The Barker v. Wilson Debate Examined

Webcasting around the world from the desert metropolis of Phoenix, Arizona. This is the dividing line. The Apostle Peter commanded Christians to be ready to give a defense for the hope that is within us.

Yet to give that answer with gentleness and reverence. Our host is dr. James white director of Alpha Omega ministries and an elder at the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church. This is a live program and we invite your participation.

If you'd like to talk with dr. White call now. It's 602 nine seven three four six zero two or toll-free across the United States. It's one eight seven seven seven five. Three three three four one and now with today's topic.

Here is James white.

Introducing the Barker-Wilson Debate Review

Hey good morning, welcome to the dividing line not much of a voice this morning. I'm afraid I'm gonna have to keep it On the low end if I'm gonna make it through the entire hour, but that's okay. We're not feeling too badly.

Just gotta gotta make the the voice last for the entire hour got that Got that really dry Tickling type cough. It seems to come up every spring. I'm not sure what it is. It's blooming out there, but I know some of you just got a bunch of snow and everything else.

That's unfortunately is not what we have out here. It's I don't even know what's supposed to be like today. It's supposed to be upper 80s 90 somewhere around there. It's it's pretty warm here in the Valley of the Sun much warmer than it's supposed to be this time of the year so everything's already blooming and I was gonna ride a couple days ago, and I literally had to put my head down and Breathe like I was breathing through a straw while riding because there were so many white flies That if I rode normally I would have gotten a huge Amount of protein extra protein.

Why is it that that bird attacks that camera only during the dividing line? It's it's like it's trying to get in it's sort of like an episode of the birds. Maybe it's a Mormon bird or something like that.

It's trying to get to us. I don't know anyway. I want to start a Series I Listened for the first time. I don't know how I missed this. Maybe just everybody assumed. I knew about it. Maybe everybody else had already listened to it.

I don't know. But I want to start a series on a debate that I listened to over the past few days while I was riding. And it is a debate took place in the late 1990s between Dan Barker the Head of the freedom from religion foundation a man that I encountered.

My first encounter with Dan Barker was live in the studio with Tom like us on KFYI radio in Phoenix, I might have been 22 maybe 23 somewhere around that age and this is one of the first atheists I ever took on was was Dan Barker and So that that in and of itself is gonna be fairly challenging but anyway, I could tell you more stories about that, but this is a debate between Dan Barker who himself is claims to be a former Christian and Was involved in quote-unquote ministry and he wrote musicals and he's an accomplished pianist.

In fact, he he informed me that he had helped to design the computer software that ran the trains for the entire Northeastern United States and he's he's quite impressed his own intellect, there's no question about that and His opponent was Doug Wilson now, I've debated Doug Wilson on a theological issue.

I listen to this the entirety of this debate and I know there's a lot of folks who would like to have me throw Doug Wilson under the bus and Kick him out of the kingdom and assign him to the flames of hell and so on and so forth but the fact the matter is this was a really really well done debate and When you have someone like Dan who is a little bit Pleased with himself.

He's more than happy to blaspheme just for the sake of blaspheming. Then it's good to have someone like Doug respond to him who has a real sense of humor and Can come back with with some real zingers that are that really communicate something.

And so that that was what was I think very useful in that from that perspective, but I just thought the debate was very very well done and There are a couple times. I was going who Barker's gonna score a point here and then and then Doug would come back with an excellent excellent response, and I honestly don't think That there's almost anything that Doug Wilson said in this debate that I would not have said.

In fact, I said there are a lot of things I would like to have said if I was smart enough to have thought to said them to say them in a debate like this so but of course in a debate you don't get the opportunity to respond to everything and You in fact you you really have to pick and choose tremendously what you want to respond to and so By playing portions of Barker's material.

I'm not criticizing Doug Wilson's responses. In fact, I'll be playing Some of the cross-examination. I just thought there was an excellent cross-ex points. But I just want to bring out some extra things some things beyond that.

