The Triune God of Scripture Lives (White vs Barker)

Alpha & Omega Ministries

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April 30, 2009

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00:00: I would now like to introduce our moderator for the evening. Mohammad Khalil is an assistant professor in the
00:05: Department of Religion here at the University of Illinois. His specialization is in Islamic studies, a topic on which he has presented papers, taught courses, and published journal articles and book chapters.
00:18: Please welcome Professor Khalil. Good evening.
00:28: First let me say as a professor of religion that it's encouraging to see so many students here with finals just around the corner.
00:35: Tonight's debate concerns the thesis, The Triune God of Scripture Lives. The format is as follows.
00:45: We will begin with opening statements, followed by cross -examination. And cross -examination simply is for the purpose of clarifying and verifying what was stated earlier.
00:57: This will be followed by a rebuttal and a second cross -examination. We will then take a brief ten -minute break.
01:03: We will return, and we will repeat the process with a shorter time frame, and we will switch the order of speakers.
01:12: This will be followed by questions from the audience, and that will be it.
01:19: We are honored to have with us tonight Dr. James White and Mr.
01:25: Dan Barker. Dr. White, to my right, is the director of Alpha and Omega Ministries, a
01:32: Christian apologetics organization based in Phoenix, Arizona. He is the author of more than 20 books, a professor, an accomplished debater, and an elder of the
01:43: Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church. To my left is Mr. Dan Barker.
01:48: Mr. Barker was an evangelical minister and Christian songwriter for 19 years, but has since renounced all religion.
01:57: Today, he fights for the separation of church and state as the co -president of the Freedom from Religion Foundation and as a co -host of Free Thought Radio.
02:07: He also plays jazz piano and lives in Madison, Wisconsin. And with that,
02:12: I'd like to turn the floor over to our first presenter, Dr. White. Please join me in welcoming Dr. White. Well, thank you very much for having me here this evening.
02:31: It is truly an honor to be with you at the University of Illinois. I appreciate the invitation, and I thank
02:36: Dan Barker for being here this evening as well. Our subject this evening is very, very important.
02:42: Dan and I were noting that this is not the first time that we have met. In fact, we met a long time ago on the
02:49: Tom Likas show in Phoenix, Arizona, and one thing that we both immediately noticed is that both of us had a whole lot more hair than we do today.
02:57: And the irony, of course, of that is the fact that that indicates that time is passing.
03:04: And that passage of time indicates that we debate this evening on the precipice of eternity.
03:11: None of us know what tomorrow will bring. Therefore, what we are debating should not be a mere intellectual exercise for anyone this evening.
03:19: From the Christian worldview, we are speaking about the very issues of life itself. The audience tonight, those who are here in the auditorium, those who will be listening later by recording, you are the ones who cannot be neutral about the subject that we are looking at this evening.
03:37: You are the judges of the debate. And please keep in mind, even though we live in a postmodern paradigm today, postmodernism does not encourage deep, critical thought.
03:47: It often confuses emotion with truth, feelings with logic. I hope you will listen very carefully to the presentations as they are made this evening.
03:57: I would like to challenge everyone in the audience to examine your own worldview this evening.
04:02: Let this be a beginning, not an end for you. Examine your worldview. Examine it for consistency.
04:07: Test the debaters. Test Mr. Barker and myself as to who is consistent with their own worldview.
04:14: Who will have to borrow from the other's worldview? Which worldview will accord with the reality that we find around us?
04:22: Those are some of the questions we must ask this evening. Now, the biblical teaching is that everyone listening to this debate knows that the
04:30: God of Scripture lives. This knowledge may not be explicit in the sense of being able to articulate the
04:37: Trinity, for example, but it is fundamental to our debate this evening to understand why a Christian believes this to be the case and why it is relevant to our encounter.
04:46: Mr. Barker has said that he knows the Christian God does not exist. He will often tell us that morality, by definition, refers to behavior that minimizes harm.
04:56: Mr. Barker has a naturalistic materialist worldview that causes him to think and reason in a particular fashion.
05:01: We will examine the consistency of his ability to be able to offer such definitions later on, but for now,
05:07: I must define the biblical view before we can examine it for consistency. We read in the
05:13: Christian Scriptures, For the wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who are suppressing, present tense, the truth by means of unrighteousness.
05:24: For that which is known about God is evident within them because God has made it evident to them. For his invisible attributes, namely his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world and the things that have been made.
05:38: So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened.
05:49: Now please notice that men know God exists, but due to their sin and rebellion, they suppress this knowledge.
05:57: The revelation of God in creation, both outwardly and inwardly, is sufficient to render man accountable to God, to give thanks, and to give honor.
06:05: The clarity of this revelation renders all men unapologetus, that is, without an apologetic.
06:13: This means that Mr. Barker will not be able to argue against the God who has placed clear evidence of his existence in and all around Mr.
06:20: Barker. Oh, but wait, surely he will do so. Yes, he will try, but here is one of the keys to the debate.
06:28: Will Mr. Barker be able to do this without borrowing from God's existence to do so?
06:33: I submit he will not. As hard as Dan has tried for over 25 years now, his suppression of the knowledge of God leads inevitably to utter futility and self -contradiction.
06:44: The biblical worldview places the triune God at the center of all things. As the creator, his purpose, his decree, his intention determines the meaning, purpose, and identity of all things, including man.
06:57: To truly know things as they are in God's created order, man cannot put himself in the center of the diagram, demoting
07:05: God to just one other fact of knowledge. Instead, to know truly and properly, mankind must see himself as a creature in his creator's world, and hence must know things only as they are related to God.
07:17: To have true, proper knowledge, then, I must know the creation only as I relate to the creator. When I know law or morality or love or history as it is properly defined by the creator, as I see these in light of the triune
07:30: God's eternal decree, then I have true and proper knowledge of these things. When man is placed in the center, as is necessary in a naturalistic materialist worldview, all things become objects of human knowledge defined by the creature, including
07:45: God. Man, by definition, has to define God in a way that fits his own role in the universe.
07:51: Further, the unity, harmony, and consistency of knowledge that comes from having the triune God at the center, his sovereign decree defying the creation, is lost, and each man or woman becomes the ultimate authority in defining reality.
08:08: Now, the thesis statement specifically refers to the triune God. Why the triune God? First and foremost, because the
08:14: Trinity is biblical. I know Mr. Barker does not believe that, but I'd be happy to respond to any objections he might raise to that.
08:21: Secondly, because of the centrality of Christ to the Christian worldview. Specifically, I refer to, for example, this text from the book of Colossians.
08:30: For by him all things were created. This is referring to Jesus. Both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities, all things have been created through him and for him.
08:41: He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. Now, this is a radical claim. Certainly, it is the
08:47: Christian message that the creator himself, to bring about his own glory and the salvation of an undeserving people, entered into his own creation in the person of Jesus Christ.
08:57: This means that there are no neutral facts. There is no neutral ground upon which to stand.
09:03: A fact, if it is a fact, is so because God made it to be so. To pretend otherwise is to compromise the
09:11: Christian faith. That means, I insist, that when Dan Barker seeks to reason logically while denying his creator, he is not only in self -denial, he has to borrow from my worldview to make it work.
09:23: While Mr. Barker does not believe he has to give a justification for the laws of logic, I leave it to the listener to decide if such vital matters can be left to mere brute facts, saying, well, that's just the way that it is.
09:35: When a consistent biblical Christian presents the all -encompassing claims of Christianity in debate with most atheists, including
09:42: Dan Barker, the atheist assumes that since we do not start with theistic proofs, which invite the creature to judge
09:48: God and which ignore the suppression of the knowledge of God already present in the unbeliever, that we have abandoned the use of evidence and that we are simply presupposing the truth of Christianity.
09:58: This is simply not the case. I am saying everything that is true is because God created it.
10:06: Hence, all evidence points to God, and that is why the unbeliever has to work so hard at suppressing the knowledge.
10:12: Further, I am not suggesting that you simply presuppose Christianity. The issue has to do with the presuppositions one brings to all the data and the myth that anyone is epistemologically and morally neutral about the existence of God.
10:27: Now, a few years ago, Dan Barker made the following claim. He said, quote, However, when it comes to a particular definition of God, such as the
10:37: Christian God or the Islamic God, I go further than just the negative, soft, lower -case atheism, and I make the positive claim that that particular
10:45: God does not exist. In that case, I am an uppercase atheist, especially when it comes to the gods of the revealed religions.
10:53: I am convinced, and I claim to know, that those gods, the Christian God, Allah, does not exist.
10:59: It is not a belief, it is a claim of knowledge. Such a God does not exist.
11:05: This means Dan is a hard atheist, a capital A atheist in our debate this evening. So how does one decide between these two positions?
11:13: Well, there's a good question. First of all, I would suggest the demonstration of the consistency of one's own worldview.
11:19: One must demonstrate the consistency of one's own worldview. One must ground logic, reason, etc.,
11:25: etc., in one's own worldview. Secondly, by providing an internal critique of competing worldviews.
11:32: Providing an internal critique of competing worldviews. And finally, through the demonstration of the explanatory power of one's worldview in light of known reality.
11:40: Now I refer to this as secondary evidence. It is not primary evidence, but it is relevant to the topic that we have this evening.
11:47: So you see, the reason we must approach this issue presuppositionally can be seen by recognizing the impossibility of demonstrating
11:54: God's existence to a dogmatic materialist like Dan Barker. From a Christian perspective,
12:00: Dan has no right to climb up upon the seat of judgment, wrap the robes of the cosmic jurist around himself, and act as judge.
12:09: For when anyone brings evidence before Judge Barker of the existence of anything outside the materialistic realm, he simply bangs the gavel and says, evidence dismissed.
12:17: So we are left with the impossible task of demonstrating the existence of a non -spatial, non -temporal, non -material being, while being limited only to spatial, temporal, and material evidence.
12:29: The impossibility of the task and the circularity of the position is obvious. Furthermore, Mr. Barker sits as judge, as a materialist, and as a functionalist, who denies the existence of the laws of logic as abstract and universal entities reflecting the order of the creation.
12:43: He can only offer us, as his ultimate authority, his own cognitive processes, his own mind.
12:50: I would like to argue that Mr. Barker lost the debate tonight by walking in the room. His expectation that we can engage in logic -based, rational dialogue in a random world, where the laws of logic are no more than the result of the action of the sodium -potassium pumps inside layers of phospholipids inside the bony structure that comprises
13:10: Mr. Barker's head, makes no sense given his naturalistic materialism. Indeed, Mr.
13:15: Barker assures us that the laws of logic are no more universal or abstract than digestion in the stomach, a confusion of categories that is truly stunning.
13:23: But Mr. Barker's functionalism must be his final authority, so he cannot give us any higher justification for any answer he may give us than this.
13:32: The neurons in his brain say so, for now anyway. Atoms bang around, electrical impulses and axons, nothing more.
13:39: In fact, in a debate with Paul Monada, Dan admitted that, in the cosmic perspective, humans are no more important than broccoli, resulting in a fascinating discussion of cosmic broccoli.
13:51: The point, of course, is that the debate we are having this evening is really absurd from a materialistic perspective.
13:57: One piece of cosmic broccoli, arguing with another when there is no transcendent reality, no laws of logic binding upon both, no truths that remain valid and important long after the cosmic broccoli has become part of the cosmic salad, is the ultimate example of futility.
14:13: The fact that we all sit here this evening, expecting rational discourse that follows the laws of logic is to be expected on Christian grounds.
14:21: It is as silly as the invasion of the cosmic broccoli from the materialist perspective. Now, let's look at solid, strong evidence of the existence of the
14:32: Triune God, not as a neutral fact from which I suggest we reason to God, but as a fact of reality that can only make sense in light of God's existence, and as a fact that will illustrate the materialist's unwillingness to allow for conclusions that challenge their worldview.
14:50: What you see on the screen right now is here we have what is called
14:55: F1 -ATPase. It is a structure found in living cells in the mitochondria. It is a vital structure in cellular respiration, for by it
15:04: ADP, adenosine diphosphate, is converted back into ATP, adenosine triphosphate, the universal power source of most bodily systems.
15:14: Through an ingenious system, it uses ionic flow to create mechanical power, very similar to the turbines we use to generate hydroelectric power.
15:24: As the mechanism turns, powered by proton movement across a gradient, it moves highly specific protein molecules, molecules that have to have a very specific ordered shape that, due to their motion, attach a phosphate molecule to ADP, reconstituting
15:41: ATP, which is then utilized by the body. Not only is the complexity beautiful, but it is so plainly purposeful, so plainly designed, that no one can possibly see this as a mere result of the movement of atoms over time.
15:57: Remember, this is just one of the many cellular organelles that are basic to life itself. We can't hope for natural selection to explain how something this grand came into existence.
16:08: It is far beyond the technology found, for example, in my Blackberry Storm over on my table over there, or the cell phone that you have with you, and far beyond anything that we can do even with our most advanced technology today.
16:22: Here we have a tremendously simplified graphic of protein synthesis in the cell using DNA, RNA polymerase, messenger
16:29: RNA, transfer RNA, ribosomes, etc. Again, the complexity of this mechanism is mind -boggling.
16:36: This is not, as Mr. Barker has erroneously claimed in the past, similar to complex crystals or wind -shaped sand dunes.
16:44: No, this is specific informational complexity on a level that rivals our best computers, and on a physical scale so infinitesimal we are left in awestruck wonder every time we look into our own selves.
16:57: Amazingly, Mr. Barker can look at this clear informational complexity and tell us that this is not evidence of an intelligent, wise designer.
17:03: This is nothing more than the report one would make after a storm has passed through. What can explain such a willingness to reject such obvious evidence of purposeful, intentional, and intelligent design?
17:17: There have been recent developments. One recent book that came out last year that is quite fascinating is entitled,
17:23: Why Us? by James Le Fanu. He addresses what has happened since the decade of the brain and the human genome project.
17:31: I thought this was very relevant to our debate this evening. He wrote, Nonetheless, there must be a reason why those genome projects prove so uninformative about the form and attributes of living things, or why the decade of the brain should have fallen so far short of explaining the mind.
17:46: There is a powerful impression that science has been looking in the wrong place, seeking to resolve questions whose answers lie somehow outside its domain.
17:57: He continues by saying, This is not just a matter of science not yet knowing all the facts. Rather, there is the sense that something of immense importance is missing that might transform the bare bones of genes into the wondrous diversity of the living world and the monotonous electrical firing of the neurons of the brain into the vast spectrum of sensations and ideas of the human mind.
18:17: What might that missing element be? One of the tragedies of modern Western academia has been the institutional establishment of a religious dogma that brooks no dissent, that being
18:28: Neo -Darwinian naturalistic materialism. These vital questions cannot even be asked by the dogmatic materialist.
18:35: The answer must be in the genes. There can't be something different about mankind that gives rise to the mind.
18:41: We have to be just like a tapeworm, or like broccoli. Our religion says so.
18:48: Long ago, Blaise Pascal, the brilliant mathematician and philosopher, said, Reason's last step is the recognition that there are an infinite number of things which are beyond it.
