An Atheist and a Christian Walk into a Bar

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An Atheist and a Christian Walk into a Bar Page 23

by Randal Rauser


  And, as you've observed, we have indeed hit the last dead-end in the road. But I'll give you this: it sure has been a fun drive—or fight (I think I've lost track of the metaphor)!

  Once upon a time an atheist and a Christian walked into a bar. The dialogue that ensued was ingenuous and provocative and filled the many pages of a future bestseller and philosophical classic. And so things went, page after page, as these two brilliant minds plundered the depths of the universe in a take-no-prisoners debate over the existence of the creator and sustainer of all things, aka, God.

  Whew!

  But all good things must come to an end and, alas, that includes even that amazing conversation between that atheist and that Christian at the bar. After many pages and arguments, debates and disagreements, a goblet of barley wine and a cocktail with a little umbrella, their intellectual energies spent, and their emotional reserves emptied, Randal and Justin finally decided it was time to offer their parting words to you, the reader. And so, as the lights in the bar are dimmed and the credits begin to roll, we turn to heed their reflections in the same order in which they began.

  RANDAL'S FINAL PARTING WORD

  Okay, I guess since I started the book off I might as well kick off the conclusion as well. And I want to begin with a story.

  As that story goes, the eighteenth-century French atheist Denis Diderot so irritated Catherine the Great with his godless proselytizing of Russian elites that she invited the brilliant mathematician Leonhard Euler to the royal court to prove the existence of God. And so, at the royal behest, both Euler and Diderot appeared before the queen and her assembled guests. Euler the mathematician came prepared with an algebraic equation, which he promptly recited and then declared, “Hence, God exists! Reply!” Alas, Diderot had no reply, for he did not even understand the equation, and so the atheist ceded the debate and retreated in humiliation back to Paris.1

  I like that story for a few reasons. And contrary to what you might think, the fact that Euler the theist appears to win the debate is not one of them.

  The first reason I like that story is because it effectively highlights the nature of expectations about debates. When it comes to debates about God's existence, people have often looked for irrefutable deductive arguments, something along the lines of a mathematical proof that can leave one's opponent defeated and humiliated beneath the weight of unanswerable evidence. But very rarely, if ever, are matters of debate really like that. Whether the issue under debate involves politics, ethics, history, economics, or theology and the philosophy of religion, what we discover time and again is that reasonable people regularly find themselves coming down on opposite sides of an issue.

  In my estimation, the back-and-forth that Justin and I have engaged in provides a reflection of that fact. Wherever your sympathies may lie, I hope our conversation has illustrated the fact that there is indeed room for reasonable and irenic disagreement on the great and daunting question of God's existence. This is not a topic amenable to simple proofs.

  And that brings me to the second reason I like the Euler story. At first glance, Euler comes out looking like the hero who won the debate while Diderot shuffles away in shame as the disgraced loser. But look closer and things appear rather different. How so? Well, note that Euler supposedly carried the day by presenting an argument that was not even comprehended by Diderot, let alone the audience gathered to hear the exchange. In other words, folks ended up learning precisely nothing about the evidence for or against God's existence. All they learned was that Euler was apparently good at math (and not so good at communication).

  That reflects a common problem in debates on contentious topics, the problem that people focus on posturing to save face and rhetorical strategies to win an argument. Needless to say, all this comes at the expense of clear, accessible, and vulnerable interaction that can help illumine the reasons for and against the various views at play.

  With this in mind, Justin and I have both undertaken this conversation with a commitment not simply to winning a debate, but rather to presenting clear and accessible arguments for our sides while honestly unpacking the deep divisions that remain between us. Whether either of us ought to retreat in humiliation back to Paris, I suppose is for the reader to decide. But at least we've stated our reasons for belief and disbelief in a manner clearer, more accessible, and more vulnerable than Euler ever did.

  Okay, there is one more reason that I like the Euler story. While I don't care so much that Euler seemed to win the debate, I do like the fact that theism appears to win the debate. For all the limitations of that ill-fated exchange, it seems to me that most spectators would have come away with a perspective that led them closer to the truth rather than farther from it. In other words, they were left with a witness to the intellectual strength and truth of theism. Since I count the existence of God to be a matter both true and important, I consider this conclusion to be a good thing, whatever else one might say of the limitations of the exchange. Truth is important, and above all I want people to find it.