It is interesting to me that I'm listening to Dan Barker saying maybe the same same things that Bart Ehrman is saying today. His his book Jesus interrupted arrived yesterday. I was just reading some more Anti-christian blather from there and So it's stuff that we need to be familiar with and so I thought I would play some sections of it.

It's available for download and mp3 format free from Covenant Media Foundation right now, if you go over there and search on it, you can grab the the mp3s of that and so let's go ahead I wanted I want to just sort of go through the opening statement and Already Doug has given his I'm not gonna be replaying the whole thing.

He gave a very good opening statement from a presuppositional perspective and now we'll be listening to to Dan Barker. This is from the late 90s. Actually, I think it was around 97 ish somewhere around that area.

I think it's on the the website exactly where he was asked to come. It might have been 96. I think about because they mentioned in the introduction that Dr. Bonson had died and The dr. Stein had died and they died within six months of each other late 95 and I think early 96.

So 96 97 somewhere around there. It's been a little while. I hadn't heard it before. I think it's really useful to listen to The You know this type of debate and to take it apart consider some things may provide some extra information You wouldn't normally be able to get.

And these issues remain very relevant today, so let's say let's listen I will address all of these points that Doug raised. But I can't help remarking that Doug just spent 15 minutes Proving what we atheists have known all along That God is a presupposition.

You just beautifully described the presupposition position Doug has.

Presuppositionalism and the Nature of Evidence

Now let me just mention something I'm gonna be cutting in and out. Obviously Doug did not present God as a presupposition. What he said was that the issue of God's existence will be decided based upon our presuppositions.

There's a major difference between the two. There's a major difference between saying God is a presupposition. I'm just simply going to put God in there and He is my starting presupposition and saying that apart from God You cannot make sense of anything that you have to have the Christian God for anything else to make sense.

Those are not the same Statements, and I did not get the feeling even though I cannot imagine Dan Barker would not have listened to the Bonson Stein debate. Which would would have been what 12 years old at that point in time somewhere around there, but it's possible.

You know. Maybe didn't. I don't know but he didn't really seem to know exactly what to do with Doug's presentation. He didn't abandon them is not important once again the the Presuppositionalist recognizes there is evidence for God.

He's later gonna misrepresent Doug and say well You don't think there's any evidence for God, and he's gonna say of course. There's lots of evidence for God, but what you do with that evidence depends upon the presuppositions you bring to the discussion what your ultimate authorities are and so Dan just did not seem to really have a Grasp on this certainly the form of Christianity that he claims to been a part of Would not have given him any type of reformed background whatsoever that leads to I think some of the miss Misconceptions on his part.

Logical arguments and so on. He apparently also has abandoned evidence. He hasn't given us any evidence for a deity. All he has given us is a Presupposition, but I will address that during the rebuttal time.

The reason I don't believe in a god is because there's no evidence.

But a kiss has traditionally taken now. Did you catch that he's given us no evidence? But the reason I believe in God's there is no evidence and of course Doug's whole point was as soon as you start talking about evidence.

You're going to have start borrowing from my worldview. Otherwise you're just a bunch of Adams Bouncing around and knocking into each other and and there is there's no Transcendent meaning there's no purpose words don't have any meaning.

There's there's no way of defining anything etc. Etc and He just just runs. He does a faceplant directly into that argumentation right from the beginning as I would imagine.

Doug expected he would three approaches. We can't do all three tonight. The the basic approach of every atheist is to say not that God has been disproved. But that God has been unproved. Therefore. I am without theism.

I am a theistic. To be atheistic is like to be a political or a moral doesn't mean you're opposed to those things. It just means you're simply without a belief in those things. Let me ask the question How many people in this room tonight believe in the existence of the Norse god Thor.

Anybody out there.

Now I Don't know if this was being done much before this, but this is really common now. And you need to be aware of it is very very common for the atheist to argue along these lines and that is well We're all atheists.

