Mickey Badalamenti

A couple days ago, ABC’s Nightline hosted a debate between Christians and atheists. The debate, titled “Does God exist?”, hosted the well known childhood actor Kirk Cameron, now a Christian evangelist, and his colleague in ministry Ray Comfort, squaring off with two individuals from the “Rational Response Squad”, a group dedicated to promoting the atheistic worldview. (Information on the debate, along with video clips, can be found at NBC’s website at http://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/story?id=3148940&page=1).

After watching the clips posted at ABC’s web site, I felt compelled to pour out some thoughts because I felt the event was a sobering example of how important it is for Christians to be prepared to meet the culture’s questions and objections – and just how damaging it can be when we’re not prepared.

Now my intention is not to sling mud at Comfort and Cameron. I know they intended to stand up for Christ and I applaud them for their courage. But standing up under scrutiny from the atheistic and skeptical culture takes more than courage – it takes being prepared to give a sound defense for the reasonableness of our faith (1 Peter 3:15). That’s where I feel things fell short on the Christian side. And I’m hoping there’s something we can learn from it. So let me summarize what I saw, and for each point I’ll ask you what you think. Contemplate it for a moment; think about what you would’ve done had you been in their shoes. Then I’ll offer my thoughts for you to consider, and it’s my hope that this exercise will bring edification.

To be fair to Comfort and Cameron, the moderator seemed to be pretty biased, strongly taking the atheist’s side and even throwing out quotes from third-party thinkers aimed at knocking the Christians off their horse, which he didn’t seem to do at all with the atheists. And further, I was only able to view what was posted on the ABC web site, so I admit that my judgment of the situation is based on part, not all, of the broadcast. Nevertheless, I saw enough to convince me that the Christians basically set themselves up for a fall from the very beginning.

To start things off, Cameron looked into the screen and said "We're going to prove that God exists...100%...absolutely...without needing faith."

Here’s my first question for you to consider: Do you think Cameron’s statement was a good way to start?

Frankly, I believe that this statement setup a strong foundation for the rest of the debate. Unfortunately, it was for the atheists. There’s at least two reasons why I say this:
1) The statement sets up a false dichotomy between evidence and "faith", playing into the culture’s assumption that to have Christian “faith” has nothing to do with evidence and proof; and
2) The idea that one can “prove” their worldview with 100%, absolute certainty is a standard that, philosophically, no one is able to meet with any worldview.
In essence it framed the debate as, “either the Christians prove God beyond any doubt, or the atheists win.” In a debate, that’s called taking on a disproportionate burden of proof. It demands a standard of evidence that is nearly impossible for the proponents to meet, and simple for the opponents to refute. (To see what I mean, flip the coin over. Had the atheists stated their goal was to prove with 100% certainty that God doesn’t exist, they also would’ve been a cinch to beat). So out of the gate, the Christians were already two lengths behind the race.

The atheists of course capitalized on the Christian’s self-defined impossible mission, saying in their opening statement that they were going to “refute Comfort/Cameron's 'proof' on this show, and provide a more thorough refutation on our web site later." Being that this is a debate, each side should have the burden of proving the tenacity of their position; so a shrewd observer would ask, how does the atheist’s stated approach here provide the positive case for the reasonableness of atheism? It doesn’t. But of course the atheist side didn’t have to worry about that, since the Christians took all the burden of proof on themselves.

I next watched the clip where Comfort gave his opening argument, a 13-minute "scientific proof" of God's existence. It boiled down to 3 arguments:

1) Creation – Comfort appealed to was the "watchmaker" argument, the idea that something which appears to be created has to have a creator. To illustrate, he held up the Mona Lisa and said, "if there's a painting, there's got to be a painter".
2) Conscience (morality)
3) Conversion – Comfort used his testimony of how he was radically changed once convicted of the first two items.

Would you have used those same arguments? Would you have added anything?

