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and theme: WHY PROFESSORS BELIEVE WEIRD THINGS.
Michael Shermer
Last night I debated Dr. Doug Geivett, Professor of Philosophy at Talbot
School of Theology, on "Does God Exist? Where Does the Evidence Point?" It was
held at the Church of the Rocky Peak in Chatsworth, CA, in the northwestern
end of the San Fernando Valley. It was a giant, modern church built that holds
1500 people. Every seat was taken and students were sitting on the floor in
droves in front of the dais. The minister of the church, Dr. David Miller, was
extremely accommodating, as were his staff (they were running circles around
me asking if I needed water, etc.), to the point where I got the impression
that he sat them down before and told them "now you be nice to Shermer since
he is going to be outnumbered here." And boy was I. He asked for a show of
hands of those who came specifically to support me. About 50-100 of the 1500+
hands went up. So, those of you who came, thank you.
Let me cut to the core: I won the debate! How do I know (given that every
debater who ever debated anyone thought he won)? Because that is what the
minister told a group of about 20-30 people surrounding him after. My mother-
in-law was one of them! He said "Shermer won the debate hands down." Actually,
frankly, I expected it to be harder. "Their" side really doesn't have that
much to offer in the way of "proof."
When we were introduced my standard bio was read, as was Geivett's, but the
moderator added a little ditty about how Geivett has "a wife and two beautiful
children," to which I blurted out into the microphone at my table: "I've got a
wife too!" This got a bunch of laughs. Unfortunately, I found out at the start
of the debate that the moderator was a colleague of Geivett, which he even
proudly announced to the audience! I couldn't believe it. Yet, he was very
fair with the exception of the "wife" remark, which I deflected, and another
later when he made a wisecrack about something I said, that got a lot of
laughs at my expense. That was inappropriate.
We each got 20 minutes, then 12 minutes, then 8 minutes, then 5 minutes.
Geivett went first and burned through the standard arguments: Big Bang
cosmology sounds like Genesis 1, the anthropic cosmological principle and the
fine-tuned nature of the universe implies a creator, life had to be designed
cause it looks like it is, humans are moral and morality could only come from
God because if it didn't then no one would be moral, and history proves that
Jesus was resurrected. That's it! He added that this is an either-or choice:
Either God exists or he doesn't. Either the universe was created or it wasn't.
Either life was designed or it wasn't. Either morality is natural or it isn't.
Either Jesus was resurrected, or he wasn't.
I opened my 20-minute segment by explaining that there are only two types of
theories: those that divide the world into two type of theories, and those
that don't. This got a delayed, but good laugh. I spent my 20 minutes talking
personally to the audience, telling them how I found Jesus when I was 17,
studied the Bible, went to Pepperdine University to study theology, but then
discovered science, started thinking for myself, and yada, yada, yada now I
don't believe in God. I then provided proof--not for God's nonexistence (since
no such proof is possible)--but for the obvious fact that religion and belief
in God is a human construction. I covered Bouchard's twin studies showing a
roughly 50% heritability of religiosity, Persinger's research in replicating
spiritual experiences in the laboratory (with electromagnetic fields),
Ramachandran's research with temporal lobe epilepsy-triggered religious
experiences, NDE's being replicated in the laboratory (all to show that
religiosity and religious experiences are at least, in part, a function of our
genes and biology); then I showed all the different flood myths that predated
the Noachian flood (comparative mythology), then the recurring Messiah myth,
going backwards from Farrakhan's belief that the mother ship in orbit is going
to topple the white government and put the black man in power, then Wovoka's
ghost dance that the messiah would come to rescue the Dakota Sioux and the
Buffalo would return and the whites would be destroyed, and finally Jesus, and
how the eternal-return of the Messiah is a common theme amongst oppressed
peoples, including African-Americans in the 1990s, Native-Americans in the
1890s, and Jews in the first century.
This must have thrown Geivett off, because in his 12-minute segment he
repeated his arguments from the first segment, pointed out that I did not
refute them, then sat down after only eight minutes!--a big mistake in debate
to give up time. In my 12-minute segment I opened by apologizing that I forgot
to explain to the audience that I would debunk Geivett's proofs in the
12-minute segment, because it only takes 12 minutes to do it! That got a
pretty good laugh. I then pointed out that I DID provide evidence--evidence
that humans created God. Then I hammered away at the cosmological, anthropic,
and design arguments, knocking down my ducks one at a time. I then closed by
quoting Jesus: "O ye of little faith." Then said that these "proofs" of God
are not only an insult to science, they are an insult to God. That seemed to
leave a lot of mouths hanging open.
In Geivett's 8-minute segment he did me a big favor by spending the first 4
minutes reading from the masthead page of Skeptic magazine, on what it means
to be a Skeptic. His point was that my telling the audience that I thought the
whole point of religion and belief in God was "faith," was an endorsement by
me that believing things only on faith is acceptable. Then, amazingly, he
spent the remaining 4 minutes once again claiming that I had not refuted his
proofs of God, and that EITHER God exists or he doesn't, EITHER . . . and so
on. Then he ran over his time limit--in the middle of talking about Stephen
Hawking's theories about time, the moderator yelled "Time." This was such a
great conjunction that I made a little joke about Hawking's book being
entitled "A BRIEF History of Time," but I think only a few people got it.
In my 8-minute segment I ran through my arguments for the evolution of
morality (evolutionary ethics) going from the selfish gene/inclusive fitness
arguments to recipricol altruism, and how religion probably evolved, in part,
as the social structure that enforced the rules of cooperation; as well as
serving as a means of demonstrating your commitment to the group, pointing out
that the Old Testament is based on an in-group morality, where you are to
"Love Thy Neighbor" as long as it is your immediate in-group neighbor, but
that it is perfectly okay to rape, pillage, and destroy those bastards on the
other side of the river. That got some shocked looks, so I told them (these
were mostly evangelical xtians) that it might be a good idea if they read the
Old Testment after the first couple of chapters of Genesis. I then closed by
noting when someone says "you can't be religious without God," that they
should speak for themselves.
