Godless (15 page)
I debated Oxford philosopher Richard Swinburne at University College in Dublin, Ireland, in 2007 on the existence of God. Our disagreement hinged on the concepts of complexity and simplicity. He feels that the fact that every electron behaves exactly the same is evidence for an external control, or designer, otherwise they would all veer randomly and chaotically and no life would be possible. I pointed out, as most atheists do, that the design argument for God fails since it attempts to account for complexity by simply adding more complexity (God), which assumes the existence of the very thing you are trying to explain. “God is defined as a personal being, and a personal being is not simple,” I told Swinburne. He turned to me and countered that God is the most simple person possible, since his characteristics are defined in infinite terms and mathematicians know that zero and infinity are the simplest concepts. (Huh?) It seems to me Swinburne is equivocating, making zero equal to its reciprocal, turning infinitely complex into infinitely simple. In any event, zero is not “simple.” Zero is nothing. If the “simplicity” of the infinite complexity of God (sounds like an oxymoron) is like zero, then God is like nothing.
In my debate with Phil Fernandes in 2000 (during which he accused me of not being open-minded), I brought up the fact that theistic claims are not falsifiable. In order for a statement to be true, there must be other statements that can be made which, if true, would make the original statement false. The failure to prove those other statements actually strengthens the original statement. The statement “all polar bears are white” is falsifiable because the statement “there exists a black polar bear” would prove it wrong. The fact that we have not yet found a black polar bear strengthens our claim about white polar bears. If you can’t find such statements that would (but not necessarily do) prove you wrong, then you can’t say your proposition is true or false. I don’t think Fernandes grasped the point of falsifiability in principle. During cross-examination, I asked him to tell us how a person could, in principle, win a debate against him:
“Give me an example of a statement which, if true, would make your hypothesis false.”
Fernandes replied: “I think that if you could show that the beginning of the universe, that atheism explains that more adequately than theism does. If you could explain—”
“But what, specifically? Make a statement.”
“I am making a statement. Give me some good evidence to believe that no God exists. I mean, the Big Bang cosmology—Robert Jastrow, who himself was an agnostic, admits that Big Bang cosmology, he refers to it in his book
God and the Astronomers
as ‘scientists climbing the highest mountain and when they got to the top they found a band of theologians waiting there for centuries,’ which shows that the universe had an absolute beginning, the beginning of space, matter and time.”
God and the Astronomers
as ‘scientists climbing the highest mountain and when they got to the top they found a band of theologians waiting there for centuries,’ which shows that the universe had an absolute beginning, the beginning of space, matter and time.”
“So, what you’re saying, then, is that someday if scientists do answer that question, you will reject your belief in a god?”
“That’s only one of the things. I’ve listed several reasons.”
“Okay, but if scientists do close that gap, and we say, ‘Aha! Now we know,’ you will reject your belief in a god? Will you be honest enough to say that your statement is falsifiable?”
“You’re—basically, at this point, I want to say something… How much evidence would it take for Phil Fernandes to reject the existence of his brother? Hey, I met the dude. Personally. I knew him. I walked with him.”
“So it is not falsifiable to you…”
“How do you falsify—I think you could present good evidence that could maybe possibly refute me in a debate or whatever, but how can you prove to someone that another person doesn’t exist when they’ve had a personal encounter and a personal relationship with that person?”
“So, Jesus talks to you, and that’s why you believe in him? He talks to you and you have a—”
“No, I believed in him before I heard him talking to me.”
“But he does talk to you?”
“I believe that God communicates to us in his Word, through circumstances, through prayer, and things of that sort. And, by the way, Thomas Aquinas did too, and he wasn’t an idiot, so I don’t think I should be pushed into that category.” (Audience laughter)
“…What if I were to be so silly as to say to you that ‘I know in my heart of hearts—I have a personal experience—that atheism is real, and I know there is no way you’re going to talk me out of it.’ What would you say to my attitude?”
“Oh, I would say—and I don’t mean this in a negative way—but I would say basically you’re a person who is close-minded, in the sense that they’re not open to the other options. (Audience laughter, applause.) However, I am close-minded. You can’t prove to me that my brother doesn’t exist, because I know him personally and I walk with him.”