18:57: It is merely feeble if it does not go as far as to realize that. And reflecting those same thoughts, the
19:03: Puritan John Flavel said, I know there is nothing in the word or in the works of God that is repugnant to sound reason, but there are some things in both which are opposite to carnal reason, as well as above right reason, and therefore our reason never shows itself more unreasonable than in summoning those things to its bar which transcend its sphere and capacity.
19:27: Now, I want to be very, very clear on one thing. While our debate places you, the audience, in the position of judging,
19:34: I would be remiss in a most severe way if I did not reject in the strongest possible terms the idea that we as creatures have the right to judge the existence of our
19:43: Creator. The verdict of this debate was given when God said, Let there be light. The issue tonight is whether we will live in accord with that verdict or not.
19:53: So what is the reality in our closing moments of this opening statement? If your worldview cannot give a justification for why we are here tonight, laws of logic, reason, transcendent meaning, it should be rejected.
20:05: If your worldview cannot accord with the reality of the world and human existence, it should be rejected.
20:12: The Triune God, as the timeless, unchanging Creator of all things, gives meaning through His eternal decree to all things in space and time.
20:21: We as creatures find our truest selves only when we are in the proper relationship to our
20:26: Creator so that our intellectual pursuits are undertaken under His Lordship where we as creatures have the tremendous privilege of thinking
20:33: God's thoughts after Him. This is the great irony of those who promote what they call free thought.
20:39: Creatures who rebel against their own nature and who embrace dogmatic materialism are not free at all.
20:45: They are bound to self -deception and as such are condemned to anything but free thought. Their worldview precludes a true, holistic, harmonious knowledge of God's creation around them.
20:58: The Christian, however, is seeing himself or herself for what we are in reality. The creatures of a personal, eternal sovereign can, from the peace that comes through faith in Jesus Christ, experience the fullness of our humanity as God intended us to, all to His glory.
21:16: Thank you very much. Thank you.
21:25: Thank you, Dr. White. And just as we are honored to have with us Dr. White, so too are we honored to have
21:31: Mr. Dan Barker. Please join me in welcoming Mr. Barker. Thank you,
21:43: Muhammad. And thank you, AAF. And thank you, navigators.
21:50: Oh, by the way, I hate to break the news to you, but now that there's GPS, we don't need the navigators anymore.
21:59: And thank you, James. I think it was 23 years ago. Do you think we would have recognized each other on the street today?
22:06: I've kept up with you, so yes. Oh, okay. You would have recognized. You've been watching the intelligent design of the airline.
22:15: All good men come out on TV. We have a national radio show, a free thought radio that airs on Air America every week.
22:24: And the joke that I told two weeks ago, the ship was sinking. The captain was nervous, and he yelled out,
22:31: Does anybody on board know how to pray? And this one guy raised his hand, and he said,
22:37: I do. And the captain said, Great, because we're one life jacket short. Usually when
22:48: I do these debates, they are general. Does God exist? Is a general
22:53: God? And I argue, probably not. Did any of you see the bus signs that were in the
23:00: UK? There's probably no God, so stop worrying and enjoy your life, right?
23:06: And that's what we have to do when we discuss the general concept of a God. Because there's probably an infinite number of definitions of a
23:15: God, so you can't disprove them all. And so I'm not going to be discussing.
23:21: In fact, tonight's debate doesn't have to depend on atheism or theism. There could be a
23:27: Jew standing here debating the existence of the triune God, or a Muslim could be standing here where I am, or a
23:34: Unitarian, or some other religion, a Hindu. And so we're not arguing atheism tonight, we're arguing a specific
23:42: God, which has a specific definition. But let me just briefly touch on the general reasons why
23:48: I'm an atheist, because they are somewhat relevant. First of all, there is no evidence for a
23:53: God. What you saw tonight is not evidence for a God. What you saw tonight is evidence for a current gap in our understanding.
24:02: It's what Richard Dawkins calls the argument from incredulity. I can't believe how that would be.
24:08: Well, years ago... What day of the week is it today? Thursday.
24:15: What does Thursday mean? Thor. We have a day of the week named after Thor, but we don't have one named after the triune
24:21: God of the Bible. Millions of people believed in this God, Thor, and Zeus, and others, and when there was this noise in the sky, and this rumbling, and this light, and this rain came, they didn't know what caused this thing.
24:32: So they had a big gap in their understanding, and so they called it...
24:37: They thought it was an animal thing, being, parent, God, whatever. They called it Thor. Millions of people were born into this religion, they believed it, and they died believing that religion.
24:47: We have a day of the week, at least in English, named after that. And yet, as we learn about electricity and the weather, that gap closed, and what happened to that God?
25:00: Poof! Disappeared. Yes, there are gaps in our understanding. It is wonderful, and you are right.
25:06: When we look at the thing like those molecules, and those proteins, we are awestruck with wonder. It is amazing.
25:13: In fact, that is what drives science. Not knowing is what drives science.
25:19: And I'm suspecting from what James said tonight, that he is proposing that we have reached the end of science.
25:25: We will never, again, we'll never ever know what causes that protein to fold in that way, and for that function to work like that.
25:34: He might even be proposing that the pagans should have stopped science back in their day, and just said, well,
25:39: I don't have the answer, but God did it. If there were evidence for a God, think about this.
25:45: If there really were evidence for a God, by now, somebody should have won the Nobel Prize for pointing that out to us.
25:52: Shouldn't they? If there really is evidence for a God, then why are there atheists?
25:59: Why are we even having a debate? Bring forth the evidence, not for a gap in our understanding,
26:04: I could do that too. Bring forth the evidence positive for the existence of a God.
26:10: A second reason why I'm an atheist is that there is no coherent definition of a God. There are thousands of definitions, even within Christianity.
26:19: A third reason is that there is no good argument for a God. We've heard, over the years, the ontological, we're going to talk later about the design, and during my rebuttal,
26:28: I will rebut James' design and functional complexity arguments. They're all bad arguments.
26:34: They basically boil down to, most of them, to the God of the gaps. Fourth, there's no good reply to the positive arguments against the existence of a
26:43: God. For example, the problem of evil. All you have to do is walk into a children's hospital, and you know there is no
26:50: God. At least there's no good God. Maybe there's a God who is an evil monster, like the
26:57: God of the Old Testament seemed to be something of a brutal monster. Maybe that God exists, and likes to torture people, and commit genocide, and likes to see children suffer.
27:06: But in that hospital, parents are desperately praying for their children. They're praying for them to get better, and they die.
27:13: The problem of evil is probably the biggest thorn in the side of theologians and apologists.
27:21: Another reason, there's no agreement among believers about the nature of this God, or its moral principles.
27:27: You talk to two different types of Christians. Here we have a presuppositionalist, a reformed type of Christian.
27:33: You talk to another type of Christian, who has a different theology, and they fight 30 years wars with each other, over their differences.
27:39: There is no agreement, and we atheists I think are justified in folding our arms and waiting for you guys to get your act together first, before you start arguing for the existence of your deity.
27:49: Another good reason is that the statement that God exists has never been falsified, never been falsifiable.
27:56: I would challenge James to provide us with an example of a statement tonight, which if true, would prove your hypothesis false.
28:05: Because anytime you make a true statement, there must exist other statements, which if true, would falsify your statement, at least in principle.
28:14: And number seven, there's no need for a God. Millions of good people live happy, moral, meaningful, productive, loving lives without this belief.
28:23: The Bible and belief in God turns out to be irrelevant. The Bible is an ancient book. It is not a book to base any truth on or any morality on.
28:31: We've risen above those primitive days. We are kinder than Jesus. We are smarter than the God of the
28:36: Bible. We are smarter than those people who wrote that book. And we don't need it. And millions of us know that. And statistically, our lives are just as good, if not better, than the lives of those who claim to believe in the triune
28:48: God of Scripture. Now those are just general things about a God.
28:54: I would argue that the probability that God does not exist is so high that we can round it off and informally say, there's no
29:01: God. But if you push me against the wall, it'd be like asking you or it'd be like asking James. Do leprechauns exist?
29:08: What would you say? Do leprechauns exist? Can you prove it? Can you prove that?
29:14: Well then how can you say no? Shouldn't you say there's a high probability because they might be hiding?
29:20: Have you ever eaten a box of Lucky Charms? There's a picture, right? We have evidence for leprechauns.
29:27: Yet most of you feel justified in saying, wait a minute. There's people who believe in them, right? But where's the beef?
29:33: Or where's the Cheerios? Or whatever it is. But when it comes to a specific
29:38: God, James is exactly right. That quote that he put up on the screen is exactly right. Specific gods can be defined in such a way, if they are defined in such a way that they are mutually contradictory, then they do not exist.
29:51: For example, does a married bachelor exist? Should we even ask, does it exist?
29:59: Shouldn't we ask, can it exist? By definition, it cancels itself out.
30:07: It cannot exist. The triune God of Scripture is defined in such ways that it's like a married bachelor.
30:16: There are so many contradictory characteristics of this God that we can safely say with 100 % certainty that that God, like a married bachelor, does not exist.
30:28: In Malachi, God said, I am the Lord, I change not. In Ezekiel, I the
30:34: Lord have spoken it, I will not go back, neither will I repent. The God of the Bible, the triune
30:40: God of Scripture, does not change His mind, and yet, we find many examples of the God of Scripture changing
30:45: His mind. Exodus 32, the Lord repented of the evil which He thought to do. Genesis 6, it repented the
30:51: Lord that He had made man, and He changed His mind. In Jonah 3, God repented of the evil that He said
30:56: He would do, and so on. The triune God of Scripture does change His mind.
31:02: The triune God of Scripture does not change His mind. Like the married bachelor, He does not exist.
31:10: Does God punish people for their parents' sins? In Exodus 20, I the Lord thy God visit the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation.
31:19: We find many verses where the children are punished for the sins of their parents. But yet, we find other verses in the
31:25: Bible. The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father. Deuteronomy 24, neither shall the children be put to death for the fathers.
31:32: Every man shall be put to death for his own sin. The God of the Bible punishes children for their parents' sins.
31:38: The God of the Bible does not punish children for their parents' sins. He does not exist. Is God good or evil?
31:45: Psalm 145, the Lord is good to all. Deuteronomy 32, He's a
31:50: God of truth without iniquity. He's just and right. However, Isaiah 45, 7, God said,
31:56: I make peace and I create evil. Lamentations 3, out of the mouth of the
32:01: Most High proceedeth not evil and good. Jeremiah 18, Thus saith the
32:06: Lord, Behold, I frame evil against you. Ezekiel 20, I gave them statutes that were not good, and judgments by which they should not live.
32:16: And there are many examples of both of these. The God of the Bible is good. The God of the Bible is evil.
32:22: He does not exist. Does God tempt people? In James 1, Let no man say,
32:27: I am tempted of God. God cannot be tempted, neither tempts He any man. God does not tempt any man.
32:34: Exodus 20, excuse me, Genesis 22, It came to pass after these things that God did tempt
32:41: Abraham. The God of the Bible does not tempt. The God of the Bible does tempt. He does not exist.
32:47: Should we kill? The Ten Commandments say, Thou shalt not kill. Leviticus 24, with a different word, says,
32:53: He that kills any man shall surely be put to death. And on and on. We find verses, don't kill. Yet in Exodus 32,
33:00: God said, Pick up your sword and kill every man his brother, companion, neighbor. And the
33:06: Lord lamented, the people lamented because the Lord had smitten many of the people of the great slaughter. If you go through the
33:12: Bible, you can make a list that takes ten pages just to list all the times God either committed, commanded, or condoned killing.
33:19: The Triune God of Scripture says do not kill. The Triune God of Scripture says kill, kill, kill.
33:25: He does not exist. Should we own slaves? There are many verses that endorse slavery in the
33:31: Bible. Leviticus, moreover of the children of strangers that do live among you, you shall buy them, they shall be your possession, they shall be your slaves forever.
33:40: And there are many verses like that. I'll skip them all because you know they're there.
33:46: In the New Testament, slaves, doulos, obey in all things your masters. And yet, in Isaiah 58, let the oppressed go free, break every yoke.
33:57: Matthew 23, don't be called masters for one is your master. The God of the Bible is pro -slavery.
34:03: The God of the Bible is anti - slavery. He does not exist. In Romans 15, we see
34:09: God described as the God of peace. And yet in Exodus 15, the
34:15: Lord is described as a man of war. The God of the Bible is peaceful.
34:22: The God of the Bible is not peaceful. He does not exist. A man of war is not.
34:29: A God of war is not a God of peace. Was Jesus peaceable? He said, my peace
34:35: I leave with you. And when he was born on earth, peace, good will toward man. And yet, Jesus himself said, if you believe he lived and even said these things,
34:43: Jesus said, think not that I've come to send peace on earth. I came not to send peace, but a sword to separate families, to separate fathers and daughters and mothers.
34:55: And then he told his disciples, if you don't have a sword, go out and buy one. He wanted them to have swords.
35:01: Was Jesus trustworthy? In John 8, he said, though I bear record of myself, my record is true.
35:07: And yet, in John 5, he said, if I bear record of myself, my record is not true.
35:13: The God of the Bible is reliable. The God of the Bible is not reliable. He does not exist. Can you see
35:19: God? We're trying to define what this God is like. Can you see the triune God of Scripture? John 1, 8, nobody has seen
35:25: God at any time. Exodus 33, God said, you cannot see my face. Nobody shall see me and live.
35:33: John 6, not that any man hath seen the Father except Jesus. 1 John 4, nobody has seen
35:40: God at any time. That rules out visual evidence for God, doesn't it? And yet, in Genesis 32, for I have seen
35:48: God face to face. Exodus 30, the Lord spake to Moses face to face as a man speaks to his friend.
35:55: And on and on. So the God of the Bible can be seen. The God of the Bible cannot be seen.
36:01: He's a married bachelor. He does not exist. Is God omnipotent? Behold, I am the
36:06: Lord, the God of all flesh. Is there anything too hard for me? And Jesus said, with God all things are possible.
36:14: And yet, in Judges 1, 19, listen to this. The Lord was with Judah. The Lord was with Judah and he drove out the inhabitants of the mountain, but he could not drive out the inhabitants of the valley because they had chariots of iron.
36:30: The Lord was with Judah, but he wasn't strong enough to drive out chariots of iron. The God of the
36:35: Bible is all powerful. The God of the Bible cannot fight chariots of iron. He does not exist.
36:42: Does God live in light? Thank you. Perfect timing. Does God live in light?
36:49: First Timothy said God dwells in the light which no man can approach. James says he's the father of lights.
36:55: And there are many verses that say that God lives in light, and yet there are many other verses that say he does not. The Lord said he would dwell in the thick darkness in 1
37:02: King. 2 Samuel he made darkness pavilions about him. Dark waters and thick clouds.
37:08: Psalm 18, he made darkness his secret place. In Psalm 97, clouds and darkness are around about him.
37:16: The God of the Bible lives in light. The God of the Bible lives in darkness. The God of the Bible does not exist.
37:23: Does the God of the Bible accept human sacrifice? Yes. There are many places where the God of the
37:28: Bible actually asked for and accepted human sacrifice. It didn't go through it with Abraham and Isaac, but it was part of his plan.
37:37: And of course you all know the story of Jephthah, who actually made a vow unto God that if he won this war, he would sacrifice the first thing that came out, and of course it was his daughter.
