So without further ado, we're going to go ahead and get started with our opening statement from Dr. Wood. Good evening. I'd like to thank Rashio Christie for arranging our debate tonight and Kenesaw State University for hosting. Every day on the internet, I'm told that there's a battle raging with science and atheism on one side, united against the diabolical forces of religion on the other. The German physicist Max Planck saw things quite differently. Planck, who won the Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on quantum theory, said this, religion and natural science are fighting a joint battle in an incessant, never-relaxing crusade against skepticism and against dogmatism, against disbelief and against superstition. And the rallying cry in this crusade has always been and always will be, on to God. For Planck, religion and science stood together against the extreme positions of skepticism and disbelief to their left and dogmatism and superstition to their right. I'm glad to see that Planck's crusade continues here in the Peach State. I'd also like to thank Dr. Schermer for representing the forces of skepticism and disbelief this evening. I started reading Dr. Schermer's column in Scientific American back in 2002. The first installment I read was titled, Schermer's Last Law. I finished reading it and thought to myself, brilliant, but wrong. Hope I get to debate this man one day and straighten him out. So thank you, Dr. Schermer, for making a 14-year dream come true. Now, on to God. There are dozens of arguments for the existence of God to keep things simple. I'll only be presenting one here in my opening statement. I'm somewhat reluctant to call theism a hypothesis because I think it functions differently from the way hypotheses typically function. But since theism is under investigation, tonight I'll call it a hypothesis for purposes of this debate. Treating theism as a hypothesis, my argument runs as follows. Premise one, no hypothesis in history has more scientific confirmation than theism. As we'll see shortly, this is a tremendous understatement. Premise two, no hypothesis in history has more scientific disconfirmation than atheism. This also is a tremendous understatement. Conclusion, if we have any respect whatsoever for science, we must accept theism and reject atheism. I'll call this argument the defibrillator because it's shocking and may lead to revival. To the untrained mind, of course, the defibrillator may sound absurd. Some people, after all, have been raised to believe that science can function apart from theism but never occurs to them to question what they've been taught. So they now believe, by blind faith, that God is not necessary for science. If you're one of those people, prepare to be defibrillated.  Ordinary scientific hypotheses are tentative claims about the world usually based on some sort of observation, claims that are confirmed or disconfirmed as relevant evidence comes in. A hypothesis becomes much stronger if you not only find lots of confirming evidence but also discover why the hypothesis is correct. So you notice a piece of copper conducts electricity and you put together a scientific hypothesis, all copper conducts electricity. Then you test your hypothesis by getting different pieces of copper and seeing if they too conduct electricity. You find that they do. This supports your hypothesis. Then you ask why copper conducts electricity and you discover that free electrons in copper can move through the metal and this makes copper a good conductor. There are tons of scientific hypotheses being tested around the globe but all of these ordinary scientific hypotheses are ultimately derived from the scientific hypothesis, capital s, capital h. The scientific hypothesis is the hypothesis on which science as we know it rests. There are three key elements of the scientific hypothesis. One, the universe can be understood. Two, we can understand it. And three, it's good for us to understand it. If you don't believe that the universe is at bottom rational, you're not going to spend years of your life gathering data to figure out its laws. If you don't believe that human beings are capable of understanding the universe, why waste your time trying? If you don't believe that it's good to understand the universe, why would you want to? So intelligibility, the universe can be understood. Capability, we can understand it. And desirability, we want to understand it. These are the three key elements of the scientific hypothesis and all three have to be in place for science to get off the ground. In the 21st century, we take the scientific hypothesis for granted. We believe that the universe can be understood, that we're the kinds of things that can understand it and that it's good for us to understand it. But there was a time when the vast majority of people didn't believe these things. They didn't believe that the universe could be understood or that we could understand it or that it was good to understand it. And so even though there were some scientific achievements among the ancient Greeks and the Egyptians and the Chinese and the Muslims, there was never anything that would amount to a revolution in our way of thinking about the world. But in the 16th and 17th centuries, a group of devout atheists decided to uncover the secrets of the universe. These atheists produced an explosion of scientific research in the budding fields of astronomy, physics, chemistry, and biology. Oh, did I say atheists? I meant Christians. They were all Christians. Here we might wonder, why did these Christians dedicate their lives to understanding the universe? Let's ask them and we'll allow them to answer from their own writings. It's time for Q&A with the pioneers of the Scientific Revolution. Here goes. First question, Nicholas Copernicus, the publication of your book on the revolutions of the heavenly spheres, generally marks the beginning of the Scientific Revolution. What were you thinking when you started this revolution? Copernicus' actual response, to know the mighty works of God, to comprehend his wisdom and majesty and power, to appreciate in degree the wonderful workings of his laws. Surely all this must be a pleasing and acceptable mode of worship to the most high to whom ignorance cannot be more gratifying than knowledge. Now that's odd. Sounds like his scientific research was grounded in his religious beliefs. I thought he was worshiping God by studying the universe. I guess we should ignore him and move on. Tico Brahe. Spent decades recording astronomical data and your measurements were five times more accurate than the best measurements available before you. Why did you spend so much time studying the stars? Brahe's response, those who study the stars have God for a teacher. Studying the stars because you want to learn from God. How weird is that? Galileo Galilei. You're called the father of modern observational astronomy. Why did you decide to give birth to modern observational astronomy? Galileo's response, I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason and intellect has intended us to forego their use. When I reflect on so many profoundly marvelous things that persons have grasped, sought and done, I recognize even more clearly that human intelligence is a work of God and one of the most excellent. Johannes Kepler. You sifted through astronomical data year after year in order to come up with your three laws of planetary motion. Why did you do it? Kepler's response, our piety is the deeper, the greater is our awareness of creation and its grandeur. Since we astronomers are priests of the highest God in regard to the Book of Nature, it befits us to be thoughtful, not of the glory of our minds, but rather above all else of the glory of God. Renee Descartes. You wrote early texts on optics, anatomy and psychology, but you're also the father of modern philosophy and the master of methodic doubt. Surely you can cast doubt on all this talk about God. Descartes' response, I see plainly that the certainty and truth of all knowledge depends uniquely on my awareness of the true God to such an extent that I was incapable of perfect knowledge about anything else until I became aware of Him. Lay's Pascal, mathematician, physicist, philosopher, inventor, pioneer of probability theory, aren't all these other scientists being unreasonable? Pascal's response, there are two kinds of people one can call reasonable, those who serve God with all their heart because they know Him and those who seek Him with all their heart because they do not know Him. Robert Boyle, father of modern chemistry, pioneer of the experimental method in science. What drove your research? Boyle's response, the vastness, beauty and orderliness of heavenly bodies, the excellent structure of animals and plants and other phenomena of nature justly induce an intelligent, unprecedented observer to conclude a supreme, powerful, just and good author. In the book of Nature, as in a well-contrived romance, the parts have such a connection to one another and the things we would discover are so darkly and incompletely knowable by those that precede them that the mind is never satisfied until it comes to the end of the book. Antony von Leuenhoek, father of microbiology, you constructed such amazing microscopes that you were the first scientist to observe and describe microorganisms. Why did you want to see what eyes had never seen? Leuenhoek's response, it is to be hoped that the inquirers into nature's works by searching deeper and deeper into her hidden mysteries will more and more place the discoveries of the truth before the eyes of all so as to produce aversion to the errors of former times which all those who loved the truth ought diligently to aim at. For we cannot in any manner better glorify the Lord and Creator of the universe than that in all things how small forever they appear to our naked eyes which have yet received the gift of life and power of increase we contemplate the display of his omniscience and perfections with the utmost admiration. Isaac Newton, physicist, co-discoverer of calculus considered by many to be the greatest scientist in history. Your laws of universal gravitation in motion provided the grand synthesis that concluded the scientific revolution. Tell us what you think of atheism. Newton's response, atheism is so senseless and odious to mankind that it never had many professors. You seeing a pattern? The scientists of the scientific revolution would roll over in their graves if they heard a bunch of 18-year-old atheists claiming to be champions of science just because they follow Richard Dawkins on Twitter. So why were Christians the pioneers of the scientific revolution? Here our atheist friends often insist that it was just dumb luck anyone could have done it and if Europe had been filled with atheists it would have happened even faster. But this is sheer nonsense. There were cultures and civilizations around the world. Plenty of people had the opportunity to study astronomy and physics and chemistry and biology but these branches of science all took off at roughly the same time in one particular civilization. It only makes sense that we should ask why. The problem is that when we ask the people who did it why they immediately start talking about their belief that the universe was created by a rational being and that since human beings were created in the image of this rational being we can understand the universe and that by setting out to understand it we're worshiping God. As for atheists thinking that they could have come up with science without Christians doing it for them let's take a quick trip to Planet Reality. Atheists would have been the last people to ever start a scientific revolution. Why is that? Well anyone can do science now because we all accept the scientific hypothesis. We all believe that the universe can be understood that we're the kinds of things that can understand it and that it's good for us to understand it but the pioneers of the scientific revolution already believe these things before they set out to prove them. They believe them based on their theology. They came up with a method of proving them and that method became the scientific method. Now if you were an atheist before the scientific revolution would you have any reason to think that the universe is governed by neat little mathematical equations? Of course not. It wouldn't make any sense to say that a falling rock is going to obey an equation. Rock doesn't have a will, can't obey anything so intelligibility goes out the window. What about capability? If you're an atheist before the scientific revolution why would you think that human beings are capable of figuring out the laws of nature? Even if you happen to think that there were laws of nature which as an atheist I doubt you would why would you think that you could discover them? You're not made for that sort of thing. You're not made for anything. You'd have no idea how you got here and no reason to think that you're capable of figuring out how you got there so you'd be trapped in a kind of bubble with no escape. How about desirability? Supposing for the sake of argument that you believe that there were laws of nature which again I don't think you would and that you believe that human beings could discover these laws which again I don't think you would why would you want to? I understand seeking knowledge that has some practical benefit like growing better crops or building an air conditioner but from an atheistic perspective what's the point of seeking knowledge that has no practical benefit? So the three key elements of the scientific hypothesis absolutely no sense given atheism but all three make perfect sense from a Christian perspective long before the scientific revolution and the universities of Europe which oddly enough were founded by Christians medieval philosophers and theologians laid the groundwork for science even before the universities were formed Augustine said let the Bible be a book for you so that you may hear it let the sphere of the world be a book for you that you may see it Augustine tells us to read the book of nature recall Kepler declaring that astronomers are priests of the highest guard of the highest regard priests of the highest god in regard to the book of nature and Boyle comparing the