Dr Greg Bahnsen - Bahnsen-Stein Debate: Does God Exist? (Part 2)

This recording has been released into the public domain by the Bonson Institute, where we aim to bring into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ.

He will, if he can find his notes. Now, it would be logically wrong to say that if all of the proofs fail the the existence of God, that one is justified in saying that there is no God. That's there's a logical fallacy argumentum ad ignorantum or something like that, to say that you accept something just because all the evidence the contrary fails. However, we have two other factors here that we must consider. One of them is the fact that 900 years have passed since Anselm first postulated the ontological proof and Thomas Aquinas and 1200 or so. So we have a long period of time which all these proofs that are being professed fail. That's some evidence about probability of there being a proof that someone will come up with that will succeed being pretty unlikely. In addition, we have a number of things which I wouldn't call proofs, but I would call evidence which make the existence of God even more improbable. And one of them is the problem of evil. If an all good God exists, why is there evil in the world? We are told with God that all things are possible. If it was possible, if all things are possible, it would be possible for him to create a world in which the vast mass of suffering that is morally pointless, such as the pain and misery of animals, the cancer and blindness of little children, the humiliations of senility and insanity were avoided. These are apparently inflictions of the Creator himself. Or else we have a God that isn't omnipotent. If you admit that, then you deny his goodness. If you say that he would not have done otherwise, you deny with him things that are possible. All things that are possible. So the atheist can present several arguments which sort of increase the probability that there isn't a God. They're not proofs, as I said. One of them would be the problem of evil. The idea is that the presence of evil is incompatible with an all good, all knowing and all powerful God as Dr. Bonson suggested he believes in. Now, he could come up with a statement that injustice in this world may well be corrected in the next world, but that would be something that he would be making without any evidence whatsoever, just again wishful thinking. He could also say that get out of this bind by saying that God is not all powerful, that some things, some evil things are done without his permission, so to speak. In which case his statement that he believes in an omnipotent God is falsified. He could also say that the old argument about free will, which is basically a morass into which he may fall if he wishes, will not do. To say that God gave man free will and therefore he can choose between the evil and good is to imply that God was unable to make a man who could examine both sides and always choose the good. That in other words, he's limited and only way he can do it is to let man completely choose for himself, as if that would take something away from man if he could examine both sides and still have the guidance within himself to always choose the good. Now, there's no obvious physical evidence of a God. If God wanted man to believe in him, man or woman, pimple, he could. All he have to do is put in an appearance before a group of people, especially a group of atheists. In fact, we invite him to our meetings to put in an appearance.

In that way, anyone would believe in.

Him except a fool. Well, the Christian says that this may sound logical to you, but it doesn't to God. God evidently wants man to believe on faith without adequate evidence. Well, if he does, then why does he give man the power of reason? And why did he give man more reason than than any other animal has? If all living things on the earth were created by a God and he was a loving God who made man in his own image, how do you explain the fact that he must have created the tapeworm, the malaria parasite, tetanus, germs, polio, ticks, mosquitoes, cockroaches and fleas. Now, surely the dog is not suffering from original sin and needs to be infected with fleas so that he can get to doggy heaven, which will be better than his present life. The standard answer of theists to this kind of question is things have to be better after death. You know, we have these things on earth. It's a vale of tears, so to speak. Doesn't make much sense. I mean, any God that would punish a man for what his ancestors did is not a very moral God. I'm talking about original sin. Now, Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. There are many instances on the earth which no distinction seems to be made between the innocent and the guilty, between the Christian and the non believer. For example, in natural disasters like an earthquake or a fire, it kills Christians, it kills babies, it kills animals, it kills non Christians. You certainly can't say that these people were punished in some way for something that they did. It also demolishes churches and hospitals. Without distinction. Isn't this evidence that at the very least, whatever force there is controlling these things doesn't care if people are Christians or not, or whether they're innocent or not? If there's only one God and he cares at all how he's worshiped, why are there so many different conceptions of God and so many different religions all claiming to be the one true religion? Does this mean that they're all mistaken? Does it mean that one is correct and all the others are mistaken? There's an old joke about an atheist in which he said to a believer, you know, you believe that 99 of the hundred gods are false. I just go one step further and say that the hundredth one is also false. So I'm sure that Dr. Bonson, in fact, he even agreed that he would help me refute any other gods but the Christian God. If Christianity is the one true religion, why are so many people who sincerely believe in it found in prisons, slums, and in organized crime? I'm not saying that all people there are Christians. I'm not saying that all people in organized crime are Christians either. But evidently, if Christianity led to an elevation of moral standards, which we haven't gotten into yet, about morality, but I'm going to jump the gun here a little bit. Christians would be expected to be highly moral, not less moral. In fact, studies of the religious beliefs of prisoners have shown that almost all were devout Christians. The number of atheists is less than 1%. These statistics were in fact so disturbing to the people who conducted them that they stopped collecting them recently. Can't argue with the facts, though. Any system which seems to fail in its application as frequently as Christianity does is not a very good or practical system for mankind to follow. I don't want to get into a real discussion of Christianity except that Dr. Bonson insists that the Christian God and Jesus and the other evidences that come from the Christian God concomitants with them are true and the others are not. What are we left with after this exercise? Well, we can see that we can't prove the existence of God by any rational or logical process, and Dr. Bonsen has not offered us any. We have a factual issue here. Again, as I said, because the proofs fail, it doesn't mean that the existence is disproved. But I think it certainly is unproved. We can. As I will say in my closing statement, this does not leave us in a bleak and horrible world. There are many, many things that the atheist does with his life which make this world a nice place and enable him to get to the solving of the problems of this world instead of hoping for pie in the sky, which does not seem to be very probable.

Thank you, Dr. Stein. Dr. Bonson, can you please have your 10 minute opening statement?

You heard Dr. Stein refer to the transcendental argument and try to dismiss it simply as wishful thinking. The hard debate is going to degenerate to that level. Then I dismiss everything that he has.

Said as wishful thinking and delusion.

