Does God Exist with Edward Tabash and Nick Keehus

good evening I'm Karen Fisher on behalf of nakiya's productions attorney Edward tabash and calvary chapel anaheim i welcome you to the theism atheism debate tonight's topic is does God exists which way does the evidence point our first speaker is Nick kiyose Nick is a writer and professor of New Testament studies theology and apologetics which have been his passion for the last 25 years he has an MA in theological studies from Veritas evangelical seminary and is presently working on a PhD in theological studies from Asia Graduate School of Theology a doctorate in biblical and Theological engagement from Bethel and a PhD in biblical history and archaeology from veritas Seminary an eighth of a Sweden Nick moved to the US in 1987 he's married to Stacie and they have five children Nick and his family reside in Southern California our second speaker tonight is Eddie Thomas Eddie Edward Thomas is a constitutional lawyer in the Los Angeles area he graduated from UCLA in 1973 magna Laden with a bachelor's degree in political science he graduated from Loyola Law School of Los Angeles in 1976 he is the son of an Orthodox rabbi from Lithuania and an Auschwitz surviving mother from Hungary after decades of spiritual reflection and seeking he is determined that the universe is natural with no supernatural being or beings no god or gods involved in the creation or perpetuation of our existence he chairs the board of directors of the Center for inquiry transnational a worldwide organization of secular humanists and scientific skeptics the format for tonight will be as follows nakiya's will speak first with a 30 minute opening statement Eddie Tabish will speak with a 30 minute opening statement Nikias will have a 15 minute time of rebuttal followed by edwart Abbas with a 15 minute time of rebuttal following this there will be a 30-minute question-and-answer period please write your questions on the cards provided on the pews and pass them to the center aisle they'll be collected the questions will be read aloud and each opponent will have two minutes to give an answer to each question please indicate on the cards who the question is directed to after the question-and-answer period each debater will have a 15 minutes to give a closing statement and I asked that you would listen attentively to each speaker whether or not you agree with what is being said thank you and let's begin Nakia sweetie please come to the podium and I will start the timer when you are ready to begin you will have 30 minutes good evening it's a privilege to be here tonight and some 20 years ago mr. Tosh and I debated the topic of abortion in Orange County so in a sense this is our anniversary debate I'm glad you're here ready it's always a privilege to debate you to debate the question whether God exists is one of the greatest questions of humanity philosophers and theologians have debated this topic for hundreds and hundreds of years tonight I will defend a position that God exists by theism I mean the theistic God that I'm defending tonight he's self-existent he's eternal he possesses attributes like divine omniscience omnipresence and so forth so it's not not the god of deism some remote divine landlord that created the cosmos and went on a long vacation my two main contentions tonight are number one there are good reasons to believe that theism is true - there is no reason to believe that atheism is true I will defend the first contention using four main strategies the first one is theism can better account for explain the meaning of life to theism makes more sense than atheism in justifying an objective morality as opposed to moral relativism which follows from the Atheist atheistic worldview number three recent discoveries in astrophysics cosmology and biology make it more plausible seemingly true to believe that there's a mind behind the universe and its origin and finally the loss of logic and mathematics are more compatible given the theistic framework than atheism having said that we're not here to debate the resurrection of Christ biblical inerrancy or higher forms of criticism these are points of doctrine that theologians and philosophers themself differ on we're here to simply debate the existence of God now concerning the debate and discussions whether God exists Oxford atheist Jo Mackey one of my favorite atheists second to tabash he writes it is my view that the question whether there is or is not a god can and should be discussed rationally and reasonably and that such discussion can be rewarding in that it can yield definite results this is a genuine meaningful question and an important one in fact too important for us to take sites about it arbitrarily the issue is not so obscure or hidden if you will that relevant considerations of argument cannot be brought to bear upon it unquote I think Mackie is correct here in fact the former atheist British philosopher Anthony flue finally agreed that some form of theism in his case deism made more sense and can better account for some of these things Anthony flew as some of you know have been referred to as the world's most influential philosophical atheist he gave it up and in his book there is no God how the world's most notorious atheist changed his mind Anthony flew published some of these things that led to that change after a lifetime of study he finally abandoned atheism so while hearing the arguments from each side tonight I would encourage you all to pay close attention to what what is claimed has the ring of truth to it if it just makes logical sense or for stretching what's more plausible X Y or Z and so forth so as I present my arguments this evening I will touch on certain atheistic responses that I think would be of course contrary to what I say but I don't know what Eddie is going to argue yet so I don't want to set up any ad hominem attacks or straw men of the sort we're just gonna have to wait and see what Eddie has to share tonight now to the arguments theism can better account for and explain the meaning of life if God exists then we can rest assured that there's real meaning to life at least some meaning we're concerning your existence why are we here where are we going is there a destiny origin meaning morality and so forth the two great questions are what is the source of the cosmos and what is the purpose of being in the cosmos if God exists there must be a purpose to our existence if God exists and created the universe we can bet on the fact that you have purpose and so do I ask us my opponent but if atheism is true we're no more than a cluster of glorified bacteria or freaks of nature if all is matter then all we are is matter in motion Lawrence Krauss one of the top atheists of our time he writes quote every atom in your body came from a star that exploded and the atoms in your left hand probably came from a different start than your right hand it is really the most poetic thing I know about physics you are all Stardust he further writes a universe without purpose should neither depress us nor suggest that our lives are purposeless through an awe-inspiring cosmic history we find ourselves on this remote planet in a remote corner of the universe endowed with intelligence and self-awareness we should not despair but should humbly rejoice in making the most of these gifts and celebrate our brief moment in the Sun that's about it for atheists so if God does not exist we're no more than accidental cosmic loafers war freaks of nature glorified Stardust lost in space awaiting death as the universe is plunging toward decay so is everything within it including you and I there's no escaping this given atheism but we don't live our lives that way do we we live our lives as as though there is meaning and purpose we love we learn we forgive us if these things really have a genuine meaning we raise our children the same way I said they have a purpose at the end of the day most of us I would hope evaluate our day and pay close attention to what really transpired meaningfully as opposed to just going to work call it a day check in check out what really mattered a what did we do to make a difference and so forth in the ultimate sense we act as if there is some greater purpose including hope for the afterlife we strive for immortality at least that seems to be the case throughout most of human culture in doing good things and focus on things that truly matter that have meaning and impact now jean-paul Sartre the French existential has claimed that life is meaningless and we must assign meaning to our existence life is like a stage or play with no ultimate meaning there is no screenplay there was no writer no rhyme or reason whatsoever so what do we do we tighten our bootstraps and just march on life is terrible according to Sartre we pretend as if there is meaning we assign meaning to our pathetic existence and sort of just go on like a bad movie but this is purely fantasy even the atheist goes home and kisses his wife and kids as if there's meaning to that experience if atheism is true there's no ultimate meaning maybe a relative meaning but no ultimate significance at all at best some vague notion of relative significance assignment to us by ourselves so in the final analysis where atheism true were no more significant really than a swamp of alligators or busing mosquitos or gays flying around what makes us so special if atheism is true for atheism each of our lives will end up food for worms our destinies to become one with your casket six feet below and we're not pushing any daisies from the grave that's for sure but everyone we see you know throughout cultures people live their lives as if there is meaning and purpose and a real morality Sartre writes it is very distressing that God does not exist because I mean all the possibility of finding values are now gone they disappear along with him like Nietzsche said God is dead and if so so saw morality there can be no longer be an OP tree or E prior to looking at the facts they can no longer be an opera re good since there is no infinite and perfect consciousness to think about it there's no one out there to think it or think about it there is no source of ultimate objective morality we have to assign morality meaning and so forth therefore what follows from the atheistic worldview is that there are no moral intrinsic values there's no meaning or purpose to life whatsoever what are we referring to here theism makes more sense than atheism in justifying not just meaning but an objective morality here's the argument in in a syllogism premise 1 if God does not exist an objective morality does not exist either to objective morality does exists therefore God exists it sort of follows logically from the premises but if atheism is true what ethical system follows atheism moral relativism if you want to do X Y Z Who am I to judge I personally wouldn't as opposed to moral objectivism or moral absolutism which would say for example rape is trans culturally wrong it was wrong 2,000 years ago it'll be wrong 10,000 years from today if there's a culture in the world says hey we embrace infanticide or rape or camel icing on the homeless with mere fun of it torturing two-year-olds for the mere fun of it throwing gay guys off of buildings like Isis does you know beheading innocent people to call those morally neutral axes morally nuts and warped why because you have to say that they're morally neutral acts unless you buy into generalism situation ethics or some other notion of morality that's not part of the objective morality that I'm defending this evening so for the theist if you think about meaning you think about morality we can also add what philosophers called OTT there's an honest - the world and that goes hand-in-hand with morality you ought not to do X Y & Z you ought not to go out and shoot the homeless for the mere fun of it things like that these are moral abominations there's an honest - the world there's a certain way that things ought to be and if there is an ought to the world where does that come from if it's just the result of of a physical universe there can again there's no meaning there's no purpose or just matter atoms in motion glorified Stardust if you will there's no real morality there's no oughtness to the world it's not a certain way that things ought to be and if you couple that with a problem of evil like Hans Kuhn the German theologian he's called the problem of evil the big rock of atheism atheist tend to cling to the problem of evil and that's sort of like the main milestone to argue from if God exists why is there so much evil in the world but what's evil if God does not exist a strawberry a one I'd bet what is it you have to presuppose an objective won't standard or right and wrong in order to argue against evil if not you'd have to say well these things are just morally neutral in fact morally illusory and that doesn't have the ring of truth duh I think that the Christian position ranging from meaning to objective morality actually saying that X is a moral abomination you can say that if you are a moral relativist so the concept entails order because you cannot have an ought without morality and this oughtness comes from God you know philosophers like p-tech Nietzsche of Germany and jean-paul Sartre understood that if God is dead then so is all morality therefore I think on these two points alone atheism is bankrupt when it comes to morality this is not to say that atheists don't live more lives of course they do it's just what are their reasons to do so other than saying well I'm doing it because of socio biological evolution says I ought to or should you know some good for society but then atheism really in that notion of morality aims at survival and sociology not at a true art so Dostoevsky the the Russian he said if God does not exist all things are permitted you know when you think of freaks like Ted Bundy one of my former professors was lecturing at UNLV and they had a relativist conference and they thought you know let's have one of the Objectivist come in and give a case against relativism so he went up into the podium and he quoted a relativist and he says let me open up with a quote maybe you've heard it maybe you haven't he says all my education have led me to believe that there was no absolute standard or right and wrong and just went down the line of the relativistic mindset when it comes to ethics and he stops on quote when the audience starts clapping then he grabbed the mic and I said yeah Ted Bundy said that before his last victim what he left out was this girl that he had in the car who was trying to get into his head you know why are you doing this let me get out of this you know maybe I can escape somehow by becoming his friend at the end of that quote he looked to the girl and says you know what therefore there's Oh difference between me having a steak or killing raping and eating you and you hear a scream soon as my professors said that the audience stopped laughing why such vivid and and gross examples because when