statement, my rebuttal, his rebuttal, and then my closing statement. Each round will be around 500 words.

This should be fun and interesting, at least. It will be shown in its entirety at www.thechristiangod.blogspot.com. And both John and I will be posting each round to our respective blogs throughout the exchange.

Blog vs. Blog

Out of my love for debating philosophical/theological topics (e.g., "Does God Exist?", etc.), I've decided to try and find a naturalist/atheist blogger out there who would like to engage in such a small exchange.

I'd like to merely have 300-500 word contributions each round, with possibly three rounds (opening, rebuttal, conclusion) total.

The biggest obstacle is finding a competent atheist blogger who's willing to do so. We could then post the exchanges on our respective sites. I think this might prove fun and interesting -- never a bad mix.

I've emailed John Loftus, former professing Christian turned skeptic. He runs the Debunking Christianity blog (www.debunkingchristianity.blogspot.com). He allegedly used to participate in much ministry work, including the study and teaching of apologetics. Now, he's turned that on its head. A discussion between us would prove confrontational, if nothing else.

Matt Young's Mistakes

The following is a dialogue I had with Phd scientist Matt Young, an atheist and avid opponent of Intelligent Design Theory. Young is the author of No Sense of Obligation: Science and Religion in an Impersonal Universe.

This discussion took place in the Feedback section of www.infidels.org in September 2003. Young had written an essay summarizing his book and posted it at that site. I responded.


TOM WANCHICK
I want to address two mistakes (of many) that Matt Young makes in his article, "Science and Religion in an Impersonal Universe." For one, his comment that "philosophers of religion seem as unwilling to incorporate the discoveries of modern science into their worldviews as are the Biblical literalists" is simply false. Prominent Christian philosophers of religion in fact quite happily use the findings of science to bolster their apologetic efforts. It's odd that Young fails to recognize this since the work of such scholars (e.g., Richard Swinburne, William Lane Craig, Robert Koons, Michael Rea) is readily available and widely discussed. Young, for example, agrees that the Cosmological Argument is supported by the scientific evidence of the universe's beginning (i.e. Big Bang cosmology). But for some reason he fails to see that contemporary philosophers like W.L. Craig cite that very data in their own work?

This leads to my other point. Young agrees that the universe probably was caused to exist. But, he says, this is unimportant since that doesn't imply that God did the causing. I beg to differ. In admitting such a cause, Young admits to the reality of a spaceless, timeless, immaterial, being who can bring the universe into reality out of nothing. Now this is precisely what theists have said of God since ancient times. How is there no theistic implication here? At the very least we ought not shrug the issue off hastily like Young does in his article.

One parting point: When it comes to the evidence for theism, Mr. Young seems to be the one who can't come to grips. For example, of the Anthropic Design (Fine Tuning) argument he says this is circular. I can't think of any sophisticated philosopher who makes such an accusation of that argument. Young appears rather unfamiliar with the current philosophical discussions surrounding this issue. Thus, in the end, we find Young himself--much like the "biblical literalists" he denigrates--refusing to properly grapple with the evidence as it stands.


MATT YOUNG
September 21, 2003, 09:31 PM
Mr. Wanchick needs to read more carefully. What I actually wrote was, "except for a few philosophically minded scientists, philosophers of religion seem as unwilling to incorporate the discoveries of modern science into their worldviews as are the Biblical literalists ." I have read Swinburne, Arthur Peacocke, John Polkinghorne, and others. I think of them as theologians writing Christian apologetics, not philosophers (just as I think of Paul Davies as a physicist, not a philosopher). But maybe the dichotomy between theologian and philosopher is a distinction without a difference. To avoid a pointless argument on who is a philosopher and who is not, I will concede that the remark was intemperate and perhaps I should not have written it.

I agree that the present universe probably began with the big bang. I have no idea what went on before the big bang. But "admitting" that the universe is the result of a causal process is a far cry from admitting that the cause was a purposeful being, let alone "a spaceless, timeless, immaterial, ([I]sic) being." I don't know what is meant by a spaceless, timeless, immaterial being, and neither does anyone else. Additionally, many physicists think that the big bang was not causal but the result of an uncaused quantum fluctuation; if they are right, there goes the argument from first cause.

I do not much care whether philosophers have noticed that the anthropic "principle" is circular. It certainly seems so to me: The universe is hospitable to life; we are here; therefore the universe was designed to be hospitable to life. How do we know? Because we are here.Supporters of the anthropic principle sometimes try to buttress their argument with the fine-tuning argument: the fundamental constants are somehow fine-tuned so that life will be possible. Victor Stenger, who has written a lot about the anthropic principle, has dealt with this claim. Briefly, Stenger argues that long-lived stars are necessary for life. Rather than arbitrarily changing one fundamental constant and demonstrating that life will not be possible, Stenger varies four fundamental constants randomly over 10 orders of magnitude. Over half the universes he has examined will support stars with a lifetime over 1 billion years. Stenger concludes that the fundamental constants are not necessarily tuned for life, though he notes that the form of life that develops might not be anything like life as we know it [1, 2]. Indeed, one hidden assumption behind the anthropic principle is that only one kind of life is possible -- else its supporters would not be so quick to argue that the universe is fine-tuned. At this very moment, in another universe in our meta-universe, an intelligent green slime (whose life is based on element 14) is basking in soft X-rays at 80 degrees Celsius and marveling that the universe is so finely tuned to support life.

Finally, as for my "refusing to properly grapple with the evidence as it stands," I can only note that my article was necessarily brief. For detailed discussions, see Ref. 3. Let us hope that my other purported errors are more substantive than these.