You may have heard the infidel guy using similar type of argumentation Right at the beginning of his program. We played his encounter with Bart Ehrman. But they want to sort of bring you along as a well.

We're all atheists. The only difference between you and me is that you Reject 99 out of 100 gods. I just reject 100 out of 100 gods as if that is the only Worldview difference as if that is that is somehow sufficient to really Summarize the massive difference between viewing ourselves as created.

The world is created. Positing a a clear and obvious source of the design of the world the design of our lives the complexity of life everything else is the difference between Rejecting 99 out of 100 and rejecting 100 out of 100 that that doesn't even begin to accurately reflect The reality.

The reality is that if you believe that there is one true and eternal God you're going to reject any type of Pretension to that God ship by something that is less than true deity. But to say that the atheist is just one step farther than that is to completely misrepresent the point.

How many people here believe in the existence of the Egyptian God Osiris. Million of people for years believe in that. Any takers on Osiris. No, what about? What about Diana? Oh, there's a taker on Osiris, okay?

What about Diana. The Greek goddess Diana. And you bet any takers. There might be a few goddess? No. We could go through a long list of gods Including Allah the Islamic God including the God that's in the Christian and Judeo-Christian scriptures at Jehovah.

How many people in this audience believe in the existence of Jehovah. Are there a few. Yeah, okay? I would guess there would be some here and predominantly Christian country. The only difference between You and me is that I believe in one less God than you do.

You're all atheists. When it comes to somebody else's God you reject the mythological gods of other religions that were held so dearly Inherit held so strongly by generations and generations of true devoted believers who had never heard of.

The Hebrew God or Jehovah. You know I the more I think about it the more almost offensive it is. That you are all atheists about somebody else's God. That's not what atheism is now. He's already defined as all pretty much all modern atheists do his soft atheism.

Where I don't deny the existence of God. I just don't think the case has been proved a sort of a weak a stronger form of agnosticism. Trying to get away from having to do what the atheist has to do and that is to bear any kind of Burden for presenting a coherent atheistic worldview.

They don't want to have to do that. They that they recognize that there's that's a dead-end path for them. And so they try to go around the other direction is in essence what they're doing.

The Indian tribe that I come from that goes back at least 12 ,000 years worships Not Jesus not not Jehovah, but they had a certain nature God religion, which now I reject. We're all atheists in this room, and I think I think all of us will have to admit in your heart of hearts.

You have to admit this when you're honest with yourself. You know in your heart of hearts that we all live in a completely godless universe. It is 100 natural. There are no artificial attitudes. We live in a universe that is governed strictly by natural laws.

And you know that when you pretend to believe in the God when you presuppose that these scriptures are true, and they're not.

You know you're playing games now now catch catch this kind of pure rhetoric. This isn't this isn't debate argumentation upon what basis. Can he possibly? Pretend to know what I believe in the sense of well you're pretending.

You know in your heart of hearts, there is no God blah blah. He's gonna do this all through the debate putting on an air of Certainty and air of Knowledge, and I just wonder how how can he know what's going on in my heart?

You know when I talk about the fact that he knows God exists. And he's suppressing that I at least have a a foundation upon which to say that I'm saying he's created image of God God has revealed. This is the case and therefore.

I'm saying this, but if I'm just you know random matter and With no transcendent meaning and he has a different nervous system than I do. Then how can he pretend to know what's in my heart? I don't get that what.

So it's pure rhetoric has no meaning as far as a debate. Meaningful debate is concerned you know that in your heart of the heart.

It is we atheists who have the honesty and the courage to admit that the Emperor has no clothes. We know it, and we say it and we're not afraid of it. A Belief in a God turns out to be a huge failure of nerve.

You can't imagine living in a universe that is random and just atoms banging around together, but what if that's true. Does that scare you? You can't imagine living in a universe from which there's no external purpose you have to find within yourself, and you don't trust yourself.

Your minister has spent years telling you that you're wrong that you're damned that you deserving of hell. The Bible tells you that no one has ever done any one good thing and so we have this negative self-image.