universe to a romance novel that you can't stop reading until you reach the end Thomas Aquinas argued since human beings are said to be in the image of God by virtue of their having a nature that includes an intellect such a nature is most in the image of God in virtue of being most able to imitate God only in rational creatures is there found a likeness of God which counts as an image as far as a likeness of the divine nature is concerned rational creatures seem somehow to attain a representation of that type in virtue of imitating God a likeness that he is and lives but especially in this that he understands we're created in the image of God one of the main features of this image is that we have an intellect and we reflect God's understanding when we understand medieval theologians also emphasize the correspondence between our cognitive faculties our reasoning ability and so on and the world we're made to be able to understand the world so out of theism particularly Christian theism flowed a set of ideas about the universe about human beings and about the goodness of knowledge these ideas permeated Christian civilization in the 16th and 17th centuries Christians developed a way of confirming these ideas scientifically how do you confirm the the scientific hypothesis by testing lots of ordinary scientific hypotheses in different fields ordinary scientific hypothesis that's tested whether it's confirmed or disconfirmed is confirmation of the scientific hypothesis in other words whenever you test an ordinary scientific hypothesis you're confirming that the universe can be understood that we're the kinds of things that can understand it and that it's good to understand it but the scientific hypothesis is a set of ideas that flowed directly from Christian theism ideas that are indefensible given atheism moreover when scientists investigated the world they eventually found further confirmation of theism such as the beginning of the universe out of nothing the fine tuning of the cosmos for life and so on now if every scientific hypothesis that's ever been tested is confirmation of a set of ideas that flowed directly from Christian theism and if the testing of these hypotheses led to even further confirmation of theism what can we say we can say that no hypothesis in history has more scientific confirmation than theism but we can go even further since every scientific hypothesis that's ever been tested is confirmation of the scientific hypothesis and as we've seen all three of the key elements of the scientific hypothesis are fundamentally at odds with atheism we can say that every scientific hypothesis that's ever been tested is disconfirmation of atheism and if every scientific hypothesis that's ever been tested is disconfirmation of atheism it's clear that no hypothesis in history has more scientific disconfirmation than atheism the only conclusion to draw from all this is that if we have any respect whatsoever for science we must accept theism and reject atheism and so echoing Sir Francis Bacon one of the great pioneers of the scientific method we can say that a little science inclines man's mind to atheism but depth in science brings man's mind to religion I would we will now welcome Dr. Schumer to the podium can you hear me alright if I walk around just a little bit Ratio Christus and Candaceau State good to see you all I need to unplug the defibrillator here before I actually start my opening statement but first just curiosity of show of hands how many of you believe in God holy shit look at the time oh boy wow well I used to be a Christian I used to be a believer in God a theist I was an evangelist I went door to door witnessing to people we called it amway with bibles and then later I became an atheist sort of born again atheist and I went back to those same doors and take it all back I was wrong and then I became a militant agnostic like the bumper sticker says I don't know and you don't either but then see the problem is the terms the terms are loaded a theist just means you believe in God atheists you just lack a belief in God but there are strong atheists who believe that they can prove that God doesn't exist or show that very likely doesn't exist or weak atheists they just lack a belief in God and just sort of leave it at that agnostic is actually a term I used for a while it was coined by Thomas Huxley in 1869 just to mean that God is unknowable in any scientific rational sense there's an article of faith and nothing more but then when I was on the Colbert report Steven told me in the green room when he asked me about my religious beliefs that an agnostic is just an atheist without balls so I thought well come on Schirmer so now I'm a skeptic because that's the name of my magazine but really it's just I think it's very unlikely that there is a God we can't prove that there is nothing can't prove a negative but just follow a thought experiment here for a second over the last say about 10,000 years humans have created about 10,000 different religions and about 1,000 different Gods what is the probability that Yahweh the God that David believes in is the one true God and that Amenra, Aphrodite Apollo, Baal, Brahma, Ganesha Isis, Mithris, Osiris Shiva, Thor Vishnu, Wotan, Zeus and the other 986 Gods are all false Gods do I have any believers in any of the Gods I just read off I have one taker which one? Zeus, yes, alright so like me the rest of you are all atheists some of this just go one God further it's a pretty simple idea that's the trend in the history of science to go in that direction but even if David convinced you that the arguments are in favor of God's existence this doesn't prove that Yahweh is the right God it could be one of these other Gods if you decide that the reason evidence points to God it could be one of these other Gods it could be an extraterrestrial intelligence as I wrote about in Scientific American how do you know? okay now I'm going to go off the page and respond a little bit to the defibrillator argument as it were it's irrelevant the religion of the scientist who pioneered science some of this was correct some of it not quite it's a little more subtle than that I'm a historian of science but it's like saying all the great art in medieval Europe was done by Christians all the great music was done by Christians everybody was a Christian it was almost against the law in some countries to not be a Christian so who was going to do the music who was going to do the art who was going to do the science in any case it's irrelevant it might as well say that they were all dog owners so what? it's irrelevant doesn't matter as for atheism atheism isn't a thing it's just a lack of belief in God full stop I'm also an A Bigfootist I'm an A UFOist I'm going to say Trumpist or something but I didn't get politics in there it's not a belief system there's no set of tenets this is what atheists believe it's just what we don't believe we just don't believe in God full stop that's it now let's talk about something else we don't believe in God but you believe in say civil rights civil liberties human rights, women's rights gay rights, animal rights you believe that people should be treated equally under the law and so on and so forth you're probably a humanist or a secular humanist or an Enlightenment humanist but it's irrelevant you can be a Christian and believe all those things you can be an atheist and believe all those it doesn't matter so this is a complete non sequitur you now on a point of logic the burden of proof is on David to prove the existence of God not on me to disprove the existence of God I can't disprove Apollo and Zeus and all that but we can we can sort of shade our probabilities of belief by the accumulative evidence for or against the God hypothesis there is no atheist hypothesis that isn't a thing either you think there's evidence for God or you don't and there's no alternative to that that has to be defended all of these arguments by the way look like this God X looks created whatever it is the I, the universe, planets DNA I can't think about X was created naturally therefore X was created supernaturally this was in essence the argument he was making by rattling off all the scientists they ran up against certain mysteries in their fields and said I can't figure it out I guess God did it Newton has a famous quote I'm surprised that my intelligent design creationist friends don't use this quote in which he talks about the stunning alignment of all the planets flat plane the plane of the ecliptic which all the planets are going around in the same direction they're all in this flat plane except for Pluto which is no longer a planet it's not a problem and he says it's just I can't explain I can't figure out how this could have come about this must have been the providence of the divine creator but no one makes that argument anymore which is why my intelligent design creations friends don't use that quote because we now have a cogent theory for how solar systems are formed naturally all you need is gravity and some stuff in certain right configurations of how far apart they are and so on and planets naturally formed we now know that virtually every star in the galaxy has a planet completely natural you don't have to have an intervening God to step in to stir the particles to make that happen in the long history of science this is what happens people invoke the gap when you think of how this could have come about naturally therefore it must have been supernaturally the gaps are being filled that's what scientists do and they're graduate students especially that's what graduate students report they fill gaps and eventually those gaps will be filled and then where goes your religious faith if you hook your faith to there's this gap here there's this thing here whatever it is the fine-tune-ness of the cosmos DNA, the eye, whatever you can't explain that I'm hooking my uh-oh he explained it everyone accepts it happen naturally uh-oh now what now what do I do with my faith that's the problem in any case if you invoke the God hypothesis there's a creator did all this any being capable of designing particles protein chains, cells, organism planets, stars and universes can't be simple such a being would have to be as complex as or more complex than her creations thus by all theistic arguments for God's existence there must be a God's God who created the Christian God and if you continue to make that argument then there has to be a God's God that made the Christian God ad infinitum now you can't just say well you gotta stop the causal chain somewhere and I'm stopping it at my God why you're the one who initiated the argument that there has to be a designer behind the complex system so who designed the designer well the designer is that which does not need to be created why can't the universe be that which does not need to be created because the universe is a thing and it has to be created well maybe God is a thing no God is not a thing God is an agent I'm an agent you think I was created so therefore God would need to be created and so forth that's the problem with all those arguments now I'm going to make two arguments tonight against the idea that there's a God and in favor of the idea that we invented God the biggest problem I see for atheists is the problem of evil so pick two one God is all powerful two God is all good three evil exists you can have two of those you can have all three here's a few numbers for you according to UNICEF about 29,000 children under the age of five die each day mainly from preventable causes that's 21 dead children every minute 10.6 million a year that's the equivalent of a holocaust every year more than 70% of these 10.6 million children deaths every year are attributable to six causes diarrhea, malaria, neonatal infection, pneumonia, preterm delivery or lack of oxygen at birth sciences responses well give them those things religions responses those are part of God's plan really? what kind of plan is that what kind of God who is all powerful and all good would not stop that?  God did it, he works in wonderful ways he answered my prayers he made a miracle when bad things happen who gets the blame? not God or he works in a mysterious way don't you know what does that even mean? so no matter what happens God hypothesis is confirmed what would disconfirm the God hypothesis? good things happen so God is bad things happen so God is what would have to happen to refute this causal explanation of evil? in the Christian world nothing can refute it it's irrefutable it's a simple assertion it's true by asserting I hear by say it's true and that which can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence as the great late Christopher Hitchens once said one of my favorite examples comes from my friend the late great Carl Sagan I call it Sagan's Dragon he has a chapter in his book the demon hunted world called I have a dragon in my garage I have a dragon in my garage would you like to see it? it's really cool I see some paint cans a ladder a bicycle I don't see a dragon it's an invisible dragon oh an invisible dragon yeah yeah yeah yeah well I got some infrared cameras here we can detect the body heat of the invisible dragon well you see this dragon is a cold blooded dragon it doesn't give off any heat at all hmm I have some spray paint no no it doesn't stick it's non-caporial body we'll put some flour on the floor and then when it walks around we can see it's footprints well you see this dragon hovers above the ground about three feet ah the fire fire breathing dragons I have some other equipment here that can measure fire this is a special dragon it has cold fire oh cold fire so Carl said what's the difference between an invisible floating cold undetectable invisible dragon and no dragon at all you say well but I feel the presence of the dragon's love I feel it in my heart that's nice that doesn't mean there's a dragon there we can imagine and conjure all sorts of things that make us feel good or bad that doesn't mean the dragon's real yeah but you know one time I prayed to the dragon and my headache went away that's interesting but headaches do tend to go away after a couple of days a couple aspirin well but one time my relative got a cancer and I prayed to the dragon and the tumor went into remission yes okay that's getting more