[1] Stenger, Victor J. 1995. The Unconscious Quantum: Metaphysics in Modern Physics and Cosmology. Buffalo, N. Y.: Prometheus Books.[2] Stenger, Victor J. 2004. "Is the Universe Fine-Tuned for Us?" Chapter 12 of Young, Matt, and Taner Edis. Why Intelligent Design Fails: A Scientific Critique of the New Creationism. Piscataway, N. J.: Rutgers University Press (in press).[3] Young, Matt. 2001. No Sense of Obligation: Science and Religion in an Impersonal Universe. Bloomington, Ind.:1stBooks Library.

TOM WANCHICK
September 23, 2003, 07:25 PM
I know Dr. Young is busy so I won't belabor my points here. But I must say some things in response to his last post.

He accuses me of grossly misreading his comments about theistic philosophers and their ignorance of science. But he's the one with the misunderstanding. His article says that merely some philosophically oriented scientists utilize modern science in their philosophical arguments for theism. He implies there that there are virtually no theistic philosophers who do so. His latest comments don't help; now he merely grants that some theologians also use science in their apologetics. But what Dr. Young manages to overlook is the plethora of literature coming from theistic philosophers (who are neither scientists nor theologians) in support of their religious stance, much of which is saturated with discussions of modern science and how its findings buttress theism. That Dr. Young fails to see this is especially strange since he has devoted a book to theism and its supporting evidence. How can he appear so ignorant of the work of such brilliant Christian philosophers as W.L. Craig, Robin Collins, and others who so extensively employ scientific evidence in their work?

Contrary to what Dr. Young says at the end of his last post, these misstatements on his part are not unimportant. In a culture (like ours) where science and scientists are often looked at (wrongly) as the sole providers of truth and rationality, one can conceive of many readers coming across Dr. Young's (a professional scientist) essay and concluding that theism and theistic scholars are somehow out of touch with the "hard facts" of science. Unfortunately, this is simply untrue and thus Dr. Young's article is apt to mislead sincere readers.

When it comes to the big bang and its implications for religion, Dr. Young appears to be the uninformed one. He says that possibly the big bang resulted from a quantam fluctuation. But even if that were so, the universe would not come from nothing since the substances underlying this event are in fact something. But then we must ask what caused those substances to exist. We're back to the cosmological argument. Dr. Young agrees that something can't come from nothing. Thus, if time and space came into existence then something nonspatial and nontemporal must've brought it into being. The probability of theism's truth raises substantially with that realization. Dr. Young says he can't conceive of a nonphysical, nontemporal being. But in admitting a cause of space and time, he admits to the existence of such a being.

Dr. Young also presents a version of the Design Argument which no serious theistic scholar even employs. Thus, he seems to be as uninformed on the arguments for theism, as are the "biblical fundamentalists" he finds so uninformed in things scientific.

I Know Who is My Beloved!!!!

One of my favorite old hymns is entitled "I Know Whom I Have Believed," a song based on 2 Timothy 1:12: "That is why I am suffering as I am. Yet I am not ashamed, because I know whom I have believed, and am convinced that he is able to guard what I have entrusted to him for that day."

Here, the Apostle Paul explains that his life of trouble and toil becomes bearable when it's set in the light of Christ. Christ will see him through to glory; the heartache of the present world thus becomes dim and weak.

I (as I hope all Christians) of course share in this hope whose only source is ultimately Jesus. But while Christ is the final root of this hope, it's worth noting that, indeed, God sometimes uses his human agents to transfer it into our lives. Sometimes there are those Christians who act as "the fragrance of life" (2 Corinthians 2:16) for us.

I in fact came upon such a Christian about a year ago when I met Stacy Weber, a follower of Jesus who not only loves the Lord, but who shows constantly His love to others. As kindhearted as she is devout, Stacy has been to me a constant bearer of Christ's light into my life in even my toughest days.

Never have I met a woman whom I could so trust with my love. So much so, that this past February, I asked for (and received) her hand to be married.

To refashion the old song a bit: I know who is my beloved. I love you Stacy!!

Revolutionary New Book

My last post mentioned J.P. Moreland's new blog. In this post, I'd like to mention his new, revolutionary book to be published June 1, 2007.

Moreland's latest is entitled *Kingdom Triangle.* The triangle here represents three facets at the foundation of the Christian life: recovering the Christian intellect, renovating the soul through spiritual disciplines, and restoring our connection with the power of the Holy Spirit and His work in our lives.

Moreland recently announced this new publication -- one he's calling his greatest contribution to the church, his magnum opus -- here (http://www.scriptoriumdaily.com/
pdf/KT_Announcement_to_ScriptoriumDaily.pdf)

Read this book and gain some massively important insights into becoming a "radical for Jesus" (as Moreland says).

Moreland & Craig (new and improved)

My two biggest heroes in the Christian faith recently renewed and greatly expanded their presence on the world wide web.

Christian philosopher and professor (at Talbot School of Theology), William Lane Craig, has a new ministry called Reasonable Faith (also the title to one of his classic books on apologetics), which is devoted to providing a rational defense of the Christian faith, as well as communicating that defense to the unbelieving world. His new site has a wealth of awesome material including scholarly and popular articles, a "Question of the Week" personally answered by Craig, audio files of his various lectures and debates (a treasure trove), podcasts of his Sunday school apologetics teachings at his church, and a ton more.

See the site at www.reasonablefaith.org.

Similarly exciting is my other favorite Christian philosopher, J.P. Moreland's (also of Talbot School of Theology) entrance into the world of blogging. Moreland is among the greatest apologists in the history of the church and he continues to spread his knowledge to the church through his books, articles, and lectures. See his excellent blog contributions at:

www.scriptoriumdaily.com

These sites are an answer to prayer! A wealth of excellent teaching at the click of a button.