And why don't we all go home? I know we're here to argue, here to argue a point and I'm going to stay just with the argument that has been proposed and see if Dr. Stein has any better answer than just to engage in name calling. Dr. Stein proposes an atheist worldview. I propose a Christian theistic worldview. There are other proposals out there that may want their evening to debate as well. I'm maintaining that the proof of the Christian worldview is that the denial of it leads to irrationality. That is, without the Christian God, you cannot prove anything. As one illustration of that, although I want to get into more than that, in the second speech, I have referred to the laws of logic. An atheist universe cannot account for the laws of logic. Dr. Stein, interestingly, in responding to that, spoke more about scientific law than he did about the laws of logic. And I'm going to come back to that in my rebuttal to ask about his understanding of scientific law. However, we still hear him saying that laws of logic are a matter of consensus and are just this way. That is to say, I don't have to prove that the laws of logic exist or that they are justified. It's just this way. Now, friends, how would you like it if I would have conducted the debate in that fashion this evening? God exists because it's just that way. You just can't avoid it. You see, that's not debate, that's not argument, and it's not rational. And therefore we have, interestingly, an illustration in our very debate tonight that atheists cannot sustain a rational approach to this question. What are the laws of logic, Dr. Stein, and how are they justified? We still have to answer that question from a materialist standpoint, from a Christian standpoint, we have an answer. Obviously they reflect the thinking of God. They are, if you will, a reflection of the way God thinks and expects us to think. But if you don't take that approach and want to justify the laws of logic in some a priori fashion, that is apart from experience, sometimes that suggests when he says these things are self verified, then we can ask why the laws of logic are universal, unchanging and invariant truths, why they in fact apply repeatedly in the realm of contingent experience. Dr. Stein told you. Well, we use the laws of logic because we can make accurate predictions using them. As a matter of fact, that doesn't come anywhere close to discussing the vast majority of the laws of logic.

That isn't the way they are proven.

It's very difficult to conduct experiments on the laws of logic of that sort. They are more conceptual in nature rather than empirical or predicting certain outcome in empirical experience. But even if you want to try to justify all of them in that way, we have to ask why is it that they apply repeatedly in a contingent realm of experience? Why in a world that is random, not subject to personal order, as I believe Christian God, why is it that the laws of logic continue to have that success generating feature about them? Why should they be assumed to have anything to do with the realm of history? Or why should reasoning about history or science or empirical experience have these laws of thought imposed upon it?

Once again, we have to come back.

To this really unacceptable idea that they're conventional.

If they are conventional, then of course.

There ought to be just numerous approaches to scholarship everywhere, different approaches to history, to science and so forth. Because people just adopt different laws of logic. That just isn't the way scholarship proceeds. And if anybody thinks that is adequate, then they just need to go to the library and read a bit more. The laws of logic are not treated as conventions. To say that they are merely conventions is simply to say I haven't got an answer. Now, if you want to justify logical truths along posteriori lines, that is, rather than arguing that they're self evident, but rather arguing that there's evidence for them that we can find in experience or by observation. That approach was used, by the way, by John Stuart Mill. People will say we gain confidence in the laws of logic through repeated experience and that experience is generalized in some weaker moments. I think Dr. Stein was trying to say that of course some of the suggested logical truths, it turns out, are so complex or so unusual that it's difficult to believe anyone has perceived their instances in experience. But even if we restrict our attention to the other more simple laws of logic, it should be seen that if their truth cannot be decided independently of experience, then they actually become contingent. That is, if people cannot justify the laws of logic independent of experience, then you can only say they apply. As far as I know in the past experience that I've had, they are contingent, they lose their necessity, universality, and invariance?

Why should a law of logic which.

Is verified in one domain of experience, by the way, be taken as true for unexperienced domains as well? Why should we universalize or generalize about the laws of logic, especially in a materialistic universe not subject to the control of a personal God? It turns out, if the a priori and the a posteriori lines of justification for logical truths are unconvincing, as I'm suggesting briefly, they both are. Perhaps we could say they are linguistic conventions about certain symbols. Certain philosophers have suggested that the laws of logic would not be taken as inexorably dictated, but rather we impose their necessity on our language. They become, therefore, somewhat like rules of grammar. And as John Dewey pointed out so persuasively earlier in the century, the laws of grammar, you see, are just culturally relative. Yet the laws of logic are like grammar. Then the laws of logic are culturally relative too. Why, then, are not contradictory systems deemed equally rational? If the laws of logic can be.

Made culturally relative, then we can win.

The debate by simply stipulating a law of logic that says, anybody who argues in this way has got a tautology on his hands, and therefore it's true. Why are arbitrary conventions like the logical truths so useful if they're only conventional? Why are they so useful in dealing with problems in the world of experience? Is that we must ask whether the atheist has a rational basis for his claims. Atheists love to talk about laws of science, laws of logic. They speak as though there are certain moral absolutes for which Christians were just a few minutes ago being indicted because they didn't live up to them. But who is the atheist who tell us about laws?

In a materialist universe, there are no.

Laws, much less laws of morality, that.

Anybody has to live up to.

When we consider that the lectures and essays that are written by logicians and others are not likely filled with just uninterrupted series of tautologies, we can examine those propositions which logicians are most concerned to convey. For instance, logicians will say things like, a proposition has the opposite truth value from its negation. When we look at those kind of propositions, we have to ask the general question, what type of evidence do people have for that kind of teaching? Is it the same sort of evidence that is utilized by the biologist, by the mathematician, the lawyer, the mechanic, by your beautician? What is it that justifies a law of logic or even belief that there is such a thing? What is a law of logic? After all, there's no agreement on that question. If we had universal agreement, perhaps it would be silly to ask the question. It's been suggested to you that it's absurd to ask these sorts of things. Although the analogy that was used by Dr. Stein about the absurdity of asking about the cause of the world is.

Not at all relevant because that isn't.

What my argument is. By the way, that's not absurd to ask that question either. It may be unnecessary to ask it if you're an atheist, but it's certainly not absurd to ask it. But it isn't absurd to ask the question that I'm asking about logic. You see, logicians are having a great deal of difficulty deciding on the nature of their claims.

Anybody who reads in the philosophy of.

Logic must be impressed with that today. Some say that the laws of logic are inferences comprised of judgments made up of concepts. Others say that they are arguments comprised of propositions made up of terms. Others say they are proof comprised of sentences made up of names. Others would simply say they are electrochemical.

Processes in the brain.

In the end, what you think the laws of logic are will determine the nature of evidence that you will suggest for them. Now, in an atheist universe, what are the laws of logic? How can they be universal, abstract, invariant? And how does an atheist justify the use of them? Are they merely conventions imposed on our experience? Or are they something that reflect the absolute truth? Dr. Stein tonight has wanted to use the laws of logic.

I want to suggest to you one.

More time that Dr. Stein, in so doing is borrowing my worldview. He's using the Christian approach to the world so that there can be such laws of logic, scientific inference or what have you. But then he wants to deny the very foundation of it.

Thank you, Dr. Bonson. Dr. Stein, you now have an opportunity to cross examine Dr. Bonson. This will last four minutes.

Is mathematics either atheistic or theistic?

Foundations of mathematics?

Yes. Which theistic?

Theistic.

Christian theistic.

How do you figure that?

From the impossibility of the contrary. No other worldview can justify the laws of mathematics or of logic because no other worldview can account for universal, invariant, abstract entities such as them.