37:46: She was burned to death as a sacrifice acceptable unto God. The God of the
37:52: Bible accepts human sacrifice. The God of the Bible rejects human sacrifice. He does not exist.
37:59: Does God know the future? Isaiah 46, God said, I make known the end from the beginning, from ancient times what is still to come.
38:10: And yet, when God was talking to Abraham there when he asked him to sacrifice his son Isaac, he said, finally, lay not your hand upon the boy, don't do anything to him, for now
38:22: I know that you fear God, seeing that you have not withheld your son. When God said, now
38:28: I know, what does that mean? He didn't know before. He wouldn't have had to do this.
38:34: You know, he might have said, maybe Abraham, now you know. But God said, now I know. The God of the
38:40: Bible knows the future. The God of the Bible does not know the future. He does not exist.
38:46: According to Christian theology, the God of the Bible is a personal being with freedom to make decisions.
38:55: And yet, he's also a being who knows the future. If you know the future, then the set of future facts is fixed, isn't it?
39:02: If God knows what he's going to do tomorrow at 12 noon, he can't change his mind. If you cannot change your mind, you are not a free personal agent.
39:10: You do not have the ability to make decisions. So, the God of the Bible is supposedly this free being who can make decisions, and yet, since he knows the future, he is not free to make decisions and change his mind.
39:23: Therefore, the God of the Bible does not exist. The God of the Bible is described as a spirit.
39:28: God is a spirit. In fact, even James says we are arguing not for a material being, but for something transcendent, something non -physical.
39:36: That's what he's arguing for tonight. And yes, I am a judge. I think the tools of science are methodologically limited to natural methods.
39:46: But, think about this. The God of the Bible is also described as a God of power. What's this power?
39:52: What is power? Power is material. Power is a physical thing. How much work can be done over a certain amount of time, that's power.
40:00: The God of the Bible supposedly had this power, and yet, the God of the Bible is not a physical being. He's an immaterial spirit of some sort.
40:08: And I think I'm going to ask James later to define the word spirit, because I've never heard anyone actually define that word in positive terms.
40:16: So, the God of the Bible is immaterial, and yet, the God of the Bible works materially.
40:23: Therefore, the God of the Bible does not exist. Finally, I just want to close with one quick...
40:28: We have about two minutes here? There's only one verse I used to preach from the
40:33: Bible. 1 John 5, 7 said, There are three that bear record in heaven, the
40:39: Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost, and these three are one. I used to preach that. It's in this book here. Yet, I recently learned that that verse in the
40:46: Bible, the only verse in the Bible that describes the Trinity in direct terms, is a fraud. It does not appear there.
40:52: If you have a modern translation like the NIV, look it up. It's not there. The Bible was tampered with.
40:59: The Bible is not a reliable document for truth. It has been tampered with. It has been mistranslated.
41:05: It has been borrowed. It has been swapped. There are mistakes in it. You notice that James starts this whole program tonight by relying on the authority of the
41:12: Bible. Of course, he was describing what Christians do believe. The Bible is not a good source of knowledge, and if you think there's a triune
41:21: God in here, well, you're arguing for polytheism. And polytheism, of course, if you think monotheism is an improvement over polytheism, what's the next improvement?
41:33: Have you thought of that? What's the next improvement, if it is an improvement? Even according to scholarship of the
41:38: Bible itself, and I think James has to admit this, that verse that I just quoted to you that I used to preach for years does not exist in any
41:45: Greek manuscript. It did exist in the Vulgate, but it's because the Roman Catholic Church put that in there.
41:51: Since we have good reason to believe in no good reason to believe in God, and since he's mutually contradictory, we can say with certainty that the
41:59: God of the Bible does not exist. We will now have our first cross -examination, and we'll begin with Dr.
42:14: White. Thank you very much. Dan, you just made reference to a very well -known textual variant of 1
42:21: John 5 -7. You said you had just recently discovered that 1 John 5 -7 was a textual variant.
42:26: Is that correct? Well, by recently, I mean in the last ten -some years, you know.
42:34: Recently, since I was a preacher, yeah. Okay, and you indicated this means that the Bible has been tampered with.
42:40: Is that correct? The version of the Bible, especially the King James Bible, has been tampered with, yes. Okay, so are you at all familiar then with how 1
42:49: John 5 -7 came to be in the New Testament? Do you know anything about Desiderius Erasmus? Yeah, I know that whole story.
42:55: Erasmus was trying to publish the first Greek version of the Bible. He could not find a version of the
43:01: Greek Bible that had that, and yet the Roman Catholic Church said that verse exists in the Vulgate, and they produced what now has turned out to be a phony document that he succumbed to the pressure, and he decided to go ahead and put that verse in there anyway.
43:16: But all scholars now know, and look at any modern translation. They all agree that that verse is phony.
43:21: It was wrong. Well, there's no question from any textual scholar that I know of outside of King James only advocates about the
43:27: Kamiohonium. It's a well -known story, but you said they produced a manuscript. Who produced it? The Roman Catholic Church, defending the
43:34: Vulgate, came up with a handwritten copy of what they said was an original
43:41: Greek manuscript, which Erasmus felt pressure to accept, although all scholars agree there is no ancient
43:48: Greek manuscript that has that verse in it. Now, the text that I cited, did they have the same textual problem that 1
43:55: John 5 -7 has, and did I quote 1 John 5 -7? Remind me of the text that you quoted.
44:02: Romans 1 was one of the texts, and Colossians 1 was the other. I'm not denying that you can argue indirectly for the
44:10: Trinity in the Bible. I never said that. I'm just saying that the most common direct verse that we used to quote all the time, the only direct reference to the three -in -one, the triune, is that verse.
44:21: There are other ways to argue for it. I'm not denying that you can't use the Bible to argue indirectly. But you had said that I was citing from these texts, and you paralleled that with 1
44:32: John 5 -7, yet there isn't any textual parallel between the two. I'm just showing that the Bible does have evidence of unreliability.
44:40: Okay, so the fact that we've recognized a later accretion means that it's unreliable.
44:47: Yes, there is some unreliability in the Bible. Do you know of any ancient document that has as much ancient evidence for its transmission as the
44:55: New Testament has? For its transmission or for its truth? Its transmission. No, but I don't know of a lot that have worse, either.
45:06: The Bible has a lot of copies, many, many, many copies, but they're copies of copies of copies.
45:11: Most of them come from the Middle Ages, basically. Would you agree with Bart Ehrman, who I debated in January, that the
45:16: New Testament is the single best attested and most ancient attested document of antiquity?
45:23: Maybe, but it's irrelevant. It doesn't attest to its truth, it's just its transmission. Okay. Very quickly, you just used your
45:31: Fang argument, your free will argument for the non -existence of God. Is it not the case,
45:37: Dan, that that requires us to believe that God is in time and that God experiences a past, present, and future?
45:43: And can you cite to me any modern Christian scholars who would say that that is the classical doctrine of the
45:52: Christian doctrine of God, that he is bound by time? Well, I know Augustine used to say that God was outside of time.
45:59: He was one of the earliest. But, there are many theologians who do think God is outside of time, but I think it's irrelevant to the argument.
46:06: Whether you're in time or out of time, if you're arguing that God is outside of time, what does to exist mean?
46:13: To exist means to occupy space -time. That's what existence means. We measure something by space -time.
46:19: If God exists outside of time, then God does not exist. Putting him outside of time does not negate the
46:25: Fang argument that he knows the future or not. Now it's Mr. Barker's turn.
46:38: Thanks, James. This is fun. You're one of the best, I have to say. You lost your hair from all that thinking,
46:45: I think, is what it is. Maybe I'm halfway there. I'm halfway as smart as James. This new swing...
46:53: Gillette Mach 3. You've heard that old joke that some people say atheism is a religion.
47:02: If atheism is a religion, then baldness is a hair color. It's on my driver's license, so you just proved my point.
47:10: There you go. This swine flu virus that's going around right now, that everybody's kind of scared of, did
47:21: God intelligently design that virus? God intelligently designed the mechanism that brought that virus into existence, yes.
47:28: I believe all things that happen in time are a part of his sovereign decree, yes. And the mechanism that brought that virus into existence is evolution?
47:36: Natural selection. They're not the same thing. Okay, so you do support evolution, at least, you're not...
47:41: I support the existence of natural selection. That's microevolution, not macroevolution. So God designed the mechanism that brought the swine flu virus into existence.
47:51: Yes. So God caused the swine flu virus. God caused everything in time and space. That's why everything in time and space has a purpose.
47:58: And that purpose can be either for his glory or for the demonstration of his judgment. Or to kill off little babies that he doesn't like.
48:05: That could be his purpose, right? Well, you know, it's interesting that you make that argument as you always say, just go into a children's hospital and you'll see that there's no good
48:11: God, but I am not the first person to sit across from you and point out to you that your argument from a materialistic perspective is appealing to emotion that has no basis in your worldview.
48:22: Designing something that kills off cosmic broccoli just is not really relevant within a naturalistic, materialistic worldview.
48:29: You're borrowing from my worldview to make an argument in regards to the nature of evil. I'll talk about that during the rebuttal, because he's just set up a straw man.
48:37: He's set up a broccoli man argument here. Okay, I guess this would be a good chance to ask you to define the word spirit.
48:45: You know, it's very interesting when you ask someone to define the word spirit and then you do not recognize that as a naturalistic materialist you will not allow for anything outside the materialistic realm.
48:55: You're asking me to define something that exists outside the realm that you allow any evidence to exist in. So when someone says a spirit is a non -material entity that lives and is conscious and can in fact interact with the material universe, you say, well that's not a definition because I've never seen one.
49:12: But again, you're simply saying, you're being like the person, like Paul Minotta told you, who says the universe is made out of only marbles.
49:19: And when someone tries to prove the existence of something other than marbles, you say, but I don't accept the existence of anything outside of marbles.
49:24: Okay, I'm not asking for proof, I'm just asking for definition. What is... I just gave you a definition. But what is it?
49:29: You said it's an entity. Is it composed of something? No, it is not composed of matter at all, no.
49:35: Does it occupy space -time? No. Then how would you know if it didn't exist? Well, again, you have to have some source of information that transcends the material universe to have any information about non -material entities.
49:48: In the same way that you have to have information about non -material entities such as the laws of logic. And information, what is information?
49:55: Information material or non -material? It's revelation. It comes into the natural realm from outside the natural realm.
50:01: You mean the ink that's on the page of this Bible? No, the message that the ink represents and the language in which it was revealed.
50:07: So a message is words, and words are concepts within minds, right? No. I don't believe that mankind experiences revelation in that way, but that does not limit
50:17: God to that realm. So the word spirit, S -P -I -R -I -T exists somewhere out there, transcendent?
50:23: That thing is actually a thing out there that you know exists because some authority told you that it exists?
50:29: You can't define it? Yes, I do accept the fact that I utilize authorities to define for me those areas that are beyond my natural capacity to experience and to know.
50:43: I'd like to invite Dr. White to give his first rebuttal. Thank you very much.
50:54: We heard at the beginning of Dan's statement that what I'm arguing for is the
51:00: God of the gaps. I am not. What we saw this evening, when you look at the mechanism whereby
51:06: ADP is reconstituted as ATP, that is not a gap where we just simply don't understand something.
51:13: What has happened over the past 150 years is not that gaps have been filling in, it's that as we have discovered more and more about the incredible biological complexity of our life, the questions for anyone who denies design have multiplied endlessly.
51:29: So I'm not talking about a God of the gaps, I'm talking about a God of the facts. And the fact is that what
51:34: I showed you on the screen is a mechanism. If you walked into Hoover Dam and saw the turbines sitting there that are creating electrical energy as the water flows through them, it would never cross your mind that there was not a designer.
51:46: Got any engineers in this room? Yeah, I've got some engineering students. It takes a little work to create something like that.
51:53: Now make it on that level, and do it without any instruments. That's something called intelligent design.
51:59: He says, he is proposing that we have reached the end of science. I am proposing nothing of the kind. I am saying to you that every fact of science is a fact of God.
52:08: That every fact of science reflects the creation that he himself has made. And so I am saying to you that that is the very foundation of doing meaningful science.
52:17: But I also say that true science does not preclude us from asking ultimate questions.
52:23: And when it does, it becomes stunted and it becomes folding in upon itself.
52:28: It can no longer ask meaningful questions. We had a long string of alleged biblical contradictions presented to us.
52:37: I had wondered if Dan would take the time maybe to do a little googling around. I spent the last month on my webcast going through every single one in the exact same order that Dan just presented them.
52:47: Because I have been spending the past month and a half since I was invited to do this listening to Dan Barker's debates. He used the exact same notes in a debate only a few months ago.
52:56: And so I played every single one of his comments, then stopped and responded biblically to each one.
53:01: And so I'd invite you to listen to the dividing line for a fuller explication of each one of those errors. But I'd like to give you some real examples.
53:08: For example, it seems to me that to become a naturalist or materialist greatly impacts your ability to do exegesis of the text of Scripture.
53:17: Because honestly, and I say this, Dan is a nice guy, but his handling of Scripture is horrific.
53:24: Absolutely horrific. To not know that the Kamiohanion is one of the most common textual variants in the
53:29: New Testament. Dan himself, in talking to the students at GW Is that George Washington University?
53:34: Earlier this year? That's George Washington. Okay. I listened to that too. When he was talking to GW students, he said that his degree in religion was, as he put it, glorified
53:45: Sunday school. So evidently, they didn't teach, in the two years of undergraduate Greek that he took, anything about textual criticism whatsoever.
53:53: If he had looked at that, then he would know a lot about the transmission of the text of the New Testament. And what he's saying there is not an argument in any way, shape, or form.
54:01: I've written an entire book on the doctrine of the Trinity and he will never find 1 John 5 -7 cited in it as a foundation for the doctrine of the
54:07: Trinity. But one that is really troubling to me, because I think it addresses the issue of epistemology, is one in which
54:16: Dan has been corrected multiple times. He did a debate with Doug Wilson in 1997.
54:22: And in that debate, he raised many of these same issues. He raised the question about in the Gospel of John, Jesus at one point says, if I testify of myself, my testimony is not true, there is another who testifies of me that is the
54:34: Father. He was referring there to the Jewish concept of having more than one witness by the mouth of two or three witnesses.
54:39: But then, in a different context later, he says, even if I do testify of myself, my testimony is true.
54:45: Why? Because I know where I've come from and where I am going. He makes reference to his divine nature, which takes it to a different context.
54:53: Now, I've read Dan Barker's book, Godless. I've got his Losing Faith in Faith. And when I read him,
54:58: I try to read him in context. He goes to this list and he says, this and this, the Triune God of the
55:04: Scripture does not exist. Dan Barker once preached Jesus, now Dan Barker doesn't preach Jesus, therefore Dan Barker doesn't exist.
55:09: Does that really work? I don't think so. You have to allow for context, don't you?
55:16: And the same thing is true in looking at John chapter 8. The same thing is true. I spent about half an hour or so recently demonstrating that Dan likes to say,
55:25: Ratzak does not mean murder. And in the Doug Wilson debate, he got into an argument with him about the fact that, well, the
55:30: Bible says, you shall not kill, and then it tells people to kill. And Doug Wilson said, didn't you notice that they were within one chapter of each other?