If there's one thing it is obvious that this the existence of God is not obvious. I'm not going to take the approach tonight of showing that there's no evidence. Doctors conceded that.

I'm not no. Doug did not concede anything of the kind. It reminds me a little bit of debating gerrymatitics where you you constantly have to correct Just these cheap debating tricks. Doug Doug had not conceded anything of that kind.

His assertion had been that obviously you interpret evidence Within a particular presuppositional framework and when you bring certain presuppositions to the table Then that allows you to continue to suppress that knowledge, which is right there in front of you to begin with.

So again Either Barker doesn't understand or much more probably. And I get a lot of trouble to say this but atheists don't have any reason not to twist the truth. I Mean, let's let's face it. Well, there's no transcendent ethical Demand upon them that they accurately represent what their opponent is saying.

And so if you if your goal is to attack belief in God Then why should you worry about being accurate in representing? What Doug Wilson or anybody else is saying? So there's there's no. You know, the Christian has a External reason to himself to be truthful in his representations of others.

But that's not the case for an atheist also going to avoid showing that all of the traditional arguments have failed. They have failed. Miserably, I'm going to take a third approach which gives us atheists something positive to say.

Rather than just spending our lives rebutting I'm going to take a positive approach that I expect it doesn't to rebut tonight and that is. It's an old argument basically, but that is to show that the very concept of God Himself or itself is logically incoherent.

When Doug talks about the trying of God of Scripture He's using words but we don't know what it means and we can't know what it means and in fact. Makes no sense to argue whether or not a God does exist if such a God cannot exist.

God is supposed to be a spirit. But what is a spirit? The spirit is a thing with no body or brain. How can a person not have a physical component? We have no experience of any person.

Without some physical brain or component to it yet. Douglas notice. This is going to be very very common throughout Dan's comments in his presentation. Is this idea that if God isn't like us if he does not conform to human categories, they just must not exist.

The very fact that we Say that our personal existence is based upon a much higher existence. He is the creator. We are the created and that while we bear the image of God that does not mean that we somehow are little gods ourselves.

But that we are creatures. God is eternal. He's outside the realm of time. He's gonna most of his arguments are all going to based on time paradoxes. That simply don't work for the Christian view of God in the first place.

And by the way, I should I should mention the thesis of the debate was that the triune Christian God of Scripture lives. Stop the triune Christian God of Scripture lives. And so it wasn't there is a God there is a deity.

Doug Wilson following in the footsteps of Greg Bonson very plainly stated. And very clearly presented the idea that he's only going to defend the Christian God and not something lesser than that and I appreciated that as well.

So this argumentation that he's going to be presenting is very much based upon trying to turn the Eternal Christian God into Basically just a large man. He's going to try to squish him into physical categories and then create paradoxes off off of that and it's.

If you're familiar with meaningful theology, it doesn't really work very well.

God, Infinity, and Time

A being if God is a being must have an identity. But if God is infinite then he's not a being at all. To have an identity means you can be defined but to define something is to limit it, right?

No, it is not to define something is not to limit it. That would be like they'd be like saying well God can't exist because If he's light then we can't define darkness or something like that, I guess.

It's difficult for me to understand how someone as intelligent as mr. Barker can make this kind of argumentation when it's so obviously fallacious. We are not limiting God by speaking the truth about God that would require the idea of Unlimited or infinite to be to mean incapable of being lied about.

Which of course does not follow so The the entire assertion is is based upon utter irrationality.

The girl from New Jersey with the red hair who weighs this much, you know, the old guy from New York. We limit by defining somebody we limit who you are. But an infinite being has no limits. To have limits.

To have no limits then is to have no identity at all. Equivocation.

Obviously taking the idea of Infinite not being limited not by not that doesn't mean no definition. No identity, but not limited by time or space. Or you have to define what kind of infinitude we're talking about and then Equivocating that over to the idea that oh, well a definition is a limitation.