  Like Euler, my own defense undoubtedly has its weak points. (And were the great mathematician here, I'm sure he'd be happy to point some of them out.) But for all those limitations, I believe theism is true. And just as that audience likely left that hall with a deepened faith in God, so I hope it is for those who leave this book. For those theists who picked up this book, I hope the result of having weathered the conversation is a stronger, deeper, more confident and worldly wise belief in God now than when you started. And for the atheists who flipped open the cover, I hope you have a new appreciation for the intellectual credibility of theistic, and Christian, belief. And maybe, just maybe, you even have one more important true belief now than when you started.

  Pax vobis,

  Randal Rauser

  JUSTIN'S FINAL PARTING WORD

  As you should know by now, the purpose of this book was to have a lively dialogue on the issue of whether or not there exists a monotheistic God as traditionally defined. However, given the informal, conversational format that we've chosen for ourselves, the flow of our exchange can seem, at times, a bit unusual. I should, however, caution readers not to mistake this feature for a bug. We purposefully tossed the proverbial playbook to the side and pointed our respective collections of arguments in the general direction we wished to go. This is how real conversations happen. They're a messy and disorganized back and forth. They backtrack and sometimes require correction. They don't always permit you to say everything that you might have hoped to get out. They are, however, a rewarding experience when done with a worthy dialogue partner. Yes, we've each fallen clear off our proper course more than a few times, tumbled down old rabbit trails, chased a few red herrings, and hit a few dead-ends, but we always managed to get ourselves back to the core question of the existence of God.

  The question of the existence of God can be, and often is, seen as a rather divisive topic to explore. The way one answers the question can dramatically affect how one sees the world and one's place in it. If past experience is to have anything to say about any evangelistic prospects, willing spectators who were previously quite confident in their positions are unlikely to have been swayed much from their initial positions. This, I suspect, may have less to do with the quality of arguments found along the way and more to do with interesting psychological facts regarding how beliefs are formed and held onto. We are imperfect inference machines with brains clustered with biases of which we are largely unaware.

  Ultimately, it matters little to me that readers are unlikely to have been swayed in either direction. I did not begin this dialogue with a primary goal of acquiring new notches on my atheistic belt (not to be confused with the Bible Belt of the continental United States). I began this project because I love the dialogue, the concepts involved, and the joy I get with exploring the mechanics of how arguments interact.

  In my case for atheism, I presented three arguments. The first argument, if you recall, appealed to the fact that many devout th
eists disagree in important ways on questions as important as how best to relate to God and what kind of lives God wishes us to live. I concluded that this fact is one that we should find relatively surprising if we assume theism to be true. Why would God allow such disagreement to persist among those with whom she wishes to have a relationship?

  In my second argument, I brought our attention to the fact that the universe in which we live is almost entirely a deathtrap for the lifeforms we know to exist. If God exists and has created the universe, she has created the universe at least in part as a place for us to interact with each other and navigate our lives as moral agents. I've argued that if atheism is true, the hostility to life of the universe is no surprise at all, while, on theism, our expectations look very different. On theism, we'd expect the universe not to be so threatening to our lives.

  For my third argument, I presented the fact of evolution as evidence against theism. Assuming life exists and atheism is true, Darwinian evolution would be one of the few plausible options available to a blind, indifferent universe. And yet theism gives us reasons that don't exist on atheism to think that the suffering and death, which is intrinsic to the process of natural selection, wouldn't be a plausible choice for a morally perfect, omnipotent being to bring about the variety of creatures we now observe.

  These arguments were all inductive arguments. They were never intended to be a deductive nail in the coffin of classical theism. I was not expecting to add yet another idol to the overpopulated graveyard of ancient gods or even to injure the rationality of theistic belief. Rather, I was merely presenting some reasons why an atheist could be rational in their judgment that atheism is true.

  The arguments in this book are by no means exhaustive of the arguments that are out there, but I do believe they offer a great place to start exploring the issue of the existence of God.