55:38: Do you think Moses was contradicting himself? Yeah, well, if he had known Hebrew, he wouldn't have done that. And Doug said, do you think he knew Hebrew? This is
55:43: Moses we're talking about here. And the fact of the matter is, if you simply look up, and I have on my computer Bible works, libronics, all these scholarly resources, look up any of the
55:53: Hebrew lexical sources, and I've taught Hebrew, and you will discover that the central aspect of the semantic domain of Ratzak means to murder.
56:01: Only by extension does it then become to mean to kill. And so it can mean that if context would just be allowed.
56:09: And I would like to invite all of you, if you're interested, if you found anything of merit in those types of arguments, look at the context of the text that Dan presented, and you will discover that there honestly,
56:21: I could present to you a significantly better list of alleged contradictions. I really could. Those are simply based upon reading the text in a surface level fashion.
56:31: And maybe that's what Dan was used to when he did what he did as a self -professing
56:36: Christian. Certainly the presentation of the gospel that he delineated to the students at GW was nothing like anything
56:41: I've ever preached. But if that was the kind of exegesis he did, well, now he's still doing it as an atheist, and it seems a little bit odd to me that you would criticize
56:51: Christians for having a surface level view of the Bible, but then you would turn around and use that very surface level view yourself, and when
56:58: Christians try to say, well, you need to look at context, you need to make application of principles, then you're not somehow allowed to do that.
57:04: I find that to be a rather inconsistent thing. Finally, in the just few moments I have here,
57:09: Dan has often said for over a decade, just walk into any children's hospital and you'll know there is no good
57:15: God. I feel the weight of that emotional appeal. But I want you to try to hold off the emotion just long enough tonight to examine that assertion.
57:26: Because I submit to you, it is evidence that Dan has to borrow from my God to make his arguments against my
57:33: God. The reason that a child suffering, the reason that a person dying,
57:38: Dan closed a debate he did once by reading a poem about a man whose woman, whose mother was dying, and it tugs at the heart strings, but it also demonstrates that the reason you and I detest death, the reason you and I detest sickness is because there's something in us that recognizes what we should be and what this world should be.
58:01: There is something evil about these things and we recognize that. And I simply submit to you that a naturalistic materialist has no logical or rational grounds arising from Neo -Darwinian
58:15: Micromutational Evolutionary Theory to care about what happens in a children's hospital.
58:21: Natural selection is just taking place there, isn't it? But you see, here's the thing.
58:26: Dan wants to get beyond natural selection. He wants to get beyond Darwinism because Dan loves beauty. He makes beautiful music.
58:33: And I say to you that is the glowing evidence that Dan Barker was created in the image of God.
58:39: And deny his existence all you want. He still knows what beauty is, what truth is, what honesty is, things like that.
58:48: And that's the inconsistency we need to look at this evening. Thank you. I'd like to invite
58:59: Mr. Barker to deliver his first rebuttal. Thank you
59:07: Mohammed and thank you James. I've been set up with a straw man attack.
59:13: Yes, I did a radio show with Minatta and he cornered me into saying something true but then he went on to paint it as if oh,
59:20: Dan thinks the human brain is nothing more than broccoli. Well, obviously a human brain is more complex than broccoli but look what
59:27: James and Paul Minatta are doing. They're taking out of context statements that were made.
59:32: My point in there was to say that in the big picture of things, in the cosmic picture total cosmic picture we don't matter any more than broccoli matters.
59:43: I never pretended that broccoli somehow has functional complexity of a human brain or of any other type of a brain.
59:50: So it's a cheap trick to set up a straw man and then shoot it down like that. Now logic, language, words, thoughts they are all functions and James is right about that, functionalism.
01:00:06: They are all functions of a working brain and so is a mind, a function of a working brain.
01:00:12: This is my understanding. I don't speak for all atheists, obviously but when the brain stops, the functioning stops.
01:00:18: When the brain dies, the thinking dies. When the computer is unplugged, the software stops.
01:00:25: It's because it's not... When the computer is unplugged, there's nothing operating, is there? The brain is an operating, functioning thing.
01:00:32: Thought does not happen at the level of neurons and there's another straw man that James is trying to set up. No one thinks that thought happens at the level of neurons.
01:00:40: If you just read Douglas Hofstadter's new book, I Am A Strange Loop, you see the amazing weirdness of this epiphenomenal functioning at a higher level, obviously.
01:00:53: And I did compare it to digestion as an example in that as the stomach functions, it does what we call digestion, right?
01:01:01: But no one thinks that digestion with a capital D is a thing that exists out there. There's some cosmic digestion.
01:01:07: When the stomach stops, digestion stops. It's just a word to describe how something works. In the same way, logic, thought, mind are words to describe how this organ is working.
01:01:21: They are not things. I repeat that this argument that James makes is actually closing the door on science.
01:01:31: Are you suggesting that there will never be a natural explanation for the way those molecules work?
01:01:37: Are you announcing to us by authority that science will never ever solve that question? And if you are, how arrogant is that?
01:01:44: How certain is that? It boils down to a design argument. Functional complexity is amazing.
01:01:51: It is incredible. If you see a watch on the ground like Paley said, or if you see the computer here as James is referring to, we go, wow.
01:01:58: If you see a dam. But that argument has been put to bed a long, long time ago.
01:02:04: And the simplest way of doing it goes way back to in my reading, it goes back to reading Dawkins in The Selfish Gene, but even in his
01:02:10: Blind Watchmaker. If functional complexity requires a designer, think about that.
01:02:17: Something's complex. Wow, look it's amazing, right? It had to be designed. Well, the designer had to be at least as complex as what it designed, didn't it?
01:02:26: Right? When you see a watch, you assume that a human made it. Something more complex made the watch or the computer.
01:02:32: Or you assume a group of computers, like polytheism I suppose. A group of humans made the computer.
01:02:38: So, the mind of this being who created this complexity has to be at least as complex as the thing it made.
01:02:43: And if your argument says that functional complexity requires a designer, if that's your argument, then it would be illogical not to conclude that the mind of the designer also needs a designer.
01:02:56: If you're just going to assert the existence of this grand designer by fiat, then you don't need your design argument at all.
01:03:02: You may as well just assert his existence. You may as well just pre -suppose the existence of this designer.
01:03:09: It's kind of like the guy who notices how in the world did they make all those rivers to flow right along the state borders?
01:03:20: How do you explain that? Really? Think of the immense amount of engineering it took. Think of how expensive that must have been to do that, right?
01:03:29: James is thinking backwards. He sees what he thinks is design and he admits that natural selection is a part of the natural world and yet he thinks natural selection has its limits.
01:03:38: But scientists are repeatedly showing us over and over again the immense power of natural selection of accumulated small advantages over long periods of time that do result in exactly what appears to be intelligent design.
01:03:52: It appears to be, but actually you can have design in nature without intelligence. You can have design by the limited ways arithmetically that atoms combine or geometrically how molecules combine.
01:04:03: There are certain laws, just basic laws that are not prescriptive laws but just describe how things work.
01:04:09: And the laws of nature are not intelligent and yet they can produce design because of survival.
01:04:17: Or like Julia Sweeney says in her play, there has to be a god because look how perfectly the hand was made to fit inside of a glove.
01:04:25: Look at that. Four fingers and a thumb, right? We laugh at that. That's silly. But that's exactly what
01:04:30: James is doing. He's looking at functional complexity and he's saying, how do you explain that?
01:04:37: Well he explains it with more complexity. He explains it with something grander.
01:04:43: My five -year -old daughter, Christy, she was smart enough as a kindergartner to say, hey Daddy, if God made everything, who made
01:04:49: God? Now, when I was a theist, and I admit I had not a great education at Azusa Pacific.
01:04:57: It was okay. I've done most of my research and studies since then. And by the way, I've found out that I'm exactly right about the word
01:05:03: Ratsak. And in my book, I explain the context. I think it is you who's taking out of context. I explain the usage of the
01:05:10: New Testament word. That the word Ratsak means kill or even manslaughter. Or it's something that even animals can do.
01:05:16: I show that. I demonstrate that. I am not taking those words out of context. I know what the word says. And besides that, it's all beside the point because God repeats the command not to kill with words other than Ratsak.
01:05:28: So it's a smoke screen. It's a phony argument that you're throwing up to try to salvage the reliability of the
01:05:33: Bible. The Bible has no explanatory power outside of itself. The Bible was written by primitive people.
01:05:41: Anyone who uses the Bible as an authority and even James admit that there have been problems in the transmission of the
01:05:48: Bible. And to his credit, he it took me a lot longer, but he rejected 1
01:05:54: John 5 -7. And if you are reading the King James Bible get your marker and cross that out of there.
01:06:00: And there are other parts of the Bible as well that should be crossed off. What this shows us, James, is that Christians, even way back in the early times,
01:06:07: Christians were in a habit of doctoring their documents. Yes, they were. We even know they tampered with Josephus in the year 90.
01:06:14: We know that Christians messed with the documents. Yeah, one minute left.
01:06:22: What else? I guess I would ask you to define, use the
01:06:29: Bible to actually define the word Trinity. I was doing a world religions conference in Canada a few years ago and I sat next to a
01:06:35: Hindu and somebody asked the Hindu how many gods are there in Hinduism? And I'd like to know how many gods are there?
01:06:41: And he said, in Hinduism, there is one god. And everybody said, what? There's all these different gods.
01:06:47: And he said, the others are manifestations of the one god. But there's just one god in these other gods.
01:06:54: Well, I submit that the triune god of the Bible is polytheistic. It's a Christian way of trying to not look polytheistic, but there are one god in three persons, three manifestations of the same god in anybody's way of thinking, that is polytheism.
01:07:10: The triune god of the Bible is illogical and does not exist. Thank you.
01:07:18: We will now have the second cross -examination. We'll begin with Dr. White. Mr. Barker, have you ever looked up batzach in the halo lexicon,
01:07:33: Hebrew lexicon? Not in that particular lexicon. I do have some other accordances in lexicons, but not in that one, no.
01:07:42: So the fact that it gives as the primary meaning to murder and indicates that the
01:07:47: PL form especially has that form, while the kol can differ from that. Did you study Hebrew at Azusa Pacific?
01:07:52: No, I did not. I studied Greek, but not Hebrew. So when I say to you that you, in the past, when you have said, it does not mean murder.
01:08:02: It can mean murder, but it does not. The word itself does not mean murder. But murder is a part of the semantic domain of the meaning of the word batzach, is it not?
01:08:12: There's about five or six different words in the Hebrew, and I admit I'm not a Hebrew scholar, but I looked it up, and I looked up all the instances of these words, all through the in context of the entire
01:08:21: Old Testament. Ratzak is one of those words. There's also what's the one that's in 1
01:08:28: Samuel? And they are scattered and imprecise, and all the translations translate them different ways.
01:08:33: In fact, ratzak is used for manslaughter, accidental killing. It is. But in the meaning of the word, in a various context, it can mean, specifically, murder.
01:08:44: You can refer to murder, but all of those words, but all six of those words can refer to murder, in a certain context.
01:08:53: Dan, did I ever say the brain is broccoli? Did I even make a connection to brain function?
01:09:02: But from what you said, I think it was pretty obvious that you were comparing, that you thought, you made it look like I was comparing a human being to broccoli.
01:09:09: Human beings, not the human brain, right? You said I was taking you out of context, but in reality,
01:09:15: I never said anything about the human brain. I said we, right? Well, you were referring to that radio interview
01:09:21: I did with Minotta, in which we were talking about the functioning of the human brain. Actually, he was talking about our role in the universe, but Dan, will jazz piano cease to be beautiful when you die?
01:09:32: Will jazz? Will jazz piano cease to be beautiful when you die? Will jazz piano cease to be, depends who's playing it,
01:09:41: I suppose, but as long as there are human beings in existence who are inculturated to appreciate and understand, as long as they still exist after I'm dead, then no.
01:09:55: But someday, jazz piano will cease to be beautiful, because our species will go extinct. So someday in the future, it will.
01:10:00: So the beauty of, I assume you've recorded this, you recorded you playing jazz piano?
01:10:07: I'll give you a CD, yeah. I'd be happy to have it. So the beauty of that will cease to exist has no transcendent meaning in your worldview.
01:10:18: That's right, there's no meaning at all, because when, I mean, some people will hear it and they don't hear anything, they hear noise, and I don't know what cats and dogs hear when they hear jazz piano, but I know
01:10:27: I like it. When you asked me a question, I didn't get to answer it, you said, are you saying science will never explain these things?
01:10:37: Do you understand me to be saying when I point to ATPase, the mechanism that reconstitutes
01:10:43: ATP from ADP, that I am simply saying we don't understand this? Is that what you hear me saying, or do you hear me saying there is clearly without question, beyond doubt purposeful order and purpose in this mechanism?
01:10:59: Do you see the difference between those two? Well, I acknowledge that by saying there is design by natural selection, not design by intelligence.
01:11:06: So I agree with you that there is, you know, you can reverse engineer all of us, and see, you can use that word purpose with quotes around it to see what is the purpose of the eye, you know, to gather light, right?
01:11:18: So yes, there is design and functionality from natural selection, but not by intelligence.
01:11:27: Now it's Mr. Barker's turn. Do you think, do you think logic is a thing?
01:11:40: Do you think it's more than just a function of an organ? Logic, the rules of logic are abstract and universal, yes.
01:11:47: They do not exist in the material realm, but they are reflective of the reality of the material realm in which we live.
01:11:54: That's why circles generally stay circles and don't become squares. But does logic, the actual thing of logic, does that exist?
01:12:04: Is that a thing somewhere? Well again, for you Dan, to exist means only in the material realm, and since you absolutely reject any other kind of existence of anything like the laws of logic or a spirit or anything else, and you demand that something that you just said, outside of time, does not exist.
01:12:24: I do not accept your mind's definition of that kind of a limitation on existence.
01:12:34: But I'm asking for yours. Then tell us then, how would you decide if something exists?
01:12:41: What does it mean to exist? Define the word to exist then, if it's not in space and time.
01:12:47: Define that. Well again, it has reality. For example, I think the laws of logic are very good. The law of non -contradiction existed prior to my birth.
01:12:56: It was a valid law before I was born, and if I get run over by a wild engineering student riding his bicycle across the quad out there and get killed on the way back to the hotel this evening, the laws of logic will remain absolutely as valid as they were tonight.
01:13:16: They are not dependent upon the firing of the neurons in my brain for their existence. I hope it's not an atheist engineering student.
01:13:23: Well, you know what? It really wouldn't matter. Okay, but when you say the laws of logic existed before you were born, aren't you just saying they existed in minds previous to when you were born?
01:13:35: Did the laws of logic exist at the Big Bang? Did those laws of logic, were their laws inscribed or written somewhere?
01:13:43: Obviously, since I believe that God created this universe for a purpose, the laws of logic reflect the very essence of the creation that he has given to us, and that is why
01:13:53: I said in my opening statement that I believe that the greatest free thinking is to think in accordance with your creator.
01:14:01: And in doing so, when I seek to think logically and I seek to think rationally,
01:14:07: I am doing so for the glory of my creator and to the betterment of myself. Well, I used to preach that sermon, so and I'm not doubting your sincerity.