Falsifiability cuts both ways, of course. I am often asked what would cause me to change my mind. “What would you accept as proof that there is a God?” I can think of dozens of examples. If you were to tell me that God predicted to you that next March 14 at 2:27 a.m. a meteorite composed of 82 percent iron, 13 percent nickel and 3 percent iridium, approaching from the southwest and hitting the Earth at an angle of 82 degrees, would strike your house (not mine, of course), penetrating the building, punching a hole through your Navajo rug upstairs and the arm of the couch downstairs, ending up 17.4 inches below the basement floor and weighing 13.5 ounces, and if that happened as predicted, I would take that as serious evidence that atheism is falsified. If Jesus would materialize in front of a debate audience, captured on videotape, and if he were to tell us exactly where to dig in Israel to find the ark of the covenant containing the original stone tablets given to Moses—well, you get the idea. Atheism is exquisitely vulnerable to disproof. Theism is not.
Cross-examination is the most enjoyable part of a debate. It is the time when the audience gets to see the participants talk to each other, vulnerable, thinking on their feet. For that reason, some debaters decline cross-examination. In my debate with Christian apologist Norman Geisler, he refused to agree to the cross-examination, preferring to read his entire presentation from a prepared text. (To be fair, some people are better writers than speakers.) In fact, he read his
rebuttals
from a text that he prepared
before
the debate without knowing what I was going to say. After I asked Dr. Shelly about the number of laws of thermodynamics, he declined to do any more cross-examinations. Of course, something similar to cross-examination happens during questions from the audience after the formal presentations, which is always more spontaneous than the prepared remarks, and I think more fun, since it engages the audience.
rebuttals
from a text that he prepared
before
the debate without knowing what I was going to say. After I asked Dr. Shelly about the number of laws of thermodynamics, he declined to do any more cross-examinations. Of course, something similar to cross-examination happens during questions from the audience after the formal presentations, which is always more spontaneous than the prepared remarks, and I think more fun, since it engages the audience.
I have sometimes been caught off guard during these unscripted moments, so I understand the hesitation. After the formal questions during my first debate with Doug Wilson, when I was really tired from hours of talking, a man came up with a question. I thought I had heard everything, but this guy asked: “Mr. Barker, are you a
practicing
homosexual?” That was so out-of-the-blue that I laughed and was speechless for a few seconds. I didn’t want to seem eager to distance myself from homosexuals, as if there were something wrong with being gay, but I also did not want to give the man any reason to think he had figured me out. I mumbled something like, “I am not a homosexual, but if I were I would not be ashamed of who I am, and besides, this has no relevance to the topic of the debate.” I later realized why he was asking the question. In his mind, atheism is the refusal to conform to moral standards, so I must be wrestling with sexual temptations (like he was, presumably), and since his church is apparently teaching him that homosexuality is an evil unleashed on the world,
that
must be the reason I don’t believe in God, not all those phony reasons I carefully explained during the debate. I later came up with the perfect response, the answer I’ll be ready to give the next time I get asked that question: “No, I am not a homosexual—but now that I have met
you
…”
practicing
homosexual?” That was so out-of-the-blue that I laughed and was speechless for a few seconds. I didn’t want to seem eager to distance myself from homosexuals, as if there were something wrong with being gay, but I also did not want to give the man any reason to think he had figured me out. I mumbled something like, “I am not a homosexual, but if I were I would not be ashamed of who I am, and besides, this has no relevance to the topic of the debate.” I later realized why he was asking the question. In his mind, atheism is the refusal to conform to moral standards, so I must be wrestling with sexual temptations (like he was, presumably), and since his church is apparently teaching him that homosexuality is an evil unleashed on the world,
that
must be the reason I don’t believe in God, not all those phony reasons I carefully explained during the debate. I later came up with the perfect response, the answer I’ll be ready to give the next time I get asked that question: “No, I am not a homosexual—but now that I have met
you
…”
In more than 20 years of atheist advocacy, I have rarely been harassed or threatened. Most public audiences are respectful, even the most philosophically “hostile” crowds. But on occasion someone will lose his or her cool. I once spoke before a large audience at Kansas State University, in Manhattan, Kansas, and right in the middle of my talk a skinny Baptist preacher in the center of the room, wearing white shirt and thin black tie, stood up and started yelling, “Blasphemy!” He kept talking louder and louder, berating me for my apostasy. I listened for a minute and then tried to say something, but he would not stop. When he noticed the student security approaching from both sides, asking him to leave the room, he quickly sat down. “Do you really think I committed blasphemy?” I asked. “Thank you for the compliment!”