interesting but you know tumors do go into remission occasionally not as often as we would like but you do hear about these so that's not really evidence for the dragon it could be some other medical explanation well but you know I'm just unsatisfied with the problem of evil so I think the dragon makes evil things happen and so on and so on you get the point what's the difference between an indetectable invisible cold god whatever and no god at all this is the problem with the problem of evil when you follow this line of reasoning this is like playing baseball without the bases or the ball this is like what I call the witch theory of causality if your theory of evil if your explanation for storms and disasters plagues and diseases and accidents is that women cavort late at night with demons then you're either insane or you lived 500 years ago in Christian Europe when everybody believed in the witch theory of causality this was the Christian theory of evil Exodus 2218 thou shalt not suffer a witch to live today no one in their right mind believes this Christian in this room that believes this nonsense why? because science debunked the witch theory of causality as it has been debunking all of these religious theories of causality because religion has no method of testing hypothesis it's the invisible dragon and nothing more what's the Christian theory for all this ultimately? bad things happen because the fall in the garden of sin that we're born with because we've fallen away from God and thus we are free to sin and do evil yeah but what about the children with the leukemia or the children die God works in mysterious ways don't you know there's some reason for this just go back to those kids imagine you're a parent of one of these children who just dies right there God could have intervened at any moment and he didn't what possible moral lesson are you supposed to draw from this the solution to this evil we are told is to accept the sacrifice of the deity which exonerates you from anything you did in your life no matter how evil it might have been just think about that you could be a serial killer on death row in Texas and find Jesus this happens don't you know as it happens I've read all 414 final statements of the executed prisoners in the state of Texas for a research project I'm doing and about 90% of them found Jesus in in prison not surprising there's a big Christian ministry there are we to believe that these men if they accept Jesus at the last moment after the brutal crimes that they committed they get to go and Jews don't Muslims don't Native Americans never heard of Jesus before Europeans came they don't get to go about the 100 billion people that lived before us before Jesus it was about 90 billion they don't get to go this is the way it goes they didn't accept Jesus this makes christianity something of a cult of human sacrifice but instead of the sacrifice of children or beast of burden as practiced by primitive religions it's the updated 2.0 version the sacrifice of one child the son of God this brings up my last point my opening statement so David I presume you are a monotheist Christians are monotheists God is omniscient, omnipotent I'm the present and I'm benevolent and so forth we were created sinless because God gave us free will and Adam and Eve chose to eat from the tree of knowledge and so forth we're born with original sin first of all this goes against all western jurisprudence you are responsible for your own sins not anybody else's and you are beholden and should be sorry to the people you harmed not somebody else still God could just forgive the sin we never committed but instead he sacrificed his son Jesus who is actually just himself in the flesh because Christians are monotheists so this violates the law of identity A is A A cannot be non-A at the same time so the only way to avoid eternal punishment for sins we never committed from this all loving God is to accept his son who is actually himself as our savior so my final sentence so God sacrificed himself to himself to save us from himself this is barking mad thank you we will now go into our first round of rebuttals and to start Dr. Wood thank you Dr. Shermer I'm going to jump right into some of his comments again by pointing out that we all reject most gods and that atheists just go one God further there's a problem with that we were already down to one right and well you know some people just go one God further well there's a world of difference between one and none here's a podium let's suppose we try to understand how this podium got here and some of you believe that many people got together and built the podium and that would be a poly-podium and others say no get one good podium builder then that's it we'll call that monopodium builderism and then you've got the atheist who says there was no podium builder the podium just is and we say well that's absurd and the response from the atheist it seems is well you rejected all those other podium builders I just went one more than you yeah but we were already down to one and in going from one to zero you go from common sense to nonsense he says atheists just don't believe in God defines atheism negatively but before that he acknowledged that there are different definitions of atheism I find this one kind of odd though it's like saying you know hey I'm a vegetarian I just go you know we're all vegetarians with respect to elephant meat and tiger meat and gorilla meat and so on we just go a few meats further than the rest of us we're not claiming anything by claiming to be vegetarians we're all vegetarians with respect to most meats well if you're not a vegetarian then you're just not a vegetarian right it doesn't matter what meats you don't eat it's kind of do you eat meat at all and so the idea that atheists just don't believe in God that is a position you see when you tell me that you're a vegetarian you're not just telling me that you don't eat meat you're telling me that whatever you consume to keep alive comes from elsewhere you've told me something positive and likewise if you say that you're an atheist yes you're denying God's but you are telling me something positive you're telling me whatever you're going to use to explain the world or anything else is coming from elsewhere and it's the elsewhere that we investigate Dr. Schermer said well if God were proven it could be any God it could be an extraterrestrial I would disagree with the extraterrestrial if you're talking about an alien or something we're talking about the origin of the universe and the fine tuning of the cosmos then you'd be talking about an alien outside of the universe and I'm not sure that's what most of us mean by alien but he said if God were proven it could be any God well for purposes of this debate of course but if any God existed that would be the affirmative statement had been affirmed and atheism would have been refuted he said that the religion of the pioneers of the scientific revolution is irrelevant now if I were just doing this as an appeal to authority and saying hey look lots of people believe in God that would be absolutely ridiculous because you can point to lots of atheists who are scientists and so on that's not what my argument was my argument was there were tons of civilizations tons of cultures down through history and these guys didn't just conveniently happen to be the ones who came up with science their views on the world and what they are and the importance of knowledge and their ability to find this knowledge came out of their theology this came out of the medieval schools and they found a method of going out and testing them and so this was in a sense one massive hypothesis proposed and tested and confirmed but the core beliefs that led them to go out and do this research not and do this research were grounded in Christian theism so how is that irrelevance right it's one mass it's like saying any hypothesis you come up with and you go out and you test it and you prove someone but it's irrelevant it's not irrelevant it's grounded in their ideas it wasn't just hey these people happen to be ones that stumbled upon a rock one day this is their ideas led them to certain conclusions about the world they tested them and they were confirmed he said that in the olden days God was used to fill gaps but the gaps are being filled by science interestingly all the earliest people who put forward this God of the gaps criticism were Christians were criticizing other Christians for focusing on the gaps they were telling them God is the God of all knowledge in other words basically everything I was saying in my opening statement I didn't appeal to any gaps so Henry Drummond for instance who was a Scottish Christian evangelist biologist and member of the royal society of Edinburgh and his book The Ascent of Man writes there are reverent minds who ceaselessly scan the fields of nature and the books of science in search of gaps gaps which they will fill up with God and if God lived in gaps what view of nature or truth is there whose interest in science is not in what it can explain but in what it cannot whose quest is ignorance not knowledge whose daily dread the cloud may lift and who as darkness melts from this field or from that begin to tremble for the place of his abode what needs altering in such finally jealous souls is at once their view of nature and of God nature is God's writing and can only tell the truth God is light and in him is no darkness at all so Christians come up with science and then other Christians go for God of the gaps types arguments and then other Christians criticize that God of the gaps type reasoning and atheists claim that this is their criticism of these types of arguments this is a criticism put forward by Christians to criticize the idea that we focus on the gaps and not all of knowledge so for Drummond and Bonhoeffer argue the same thing Coulson argue the same thing they're pointing out that God is the God of all knowledge and that it's what we know it's what we know that affirms God's existence not what we don't know he dismisses the design argument by asking who designed the designer I didn't use that but I think this is a bad criticism of arguments from design so if you had taken argument from design something like an argument from DNA or something like that that the most sophisticated information storage system in the universe happens to be inside your cells and wouldn't it be amazing how amazing would it be if that just came about by some natural process the information storage system in DNA makes the information storage system in my laptop look like a complete joke so wouldn't it boggle your mind if that happened by natural means and the response is well if that requires a designer then who designed the designer there's a problem though we talk about biological design biological complexity we're talking about parts that look like they're put together in some order arrangement for some kind of purpose and we can't imagine those parts coming together in that order to serve that purpose by anything that's available by natural means is that the sort of reasoning that would apply to God I don't see how we're not talking about God well God looks like he's parts arranged to serve some sort of purpose you're talking about completely different kinds of things here he gives the story of Sagan's dragon Sagan's dragon in my garage story it's a parallel of Anthony Flues is there a gardener story but atheists don't like to quote the flu story anymore since he became a theist but Flues' story makes the same point but I think is much stronger than Sagan's point so Sagan's argument compares looking for God to looking for a dragon in your garage and that's the problem if you're looking for God the way you would look for some creatures say a dragon or the flying spaghetti monster of course you're going to come up empty handed but if you'd like a more interesting parallel I mean try asking if there's a garage was there an architect is there a foundation to the garage if there's a garage did someone build the garage so those are the sorts of questions that would parallel arguments for theism not hey there's an invisible dragon in my garage as for the problem of evil I don't have very long but my thinking on this is very different from the way atheists tend to think of it I'm trying to make sense of the universe and I guess atheists are trying to do the same thing there but in doing that as I went back to my opening statement if my argument wasn't clear there are people there are people historically who came up with a new way of doing things that was drawn from their world view and they were proven to be right about some things that would be very amazing if we didn't believe them already we all believe them already so it's nothing surprising to us we all believe them whether we're atheists or Christians or whatever because they prove them to be true but before they prove them to be true they believe them they believe them when they set out when they launch the scientific revolution and so I'm looking at how we make sense of the universe and people who came up with these views going on improving them and defending them I have to say that is very amazing that they took these ideas and they turned out to be right when they were tested so I look at them and I say they make sense of a lot of things why there are neat little mathematical equations at the bottom of reality that makes sense from a Christian perspective why we are the kinds of things that can understand the universe that makes sense from a Christian perspective so I'm trying to make sense of the world and the response is well why is there so much suffering even here if I'm even trying to make sense of the objection as he pointed out there are people offer explanations to the oddities and God does it for this or that taking a step back from that I can't even understand the criticism unless we have a moral law that we are all agreeing to somehow unless we believe that there is a moral standard that we all must adhere to think about what the atheist is saying in these types of arguments they're saying hey here's a moral standard a moral standard that I am aware of that even God must adhere to does that make any sense whatsoever from an atheistic perspective to say that one that there is a moral