Therefore. It's no longer Infinite which is just using one word in multiple ways and it's it's really bad argumentation. It it amazes me that someone would get up in public and utilize this at least someone.

With the obvious intelligence that the Dan Barker possesses and you have no identity is not to exist at all. If God is infinite he has no way of being described or defined. Think about this. My son told me that this argument impressed him.

He's in high school. If God is eternal. If God is an infinite being. Then there must have been an infinite number of previous thoughts in his mind, right? But we know mathematically you can never arrive at infinity.

So now this is the this is One of the theistic proofs turned backwards on itself, but it is of course Improperly done and that is what is the component that has been added to this? You see normally what you hear is you hear the theist saying there cannot be an unlimited number of events Leading to the events of today.

The universe cannot be self-caused. You cannot have infinite regression. And what's missing here is both the idea of cause and effect which is part and part of the the argumentation provided by theists and.

The major issue here is no one's going to argue that the created universe exists outside of time. But the Christian God is the creator of time. For Dan Barker the Christian God is always subject to time and therefore he brings that's like I said before he tries to create these paradoxes Based upon limiting God to the realm of time.

But if God actually exists outside the realm of time is the creator of time itself. Then these types of arguments simply don't work as this argument does not work either.

God is an infinite being he must have been thinking fast for an infinite period of time. Therefore he could never have got to this current thought in his mind. He could never have got here could he. Therefore God must have had a beginning.

This is the Kalam argument. Turned on his head. I know you know that one a lot of theists like to use it to show that the universe had a beginning. But if so, then so did God. You shoot yourself in the foot.

A being who is eternal. Cannot possibly exist cannot possibly have existed for eternity.

Think about this again all based upon asserting temporality as being. Not only in essence part of God's being but necessary for God's being his temporality. Bring him down to the level of creature. And then say well It's impossible for a God who is limited like we are to actually be the God you're describing which of course is Is a tautology because we're not saying that he is that and we would agree that if he is just merely an exalted creature Subject to time in that way that he would not exist as we claim that he exists, but we claim that he is eternal.

He's the creator of all things and so the argumentation. I'm not sure who he's trying to impress, but it's certainly not the Christians in the audience.

God is all-knowing. Okay, that means he knows everything about the past the present and the future. That means he also knows everything about himself. And to know means what does it mean to know. It means to have an internal?

Imaging in your mind. God supposedly has a mind. The Bible talks about the mind of God. To know means to have an image in your mind. What is the bluebird? I have an image. So God knows himself. So God must have an image of himself in his mind.

It also wouldn't be God. He wouldn't know what he's going to think next right? But that image of himself that he has in his mind to be complete must contain the image of himself within his mind also. On ad infinitum.

An infinite God in an all-knowing God cannot exist logically. Infinity does not exist. Therefore how in the world can an infinite God keep track of himself. Keeping track of himself keeping track of himself?

He would spend all of his time remembering all of these things that he did for an eternity. He would have no time to do anything as a functional being. Such a being is not a mind. Such a being is not a person.

And if your God requires personality your God does not exist.

Um that just is almost so absurd that it's it's hard to even respond to it. Evidently the idea is that If you're an infinite being Then it's almost like the speed of light idea the closer you get to the speed of light then your mass begins Increasing at an exponential rate.

That's why most people feel Star Trek could never happen because you know. You'd not be able to get past warp 1 etc. Etc. Evidently the idea is that again trying to limit God to just a big creature like men as if somehow our Paradigm of knowledge determines God's rather than ours being reflective of a greater creator.

Again, not dealing with Christian God and not really dealing with Doug's presentation, but just doing what atheists do. The idea is that the more knowledge you have then the more you have to know about what you're doing and if you have to have this image in your mind of what you're doing, then you have to be constantly keep a track yourself and and Evidently, even though God's infinite his processor can only go so fast.

I guess is the argument or something like that I don't know about you. But I just it would have been difficult for me not to have chuckled just a little bit in Listening to this kind of argumentation.