While I agree with these arguments in general, there’s a couple of holes here that the opposition would later exploit:
1) The scientific evidence concerning the origin of the universe undergirds the Christian position and undermines the atheistic position. Yet it was not used.
2) Most disappointing, there was absolutely no appeal at all to the central evidence for the Christian faith – the resurrection. The resurrection is the central tenet appealed to over and over by the New Testament as proof-positive that Christ is the unique divine revelation. How Christians can miss this when providing evidence for the veracity of our faith is beyond me.

To see how the exchange went from there, I watched a 9-minute clip ABC posted, labeled "Who Created God?" and the exchange was very disturbing to the Christian point of view. Let’s look at how the Christians faired on each of Comfort’s 3 arguments.

Regarding Creation, the atheists challenged the Christians with the tired "If God created everything, who created God" argument. The atheists charged Comfort with dodging his own rule: "You claim everything needs a cause, then you make an exception for God." The moderator reiterated the challenge, using Comfort’s words against him: "You claimed a painting needs a painter. Then with God, you say no painter is needed. You're dodging your own rule." Comfort basically had no response except to say God is eternal. This of course played right into their hand, because it basically appeared like he was making an exception for God.

A short while later, on the same subject, the atheists pulled a subtle 180 when they argued, "We believe the universal is eternal and uncaused. So there's no need for a God." The Christians were stumped by this. The irony was that with this statement, the atheists had actually tipped their hand, but unfortunately neither Comfort nor Cameron were adequately prepared, so they completely missed the philosophical dodge their opponents had just made.

Do you know what it was? What would you have said in response?

Here’s what I would’ve pointed out. Now please pay attention, because this a ground-level philosophical issue that anyone claiming the existence of an eternal God needs to know, or else sooner or later you’ll get handed your hat by an atheist or skeptic exactly as Comfort and Cameron did. [Not to say this is about trying to protect our reputation; it is Christ’s reputation that suffers.] The atheists’ argument was essentially proposing this logical deduction:

1) Everything that exists must have a cause.
2) God exists.
3) Therefore God must have a cause. [This then prompts the question “what created God?” as the atheists posed, giving the appearance of a contradictory position.]

Here’s where the atheists tipped their hat: If the deduction above is correct, then the same proof counts against an eternal universe [just replace "God" by "the universe" in statements 2 and 3 above to see what I mean]. So the atheist has no leg to stand on.

But in point of fact, premise 1 in their deduction (“Everything that exists must have a cause”) is flawed, and they were actually admitting this by their willingness to allow for an eternal, uncaused universe. In truth, the proper deductive argument is this:

1) Everything that begins to exist must have a cause
2) God never began to exist
3) Therefore God needs no cause

Of course, the same proof works for the universe – that is, if the universe is eternal. So either an eternal universe or an eternal God can be posited. The question then becomes, which one is borne out by the evidence? The Christians could've then shown how the idea of an eternal universe has been thoroughly refuted by the scientific evidence. (I can’t go into the reasons here; if you’re interested in exploring this, look into books like Hugh Ross’ The Fingerprint of God or God and Big Bang Cosmology by William Laine Craig). So ultimately the universe undergirds theism, not atheism. But the Christian side was not prepared for the shell game, so they lost the wager.

Conscience (morality) – Appealing to the existence of absolute morality is a great argument, one that atheists in general have a very hard time dealing with. But here was the problem: As far as I saw, the Christians never took the atheists to task on this. They may have, but I didn't see it posted on ABC. The power of the moral argument was completely shelved as they dwindled away the time defending against the atheists’ straw man refutation of creation.

Conversion – Comfort offered the radical change brought about in his life as proof that Christ is the true God. While I don’t deny the validity of a Christian’s testimony, the difficulty with using this as a prime argument in a debate was shown by what the atheists countered with. The atheists basically accused a testimony like Comfort’s of being subjective, meaning it is something that is accepted by an individual based solely on their own personal experience, and as such offers no objective evidence that it is actually true for everyone.