Do you think it's fair since you've pointed out that logicians themselves are in great disagreement about the nature of the laws of logic to ask me to explain them in a way that you would find satisfactory?

Yes, it's fair.

Why?

Because this is a rational debate about worldviews.

You have a naturalistic worldview.

I have a supernaturalistic one. I want something even beginning to Be an answer of how a naturalist can justify a universal abstract entity. I haven't heard one yet.

Okay. Is logic based upon mathematics? No, never. Not symbolic logic, for example?

No.

I would disagree with you.

Well, if we want to get into.

Russell and Whitehead and debate those issues, we'd be glad to do that. But if you ask a simple question.

I can only give you a simple answer.

You said that assume the opposite.

As far as I'm concerned as a.

Christian, I'm not committed one way or another to that.

If you want to say mathematical and the permutation laws of math are the same as those used in logic, that's fine. How do you justify either one of.

Them, is my question. Well, I would ask you a more fundamental question that as you explained, that the laws of logic reflect the thinking of God. Number one, how do you know this? And number two, what does it mean?

What question? What difficulty are having understanding? What does it mean?

I don't know how you were privy to the thinking of God. He revealed himself through the scriptures of.

The Old and New Testament.

And that explains the logic? That explains logic.

That explains why there are universal standards of reasoning.

Yes.

It doesn't explain them to me. Could you explain them again?

Yeah. We have Bible studies from time to.

Time where those things can be delved into.

You mean you spend some time rationalizing the irreconcilable or reconciling the irreconcilable?

No, that's just.

I mean like the two accounts in Genesis, the two pedigrees of.

This is a cross examination. If you have something other than a rhetorical question, I'll try to answer it.

Well, it's not intended as a rhetorical question. It's intended as previous one was rhetorical only. No, it was intended to show that your last statement was disingenuous.

And please limit your comments to questions.

Yes, okay. Saying that logic reflects the thinking of God is to make a non statement. How is that an answer to anything that's relevant in this discussion?

It answers the general metaphysical issue of how there can be universal, invariant, abstract entities in a particular person's worldview if you want to know the precise relationship. For instance, if somebody wants to know how did God make a cow? Okay, the statement that God made the cow has meaning apart from my being able to explain the mechanics of God making a cow. Likewise, the statement that the laws of logic are intelligible within a Christian theistic universe has meaning because there are things which are in fact spiritual, immaterial and have a universal quality Such as God's thinking and those standards that he imposes on people. And so again, we can at least metaphysically make sense of invariant abstract entities.

In one universe, whereas we can't make.

Sense of them at all in the other. We're not not asking for the mechanics here or anything precise such as resolving.

The relationship of logic to math and.

That sort of thing. I'm simply asking a more general question. If you're an atheist, how is it initiated? How in the atheist universe is it possible to have an abstract universal law?

Thank you, Dr. Stein, Dr. Bonds.

And you now have a four minute.

Opportunity to cross examine Dr. Stein.

Dr. Stein, you made reference to David Hume and his rejection of miracles. Have you also read David Hume in his discussion of induction or more popularly the uniformity of nature?

Long time ago. I can't recall exactly what he said, but I have read David Hume thoroughly.

Were you convinced a long time ago.

That you had an answer to Hume's skepticism about induction?

Can't answer that question honestly. I don't remember what this is. At least 15 years ago that I read this.

Scientific laws were. The validity of scientific laws were undermined by Hume when he contended that we have no rational basis for expecting the future to be like the past. Or if you will, for there to be to be types of events so that one event happening can be understood as a type of event. So where it's seen happening somewhere else, the same consequence can be expected from similar causation. Hume said we had no rational.

Can we have a question please for Dr. Stein?

Yeah, I'm trying to set up a question. Hume suggested that there was no rational basis for expecting the future to be like the past, in which case science is based simply on convention or, if you will, habits of thought. Do you agree with Hume?

Not on this issue, I don't.

Do you now have an answer for Hume?

I think he was wrong about that one thing, but he was also right about a lot of other things. Nobody's perfect.

What is the basis for the uniformity of nature?

That I went through this, but I'll be glad to reiterate it. The uniformity of nature comes from the fact that matter has certain properties which it regularly exhibits. It's part of the nature of matter. Electrons, oppositely charged things attract the same charges repel. There are certain valences that can fill up the shell of an atom and that's as far as it can combine.

Do all electrons repel each other?

If they're within a certain distance of each other, yes.

Have you tested all electrons?

All electrons that have ever been tested repel each other. I have not tested all.

Have you read all the tests on electrons?

Me personally, or can I go on the witness of experts?

Have you read all of the witnesses about electrons?

All it takes is one witness to say no and it would be on the front pages of every physics journal and there are none. So therefore I would say yes in effect by default.

Well, physicists have their presuppositions by which they exclude contrary evidence too.

But in other words, you haven't experienced all electrons, but you would generalize that.

All electrons under certain conditions repel each.

Other just statistically on the basis of past observation.

We don't know that it's going to be that way 10 minutes after this.

Debate, then no, but we see no evidence that things have switched around either.

Do you accept the Zen Buddhist logic that allows for Cones, the different kind of logic that you referred to used by Zen Buddhist?

I use the word extra logical and I think that's the right word. It is outside of the normal kinds of logic. It's not necessarily a different kind of logic, but it's just non logical. But accepted in place of logic.

Is it also. Are extra logical things absurd?

They may seem that way to us, but no, I would say they're not absurd in the grand scheme of things.

Can astrological things be true? Can claims about astrological matters be true?

That's an impossible question to answer. Because if we're using logic to answer whether something is true or not, then extra logical things are not subject to the analysis given by logic.

All right, so are claims about extra logical entities allowed or disallowed in your worldview?

In my worldview depends on what we're talking about. We're talking about things like Zen Buddhist and they confine themselves to these philosophical speculations there. Then yes, we're talking about science.

No, sounds very arbitrary. Thank you.

We will now move to rebuttals. Dr. Stein, six minute rebuttal, please.