In the final 5-minute segment Geivett reiterated that God exists, Jesus died
for us, and that God gives us great comfort in times of grief, and then
related a story about how his wife got cancer and they were greatly consoled
by their belief in God. In my 5-minute segment I read the closing passage from
a chapter in my God book, entitled "Gould's Dangerous Idea," about how the
universe is an undesigned, contingent place. I have reprinted it at the end.
For me the most interesting part of debates is the Q & A because then you get
to hear what some of the audience is thinking. Again and again the question of
morality came up. I was asked that, since I don't believe in God, if I think
it was perfectly acceptable what Hitler did to the Jews. Incredible! That
really is one of their favorite arguments. But I deflated the morality "proof"
once and for all with a no-win question I posed first to the individual, then
to Geivett, then to the whole audience: IF THERE IS NO GOD, WHAT WOULD YOU DO
MORALLY? WOULD YOU KILL ME?
The first guy said that if he found out there is not God, he was not sure
whether he would kill me or not. I said, "Well, that tells us a lot about the
depth of your character. Stay far, far away from me." Geivett said that was an
unfair question, but that he too was not sure if he could be moral without
God. I repeated my admonition that one would be well advised to steer clear of
people who have so little character that, without the threat of eternal
punishment they have no self control." I then addressed the entire audience,
and said: "if you cannot be moral without God, doesn't that imply that, in
reality, you are not a moral person at all? That you have no courage, no
conscious, and no character? And if you would be moral without God, doesn't
that refute the argument that you cannot be moral without God? Think about
this. Who would you rather marry? A person who says "I will not cheat on you
because it is a sin and I don't want to go to hell," or someone who says "I
will not cheat on you because I love you, I respect you, I promised that I
would not do so, and I have the courage and character to live up to my
promises." I think (I hope) the point was made.
In one of the answers Geivett gave to a question (including a real beaut when
someone asked him what it meant that the Waffen SS soldiers had on their belt
buckles "God is With Us." (Does anyone, by the way, have the correct German
version of this?), he said that "we still do not know what Dr. Shermer thinks
about the proofs of God." I responded, in a very strong, but controlled voice,
"Look folks, Dr. Geivett keeps asking what Michael Shermer thinks. It doesn't
matter what Michael Shermer thinks. YOU SHOULD THINK FOR YOURSELF!"
And that was the point of my participation in this debate--to get people to
think for themselves.
One final humorous incident: after the debate there was a bunch of folks
hanging around, and some guy launched into the creationist argument that
sexual reproduction could not have evolved because you would need both a penis
and a vagina at the same time but neither could have evolved without the
other, bla, bla, bla, but he finished his question with this: "so how can a
male and female come at the same time?" God delivered him into my hands (to
quote Huxley from the 1861 Oxford evolution debate with Wilberforce). I said:
"Well, I find foreplay and communication to be really useful."
Shermer
MY CLOSING REMARKS:
Finding Meaning in a Pointless Universe
I am often asked by believers why I abandoned Christianity and how I found
meaning in the meaningless universe presented by science. The implication is
that the scientific worldview is an existentially depressing one. Without God,
I am bluntly told, what's the point? If this is all there is, there is no use.
To the contrary. For me, and for many of my colleagues, quite the opposite is
true. The conjuncture of losing my religion, finding science, and discovering
contingency was remarkably empowering and liberating. It gave me a sense of
joy and freedom. Freedom to think for myself. Freedom to take responsibility
for my own actions. Freedom to construct my own meanings. With the knowledge
that this may be all there is, I was free to live life to the fullest extent
possible.
For me, and not just for me, a world absent monsters, ghosts,
demons, and gods unfetters the mind to soar to new heights, to think
unthinkable thoughts, to imagine the unimaginable, to contemplate infinity and
eternity knowing that no one is looking back. The universe takes on a whole
new meaning when you know that your place in it was not foreordained, that it
was not designed for us, indeed, that it was not designed at all. If we are
nothing more than star stuff, how special life becomes. How inspiring it is to
share in the sublimity of knowledge generated by other human minds, and
perhaps to even make a tiny contribution toward that body of knowledge that
will be passed down through the ages, part of the cumulative wisdom of a
single species on a tiny planet orbiting an ordinary star on the remote edge
of a not-so-unusual galaxy, itself a member of a cluster of galaxies millions
of light years from nowhere. For me, the Hubble Telescope Deep Field
photograph WFPC2, revealing as never before the rich density of galaxies in
our neck of the universe (and reprinted in countless magazines, including the
cover of Skeptic, Vol. 4, No.2), is as grand a statement about the sacred as
any medieval cathedral.
Skeptics and scientists cannot experience the numinous? Nonsense. You do not
need a spiritual power to experience the spiritual. You do not need to be
mystical to appreciate the mystery. When I stood in Chartres cathedral with my
soul mate, lit candles, and promised each other our eternal love, it was a
more sacred moment than any I ever experienced. My unencumbered soul was free
to love without constraint, free to use my senses to enjoy all the pleasures
and endure all the pains that come with such love. I was enfranchised for
life, emancipated from the bonds of restricting tradition, and unyoked from
the rules written for another time in another place for another people. I was
now free to try to live up to that exalted moniker--Homo sapiens--wise man.
---
Return to The Skeptic Tank's main Index page.
Date: Mon, 16 Nov 1998 15:53:31 -0800
Subject: SHERMER WINS GOD DEBATE!
Publisher
---------------------
SHERMER WINS GOD DEBATE!
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