standard that if God existed he would be bound to and two that you have access to that moral law this is very similar to the situation in science where people are making all sorts of amazing claims about the universe but they make sense on Christianity they make absolutely no sense on atheism and that's why Christians can discuss the problem of evil and offer theodices and explanations and so on and it makes sense to do that from within our world view but once you step outside of that where you have no moral standard that you could possibly defend now these things all break down and we're left with nothing that makes sense apart from that he offered some criticisms of Christianity well you know Christians find Jesus in prison I was in jail by the way when I became a Christian the other religions Christianity has what about all these other religions is this really fair those don't seem to be on the topic does God exist and so if Dr. Schermer would like to debate whether Christianity is true be happy to debate that at a future date right now certainly say God exists Dr. Schermer here we go so I got to come back and hit this atheism thing again it's like vegetarianism no no we like meat no sorry it's a little joke from my animal rights friends I'm a reducitarian you know just meatless Monday for most vegetarians is one of two reasons they do it it's either lifestyle health or moral reasons because of the brutality against animals this is nothing to do with where do all this stuff come from in the first place alright well theos say it came from God atheists say I don't believe that that still leaves the question open well where did it come from ok so now you're back on the page of science and there is no Christian science well there is that religion but there's no Buddhist physics, Christian physics Hindu physics nothing like that there's just physics if you go to India most people are not Christians but those that do physics they do the same physics we do because the physical world really exists it's knowable we can know it and it's good to know that's our point of agreement there but that's open to everybody you don't have to be a Christian you can be anybody it doesn't matter again it doesn't matter what the religious attitudes were of those who pioneered the scientific revolution you might as well have said well they were all Republicans or Democrats or Wigs or Tories whatever it doesn't matter it's irrelevant the point is they discovered something that you and I can discover that anybody can discover anywhere in the world and religions not like that this is why there are so many different religious groups based geographically if you happen to have been born by chance some other part of the world or some other time in history 10,000 years ago 500 years ago you would not believe the stuff you believe today you wouldn't but science is not like that we know that physics works the same way on the other side of the galaxy and probably on the other side of the universe for example my friend Deepak Chopra is a Buddhist sort of hails from the eastern wisdom traditions little bit of Buddhism Hinduism Taoism he loves science he meant that he does some science like he recently published a paper showing the benefits of meditation the physiological and psychological benefits of meditation measurable even genetic benefits of meditation this is nothing to do with his Buddhism his Buddhism led him to meditate because it works for him and I got him interested in studying meditation but meditation either works or it doesn't it doesn't matter what your religion is irrelevant I'm just trying to come out in different ways alright things look designed they look purposeful yes yes that's right because that's how nature's laws operate and until Darwin we didn't have an explanation for why wings look like they're designed to fly and eyes look like they're designed to see it was Darwin that gave us a bottom up mechanism that shows through natural selection how these complex organs can come about through simpler gradations simpler structures through gradated change over long periods of time how long hundreds of millions even billions of years that's enough that's enough time so it's okay to say yeah the eyes were designed to see yes that's true the design is nature now if you want to say well I think God uses natural selection to create complex life just like God uses gravity to create solar systems fine I don't have a big beef about that those are just words we're using ultimately we don't have an explanation for why the laws of nature are exactly the way they are we have half a dozen interesting theories about this but that's still one of those great open questions that maybe one of you graduate students will figure out that's for the dragons garage builder well we can film the garage being built the garage builders we have lots of examples of artifice makers they're called artisans it's us people we can see that there's nothing like that for the universe say well I think God did it okay where's the empirical evidence for that well I can see his works I know you can see the works I can see the garage but I know who made the garage we can film it being made by a certain company and ask for the blue prints did you make this garage yeah bring the blue prints okay there we go there's nothing like that for theas it's all this but I just kind of feel like there just has to be it just gosh darn it there has to be an explanation for this I'm not satisfied with I don't know and no one knows there's got to be an answer no no there doesn't have to be an answer it's okay to say I don't know where the universe will come I don't know I don't know where it came from might have been quantum fluctuations in the quantum foam might have been colliding brains of different universes might have been collapsing black holes that trigger another big bang explosion I'm just rattling off a few of these hypotheses that are put forth by cosmologists that have not been confirmed yet these are just ideas we have but in all cases in science it's always okay to just say let's work on that problem some more before we leap to the supernatural let's say let's look to see what we have in the natural world first science is only a few centuries old we have a long ways to go to understand nature just barely there just scraping by and those gaps will be filled ultimately this is what we do we fill gaps again repeated myself on that but even if you said well okay I really think there's a supernatural being out there outside of space and time and that's why like the dragon it's not measurable okay if it's supernatural if it's not measurable how do you know it's there and you can't just say well I feel it in my heart or it seems like there should be or one of these logical sequences of infinite regress and that sort of thing no no we need actually some empirical evidence so this is why I could back up a little bit on the extraterrestrial intelligence hypothesis my last law I call it my last law because I don't believe in naming laws after yourself so the first shall be last and the last shall be first so Shermer's last law is just a tongue and she's not even original to me it's an old sci-fi idea that any sufficiently advanced extraterrestrial intelligence is indistinguishable from God of course I got the idea from Azimov's three laws the third one any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic just walk you through that for a second there's a guy who's a quadriplegic and he has a chip in his motor cortex yoked to his computer and he can just think thoughts and he moves the computer cursor he can play games he can answer emails he can type and so forth if you didn't know he had a chip in his brain it would look like telekinesis like he's psychic powers but once you know that there's a chip there you go oh I know the technology any sufficiently advanced technology looks like magic so imagine how far our technology and science will be not in 50 years which is surely going to be impressive just go back 50 years and look what we have now take that out another 50 or 500 or 5,000 years or take it out 50,000 years or 500,000 years of cultural technological progress imagine what we would be able to do can already genetically engineer life forms and some pretty amazing technologies so just 50 years of progress if we encounter an extraterrestrial intelligence they're not going to be just like 5 years ahead of us or 50 years ahead of us like the UFO people think about Roswell you know the spaceship planet in Roswell and we back engineered silicon chips from them really we went from vacuum tubes to transistors from the aliens they traversed the vastness of the new stellar space on 1950s silicon chips? come on really? they're going to speak English with an Indian accent with gnarly stuff on their forehead walking around bipedal? no no no this is too much science fiction they're not going to be anything like us technologically, morally and so forth they'll be able to do things that to us will look like the stuff we would do that would look like to a Neanderthal cell phone it looks supernatural when you know the technology behind it so my question is how would you know if you encountered God that it wasn't just some super advanced ET capable of doing these amazing things well but what about curing cancer we're going to be able to do this it's a harder problem than we thought it's not 5 years away probably not 50 years away but surely 500 years away surely we will get there genetically reprogram the tumors stop the cell division with the telomeres and all that we'll get there that would look like a supernatural miracle healing but it isn't once you know the technology but God is outside of spacing time can't be an ET but how do you know well he reaches in periodically to stir the particles well if he does that then we should be able to measure the particle stirring like if he reaches into cure cancers how does he do it does he reprogram every genome in every cancer cell by hand or how is this done and if that's what God does then we should be able to measure it see it and not with stuff that gets better anyway because then we're back to the problem of how do you know it's not something else so that this is why there's this web page why God hates amputees it's a little in your face but it makes a point why is it God only seems to heal things that might have happened anyway but humans never grow limbs never, never documented you hear stories oh I met somebody who was at this revival and they knew somebody who said they saw God I have it on film I want to see it why does that never happen because God works in mysterious ways or because there is no God I think that's the likeliest scenario thank you we're going to move into our second rebuttal Dr. Wood thank you again Dr. Schirmer he again says that the religion of the pioneers of the scientific revolution is irrelevant it's like saying well they were republican or some other irrelevant detail no it's not if someone's claims about the universe flowed directly from the fact that they were republican and then they went out and tested these claims and they were claims that the general population of the world would have rejected and that republicans were the only ones putting forward these claims and then they went out and tested them and they were confirmed well that would be a parallel but these two cases aren't parallel Christians because of their theology came up with certain claims about the world again claims that most of the world's population would have rejected but claims which most of the world's population accepts now why because they went out and defended and proved them he said that there's no Christian science it's all Christian science everyone just agreed and adopted the views that Christians put forward and defended Christians are the ones who put forward these ideas again any other culture could have put forward the same ideas and gone out and done experiments to defend them it was Christians Christians defended these claims and now people in general believe that the universe at bottom is rational that we are the kinds of things that can go out and do this that knowledge is good and so on so atheists simply aren't really atheists they're heretical rebellious Christians because they've adopted a Christian world view and just don't know it he says that Darwin gave us an explanation for complex life this actually ties into a lot of what I've been saying because this goes back to what I said about the beginning of the scientific revolution assuming that you had a Darwinian view you didn't have it yet but assuming that as an atheist before the scientific revolution you had a Darwinian view that could explain something about how you got here and your faculties and so on would you have concluded that you can go out and understand the universe interestingly Darwin himself started to know a problem here he was responding to someone's argument book arguing for design in the world and Darwin said hey I agree with you really looks like that and he said this with me the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man's mind which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals are of any value or at all trustworthy would anyone trust in the convictions of a monkey's mind if there are any convictions in such a mind think about what he's saying there because he started off very confident about going out and proving things and so on by the end after following his world view to its logical conclusion human beings are what well we've developed over a long period of time but as far as our cognitive faculties our ability to form convictions and so on to make claims about the universe and so on those abilities our cognitive faculties were selected what were they selected by natural selection natural selection doesn't favor coming up with accurate conclusions about the origin of the universe or about the laws of nature natural selection favors traits that help you survive and reproduce so the only thing you can sort of trust that system with would be things that involve finding a mate or using a spear against an enemy or avoiding poisonous berries those would be the sorts of faculties that would help you survive and reproduce at no point would you say hey I have this awesome mutant berry finding ability