01:14:14: You really preached that sermon? Yes, I did, and I'm not doubting your sincerity. I used to know, I used to feel the presence and believe in my heart, and I used to know all that.
01:14:22: In fact, many people used to testify that they felt the spirit of God in their ministry.
01:14:27: I read the book. So, okay. I've listened to your testimony many times. Alright, so, and I'm not doubting your sincerity either.
01:14:34: I think you really do believe it. But the point I'm trying to get at is things happen in our brains.
01:14:41: I have a nightmare, and there's a monster coming in the window, but there's not really out there a monster coming in the window.
01:14:46: It's a function of my brain. My brain is telling me something, right? So our brains function in certain ways, and we put words on this functioning.
01:14:54: We call it mind, or we call it thought. But does it really exist outside of our brain?
01:15:00: If minds were to cease to exist, then would we even need the word logic? Would we even use the word?
01:15:05: Would it even be a because it's a concept, and you can't have a concept without a mind, right? Concepts don't exist out there somewhere.
01:15:12: Dan, the fact that you and I are sitting here, and we are doing the same thing as if we had a chessboard between us, and we are thinking ahead, and we are designing our questions to go a certain direction, to illustrate certain things, means that both you and I are functioning according to the laws of logic.
01:15:31: And I believe that those laws have an existence outside of just our shared experience of them.
01:15:39: Well, that concludes the first half of the debate. Let's give the debaters a round of applause. We will now take a brief break, and during this time we will collect questions, and just look for these folks with the question card signs.
01:15:58: Thank you. We now begin the second round of the debate. We will now switch the order, so we'll have
01:16:07: Mr. Barker followed by Dr. White. And with that, I'd like to invite Mr. Barker to deliver the second positive statement.
01:16:21: We should not argue from emotion. We are emotional beings, and some of us get more emotional than others, but we should not argue because something feels right.
01:16:33: We should not believe in God because we're afraid of death, or because we have wishful thinking to go to heaven.
01:16:38: We should stick with the facts. We should go with the logic. Logic is a very useful tool of the functioning human mind.
01:16:47: But, emotion can be a good way to illustrate something. Emotion can be a way to wake you up and say, oh wait,
01:16:53: I never thought of this before. Emotion can be a way to turn your head. So, let's use emotion to illustrate.
01:17:01: Let's use emotion to get some feelings going, but then base your conclusions on the facts and the evidence and the logic alone, not on your emotions.
01:17:09: The children's hospital thing is emotional, but I think what James is saying here is that we probably should not judge what
01:17:18: God may or may not be doing by allowing these children to die, in spite of the fact that the
01:17:23: Bible very clearly says, all things whatsoever ye shall ask for in prayer, believing, you shall receive.
01:17:33: The parents of these kids that are sick and are dying, they are grasping that Bible verse that tells them.
01:17:38: It doesn't say, maybe. It doesn't say, if you're good. It doesn't say, if I feel like it. It says, all things.
01:17:46: I don't know how you could contextualize that word away. All things whatsoever you shall ask for in prayer, believing, you shall receive.
01:17:55: And later, is it James who said, the prayer of faith shall save the sick, right? Those who are sick shall pray and be healed.
01:18:02: Parents who believe in God, who believe that God hears their prayers and answers their prayers, pray for those kids.
01:18:10: There were people who prayed for God's protection in their life the morning of 9 -11. Good people who were killed.
01:18:16: They trusted. They prayed. But you know what? Prayer makes no difference.
01:18:21: And I think James is admitting that tonight. We may as well not pray because there's another purpose. In fact, a lot of people say the purpose, the problem of evil is answered because evil is a way for us to grow our character.
01:18:36: We learn from evil. When a tragedy happens, look how strong you get. Look how America came together after 9 -11.
01:18:42: Well, tell that to the people, relatives of the people who died. Thanks a lot. But if you have that kind of a mentality, if you think, oh well,
01:18:49: I'm not going to worry about my kids. I'm not even going to pray about them because it's not going to make any difference. You may as well not stop your kids from running out in the street.
01:18:57: You may as well say, you may as well not because just think of the character lesson. You're denying yourself, right?
01:19:03: Go kids because I want to get my character stronger. Of course, that's absurd. We're human beings.
01:19:08: We love our kids. We do the best for them. And statistics show that nothing fails like prayer.
01:19:15: So I guess I would accept part of James' implication tonight that prayer is a waste of time. People pray and a lot of times things get worse.
01:19:24: Some of those kids who do get better were from families that didn't pray. I debated
01:19:29: Doug Wilson as James points out, on two occasions. Once in Delaware and once in his hometown.
01:19:36: Where does he live? Idaho. Yeah. And in Delaware it was the place where I asked
01:19:43: Doug Wilson, and maybe I'll ask James the same thing tonight. What do you think of verses in the
01:19:49: Bible where God says horrible things? And I brought up to Doug Wilson, Psalm 137 .9
01:19:56: where it says, happy shall be he that takes and dashes the little ones against the stones. Now, when
01:20:02: I was a preacher, I used to translate that verse metaphorically. I didn't think God was saying, you should be happy to take little babies and throw them against the rocks.
01:20:09: Although that's what it says. And I asked Doug Wilson, do you think it's a good thing to throw innocent babies against the stones?
01:20:16: And he basically said, yes it is. You know why? Because if the Bible says it, that's what makes it true.
01:20:23: We are not supposed to judge the Bible. We're not supposed to judge because God has a higher purpose and we're not supposed to submit our minds to whatever his will is.
01:20:32: And some of the Christians in the audience gasped when Doug Wilson said that. So then I switched to the New Testament and I said, and again, there's different ways of interpreting this verse,
01:20:40: I don't deny that, but I said, Jesus pointed out that there are some slaves that you ought not to beat as hard as other slaves because they didn't know better.
01:20:49: That demonstrates a little bit of the compassion of Jesus, that he was able to make distinctions, right? Although he never once denounced slavery.
01:20:56: He never once spoke out against it. He incorporated it into his parables as if it were the most natural order, which it was at the time.
01:21:03: And so regardless of your interpretation of that verse, I would have hoped that you could interpret it metaphorically somehow, that he didn't really mean you should beat your slaves.
01:21:13: But I asked Doug, is it a good idea to beat your slaves? And he said, yes it is.
01:21:20: Because the Bible says it, that makes it true. So he brought up Wilson, that's why
01:21:26: I'm talking about Wilson, to make this point. You will find within Christianity, within the body of people who claim to believe in this book that you said presents to us this triune
01:21:36: God, you'll find all sorts of differences of opinion. Paul wrote in the Bible, this is probably one of those things you predicted to the navigators that I would say, right?
01:21:44: Okay. Paul wrote in the Bible that God is not the author of confusion.
01:21:50: But can you think of a single book that's caused more confusion than the Bible? All of these groups, these presuppositionalists, these
01:21:57: Calvinists, and these Lutherans, and these Baptists, and these Mormons even who read the Bible and Methodists, they can all open the
01:22:04: Bible and tell you, here's the true interpretation and the others are wrong. Many good, devout
01:22:10: Bible -believing, praying, moral Christians will look James in the eye and tell you, you are wrong about the
01:22:16: Bible. The Christians don't have their acts together on this thing. And one way to prove that, one way to show that, is just to think.
01:22:22: If the Bible is a source of moral guidance, that's what I used to preach. We need the Bible to have a moral rudder in the world.
01:22:29: Then why is it that you cannot find a single issue, not a single issue that we're struggling with right now in the world.
01:22:36: What are some of the issues? Like gay marriage, abortion rights, what else?
01:22:43: Doctor assisted suicide, the war, stem cell research.
01:22:50: In the past it used to be birth control and interracial marriage and women voting and all that.
01:22:58: You won't find a single issue on which good Bible -believing, praying, church -going
01:23:04: Christians are not on both sides of those issues. Aren't I right? Look at the parades. Churchgoers, people who hold the same book under their arm that James holds.
01:23:13: They use that book and they say, this is our source of moral truth and yet they can't agree among themselves.
01:23:18: Of course, each side will tell the other they have the true interpretation. And James will even quote from the Hebrew lexicon or whatever it was to prove that his version of theology is the right one.
01:23:29: And yet there's no harmony there. There's no agreement there. If the Triune God of the Bible really existed and if he really cared he should have done a better job of explaining what he meant.
01:23:39: The contradictions that I laid out before are valid contradictions. Yes, I know you can contextualize anything.
01:23:46: But think about context. A huge context that James is ignoring is the fact that the New Testament and the
01:23:51: Bible is written during a time, during a context when there were these virgin -born God -men who were put to death who were then raised from the dead and then all this pagan mythology even early church fathers admitted.
01:24:04: Justin Martyr admitted. You know what? There's nothing in Christianity that's unique. He was arguing with the pagans and Justin Martyr said, you know what?
01:24:11: You pagans should become Christians because there's nothing different. It's all the same stuff. It's cut from the same fabric.
01:24:18: Nothing special about Christianity. And there's the real context that James seems to be ignoring.
01:24:25: He thinks Christianity is special. He thinks somehow because there are more copies of it, most of which come from the
01:24:30: Middle Ages, there's more copies of it somehow that makes it more special. Suppose there were more copies of my books than his books.
01:24:37: Does that make my book more truthful? The fact that there were devoted scribes who made copies of the book.
01:24:43: Suppose you make a photocopy of something. 10 million copies. Well, I'm going to make 40 million copies.
01:24:48: How does that attest to the reliability of the content of those books? It's another one of these argument smokescreens that are made.
01:24:56: When God's chosen people in the Old Testament or the Hebrew Scriptures were following God's orders and they were killing, they were going out to kill the pagan tribes, the idolatrous tribes.
01:25:09: They went out there and God said, there won't be peace on earth until we pacify these people. When they went in and they killed all the men, all the animals, all the children, and yet they left the young virgin girls alive as war booty for the priests.
01:25:22: 32 of them were given to the priests. When God's holy soldiers went into these villages with their swords, obeying
01:25:31: God's command to kill everything, when they stabbed this woman, this infidel woman with their sword, maybe she was pregnant even, did they say to her, oh, by the way, if you look at the context,
01:25:44: I'm not really murdering you. I'm not. What I'm doing is a good thing. I'm not murdering that word ratzak and that word zarak.
01:25:53: Those words don't actually mean murder. I'm actually doing you a good favor here. Would she have cared one bit about all this contextual wordplay?
01:26:03: The God of the Bible is brutal. The system of the Bible is brutal. It is simplistic. It is a toddler morality that any of us are welcome to rise above and live a truly materialistic natural atheistic worldview without the fear of hell or the promise of heaven, which really cheapen morality when you think about it.
01:26:22: The triune God of the Bible, even if he did exist, would not be worthy of my respect as a moral or intellectual person.
01:26:34: Thank you. Now I'd like to invite Dr. White to deliver his second positive statement. Dan just said that the
01:26:49: Bible tells us that if you ask anything in prayer, believing you shall receive, but for some reason he doesn't allow us to contextualize that.
01:26:56: Like I've said, he's an author. I guess I can just take anything in his book and tear it out and say, Dan Barker contradicts himself, therefore we shouldn't listen to anything
01:27:04: Dan Barker says. I don't think that's why we came here this evening. You do allow things to exist in a context.
01:27:09: You actually do look up Hebrew words. He, in previous debates, has said that's not what the Hebrew word means, and he's wrong.
01:27:15: That's all I've said, and I've proved my point. I've provided the resources. He can't rebut that. He's in error. Now, he can insist on that if he wants to, but I invite you.
01:27:24: Look it up for yourself. The information is available. When we contextualize the comment about prayer, we know that Jesus also talked about praying in accordance with God's will.
01:27:33: That's called contextualizing it. That's called understanding it in an overall biblical perspective, which evidently we're not allowed to do when
01:27:41: Mr. Barker deals with the text of Scripture. He asks, what is the purpose of prayer?
01:27:46: Well, I will admit that a lot of folks and evidently Dan's background was in this think that prayer is sort of a magical means by which you manipulate
01:27:53: God into doing what you want him to do. I don't believe that's what prayer is. I believe that prayer changes people.
01:27:58: I believe it changes me. I believe it draws me closer into fellowship with my God, but I don't think that I'm giving my
01:28:03: God directions. I think we look at what the Bible says about that, we would see that very clearly.
01:28:09: He mentions Psalm 137 .9 that speaks of the blessedness of those who would bring judgment upon the
01:28:15: Babylonian people who had brought judgment upon the Jewish people. And I think, I cannot do anything better than to point out that what he's doing here is again making an objection based upon a world view that he rejects.
01:28:28: What's wrong with dashing babies against rocks if they're all just cosmic broccoli? If that makes your tribe better than somebody else's tribe, if that gives you their women or something like that?
01:28:38: Why do you say that's different? Well, because my morality says to minimize harm. Great, fine, wonderful. I know you're creating the image of God.
01:28:44: I know that's where it comes from. But that's what the debate is about. Why are you borrowing from my world view to, in essence, fill the gaps in your own?
01:28:53: He talks about the fact that Jesus never spoke out against slavery. I've heard him say this so many times. I would like to point something out.
01:29:00: Slavery not only was limited by the Bible, and you were given rules as to how it was to function that were just amazing at the time in which they were given.
01:29:09: No one ever talks about that because that was the primary economic factor of that day.
01:29:14: But in essence, what we're being told is unless Jesus created a revolutionary religion where all of his followers would have to go in and foment revolution in every nation they went to, then we're not going to, in any way, listen to what he had to say.
01:29:27: The reality, of course, is that the New Testament says to slaves that they are to honor their masters so as to bring glory to Christ, and says to Christians who have slaves, treat your slaves as your brothers and sisters.
01:29:42: No one ever talks about how radical that was and how it laid the foundation for the end of slavery when the economic system allowed that to happen.
01:29:50: But the idea is, well, Jesus needs to be a revolutionary. This kind of anachronistic reading of the text in the
01:29:56: New Testament simply does not make any sense whatsoever. Dan said that I'm ignoring the early
01:30:02: Christian context and all the pagan gods and things like that. Dan just hasn't done his homework. I would invite you to listen to my three hour debate with Dr.
01:30:09: John Dominic Crossan, one of the leading historical Jesus scholars from 2005, where he debated this very issue.
01:30:16: And I'm not ignoring it at all when he says there is nothing unique about Christianity, that is simply a statement of ignorance.
01:30:24: The perspective of the New Testament is that you have monotheism which was, first of all, unknown at the time outside of Judaism in any meaningful sense, and that that monotheistic creator who did not create the universe out of pre -existing matter, but created it ex nihilo, has entered into his own creation.
01:30:41: The parallels that I've heard Dan use before to Osiris and Dionysus, please go beyond some surface level textbook, look those things up for yourself, they are beyond absurd.
01:30:52: The parallels that people present there are amazingly bad. And they require you to ignore the vast majority of what the
01:30:59: New Testament says about Jesus. Somehow, I guess it does not understand what
01:31:04: I was talking about when I was talking about the transmission of the New Testament. He seems to confuse my assertion that the
01:31:09: New Testament is the best attested document of antiquity with an assertion that what it attests is necessarily true.
01:31:16: Those are two different issues. Content and transmission are two different things. He brought up one issue in regards to the
01:31:22: Kamiohonium, which to any textual scholar, and I have worked as a critical consultant on the Lockman Foundation, on the New American Standard Bible, I know something about textual criticism.
