Last Night’s ABC God Debate Was Unfortunate
Last week I mentioned there would be a debate about the existence of God on ABC.com, which would then be covered on Nightline.
The debate was between actor Kirk Cameron, preacher Ray Comfort, and two atheists from the “Rational Response Squad”. As I feared, it was a disappointment.
If ABC wants to have a serious discussion about this, why not call for intellectuals of each side of the debate? Religion obviously has its share of nuts, and atheism has its share of ineloquent speakers. Does that mean these are the people we should hand a microphone and ask to represent each side?
Luckily, the nuttiness of the Christian side was over-the-top. I only wish the atheists had been prepared with better responses. For example: Ray Comfort claimed he could prove, scientifically, the existence of God. In order to do that, he used the example of a painting, and explained that the painting could not exist without a creator. Case closed.
Is that it?! That was their highly anticipated “scientific proof” for the existence of a god?
The response was reasonable, but any more intellectual atheist could have crushed their argument to the point of sheer embarrassment. This is nothing more than the design argument… the same argument that has been torn apart by philosophers for years. The complexity of the universe dictates that it couldn’t have just “come together”… it had to have been designed.
This is the argument levelled against evolution, and yet, it’s also the argument that puts evolution in the winner’s seat. The debators did point out the most glaring flaw in the argument - if you’re going to argue that God exists because there must be a designer, then who created God? They should have put the argument in a better framework: If the argument is that the complexity of nature proves that there must be a designer, then it follows that the designer would be more complex than his creation. If the designer is complex enough to have the power to create our vast universe and all its life, then what could possibly have created him? The argument falls apart completely. But what was left out completely, and this is much more important, is that evolution elegantly explains existence without these glaring faults. The choice is not between “the universe was designed by a Creator” or “the universe just fell into place”. Evolution dictates that the universe’s complexity evolved over billions of years. It didn’t start this way, and it didn’t just fall together. It evolved into progressively greater complexity.
Please, ABC, if this is the best you can do to present a religious debate, just stay out of it.
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