I would first like to make one little factual rebuttal about a statement that will slip by in the first speech of Dr. Bonson that atheists caused the French Revolution. This is a 4 statement. The leader of the French Revolution, the most important person was Robespierre, who was a Christian. So I mean, there may have been some atheists there, but that doesn't mean that they caused the French Revolution. There are atheists everywhere. Okay. Now we've spent a lot of time talking about logic, and yet I'd like to know why. And this Is not a question that's addressed right now for an answer, but just as a put out for a future response. Why has Dr. Bonson stressed the laws of logic so much when he's refused to apply them to the existence of God? I'm not so sure that it's even falsifiable, so therefore it isn't even a statement that can be tested in any way. He has stressed the laws of logic because he knows that there's no explanation for the laws of logic that philosophers agree upon. This is a trap in effect. I may have fallen into it. If so, fine point is it's not relevant to his position to say he doesn't have an answer to the laws of logic either. To say that they reflect the thinking of a God is to make a non statement. First of all, he doesn't know what the thinking of a God is. All he knows is what has been said by men to be what they thought the thinking of a God might have been many, many years ago. Maybe if we keep granting all the possible things in his favor. It's like saying, as I said before, that God created the universe. Unless you explain how he created it, you have not made a statement that has any intrinsic value to it. You may have made a part of a statement, but I want to hear the other half. What is there in the method that God used that we can learn something from? I mean, why did God do it? If you want to be a little bit more nasty, it's not valid to ask science why something happens. You can ask how it happens, but science doesn't try and answer the question why. Theologists, theologians, I mean, do ask the question why and try and answer it. I have not heard an answer as to why God did anything that he supposedly did, nor have I heard how God did it. These are the two most essential meaningful answers to asking a question. If we don't supply those, we have ducked the whole center of the issue and just given you another mumbling which doesn't go anywhere. Give you an example. If I said, how did that car that's parked in the parking lot, that red car right in front, how did it get here? And you say General Motors made it. That does not explain how the car got here. Now if you want to go and explain that in Detroit, 100 men worked a certain number of hours to make this car out of steel that they got from Youngstown, Ohio from a smelting plant. And then maybe we're getting somewhere. So how that car got here, I don't mean how it got on Irvine campus? I mean, how did it get here in existence? So until we have that kind of an answer, we have not said anything. To say that General Motors made it is not answering the question of how that car got here. Neither is there an answer to say that God made it. And I would ask Dr. Bonson to explain. If he thinks he knows the answer, which none of these philosophers know about the laws of logic, to put his answer in some kind of meaningful language. To say that the laws of logic reflect the thinking of God is to make a non meaningful statement. And not just to me, to anyone. I want to know whether God thinks rationally all the time, whether he can be irrational. How do we know when he's being irrational? Is it possible for him to be irrational? I want to know what kind of logic God uses. Does he use the kind of logic that we can demonstrate, that we can test in the same way that we use the logic that we're talking about in science? If so, should it be impossible for God to contradict himself in any way? Can he make a stone so big he can't lift it? Is that a logical impossibility? Is God limited by that kind of a thing? Can God make a square circle? I mean, these are little logical games that we play that don't really ask important questions, but they have a reflection on some kind of a problem that he is having with his concept of God, then if God can do anything, if he's omnipotent and omniscient and omnibenevolent, can he do those two things I said or asked? And if he does, what kind of logic is he using? The logic of self contradiction. Until we have some answers to these questions, I don't think we've got very much meaningful from Dr. Bonson in the first place about any issue. He certainly hasn't applied logic to the proofs of the existence of God that have been offered by philosophers.

Thank you, Dr. Stein. Dr. Bonson, you now have six minutes.

Allocated for your rebuttal.

Dr. Stein has demonstrated, it seems to me repeatedly in the course of tonight's debate the claim that was made very early on in my original statement, and that's that the atheist worldview cannot give an account of those things which are necessary for rational discourse or science. When asked about Hume and the skepticism that he generated about induction or the uniformity of nature, we don't hear an answer coming forth. I don't think there will be an answer coming forth from the atheist worldview. However, Dr. Stein, who is an atheist has said, and I think this is close to a quote, if there were no uniformity, science would be impossible. Exactly, Dr. Stein, if there were no uniformity, science would be impossible. So on what basis in atheist universe is science possible? Since in atheist univers there's no basis for assuming that there's going to be uniformity. For someone to say, well it's been that way in all the cases in the past that we know of and therefore very probably it's going to be that way in the future is to assume, because you're using probability, that the future is going to be like the past.

That is to say, is to beg.

The very question that's being asked you. Now of course, if you don't like the tough philosophical questions that are asked you about the nature of laws of logic, how, how they are justified, the.

Nature of natural law, how it is.

Justified, and so forth, and just dismiss it as absurd questions or non questions that no one understands and does not have meaning. Seems to me it's just to try to give medicine to a dead man. You see, it's to say I'm not going to reason about that because I haven't got an answer to it. And that's just uncomfortable. But you see, these are philosophical questions which not just Christians by the way, that all philosophers have had to ask and face throughout the centuries. Dr. Stein doesn't even begin to scratch the surface of giving us an answer. How an atheist worldview can account for laws, laws of science, laws of logic, laws of morality, and yet he does tell us without them science would be impossible. As for the transcendental argument not being logical, I mean you can claim that, but I've yet to see Dr. Stein show any self contradiction or any violation of the laws of logic in it. And of course if he were, I would immediately ask him if that law of logic is one of the things that we are necessarily to live according to. Are we to reason by this law? Or is that just a convention? Should I say, well that's your convention, but it's not mine. Or is that law of logic universal invariant and something that must be followed if we're going to arrive at truth? If it is, then I'm going to ask him how it's possible to have such a thing in his universe, how he can justify it at all? But he hasn't shown any contradiction. He simply again called it illogical, whether it's falsifiable or not. I mean even asking that question I think shows that Dr. Stein is not really aware of the philosophical nature of the question and debate before us. No, transcendentals are not falsifiable. That's right. But they are very meaningful. The very sorts of things that philosophers deal with all the time. You look at Kant or Aristotle or other philosophers, you'll see they deal with the preconditions of experience. And since they are the preconditions of experience, they are not falsifiable and yet they are meaningful. He says that I do not have an answer to these questions either. Well, I certainly do. It's just he doesn't like the answer. The answer is that God created the world and this world reflects the uniformity that he imposes on it by his governing. And our thinking is to reflect the same consistency or logical coherence that is in God's thinking. How do we learn about those things? He revealed himself to us again. These are simple answers to the sorts of things Sunday school children learn. But you know, I've yet to find.

Any reason not to believe them.