you're testing a system you want to push it to his logical extreme so by saying hey if moral relativism is true and there is no God and we sort of assigned value equivalent to a speed limit you know we can change the speed limits up or down but there's a moral principle behind that speed limit which is what don't drive too fast because you could kill people and killing people is wrong same thing with yield signs and stop sites there's absolutely a moral principle behind it most people don't think of that but there is but you still up or down the speed limit same thing driving an ambulance with somebody dying in the backseat right you can violate the speed limit in doing so why because life per serving is what we're after that's praiseworthy we value life more than a speed limit because the principle behind it is an objective moral law so to argue morality based on secular humanism or mere social mores is no more than sociobiological evolution aiming at survival which is not ethics it is sociology next argument recent discoveries in astrophysics cosmology and biology specifically DNA make it more plausible to believe that there's a mind behind the universe as opposed to not premise 1 an argument from cosmology whatever begins to exist requires a cause if the universe had a beginning point and then it requires a cause Big Bang cosmology seems to suggest that the universe began to exist well then there must be a cause behind the universe who lit the match there was a big bang who or what lit the match I think that the rival hypotheses offered by by scientists trying to explain away this principle don't work either could the unit be eternal well if the universe is running out of energy and is expanding and all of the causal events in the past are actually infinite or eternal Sun is shrinking what five six feet per hour and so forth the universe would have burned up an eternity ago if it was eternal but we're here could the universe have created itself well that's kind of circular for the universe of create itself it would have to exist prior to some creations you haven't said much you back to it being eternal what about the universe being in a steady state American physicist Arno Penzias who worked extensively on the Big Bang model used to believe in the steady state model here yet he gave it up final he said it is just ugly he says quote the steady state Theory turned out to be so ugly that people dismissed it the easiest way to fit the observations with the least number of parameters was one which the universe was created out of nothing in an instant and continues to expand to the universe being in a continual oscillation whereas oscillating is its expanding and contracting and so forth there simply is not a sufficient mass in the universe to do so and the force of gravity the expansion rate we know of no natural loss to ever pull it back that's the rate of the expansion but what about this question that always comes up when it comes to this argument anything that begins to exist requires a cost to the universe began to exist 3 therefore the universe was cost where did God come from then and say everything that exists requires a cost we said anything that comes into being or every effect has a cost the universe is in effect therefore requires a cost if it is in effect of course to ask where God comes from or came from is a category error this is asking the wrong question about the subject it's like saying what does the color blue smell like well blue doesn't smell like anything right so the mistake here is if you're asking questions about a being that is immortal where did he come from were you missing the missing the point we believe that God is the uncaused cause that transcends the universe which is finite he's infinite the universe so interestingly some atheists they have no problem in believing in an eternal uncaused universe where they can't believe and an eternal uncaused cause who brought the universe into being whatever begins to exist requires a costs a couple things here defending that premise the law of causality every effect requires a cause virtually most if not all of science rests on that principle whatever begins to exist in a scientific lab you assume from the get-go that if I were to throw a bottle across the room it will land somewhere if I were to throw a pencil above this podium and you and you don't see me you just see a pencil fly you're gonna assume that someone threw the pen because pens don't fly by themselves observation repetition and then prediction scientific method we observe things then we repeat things and after repetition we can predict things such as if I would have throw a pencil up in the air it's not gonna levitate and fly by itself right so forensically when we're dealing with cosmology it's it's really an exercise in forensic science we weren't there to observe the Big Bang we weren't there to observe the origin of the universe and we're certainly not present now to experience black holes and parallel universes and multiverses and baby universes and all of these things so we're kind of stuck so what the theists us is we actually focus on what we are doing in the here and now the scientific method not scientism I don't think that works but the scientific method and we're just saying look and here are now all effects of causes unless we want to talk about subatomic physics and most people don't even have a clue about what's going on at that level but that being said what is wrong and saying everything that we experience here all effects have causes well let's go back 6,000 10,000 13.7 billion years whatever you want to assign to it if the universe had a beginning point looks that way there must be a cost behind it that's plausible defending premise to the universe began to exist the scientists have confirmed that planets are moving away at rapid speeds Rafal resulting from a great explosion some time ago we already talked about that who lit the match we can rephrase the argument again every effect has a cost the universe is in effect therefore requires a cost and we call this cost God further the universe is thinning out some call it burning out indicating that the universe is finite as opposed to eternal I already mentioned that if the series of causal events in the past caused an effect cost-effective is actually infinite there would be no present moment al-ghazali who defended the Kalam cosmological argument he says if the series of events in the past are actually infinite there would be no present moment but here we are I think it was a ghostly lightnings who who was a german mathematician in my view smarter than Einstein he said the infinite is solely that of my idea the infinite is nowhere to be found in nature nor does it provide a legitimate basis for rational thought it's solely that of an idea what about virtual particles appearing or disappearing without a trace in a vacuum problem here is that the vacuum is not nothing it's something the vacuum and black holes are part of this universe they're part of the entirety of the cosmos so we can argue all night long about baby universes and so forth within this universe or parallel universes we're talking about everything that we observe everything that's out there if it's an effect it requires a cost and this cost we call God an argument from design you could call this the teleological argument you could call it argument from design you can do all sorts of things with this I will focus on on DNA and biological truths and some scientific points here number one physical things require a designer to the universe is a physical thing and more for they just three therefore the earth requires a designer or we can put it this way premise one the universe is either fine-tuned resulting from design chance port law which Aviva natural law it is not the result of chance or natural law three therefore the fine-tuned universe is the result of design again this is true of virtually everything that we observe why not the universe when you see a car you know there's a car manufacturer behind the design and the vehicle is a blueprint behind the blueprint is an engineer and then they go to production why not the world why does design only reply to these things but not to the universe the intricate universe that you live in with all of its loss and details now there are some things that seem out of whack say decease and other things but concerning what appears to be imperfect we presuppose some notion of what is perfect so for the theists we live in a fallen universe we live in a fallen world that's why we see imperfection and when you say things are imperfect or out of whack you're you're presupposing that there's a standard of perfection even you even though we may be unaware of what that is you know sort of like you can't say what's cricket like CS Lewis said unless you have an idea of what's straight same thing with an art same thing with evil and same thing with designs that appears to be out of whack for example DNA is not perfect it's filled with information some 5000 volumes of information in one single human cell Darwin called it a simple cell we know a lot more now about the cell so if it's packed with information equivalent to five thousand volumes one cell and you have billions of cells in your body why would you just say no water bottles are made you know by man but not the universe not human beings not animals it makes a little sense for the theists so you could say though that the newest thing so to speak or more recent for the this movement is to say that it's just an apparent design well either is designed what's not to argue that something is apparently designed due to maybe DNA having a a breakdown or DNA can be contaminated and so forth through disease or whatnot that does not go against the theistic argument that it was designed to still have designed regardless of imperfections because we live in a fallen world and so forth the specific amount of information contained in these things is so astronomically enormous that to explain a way the designer is not just strange but it's unconventional we don't do that in a lab consider this one one single sperm contains some 300 billion basis of genetic information 300 billion and that's what turned you into you not from good is due to you consider your body if you were able to lay down your arteries the totality of your veins would stretch as far as 100,000 miles from just one single enough to wrap the entire planet four times but that was all chance molecules consisting of nonliving matter cannot be transformed through natural and blind unguided processes into organic proteins the building blocks of life it screams for a designer and in order to arrange a protein sequence that actually works for important life that's just simple life important life the amino acids must be organized in an exact sequence or system it's just slightly off like imagine a harp playing a harp with a billion strings and it's fine tune if one is off-key this universe including you and I would cease to be this ought to be a life prohibiting world the fact that it is a life permitting planet is a miracle enough might as well give up atheism because that alone is a miracle CS Lewis put it well when it said men became scientific because they expected law in nature and they expected law in nature because they believed in a law maker now concerning the size and vastness of the universe astrophysicists djor smooth at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory points out that in order for it to be that big the size of the universe you have to make it perfectly otherwise the imperfections would amount would mount up and the universe would either collapse on itself or fly apart and so it's actually a pretty precise job unquote basic logic science and engineering demonstrate that you don't get information from not information there's information in DNA there's information in your body there's information in the world is information and natural law there are mathematical truths mathematical truths that actually got us to the moon we rely on these principles as we do in a lab so you don't get mine from non mine you don't get intelligence from non intelligence as Rousseau put it quote the visible order of the universe proclaims a supreme intelligence unquote when Lightning's said why is there something rather than nothing at all this is what philosophers have been you know trying to sort the ends for long long time millennia why is there something rather than nothing at all if the universe came from nothing by nothing that takes more faith than to believe in that there's a cause behind it the ratio of electromagnetic force constant to the force of gravity is perfect the expansion rate of the universe the velocity of light the age of the cosmos the initial uniformity of radiation the average distance between stars the ratio of electrons and proton mass all of these things if they were slightly off life would cease to exist in short mathematical truths logical truths like the law non-contradiction ada son equal non aid we rely on these mathematical prints they're not real as far as being part of this physical universe they're not material but the Latins would say it's not matter numbers are still as real as you are in this room you can even utter a sentence unless you presuppose the loss of logic which is information we believe that mathematical principles flow from the nature of the theistic God the same thing with a loss of logic Aristotle did not invent them he discovered them thank you will now give his thirty minute opening statement well I want to thank Nick in the church for arranging this debate I will respond to Nick's specific arguments in my rebuttal but not going to set forth arguments for why I maintain the overwhelming weight of the evidence in our universe demonstrates that it is more likely than not that God does not exist I will argue that the evidence in our physical universe makes it more unlikely that there does not exist the standard-issue all-powerful Allgood all-knowing deity first argument is the lack of evidence of anything beyond the physical one of my themes will be the lack of evidence of the supernatural and the clear indication from the physical world that the supernatural does not exist the SCOTUS swept away with all supernatural claims my argument is based on the weight of the evidence and the upon the assertion that atheism is the best inference to be made from the existing evidence as this debate progresses I want everybody to keep in mind the following criteria for assessing the relative strengths of our competing arguments argument number two the God of the gaps no basis for asserting a supernatural being because we haven't yet found a naturalistic answer when there is no otherwise existing independent evidence of the supernatural in order to prevail in this debate Nick must show that his supernatural explanations are better than naturalistic explanations extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence his burden is the same as one