Recently I attended a debate sponsored by the Classical Studies department on “Does God Exist?” The debate consisted of four student panelists — two atheists and two theists, with a scientist and a philosopher from each side. The debate was interesting and I was very impressed with the panelists, who handled themselves very well. However, I was troubled by some important concerns I have about how talk of belief in God is structured in general.
First, I would like to say that I agree with a previous blogger that the debate was very Christian-centric. The two theists were Christians, and the arguments were almost exclusively geared towards proving or disproving the existence of a Christian God. (For the purposes of the debate, “God” was defined as an omniscient, omnipotent, and omni-benevolent personal creator who interacts with creation.) Of course, especially for a two-hour debate, it made perfect sense for the panelists to stick to debating one specific definition of God - especially a definition that has received the most scholarship in Western academic history and in Western religious thought today. However, it might have been interesting to have an Islamic or Jewish perspective represented on the theistic side as well.
Second, I was disappointed to see that the debate seemed to slip into a debate over intelligent design vs. evolution to a large extent, as there is so much more to the debate over whether God exists. Furthermore, the ID/evolution debate is really one about science, not religion, especially because I do not think belief in evolution and belief in God as creator are incompatible.
Third, I was confused by the theist philosopher’s defense of the problem of evil. The atheist philosopher argued that if God is all powerful and all good, he would not allow evil (especially natural evil) to exist in the world; evil exists, therefore God does not exist. The theist (forgive my rough outline of a more nuanced reply) responded by claiming that the atheist is unjustified in making a claim about “evil,” because doing so implies acceptance of an objective morality, which implies that there is a God who provides the basis of such a morality.
The debate then started centering on the question of whether one could have an objective morality without God. Although I am a Christian myself, I definitely disagreed with the theist philosopher’s broad point that objective morality cannot exist without God. There are scores of contemporary metaethicists who adhere to some form of moral realism and believe in objective morality while being atheists. Though certain moral problems (moral motivation, for example) are harder to deal with under a non-theistic view, there are many well-thought, fleshed-out, and plausible naturalistic moral theories - for example, “Cornell moral realist” theories of Nicholas Sturgeon, Richard Boyd, and others, or David Copp’s recent book titled Morality in a Natural World.
I think neither the theist nor the atheist side adequately pointed this out or responded to this in the debate. (Of course, that is likely because it was supposed to be a debate about the existence of God, not about moral naturalism per se, so the panelists were perhaps very understandably outside of their areas of expertise.)
Finally, and most importantly, I personally think such debates about the existence of God are at core misguided. At the end of the debate, the moderator asked the Christian panelists why they believe in God. They both cited the historical, scientific, anthropological, and sociological evidence they had been speaking about all evening. I was shocked that neither specifically mentioned subjective religious experience and faith.
Now, this could very well be because they were trying to engage with the atheists on their own terms. However, I think this is a mistake. Ultimately, religious belief is fundamentally different from other types of belief - it is a product not of strictly logical inquiry, but rather of faith that is given to us by God. This is not at all to say that we should not strive for a “faith seeking understanding,” to borrow Anselm’s phrase — I think believers of all sorts should critically analyze their views, and strive to maintain rational and logically coherent belief sets.
It is completely appropriate for believers to analyze their faith, or to engage in dialogue with other believers and with non-believers about rational, historical, and scientific analyses of their beliefs. However, I think it is impossible and unwise to attempt to conclusively prove God’s existence through such analysis. First and foremost, God is bigger than human understanding - it would seem odd to be able to prove or necessitate God’s existence through our limited understanding of the natural world.
Second, I think such a proof of God’s existence can never happen. An atheist will never be convinced by rational argument alone, because rational argument is not enough to possess religious belief — some aspect of faith or religious experience is required. This is especially apparent when the historical or scientific evidence being presented stems from holy scripture that the theist holds as truth-bearing when the atheist does not.
All that is needed to show this point to the theist is to present a Christian, for example, with logical arguments drawn from history and from Islamic scripture for the unity of Allah, the status of the Qu’ran as God’s revealed word, and Muhammad as God’s final prophet. The Christian will be unlikely to accept this as evidence for the truth of Islam, because her previous theoretical and religious commitments lead her to believe that the Islamic scriptures are not a sufficient source of evidence.
Clearly, the atheist will react to the Christian’s defense of God using the Bible in the same way. Similarly, no argument an atheist can level at a committed theist will convince her that God does not exist, for there will always be ways in which God is outside of human understanding, and the theist’s faith will help her accept and attempt to understand this.
God is such that God’s existence can neither be proven nor disproven. The strictly rational position is not that of the theist or the atheist but that of the agnostic. Going on logic alone, one should withhold belief, because there is no way to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that God does or does not exist.
The theist looks at the rational arguments, adds faith to the picture, and gets belief in God. Perhaps ironically, the atheist does essentially the same thing — looks at the evidence and through a kind of reverse-faith adds an ultimately unprovable conviction that God definitely does not exist.
I think debates such as the one I attended are interesting and important. I also think that people must keep in mind what the debates purport to do — whether the goal is simply to look at different sides of and arguments about an issue (which is feasible and productive), or to convince the opposite party that your side is right through a proof for or against God’s existence (which I believe is impossible and misguided.)
– Alida Liberman
