Transcription
You could, by an argument from design, prove answered prayers, or prove that someone born of a virgin was therefore the son of a god, or could prove that resurrections occur, and that by, uh, people being tortured to death thousands of years ago, we are now redeemed, that we are vicariously forgiven our own offenses by human sacrifice. How does deism help you to that? It doesn't.
Everyone in this room is an atheist. Everyone can name a god in which they do not believe. Let them advance the case that the one in which they believe is the superior one. Is it nonetheless possible for an atheist to say, a proclaimed atheist to say, as I do, um, proclaim myself to be, that God positively can be said not to exist? No. It's a very common misunderstanding about my fraternity, sorority. I'll just take a moment to clear it up. The atheist says, "No persuasive argument for the existence of God has ever been advanced or adduced without convincing rebuttal." That no argument in favor stands or has been found to stand the test of argument and evidence. We cannot say that we know that there could be no such entity. Among other things, we are too reverent of the extraordinary time of discovery, innovation, pushing back of the frontiers of knowledge and and understanding that's taken place just in our own time to make any such remark. But by saying this, we say, I think, quite a lot. There is no valid or coherent or consistent argument that would not work, if it comes to that, for the existence of any god.
Now I notice it was, by a slight work of illusion, a bit of uh, tap dancing there, that Dr. Toret went from uh, being a deist to a theist, and then from being a theist to a Christian. Now I know he does not believe in the existence of the sun god Ra. I'm practically certain he doesn't believe in the existence of Zeus. If you'll pick up a copy of my portable atheists, a selection of the finest writings by non-believers, uh, down the years, and just turn to the three pages where Mein HL Mein lists the easiest to name 3,000 gods that used to be worshipped and that no longer are held to exist by anybody. Uh, you'll spare me the trouble of reading them out. Um, no, he thinks he doesn't just know, Dr. Toric, that there is a god. He knows which one is the right one from a potentially infinite list. Actually, from a list that's as long as the number of people there are, or have ever been in the human species. Because if you ever argue with a theist or a deist, as I do every day, you'll find they all believe in a god of their very own. Indeed, they often say a personal god. Indeed, they often say a personal savior. So, out of out of what are we reifying a concept that applies to all of us? Out of nothing but wishful thinking and nonsense and fear and ignorance and above all, and I'm not quitting on this point, civility.
Everyone in this room is an atheist. Everyone can name a god in which they do not believe. Let them advance the case that the one in which they believe is the superior one. Hitchens is pointing out something that holds up historically and philosophically. Over centuries, people have proposed arguments for a god: the cosmological argument, design argument, moral argument, but none of them have held under critical examination. For example, David Hume challenged the design argument back in the 1700s, saying complexity in nature doesn't automatically mean a designer. Today, the multiverse theory offers a scientific explanation for fine-tuning without needing a supernatural cause. He also brings up the thousands of gods humans have worshipped. That's backed by history. There are over 3,000 documented deities from cultures all over the world. Believers today reject almost all of them. So when someone says their god is the true one, they're making the same move atheists make, just with one exception: that's not reasoned evidence. It's cultural inheritance or personal conviction. And to just make it simple, everyone can be an atheist because we already don't believe in most gods. We all have something we believe in. But belief alone isn't the same as truth.
Now, the same tap dancing hopes you will not notice that deism and theism are two quite different things. The deist argument says that there is so much order apparent in nature and in the cosmos and in the universe that it might be unwise to assume that such order has no one interested in ordering or designing it. That, that, that assumption might be an might be an unsafe one. The philosopher Paley, in his, uh, natural theology, said design implies a designer. He came up with the very famous image of the watch. If you come across a watch, if you're a primitive tribes person in the Sahara, you may not know what it's for, but you know that it's not a rock or a vegetable. You know it has a purpose and someone made it that way. Um, until quite recently, that was the default position of most intelligent people, including Mr. Jefferson, who, despite his intermittent atheism, in my judgment, was a theist. I'm so sorry, was a deist. Was a deist. He would debate with, um, among the many skills he had, was a very advanced, uh, level of paleontology. He would debate with the greatest paleontologist of his time, the Count of Buffon, how, how comes it, how can it be that we find seashells so high on the mountains of Virginia? How can this be? Not even the most intelligent people of today, and it's very recent, it's an instant in historical time, had any idea how that could be. There isn't anyone in this room who wasn't educated and brought up knowing exactly how that is. It's just a shame that Jefferson and many other intelligent and humane and well-educated, literate people just couldn't see that far. He wasn't to know that Darwin was born in his day, on the same day, actually, in 1809, as Abraham Lincoln, the very same day, the two great emancipators, Darwin being, in my judgment, the greater of the two.
Now we know, we know this proposition to be true, the proposition that was ridiculed so, so pathetically, I have to say, by Dr. Story. There is no explanation for the origins of our species, for the origins of our cosmos, for the origins of our globe itself. There is not one explanation left which requires the existence of a deus ex machina. In every case, we have a better or sufficient explanation. I think that assertion of mine will stand any challenge this evening, and I'm looking forward to hearing, uh, some more of them. Of course, Darwin used creationist images. He actually set out to, um, vindicate, uh, paleontology. Thought he could do it by his study of taxonomical study of nature. Um, Einstein used, uh, god images when he spoke, uh, of the extraordinary majesty of the cosmos. It's, it's, it's in us. It's in our vocabulary. It's hardwired in us, you might almost say, to use images of awe-inspiring, um, godly, uh, Mozartian, you might say, or even Shakespearean images when talking about these things. But when we come down to the actual analysis of them, we find that we don't need the prime mover at all, and that most of the prime mover explanations, if not all of them, have been positively misleading. So that the deist may propose a designer, and I may not be able to show you convincingly that there could be no such person, but the theist has all their work still ahead of them. From this designer, how do we get to the designer who answers prayers? Did you hear a thing? I mean, just a phrase, even an implication, even a suggestion from anything my opponent said that you could, by an argument from design, prove answered prayers, or prove that someone born of a virgin was therefore the son of a god, or could prove that resurrections occur, and that by, uh, people being tortured to death thousands of years ago, we are now redeemed, that we are vicariously forgiven our own offenses by human sacrifice? How does deism help you to that? It doesn't. It quite simply doesn't and cannot. And the attempt to build from one to the other is a conjuring trick of a very vulgar, I think, kind.
Hitchens is right to call out the jump from deism. Theism only says there might be a creator behind the universe's order. Theism adds layers: answered prayers, miracles, virgin births, resurrections. That leap has never been backed by evidence. The design argument he critiques, Paley's watchmaker analogy, was seriously challenged by Darwin's theory of natural selection, which explains biological complexity without needing a designer. Today, we have overwhelming support from genetics, fossil records, and observed evolution in labs. The watchmaker argument doesn't hold when we understand how nature builds complexity over time. Hitchens also mentioned Jefferson's confusion about sea shells in the mountains. Now we know that's due to plate tectonics and marine sediment uplift, fully explained by modern geology. What used to be a mystery no longer needs supernatural answers. And about Einstein, he spoke of God as a metaphor. He said, "I do not believe in a personal god, and I have never denied this." His views were closer to Spinoza's pantheism, not traditional theism. In short, every gap once used to justify God, from life's origin to Earth's features, now has natural explanations. And no part of theism leads to claims like human sacrifice for redemption. There's no evidence connecting the two. Let's hear Frank Turk's rebuttal.
I want to point out that most of what Christopher just said there is pretty much complaints about religion and religious people, and has no impact on whether or not God exists. Religious people can be the worst people that ever lived. That says nothing about whether or not God exists. Um, people can do evil. That doesn't mean the parents don't exist. Children can do evil. Doesn't mean the parents don't exist. My kids do evil, but I'm still here. I do evil. My dad's still here. In fact, he's sitting right there. What does that prove about whether or not God exists? Let me try and go down some of the things Christopher said. Yes, I am an atheist when it comes to Zeus. But Zeus is not spaceless, timeless, immaterial, powerful, moral, personal, intelligent creator that I hopefully, at least I thought, I gave evidence for. And maybe Christopher will come back to my statements on that later. Uh, I don't believe in Zeus because I don't think there's any evidence for Zeus, but I think there's evidence for the theistic God. Uh, deism. I didn't make the direct shift to theism. I probably should have been more explicit. I think it's obvious there's a theistic God because life came several billion years after the creation. That is not a theistic concept. That is a theistic concept. I didn't say anything about Christianity. Even though I am a Christian, I don't have time to defend Christianity here. I'd love to debate Christopher on the issue of Christianity in the future. And I, I'll publicly offer that right now. If he wants to debate whether or not the New Testament documents are reliable and tell us really what happened about what, uh, Jesus, uh, came and said and did, I'd be happy to do it. But when I mentioned before, I have a couple arguments in on the bench. I've got almost a full baseball team of arguments here. I've got a couple arguments on the bench. It's the resurrection is one of them. And I don't have time to, to, to get to that here. So, I'm not backing up the Christian God here. I'm backing up a theistic God, even though personally I do believe in a Christian God. Um, he claimed Darwin was the great emancipator, and that, um, he went on to talk about atrocities. And I think he again missed my point. As I said before, I'm not saying atheists can't be moral. Christopher, what he says in his book again, much of it is true. Religious people have done awful things. In fact, Christianity predicts we'll be hypocrites. That's what the church is. It's full of hypocrites. Whenever somebody says, "I don't want to go to church. There's too many hypocrites down there." I always say, "Come on down, pal. We got room for one more." That's what the church is. We're all fallen. We're all sinners. That's why we need a savior because we can't do it. And Christopher said, "Well, how can you command somebody to be well when they have no capacity to be well?" Well, we were well in the beginning. And I'm going into Christian theology here. I understand. I'll just try and answer the point. We were well in the beginning, but then we messed up. And so God, the great physician, came back to save us. That's Christian theology. As again, I don't have time to support it. I'm just pointing out that is the theology. Now Christopher talked about atrocities. But again, on the atheistic worldview, here's the main point: How do you define what an atrocity is? Who defines it? Who has the authority to define what an atrocity is? The carbon atom, the benzene molecule.
Toure claims Hitchens is just complaining about religion. That's not true. Hitchens is pointing out that religious claims like prayer, miracles, virgin births have no evidence. That's a valid challenge, not a complaint. Turk says his god is different from Zeus because it's spaceless and timeless. Those are just descriptions. There's no testable evidence for any of that. You can describe a unicorn as invisible and eternal. It doesn't make it real. He argues life began billions of years after the Big Bang and that proves a theistic god. That's just a timeline. Astrophysics explains it naturally. No god needed. Turk brings up morality and says atheists can't justify it. That's false. Morality is rooted in evolution and social behavior. We see it in animals: cooperation, empathy, fairness. These traits evolved because they help groups survive. He asks where reason, math, and consciousness come from. Neuroscience studies consciousness. Math is a tool we invented to describe the world. These aren't mysteries that require a god. Turk quotes scientists like Crick, but Crick never said God was the answer. He said, "The origin of life is complex and still being studied." That's not proof of design. It's honest science. And DNA. It's chemical, not coded by a mind. Self-replicating molecules can emerge through natural processes. There's no evidence that intelligence is required. Everything Turk mentioned either has a natural explanation or is still being explored. None of it proves an atheistic God.
I'm not saying you have to believe in God to be moral. I'm not saying that only religious people are moral. I'm not saying atheists can't be moral. I'm not saying atheists don't know morality. I'm saying there's no way to justify what is right and what is wrong unless there's some authority that provides it. What is the authority in a materialistic worldview? There is no authority. The carbon atom has no moral authority over you. And it seems that Christopher goes on and on about how he does not want to be under any, some, some kind of divine totalitarianism. That is a moral rejection of God. Where does he come up with this immoral totalitarianism? His worldview does not afford immorality because his worldview does not afford morality. He has to borrow from the Christian worldview in order to argue against it. In fact, he has to sit in God's lap to slap his face. [Music] Where does he get morality from? Where does he get reason from? Where does he get mathematics from? Where does he get consciousness from? Where does the universe? He said, "There are explanations for where the universe came from." Atheistic. I'd love to hear them. I, I haven't heard one yet. How does something come from nothing with extreme fine-tuning? What is the explanation for that? He said, "There are arguments for the beginning of life that are naturalistic, not according to the people who are studying the matter." How about Francis Crick? If I could find his quote here. Francis Crick said, "Every time I write a paper on the origin of life, I swear I'll never write another one because there's too much speculation running after too few facts." Mark Kersner of Harvard and John C. Ghart of Berkeley said, "Everything about evolution before the bacteria-like life forms is sheer conjecture." Biochemist Klaus Dose admits that after more than 30 years of research into the origin of life has led to, quote, "a better perception of the immensity of the problem of the origin of life on Earth rather than its solution." "At present, all discussions on the principal theories and experiments in the field either end in stalemate or in a confession of ignorance." Now I'm not saying that this is a default position that it must be God. I'm not saying that I just lack a natural explanation for the origin of life. I'm saying that specified complexity, information, the DNA structure that we all have, is evidence for an intelligent being. Because information only comes from minds. The laws of ink and paper did not create. Is God not great? There was a mind behind it that brought it into existence. And there's a mind behind DNA. What is the atheistic explanation for DNA? What is the atheistic explanation for information? What is the atheistic information or explanation for all of these nine things I mentioned? How much time do I have? I have none. Survey said sit down.
Yes, sir. Well, I think I, I'll just invite Dr. to do the following and make available to us in on a sheet of paper, which I'm sure he has, the the sorest of quotations that he's found from this and that scientist and physicist and natural scientist and so forth. And you will find when you read them, when you look at them, I was writing them down as he went through them. All of these are statements of uncertainty. All of them. They're statements of, "All we know is how little we know." That's been for many years my definition of an educated person: someone who knows enough to know how ignorant they are. Uh, it's actually the only, it's not my own original definition. It comes from the Greek, but, uh, it's the only definition that works. And no one working, toiling in the field of science, uh, could possibly say anything less or more of themselves, especially at a time like this. But there you have it right away. The theistic and the deistic explanation has to be based on a certainty that there is a supervising, and if you want to be a theist, a caring and intervening creator who manages these matters, and there hasn't been a single sentence. So who made the stronger case, Hitchens or Turk? Let us know in the comments. Like and subscribe for more clear, fact-based breakdowns of debates that matter.