who asserts that it is most likely that the noise in the Attic is caused by space aliens who can make themselves invisible whenever they want from a planet in the Andromeda galaxy after we have heard substantial commotion in the Attic and each time we inspect the Attic can't find the source of that commotion the fact that there is undisputed commotion in the Attic along with the fact that we cannot determine the causative agencies for that ruckus still does not justify a leap to a paranormal explanation the analogy I argue applies to all claims of God did it Nick will also have to show that a supernatural God is a more likely explanation than a non supernatural explanation for each of the arguments that I'm about to present and for each of his arguments the fact that we can't prove that there are absolutely no space aliens in the Attic causing the noise does not mean that we now have good evidence that those space aliens are making that noise so I will ask you to keep in mind this additional question and that is my argument number 3 which is more consistent with the observed facts of our physical world when there is no evidence of anything paranormal that is operative beyond the physical world the natural explanation or the supernatural one for purposes of our debate tonight I will ask you to never drop the analogy of the invisible space aliens because it directly conforms to the same problem of the invisible paranormal supernatural God my point number 4 we have no obligation to justify our disbelief in something unless there is super sufficient evidence to believe it I don't have to justify to quote Bertrand Russell my lack of belief that there is currently a ceramic teapot orbiting Jupiter I don't have to prove this is not true now the theists burden that must be met and overcome his first show that a disembodied immaterial mind without a functional brain created the physical world and controls it then he has to demonstrate how that mind with no material components created matter and the physical world and what was the mechanism to demonstrate how the actions of this immaterial mind a supernatural being with no physical attributes itself are a more likely explanation for any occurrence or condition in the universe even those which we don't yet have answers for there is a problem point number six of supernatural claims generally if I said that years ago here in ancient Anaheim that Green gremlins from the sixth dimension abducted members of the native population and imbued them with special powers and this is why Disneyland located here you wouldn't believe me and you wouldn't believe me because these gremlins violate the laws of nature as we understand them now let's draw an analogy here nick is inferring from things in the universe that a supernatural being exists but let me show you an analogy that stays within the framework of the scientific empirical method though we've never seen a quark we know that the category of sub atomic articles do exist evidence for the existence of quartz have been steadily increasing one indication of the soundness of the court model is its success in predicting the outcome of high-energy collisions of an electron and a positron so there is empirical verification that they exist even though we don't observe directly within what we already know about the natural physical universe again extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence there's a problem with claims of miracles claims of miracles have the initial problem of bearing witness against themselves since by their very nature they are violations of the very laws of nature that are not supposed to be violated all the supposed miracles that are used to verify the intervention and human affairs of this all-powerful God took place in a pre-scientific era why don't they happen today we don't ever see a talking donkey we don't see worldwide floods we don't see this son standing still we don't see talking snakes though some people attribute that to members of my profession and yet none of this occurs there is a story that God turns somebody into a pillar of salt we'll do that today do some miracle today which will lead into my later argument from divine hiddenness the probability that a miracle happened a violation of natural law will always be lower than the probability that a miracle has not occurred as philosopher Scottish philosopher David Hume famously said that a miracle claim must be more plausible than the assertion that the miracle did not happen now a very strong argument against anything that a God without a physical body could even do could even think is the argument from physical Minds now if we have Alzheimer's or even an anesthetic our brains don't function we don't have our consciousness let's take somebody who at the moment of their birth is kept for 70 years with no language just fed and hydrated and kept chemically alive never spoken to and never here's a human language human word and then pops out into the life after death which in excess we yearn for well who comes out into the year after somebody who speaks a language who understands things everything we know comes through physical senses into a physical brain and now I'm going to use what I consider a great accomplishment on the part of my friend Nick to argue further that physical brains are necessary for learning and consciousness and awareness he came here as a teenager from Sweden and learned to speak English like a native nobody listening to him can tell he wasn't born here usually kids who learn a language when they moved to another country come much younger than he did however he could not have learned English without the contents and forms of the language entering a functional physical brain with operative cortical neurons and synapses through the physical senses of seeing and hearing he couldn't have learned language he couldn't have even learned how to make the arguments he made tonight without a physical brain and sensory input into the physical brain so there would have been no way that pure spirit without cortical neurons and synapses can display consciousness and if there is we need to see evidence of that also if our models of self conscious aware beings are those with physical brains and we are indeed made in God's image then based on the model of consciousness and brains we derive from our own experience as sentient beings how can we be expected to believe in an conceive of mind without the attributes of consciousness in our experience that shows dependence of consciousness on the physical brain how can God think how can God impact the physical how can God cause nature to come about and sustain it if God can't think because God can't think without physical neurons and synapses and if God can do it how does he do it the connection between disembodied mind and impacting the physical world let alone creating it must be explained and that is one of the key problems with all supernatural claims and all claims that a disembodied mind can be antecedent to all we know and all that exists now there comes the problem from evil now Nick is not basing his argument tonight on a God of the Bible however I'm asserting that the defects and problems with the Bible whatever Nick is arguing is an independent atheistic argument against God's existence which I will explain later so for instance in isaiah 46:9 through 11 god says he wants whatever happens happens and then he later says i make peace and i create evil well why is one child born in a Bangladeshi mud hut and the other born in an upscale American neighborhood now there was no benefit to my mother's experiences and ash wits I grew up as her son I can testify to that you want to say well did it mold her character no it didn't it broke her so why not give people a boot camp to improve our character and stiffen our spines as opposed to a concentration camp malaria is a terrible disease there is a gene though that provides an effective defense against malaria it works by destroying any red corpuscles that have been occupied by any of the types of parasitic protozoans that cause malaria but if one has inherited this gene from both parents it causes sickle cell anemia now God does not adequately comfort suffering he's too harsh with us the distribution of disease and pain is in no way related to the virtue of the afflicted also how can God be all-knowing and unchanging with respect to his views on what evil is and what it is not if he changes his mind Exodus 32 14 and the Lord repented of the evil which he sought to do on to his people but you see if he is almighty and then he can change his mind but if he's all-knowing he can't change his mind because he always knew what he was going to do so he can't repent and if nick says well I'm not then arguing the God of the Bible he has to show us where else revelations have been lodged so we can find him including those of morality now to explain evil a theist must argue that God with his unlimited power could not have prevented an even greater evil but for the horrible evil he actually caused or allowed when he could have stopped it or with his unlimited power he could not have brought about a very great good but for actually causing or allowing a horrible evil this is a very high hurdle for an omnipotent being to meet if we really take omnipotence seriously further an all-powerful and all good God would have to have a morally sufficient reason for allowing or causing any suffering if we are to believe that an all good all-knowing all-powerful deity exists that deity should directly explain to us why with unlimited power this being still allowed the egregious suffering in question then as a subset of the argument from evil is the flourishing and languishing of sentient beings we only have a few decades of good health and particularly physical vigor and then we decline now there are countless living organisms including sentient beings who never flourish and there are people who live in poverty their entire lives and other sentient leave living beings who live in squalor and that's not what we would expect if the world is created by a perfect God also another subset of the argument from evil is how pain and pleasure operate it can be argued that some pain is necessary in order for people to be alerted to various dangers such as the pain of fire alerting us to call the fire department to hopefully rescue us before we perish in the flames but now consider the pain suffered by an innocent person who's burned to death by members of Isis just for not holding the religious beliefs that Isis approves of such pain is not biologically useful in that it doesn't contribute to someone's survival or reproduction if theism were true we would expect a benevolent deity to shield us from such unnecessary suffering by fine-tuning our capacity for agony to be activated only if such horrendous pain served a purpose to aid in the individual's survival of reproduction an atheistic naturalism we would expect there to be no relief from agonizing pain even if such pain were not useful as the evolution by natural selection is indifferent to human suffering in a way that we would not expect God to be now there's the argument from evolution though many theists believe in evolution because of its sloppiness and trial and error features evolution by natural selection is more likely if there is no God because of all the blind alleys that runs into and it's wasteful way of groping for the descendants and what occurs more than 99% of all species that have existed are now extinct this is wasteful we have useless components to our bodies and indeed that do more harm than good like the appendix evolution by natural selection is established by the weight of evidence thus far in our physical world for instance the hundred percent match of DNA sequence in the pseudo region of beta-globin is proof that humans and gorillas shared a common ancestor not that we evolved directly one from the other but shared a common ancestor now a lot of what I've been presenting raises the question that we human beings with our rational minds have a right to expect that if there were a god that God would reveal certain things so that belief in him wouldn't be so difficult this is the argument from divine hiddenness for non-resistant belief which is that we have a right to expect the God that wants relationship with us to give us enough direct evidence and not to give us defective revelations and never answering questions about evil because these unanswered questions which cause many of us to not believe in a God is more consistent with there not being a god that wants relationship with us then one that does want relationship now I God did not comfort my paternal grandmother as the Lithuanian militia acting for the Nazis were about to shoot her into a pit that she was forced to dig God didn't comfort my maternal grandfather as he was about to be shoved into the gas chamber in Auschwitz if God provides such comfort God should let everyone know in advance that discomfort will be coming to everyone about to undergo a horrible death so that we don't have additional beliefs reasons not to believe in him and why is God so inaccessible to us except by ancient hearsay why so many different religions why not a simulcast in every language of the world with some guidance a supernatural voice booming from the heavens I couldn't believe in God even if I wanted to however if this podium turned into green mist and right now the roof blew off this church and Nick and I were elevated a thousand feet above Anaheim with all sorts of flashing lights and booming voices I might turn him and say Nick I might be on the verge of conceding the debate but that's not going to happen we not we know it's not going to happen there are no miraculous events which there should be if God wants us to be in relationship with him and to say well God has to keep a distance so as not to impinge in our free will well no the more information we have the more we know in no other situation do we say let's keep people in the dark so they have greater free will the more information you have the more you can have informed decisions so the evidence of our world strongly suggests that we live in a vast and indifferent universe and we will get into all the problems with the Bible now I said that the Bible is an independent argument against God's existence whether Nick decides to defend Christianity or not there are separate issues here's why as an extension of the argument from divine hiddenness and the argument from religious confusion we would expect a God who wants relationship with us to give us a revelation that we could rely on but Genesis got so many things wrong plants did not come into existence without materials that come from the stars exploding a supernova yet the planets existed before we have the Sun standing still we know that didn't happen all sorts of atrocities in the Bible there is an area where Moses's armies were told to kill all the non virgins in a city and keep the virgins for themselves and discard them later