01:31:29: Any textual scholar knows about these things. And then somehow said, well you can't trust what the
01:31:35: New Testament says as a result of that. The fact of the matter is Dan just does not know this field.
01:31:41: I'm reminded of what he told Paul Minatta in a debate a few years ago. He very proudly proclaimed that John Calvin preached from the
01:31:48: King James Version of the Bible. Now think about that for just a moment. John Calvin was French. He spoke French and Latin.
01:31:54: The King James is English. I'm not sure why he'd be preaching from the King James Version of the Bible. But there's another problem. The King James Version of the
01:31:59: Bible was published in 1611. John Calvin died in 1564. So exactly how did he preach from the
01:32:05: King James Version of the Bible when it didn't come into existence for 40 years after his death? It's that kind of confidence of these biblical facts that are not biblical facts at all that I think
01:32:17: Dan should be a little bit concerned about in making references to these particular things. Now going back to his free will argument,
01:32:24: I want to make sure that you see where the problem here is. Dan made a statement and this goes right back to my opening statement
01:32:31: I hope you see the connection here, the consistency because I invited you to test for consistency. Dan said that which exists outside of time does not exist.
01:32:41: Why? Because I'm a naturalistic materialist and the only thing that exists is the material world which is time bound and therefore that's just the way it is because my world view says so and I'm going to deny the existence of anything that transcends my world view.
01:32:58: That's what fundamentalistic naturalistic materialism is all about. I'm just going to reject the idea that God can exist in a timeless fashion that he can transcend his own creation.
01:33:10: So what is he doing? By definition your God doesn't exist. Well if that's how debates are won, I can simply say by definition my
01:33:16: God does exist. Let's all go home. But that's not why we came here this evening is it? And so when he then uses this horrible argument that Dawkins made well if there's order and design, and by the way science can study the design of that particular organelle that I showed you, it's actually part of the mitochondria all at once that's not going to change the fact that it's designed intentionally.
01:33:47: Anyone who looks at, well however this came into existence it had to know about proton transport it had to be able to design shafts, turn things design molecules to certain shapes and it only works with ADP and ATP.
01:34:00: It can even go backwards and reverse itself. If you saw anything like that on your cell phone, your computer or anywhere else you wouldn't even think about the fact that it had a designer except you look at that and well it doesn't have a designer.
01:34:10: Why? Because I'm a naturalistic materialist and so I can't have a designer. That's the problem. That's the circularity.
01:34:16: But he says, well if God has to be the designer then God's mind must be designed.
01:34:23: I hope you can see the circularity of that. Once again Dan insists to take the
01:34:29: Christian God and put him in time and make him a material being. Dan's arguments are great against Mormonism a
01:34:38: God who is in the space -time continuum a finite God your arguments are great to the
01:34:44: Christian God and on this issue you're not going to find the
01:34:50: Christian orthodoxy on this subject is pretty well defined. His arguments just now, well there's all sorts of differences people read the
01:34:57: Bible in all sorts of different ways. That's why debate them too. When people, you said homosexuality listen to the debates that I've done with John Shelby Spong and with Barry Lynn on that particular subject they didn't even bring a
01:35:09: Bible to the debate and they lost the debate badly. Just simply to say well people have all sorts of different opinions doesn't mean anything.
01:35:17: People can read your book and come up with all sorts of different opinions. Does that mean that there is no message to your book? Of course not.
01:35:23: And so this kind of argumentation I think once again illustrates what I was saying at the beginning and that is we have a world view here that simply by definition gets rid of its opposition.
01:35:38: Your God can't exist. I will force you to put your God into the space -time continuum I will force him to be less than the creation and then
01:35:44: I will judge him on that. That's not the Christian God that I'm presenting. That's why I didn't want to do a debate on bare theism.
01:35:51: I am a Christian theist. I don't believe any other form of theism is consistent. Now you might immediately say well wait a minute, well what about the other monotheistic religions?
01:35:59: How do you decide between them? You decide between them by getting together and honestly critiquing each person, each viewpoint that is being presented.
01:36:08: That's why for example over the past couple of years the primary debates I've been doing have been with Muslims. I did five debates in London with Muslims in November at Duke University in November as well and we come to a common ground we look at each other's documents, we do study, we try to treat each other with respect and we deal with those issues.
01:36:26: That's how you do it. And I'm simply saying to you we can't even get there in this debate because we have a world view that by definition excludes anything that is beyond the material.
01:36:37: And that kind of perspective simply does not accord with reality as we see it. Thank you. Now we will have the third and final cross -examination.
01:36:51: We'll begin with Mr. Barker. James, when
01:36:56: I said earlier that the reliability of the Bible is questioned because of our evidence of tampering, did
01:37:05: I say that therefore you cannot trust anything the Bible says as a result of that? Actually the first time you said that you were referring to 1
01:37:13: John 5 -7 and you did say that we cannot trust the Bible because it's been tampered with. The second time you were focusing more upon just that particular segment.
01:37:22: That's my recollection. But did I say you can't trust the Bible or did I say the reliability of the Bible is lessened and questioned?
01:37:29: I actually do believe there are some things in the Bible you can trust. It's not all bad, but... Well again, it seems like you're confusing the difference between the text of the
01:37:38: New Testament... You misspoke, you misrepresented what I actually said. I know we could argue about that, but I did not actually say that you cannot trust what the
01:37:46: Bible says because of our evidence of tampering within the text. You agree with that? You misspoke. If you want to say
01:37:52: I misspoke, I'll let someone listen to the tape for themselves. Also, I know Calvin did not preach from the King James Bible.
01:37:57: But you said he did. Well, you know, on a radio interview where we're talking about John Calvin using the same verse from the
01:38:05: Vulgate or from whatever versions they were using, he was assuming that was in the
01:38:11: Greek text. I have the recording. Besides, we're not debating what I might have misspoken.
01:38:17: And I agree, John Calvin did not preach from the King James. I know when the King James was written and I know when John Calvin wrote it.
01:38:23: So that would have been a stupid thing to say, and if it was, it was a misstatement. It wasn't anything I said in tonight's debate.
01:38:29: Do you think that buying and selling human beings is a good moral thing?
01:38:38: Good moral thing. Is it? In a context that allows them to live and keeps them from dying, yes, that would have been a good moral thing.
01:38:46: That is, in fact, one of the primary functions of slavery under the Hebrew law was when a person could no longer provide for themselves, it was a means of protection of life.
01:38:56: So, in that context, it could have been. So, buying and selling human beings is actually a good thing.
01:39:02: And you own them and you control their lives. In the context in which the scriptures provided it, at which I just said, which was a means of protecting the poor from death, that could be a positive thing.
01:39:13: That is one of the major differences between the biblical limitations on that subject and the Roman process, the
01:39:19: Roman adulteration of those laws that took place at a later time. Now, I admitted during my statement that I agree that you can interpret
01:39:27: Psalm 137 .9 metaphorically. I agree that there are other ways of interpreting it, but I am pointing out that, apparently,
01:39:33: Wilson is some kind of a colleague of yours. He did not. He said it was a good blessed, happy thing to do.
01:39:39: And so, I was not admitting any unwillingness to reinterpret verses within context.
01:39:45: I do. Give me an example of a teaching, a historical claim or a factual claim of Christianity that is unique from paganism.
01:39:58: Can I answer that question? Thank you. The uniqueness is a monotheistic religion that says that the creator of all things, who created all things, ex nihilo, has entered into his own creation to bring about his own glory through the redemption of the people.
01:40:11: There is no religion that has ever even come close to that. Now it's
01:40:16: Dr. White's turn. Dan, in your statement that Calvin preached from the
01:40:22: King James, you never corrected that in that entire debate, did you? It was an informal radio interview where we were talking back and forth, and during that debate you're exactly right.
01:40:36: I don't even remember if I would have said that. I might have been a mistake. Just to clarify, one of the rules we had agreed upon was that there would be no discussion of anything that happened outside of this debate.
01:40:45: So for that reason, I think we should maybe ask some different questions. Okay. Well, I think that's a fair objection because he's rebutting something that I may or may not have said and remembered.
01:40:56: You know, we all misspeak. Do you ever make a misstatement on a casual radio show?
01:41:02: My point was to raise the issue of the accuracy of your statements concerning biblical history.
01:41:09: And I think that point is quite valid given that you made an entire string of unsubstantiated claims in your opening statement in regards to the
01:41:18: Bible. But I know Calvin did not preach from the King James. I know that and I've always known that. I'm glad that's the case.
01:41:24: Dan, once again, when you made the assertion that all sorts of differences demonstrate that somehow the
01:41:35: Bible is insufficient or the triune God should have done a, I think the term you just used was a better job.
01:41:40: Is that what you said? If I were God, I would have done a much better job than he did. He was sloppy and uncaring. So, upon what basis do you assume that it's
01:41:48: God's purpose that in this life there be no divisions, no struggles, nothing like that.
01:41:56: Everyone's just supposed to have absolute agreement on everything. What's your basis for assuming that? Well, I'm the one who's being asked to judge whether I admire and accept the reality and the moral character of this
01:42:07: God. So I am judging it based upon principles that I think, according to what you would say is my
01:42:12: God -given mind, would satisfy me as far as respect and reliability goes.
01:42:18: So, I would think that when this God promises to answer prayers and promises to love and take after his children, when this
01:42:25: God says that believing in me will bring blessings to your life, with the prayer of faith will heal the sick,
01:42:31: I would think that prayer should make some kind of a difference, especially if this God is defined as a good God and we see in reality that prayer makes no difference and we see the antics of the
01:42:41: Biblical God as actually lower than my and your morality. I have to judge that based on what
01:42:47: I think is right and wrong. But what basis do you have for ignoring all the other texts of Scripture that talk about the trials, the sufferings, the difficulties, the need for patience?
01:42:57: You're dismissing all of that. Why should we take your reading of the text of the
01:43:02: New Testament as having any type of normative value to it at all? I don't ignore them at all, James. I'm seeing them in context. I see the
01:43:08: Bible as a contradictory book, even in context. The God of the Bible is defined in contradictory ways.
01:43:15: In textual criticism, especially when there's all these different authors put together, you don't expect them all to agree on everything.
01:43:21: These authors are all coming from different times, from different areas, wrote in different languages. They made mistakes. No, I do expect them to.
01:43:27: They were human beings and they made mistakes. I'm seeing that in context. Human beings make mistakes and they presented us with a contradictory
01:43:35: God of the Bible. Thank you. And now it's time for a rebuttal, so we'll begin with Mr.
01:43:40: Barker. I'm looking for my notes of your last opening statement here.
01:44:09: The amazing functioning of things like the bacterial flagellum.
01:44:16: You hear that a lot. The little tail that runs like a rotor that's separated within the bacteria.
01:44:24: By the way, that's what makes the E. coli so powerful, that little tail. Things like that are amazing and I agreed with you earlier that we should be astounded at how this appearance, there's actually design in nature, but I pointed out earlier that I'm not rejecting design in nature.
01:44:41: I'm just pointing out that you can have that design without intelligence. Dawkins' argument is not stupid.
01:44:48: Dawkins' argument is very good. You can see design in a simple sense.
01:44:53: If you look at a snowflake, look at how the snowflake under a microscope, look how all those molecules are aligned and look at the pattern that's there.
01:45:02: Some artist must have done that, right? How did that happen? Isn't that beautiful? When I was a little kid in preschool,
01:45:09: I used to draw some snowflakes and my mom said, that's so pretty, what a good job. So when we look at a snowflake falling through the sky, are we supposed to say, wow, what cosmic artist designed that snow?
01:45:20: Isn't that pretty? Well, of course, we say it was designed not by intelligence. It was designed by the way molecules naturally attract.
01:45:27: There's only certain ways that molecules can form with each other. And once they start forming, crystals then grow.
01:45:33: A crystal is a growing thing. So I'm not trying to equate a crystal with more complex things, but you can see. If we can say that that snowflake is not intelligently designed and yet it was designed in a natural sense by the laws of nature, then we can apply that to things that are so complex that it's hard for our brains at this time to wrap around them.
01:45:55: And the motors that you're describing are amazing, but a long time ago lost the gift of prophecy, but I'm going to predict that someday scientists are going to go, aha, okay, now we know.
01:46:08: Just saying that we don't know why you to impute intelligent design to this, when we already know that science has a very good track record of showing how there is natural design to these things.
01:46:21: Somehow you think we're going to reach a point where we stop explaining things naturally. Again, I did not rule out the existence of God based on the fact that he has to exist outside of time.
01:46:32: I was asking you for your definition of existence. And I submit that when we say the word exist, we mean something that exists in space and time.
01:46:42: That's what we mean. That it exists. If it doesn't exist, it's nowhere any place, right?
01:46:48: If you want to come up with another definition of existence, you're welcome to, but you haven't defined that. If God exists, does he have a functioning brain?
01:46:56: Is there a mind that somehow has desires and whims and cares?
01:47:03: Whether inside of time or outside of time, let me concede the argument that maybe something could exist outside of time.
01:47:10: I don't know how. I don't understand that. Maybe you don't either, but you accept it. It doesn't change the fact that if there's a
01:47:19: God, tomorrow at 12 noon he's going to do something, right? Today he knows what he's going to do tomorrow at 12 noon, either inside of time or outside of time.
01:47:28: What it means to be a free agent to make decisions. In order to make a decision, you have to have options that are open to you during a period of uncertainty.
01:47:39: You have to be able to say, can I choose coffee or tea or do I want this beer or that beer or this pizza, you know? And at the last, you can change your mind up to the last second, but the fact is you don't know what you're going to do until the very last second.
01:47:50: That's what gives us the illusion of free will. The fact that we don't know the future, we have the illusion of the freedom then to make decisions and that's what we mean by that.
01:48:00: If you do know the future, if you do know what you're going to choose, then you are what? A robot.
01:48:06: Either inside of time or outside of time. You are some kind of a machine that's been pre -programmed.
01:48:12: You are not by definition a free personal agent. You are something else.
01:48:17: Maybe that kind of a God exists. I'm not ruling out that possibility but I'm saying that if God is defined as being a free agent who is able to make decisions and change his mind, those are temporal concepts that requires a not knowing.
01:48:33: Those concepts require not having future knowledge. So a being that has future knowledge of its own decisions is not a personal being who can make decisions.
01:48:45: One minute. Thank you. I guess we can summarize this whole debate in one basic question and that is, do you believe everything you read?
01:49:07: Why believe the Bible? Why do that when we know from history and from human nature that human beings create, they invent.
01:49:16: The concept that James gave us that was unique about Christianity is a theological concept but the death, the birth, the resurrection, the life, the miracles, all these stories in the life of Jesus are not unique.
01:49:30: They happened before and even early church fathers admitted there's nothing unique within these stories.
01:49:36: Of course you might come up with some overarching idea of monotheistic inserting within, right? Every religion has its uniquenesses.
01:49:44: Every religion Islam has some unique things about it, right? But the fact that theologically
01:49:49: Christianity has what James thinks is a unique concept does not mean that the story itself is not cut from the same context, from the same fabric as ancient pagan mythology.