  In reason,

  Justin Schieber

  INTRODUCTION

  1. I devoted an entire book—Is the Atheist My Neighbor? Rethinking Christian Attitudes toward Atheism (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2015)—to rebutting this popular idea.

  2. Randal Rauser, The Swedish Atheist, the Scuba Diver, and Other Apologetic Rabbit Trails (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2012), p. 12.

  CHAPTER 1: WHY GOD MATTERS

  1. Jonathan Rauch, “Let It Be,” The Atlantic, May 2003, http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2003/05/let-it-be/302726/ (accessed June 13, 2016).

  2. John Vitti, “Weekend at Burnsie's,” The Simpsons, season 13, episode 16, directed by Michael Marcantel, first aired April 7, 2002, Fox.

  3. Mt. 7:7 (NRSV).

  4. Acts 17:24–25 (NIV).

  5. See, Stephen Law, “The Evil-God Challenge,” Religious Studies 46, no. 3 (September 2010): 353–73.

  6. J. L. Schellenberg, The Wisdom to Doubt: A Justification for Religious Skepticism (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2007), p. 197.

  7. One might also question this assumption. After all, if God is perfect, why think she would be likely to create anything external to herself?

  See, Herman Philipse, God in the Age of Science? A Critique of Religious Reason (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), p. 149.

  8. Thomas Nagel, The Last Word (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), pp. 130–31.

  9. Christopher Hitchens and Peter Hitchens, “Hitchens v Hitchens Debate,” April 3, 2008, Hauerstein Center, YouTube video, 34:30, Jun 15, 2011, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ngjQs_QjSwc.

  10. This master/slave rhetoric, while punchy, does not apply to mere theism. That's not to say it isn't a proper description of some popular religious forms of theism that call for complete, unquestioning submission. Theism, however, need not entail a demand for this sheeplike, submissive attitude from believers.

  11. Sarah Laskow, “Found: A Creepy Note from a House's Former Inhabitant,” Atlas Obscura, March 16, 2016, http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/found-a-creepy-note-from-a-new-houses-former-inhabitant?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=atlas-page (accessed April 25, 2016).

  CHAPTER 2: GOD, FAITH, AND TESTIMONY

  1. Robert Merrihew Adams, The Virtue of Faith, and Other Essays in Philosophical Theology (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987).

  2. See, for example, C. Stephen Evans, Passionate Reason: Making Sense of Kierkegaard's Philosophical Fragments (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1992).

  3. Randal Rauser, You're Not as Crazy as I Think: Dialogue in a World of Loud Voices and Hardened Opinions (Colorado Springs, CO: Biblica, 2011), p. 39.

  4. For further discussion, see, John Vickers, “The Problem of Induction,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, November 15, 2006, http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/induction-problem/ (accessed May 20, 2016).

  5. Elliot Sober, Evidence and Evolution: The Logic Behind the Science (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2008), p. 136.

  CHAPTER 3: THE PROBLEM OF MASSIVE THEOLOGICAL DISAGREEMENT

  1. Colin Howson, “Evidence and Confirmation,” in A Companion to the Philosophy of Science, ed. W. H. Smith (Oxford: Blackwell, 2001), p. 108.

  2. Robert A. Pape, Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism (New York: Random House, 2005), p. 4, emphasis added.

  3. Ibid.

  4. Elliot Sober, “The Design Argument,” in The Blackwell Guide to Philosophy of Religion, ed. W. E. Mann (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell, 2008), pp. 117–47.

  5. For a more robust account of what follows from divine love with respect to meaningful, conscious relationships with God's created finite persons, see, J. L. Schellenberg, Divine Hiddenness and Human Reason (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993).

  6. Cited in Paul Murray OP, Aquinas at Prayer: The Bible, Mysticism and Poetry (London: Continuum, 2013), p. 28.

  CHAPTER 4: GOD AND MORAL OBLIGATION

  1. Alonzo Fyfe, “A Basic Review of Desirism,” Atheist Ethicist (blog), December 28, 2011, http://atheistethicist.blogspot.com/2011/12/basic-review-of-desirism.html (accessed June 14, 2016).