For Dr. Stein to say, well, these aren't answers doesn't convince me at all. He says they're not going to be answers unless I include how, how it took place. What is God's method and why did he do it? Well, I don't accept those standards. I don't accept that that's a requirement for an explanation at all. And he hasn't given us any good reason except that he's not going to be satisfied or it's unhelpful to him. He says it's a non meaningful statement to say that the laws of logic reflect the thinking of God. He wants to know things like can God be irrational? Well, if he had asked those questions in cross examination, I'd answer them. No, God cannot be irrational. Rationality is measured by the standard of his thinking and his revelation. The atheist worldview cannot account for the laws of logic, cannot account for any universal or abstract entities for that matter, cannot account for the uniformity of nature and therefore cannot account for the successes of science. Nor can the atheist universe give us universal and absolute laws of morality and so on. Three of the most important issues philosophically that men must face. Logic, science and morality. The atheist universe is completely at odds with those things. Well, we have one minute left here. I want to answer very quickly those few things that Dr. Stein brought up in his second presentation so that I might rebut them. He wants to know about the problem of evil. My answer to the problem of evil is there is no problem of evil in an Atheist universe Because there is no evil in an atheist universe. Since there is no God, there is no absolute moral standard and nothing is wrong. The torture of little children is not wrong in an atheist universe. It may be painful, but it is not wrong. It is morally wrong in a theistic universe. And therefore there is a problem of evil of perhaps a psychological or emotional sort. But philosophically the answer to the problem of evil is you don't have an absolute standard of good by which to measure evil in an atheist universe.

You only have that in a theistic.

Universe and therefore the very posing of the problem presupposes my worldview rather than his own. God has a good reason for the evil that he plans or allows.

Thank you, Dr. Bonson. We have now concluded segment number two of this evening's debate and we will move very quickly into segment number three.

Which is closing statements.

Dr. Stein has the first closing statement which will be of a 10 minute duration.

Dr. Bonson in his last response and indeed throughout his entire talk has made a number of claims about what's possible in an atheist universe and what is not possible in an atheist universe. All I can say is that he has a very strange conception of an atheist universe and perhaps of the universe in general. First of all, evil in an atheist universe, yes indeed there can be evil in an atheist universe. Evil is by definition in an atheist universe, that which decreases the happiness of people, the most unhappiness of people. In other words, if we have two things that if we want to make a comparative evil statement which is more evil than another, the thing is more evil which causes more people to be unhappy. Now how do we know this? Well, we don't know it. It's a consensus. Just like morality in general is a consensus. It's a consensus reinforced by the teachings of society through its parents, to children, teachers, to students, the media, literature, the Bible. All of these things reinforce morality through teaching and the socialization process. And also we pass laws to punish people that violate some of the more blatant cases that we have said are no nos. So the idea that there's no evil in an atheist universe is utter hogwash. But our evil is at least a rational determinant thing. We don't say well did God make this evil? And then we have to go flipping through the Bible to see if it was covered at all. You know, there's 100 volumes of commentary, at least 100 volumes more called the Talmud, which is the Jews interpretation of all the places that the Old Testament didn't give them any Guidance on for ethical and moral issues. So I mean, these things are not clearly spelled out in the Bible. We have no guidance on a lot of things as to what's evil is an ovum transplant evil. I mean, you don't find that in your Bible. You've got to go and look at the issues and you do an analysis just the way any rational philosopher would do it. Or an ethnical, what do you call it? Person, an ethicist, couldn't think of the word. So I mean, we have standards by which we determine evil and good. And in an atheistic world, the atheistic worldview, I think I've demonstrated that the regularity of matter, which is an inherent property of matter, explains the way we.

Are able to make laws which are.

Generalizations in the field of science. And to say that first of all, most, many, many scientists are atheists. It's been shown by studies over and over again. So they claim, as Dr. Bonson claims, to claim, that science doesn't give us an atheistic worldview that is in conformity with, I mean, that science is not in conformity with an atheistic worldview is utter nonsense. Science is in itself atheistic. It doesn't use God to explain things and it understands that matter behaves in a regular and therefore predictable way. And that is the way in which scientific research is done. The same with logic. Logic is a consensus. I think it has a mathematical and linguistic basis. It has some conformity to the reality of the world. I don't know how many times we have to repeat that for it to get through to Dr. Bonson, but it doesn't seem to be, and he seems to specialize in what we call the thinking makes it so school of logic, if you want to call it that, because he says something is so, because he knows what God's thinking was. Therefore it is so. The omniscient Dr. Bonson has answered. Well, that doesn't answer anything. If we're going to apply the tests of reason to what he says, his statements are not only irrational, they are unreasonable. The idea that the future is going to be like the past, it's a statistical probability statement. We have never seen a future. Today's future. Today is the future from yesterday. Yesterday, what is happening today was the future. And we have not seen anything in that time period that we have observed, which is several hundred years, to show that the regularity of matter and its behavior is going to change. If it changes, scientific experiments will go haywire and we'll know it right off the bat. And then we'll have to revise a lot of things. I think the chances of that happening are pretty small. Now let me just finish by saying that atheism is not a bleak and negative concept. It frees man. It sweeps away the theological debris that has prevented man from taking action to correct the problems of this world. We want to feed the hungry. We want to educate the illiterate. We want to clothe the naked. We want to raise the standard of living. We want to spread reason and thinking and progress and science. These are all things which are in and of themselves atheistic. We don't do them because God tells us to do them. We do them because they are right. They need to be done in this world. And if we do them because they're right, we make people happy. We will be made happy ourselves by making other people happy. It's a very positive world outlook, which is something which I don't think Dr. Bunsen has even mentioned. But it's certainly the other side of the coin. I mean, what happens when you wipe away the God concept? Are you left with nothing? No, you're left with the responsibility that you have to take on yourself. You are responsible for your actions and also you get the credit for the things that you do. And I would rather have a realistic worldview that gives up a few things that would be nice to have but just don't happen to be true. And I'd rather operate on a worldview like that than I would on making wish fulfillment of things that just are not so.

Thank you, Dr. Stein.

Dr. Bonson, your 10 minute closing statement, please.

I want to begin my closing statement by thanking the debate team for inviting both Dr. Stein and myself here for.

This interesting evening and interchange. And thank you all for giving up.

An evening to discuss what I consider.

A very important question. And I thank Dr. Stein for coming for his graciousness toward me. As far as my rebuttal, or excuse.

My closing statement, I need to deal.

I think first of all, or perhaps.

In the entire time analyzing this remark, that my statements have been tonight irrational.

Well, perhaps they have.

But you see, saying so doesn't make it so. That's something we just heard as well. And so if my statements had been irrational, then we were going to need some standards of reasoning by which these statements have been shown to be irrational. Dr. Stein has yet to explain to us in even the broadest, simplest Sunday school child manner that I told you about. Laws of logic, laws of science and laws of morality. He hasn't even begun to scratch the surface to tell us how in his worldview there can be laws of any sort.

And if there can't be laws or.

Standards in his worldview, then he can't worry about my irrationality, my alleged irrationality. The transcendental argument for the existence of God has not been answered by Dr. Stein. It's been debated, it's been made fun of, it hasn't been answered. And that's what we're here for. Rational interchange. The Transcendental argument says the proof of the Christian God is that without him.

You can't prove anything.

Notice the argument does not say that atheists don't prove things. The argument doesn't say that atheists don't use logic, science or laws of morality. In fact they do. The argument is that their worldview cannot account for what they are doing. They their worldview is not consistent with what they are doing.