it really helps me find berries therefore it'll help me uncover the secrets of the universe and the laws of nature and the origin you wouldn't think that and so notice the difference notice the contrast between the pioneers of the scientific revolution who are saying we were made to figure these things out we were made to uncover the secrets of the universe we're made for this because we're made in the image of God so one world view would lead you to go out and think that you can actually discover the secrets of the universe the other would lead you to think I'm just not made for that and how can I trust my faculties with anything beyond the bear minimum he says that science will fill in the gaps again I haven't appealed to any gaps this evening I'm not appealing hey here's something we don't know therefore God now the problem with his response is that he's saying that science is filling in gaps and so on science is going to fill in gaps but every scientific hypothesis that's tested whether confirmed or disconfirmed is going to affirm and confirm that initial scientific hypothesis put forward by Christians so the more scientific discoveries you come up with the more you've shown that they were right when they suggested that the universe can be understood that we can go out that we can develop mathematics or anything else we need to uncover the secrets of the universe and that it's good for us to know the more scientific experiments you do the more you're confirming the hypothesis the more you're confirming the beliefs that led them to this hypothesis and so no amount of science is ever going to disconfirm their views it'll only add more confirmation so fill in those gaps it only helps now Schermer's last law again this was the first article I read but any sufficiently advanced technology would be indistinguishable from God and this would apply I think to things like design in biology or something like that something that looks like a miracle again I don't think it would apply to a universe or something like that unless you're talking about aliens outside the universe but I've always found this argument interesting because think about this if God did exist I'm not saying he did but if he did exist for you atheists would you want to know it some of you might say yes some of you might say no but if you did want to know that God exists wouldn't you need some sort of method to figure out if he exists something that could lead you to the truth about that according to Dr. Schermer there can be no such method because anything God could possibly do you could say aliens did it powerful aliens that are vastly beyond us so it's built into the methodology that you could never know whether God exists or not and if it's built into your methodology to never know the truth about something I have to question the methodology methodology should be designed to get us to the truth so and notice other criticisms why doesn't God heal amputees evidence would that be for God if God healed amputees you could just say aliens did it hey look that amputee was just healed look a miracle look someone just showed up striking lightning bolts saying believe in me could be aliens could right so given the methodology there is absolutely no way to prove that God exists and I think that says something about the debate tonight if you set up your methodology from the beginning believe and then develop your methodology so that always leads to the desired conclusion what does that prove I could do that with all kinds of things and there's nothing you could ever do if I say hey I believe I'm in the matrix how can you prove me wrong well you can't there's nothing you could do that could prove me wrong if I say anything God could do aliens could do well then there's no way that you could ever believe in God with that methodology I would suggest a new methodology and so you can either decide what you want to believe ahead of time and then develop your methodology to get you the desired results but can you claim to be a champion of science if you're deciding the results you want ahead of time and then designing the method to confirm what you want to believe that doesn't sound like science to me Dr. Schumer your rebuttal thank you okay okay there are arguments that natural selection would not have designed our senses to give us an accurate picture of the world only to survive long enough to leave behind offspring and so forth and that's a legitimate theory it's a guy named Donald Hoffman at UC Irvine who proposes this idea but I disagree I wrote skeptically of that because how is it we're able to say get spacecraft to Mars because it really is a reality and we really are improving our capability of measuring that reality detecting that reality predicting that reality and that would not be the case if we did not have the senses to really be able to do that not perfectly and this gets me to the second point that we're made in God's image what does it mean of course it doesn't mean bipedal primate obviously what doesn't mean a rational being well we're not very rational most of the time we're pretty irrational I mean I write about this for a living every month in Scientific American here's the next way we deceive ourselves we're fooled confirmation bias and motivated reasoning and hindsight bias all the different ways that illusions and magicians fool us and so on we're not very God like at all so what does that mean we have the capacity to do some reasoning yeah we do it doesn't sound very God like to me not to mention our emotions sort of a different subject Old Testament Yahweh is not a very pleasant fellow it was a jealous God says right there in the Ten Commandments I am your God a jealous God jealousy I know people that have gotten over jealousy I mean come on really this is a characteristic of God we're made in this image this is a word God that we use to fill in gaps I don't have an explanation I don't know God it's just a word we don't really know what that means it's just a I've hit an epistemological wall it doesn't go any further ontologically speaking I don't know what the reality is beyond my epistemological wall so we'll just throw that into the realm of the supernatural this is why I like to say there's no such thing as the paranormal or the supernatural there's just the normal the natural and the stuff we haven't explained yet it's like the witches theory of causality we replaced that we debunked it we replaced it with meteorology germ theory of disease and so on and that faded the supernatural and the paranormal it just gives way to the natural and the normal or it just goes away because the so-called mysteries end up not being mysteries at all they were pseudomistries like how do women fly on brooms anyway they don't oh so I don't have to explain it no we don't need some physics of broom flying except in Harry Potter apparently it's a little bit like when cosmologists talk about dark matter and dark energy those are just linguistic placeholders they're just words because we have to speak to one another to communicate what we're doing so we're going to call it that for now until we figure it out what it is we know it's there because the rotation of galaxies the structure of galaxies the accelerating expansion of the universe there's something there we're going to call it dark energy and dark matter because cosmologists don't mean that as an explanation that's the answer those are just words we use to say this is what we're calling it for now now let's get to work and see if we can figure out what it is this stuff is what is this dark matter we don't know again half a dozen theories we can work on it but for the theist God the word is the equivalent of dark energy dark matter but stopping the search there that's it that's my answer that's not an answer it's just a word what is it that this God is like what does he do how does he do it God creates universes how does he use collapsing black holes to a singularity to spark another big bang explosion does he cause brains from separate universes to collide with one another and that creates a new universe that's just an engineering feat or if again if he cures cancer how does he do it inquiring minds want to know so we have to be careful when we throw these words out what do you mean exactly God created his image what does this mean scientists have very specific meanings of terms and the terms change because we get better at explaining what the actual causal underlying mechanism is that is what science does so in a way yes David I don't think the God you're thinking of is detectable by science I don't think there's some experiment we're going to run some clever set of arguments that'll be presented tonight or some other night yes that's it the scales have fallen from my eyes I don't think that's going to happen believe me I've been looking since I was a teenager and I don't think it's possible begin for the same reason I don't think the parent let's go back to the paranormal for a second the guy with the chip in the brain say there's no chip in the brain let's say it turns out that people really can read each other's minds because it has something to do this is an actual theory has something to do with the microtubules inside the neurons inside your brain and because of quantum fields the collapse of the wave function in the subatomic particles inside the microtubules in your neurons causes consciousness to sort of come and go in waves that are patterns that can affect your quantum field in your neurons and so you could read my mind and I can read your mind I don't believe any of this I've been skeptical about this for a long time but this is a legitimate theory let's say that turned out to be true ESP would no longer be some spooky mysterious paranormal psychic it would just be quantum physics and consciousness or quantum consciousness as it's called it would just be part of science part of the natural world it'd be like oh yeah yeah yeah people can read each other's minds that's so cool here's how you do it you get in the state of mind you get your quantum field going and boom boom boom it would take the mystery out of it same thing with the god hypothesis and the supernatural idea let's get if it's there drill down and see if we can find it if it is it's just part of the natural world we incorporate it into science or it's not there and there's nothing to explain so I think that's where we're at I think that's kind of what we've come to here tonight that it's not a scientific question in that sense there could be some superior entities out there that we will one day encounter in our starships or whatever or maybe they'll come here or something like that but that's not what you're thinking of when you're thinking of the theistic god it's just a word it's a linguistic placeholder and I think we need to lose it thank you we will now have 10 minutes of crossfire with each of our debaters having one minute and we are going to start with Dr. Wood let's sit here 10 minutes and then we just have to make sure we switch at the end of each minute very quickly Dr. Shermer I'm still concerned about this Shermer's last law on the one hand you keep saying don't break that law hey we need to if God exists we need to find him we need to figure out how God does things we need to figure out how the explanation works we need to figure out how he has problems and so on but on the other hand you're saying that advanced aliens would be indistinguishable from God and if they're indistinguishable then God would be indistinguishable from aliens so I'm just interested in what according to your world view which includes Shermer's last law what could God possibly do to show that he exists and if there's nothing that he can do to show that he exists is this method really designed to get to the truth of the matter a large cash deposit in my name in a Swiss bank I have the routing number here just in case because I've been asked this before and the amount I think 10 million would do it partially facetious but I'm after there is something that wouldn't happen otherwise I suppose but again I think we're getting caught up in the words, the language forget calling it God or aliens whatever is there some advanced intelligence a designer call it whatever you want maybe how do we know our methodology is actually pretty good for finding out since I mentioned Sagan the SETI program has algorithms that they grind through of signals coming from space to determine if it's random noise or if it's a signal my minute jokingly of course a large cash deposit in the bank of course this could easily be explained by aliens and then the only example the serious answer you gave was something that wouldn't happen otherwise and then we shifted to some sort of higher intelligence now notice it's over and over again in this debate it's been hey if God exists then where's the evidence and why can't we find the evidence and hey we should be skeptical and demand evidence and so on but when we ask what evidence could God possibly give in any possible world that would count as evidence for the existence of God the answer is something that wouldn't happen otherwise but something that wouldn't happen otherwise according to Schermer's last law could be explained by aliens so once again we're left with a methodology that can't possibly investigate this matter yep well I mean amphibians can grow new limbs why can't your God do it okay that would be an example there's lots of Iraqi veterans coming back with missing limbs most of them are Christian most of them have Christian families who pray for them how come that never happens and who gets the blame? Not God why not? so that's a flawed methodology that can never get us to an answer bad things happen or good things happen either way God gets the credit but not the blame so that's the deeper flaw there in terms of evidence for okay what do you mean by God again if it's if it's just something that the stars have written in the sky Schermer I'm here that would give my attention however I have seen Copperfield pretty amazing things with magic that I'm not sure that it could be discerned as supernatural given the power of illusions and magic and our brain's ability to be fooled a couple extra seconds here here again because I'm very concerned with methodology if we are trying to determine