01:50:07: And now Dr. White will give his rebuttal. The early church fathers did not admit what
01:50:16: Mr. Barker just said. He quotes one early church father, Justin Martyr, who knew much more about Plato than he knew about the
01:50:21: New Testament, who in one section tries to draw parallels. He doesn't deal with Ignatius, he doesn't deal with Clement, he doesn't deal with Irenaeus.
01:50:28: The early church fathers did not argue as Mr. Barker just said that they argued, and I would challenge
01:50:34: Mr. Barker to demonstrate to us from the early church fathers this evening that his statement is true. A couple things.
01:50:42: Mr. Barker just attempted to parallel once again the complexity of a snowflake with what
01:50:49: I showed you, which is a mechanism that has function and that produces something and uses energy.
01:50:58: Those of you who know anything about information theory knows there is no parallel between those two things. What I showed you on the screen is just one of hundreds, thousands that I could show you.
01:51:08: It is an organelle that utilizes properties of science, properties of protons and ion charges and so on and so forth to produce mechanical energy that it then uses to reconstitute
01:51:24: ADP into ATP. Why should it be doing that? Because it is a part of a larger organism that needs
01:51:29: ATP. That is why. Here is my cell phone.
01:51:35: I got myself a new Blackberry Storm. It is pretty nice. You know something? When I put it up to my ear the ear part goes next to my ear and the mouth part goes down next to my mouth.
01:51:47: Amazing how that randomly happened. You see, we look at something like this and there is a reason why it is that way.
01:51:54: There is a reason why that particular organelle creates ATP and why it functions in a certain way.
01:52:02: It has a shaft and it moves. This is called design. Notice the absolute necessity on Dan's part to say, but it wasn't intelligent design.
01:52:12: It is stupid design. No. It is unintelligent design.
01:52:19: What? We can't even do what this thing does and it is unintelligent design? I find that absolutely amazing.
01:52:28: Basically what we are being told here is that science to be science must be only materialistic.
01:52:36: That is the whole problem. Because once we start digging down to the point of the very essence of life itself what
01:52:45: Dan is saying is science has to just be made God at that point.
01:52:50: And I say to you, what if science discovers that there is something more than the material realm? Are you going to simply say no?
01:52:57: Sounds like he is saying, yes, I am going to say no. Back to his argument about being a...
01:53:04: God can't be a personal being if he knows what he is going to do tomorrow. What did you just define as a personal being?
01:53:11: A time bound being? A material being? So what is Dan saying? Well, unless he is like me, he can't be God. The round...
01:53:18: The circularity of the naturalistic materialist who simply cannot wrap his mind around the concept of existing outside of time.
01:53:26: You see, God decreed before time began what he was going to do in time.
01:53:33: What we see is what he freely chose to do before time itself even existed. If we can even use such terms as before.
01:53:40: Timeless existence is beyond our experience. Yes, I say to you that if you sit here this evening and say, well if it is beyond human experience, then it must not be true.
01:53:49: 250 years ago that would have been an argument against everything you and I agree about in regards to biological sciences and science itself.
01:53:58: God decreed in eternity to do what he was going to do. He freely chose and then
01:54:05: Dan says, by definition this means. Whose definition? Well, my materialistic definition.
01:54:12: You can't import your materialism into my world view and say, ah, see, you're not working according to my premises.
01:54:19: No, I'm not. But isn't it odd that you are working by my premises when you bring up issues like evil.
01:54:26: When you bring up issues like suffering. Why are those things bad?
01:54:32: Well, because in Dan's morality, by definition morality is acting in a way that reduces harm.
01:54:41: Now, I don't think that's anywhere near sufficient enough to actually deal with serious moral issues, but that's the definition that he's given to us.
01:54:47: It reduces harm. Okay, who gave you the authority to define it that way? He admits that it has to be contextualized.
01:54:55: He often uses the idea of sticking a needle in a baby is not a good thing unless it's giving him a life -giving infusion or inoculation or something like that.
01:55:02: He recognizes the need for context. But the reality is he wants to make reference to this kind of external morality.
01:55:10: But his world view gives us no foundation for it. No foundation for the laws of logic.
01:55:16: Why in the world should I be concerned to even be giving logical answers to his objections?
01:55:22: Why should I have cared about what he said about the text of the New Testament? Why should I want to give a logical, truthful, consistent response to those issues?
01:55:31: Why don't I just stand up here and speak gibberish? Because we all share those laws of logic together.
01:55:39: It's not just because inside each one of our craniums certain axons are firing in a certain way.
01:55:45: It's not just a function of a mind. That's what brings us back to the foundation of our discussion this evening.
01:55:53: I gave you tests as to how to know whose world view is consistent. Who has to borrow from somebody else's world view?
01:56:00: We see in this situation exactly what is going on in this debate. And I hope even though it's getting late in the evening, you're focusing upon that and keeping score.
01:56:10: Who is being consistent to their world view in these things? Thank you. Thank you.
01:56:18: We will now have closing statements and that will be followed by question and answer. We'll begin with Mr.
01:56:24: Barker. Well, thank you, all of you, for coming and sitting through this long temporal event.
01:56:38: We all exist, at least, in time and space. And thank you, James. You're very eloquent and you're a very good man and I appreciate you doing this.
01:56:47: Yes, you are right. It is amazing. The ADP process and many other processes of nature that we examine are astounding.
01:56:56: They are amazing. They can raise the hair on the back of your neck. They can cause you to want to become a scientist to figure out, how did that happen?
01:57:06: You are also right that science is only materialistic. You are right about that. Because, so far, there is no evidence for any transcendent supernatural world.
01:57:15: Your transcendence and your supernaturalism is a hypothesis. It's nothing that's been demonstrated yet.
01:57:21: It's something that you choose to believe because you believe those writers. If, someday, there comes to us some kind of reason, evidence or good reason, for accepting a transcendent world, then science will follow.
01:57:34: Science will say, oh, science will broaden. That hasn't happened yet. We cannot get outside the box.
01:57:40: And if you think there's a way of getting outside the box, please win the Nobel Prize, James, and show us how that is done.
01:57:47: Right now, you have a hypothesis. And, by the way, you've done a poor job of connecting any dots.
01:57:53: How do you get from that ADP process to the triune God of Scripture? Why doesn't that lead us to one of the
01:58:00: Hindu gods? Why doesn't that lead us to the God of Islam, Allah?
01:58:06: Why does it lead us to your particular triune God of the Scripture? Our debate tonight is that God.
01:58:14: I know you're trying to make an argument that makes a reasonableness, or an argument to the best explanation, I suppose, but you did not connect any dots.
01:58:22: Which of the three of those triunes did it? Did the Holy Spirit make the ADP? Did God the Father make the
01:58:28: ADP? Or did Jesus do it on his day off? How did the three of them work together? This triune, these three persons up there do this?
01:58:40: I used to believe the Bible. I used to read it and follow it and dedicated my life to it, and I loved it.
01:58:45: Every moment of it, I was a true believer. If I was not a true believer then nobody is.
01:58:51: I truly lived, and the Bible says you shall know them by their fruits. I changed my mind because, well, because of the reasons
01:58:57: I gave earlier. When Jesus told the story of the prodigal son, if Jesus existed and if he actually told this story, he was telling a parable.
01:59:09: He did not expect us to think that the prodigal son actually existed with an address and a social security number.
01:59:16: He didn't expect that. It was just a story. If we had gone to Jesus and said, there is no such thing as a prodigal son, he would have said, you're missing the point.
01:59:25: The story is to teach a lesson. It doesn't matter if it's real. I'm trying to teach you a moral lesson.
01:59:31: That's what moral lessons do. That's what fables do. Fables aren't meant to be taken seriously.
01:59:37: They're meant to teach us a lesson. I remember in my early migration, going from fundamentalist,
01:59:43: Bible believing Christian to atheist, which took 4 or 5 years, I got to thinking about other parts of the
01:59:49: Bible. The story of Adam and Eve, the creation of the world. If the prodigal son was just a story, then why, in fact a lot of people believe this, a lot of Jews and even some
01:59:59: Christians believe that the story of Adam and Eve was also a kind of Hebrew parable.
02:00:05: That there actually were not two people there, whether they had navels or not. That it didn't really matter.
02:00:10: We evolved from pre -human ancestors, but there's a certain point in history.
02:00:17: So they're using this story as a kind of metaphor. That we're not supposed to think there actually was a real
02:00:22: Adam and a woman taken from Israel, but that kind of stuff. And I thought, you know, that kind of makes sense. There's a lot of liberal
02:00:27: Christians who think like that. But then finally, towards the end of my migration, I got to thinking about the whole Bible. If the prodigal son is a made -up story, right,
02:00:37: Jesus made up a story to teach a lesson. If Adam and Eve are a fable, and by the way, fables usually involve talking animals, don't they?
02:00:47: And almost any fable, Aesop's fable, have animals talking or acting like human beings. Here we have a talking snake in the
02:00:53: Bible. We know that snakes do not talk. So we know this is a fable, this is not a true story.
02:00:58: And it didn't have to be to have meaning to those people back then. It didn't have to be true, right? Well, if the prodigal son is a parable, and if Adam and Eve are a metaphor, then perhaps
02:01:08: God himself is just one huge figure of speech. It's a way that the human race, back in primitive times, tried to make sense of our world, so they tell this story.
02:01:20: A pretty story, maybe, or maybe it's an ugly story, depending on what parts of it. They tell this story, but we're not supposed to actually think that this character in this parable, fable story is actually true.
02:01:32: It's actually a real thing. Just like your dreams are not real things, your nightmares are not real things.
02:01:39: And part of my migration to rejecting the actual truth value of these transcendent claims was to realize that when we interpret this literature, which is riddled with problems,
02:01:50: James probably thinks it's less riddled than I do. But I raise a lot of flags about the reliability, and many scholars have, and James knows that.
02:01:57: He disagrees with them about the reliability of what the Bible tells us, and some of it actually had to be physically cut out, because some stuff got stuck in accidentally and wrong, and there are many, many, many cases.
02:02:08: Many other cases. James would try to minimize that, but if you look at it, there are many cases where it's obvious that the
02:02:15: Bible has been tampered with. Then God himself becomes one of these huge figures of speech, and maybe it's useful in a culture to use the word
02:02:23: God, for some people. I don't anymore. But I rejected that whole concept, because with reason and intelligence, and by the way, we don't get reason from anywhere.
02:02:34: We don't get the laws of logic. It's not like you can go shopping and say, I want some induction, and I need a little bit more of this law of non -contradiction.
02:02:44: We don't do that. These are labels for principles of the way our minds are functioning, and they don't always work very well.
02:02:51: And by the way, induction is very useful, but it's not perfect. Induction makes a lot of mistakes a lot of times.
02:02:57: So does Occam's razor. A lot of these principles that we come up with, that are useful, are actually not 100%.
02:03:02: They are not laws in the sense that they always function. We are natural organisms in a natural environment, and that's all we are, and that's good enough for me.
02:03:16: I don't feel bad knowing that. I don't feel like my life is missing something, because there's not some transcendent order to it all.
02:03:23: There is no purpose of life, and we should not want there to be a purpose of life, because if there were, that would cheapen life.
02:03:31: That would make us secondary. That would make us tools, or slaves, or whatever level of slavery, or barmanship you want to call.
02:03:41: It would make us less than full, equal organisms in this universe that really doesn't care about us.
02:03:48: If there's going to be any caring, we have to do it, but the fact that there's no purpose of life doesn't mean there's not purpose in life.
02:03:56: Those of us who don't believe in a God, who reject the fairy tales and the fables of the Bible, know that whenever there are problems to solve, beauty to create, hunger to lessen, knowledge to gain, then we have a lot of purpose in our life because it's rooted in the real world, not in wishful thinking, and not in fables written from the pens of ancient, ignorant human beings.
02:04:21: Thank you. Thank you. Dr. White will now deliver his closing statements.
02:04:35: I would like to begin by saying those ancient, ignorant human beings were probably, in most cases, significantly more disciplined than we modern folks are.
02:04:45: I can assure you of that. Before I give my closing statement, I have some gifts for Dan. I have the
02:04:51: DVD of the debate that I did with Dr. Bart Ehrman on the reliability of the text in the New Testament, and Dan and I share a passion.
02:05:01: I don't get to do it very much. He would probably wipe the floor with me, but here is a book by Irving Chernev, The Most Instructive Games of Chess Ever Played.
02:05:09: I think you might find it to be useful. Actually, I have this book. Well, good.
02:05:16: That means I picked the right one because it reflects something that you yourself would like. Well, I'll give it to one of my friends.
02:05:21: There you go. The New Testament presents to us an absolutely unique message.
02:05:31: All of the pagan religions had no concept of what the New Testament says to us. That's why it was such an amazing and startling message in its context.
02:05:41: As a monotheistic religion, Christianity teaches that there is one God who is timeless, who by the exercise of his will created all things, time, space, and matter.
02:05:52: But he is not subject to these things. He is not connected to these things in the sense that he is dependent upon them.
02:05:58: That monotheistic God, for his purposes, chose to glorify himself in a triune fashion.
02:06:06: Dan said I didn't connect the dots for you. Well, I made it as part of my opening presentation. He never challenged any of it.
02:06:12: Specifically, the fact that God is triune demonstrates that the personal relationships of Father, Son, and Spirit have always been there.
02:06:20: God has always been love. He did not become love in creation. Creation was not necessary to him.
02:06:26: Without the Trinity, you have all sorts of issues regarding necessity in the being of God. As I pointed out, the
02:06:32: Bible reveals this about God, and it reveals to us that the Trinity, as a whole, chose to bring about the drama of redemption.
02:06:40: It was not the Father who became incarnate, it was the Son. It's not the Son who dwells in the people today, it's the
02:06:47: Son by the Spirit that does so. These are biblical teachings that the New Testament is very clear on, and it is absolutely amazing what the
02:06:55: Christian is actually saying. Yes, we are saying that the one who created all things, who literally holds all things together, became a carpenter in Galilee.
02:07:05: Amazing! Stupid! Foolish! It's exactly what the New Testament says those who are perishing believe. It's foolishness.
02:07:12: It's a scandal to the Jew who is seeking after signs. It's a scandal to Gentile who is seeking after wisdom, but God has chosen the foolishness of the message that is preached to be the means by which
02:07:23: He saves those who believe. Now, when I look at creation around me, and I was a science major,
02:07:29: I was a double major in college, Bible and biology, as department fellow in anatomy and physiology. As a senior, I raised over 35 ,000
02:07:35: Drosophila melanogaster fruit flies. Anybody raise fruit flies in here? Are they still, does the fly nap still stink as bad as it used to?
02:07:43: It does? Okay, alright. I studied genetics and I was fascinated by it.
02:07:49: And when I look at what happens in our bodies, when I look at the complexity,
02:07:56: I am not sitting here going, oh, that complexity must mean God is there. I'm not talking about trying to fill
02:08:02: God into the gaps. I am recognizing that the complexity that is there is not a snowflake complexity.
02:08:11: It is not a crystal complexity. It is the same complexity that is containing in the hard drive of that MacBook Pro over there, the keynote presentation that I made at the beginning of this presentation.
02:08:24: And if I fire a keynote up again, guess what? It's going to give the same presentation. The data has order, it contains information, and it's repetitive.
