Barker's Toothless Atheist Arguments

On April 30, 2009, atheist Dan Barker disputed the resolution "The Triune God of Scripture Lives" with Protestant apologist James White. White asked me for my thoughts on the debate, which I gladly supplied. And, since the things I said to him are things I wanted to say publicly anyway, I provide them, for what they're worth, below.

Dear James,

Thank you once again for linking to the article about the unsound sticks which Catholics sometimes beat Protestant dogma with (any stigma is good enough to beat a dogma with, as a mutual friend of ours says). This has resulted in some very interesting and fruitful correspondence, all of which, incidentally, has been cordial, including, contrary to your expectation, that with Dave Armstrong. Dave in fact agreed with the majority of the article; I think he cares about truth and integrity far more than you give him credit for. Sadly, yes, Art Sippo did decide to flame David Palm, Nick, and me. He must still be bitter over my taking him to task for calling James Swan pro-Nazi.

Regarding the Barker debate, I thought Dan Barker did poorly. Mr. Barker did, as you noted repeatedly, borrow from the Christian worldview in order to attack Christianity, particularly when attacking biblical slavery. On what basis is he so indignant about biblical slavery, he the materialist hard determinist for whom free will is an illusion, for whom life is purposeless, who lacks any reference point besides his own arbitrary will for concepts of morality and personal responsibility?

That having been said, the argument from evil is an internal critique of Christianity, in the execution of which it is legitimate for Mr. Barker to assume the Christian worldview. As such, instead of spending valuable debate time pointing out how he is assuming the Christian worldview, I would have focused on explaining how the data of our experience in children's hospitals is consistent with that worldview.

To wit, God was not obliged to create those children. He willed them the good of existence and, provided they do not commit any personal mortal sins before death, they will spend eternity in at least a state of natural happiness. Many of these children are baptized, and hence will certainly possess eternal supernatural bliss. As such, in a world full of incitements to impiety which drags most adults down to hell, for God to take these children out of the world in their youth could be seen as a great act of mercy. Of course, this is only a partial explanation, but it is a start.

I was amazed that Mr. Barker actually argued that we should not want there to be a purpose to life, because if there were, it would cheapen life. He would rather be a collection of atoms, which will be oddly coordinated for a time and then go their separate ways, than a son of God, so long as he might preserve his precious autonomy, so long as there should be no God ruling over him. Like Satan, he would rather rule in hell than serve in heaven. Hell get half his wish.

Mr. Barker also made it clear in the debate that he has not read, or at least not adequately absorbed, any classical and philosophically rigorous account of natural or Trinitarian theology. His FANG (freewill argument for the nonexistence of God) is toothless. It requires that God should exist in a succession from moment to moment, an absurdity which is excluded by the divine name itself: I am who am, i.e., I exist simply. God exists in an eternal now. He determines from this eternal now, immediately, everything He should do in created time. Hence there are no new choices for Him to make day by day. Similarly, Mr. Barker betrayed his ignorance of Trinitarian theology in his question as to which Person of the Trinity made ADP. The Persons of the Trinity are one in all operations ad extra. Hence the Holy Three made ADP together. Now, perhaps if Mr. Barker understood this and other aspects of Trinitarian theology he would not make the ignorant claim that the Trinity is not true monotheism.

Mr. Barker's answer regarding the sort of evidence he would accept as proving the existence of God raised a question in my mind. If you predicted that a great miracle would occur at noon on October 13, and 70,000 people showed up and witnessed the sun dance in the sky, would Mr. Barker accept that as proving the existence of God? If not, is he not simply setting an arbitrarily high threshold for the amount of factual detail he requires in a prophecy before he will accept it as supernatural?

I thought Mr. Barker made a preposterous argument when he attempted to deny the universal and objective validity of the laws of logic by appealing to the fallibility of induction and Ockham's razor. I would like to ask Mr. Barker to come up with a single exception to the law of non-contradiction or any of the nine rules of inference, a single instance where one of these does not "work very well." If he cannot, he might wish to reconsider using the exceptions to induction and Ockham's razor to support his claim that there is no transcendent order to the universe, as he seems to have done. For the rules of inference are indeed universal, as they are implicit to the divine essence; they are not merely labels for fallible principles by which human minds work.

Regarding your performance in the debate: naturally, as I agreed with your thesis, I agreed with most of what you said in its defense. Nevertheless, I must object to certain statements you made while justifying your presuppositional approach to the question.

First, you claimed that one must presuppose the Christian worldview in order to justify the laws of logic. I grant that monotheism (of a form consistent with Christian theology proper but not necessarily coextensive therewith) is necessary to explain the why and whence of the world's rational and intelligible order. Still, the fact of this order is abundantly established by sense experience. Drop a rock, and it falls. Every time. Drop two rocks, and they not only fall, but fall at the same speed(!). Knock them together and they make sparks. Let the sparks fall on dry kindling and they start a fire. And so on. So clearly even a caveman could confirm that the world behaves according to principle. A Greek could do still better: starting from geometric axioms which are immediately, self-evidently true, thence proceeding by reason, he might deduce theorems which, although not self-evidently true, are plèn invariably and observably true. So, the fact of the rational and intelligible order of the universe, and the universal validity of the laws of logic, is established by abstraction from sense data, logically prior (in the creature's apprehension) to the establishment of the existence of the God who is its Source. Thence, from this empirically established foundation, the creature might rise by reason to the existence of said God.

Second, you claimed that presenting proofs for God's existence invites the creature to judge his Creator and ignores the unbeliever's suppression of knowledge of God. On the contrary, when the Christian philosopher presents theistic proofs, he should fully expect the unbeliever to attempt to avoid their certain conclusion. Yet, the fact remains that they are valid proofs. Hence the unbeliever's objections must of necessity be invalid. The Christian philosopher will then expose the unbeliever's objections as such, and hopefully any persons of good will in the audience will perceive what is going on.

Otherwise, by and large, I thought you did well at the debate, and I hope your words by God's grace convinced some in the audience, as I hope God likewise blesses other aspects of your ministry which are consistent with Catholicism. So, I remain praying,

God grace and forfend you,
Ben Douglass
May 24, Anno Domini MMIX