the existence of X where X can be wildly different if we're trying to determine whether there's some sort of planet pass Neptune or something like that if we're trying to figure this out a method that can investigate the question if you're talking about something something less physical if you're talking about something like laws of nature or logical truths or something like that it helps to have some sort of method in place to determine these kinds of things if we're debating the existence of God there should be some sort of method to determine whether God exists and here again why can't amputees grow new limbs how would you say that's God and not aliens doing it so we're back to this issue of God can do absolutely nothing to prove his existence oh look we concluded that he doesn't exist that's a big surprise no I started at 45 I started at 545 we're just having an exchange here it's okay okay let's just keep it in general whatever we're not greedy well what would you tell the difference between say you prayed for somebody and let's say they had cancer and the cancer went away and you know that sometimes cancers do go away regardless of whether they prayed for or not and so on how can you tell the difference between this one was a miracle God intervened this one was not a miracle God did not intervene what would be your methodology for that I actually agree with that point I can say hey you know what happened this really boggles the mind and I'm going to believe that God did this I'm in a similar boat to you in terms of being skeptical when people tell me things when someone says hey I was sick and I got better I generally think now you just got better there are some instances where where I often think okay well this really sounds shocking so I leave the door open but I'm in that ballpark where I would say you know I don't know it looks like a miracle or I don't know it doesn't look like a miracle but you know if we're talking about something like a dead man rising from the dead or something like that then I would count that but that would be a bigger debate on whether that happened well that would be a miracle by your definition so what is your explanation for these innocent children who die of childhood leukemia or starvation in Africa or whatever why does God allow this to happen? that's not something I'm even going to attempt here in a minute I did an entire doctoral dissertation on the problem of evil but here again for purposes of this debate I think it would be David given these problems why don't you reject the existence of God here again I can only understand the problem I can only understand why human beings would regard this as a problem if I'm convinced that there's some moral law that makes it a problem if I'm sitting here saying there's a transcendent moral law that any being any rational being any rational moral being would have to adhere to and obey and that I'm applying to God that makes no sense from a naturalistic perspective I couldn't trust moral judgments enough to say God would have to do this or God would have to do that I'm not that kind of thing yes I can say yes I can rustle with the problem of evil try to come up with explanations but if I can't understand the problem without theism I just can't I can't see this being a problem well can you see something like let's just take a moral principle of truth telling keeping your promises and being honest you get married you take your vows I will not cheat on you boom now whether there's a God or not do you not agree that God is a good principle good by the standards of you and your spouse and your relationship and the principle of commitment it doesn't matter if there's a God or not doesn't that principle exist really in your mind and your spouse's mind yes the principle would exist and we would recognize them as good but if I had if I drew from a naturalistic perspective I would have to say what's the status of this moral belief I have and there's only kind of two places you can go for a moral explanation you can say I'm hardwired to believe that the way a lion is hardwired to you know kill the cubs of a competing tribe before it moves in in which case what does that have to do with it being moral or not it's just the way I'm hardwired and the alternative is it's just been taught to me by society in which case I mean there are cultures in the world where if a girl walks down the street without a male escort they will slaughter her and it will be her family doing it and they are absolutely convinced that it is bedrock morality to do that sort of thing so I can't depend on society but we know that they are wrong and that's why we condemn that correctly without a God the violation of an individual's autonomy and control over their own body is an absolute moral principle that should be withheld and defended and I think you would agree with that and it stands whether there's a God or not I agree that that is a moral standard if there is no transcendent moral like there are forms of Platonism and so on you know how to test it, you know how to know ask the women who are violated they'll let you know that's not cool you don't need God for that this concludes our crossfire we're going to go ahead and move into closing statements Dr. Wood if you would please good that ending there is a perfect example to really sum up this debate this is just a moral law that's the way it is it's true whether or not God exists again how could you possibly defend that from an atheistic perspective you just have to stomp your foot and then clap your hands and say this makes sense how is someone in Pakistan who kills his sister because he's firmly convinced that this is necessary for the preservation of society that you have to uphold these standards or you've dishonored your family and so on how is that person any less correct than someone who says that's just wrong you don't do that you don't need God to believe the moral principle but here going back to if you say you're an atheist you are telling me something you're telling me something positive you're telling me whatever explanatory resources you have they're outside the realm of theism so given atheism and here I'm thinking in the strong sense of naturalism given atheism in that kind of sense where you don't have any resources for explaining our moral feelings other than it's hardwired in some sense versus well society teaches us that if your belief is based on what society teaches guess what beliefs change from society to society and that man's society teaches him that you have to kill your sister if she walks down the street with a man that she's not related to the alternative is we're hardwired we're just hardwired to believe that certain things are wrong hardwiring how could you possibly how could you possibly explain or defend this in terms of hardwiring again a lion will kill the cubs of a competing pride what does that have to do with it being moral it helps it pass on its genes what does that have to do with whether it's good or bad and so you just as an atheist you just have to stomp your foot and say this is the way things are and that's how it is with everything else we've been talking about this evening you say hey atheists before you knew that the universe again is governed by neat little mathematical equations would you have ever expected that would you have ever expected the universe to be like that of course not oh it's just physical objects they they're not going to follow laws they're not going to follow neat little statements mathematics is a language ladies and gentlemen the universe is operating according to language that's surprising on theism where we're told that God upholds and sustains everything by his word not surprising at all for theists and it wasn't surprising for the pioneers of the scientific revolution it should be horrifying to atheists because that's the last thing you would expect if you are an atheist and you try to figure out where your how you got your cognitive faculties these were faculties that were selected because they helped find food or find a mate why would you think that those could get you to the truth about the universe you would never in a million years conclude that they could get you to the truth about the universe and that's why Darwin began struggling with these kinds of doubts about his convictions what's the status of my convictions given my beliefs about the world they can't have the status I think they have and so his framework began breaking down as far as his confidence in forming conclusions on the big issues but if you're an atheist that should be bothering all of you or the goodness of knowledge Dr. Shermer said he agrees that knowledge is good even if it had no practical benefit whatsoever why how could you possibly defend knowing what a quasar is if you had no if it had no practical benefit ever that it's just good all of this makes sense from a theistic perspective atheists notice have absorbed all of these ideas about morality being absolute and not just something that is hardwired into us they've absorbed the idea that the universe is at bottom rational that we can go out and discover its laws that we're the kinds of things we're made for this sort of discovery and that it's good for us to know all of these things all of these came from Christians and so Christians when we're asked why do you believe that the universe is rational why do you believe that we can figure these things out why do you believe that it's good all of this makes perfect sense on our world we have an explanation for all of this including our claims about why certain things are right or wrong if you're an atheist you have no explanation for any of these you just have to stop your foot and cling to Christian views of the world and of morality and pretend that they're not just hanging out in midair giving your world view Dr. Schumer your closing well thank you again for inviting me here I'm not going to stop my foot but let me see if I can give you some reasons for some moral principles for example I see you have a wedding band I assume you're married is your wife here tonight no okay so let's say I talked to you into being an atheist tonight one can hope would you cheat on your wife tonight I suspect you wouldn't why not you're not a theist anymore none of it matters a thousand years we're all dead anyway there's no purpose to the universe and so on why bother how about this you don't have to stump your foot because you love your wife and you don't want to hurt her because you don't like to hurt people that you care for how about because you promised you wouldn't and you're a man of honor and your word and you believe in keeping your word how about you wouldn't want her doing that to you what hurt you wouldn't want to live in a society where no one keeps their promises and everybody cheats on each other not just marriage but business and so forth we know the basis of a civil society is a rule of law where people keep their word keep their honor that's why you have rules good fences make good neighbors and all that the long arc of the moral universe as I wrote about in my book the moral arc is due primarily to humans reasoning their way through finding these moral principles that work based on what based on the survival and flourishing of sentient beings we are sentient beings as Jeremy Bentham said the question about animal animal rights is not can they think or can they talk but can they suffer the suffering of other sentient beings is our moral starting point that's where we begin and we build from there slavery is outlawed in every nation in the world now it used to be practiced by every Christian nation Christians defended slavery vehemently you can read the literature I summarize this literature in my book a pre-civil war Christian defense by theologians ministers priests and so on slavery slavery the creator of the universe the holy book couldn't even get it right about slavery couldn't think just add an 11th commandment thou shalt not enslave thy fellow humans no no think of that one till 1865 hey I know maybe we ought to have an extra commandment in the constitution called an amendment torture used to be practiced by all Christian nations defended by Christians gone early 1967 it was still illegal for blacks and whites to marry and most Christians favored that how many favored today none almost none posters don't even ask anymore it's a ridiculous question of course blacks and whites should be able to marry what's wrong with that and as you saw last year the supreme court ruled on gay marriage some Christians are still struggling with that hanging on to the old school no darn it that just can't be right but in five years or so everyone in this audience will go gay whatever dude who cares of course they should have the rights to get married the arc of the moral universe is bending toward justice not because of religion in spite of it but because of reason and science because we can discover truths by studying them by those principles and then test them and measure them and see how well it goes by that criteria so I was once a born again Christian I went to Pepperdine University Church of Christ school and as I mentioned and so I understand when you're in the bubble it makes sense it's logically coherent internally consistent until you step out of the bubble and you study other cultures and you see what works and I would encourage you to do that think outside of the bubble think about some of these principles we've talked about tonight and how they stand by themselves whether there's a God or not it's us it's up to us it's always been up to us to solve our own problems and not turn to some supernatural force not wait till the next life do it now in this life because people matter and our lives matter now thank you we're going to go ahead and begin our Q&A for those of you who have any questions we have two microphones one at each side at the front of the aisles if you would please limit your questions to no more than 30 seconds we will give each party an opportunity to respond to your questions if your question is specifically for one part of the other please state that also remember that these are for questions these are not for statements these are not for platitudes or for you to decide to become part of the debate this is for you