In their worldview there are no laws.

There are no abstract entities, there are no universal, there are no prescriptions. There's just the material universe naturalistically explained in the way things happen to be.

That's not law like or universal.

And therefore the worldview doesn't account for logic science from the reality. But atheists of course, use logic, science and morality. And in so doing, atheists give continual evidence of the fact that in their heart of hearts, they aren't atheists. Their heart of hearts, they know the.

God I'm talking about. This God made them.

This God reveals himself continually to them through the natural order, through their conscience, and through their very use of reason. They know this God and they suppress the truth about him. One of the ways we see that they suppress the truth about him is because they do continue to use laws of logic, science and morality, though their.

Worldview cannot account for them.

Dr. Stein has said the laws of logic are merely conventional. If so, then on convention he wins tonight's debate. On convention, I win tonight's debate. And if you're satisfied with that, you.

Didn'T need to come in the first place.

You expected the law to of logic to be applied as universal standards of rationality. Rationality is not possible in a universe.

That just consigns them to convention.

Dr. Stein said the laws of science.

Are law like because of the inherent character of matter.

But Dr. Stein doesn't know the inherent character of matter.

Now if you were God, he might.

Reveal that to us, as I think God has revealed certain things to us about the operation of the universe. But he's not God.

He doesn't even believe there is a God.

Since he hasn't experienced all the instances of matter and all of the electron reactions, all the other things that scientists look at, since he hasn't experienced all of those, he doesn't know that those things are universal. He doesn't know that the future is going to be like the past. When he says, well, it always has been in the past, and boy, if it changes tomorrow, won't that make the front pages? That's not an answer. You see, we're asking what justifies your proceeding on the expectation that the future.

Is like the past? To say, well, it's always been that.

Way in the past. It's just to beg the question. We want to know on what basis your worldview allows for the uniformity of.

Nature and laws of science.

Thirdly, we've spoken of laws of morality tonight. He says they have laws of morality, the utilitarian standard of what brings the greatest happiness to the greatest number. Well, that doesn't justify utilitarianism to announce it. He's announced that it's his standard. But why, in an atheist universe should we live by that standard? Marquis de Sade enjoyed torturing women. Now why should he give up torturing women so that he might bring greater happiness to those women that he was torturing? Now, I've got an answer for that. It's not one that Dr. Stein likes, and maybe some of you out there don't like it, but at least I can begin philosophically to deal with that.

I have an answer.

A universal absolute about morality. Dr. Stein does not. He simply has an announced, stipulated standard. And, and if morality can be stipulated, then of course Marquis de Sade can stipulate his own, even as Dr. Stein has stipulated his own. Why should he feed the poor? He says they want to do that. I grant that my argument tonight has never been that atheists are the lousiest people in the world. That's not the point. Some Christians can be pretty lousy, too. But why is it that I call atheists or Christians lousy when they act in the ways that we're thinking of? Because I have absolute standards of morality to judge. Dr. Stein does not. And therefore, once again, from a transcendental standpoint, the atheistic worldview cannot account for this debate tonight. Because this debate tonight has assumed that we're going to use the laws of logic as standards of reasoning, or else we're irrational, that we're going to use laws of science. We're going to be intelligent men that way. We're going to assume induction and causation and all those things that scientists do and it's assumed moral stance. So we're not going to be dishonest and try to lie or just try to deceive you. I mean, if there aren't laws of morality, I can just take out a gun right now and say, okay, Dr. Stein, make my day. Is there a God or not?

You see, if he argues, oh no.

You can't murder me because there are laws of morality, then of course he's made my day because I win the debate, that shows that the atheist universe is not correct. But if he says, oh no, there are no absolute standards, it's all by convention and stipulation, that sort of thing, can I just pull the trigger and it's all over and I win the debate anyway, Would you expect me to win the debate in that fashion? Absolutely not. You came here expecting rational interchange. I don't think we've heard much from Dr. Stein. I've asked him repeatedly.

It's very simple.

I don't want a lot of details, just begin to scratch the surface. How in a materialistic, naturalistic outlook on life, man and his place in the.

World can you account for laws of.

Logic, the laws of science and laws of morality?

The atheist worldview cannot do it.

And therefore I feel justified in concluding, as I did my opening presentation this evening, by saying that the proof of the Christian God is the impossibility of the contrary. Without the Christian worldview, this debate wouldn't make sense. The Bible tells us the fool has said in his heart there is no God. Don't misunderstand that. When the Bible uses the term fool, it's not engaging in name calling, it's trying to describe somebody who is dense in the sense that they will not use his reason as God has given him. Somebody who is rebellious, who is hard hearted. It's the fool who says in his heart there is no God. Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians, the first chapter, that God has made foolish the wisdom of this world. He calls rhetorically. Where is the wise? Where is the disputer or the debater of this age? Hasn't God made foolish the wisdom of this world? In a sense, I think what Paul is telling us, if I can amplify and read between the lines, is the whole history of philosophy is an argument for the existence of God. The whole history of philosophy is an argument for the existence of God because of the impossibility of the contrary. Someone who wants to say contrary to what the Bible says about God, let him stand up and answer these questions. Let him show that in his heart. He may say there is no God, but he can't live that way. He can't reason that way. In Romans, the first chapter, Paul says God is making himself known continually to all men and persuasively so that men do not have an excuse for the rejection of the existence of the Christian God. That isn't to say that all men confess this God.

Not all will own up to him.

As their Heavenly Father. Not all will submit to Him. Some continue to rebel. Some continue to devise their fool's errands and rationalizations for why they don't have.

To believe in Him.

That's what the Bible teaches. I didn't come here and make this up. I didn't come here tonight to say, well, if you don't agree, you see, you're just being rebellious. That's what the Bible says. What I want you to do tonight is to go home and to consider whether there isn't something to that. Why is it that some people continue to use laws of logic, laws of morality, laws of science, and yet they have a worldview that just clashes with that and they just won't do anything to resolve contradiction. Dr. Stein tonight made reference to my doctoral dissertation on self deception.

He wondered how relevant it might be. Well, it's very relevant, very relevant. Because what I do in that doctoral.

Dissertation is to show that there are some people who know the truth and yet work very hard to convince themselves that it's not true. Now, of course, atheists think that's what Christians are doing. I recognize that.

And we have to argue what the.

Evidence for and against self deception is. All I want to leave with you tonight is the fact that self deception is a real phenomenon.

It does happen to people. People who know the truth can yet.

