I recently attended the campus debate on whether or not God exists. Ultimately, the debate proved quite interesting and I was impressed with the level of knowledge the presenters possessed. I also appreciated the structured nature of the debate, which allowed me to thoroughly assess both arguments. The nondenominational nature of the debate also allowed me to be more thoroughly involved in the discussion. As a Reformed Jew, I was concerned the debate would be too deeply seeded in Christian doctrine for me to involve myself in the discourse.
For me, the most interesting topic debated was the idea of ethics. The essential question here is: If God exists, why does he allow bad things to happen? From the Atheistic perspective, the presence of suffering inherently denies the presence of a deity. However, the Theistic team argued that evil must exist if free will is to thrive. If man cannot choose to do evil, then he is ultimately not free and would be a slave to his God. To counter this point, the Atheistic team asked why God allows natural disasters to occur. Since these are not man-made, they cannot affect free will. The counter argument to this point intrigued me. The Theists claimed that God might not ascribe to the same logical constraints as man. This raised the question in my mind, how can we have an illogical God?
Many other questions were raised during the debate, and I was forced to rethink my own perspectives on the issue. I have yet to come to a personal conclusions for many of the questions this debate induced. However, I hope to continue evaluating these ideas in my personal studies.