to ask questions of the panelists who are here thank you we've got 35 minutes in total yes we're supposed to raise the house lights okay so we'll ask the house to go ahead and bring the lights up we're going to have about two minutes for the primary respondent and then about one minute for the other respondent as well per question so that we can get as many questions in as we can within the next 35 minutes hello I just want to thank both of the speakers for coming down tonight we greatly appreciate both of you dedicating your time to this let's see my question is for Dr. Schermer just kind of continuing on the moral question so obviously you passionately defended certain moral principles that I think just about everyone can agree on so what in your view ontologically grounds these moral principles would they be something that exists in the same way say laws of nature exist and furthermore if these are non-scientific moral principles how can we use an empirical method is it possible to empirically test whether we should promote human flourishing that's a really good question I mean it really it's at the heart of reasoning about moral principles and the answer is in short it's not quite like discovering laws of nature but it's similar to that I claim that it's part of our nature that we evolve the propensity to as a social species have to care about the welfare of others not always we don't it's sort of a game theory prisoner's dilemma if I defect I get a little short-term benefit but if I cooperate he gets a little short-term benefit I don't get quite as much benefit initially but down the road I'll get more benefit and I can reason my way to be nice to this other person but it's not I claim in an evolutionary way a calculated cold Machiavellian I'm going to use this guy to get what I want even if it appear I'm just pretending to be nice because he'll know people can tell if other people are psychopathic faking sociopaths you got to really believe it and really be moral wait I get two minutes right? so here's the argument that you can't fake being a moral person because people can read the cues and so you actually have to feel it, live it, believe it and that's the best we can do it's part of our nature we evolved it and then culture reinforces it why do I feel guilty about this and another culture feels guilty about that yes cultures tweak the moral emotions but we all are born with these moral emotions we can see this in infants infants that are just like six months to a year old these are complicated experiments but you can see that they have a sense of right and wrong they like the good puppet they hit the bad puppet that does things you can see this in chimps and other primates it's part of our nature to have a sense of right and wrong goes along exactly with what I was saying you basically got two places that you can appeal to for your moral claims or whatever moral feelings you have you can be hardwired for them or they can be something to do with culture and obviously both are involved Dr. Schermer says cultures tweak moral emotions and we just have these moral emotions bedbugs reproduced by violent rape what does that have to do with right or wrong they're wired to do that it helps them reproduce it helps their species their species wouldn't work right now if they didn't do that because that's the only way they do it what does that have to do with right or wrong and so all atheists can really do in these scenarios is just say well we're wired to do this and cultures tweak it what's the standard there seems to be no standard other than the way we're wired just imagine a different situation where humans reproduced by violent rape and it was necessary for our survival we're wired to do that would that make it good and right I don't see how next question thank you for both the speakers question for Dr. Schermer you mentioned evils such as children dying of illnesses and a problem for Christians but if you hold to an atheistic naturalistic materialistic world view we're nothing more than a highly evolved collection of chemicals what objective standard do you have to say what is evil and what is not according to your world view what is wrong with the bag of chemicals dying well for starters if you're that bag of chemicals you don't like that and you don't want to be treated that way you don't want to treat other people that way because you sense that they feel the same way you feel now this isn't a given centuries ago people didn't think like that as much as we do so the moral arc the moral sphere has expanded to include more people because culturally we've passed laws we've encouraged people to be more civil and so on bunch of other factors going on in there that has expanded it and so you care about other people you genuinely do whether there's a God or not you do because we're a social primate species we also exploit others too so it's a balance the whole point of a civil society is to tweak the variables to get people to be nicer to one another and attenuate violence and aggression we're not there yet perfectly but you know we're getting there moral progress so oh yeah so the question is what's wrong with these things according to Dr. Schermer's world view so he's making certain moral claims about things that are evils and notice because this happens over and over again when atheists describe why something is wrong they explain it in terms of another moral principle that can't be defended so why is it wrong for this person to suffer to hurt this person well because you wouldn't want to do it there's another moral principle that you shouldn't do this and then why is that one well there's this greater moral principle that you shouldn't violate someone else's autonomy all of these should should should ought ought oughts if we ask what the status of these things are on atheism you're just wired to do that again how does being hardwired to do something give it the status that we believe it we have free will you have a choice you have degrees of freedom we have free will you could exploit the person or you could be nice to the person interesting what are you going to do yes absolutely we have free will ladies and gentlemen I like that I agree we found agreement I think for a minute we slip back into crossfire okay question on this side thank you he started my question is for Dr. Wood you keep saying that new scientific discoveries actually strengthen your theist arguments but if you believe these new discoveries say evolution and cosmology are true how can you possibly reconcile them with the biblical account of creation well there are multiple ways to do that I'm not going to come down on any side here but here are your options notice when I read that quote earlier about the God of the gaps argument they don't go to the gaps that was an argument defending Darwinism Darwinism from a reverend so you basically have that approach saying hey whatever we discover out there that's what we set out to do and that was actually the general approach of the pioneers of the scientific revolution they didn't believe in that it hadn't been proposed yet but their idea was and in the Roger Coates in the second edition of Newton's great principles of mathematics he started out by saying that however God does something it's if we're talking about creating laws of nature and creating the world it's not out of necessity in other words it's not like 2 plus 2 equals 4 where you can just sit back in your chair and figure it out for yourself if you want to know how God creates the world he argued that you have to go out and explore that right and he specifically said if you want to know how God did something since it's not of necessity then the only way to find it out would be to go out into the world and discover how God makes the laws of nature work and so he defended observation and experiment as the grounds for how you would go out and discover how God did certain things in the world so that's one of the I'm saying that because I've talked a lot about the scientific revolution that's what that's the method that they proposed and so following that method if you have this for anything then you'd say hey I was able to figure this out using the scientific method the other would be to sort of separate the books the book of Scripture and the book of nature and say well I think these two are in conflict here so in other words you have two approaches one is to adhere to one and to hear the other if there seems to be a conflict the other would be to kind of reconcile them and Christians are going to fall into those general categories but even if you accepted the idea that there has to be a God for there to be an external objective morality a moral law some Archimedean point beyond us that grants it shouldn't those moral principles stand in and of themselves whether those are God or not so if God says lying is bad murder is bad whatever those should be true anyway so he's really just identifying something that's out there that's really there but the problem is of course there's many holy books and lots of moral principles from lots of different religious leaders over the last several thousand years most of which we've rejected as absurd so what happened we reasoned our way to this next question I'm confused about your position on morality you seem to think or to say that morality is objective like you've actually violated some real objective standard when you let's say violate a woman but then when we ask for justification for grounding you appeal to what we believe but there's something objective it's independent of what we as individuals or as a group believe like the speed of light is objectively the case and our beliefs have no bearing whatsoever any appeal to our beliefs just doesn't have anything to do with the speed of light so let's take it in like a hot button topic of female genital mutilation is that objectively wrong ask the women there's one place to begin to make it objective and then you build from there would we want to live in a society sorry I'm appealing to what to a woman's belief well it's not just her belief it's her autonomy her rights, her physical being you said ask a woman consult her belief it's a place to start yes you can find women who will say yeah I think it's okay but the long term trend has been away from men lording it over women and men controlling reproductive rights of women the trend in western civilization which is spreading globally is that individuals have autonomy over their own selves all individuals blacks, Jews, women everybody and it didn't used to be that way but we overcame that religious tradition that held us back well but even if it was how do you know if you're saying it's a religious argument and you're getting it from God how do you know how do you get your morals? that's a different question of how we know something versus whether it's objectively true I gave you an answer the survival and flourishing of sentient beings is a moral starting point how do we know? ask them, study them look at the effects ask yourself how would I feel if somebody did that to me and then ask yourself do I want to live in a society where everybody violates their promises what would you want to live in that society that's as objective as you can get it's not perfect but I'm coming back to you by saying if you say no no I get it from God or the Bible or whatever but you tell me where you get it how is that objective? how do you know? how do we know something? how do you know what is right and wrong? I'd say through our moral sense I think through innate ideas that we were implanted with innate ideas of what's right and wrong physical senses we don't see or hear the same way but we still perceive reality I think morally we have I think we're in agreement actually so you believe there's an objective reality beyond us? okay we're going to go ahead and give Dr. Wood one minute to give a response here again explaining some moral principle in terms of another moral principle which remains undefended apart from just again stopping the foot and saying the way things are individuals have autonomy over themselves and Dr. Schermer said the surviving and flourishing of sentient beings is the starting point now why prefer humans in this equation? there are many sentient beings apart from human beings and the success of human flourishing and primate flourishing certainly conflicts with the flourishing of many others on atheism why prefer humans or primates to any others you just have to lay down this is the way it is this is my species or whatever and that's why I adhere to this but again it would be indefensible whereas defending the autonomy or anything else if people are created in the image of God we have a different kind of status from everything else and so here again things tend to make sense with one worldview and not make any sense at all with another okay next question my question is for Dr. Schermer traditionally understood or at least as I've understood that atheism could be defined as the affirmative belief that God does not exist however in your opening statement in some of your buttocks you refer to atheism defined as the lack of belief in God I guess you can say my question is a two-part question the first part being why would you adopt the definition of lack of belief if it doesn't make a positive statement about reality the second would you make the affirmative statement that God does not exist these are just labels it's sort of labeling issue philosophy is making a difference between weak and strong atheism I assert that there is no God I believe there is no God I'm confident that there is no God I know there is no God weak atheism is just lack of belief in a God there's some other variations apathyism they just don't care and I gave you agnosticism and there's a few others forget the labels sort of the ontological question what is the nature of reality is there really a God then there's a question of how do you act what do you believe because that shapes how you act and how you behave in the world based on those beliefs so it doesn't really matter whether I'm a strong or weak atheist I don't believe in God and I act accordingly so effectively call it whatever you want I live a life without God I think it's a little little joke just a joke points about the distinction between