Work very hard to rationalize the evidence, convince themselves, as Paul says, suppress the truth and unrighteousness, convince themselves that there is no God. Well, you can choose tonight between the Christian worldview, the atheist worldview. We haven't touched all of the issues that you may want to look into, but in broad strokes, we have touched on a very important issue. If you're going to be a rational.

Man, a moral man, a man of.

Science, can you do so in an atheist universe? I say you can.

Thank you, Dr. Bonson. You can see the conversion has already begun. Not a religious conversion, but the conversion to answer questions. What we're going to do now is I'm going to reiterate what I stated at the beginning. You have a sheet of paper included in your evening program. If you have a question for either Dr. Bonson or Dr. Stein, I would ask that you would take that paper out. Write your question quickly. They are being rapidly collected by speech and debate team members. Obviously, we cannot answer every single question that's going to be posed here this evening. They will be sorted through by our question panelists that we have here this evening. They will be read by me at the podium. The person to whom the question is directed will have an opportunity to respond for two minutes. His opponent will have an opportunity to respond for one minute.

The first question, in keeping with our format this evening, will be directed to Dr. Greg Bonson. Dr. Bonson, the question reads, what solid evidence do you have to maintain that the Christian faith is the only true religion with a God? There are religions far older and more or just as widespread which millions of people consider valid. Once again, what solid evidence do you have to maintain that the Christian faith is the only true religion with a God?

That's very good and relevant. Question I want to say two things just by way of preface. One, that isn't what the subject of our debate was tonight. However, that can't just be taken for granted. It's worthy of a debate. It's just that we couldn't do everything in one debate. Secondly, you might be interested to know that in my original opening statement I had a long paragraph dealing with that very question so that it wouldn't be thought that I was just flying over it arbitrarily and dealing with that matter. But when I read it back to myself in time myself, it just turned out I had to cut a number of things out and so I cut that down. What I did say, however, was that if I can find it here that I have not found the non Christian religions to be philosophically defensible, each of them being internally incoherent or undermining human reason and experience. Unless it will violate your debate format, I give just a couple of illustrations. That's obviously I can cover all of them. But for instance, Hinduism assumes that God or Brahman is the impersonal universal soul, the unchanging one of which all things.

Are part, for instance.

And because of that particular outlook, Hinduism says that everything in terms of my normal experience of the world and thinking is Maya or illusion, because everything in experience and thinking presupposes distinctions, but that is contrary the most fundamental metaphysical fact, and that's that there are no distinctions.

All is one.

So basically Hinduism tells me that all my thinking, all of my reasoning is illusion and in so doing, you see, it undermines reason. You can take religion such as Shintoism, its view of Kami, the forces that that permeate the universe, or Daoism, the ordering force of the universe, and they are impersonal forces and as such are even less than human beings because they.

Don'T have volition or intelligence.

Is that an that I should stop?

Thank you. Let me just re explain the format. We will allow the person to whom the question is directed to have a two minute response and his opponent will have a one minute opportunity to rebut. Dr. Stein, your one minute rebuttal please.

Well, Dr. Bonson has criticized Hinduism. I would make the case that Hinduism is no more irrational than Christianity is, nor do I think that it is any more irrational than Islam is. Nor is it any more irrational than almost any other religion that you want to name. With one exception, I'd say Buddhism is more rational than either Christianity or Hinduism. That doesn't mean that I accept Buddhism either, but I just think it's more rational. At least it makes some psychological sense if nothing else.

Thank you Dr. Stein. The next question will be directed to you Dr. Stein, and the question reads as According to your definition and basis for evil, why was Hitler's Germany wrong or was it? Note, Jews and others were defined as non persons, so their happiness doesn't really count. Once again, according to your definition and basis for evil, why was Hitler's Germany wrong or was it?

Well, Germany is part of the Western European tradition. It's not deepest Africa or some place on Mars. They have the same Judeo Christian background and basically the same connection with the rest of the developed world. So therefore the standards of morality that have been worked out as consensuses of that society society apply to them too. They can't arbitrarily. Hitler can't arbitrarily say, well I'm not going by the consensuses that genocide is evil and wrong. I'm just going to change it and make it right.

He has not the prerogative to do that.

Neither does the German society as a.

Whole because it is still part of.

A larger society which you might call Western society. So even though morality is a consensus, it's not a consensus of one person or two people. It's a consensus of entire civilizations. And he cannot just arbitrarily do that.

So what he did was evil and wrong.

Hey, Dr. Bonsen, your one minute rebuttal.

Dr. Stein continues to beg the most important questions that are brought up. He tells us that Hitler's Germany was wrong. Because Hitler or the German people didn't have the right to break out of the consensus of Western civilization. Why not? Why is there any moral obligation upon Hitler or the German people to live up to the past tradition of Western morality In an atheist universe?

There is no answer to that question.

He gives the answer, but it's totally arbitrary.

Thank you. Our next set of questions, please, from the panelists. Next question is directed to you, Dr. Bonson. If I could read it for just a minute. Why is there pain and evil in the world?

There are a number of answers that could be given to a question. Why is something the way that it is? One relevant one, but not the most ultimate answer, would be that there's pain and evil in this world because men have decided to rebel against God, their maker. And that's one of the consequences of rebellion against God. Now somebody said, well, that's not fair. God shouldn't punish people for rebelling against him. Well, I mean, if there is a God, as I have maintained, and if he is the Christian God as revealed in the scriptures, it won't do any good to complain about that. That's the way God governs mankind. And if you think you know better than God about morality, then you're in Job's position. You want to have an interview with God and you'll end up like Job. You'll put your hand over your mouth and you'll say, I've spoken too soon. I can't contend with the Almighty. Okay, so that's one answer, is that God has decided that that would be the outcome if people decided to rebel against him. If they want to be their own little gods, they want to make their own rules of morality and live by them, then the consequences are going to be such and such. And that includes pain for animals and the created order. Because in so doing, man represented all of creation, even as the second man. Jesus Christ represents all of creation and the new heavens and the new earth, which I believe based on faith in the scriptures, is yet to come. In that new heavens and new earth, there'll be a redeemed earth where pain and suffering have been removed. Why is there evil? Ultimately, the answer is obviously because God has planned it. I believe that he governs everything that's in history.

Does that mean that he caused it?

No, I don't believe he compelled Adam to fall into sin.

Dr. Stein, your one minute rebuttal.

Well, Dr. Bonson has given us another one of his famous non answers. Basically, what he said is anything God does is what he does. It's a tautology.

He doesn't say anything.

Now how can someone rebel against an omnipotent God? This is a logical self contradiction. If God is omnipotent, he has the power to prevent man from rebelling against him. And assuming he doesn't like rebellion, which I think Dr. Bunsen would concede because man is evidently going to be punished for this in some way for his rebellion eventually the Day of judgment. If God had the power to prevent him from rebelling, then he ought to.