To make this case, they began with this argument: "If you [Comfort] had been born in Pakistan, you'd most likely be a Muslim." In other words, had Comfort been a Pakistanian, he most likely would be offering testimony of how Islam had proven true in his life. The moderator agreed with that premise then took it unabashedly further: "This idea [that most people simply believe what their culture believes concerning God] shows that God is a construct we create based on our cultural influence, and therefore it proves that God doesn't exist." Comfort tried to respond by saying he was born in a non-Christian culture yet he accepted Christ, so that shows all who seek God will find him.

Would you have used Comfort’s response?

While it’s not an entirely bad response, the problem with it is that it doesn’t really address the atheist’s argument. Their premise is that most (not necessarily all) people remain in the religious persuasion of their surrounding culture. So Comfort offering himself as a one-off exception does nothing to defeat that premise. In response, the atheists can offer scores of people that are born in non-Christian cultures and remain non-Christians to support their premise.

Cameron then spoke up, saying in essence, “People create different Gods, but that is idolatry. The true God reveals himself in the Bible.”

Would you have used Cameron’s argument?

In my opinion, Cameron’s argument was even weaker than Comfort’s and made the case worse for the Christian side. In essence, he was arguing for the truth of the Biblical God by assuming the Biblical God is true – a circular argument (for he hadn’t offered any objective proof why someone should accept the Bible as divinely inspired). Naturally, this came across as a subjective opinion, which only served to reinforce the atheist’s original argument.

To see just how strongly the atheists capitalized on Cameron’s statement to reinforce their “subjective” argument, look at their response: "Kirk I know that's your experience. But members of the audience have different experiences…and if I experience a little invisible green leprechaun on my shoulder, that doesn't make it true." The moderater pressed his original argument that God is simply a construct of each culture’s imaginations. The Christians again had no response.

What would you have said?

I would’ve had them try this on for size:

The flaw was not in the atheist’s premise, but in the conclusion that was drawn from the premise. Even if it is true that people tend to stay the same religious persuasion as that of their surrounding culture, it does not logically follow that this proves theism [the idea that God exists] is false, any more than the fact that the atheists in the debate have been influenced by Western atheistic culture proves atheism is false. Imagine the fun that could’ve occurred here had the Christians flipped the argument around:
Christians: “Are you guys atheists?”
Atheists: “Yes.”
Christians: “Do you think your views were formed in part by the influence of other atheistic thinkers and atheistic sub-culture?”
Atheists: “Ummm…yes.”
Christians: “Then atheism must simply be a projection of the sub-culture’s mind, and not really true.”

The fact is that we can pose at least 3 valid responses one could have to a view originally adopted through cultural influences:
1) They continue to hold onto their theistic view because it is philosophically superior to all rivals.
2) They continue to hold onto their theistic view because it is comfortable, while in fact another theistic view is philosophically superior in demonstrating itself to be the true view.
3) They have concluded that all theistic views are false, and reject their theistic view.
As long as 1 and 2 are even possible, 3 cannot be claimed to be automatically true. So the moderator’s argument that God is simply the projection of the cultural mindset does not follow.

The truth is that all views, theistic or atheistic, need to be evaluated on the basis of the evidence that they offer. That is precisely where the Christian worldview fairs very well in opposition to atheism. Unfortunately, Comfort/Cameron were again not prepared to deal with this objection.

And so having placed a disproportionate burden of proof on themselves that they couldn’t possibly hope to meet, and having not prepared for the standard objections that the atheist side would give, the Christians lost the race before it began, and the conclusion was inevitable. At the end of the clip, one of the atheists sniped, "You claimed you would give the scientific evidence proving God exists, and you haven't given a single shred of it." The audience erupted in applause.

Let this be a lesson to us – God is deadly serious when he tells us to be prepared to give a reasonable defense for our faith (1 Peter 3:15). Let’s stop making a false dichotomy between “faith” and reason, get out of our comfort zones by taking the time to learn the sound, evidential answers for our faith, and ultimately worship God by loving him with our minds so that He can use them to reach a godless world.