02:08:35: And that's what we see in the design around us. You know who really introduced me to intelligent design?
02:08:42: It was Dawkins. You see, I graduated in 1985, completed my major in biology, and then
02:08:49: I read The Blind Watchmaker. Now, I had gone to a Christian school, but I was the only non -evolutionist in the biology department, so I had fought this battle for a long time.
02:08:57: I've read the best evolution has to offer. And I read The Blind Watchmaker. And it was in reading that that I came to the realization that single step micromutation cannot create complex systems.
02:09:11: It just can't do it. Because every single mutation has to give some type of reproductive help to the being in which it's contained.
02:09:20: And you can't do that when the most minimal system will require 10, 15, 20 steps.
02:09:26: That's what caused me. I had never even heard of the term intelligent design. Never even read anything about it.
02:09:32: It was reading The Blind Watchmaker that forced me to recognize that. Now, Dan Barker's a very bright man.
02:09:39: You still remember the Prometheus Society? 99 .997? Is that what it has to be? They haven't kicked you out yet?
02:09:45: Okay. An IQ of in the 99 .997th percentile. That makes
02:09:50: Dan a very intelligent man. No one's questioning that this evening. I question his exegesis, and I can give good grounds of that, but that's a different issue.
02:09:58: How can he and I look at the same data and come to such different conclusions? He would say, well, it's because you're religious.
02:10:05: And I say to Dan, oh, so are you. My, you have demonstrated that this evening. There is such a strong commitment on his part.
02:10:14: He said, I was once a fundamentalist. I think Dan still is. He's just switched gods. He has fundamentalistically clung to his naturalistic materialism, and anything that would point beyond the borders of that materialism must be denied.
02:10:32: And I simply say to you, who has borrowed whose worldview this evening? Why should
02:10:38: Dan, as Doug Wilson put it, complain that God's pro -choice in Psalm 137? If that's what he was complaining about.
02:10:47: If that's what God is. Why should he raise those issues? Why does he tell us this evening that there is no transcendent meaning and purpose to life?
02:11:00: You know what my hope this evening is? Very quickly, I met with a young man a number of years ago at a university here in Illinois up to the north.
02:11:08: We had a long conversation about his atheism, and when he left I said to him, you know, I think you're going to take that jacket with you when you leave.
02:11:15: He had denied whether that jacket really existed or not. I think you're going to take that jacket with you because it's cold outside. I think you're going to drive down the right -hand side of the road, and I think you're going to live a life where you're going to every single day have to borrow from my worldview to make yours work.
02:11:30: And Dan Barker is a brilliant man, and I'm going to hold him to sending me one of your CDs. I want to hear your piano playing, because I'm sure it's beautiful.
02:11:40: But my hope and prayer is that when Dan Barker sits down at the keyboard and he produces that which is objectively and transcendently beautiful, he's going to realize that he's doing it.
02:11:53: That he's not going to cheapen it by saying, oh, well, this is only beautiful because there's certain reactions in my brain.
02:12:01: That that beauty is real beauty. Meaning is real meaning. Purpose is real purpose.
02:12:09: And after you and I are gone, those things will still be true, valid, beautiful, and right.
02:12:16: I submit to you that no society will last long that doesn't believe those things. And no person will ever find true fulfillment until they know those things.
02:12:24: Thank you very much for being here this evening. Thank you.
02:12:32: And thanks to both speakers for staying within the time limit. We now have time for questions.
02:12:39: Shall we begin with Dr. White? First question for Dr. White. Each speaker will have 60 seconds and then 30 seconds for rebuttal.
02:12:51: Why is God necessary for human deaths to be meaningful to me? How does lack of cosmic importance make the death of someone
02:13:00: I love meaningless to me? Well, I didn't say it would be meaningless to you.
02:13:06: The point is, you keep using the term to you. Why are you assigning meaning to this in light of the fact that we are cosmic broccoli?
02:13:15: The fact that this is simply a natural thing, isn't it? Isn't that what death is in a materialistic worldview?
02:13:21: All we are is protoplasm that develops a problem and stops existing. Why should that cause anyone any type of fear?
02:13:28: Why should that cause anyone any type of sadness when protoplasm ceases being protoplasm? You see,
02:13:34: I raised this issue. Dan wants to get beyond this and I salute him for that. He wants to get beyond the mere naturalism of Darwinism and assign higher meanings.
02:13:44: My whole point is, why? Upon what basis? I have a basis for doing that in regards to the fact that we are created in the image of God.
02:13:52: But why does a person who denies the existence of God make this type of arbitrary assignment when could make just the exact opposite arbitrary assignment?
02:14:04: Meaning only exists within minds. If minds did not exist, there would be no meaning.
02:14:10: Values are created within minds that have needs, basic physical needs. And so we find meaningful those things which lessen real harm in the real world because we are natural organisms in a natural environment.
02:14:22: Meaning is just a label for a concept of the functioning of a mind. And I'm happy with it not being cosmic.
02:14:28: I'm happy with meaning. I think meaning is more meaningful when it is limited to who I am and to who we are as a species.
02:14:34: When our species goes extinct, the meaning will disappear. Question for Mr.
02:14:39: Barker. Why should an atheist obey any laws or be moral at all?
02:14:45: What is the value of kindness in the context of your world view? We are social animals.
02:14:51: We evolved to be that way. The natural human instinct is to be good and kind which are good evolutionary reasons for that.
02:14:57: And a lot of research supports that. When someone does a horrible thing, what do we say? What an inhuman thing to do.
02:15:02: We assume that our species as social animals are naturally good and instinctive.
02:15:07: And the reason is because our actions are avoiding harm. Harm is a natural thing.
02:15:13: Harm is a physical thing. Harm is hunger, lack of shelter, pain, being eaten, not being able to enjoy.
02:15:22: All these things that happen to be part of our natural world. The reason we want to be moral is so that we can survive.
02:15:31: We evolved with that instinct. It wasn't even a reason to it. The instinct that we have was for the survival.
02:15:37: We wouldn't be here if we didn't have that. There are naturalistic explanations for the value of morality, naturalistic morality.
02:15:46: And I submit that hanging morality on something outside of nature can lead to immense immorality.
02:15:54: Rebuttal? Well, I would just simply point out that if you want to talk about immense immorality, look at what
02:16:00: Darwinian social theory created in the 20th century. It has been often pointed out to Dan that people like Stalin and others were acting consistently with their worldview.
02:16:11: He says, oh, Christians have done terrible things too. Yeah, but they were acting in contradiction to their worldview.
02:16:16: Stalin was not acting in contradiction to his worldview. So we once again have to ask, well, Dan says it's so we can survive.
02:16:23: Well, why should one survive over another survive? Next question goes to Dr.
02:16:29: White. Does design in nature entail only the Christian God, and why?
02:16:36: Well, my whole point has been that while you can speak of bare theism, I don't find bare theism as a rational position to defend.
02:16:45: I am a Christian theist, and I do not find another perspective to be defensible, and so I can only defend what
02:16:53: I actually believe. Yes, I do believe that there are some fundamental issues. For example, if you do not have community in God as you have with Father, Son, and Spirit, then you have to ask questions about how can
02:17:04: God's love be eternal if it doesn't have an object to be expressed to, et cetera, et cetera.
02:17:11: But one would have to simply ask, well, which competing religion do you want to discuss?
02:17:17: And if it's a monotheistic religion, then I've probably done debates on that very issue with them for that very purpose.
02:17:24: I don't find polytheism at all to be a rational or defensible position. So I would primarily focus upon monotheistic religions where at least you have this concept of God as the creator that you can start with.
02:17:37: I've debated Muslim scholars twice on a public occasion and sometimes informally, and they use the same arguments, the same so -called evidence that you are using to argue for the existence of Allah.
02:17:48: And by the way, Islam is truly monotheistic, unlike Christianity. In Islam, God has no son, has no children.
02:17:56: It's a totally different God, and yet the Muslim scholars are using your very arguments and very facts to argue for the existence of their deity.
02:18:04: Okay. This next question is for Mr. Barker. You stated that you do not speak for all atheists in representing a functionalist worldview.
02:18:15: Should theists not wait until all atheists agree on this point before engaging them in debate?
02:18:21: This answers to your assertion that disagreement among theists or Christians is a strong general argument for the non -existence of God.
02:18:29: Well, that's a good point, except when we're discussing the mind. If we were having a debate on the mind, then that would be a valid point.
02:18:37: There is disagreement, but when we're discussing the existence of a God, by definition, all atheists reject the existence of a
02:18:45: God. Either they lack a belief in a God, or they possess a belief that there is no God.
02:18:51: That question is comparing apples and oranges. Well, I don't think that it is at all.
02:18:57: I think the point is that the argument that, well, there are different views from people who call themselves Christians, does that mean that the actual biblical perspective is not discernible or determinable?
02:19:06: That's not the case. We live in a day where people go, well, there's just so many different opinions, and no one therefore can say that they're right.
02:19:12: Well, if we read Dan's book and came up with 50 different opinions, does that mean that this doesn't present one perspective?
02:19:21: Or does that mean that people are not necessarily the best readers at all times? This next question is for Dr.
02:19:29: White. If intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe, has God revealed himself to said beings?
02:19:36: Are they in his image as well? Are there other alien Jesuses? Wow, I didn't bring my communicator with me to get the answer to that one, but on a merely theoretical level, my belief, given what's, and again, this can only come from my theology of the
02:19:58: New Testament, is that God's purpose in creation has been to glorify himself in the redemption of a peculiar people in Jesus Christ.
02:20:07: The idea of multiple saviors on multiple planets just doesn't seem to make any sense to me. And so, it would seem to me that, in light of that, that purpose of God would be limited to that revelation, and that any existence of anything else, we know that the
02:20:24: Bible speaks of angelic beings, for example, that existence of those other beings would be subservient to his purposes in his revelation in Jesus Christ, specifically as Jesus of Nazareth.
02:20:35: So, hypothetical questions are interesting, but I think they'd have to take second place to that overall biblical approach.
02:20:43: Rebuttal? Well, maybe on those other planets, virgin births are common things, and it wouldn't be seen as a miracle.
02:20:52: I'd like to know what the DNA of Jesus looked like, wouldn't you? If he was impregnated, if a woman was impregnated by a ghost, then what did the male side of the chromosome...
02:21:03: Have you ever thought about that? What was the... It wasn't Joseph. Joseph wasn't the father. So, maybe the ghost was an alien from one of those cultures that came then.
02:21:13: I don't know how that works. It's too bad we can't go back and look at the DNA of Jesus. This question is for Mr.
02:21:19: Barker. What evidence would prove the existence of God to you, if provided, do you honestly think you would believe?
02:21:28: I honestly do think I would believe. It would be stupid to ignore something like a God. If a
02:21:33: God exists, I would want to know that. It would be amazing. I would have a million questions to ask. We atheists don't have our heads stuck in the sand.
02:21:40: We're not rejecting God because we want to be free of the moral restraints so we can just kill and rape and steal.
02:21:46: That's not why we're atheists. We're atheists because we want to know. And if there's a
02:21:51: God, I would like to know that. If James were to pray and ask God to do a prophecy, for example, the prophecies that happen in the
02:21:59: Bible, and God were to tell James that tomorrow a meteor would strike this building at 85 degrees and end up 7 inches below the basement floor consisting of 73 % iron and 2 % iridium and so on, and if that actually happened as James says
02:22:15: God told him that would happen, I would be impressed and I would say, oops, I was wrong. I'd be happy to change my mind.
02:22:22: Atheism is exquisitely vulnerable to falsifiability. Theism is not.
02:22:31: Ironically, what Dan demands would be some type of physical manifestation that would convince him, you know,
02:22:38: God showing up on stage or something like that. But isn't it ironic that we can look at the 53rd chapter of Isaiah, we can look at the 22nd
02:22:45: Psalm, we can look at Isaiah chapter 9 written hundreds of years before the ministry of Christ and find these things uniquely fulfilled against the expectations of people around them, but that's not sufficient.
02:22:59: I think we have a problem there. Question for Dr. White. Do you believe the
02:23:05: Bible is 100 % literally true? And if not, how are verses categorized as literal or metaphorical?
02:23:13: Well, it's obvious the Bible contains all sorts of literature, so when you say literally true, hopefully you're not taking that in the sense of, well,
02:23:20: I have to read every word and when Jesus says he's a door, that means he has hinges and a doorknob. This is not how
02:23:25: Christian scholarship approaches the text of the Bible. There is apocalyptic, there's parable, there's didactic, there's all sorts of different kinds of literature in the
02:23:34: Bible and it has to be read in its own context, first and foremost, for what it meant to the people to whom it was written.
02:23:41: Much of the epistolary literature, for example, had a specific context in a specific time, and that has to be determined first.
02:23:48: This is what Christian scholarship does and as I teach in seminary, that's what I teach when I teach people to do the exegesis of the text, is to first honor the intention of the author, the intention that he wanted to communicate to his first audience, and then you make application from there.
02:24:04: That's how you handle really any ancient literature, but especially if you want to honor the intention of Scripture, you have to do that with the
02:24:11: Bible. In the Bible, there is actual face value truth and then there is metaphor and everybody draws that line in a different place.
02:24:21: Fundamentalists draw the line way down to include a lot of things that a lot of liberals don't and that was part of my process as I evolved out of Bible belief into rejecting the
02:24:31: Bible to see where do you draw that line as I explained during my closing statement and James draws his line in a place that seems reasonable to him, but to me that does not seem reasonable.
02:24:42: Snakes do not talk. I assume that James does not believe that an actual snake spoke human language.
02:24:49: Okay, this is the final question and I know you've already touched on this, but Mr. Barker, can you please tell us shortly what led you from belief in God to non -belief?
02:25:00: It's in the book. It was intellectual. It was not emotional. It was just learning that the claims that I was preaching as a
02:25:07: Christian minister, I preached for 19 years, are factually untrue. I know that Christians disagree.
02:25:13: I know that theologians disagree. I know that James has a particular position that he convinces himself with, but he doesn't convince all other
02:25:19: Christians. Other Christians who are equally devout and believe and think they are applying proper exegesis disagree with James and with me.
02:25:28: There are probably as many forms of Christianity as there are Christians. I went through a four or five year process of meeting all these different types of Christians and liking a lot of it and then realizing that, you know what, if the trumpet gives an uncertain sound, who's going to march to battle?
02:25:45: The total ball of wax of Christianity I realized is simply not true and that there's a better way.
02:25:51: We lack nothing by rejecting Christianity. We atheists and agnostics and humanists and non -believers have just as good lives, if not better lives, by getting rid of superstition and mythology.
02:26:04: Dan makes a strong case all the time that, well, if I wasn't a believer then nobody was, but he then at the same time, for example, has admitted that he knew nothing about the theory of evolution as a
02:26:15: Christian. He didn't know anything about textual criticism as a Christian. He admits that he was very ignorant of his own faith at that point as far as its background and things like that.
02:26:24: So then to make a parallel to Christians who do study these things, who expose themselves to those who are critics of the faith is an invalid parallel.
02:26:33: It simply isn't there. Thirty seconds is not a long period of time. Well, that actually concludes the debate, so please join me in welcoming and thanking both debaters.