I recently listened to the debate "Does the God of Christianity Exist" by Justin Schieber and Max Andrews. If you would like to listen it can be found here and transcript is here
Before I start my review I do want it to be known that I am not a philosopher or have any formal debate training. I will try my hardest to be as objective as I can, but since I do not have a belief in the Christian God I'm sure my bias will show.
Max Andrews opens the debate with three points, two for the existence of a god (The Thomistic Cosmological Argument and The Fine-Tuning Argument) the third for the existence of the christian God The Resurrection of Jesus.
I will only comment on the third point because in my opinion the first two do not matter as the debate topic is specific to the existence of the Christian God only. We can grant the existence of a god (deistic model) and that gets us no closer the existence of the God as described in the Bible.
Max's argument for the resurrection quickly turns into the "Who would die for a lie" argument and although I think Justin does a good job explaining why that is a bad argument he could have done better (and has). The empty tomb seems to be the crux of this argument and granting that said tomb was in fact proven to be empty that is only proof of an empty tomb not resurrection. There are a few other possibilities that should be considered. 1) The body was stolen/moved (this would fall under the rebuttal to "who would die for a lie"), 2) The guard(s) were paid off by Joseph of the Sanhedrin (who is the owner of the tomb Jesus was buried in) effectively faking Jesus' death.
The best argument Justin Schieber makes is his "God World" argument and although I do think Max makes a fairly decent rebuttal. My question to both Justin and Max regarding the "God World" argument is how does heaven factor into the point? Could God have just created heaven and would that erode the "God World"? If it doesn't then why is this temporal life necessary? If it does erode "God World" then Justin's argument stands solid.
Max takes great issue with Justin's Hell argument and I think that issue would be justified if the topic of debate was "Does God exist" but it wasn't. The Christian God is given very specific qualities in the Bible and by Christians if the god they describe also created hell than it is an issue. Specifically Max takes issue with the phrase "God sends people to hell" and I'd like to address why that is a valid statement (which I think Justin could have done a better job addressing). If God is omniscient and the creator of the universe then he created a universe knowing that only about 2 in 7 people would believe in the Jesus story. He could have created a universe where the evidence was overwhelmingly accessible and undeniable. He could have created a universe where blood sacrifice was not needed at all. He chose to create this one and therefore knows who would and would not accept the Jesus story and created this universe anyway. It is a valid statement that "God sends people to hell".
I do have one question for Max (assuming he reads this) regarding his belief in hell and judgement. How does God judge those that are never given the opportunity to accept or reject the Jesus claim past/present/future? Many Christians I have come across say they will be judged based on the "knowledge they have" which sounds an awful lot like being judged on actions and not beliefs to me. If this is the case than the resurrection is not necessary for salvation, which begs the question as to why the resurrection was necessary at all. If these people are punished for their non belief in something that they were never given the opportunity to accept or reject than God has most definitely sent them to hell.
I am not usually a fan of the formal (especially live) debates because generally speaking participants are forced to anticipate their opponents points and responses and don't actually address what is said. I enjoyed this one because both Max and Justin were given ample time to dissect and respond to the arguments made. My main criticism of each debater is they allowed (or steered) the debate to go from "Does the Christian God exist" to "Does a god exist"
Please listen to or read the debate and tell me where I am wrong
I want to thank both Justin Schieber and Max Andrews for a job well done (I also hope you don't mind that I addressed you both by your first names) this was one of the finer debates I have ever listened to
- MoonWalking Unicorn