you know strong atheism weak atheism and so on if you're talking to someone who claims to be an atheist you would ask for an explanation of what you believe are you I think of when I say atheism I'm usually talking in a strong sense of naturalism there are no gods or nothing supernatural but some atheists adhere to a weaker position and if you what we can agree on is Dr. Schermer says that the weaker form is just a lack of belief in God so if we want to hold them to a stronger position we should be sympathetic to our atheist friends who say that their position is just one of lack and agree that their position is lacking next question my question is for Dr. Schermer as well and you said previously in the debate that along the lines that there has to be a dual credit given to God regardless of result being good or bad and to go even farther you gave the example of dying children and my question is is it not true that when these family chains are broken that they relink again an eternal world with forever lasting peace which is greater than any gift you could ever receive well I missed the last part isn't it true that is it not true that when these family chains are broken a.k.a. when the children are dying that they relink again parents and their families which is greater than any gift you could ever see because forever lasting peace in an eternal world okay so I understand what you're saying is that we should tell them that they get to see their kids again in the next life because they'll make them feel better no I'm asking you you said that there's no possible way that we or will you say that as a theist you should believe that there should be dual credit given to God whether being good or bad and I'm in agreement with you I think there can be dual credit given to God and what I'm asking is when those children are dying you're saying that that's a bad thing and that like we don't have like a reason for that like happening whatever but my answer and my response to that is that when they do die that they are going to an eternal world where they will see their parents again and they will have an eternal life of forever lasting peace and is that not greater well I can see why people would believe that for sure but the question is is it true and in any case it's how do you know how do you know how do I know if it's true or not have you been there no I haven't that's what I'm asking you is it not true no I the burden is not on me to disprove your heaven there's lots of versions of the afterlife tons of them my next book is about this you have one particular one how do you know that's the right one listen he's given a lecture on Islam shortly on the Quran in a couple of days I mean this is the big elephant in the political room these days Islam and Islamic terrorism and so forth you realize there's a billion people in the world who believe just as fervently as Christians do in their version of monotheism they do not accept that Jesus was resurrected the son of god and so on they don't they think you're going to hell for believing the wrong religion how can we tell the difference between these just those two which is the right one and of course David so I know because so I know he'll make his arguments but I can assure you that you bring him some imams and they'll go oh no no no you're misreading the Quran you've mistranslated this particular word and you are wrong Jesus was not resurrected and it goes on and on how can we tell the world to my talk on Wednesday to challenge me I think the point I think the point that was being made is one about the possible coherence of theism on this issue so I think the point was if you're a theist of some sort you don't believe that death is the end and so even if there's some kind of thing that happens to a child that's not the end of the story according to theism and so maybe that this all works together in terms of you know the problem of evil given a theistic context there are explanatory resources given theism that would allow that not to be the end or something like that so I think that's kind of the point not that this is true although he might have believe that if we wanted to make a point with it it would be that whether it's true or not if the claim is theism is incoherent because of this suffering then theism has all kinds of explanatory resources to appeal to for talking about suffering next question this is for dr. and I guess I consider myself to be kind of agnostic but I don't think God has any correlation with the earth we live in or even with any religion but I find myself thinking there is a God because I just look at the start of where everything was and how do you dismiss that with the universe where did the first thing come from those are hard questions why is there something rather than nothing maybe we should ask why is there nothing rather than something why isn't there nothing we know that the universe began with the big bang but it came from something we know from quantum physics that nothing in the theological sense is not exactly true there is energy in the empty space that bubbles with this sort of quantum foam they call it mind you I'm a social scientist I'm just saying the words that quantum physicists talk about this is what they do for a living they have the mathematics and so forth in the physics experiments to show this is the case and we know that not all quantum effects are caused they are truly just uncaused random events that happen in the subatomic world it's a weird, weird field of science that's extremely well supported but very counterintuitive and the beginning of the universe appears to be something that we don't realize now it could be there's the universe is infinitely old that is without a beginning that our little bubble universe is just the latest incarnation of this but this sort of quantum foam energy field or something always existed we just don't know we don't know and again there's half a dozen theories about this maybe a dozen you can read all about it in these popular books people like that lay it out beautifully but still we don't know and that's one of the great questions it's really fun to not know it's okay tying this into basically my position in my opening statement think about what Dr. Sherman was just talking about there bubble universes quantum effects subatomic worlds the beginning of the world all of these things going back to if you were assuming everything that we're hearing about the origins of the universe and so on were correct going back to a pre-scientific revolution time if you were an atheist and you said hey these are the kinds of things that are true about the universe or you were a theist and said that are true about the universe which one of those would you be able to say hey if that's true I've been made to figure this sort of thing out I think as a theist you would say hey I'm creating the image of God God created the universe I'm rational this is how this is how I reflect God's rationality is in uncovering these things and so you'd think hey we are made for these kinds of things you'd never expect that if you believe what you are according to atheism or naturalism so everything even the descriptions used by atheists are still confirmation of theism our next question yes and my questions for Dr. Strumer in preparation for this event tonight I did go to the library and get a copy of a more arc and read through it and what I found in there the problem is what several other people have said that there was no basis for the ontology of morality in words there are more truths out there these truths if we're going to discover them which is what you've been talking about epistemology they have to exist independently of us even if we weren't here before we could discover them so we could picture a universe where we're not here and there are still things that are good what is the ontological and metaphysical basis then to know that this is something is good or something is even and if you don't have that you just have relativism and so much then for talk about slavery or children dying or anything like that thank you for reading my book I just appreciate that right if there's not absolute morality then it's all relativism no no no and no there's lots of areas in between you can have moral principles that may not be absolutely 100% always in every circumstance true and that doesn't exist in religion either so we can just jet in that idea and then start to build there we're not really discovering the first question tonight it's not quite like discovering gravity or electromagnetism or something like that but it is discovering truths about the human condition about human nature in the same way that we know that people have a sense of color or a sense of balance or certain physical characteristics we also have a sense of right and wrong moral instinct that really is responsible for most of the violence in society about 90% of homicides are moralistic in nature only about 10% are instrumental in nature that is I kill them because I wanted the Rolex or his car or whatever usually thieves and criminals when they burgle your house they're hoping you're not home especially if you're armed they just want your stuff most of the homicides that occur are due to the sense of he insulted me he cheated at cards he scratched my car, he took my parking spot she cheated on me with my best friend, I had to kill her those are real moral emotions that exist you can measure them so the whole point of structuring civil society is to try to get people to bring out the better angels and attenuate the inner demons because they're both there nice metaphor from my friend Stephen Pinker in his great book, The Better Angels of Our Nature so in that sense social scientists have discovered those truths by studying human nature and human society those are sciences, just like economics is a science the Nobel Prize was given today in economics, it's a science so as social science psychology experiment, cognitive science we're discovering truths about humans that are really there boy I really feel bad for a society that governs its view of right and wrong based on their emotions emotions can change very quickly let me get personal here for a second I'm technically a diagnosed sociopath I don't have these moral feelings when I see a bunch of people slaughtered in front of me, I have no bad feelings for it I don't choose to be that way that's just how I'm wired, I'm defective I understand that I'm defective in that way so why don't I hurt people or something like that well it has nothing to do with my emotions they're not what guides my behavior I view people as created in the image of God so I have no right to do certain things to other people I have to respect what they are, I don't get to do whatever I want to people and so if you throw that out just conclude that we're the product of what naturalism would suggest that's why I keep asking this question because I take this question very seriously if it's just, hey here's how we're wired I'm wired to not care about any of you if it's a matter of what society teaches I'm wired to not care what society teaches me so is there something that's more than our feelings or the way that we're wired? If there is we need to be aware of that and if there's not boy are we in a lot of trouble here next question earlier Dr. Sherman earlier you said that theists use the word God as a linguistic placeholder basically saying we don't understand God we can't feel him we don't know his presence by that you're saying that we can't you're questioning our faith but do you not think that you as an atheist put a lot of faith in science for things that are essentially flawed for example the taxonomic classifications there's an Asian elephant and an African elephant the Asian elephant is tuskless and the African elephant has tusks but there are two different genuses but to the human eye they look like elephants and the human would make saying oh this elephant can't be in the same genus as this elephant because they don't have a tusk why not and also there's a rule for the taxonomic classification that says that organisms in different species cannot hybridize they can't reproduce but there is an actual piece of evidence of the elephant named Madi that was made by the Asian elephant and the African elephant reproducing and that was in 1931 so how come you as an atheist does not discount the taxonomic classifications that you put so much strong faith in okay there's a lot there so the first part it's not that I'm not integrating faith it's just not a reliable method of knowing the world it is how I feel about things I feel God's presence like I said feel the dragon's presence whatever we can imagine all sorts of things that change how we feel that doesn't make them true now on the taxonomy question there is a debate in the philosophy of biology about to what extent species are real I mean are they really out there are these complete social constructions by biologists you would know it more popular culture is race real in human groups are they really races the meme now is that it's a social construction races don't really exist anyway I tend to favor the side that taxonomy has been moving ever closer to real units that exist in nature by the definition you just gave reproductive isolation now hybrids do happen in tigers if the males a lion it's a liger if the males a tiger it's a tiglon but they tend not to have viable offspring that continue the line so they're hybrids like donkeys or mules now if a hybrid group small group as a founder population they floated out to a new island where there was no life forms started a new population it would be a new species and that is how new species are formed through these founder populations that have viable offspring so those really exist and the final point on that I'm encouraged by my friend Jared Diamond who studies birds in Papua New Guinea talks about the match between western trained biologists and his native Papua New Guinea and friends he goes birding with they pretty much come up with the same groupings of species even though they have different backgrounds different cultures we think that those things really exist in nature we're discovering them you too? okay well that's all the time that we actually have for questions but thank you all so much