  2. Cited in Clarence Bauman, The Sermon on the Mount: The Modern Quest for Its Meaning (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1985), p. 13n11.

  3. Alonzo Fyfe, “What Ought a Person to Do?” Atheist Ethicist (blog), March 18, 2008, http://atheistethicist.blogspot.com/2008/03/what-ought-person-to-do.html (accessed June 14, 2016).

  4. John Rabe, in Nanking, directed by Bill Guttentag (2007; New York: A&E Television Networks, 2008), DVD.

  5. C. Stephen Evans, God and Moral Obligation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), p. 15.

  6. See, Randal Rauser, “I Want to Give the Baby to God: Three Theses on Devotional Child Killing,” (paper presented at the Evangelical Philosophical Society Annual Meeting, Atlanta, Georgia, November 17–19, 2010), http://randalrauser.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/Three-Theses-on-Devotional-Child-Killing.pdf (accessed August 5, 2016).

  7. Bertrand Russell, “A Free Man's Worship,” in Why I Am Not a Christian and Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects (New York: Touchstone, 1957), p. 107.

  8. Cited in David Baggett and Jerry Walls, Good God: The Theistic Foundations of Morality (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), p. 234n35.

  9. Paul Babiak and Robert Hare, Snakes in Suits: When Psychopaths Go to Work (New York: Harper Collins, 2006).

  10. For more on this topic, see an analysis of an online debate between Paul Draper and Alvin Plantinga: Paul Draper, “In Defense of Sensible Naturalism,” The Secular Web, 2007, http://infidels.org/library/modern/paul_draper/naturalism.html (accessed June 15, 2016).

  CHAPTER 5: THE PROBLEM OF THE HOSTILITY OF THE UNIVERSE

  1. Here, the word hostile refers to the danger that the universe poses to the existence and survival of life forms and is not to be taken literally or to hint at any design or purpose.

  2. Philip Plait, Death from the Skies! These Are the Ways the World Will End…(New York: Viking, 2008), p. 1.

  3. The core of the hostility argument originates with Jeffrey Jay Lowder. Lowder uses the argumen
t in an online debate: “DEBATE: Naturalism or Christian Theism? Jeff Lowder vs. Kevin Vandergriff,” Doubtcast, YouTube video, 9:10, November 21, 2014, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBY-Ze0_nWk.

  4. Plait, Death from the Skies! p. 3.

  5. Cited in Julian Wuerth, Kant on Mind, Action, and Ethics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), p. 332.

  6. See, Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space (New York: Ballantine, 1994), chapter 1.

  CHAPTER 6: GOD, MATHEMATICS, AND REASON

  1. E. P. Wigner, “The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences,” Communications on Pure and Applied Mathematics 13, no. 1 (February 1960): 14.

  2. All these examples are surveyed in Thomas Koshy, Fibonacci and Lucas Numbers with Applications (New York: Wiley-Interscience, 2001), chapter 2.

  3. Meandering ratio is calculated by taking to the total length of a river divided by a straight line from its source to its mouth.

  4. Hans-Henrik Stolum, “River Meandering as a Self-Organization Process,” Science 271, no. 5256 (March 22, 1996): 1710–13. Cf. Alfred S. Posamentier and Ingmar Lehmann, Pi: A Biography of the World's Most Mysterious Number (Amherst, NY: Prometheus, 2004), p. 139.

  5. Daniel McCabe, Nova: The Great Math Mystery, DVD, directed by Dan McCabe and Richard Reisz (April 15, 2015; Arlington, VA: PBS, 2015).

  6. My description assumes that God is temporal and thus that one can describe the relationship from decree to actualization of that decree in temporal terms (i.e., first God decrees and then God creates). However, many theologians believe God is atemporal. In that case, the priority of decree to its actualization would be understood in terms of logical rather than temporal priority.

  7. Todd J. Cooke, “Do Fibonacci Numbers Reveal the Involvement of Geometrical Imperatives or Biological Interactions in Phyllotaxis?” Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society 150, no. 1 (January 2006): 3.

  8. Philip Ball, Shapes: Nature's Patterns: A Tapestry in Three Parts (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), p. 236.

 

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