c. 1998 Religion News Service

MADISON, Wis. _ Does God exist?

Unbelieving philosopher Bertrand Russell and believing philosopher F.C. Copleston debated this perennial question in a famous debate 50 year ago on a BBC broadcast, and Wednesday night (Feb. 18) two prominent contemporary philosophers took up the question before an audience of 4,000 here to commemorate the 1948 event.

Renowned philosopher Anthony Flew and Christian philosopher William Lane Craig drew a diverse crowd from across the United States and England for the event with two unlikely co-sponsors _ the Veritas Forum, made up of local church organizations, and the Freedom From Religion Foundation, the Madison-based national atheist organization.

At the end of the evening, audience members _ believers and non-believers, skeptics and faithful _ seemed to agree God won, that Craig had the more eloquent debating form and clearer, if not mind-changing, arguments.

Self-described atheist and mathematics professor David Moulton, for example, acknowledged that although Craig’s arguments didn’t change his mind, he was disappointed with Flew’s defenses.”In terms of technical debating, Dr. Craig did a better job,”Moulton said.

Craig led off the debate with five arguments, clearly explained and defined, to prove that”theism is more plausibly true than atheism.” His arguments, which he described as independent from each other but making a powerful case when taken together, were: the universe exists, so it must have a cause; the complex order that exists in the universe is so highly improbable it points to a designer of the cosmos; people recognize that actions are either right or wrong _ universally accepted moral values; historical evidence supports Jesus’ resurrection, a divine miracle that is evidence of the existence of God; and, God can be immediately and personally experienced.

Flew, billed as the atheist in the debate, apologized from the outset for taking a more defensive than offensive approach.

His opening statement, rather than laying out his position, was a response to Craig’s first speech.”I’m not going to try to show that there is no God, but that there are no sufficient reasons to believe there is,”he said.

Both men appeared to be operating under the assumption that the God being debated has the attributes of the God described in the Bible. Flew, who quoted Aquinas, Luther and Calvin, attacked Christian doctrine as part of his defense against the probability of the existence of God.”If God was omnipotent, shouldn’t you expect results?”Flew asked.”Obviously he’s not interested in human behavior. It’s not compatible with your beliefs to have a torturer run the universe,”he said. Flew called the idea of hell completely unjust and told the audience:”The God Dr. Craig is asking us to believe in is a sort of cosmic Saddam Hussein.” Said Craig, criticizing Flew from straying from the debate topic and trying to prove the non-existence of hell rather than the non-existence of God,”It isn’t that God sends people to hell, but that people of their own free will reject God.” Seeming at times more agnostic than atheist, Flew described people as”finite, limited beings”who can’t know anything outside of the universe.”We’re all creatures and our only experience has been in this universe. Craig and others are too bold to think they could know the cause of the universe,”Flew said.

However, Flew did admit the validity of several of Craig’s arguments, including that the universe must have had some sort of cause, and that morality is not subjective.”I don’t accept the sort of subjectivism most people call relativism,”he said.

Oxford University Press has bought publishing rights for the transcript of the debate, and is inviting other theologians and philosophers around the world to weigh in with supporting or dissenting chapters.

Jon Dahl, one of the debate organizers and head of a campus Christian group, said the debate achieved its goal: to bring up the big questions and get people talking about them. He called the debate a”creative, non-conventional way to reach out to the community.””I don’t know that anybody’s mind was changed,”Dahl said.”I think Dr. Flew’s arguments were a bit of a disappointment both to those who came ready to agree with him and those who came ready to disagree with him.” If audience members had to name a winner, most said it would be Craig. “Flew wasn’t able to discredit any of his evidence,”said Tim Schmidt, 21, a child and family studies major.”He didn’t really try to disprove or offer other explanations.” Scott and Judy Hoggatt traveled to Madison from Milwaukee to hear the debate. Scott described Flew’s arguments as”weak, illogical and very uncompelling,”while his wife Judy emphasized that a debate over the existence of God can’t really have a winner.”Neither of them can really prove their side _ that’s not what faith is,”she said.”There is no tangible evidence; we have to believe based on faith.” Keith Yandell, the moderator of the debate and a professor in the university’s philosophy department, said it would be difficult to say who came out ahead. “There were obviously some deep disagreements about a lot of things and those things didn’t all come out,”he said.

Yandell, who said he believes in God, thought the debate was helpful.”People tend to think of religion as private stuff, and that’s a great disservice to the faith,”he said.”This way at least people are talking about these things.”

Eds: More information on the debate can be found at http://www.sit.wisc.edu/(tilde)debate).

DEA END JONGSMA