That’s a good tactic, thanking people for what they think is an insult. If someone tells me I am going to hell, I say, “Thank you! All the great people are in hell. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Mark Twain, Johannes Brahms, George Gershwin, Albert Einstein, Bertrand Russell, Margaret Sanger… I was afraid you were going to tell me to ‘go to heaven’ and spend eternity with Jerry Falwell.” Mark Twain said the same thing better: “Heaven for climate; hell for society.”
I was giving a talk at Iowa State University in 2004, during First Amendment Week, led by students and by my friend Hector Avalos (an atheist professor of religion). Each day of the week was devoted to a different one of the five freedoms spelled out in the Constitution. I was there to talk about religious freedom. Right in the middle of my talk, my microphone went dead and I had to raise my voice to be heard. Someone went backstage to the amplifier and noticed that the volume on my channel had been turned down to zero. My channel only. When I was told what happened, I said, “Wow! That’s great! It’s not often you say something so provocative that you need to be censored—especially during Free Speech Week. Thank you for the compliment.”
In 2007, at the University of California at Monterey Bay, a woman disrupted the meeting, yelling, “This man is a liar! Don’t believe him!” She was trying to warn the students not to be misled by Satan. We let her talk for a minute or so, and then I tried to thank her for her comments but she would not stop. She came walking up to the front of the room and turned to the audience and said, over and over, “This man is a liar! This man is a liar!” At that point we realized she was truly irrational, and we asked her to leave. I reminded her—or I tried to remind her, as she would not stop yelling—that she was now breaking the law, and I quoted the verse that tells Christians to “be subject to every ordinance of man.” She still would not stop. It was the only time the police ever had to remove someone from the room when I was speaking.
One of the least threatening, most enjoyable and interesting debates was with Hassanain Rajabali, a Muslim scholar, in January 2003 at the Islamic Center in Queens, New York. (We also met again the following year in Dearborn, Michigan, for a team debate with me and Richard Carrier against Rajabali and Michael Corey.) We originally had agreed to debate the topic “Does God exist?” But after the Muslim organizers discussed it, they told me that that wording starts from the assumption that God does not exist, which is insulting to Allah, and they wanted to know if I would agree to change it to “Does God not exist?” I agreed, pointing out that as a consequence, I should take the first opening statement, since I would be arguing the affirmative. I would be saying, “Yes, God does not exist,” and Rajabali would be responding, “No, God does not not exist.” Since a double negative is a positive, it amounts to the same thing, except that I got to go first and set the tone for the event. The audience was advised to split into females on one side of the room and males on the other. Most of my left field of vision was women in dark clothing with scarves, shawls and veils, and on the other side were men dressed as they pleased. Although someone had warned me that whenever the name of Allah is spoken, the people would respond with something in Arabic, it was still a little amusing to hear the crowd “interrupting” me from time to time.
I was happy to do this debate because to this point I had been only minimally acquainted with Islam. I learned a little of the life of Muhammad and read through the Koran. Since I was debating a true follower of Allah, I was anxious to read the 23rd Sura from the Koran that is called “The Believers,” and was surprised to learn that in order to be a good Muslim, you must be humble in prayer, avoid vain talk, be active in charity, and limit your sexual intercourse to your wives and your slaves. (I didn’t bring this up during the debate because I assumed that American Muslims would not own slaves.)
Rajabali’s main arguments were morality and existence. I had trouble following his reasoning, but he basically insisted that the existence of contingent beings like us requires a higher context within which our identities make sense. The Anthropic Universe exists within a frame of reference, and that reference is God, who needs no frame of reference because he is infinite. When I asked him for evidence of the existence of God, he replied by saying, “The fact that you and I exist.”
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