I guess I could have cut this part, but I have a more fun argument for the non-existence of God it's been said before but I'm calling it the The free will argument for the non-existence of God. It's called F a ng thing.

I.

Presume that if God is a person you got right for this the free will argument for the non-existence of God now. Doug did an excellent job in taking this apart. But I Just have a feeling there are a bunch of Calvinists in the audience.

Just chuckling going. Yo, dude, we're over on this hill. Well over here.

Free Will, Moral Reasoning, and the Problem of Evil

Yeah, I could just I can associate whatever free will means that God has free will. I assume that that's part of his. He can make choices. He can change his mind but to have free will you have to have at least five conditions and maybe more.

You have to have a Desire. You have to need or want something. You have to have more than one options available to you. You have to have the ability to choose those options, which means you have the strength you have the skill the know-how you have.

You you also have to have reasons. You don't just choose willy-nilly. You have to have a rational choice for what your free will is exercising. You also have to have the freedom which means there's a lack of restraints.

You must you must not be incarcerated or not have some other physical restraint and this is very important in order to have free will. You can't know the future.

Okay to have free will you cannot know the future. Again all of this just projecting from human categories on to God as if somehow. This kind of self-limitation is is relevant. We'll hear how this all works out after we take our break and continue listening to Dan Barker's opening statement from the 1997 debate With Doug Wilson.

I got the feeling this debate took place back east somewhere. Because some comment was made along those lines. I'm not sure exactly what the location was but Doug Wilson Stepped in in essence. Originally the idea had been to have Greg Bonson involved, but of course Greg Bonson passed away.

And so this is an excellent example of a presuppositional approach. Doug Wilson versus Dan Barker will be right back.

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The Cross-Examination on Objective Morality and Abortion

And welcome back to the dividing line. We are listening to the 1997 debate between Dan Barker and Doug Wilson listening only to portions of it. Mainly Dan Barker's portions also goes to the cross X because I thought that one very very well.

Indeed, but we're listening to Dan Barker's opening statement warning. I should have said this before but warning warning blasphemy alert. Dan Barker does not mind Sticking his finger in the eye of any Christian in the audience, so if you are squeamish about such things you Might want to listen to some nice quiet music or something.

You have free will. You have to have an uncertainty about the future. If there's a God who's all-knowing he knows the future. He knows what he's gonna do tomorrow at 12 o 'clock. He knows if he's gonna.

Destroy Sodom and Gomorrah with and now you've already seen the problem here, right? I mean by definition you have said. By my definition you cannot have free will if you know the future. I know that you believe God knows the future therefore.

This is my argument against your God. You haven't explained. Why that is you haven't explained anything about the Christian perspective of God's Timelessness his existence outside the realm of time or how his eternal decree interfaces with time anything.

You've not addressed any of that stuff. You're just simply Making up an argument saying okay, I'm going to define it in such a way that God can't exist. That's that's really all there is to it and the theist is left going.

I see okay. Well, that's that's that's deep, but that's not exactly a meaningful argument.

He knows how many people will take it well before he changes his mind. So when tomorrow at 12 noon comes can God change his mind? If he knows in advance what he's going to do tomorrow at 12 noon, then he's stuck.

When 12 noon comes tomorrow, he can't change his mind. He's determined. He's been basically. God is a deterministic being if God goes ahead and changes his mind because he's all-powerful. Then he didn't know did he.

So he can't have a God who is both all-powerful.

And all-knowing though and limited to time as he's attempting to present him which is of course the problem.

Two concepts are mutually exclusive. A being like that cannot Exist. If God comes up to 12 noon, and he says well I've got it I've got to choose coffee over tea because I knew yesterday I was going to choose coffee over tea.

That puts severe limits on His power doesn't it? He's stuck. He's more deterministic than any any of any of us might think we are. But God also falls the desire fails on the desire. To desire is to lack something.

To desire is to want or to need something better. To desire is to lack something. Why?