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and theme: WHY PROFESSORS BELIEVE WEIRD THINGS.
Michael Shermer
Hey gang, you are going to love this one. It looks like my declaration of God-
debate victory may have been premature. Remember I said that my mother-in-law
heard the minister of the church say that I won the debate? Well, this
skeptics hotline goes out to more people than I imagined as the minister
himself got that posting and naturally wanted to qualify what he said! Here is
the good minister's own words (Dr. David Miller):
"I said that you won in terms of communicating your points to the common
person in that you were far more interesting than Doug. But, I also said that
in the terms of a formal debate, Doug was the clear winner, in that he
addressed the issue in an organized and consistent manner. Having done some
formal debating in the past, I saw your approach as being winsome and even
entertaining at times, but not carefully constructed, nor well-focused on the
specific issue of the debate. In my opinion, you seemed engaging, but
disorganized and shallow in your
presentation. Simply put, to me you were sure a lot more fun to listen to
than Doug, but not very deep or organized. Doug, on the other hand, was
philosophically deep and well-reasoned, but often too boring for the
audience. Doug was organized, stayed with his seven points, and defended your
objections made to his points. Perhaps your dear mother-in-law left in her
excitement after hearing my first comments, and failed to stay for what
followed. In case you have not heard, the tally of responses on the Great
Debate cards was as follows:
89.9% believed Doug presented a better case.
10.1% believed you presented a better case.
Number of people indicating they switched their position to belief in God's
existence: 21
Number of people indicating they switched their position to doubting in God's
existence: 0"
Okay, let's think about this for a moment:
1. I think 10% is pretty damn good considering only about 50 hands out of the
1500 or so went up when the minister asked for a show of hands of who came to
support me. So, statistically, if 3 percent supported me at the start and 10
percent at the end, then I effected a 300% increase. No bad. As for the
process of voting who won a debate on God held in an evangelical church with
"true believers" voting, hell, Geivett could have read the phone book and they
would have said he won! That's the nature of the biz. Republicans will say
their man won no matter what, and the Democrats will as well. That's the way
these things go.
2. I am not at all surprised that 0 people abandoned their belief in God in
one evening. That is simply not how deconversion experiences happen. But 21
people came to the debate with no belief in God and suddenly converted right
there on the spot after hearing Doug Geivett's "proofs" of God? I am very
skeptical of this for the simple reason that sociologists of religion have
shown that almost no one converts for purely rational reasons. They may SAY
they believe for rational reasons, but they convert for emotional reasons.
3. More seriously, I did, in fact, address the subject of the debate, and I
did so quite directly. The fact that I chose not to follow Doug Geivett's
point by point presentation means nothing, other than this is what Dr. Miller
expected me to do. Recall the subject of the debate was: "DOES GOD EXIST?
WHERE DOES THE EVIDENCE POINT?"
In fact, I argued that God's existence or nonexistence is insoluble by any
rational or scientific means. But all the evidence points to the CONCEPT of
God, and religion as a manifestation of belief, as being socially constructed.
Dr. Miller (and no doubt most of the believers there) missed this point
because they were locked into Christian apologetics which defines the problem
a certain way. But, as I pointed out over and over and over (including with a
little joke about "there being only two type of theories: those that divide
the world into two types of theories, and those that don't"), there are other
ways to look at the question of God's existence. One of those ways is that
"God" is a concept created by humans. I presented evidence for that.
Now, someone may argue that I did not make my case very well, or that this
evidence is weak, but one cannot argue that I did not argue the issue at hand.
I most assuredly did! To reiterate: Does God Exist? The evidence all points to
the concept of God as existing in people's minds and nowhere else. This is why
I spent a considerable amount of my time on comparative mythology, such as all
the flood myths that pre-date the Noachian flood myth story, the eternal-
recurring messiah myth, especially prevelant among oppressed peoples like the
Dakota Sioux Ghost Dance of 1890 and the first century Jews who saw Jesus as
the messiah, and so on. I also pointed out several times that all theologians
know that the Bible was constructed, edited, and redacted out of numerous
documents from numerous locals over a long span of time. What else COULD the
Bible be BUT human constructed? Their out, of course, is that somehow God
reached down and divinely inspired the editing process, but to so state that
is hardly what one would call "proof."
My question for Dr. Miller and all the other believers out there with regard
to "proving" God is this: why do you feel a need to PROVE your belief? Most
religions around the world, and even most Jews and Christians in the Western
world, would find this process rather foreign. Why not just believe on faith
and leave it at that? It's no one's business WHY you believe. No one really
cares why you believe in God. Why isn't faith enough? Just curious.
Michael Shermer
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Date: Fri, 20 Nov 1998 11:38:44 -0800
Subject: OOPS, SHERMER LOSES GOD DEBATE!
Publisher
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OOPS, SHERMER LOSES GOD DEBATE!
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