of on pleasing so that means that the God of the Bible can don't rape also the argument from religious confusion why is it that so many sincere people have so many different ideas about what religion should be why is it that the Bible is so confusing and if it's not in the Bible where else does God locate his definitive revelation so that these question marks that create doubt and lead to non-belief wouldn't exist now Nick is not defending the Christian God but the claim that there is a Christian God is itself as a reason not to believe because it shows a defect in the Bible for instance if Jesus and God were one then Jesus was crying out on the cross my God my God why have you forsaken me he was really saying Mimi why have I forsaken myself which would have been pretty schizophrenic now what about people who undergo what we could know as religious experience there is an argument against God's existence from the in conclusiveness of religious experience because it leads nowhere people have different impressions the Dalai Lama meditates deeply and believes there's a cosmic Murch that loves everybody a Christian mystic may come back with another sense of something if there is a God that wants us to know him and know his will then that God should reveal the same story to everybody who goes into a mystical state also if there is a God who wants us to be able to connect with him during a religious experience or mystical state they should be veridical and they should have evidence in them of contacting something beyond the physical they don't first of all science has shown you can manipulate certain parts of the brain and induce the same types of experiences as mystical experiences you can take psychedelic drugs and have the same types of experiences also regardless of how lofty religious experiences or you couldn't have them without a functional physical brain so if there is a God we would expect a uniform veridical experience that would accompany mystical States so that we could connect with this being unless it's really trying to hide from us which would make no sense then we have the argument from moral confusion if there is a God who wants us to know its will then that God would not allow us to be so confused about what it really wants so Nick says he's not going to argue the God of the Bible ok then I'm going to say that gay sex is fine and that we should all support the right of gay adults to have sex but there are many people who claim to believe in God who disbelieve in this well where do we find a reliable answer that we can trust there are all sorts of dilemmas today abortion capital punishment when we should go to war when we shouldn't in Romans chapter 13 we are ordered to support the government that is in power does this mean that religious conservatives who try to bring down Bill Clinton when he was president violated this biblical command when should someone go to jail for something when should that which is immoral become illegal we have no basis for determining these things and many people of good will have vastly differing answers and because of the vastly differing answers there is too much confusion than what we would expect for a God who wants us to know his will then there's the argument from scale and the argument from human insignificance well-mixed says that the vastness of the universe would be evidence of God's existence the opposite I would say is true 96% of the universe is dark matter there are septillion Xand septillion z' of Lanice why is it that if there is a God to whom we are central that there is so much unnecessary debris floating around so many unnecessary billions of galaxies and planets and if we are not central to God's existence but one of only 50 trillion inhabited planets where God is trying to save the residents does this mean that a savior has to be sent to all 50 trillion and die on that planet in order for its inhabitants to be saved and so we don't even know our place in the universe but if there is a God who wants us to know him we should know that place then there is the argument against God's existence because of the improbability of a transcendent person a person is by very definition of being who thinks and performs actions and in turn requires to be in time so how could God have deliberately created anything if there wasn't a context of time in which he had no choice but to operate if we appeal to some free time time as we know it met a time then we are speaking about something mysterious that does not correspond to our understanding that all personal beings operate in time as we know if the theist says that God can exist and function in some unknowable meta time for which of course there is no proof and which is something made up ad hoc without any evidence then the theist is conceding that God is not completely transcendent a transcendent being has to act in time in order to cause our universe to come into existence a transcendent being has to act in time in order to provide the necessary state of affairs of our universe but how does a transcendent being that is outside of time even know time or enter into it so it is a a contradiction not a contradiction but I think an evidential contradiction to say that God is a transcendent being and yet is a personal being also if in fact there are immaterial souls whose existence do not depend on the physical body what kind of afterlife could it mean would it mean that one soul falls into another because there are no boundaries how do we tell one from the other how could consciousness be transferred from the physical brain into a disembodied setting the mechanisms aren't even there for disembodied mind to exist and if they were there then all the evidence shouldn't point to the fact that we can only have functional consciousness in any form if there's a physical brain so if you look at the totality of the physical evidence in our universe it's far more likely than not the universe is natural and not supernatural and no God or other disembodied intelligence exists thank you index cards and pens on which to write your questions on the pews in the first few rows so please come forward and write your question we'll have a time of question-and-answer later on in the debate we'll now have a time of rebuttal nakiya's you have 15 minutes for your rebuttal we need three hours to address all of our concerns tonight and that's a lot of stuff I won't address everything I will I will address the points that I think are mostly important Edie decided to bring in biblical theology citing various verses from the Tanakh or the Old Testament including Romans so we can go there too but I do so selectively to stay close to the topic which is the Scout exists not necessarily Moses and immateriality and so forth he argues that there is a lack of evidence above the physical realm you know always sees physicalism I beg to differ if I were to say to my wife I love you you can't prove love in a test tube if I were to say eight plus eight equals sixteen you can't prove that in a test tube numbers are symbols representing concepts that I don't believe just recite in the brain I don't go with the view that all truths are produced by the brain I would be more in line with Thomas Aquinas Thomism that we are we have pre-existing Souls okay or you could set put it this way if you go with a view known as tradition ISM tradition ISM is the idea that within the theistic circles the the physical body of DNA and so forth including the soul sister go in there is transmitted through the parents so it's not like some of the old theologians used to say that maybe there's a soulish factory up there and whenever you know a baby is conceived you know God throws a soul in there no I go with the tradition view that both soul and human DNA is is transferred through the parents now that being said when you look at numbers for example the number eight if I draw an eight on a board in a classroom and I ask you what is that you will say that's eight and I will say no that's a symbol of the concept of eight nests because symbols differ a Chinese version of eight looks very different from our version same with Japanese and so forth so these simba symbols are representing the same concept so if I were to say for example did two plus two equal four prior to human beings existing I'm of the view that yes it would equal four if we all drank cyanide and died in six minutes the entire planet is it still true that two plus two equals four some of you might say no I'm going to say yes so these logical truths don't float around by themselves in the universe I believe again going back to Thomas Aquinas now that we have there's an innate knowledge part of the mind not part of the brain the mind can be conscious as well and now you're dealing with issues of resurrections for example you wanted to argue biblical theology John 2:19 Jesus has destroy this body was referring to his body destroy this temple in three days I will raise it up what happened if you want to go with biblical theology well he was dead for three days spiritually conscious on the other side of death said because he can trace his own carcass unless he's on the other side of the grave so destroy this body in three days I will read I will raise it up to the baa-baa Greek word for body there was a soma I will raise it up it's the same body so on the other side of death he's spiritually conscious which is part of the mind he raised his physical body and moved on so math love logic these are immaterial truths that I think are just as real as this room we presuppose these things even the scientists assess philosophies for the birds he engages in philosophical reasoning prior to his scientific method what led you to the truth that you can only know truth according to scientists 'im well loss of logic there you go loss of logic are not part of the scientific method if you will atheists need not justify their atheism I think they do I didn't want to go there the same because atheists are not necessarily my opponent this evening but they're splitting hairs ah that was a in Greek is negating Thetis which is God thoughts are thoughts you can really say it's anti theism you can say anti tell us it's without God it's no God ISM so when you're making a claim that there is no God ISM you need to defend that claim I don't think the burden of proof is solely on me the moment you say something about reality or ultimate reality you need to defend that point not offensively if the defendant if I claim God exists I need to give some arguments for it if you say God does not exist you need the use of argues against God it's God's existence and I think that's what we're going and so a burden of proof is not solely on me how did a spiritual mind create the physical world again I I would say here that the mind is not physical already touched on that how could God do so if it doesn't have a brain well I can say that if if this being is immaterial and the mind is part of this immaterial being you can have an immaterial being outside of the universe that possesses things like volition and will if you look at the Kalam argument we touched on earlier anything that begins to exist requires it cost the universe began to exist therefore it requires a cost okay theists believe that at that moment when God created the universe he created energy matter time right then and there and so that would require will if God were to say I'm going to create the universe right now that moment would be the first moment because time was created it tells me that this being must possess attributes like volition a choice to create the world at this moment as opposed to other moments and and it also requires power so I don't think I see a problem with a spiritual agent a personal agent possessing these attributes could actually create matter miracles or violations of the law of nature is says I go with the view that the loss of nature are descriptive they're not prescriptive what we to say that the loss of nature are absolutely fixed assumes the uniformitarian view of nature you have to be everywhere in the universe at the same time for all millennia since the origin of the universe to make that claim I'm not saying that God is violating the loss of nature he created the loss of nature he's not subject to them but I can also say that based upon what we observed we can say yeah they appear fixed or we can say that they are descriptive but I'm not going to say that they are prescriptive no miracles are happening today well I tend to differ certainly maybe not here in in the West you know in the Western world but if you look at say for example some of the radical Muslim countries around the world some of these Muslims said that are not being reached by various missionaries of whatever faith they're now claiming to have visions of Jesus and and all sorts of bizarre dreams that I did not use to believe in I used to be skeptical of that but the experiences are sort of getting to be overwhelming you know they're they're adding up adding up their story after story after why would you give up Islam you know well have the vision of Jesus he showed up in my room now that hasn't happened to me if that happened to someone in Saudi Arabia good for them in previous debates edwart abbas would argue against exorcism and it sort of goes hand in hand with the thing of that the universe is just a physical property there's nothing spiritual within it I studied exorcism in Rome and I was in a room with 169 priests these guys are not out to flaunt their stories they're not first page news they don't stress their trade they're very I'm not gonna say secretive about it but it's not a popular profession most priests don't want to do it most people don't want to study this stuff I got frustrated with books on systematic theology written by Protestants so that said I got to go over there and really get demonology on steroids so to chew the fruit and spit out the seeds and I did and I got some answers you know we could say foaming of the mouth is produced by you know some chemical imbalance or something in the brain what would you can explain is a five-year-old girl in Peru levitating off the floor you can't explain how say I'm sure I'm not gonna lose to real stories because we're supposed to keep them within that room but let's say you have an American girl living in Fountain Valley and people just schizophrenia multiple personality disorder and so forth and so let's give her pills well the say that the family are devout Catholics Protestants would probably send them to dr. Phil but most Catholics would say call the priest so the priest shows up and what happens there's an aversion to the sacred they don't like crosses they don't like holy water none of these things and then this girl from Fountain Valley starts cursing at the pre priest fluently in Latin why well languages are earned just like Yeti was saying I had to pick up this language and more so languages are earned you just don't there's not something in your brain that's going to help you speak Latin or French or cursing at a priest and Ebru or whatever you can't explain levitation you can't explain cursing at the priests priests in in a different language unknown to the possessed so there are I would consider that a miracle I because it is out of healing and then if they leave meaning the possession is successful after the Exorcist walks in that's a miracle there are reports of these things worldwide maybe not in Hollywood maybe not in Surf City because maybe we are already so closed-minded to these things third-world countries these things tend to happen there's more to the brain than merely the physical already said that there's a mind immateriality as part of the soul and logic is part of that you know one thing I wanted to mention is within the mind which is part of the soul and these are difficult things to talk about what in the world is a mind what is a soul if it's a material what kind of materiality is a materiality I see the problem there we don't know everything yet we don't wait we're going to talk about parallel universes and maybe Jesus going to die for for sinners on another planet we might as well say hey there's a soul and there's a mind and part of that mind has innate knowledge knowledge so once the brain starts to develop the child can actually recognize when mom or dad walks into the room they don't confuse these things I believe that the loss of logic are already part of the innate mind of a child and then once the brain starts to develop the to work hand in hand what happens when we die will our souls merge with other souls well I'll go with biblical theology on that view you will be reunited with your soul at the resurrection which happens at the end of time that would be the biblical mainstream view I should say and that goes for Judaism as well at the end of the age I'm not talking last days madness I'm talking at the end of the world at the end of the H and the H began a long time ago there will be a resurrection of all bodies let's see here I create evil Isaiah 46 that can also be translated calamity you know again we're back to the problem of evil these the Atheist when he brings up the problem of evil he believes evil is real but again if God does not exists nor do objective moral values but objective moral values doin's exists why because some things are really evil for example my opponents mother surviving house wits absolutely horrible I get it and he's got it real there's a tone of condemnation and rightly so but if atheism is true and relevance and prevails who are we to say to the Nazis that you are wrong at the Nuremberg trial which is exactly what was their defense who are you to come in here push down your moral values down ours our throat when the US showed up in the Italians in French and whoever else who are you we got our own set of values don't force your objectivism on me what did we say we answer to a higher law a natural law a moral law that's above your pathetic law that's what they we're told the Nazis so they're I think that evil in this sense is in direct proof that God does exist pain and suffering you know evil pain and suffering well the the the judeo-christian view that would really be it for theism Islam doesn't qualify for being a theistic religion God is too arbitrary he lies but he likes perfectly so we could toss that one out well if Judaism is true and Christianity is true from a Christian standpoint we could said that F Christian is Joseph's fulfillment of Judaism so now you got Judeo Christian theism and he was citing from from the old and new testament their evil will one day be done away with if God has logically logically possible is to say is it possible for God to have good reasons unknown to us for allowing pain and suffering sure it is but he will end it one day secondly um we live in a West here in the West we think all pain is bad pain is bad pain is in the in the Middle East no we learn from pain we grow with pain third we live in a fallen world will to screwed up and we know it there's something broken about our ourselves about to buy something that's in need of repair we call that oddness as part of the design fallen world he's not responsible we chose that thank you [Applause] we have 15 minutes for your rebuttal you see one of the key problems with Nick's approach to defending the supernatural and the paranormal without sufficient evidence is what he just told us about exorcisms it is far more likely than not that priests in Rome will pretend to be hush-hush about it to make it look like they're so humble that they don't even want to talk about it just to make it more likely but there is no proof whatsoever of demonic possession and here is another problem how does an entity without a physical body and brain possess another entity what is the mechanism also how large is a demon if a demon is 15 feet wide can the demon possess two people who are standing next to each other and in terms of a went mentioned one debate about something in Germany about a possessed young girl walking sideways up a wall that's all fine if we could prove it and see it in the early 80s in my New Age days a medical doctor from India told me that it is his home in West Los Angeles he and five of his friends saw their guru who just came for a visit from India levitate to the ceiling if I don't see it myself and I don't put my hand above the guy to make sure there are no wires pulling him up I have no obligation to believe it there's absolutely nothing that Nix said about the veridical claim that possession occurs that constitutes proof now with respect to his argument from morality and his claim that we can't have objective moral values without God first of all he assumes that God is necessary for objective moral value but does not explain how that comes about also if Nick doesn't want to defend the Bible he has to show us where God has lodged these objective moral values for us to find them and know what they are if not the Bible and if God has lodged them in the Bible then God's atrocities in the Bible are such that we can't believe that God has an objective basis for moral values now if each of God's commands are they necessarily nature does that mean that it was impossible for him to give us commands other than those he gave us could he have said in the book of Exodus rather than thou shalt not suffer a witch to live let the witches do what they want they're fine they're not hurting anybody could he said they have said in Book of Leviticus gay-sex and that's nothing let them do what they want as long as they're happy so you see we also have the Euthyphro dilemma is something good just because God says it's good which means it's arbitrary based on God and you look at what he did in the Bible or during the Amalekites to be killed of women captives to be raped whole races wiped out of flood taking out everybody including innocent children you look at all of that and you say well no we don't have to accept that we have an innate moral sense based on our biological nature that tells us these things are wrong now someone can say well God created us so he can do whatever he wants with us even torturing us no because you see if I create a race of sentient robots they're my creation but I have no right to make them suffer unnecessarily so creating someone doesn't justify harming them or torturing them and then if things are not morally true just because God says them but there is a moral standard dependently of God that God is able to determine than we already have an independent basis of morality other than God now if you want to say that there is a third prong and that things are good because they emerge from God's perfect nature you have to first prove that that nature exists and that it is perfect you just can't assert it and then once again you have the problem that you had with the conduct of God in the Bible with all the atrocities now another problem is this is that if all moral commands come from God that means that unless they come from God that they can't be known or done and don't have moral values so let's say that we could say all we have to do is lift a finger and stop the Holocaust but God never told us that was a necessary thing to do or we should do it and we don't know God's view on that does that mean now that lifting a finger to stop the Holocaust has lost its value and its moral impetus because we haven't heard from God and also to say that God is good and God is the fount of moral values must be morally significant but it's not morally significant if it's a tautology if we say God commands us to do the good and whatever God commands is automatically good then what we're saying is God commands us to do what God commands us to do which becomes meaningless with respect to Nick's position on the first cause argument the Kalam cosmological argument he doesn't tell us how God did it or the process by which God can do anything without being a physical being also for purposes of tonight's debate I'm going to happily concede that the universe began with the Big Bang however if the universe began with the Big Bang time and space began with the Big Bang because everything began with the Big Bang thus we can't even speak of a cause of the universe because time and space did not precede the universe so for aid to cause B there has to be a context of time and space and there is no time in space so we cannot say that if the universe had a beginning that it had a physical and and exist that it had a cause outside of the physical realm which means in our current knowledge we can't even attribute cause to it because time and space began with the Big Bang also an alternative which is still more plausible than theism is that we can't get back to the Big Bang it's a model not an actual event and that there was a process of quantum foam on quantum mechanics and it would say well where did that come from well I can say where does God come from Nick says that that is an impermissible question because God is automatically defined as already having existed he can't presuppose that he has to prove it now with respect to his a fine-tuning argument from design there are a number of problems with the with the whole issue of fine-tuning and it begins with this is if in fact God is all-powerful and can do anything why is fine-tuning even an issue because God could make us live in water so why would God even have to fine-tune anything in addition in addition to that if God does not have to fine-tune anything it doesn't matter what these parameters might be also if in fact God is this all-powerful being and can literally do anything then God doesn't even need the laws of therefore given that the laws of physics apply it is more likely on atheism than on theism because on theism we wouldn't need laws of physics but on atheism we do and we have proof that they work also Nick mentioned that there all these constants that couldn't vary at all well yes they can it's not as tightly wound of Steve Weinberg the physics Nobel laureate talks about how there can be a 20% difference in the electron volt and still would not cause a collapse and then also I was published in Scientific American that you can eliminate the weak force one of the four cosmic forces and you will still have sufficient substituting for hydrogen by deuterium which would only make water heavier and then the fine-structure constant known as alpha was measured about 300 distant galaxies and there could be a great variance in it and the the stars could still form now professor Fred Adams of the University of Michigan wrote in stars and other universes stellar structures that the nuclear reaction rates even if they function only one-fourth of their current parameter space and still permit stars to be operational by way of nuclear fusion stars could still form and then explode as supernovae so and then the other problem with the fine-tuning argument is the inexplicable question of why an all-powerful being Wein all-powerful being would in the first place make the universe teeters so precariously that the slightest alteration of anything would make it collapse you wouldn't find a computer programmer creating a computer program that is so tinderbox at the moment you touch anything it falls apart why would God make something so close to the edge where it's about to collapse at any moment now and Nick in his opening statement talked about the ultimate meaning of life life would be meaningless if we end a death that's not an argument for God's existence it is an argument that maybe we would be happier and better off if there were a God but that the topic tonight is not would we be better off with the God the topic is does God exist now he talks about the laws of logic and mathematics but they count against the ISM because they are so inherent in existence that no mind divine or otherwise could alter them so the fact that two plus two equals four could never be changed by anyone that that holds even under any circumstances once we define two and once we define two once we define four they are inviolable and because they are enviable they don't depend on any mind including the mind of God it was a very very important point now he mentions abstract concepts like love and like numbers they don't require super natural existence the Platonic existence of numbers like the number three which correspond to three objects does not in any way mean that those platonic abstract entities by themselves have separate consciousness that is disembodied so we're all capable of having great love for people but the love itself even if it's an abstract concept is not self conscious without a body and brain we with our brains are conscious of the love that we feel now he talks about mind not coming from non mind we're getting very close in on naturalism this is more likely than on atheism on the going back to the big to the 1953 miller-urey experiment where amino acids many of which constitute proteins were created in a flask and then recently at the crips Scripps Institute we are almost at the point right on the verge of recreating ancient pre DNA RNA which was the first forms of mechanism of life precursor and life enabler from which DNA emerged also once again now that we have this we can see how it's possible that inorganic matter became organic material without the intervention of a supernatural being and then again with respect to the argument from evil since I was able to demonstrate that a supernatural being is not the fount of our understanding of moral values you don't need common sense and daily experience tells us you don't need to believe in a deity in order to know the Holocaust was wrong you don't have to believe in a supernatural being to know that the claimed atrocities perpetrated by the God in the Old Testament are wrong you don't need a deity to tell you so that you can reliably comprehend that torturing innocent people is wrong you don't need a deity to tell you that Isis throwing people off of buildings just because they're gay is wrong so these moral comprehensions are inherent on an evolving sense of decency and in fact the more we evolve morally the more we get away from the strictures and punishments of ancient fundamentalist religions so again the universe is natural not supernatural God does not exist thank you [Applause] and I'll have its time I've question an answer if you have questions could you please pass them forward quickly okay the first question is for Nicky's what are your thoughts about the statement humans created God in order to explain the unknown that which was not understood in the world Nick you have two minutes and then Andy will have two minutes as well for the same question well I'm gonna go with what Eddie went with earlier Eddie was saying you know why are there so many religions I think man is incurably religious we seek answers and I don't think the fact that there are so many religions including totes I don't think that's evidence against there being in God you know biblically speaking the same book that Eddie quoted from because there's none righteous there's none that seat I forgot you know we keep thinking that there's all these people and other religions or the unsaved person living in a remote island that really is dying to know the true God the scriptures say today Christian script was safe to draw near to me I will draw near to you god foreknows who will choose to follow him and we can't limit to necessarily missionary methods to just missionaries going God to show up because send an angel of theophany christophany and so forth that being said I do think that nature alone screams and demands answers so I think just like a child you know you looked up you weren't talking via some kids kids wonder you wouldn't born with an atheistic mindset I should say you were born the wondering block outside in your life you know what weird and all this come from then your father tells you from nowhere nothing created nothing and you are just Stardust like crows would say I think that sense of wonder that we all have produces false religion and false cults you know and these some religious leaders that I think are taken advantage of peasants that need answers so I don't think that we have you know created God for some psychological need that was not the case for me I've always been some type of a theist I believe that there was something greater than me I didn't know what well here's the thing let's look at where the God that Nick really believes in and that believers in Judaism and Christianity and Islam came from in all derives from a desert God from ancient Hebrew tribes now that doesn't that primitive concept that then found its way into the Old Testament then the New Testament then the Quran and then the Book of Mormon and whatever else that is not political of the supernatural so if you trace it back to the mythological origins of a desert tribal God thou shall have no other gods before me your God is a jealous God of Jews are the chosen people as my mom used to say after Auschwitz that God choose somebody else we don't want to be chosen anymore when you look at all of this you don't see any proof that there was an independent spiritual force that first manifested as only this little part of the Middle East and said I'm the true creator of the whole universe so it's obvious that given the physical parameters of the physic universe and the arguments I've made thus far there is no independent disembodied intelligence that is undergirding all of reality and looking at the sky and being and wonder the atheist can do that too I can look at a beautiful sunset I can look at a beautiful landscape and be filled with awe but that's because I have a functional physical brain that doesn't have to be grounded in a supernatural magical being and I think this is something that we need to know but again look at the derivation all the deities that the monotheistic religions believe in trace back to a tribal Middle Eastern Hebrew desert god that certainly doesn't show any truth of existence thank you our next question is for any tava so why is that humans seem to be hardwired to believe in a God in that all cultures have similar myths about a god and how humans came to be if there is no God the answer is very clear and that's that fantasy always departs from reality the fact that we might yearn for life after death doesn't mean it's going to happen look at the arguments are made from dependence of consciousness on the brain the fact that millions and millions of human beings have been unable to face the reality that death is the extinction of us as individuals and that we are floating alone in a vast and different universe and that we have to make our own meaning because there's no cosmic parent looking out for us the fact that humans can't accept that and invent fantasies doesn't give them truth we have no independent freestanding truth of the supernatural of the paranormal of anything beyond the physical to give independent verification to the existence of such a being so the mere yearning for it doesn't fill the gap you can't legitimately say I see no physical evidence for this being but the fact that I yearn for it means it must be there that's like the flawed ontological argument and so just as we can conceptualize a perfect being means that must exist in reality the fact that the mind thinks something doesn't make it real that sounds like some old episode in the twilight zone okay Nick this is for you from the play-doh to Nietzsche to Richard I my goodness for B I'm going to guess many prospective any perspectives on morality how do you reduce them to a dichotomy of objective morality versus relativism are things more complex than that in a sense yes but also touched on situation this test on generalism where i mentioned them there's antinomianism sure they're different views of ethics but they largely go into two camps there are there you have the absolutist camp sounds sounds horrible right absolutism well there's an objective morality and then there's non objective morality which would be relativism under relativism you have area systems such as for example antinomianism against against logs we've got an anarchy like Sex Pistols and Thomas against law antinomianism without law than you have situation ethics you have various types of ethics within the absolutist camp you have for example unqualified absolutism you have created absolutism I go with graded absolutism so there are different types of systems but lard within those two main camps my main claim was that if God exists only then can we have an absolute objective moral value because these moral values transcends us they're above us if God is not exists then we're stuck we're stuck with relativism and that is mere social mores you can judge other cultures and so forth I think we can judge other cultures I think we can we can condemn house which I think we can condemn what Isis is doing I think we can condemn the fact that women can't drive in Saudi Arabia I think bird nests are ridiculous I can say that I can say that these are clear violations of human rights but I can't but and I'm not believing that that's because I dreamt it up yesterday I believe they're part of the moral furniture of the universe but you see here's the thing we don't have to be able to have a debt bank surefire location for objective moral values we just have to show that our account of them is superior to that of rooting them in an alleged supernatural being again nick has not been able to demonstrate how the existence of this being grounds or assures us of what the moral values are because in order to say that these moral values emerge from a perfect being he has to first be able to prove to us that God not only exists but is perfect and then we have the atrocities in a Bible we have the amount of evil that occurs this world none of the things that Nick has just said about Isis about the denigration of women about all of these things require rounding in an alleged supernatural being for us to exist in fact it is the Bible that talks about the subordination of women of Genesis 3:16 in a New Testament woman shall not speak in the church it's a shame for to speak in the church asked her husband later all these misogynistic things are in the Bible so if we're not going to use the Bible and say no no that's morally defective where did this supernatural God then ground and locate these moral values so we can open up the treasure chest and say here we are we can rely on them this is where God put them and we know God is perfect none of these proofs are in place for us to trust that there is a perfect God whose moral decrees we can trust in the first place and who was actually revealed to us what these moral decrees are and the fact that we can all agree on moral intuition on what's right and wrong in these grand areas of human conflict today demonstrates it's not necessary to invoke a supernatural being and it begins with a quote therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife and they shall be one flesh and he gives the quote Genesis 2:24 sure you're familiar and then the question then is how does evolution explain father mother wife and man and the two becoming one better than the book of Genesis and he says we are whoever wrote this we have servus exactly on the earth how does evolution explain the origin of the family better well I think that the answer is very clear first of all since humans evolved from fire primitive States like all other beings we know that Adam and Eve is a myth so that we see the family unit the family unit is obviously a protective way for people to come together and form these units and we don't need a divine origin for them the fact that marriage gives the framework for raising children doesn't mean that all marriages have to be based on raising children otherwise we would prohibit infertile couples from being able to marry also if in fact the person who is quoting the Bible at me sees the marital institution as a legitimate institution ordained by the Bible then that person has the burden of proof of demonstrating why that marvelous institution shouldn't be equally legally available to gay people but the same Bible that talks about this marital Union would deny it to other human beings who would join that communion of those of the same gender so the fact that evolution and natural selection gets us to make certain combinations of units is certainly not something that is so remarkable it requires a supernatural hand you would answer that women will feel it is himself different whether Adam and Eve are literal so if you want to take the literal approach or not literal approach that's entirely up to you I think that regardless of world here the agam theistic polytheistic atheist to being theistic whatever ism you want to add to it we need to have an ancestor so if judeo-christian scripture says there was a first man and a woman named Adam and Eve Adam means or for man means the piercer and the female Eve is the pierced one you guys can do the math plumbing fits that being said if we world view have to have a common ancestry somewhere there has to be a first parent somewhere I am not sold on mic macro-evolution mic revolution yes but I do think that the fact that you have male and female it goes hand in hand with oughtness we not just because we can't reproduce the plumbing fits a little better people are born of heterosexual unions it's a healthier activity to engage in and so forth does that scream evidence for the existence of God perhaps not but getting back to the fact that every worldview have to give an account for a first parent of somewhere biblically I think they have the Answers in Genesis thank you this next question is for Nick people claim that God and or Jesus cured their ills when visiting Lourdes and France yet the Catholic Church acknowledges only a handful of miracles and Carl Sagan calculated that with spontaneous remissions the visitors who are more likely to recover from ills by home aren't people being deceived into believing supernatural or God caused cures instead of simply hope or natural cures there's a lot of things in that question too much for two minutes of course people are being deceived you didn't tell that by just watching some of these religious shows on television there are people that take advantage of of the masses the hoi polloi at the Greeks we call it and there's a special place for them in the afterlife what you're ripping off people and promising prosperity and you know so forth but I am still of the view that if God exists he definitely can heal people so are there false preachers are there false religious leaders yeah I think that goes for all religions I'm not a Roman Catholic so I'm not gonna speak for them what happened in Lewis but my wife has had cancer twice I'm not gonna say that prayer healer would God heal dirt but I do know that we were on our knees and on our faces for it not to come back maybe look at back welcome back to third time here's the real problem it has supposed that God did heal my wife twice how many times does he have to kill her we're all gonna check out one day so if he's healer twice already let's just suppose he did and heal sir another 10 times you see morally obligated to heal her you know a 29th time eventually our bodies will give in and again from the theistic it's participative in a fallen world so God can't evil he doesn't always heal but maybe he you can also SPECT it and say maybe he's pre healing you before the decease is gonna hit you next week that's just I mean we could sit and philosophize all day long there has not been a single verified instance of paranormal or supernatural cure in human history as Mark Smith who's with us tonight has said prayer has never had an amputee regrow a limb you'll never see that happen so there is no evidence that this occurs and again evidence of absence of evidence is evidence of absence it's not there and how do you rely on it how would you say of the three million cures for this disease that were accomplished by medical science this particular cure for this particular family member I trust to a spiritual method we can't take that risk so we can't take that risk again where is the evidence now you see Nick did something really really sincere and honest he mentioned his wife's recovery in action that he can't say for sure that it came from God but I'm extending that I'm saying no one can be sure that something paranormal sure's an ill human being so we can't even begin to take the risk let there be one verified instance of an agitated limb regrowing let me right now shoot up from five foot six to six foot five and I'm joining this church so you have to understand it's a question of proof we can't run away from that this debate is about proving the supernatural in a context where all we see is the natural thank you Nick this is for you I'm gonna do my best to read this you say we cannot have morals without God why then do we see in the northern European countries which have an 85% atheistic population and they live in the most immoral behavior with murder rates as well as many other social measurements leading the world in happiness I didn't say you can't have morals without God I'm saying we can't justify why there is a morality apart fun mystic God existing I didn't say you can't have morals I believe that conscience morality is woven into our being and I'm trying to justify by saying that objective moral law comes from and moral lawgiver my opponent earlier says that doesn't prove anything I have to prove how it flows from the nature of God if God wills it or could he reversed the Ten Commandments and so forth now we could and well he is good by nature and morality flows from his being we'll talk about the atrocities and my closing statements but I'm from I'm from Sweden I'm from it's a very secular country Nordic Europe Scandinavia some very moral people that live there they're taken in tons of refugees which I'm sure will not backfire just kidding it will in time but that being said extremely PC a little more life's all we're saying here is what is the reason to be moral and why is there a morality if there even is a morality I don't think there is a morality if if that is that God does not exist only social Maurice where we assign meaning and a man created temporary loss and what happens in Zimbabwe stick different from Stockholm what happens in America is different from Los Angeles and who are we to judge what they do there no you need an absolute standard right or wrong that transcends us that says all of these cultures are wrong in doing X Y & Z is the right thing we see again the problem is as nick has to prove that God's perfect nature is the fount of objective moral values and then he has to show us where God deposited them for us to find them if he's going to say God deposited them in the Bible that I'm going to point to the atrocities in the Bible that cannot be justified on any kind of rational moral basis if nick is going to say well God put them somewhere else I'm going to say fine Nick let us then do this great Easter egg hunt and find where these objective moral values from God are buried but we have a right to know where they are deposited now Nick did say something which is true which is that these moral notions are interwoven into our being and consciousness yes they are by virtue of our evolutionary development but they don't require grounding in a supernatural being and if they do Nick has to demonstrate how that supernatural being can be trusted and once again where is the reliable non-defective location of these objective moral values where we can say whatever we find in this book or this box we can agree is an objective moral value and we don't have to worry that any event will be wrong thank you we have time for one more question this question is for Eddie and it merely says of who are we talking about who are you trying to explain away what who are we talking about who are you trying to explain away okay both Nick and I though he's trying to say it's real I'm trying to say it's not real are speaking about an all-powerful good all-knowing being that created and sustains the universe and that has revealed itself in certain ways to humanity my argument is that because that being is claimed to be invisible and immaterial and to have supernatural powers and there's not one reliable manifestation of a supernatural event in the history of the world certainly not in contemporary society and I'd sure love to witness directly with Nic these kids being possessed and watch them do supernatural things like walking on ceilings but in the absence of that in the absence of that we are talking about this supposedly all-powerful all good being for which I claim there is no actual evidence and because I claim there is no actual evidence that evidence has to be produced now I can easily tell you that if miracles as described in the Bible would happen before my eyes if the Sun Stood Still if all of a sudden like see Chariots of Fire if I were elevated like Saint Paul claims to the 3rd or the seventh or even the first heaven then I would probably adopt some kind of religious view but if God exists God knows this and God knows that my inability to believe is because of the absence of evidence like Bertrand Russell said what if you die and you find out there's a God whether you see the God they'll say God is your fault you didn't give me enough evidence while I was alive thank you would you like to answer that who are we talking about who are you trying to explain away is the question no I think that's clear okay thank you we're gonna good now when I have 15 minutes for each debater to give their closing arguments thank you please come on if I invited you to an exorcism would you go Eddie absolutely okay it's on okay I flew up to San Jose to interview out there are the chief exorcists for that area and the movie the right with Anthony Hopkins was based on his life and I did a 3-hour interview but that's secondary because I didn't see the things that he witnessed while in Rome so that wouldn't be good enough for Eddie to meet with this guy but maybe I'll talk to dr. Kraft or someone in Pasadena we'll go in and sit on one actually showed up on one and I fell asleep there was no possession that being said I want to just reiterate some of the points we didn't have time to touch on in the rebuttal how does a demon a non-physical being possess a physical body the depends on what your view is on dualism I believe that you have there's two natures to you you have a physical body and you have an immaterial body a soul and so if you are a materialist of course you will run run against the wall a demon can possess your physical body but not possess your soul that's the one that's so-called saved with the holy spirit would dwell morality Nick assumes God is necessary and and for morality and somehow I need to prove not from the Bible I'm not gonna use the Bible as proof that he's good I'm gonna say that the whole notion what we have this intrinsic more value within us must come from somewhere either it's chance or it's by design I go by design I don't have to prove from the scriptures right here is how that morality is subjective and why any more than the universe was cost I was in their door was Eddie we have no idea but if the universe were cost we can conclude that there is a designer or cost behind that effect he mentions some of the atrocities that we have in the in the scriptures you know when you look at for example what happened to the Amalekites the Hittites or for example the Canaanites it was a couple of things that we have to keep in mind if we're going to do historical and Biblical hermeneutics and that is in the context you know God issues commands with a heavy and grieved heart you have that in Genesis 6 6 and Ezekiel with heavy and grieved heart he doesn't desire judgment he doesn't seek to afflict willingly now God had patiently waited for half a millennium including 430 years in Egypt until the Canaanites right the sense of the Canaanites that he brought up the Amalekites as well I could god destroy them and so forth I want to answer that because I think that's an important question Palka pan has done a lot of work in this area is God a moral monster pick that book up or or attend a lecture you know when you read of by Allah in in the Tanakh the Old Testament baa-baa what were these Canaanites worshipping I'll give you the short version real quick let's suppose that Isis took East LA hostage and they're raping women in every house they're you know cleaning out every liquor store and no one is going in or out cops won't even go and so somebody says hey why don't we just send in the National Guard and mow down Isis would you have a problem with that would that be an act of justified war or would it be unjustified war to go in and take out Isis from East LA well the Canaanites sort of behaved the same way here are some of the things the vial psych cycle which is Canaanite epic poems one of them reads Baal has sex with high fer 70 times and 80 times 8 and she bears a boy but I'll raped his sister that was the god they worship raped his sister a goddess of war while she was in the form of a calf a calf hittite law there's a 1600 BC so you write around the the the middle Bronze Age hen site law if a father and a son sleep with a female slave or prostitute it is not an offense but then again Etta Berta Bosch wants to legalize prostitution so maybe we could take some of that Canaanite law and apply it what about Hittite laws if a man has sexual relations with either a horse or a mule it is not an offense so bestiality I've been to a Canaanite altar in Israel on human stone they used to just sacrifice virgins there they would light statues of fire gold and brass statues like this heat him up and cook babies while they had orgies sex in the field that's who God says hey go in and take them out they had plenty of time to leave I'm talking I do not believe that mothers and children were destroyed Oh aren't you being selective now Nick no because the very next verses you read that the Canaanites dwelt in the land with Israelites together so they weren't all wiped out common warfare in those days figurative speech war language was sort of like exaggerations you see that you know we went and and destroyed the whole city no you didn't because in the next verse you wrote that you lived with the Hittites or the Amalekites in the land so in one verse you can't just run with that you got to read the whole context I believe that the women and the children were not there now you're stuck with warriors or the military that's who Joshua was fighting and I think just the basic hermeneutic will answer that if you read the whole thing in context so god wiped out the the male Isis of the day God evil in theosophy Odyssey we keep going back to that point if it is logically possible for God to have good reasons some of which are unknown to us there's no direct contradiction between an omnipotent being like God and allowing evil resulting from your exercise of freedom we make choices every single day some of them are not so good the way you exercise your freedom every single choice you can go this way or that way just because God for knows if that will be poor immoral or just a bad decision doesn't make him responsible for your decision he ought us free will you know sort of like the die will be done that whole notion okay what are these days when we all go home if you would want nothing to do with God and the thesis that God exists he'll respect that too he'll go thy will be done you know if God would have forced every single person that just just doesn't want anything to do with God you know hates everything about it makes no sense he's just a moral monster not gonna look into it any further well heaven would be help for those people so he's not gonna force them in safety so we honest free will so so long as God has good reasons for allowing evil there's no contradiction between you having freedom exercising your freedom wrongly running the risk of going against what ought to be avoided we keep going back to pre DNA or our DNA our DNA still requires design because there is information within it real brief you know the existence of information is not improbable given theism I'm guarding here the existence of information is very improbable given naturalism therefore given one and two in the prime principle of confirmation it follows that the information data that is provided in this world gives strong or stronger evidence in favor of the theistic hypothesis over naturalism you know typically when you observe information you assume it came from a mind I think that's very strong and Eddie and I just seem to to disagree on that it's sort of like I don't get it only specified complexity as life requires a cost life is a specified complexity therefore life is cost I think the argument follows I think is a stretch to argue that we came from mere chance I don't think that we are accidental freaks of nature you're more than walking Stardust or cluster molecules there's more to it than that multi versus and more some say this planet is the lucky one just because there I hope to scale two universes out there does that mean that this universe was not created moreover infinite regress goes against multi vs. as well while it may be logically possible for multiple Asur to exist and other bizarre things that we can't fully prove their hypotheses are they scientifically tenable no they're not logical probability is not the same as it will occur one day there's a lot of logical possibilities you know it is an attorney so you can show up and say isn't it logical possible that and he's gonna go short but how likely is it how likely is it scientifically I will submit now when I stated the argument whatever begins to exist requires a costs will and may Craig is the foremost defender of this argument he reinvented al-ghazali's will and al-kindi and ran with it he says here quote if the universe began to exist then the universe has a cost for its beginning this more modest version of the first argument will enable us to avoid distractions whether sub atomic particles which are the result of quantum decay processes come into being without a cause this alleged exception to one meaning referred to anything that begins to exist - would be irrelevant if we were to say if the universe began to exist then the universe as it costs for its beginning unquote Crick continues for the universe comprises all continuous space-time reality therefore for the whole universe to come into being without a cost is to come into being from nothing which is absurd for something to come into being from nothing is absurd in quantum decay events the particles do not come into being from nothing they're already part of the universe as Christopher is Sean Britain's premier quantum cosmologists he cautions care is needed when using the word creation in a physical context one familiar example is the creation of elementary particles in the accelerator however what occurs in this situation is the conversion of one type of matter into another it still exists matter with a total amount of energy being preserved in the process earlier mr. Tobias was was mentioning Jesus you know why would Jesus pray to himself if Jesus and God are one how could it pray to himself you got to read more theology if we're gonna get into theology you know I don't know if he if he's confused about the Trinitarian concept but I don't think so he's well studied first of all when Jesus was praying in the Garden of Gethsemane not been there I I don't believe that he was forsaken first of all you have to read that in Old Testament context where you have Psalm 22 you have Isaiah 53 those two chapters you should be read very well when crisis on the cross he is quoting Psalm 22 my God my God why hast thou forsaken me you read Psalm 22 drop down to verse 24 it says but when he cried he father heard so Jesus was not forsaken if he was forsaken on the cross you ripped the divine Godhead apart so he wasn't forsaken physically he could have felt forsaken but ontologically he was not forsaken if God if God the Father abandoned the son and the cross he would rip the Trinity in half God the Father who is not the incarnated son within 1 nature 1 ontological what there are three humps the 3 persons within the one ontological nature of God so we're not saying that there are three gods over here and one God over here we're saying that there's one God that's one nature one ontological oneness that consists of three homes no contradiction at all so Jesus being subordinate to the father in his deify cease or dual nature form into one hypostatic Union I didn't make these words up but it's a shorter way to talk about it there's no problem for him to communicate with the Father when it says why you've taken me that's answer by Isaiah and I'm 22 so just wanted to touch on that point now the subatomic realm even if one grants that a photon of light can pop into existence from a quantum ghost meaning out of sheer nothingness it does not follow that the first event did not need a cause that simple even if one can make statements like the one about quantum ghosts intelligible I don't think you can but macro events macro events still need cautious it is also an unwarranted extrapolation to argue from the micro level to the macro level unquote dr. Craig now even the Atheist Quinta Smith he concludes that these state nothing about the causality or a non causality of absolute beginnings or beginnings of the existence of particles that is of course much more - there's a lot more to learn about quantum physics and we're just barely scratching the surface on that but we're after actual beginnings now what about design and design is poor design God could have done a better job you know there are three types of complexity in life specified order there's unspecified complexity and specified complexity specified order which is a repeated set of information take a snowflake for example and I don't mean the the leftist but snowflakes are produced by nature and as such are natural right now unspecified complexity would be random but they're not repetitious they're also natural phenomenon for example take a bedrock you know it's shaped and cost by natural flung phenomena or natural law what is specified complexity you know versus oceans you know hitting hitting land and it ends up looking like Sunset Beach or downtown Huntington well those are natural events specified complexity is quite different it is it's not that these are they're not random or repetitive in comparing natural shape to bed is quite different from specified complexity take for example the city of Dubai that is specified complexity versus a waterfall that's caused by natural means I already touched on the fact that God is not a moral monster I will reiterate though that if God exists this moral clock that we have within us or like what are my mentors in Norman Geisler said there's a baloney meter in here you hear something false and he goes off so let's just go ahead and do this and it's wrong where does that come from I'm not pointing to the scriptures he has have revealed certain laws like the Ten Commandments but why is there a notion at all without without the Bible people are living lives as if objective moral morality is really thank you if you tell us you know have 15 minutes for your closing remarks in discussing and trying to defend exorcisms nick said that he believes in the duality of the body and mind so that demonic possessions could exist but he didn't demonstrate how such duality exists he just claims he believes in it now if he's not willing to say specifically that the moral code that God gives us is located in the Bible because of a lot of these atrocities in the Bible he has to show us where they're located if he says look under that rock and you'll find them and I find them to be reliable I'll concede the argument but Nick has not directed us to where that could be done now he says God does things with a heavy heart so this means that an omnipotent omniscient being all-powerful being and all-knowing being gets depressed when he has to wipe out some of his creations well he could certainly be able to put into the hearts of some of these people to behave a little better and give them certain impetus and now Nick would say well that violates their free will first of all why is freewill such a value that it overcomes everything else why should we allow Isis and Nazis to torture and kill people without divine intervention to stop them just so they can exercise their free will if you have two kids and one is about to push the other over a cliff you won't let it happen just so that the pushing child will be able to experience the adverse consequences of freewill now he says the Canaanites did all of these horrible things but these are ancient stories that haven't been verified we don't know that the Canaanites did these things and even if the Canaanites did these things how do we justify the God of the Old Testament wiping out the women and children among the Amalekites and the God of the Bible definitely commands rate not only just approves of it because he told Moses is invading army to kill the non virgins and forcibly take the verge onto themselves now if you invade a city or a tribe and you kill women only because they were not virgins but keep alive women who are virgins you certainly if you command that are not the fount of that moral intuition and that right and wrong that nick says is buried in our hearts and if it's not in the bible he needs to show where it's located so that would make the god of the bible a moral monster now he talks about good reason for evil to occur and that he will make it right at the end of time but we don't have that end of time yet we need to have explanation from God now why these horrible things happen and if God is not forthcoming with that explanation we have a right to then say it's far more likely than not that a God that wants us to believe in him does not exist because a God who wants to believe in him would show us these explanations now he mentions that he can't see how the specified information or anything mental katrien could transmit dna/rna but we certainly see information genetically transferred the whole purpose of genes estrogen genetically transfer information and there is no proof whatsoever that this process could not occur without a supernatural ghost in the machinery and in terms of his defense of bill Craig's Kalam cosmological argument he says that everything has to that exists needs a cause but that's everything that exists in already existing universe he makes the fallacy of composition and he's saying that just because everything in the universe needs a cause doesn't mean the universe as a whole and I agree with him for purposes of tonight's debate that the universe began with the Big Bang but that also means time and space began with the Big Bang so if time and space began with the Big Bang there was no precursor period where a could cause be so on current now we can't even speak of the cause of the universe and that doesn't justify substituting in a God of the gaps now he said in the Old Testament Jesus wasn't forsaken he might have just felt he was forsaken but if Jesus and God are one then Jesus couldn't even feel forsaken it's like I'm saying you know what I thought I had forsaken myself last night then I realized I didn't but that really wouldn't make any sense so the the first event if it required something outside of space and time to do something could not have happened and and that takes care of the Kalam cosmological argument again with specified complexity he has not yet shown that the genetic transmissions of these things are impossible and he has not yet shown they are required now he actually defeats his own argument for Supernatural design when he compares the city of Dubai to a waterfall and we know that the city of Dubai the cities are manufactured by people we don't have the same with the waterfall it's like William Paley's famous watch if you find the watch lying on the ground you know was manufactured by an intelligent human being but if you find rocks and trees and plants you have no such knowledge and there is no such exaggeration he tries to defend the atrocities of what the God of the Bible did but he ignores for instance that Exodus for 24/7 God sought to kill Moses because Moses had not yet circumcised his son that to me is not a rational being and the moral intuition that Nick says is in my heart says the God that sought to do that was a maniac and then in Deuteronomy chapter 13 you're supposed to stone to death any family member wife brother son or daughter who beckons you to worship some other God and then you're supposed to kill anyone in the city in which you live who worships another God Deuteronomy 17 stone to death any who have worship some other God so that basically means if your daughter or son comes to you and says hey mom pop let's go worship Buddha you're supposed to kill them that that's clear that's unmistakable now with respect to the fine-tuning argument again I how there were very very many areas where these constants and parameters had a great range of variants and didn't need to be so finely tuned and even if those variances took place varying their current valence --is and their current conditions we still wouldn't have a collapse also ultimately a deity that could make us live in any environment would need to fine-tune the universe in the first place also if the universe is fine-tuned for life how come 95% of it is lethal with dark holes and dark matter it's as if if you look at the earth and you look at what was best designed for and what there is most of you would have to say that God made the earth with insects in mind because they essentially have the best environment in in which to thrive now he spoke in his opening statement about how the desire for immortality and the yearning for it gives credence to the fact that it probably does exist that totally ignores my argument from physical minds of how consciousness is dependent on the physical brain which he was never able to overcome except by assertions with no proof and the mere desire for something does not bring it about you might desire for there to be a perfect God who will make it all right in the end the mere fact that you desire that does not in any way constitute that it will take place and in essentially his argument from mathematics you could easily see that the mathematical axioms that he talks about could be false two and two could not be other than four and so it is more likely on naturalism than on theism that we have these laws because on theism God wouldn't need laws of physics laws of logic laws of mathematics but we do need those and they seem to be inviolable and built into the very fabric of reality which means that no mind even the divine mind could make them untrue so that means that God could not say in a reissued updated Bible I now decreed 2+2 equals 5 even God's decree that wouldn't make it so so the argument about the existence of logic and mathematics and information are actually arguments in favor of atheism as opposed to theism because they are presented in such a way in which no one could vary them with respect to again the cosmological argument in order for a being to create something that being would have to enter time so I want to refer back to my argument against God's existence from the improbability of a transcendent person a transcendent person is outside of time so how could it be that this is just an ad-hoc assertion God existed forever into the past an infinity forever into the past in God time and God said I'm going to create the universe at what will exactly be 13.7 billion years ago from September 28th 2017 see you how could you conceptualize the time to create the universe if you are a being outside of time also he was not able to argue against my argument from scale he admitted that he was a believer in the Bible and tried to defense things in the Bible well then why didn't the Bible tell us that we are just one among billions and billions of other creatures that God cares about the Bible makes it seem like we are the primary concern of this deity if we are the primary concern of this deity it makes no sense to have so many billions and billions of unnecessary props and endless debris if there are billions and trillions and septillion z' of other planets in the universe with just by sheer probability have a possible great probability of intelligent life why only us and no one else also there is the whole argument in terms of formally rejecting the supernatural based on Bayes themed theorem where we use the calculus of prior probability to assess the likelihood of something existing or not but an element of the steps of Bayes theorem is background information we have no background information of any supernatural event so with no background information of any supernatural event the prior probability about calculating the likelihood of a supernatural or paranormal event is very low so on that alone of atheism is much more likely than theism he also was was not able to overcome my argument from evil that if God is truly all-powerful and all good then all the evil God allows or permits or actually does would have to be of such that God with all his power couldn't have prevented an even greater evil or there was a good so great as to justify the evil and suffering and with all his power God couldn't figure out a way to bring that greater good but for the horrendous suffering this is a very very high hurdle for a omnipotent being to hold and also Nick never refuted my contention that an order for God to allow any evil and a suffering to occur God must have a morally sufficient reason for doing so he also never was able to demonstrate again an underlying foundation he made a valiant attempt to grasp at supernatural straws in a natural universe but he never showed us how the immaterial being did it just by saying he believes in duality doesn't tell us how a demon could possess just because he asserted it doesn't mean he explains the mechanism by which something with no body no physical brain outside of time could create time and space and matter if you look dispassionately objectively at the evidence in our physical universe you will see philosophically and scientifically it's far more likely than not that there is no God the universe is wholly natural and not supernatural thank you very much you I want to thank Nikias and Eddie Tavish for agreeing to debate here tonight and I thank you so much for your thoughtful questions and your careful attention tonight and I hope tonight's debate is giving you food for thought on this vitally important topic and good evening and thank you for attending tonight's debate [Applause]

Channel: thegoodatheist

Views: 13,425

Rating: 4.6140351 out of 5

Keywords: Does god exist, god, tabash, keehus, backyard skeptics, atheist, atheism, bruce gleason, debate, christianity.

Id: LVDkfZteEU8

Length: 151min 10sec (9070 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 10 2017