Prevent him from rebelling.

And just to say that God does what he does is not to give us an answer at all.

Next question is directed to you Dr. Stein. It reads if you haven't examined all the evidence, then is it not true that you are really an agnostic? Isn't it true that you're open to the fact that God may exist? If you haven't examined all the evidence then isn't it true that you are an agnostic?

Well agnostic is a word that's very badly used. Thomas Huxley, who invented the word, used it in an entirely different way from the way we use it today.

And in fact the way we use.

It today is entirely different from the way Herbert Spencer used it. I would define an agnostic as a subtype of atheist. An atheist is someone who does not believe in a God. A theist is someone who does believe in a God. There's no middle ground.

You can either do or you don't.

Now an agnostic does not believe in a God either because of one of two things. Either he thinks it's impossible and ever to know whether there is one or not. That's the Spencerian Herbert Spencer type agnostic that thinks there are unknowables.

Or secondly, because he or she has.

Never examined the evidence that exists and therefore has not made up his or her mind. But still at this point he does not believe in a God. Now if he examined the evidence and found it convincing then he would move into the theist camp. So no, I am not an agnostic because I do think that these answers, these questions are solvable. That not maybe we don't know the answer now, but I think we can eventually know the answer. So I'm not a Spencerian agnostic and I have examined the thing, so I'm not the other kind of agnostic, whatever that kind is called isn't have a name for it.

Dr. Bonson, your one minute rebuttal please.

It's interesting that the word agnostic is being used as a subclass of atheist I would agree with that, but for reasons different than have been suggested. Also interested that atheist is being redefined earlier in the debate. Dr. Science that an atheist is one who finds the theistic proofs inadequate. I said no. Traditionally, an atheist is one that denies the existence of God or doesn't believe in the existence of God. Now he's using the traditional definition to answer the question. One more interesting comment about that and we'll let it go. He says we do believe there are answers to these problems. We have yet to find them.

You see, that's the problem.

Atheists live by faith.

Okay, the final set of questions are here before me. Dr. Bunsen. Question for you, Reid. Why is it necessary for the abstract universal laws to be decided from the transcendental nature of God or derived from the transcendental nature of God? Why not assume the transcendental nature of logic? Let me read that again. Why is it necessary for the abstract universal laws to be derived from the transcendent nature of God? Why not assume the transcendental nature of logic?

Somebody who wrote the question is good in that you've studied some of these philosophical issues. The answer may not be meaningful to everybody in the audience, but very briefly is that I do believe in the transcendental nature, the laws of logic. However, the laws of logic do not justify themselves just because they are transcendental. That is a precondition of intelligibility. I mean, why isn't it just sound and fury signifying nothing? That's a possibility, too.

So the laws of logic do have.

A transcendental necessity about them. But it seems to me you need to have a worldview in which the laws of logic are meaningful, especially when you consider such possible antinomies as the laws of logic being universal, categorizing things in that way, and yet we have novelties in our experience. I mean, the world of empirical observation isn't set rigidly by uniformity and by sameness, as it were. There isn't a continuity in experience in that way, as there is a necessary continuity in the laws of logic. How can the laws of logic then be utilized when it comes to matters of personal experience of the world? We have a contingent, changing world and unchanging invariant laws of lodging. How can these two be brought together? You need a worldview in which that transcendental necessity of logic can be made sense of in terms of white human experience. And I believe that Christianity provides that. And I just can't find any other one that competes with it that way.

And Dr. Stein, your one minute rebuttal.

I do not have a rebuttal to that particular answer. I do have a rebuttal to the last one, to his last rebuttal, if I may make that very briefly.

Okay, well, can you keep your limits to the questions that are before us?

The final question, may I ask, David, is this my last response? Have I given that?

No. We have one more question for Dr.

I'm sorry. If the same rule will be applied so that I can respond, then I'd be happy to. I thought we were ending the debate.

Certainly.

Go ahead.

Dr. Bonson's comment that atheists believe things on faith is a false statement. Faith, we have confidence based on experience. Confidence that things happened in a certain way, that we have learned a lot of things about the world and therefore we will continue to learn a lot more about the world. Things that we do not know now we will eventually have answers to. That's not faith, that's confidence based on experience. So I think he's misusing the word faith.

Okay, Dr. Stein, the final question is directed to you. It reads, you have said that there has been no adequate evidence put forth for God's existence. What for you personally would constitute adequate evidence for God's existence?

Well, it's very simple. There would be two.

I can give you two examples. If that podium suddenly rose into the air five feet, stayed there for a minute and then dropped right down again, I would say that that was evidence of a supernatural because it would violate everything we knew about the laws of physics and in chemistry. Assuming that there wasn't an engine under there or a wire attached to it, I mean, it could make those obvious exclusions. That would be evidence for a supernatural.

Violation of the laws.

It might be, call it a miracle right in front of your eyes. That would be evidence I would accept. Any kind of a supernatural being putting in an appearance and doing miracles that could not be stage magic would also be evidence that I would accept. Those are the two simplest ways. I would also accept any evidence that's logically non contradictory. And I have no. Not heard any yet tonight that hasn't been offered already.

Hey, Dr. Bonson, your one minute rebuttal, please.

Yes. Dr. Stein, I think is really not reflecting on the true nature of atheism and human nature when he says all it would take is a miracle in my very presence to believe in God. History is replete with first of all, things which would be apparently miracles to people. Now, from an atheistic or naturalistic standpoint, I will grant in terms of the hypothesis that that's because they were ignorant of all the causal factors. And so it appeared to be miraculous. You see, that didn't make everybody into a theist. In fact, the Scripture tells us there are instances of people who witnessed miracles who all the more hardened their heart and eventually crucified the Lord of Glory. They saw his miracles. That didn't change their mind. People are not made theists by miracles. People must change their worldview. Their hearts must be changed.

They need to be converted.

That's what it takes, and that's what it would take for Dr. Stein to finally believe in it. If this podium rose up five feet off the ground and stayed there, Dr. Stein would eventually have in the future some naturalistic explanation. Because, you see, they believe things on faith, but by which I mean they believe things they have not proven as yet by their senses.

Thank you, Dr. Bonson. I'd like to thank the many people who made tonight possible. Before we dismiss, I'd like to thank Brian Moffitt and the Associated Students of the University of California at Irvine for their assistance. I'd like to thank the Speech and Debate Team members. And I'd like to thank the speakers, Dr. Greg Bots and Dr. Gordon Stein. It.

This recording has been released in the public domain by the Bonson Institute. Duplication, sharing and distribution is encouraged. For more information about the life and Ministry of Dr. Greg L. Bonson, visit our bonsoninstitute.com where we aim to bring into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ.