Caleb's final response and summary

I want to thank Dan for allowing me to express my beliefs.

I took this debate because in one of his YouTube vides Dan referred to this type of apologetics as the last ditch effort of a dying faith. This showed me that Dan doesn’t really have a grasp on what has been taught or defended in Christianity over the last two thousand years or the fact that Christianity is exploding in the intellectual community whether at oxford or Notre Dame, a generation of Bible believing Christians are thriving in their scholarly fields without having to sacrifice their faith and even more so, they contend for it on the highest academic levels. As our discussion has deepened I also came to realize that Dan doesn’t really understand Christianity, or apparently has not taken the time and effort to read a commentary or two since for much of this debate he has consistently used verses from the Bible completely out of their historical context. When Dan tries to explain what the Bible or the Christian God is like he would be hard pressed to actually find someone who thinks that way. I would recommend that instead of taking his queues from the “televangelist atheist” such as Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris he actually make the effort to know how Christians have understood and wrestled with things for thousands of years.

            Dan has made the assertion that the laws of logic “just are.” He offers no justification for this view, he just asserts it. If we are allowed to make assertions I can think of a couple I would like to make as well. But instead I’m going to suggest that universal, unchanging, constant laws such as the laws of logic are justified by their lawgiver. You do not get universal laws without a universal lawgiver.

            In order for Dan to be consistent with his world view he has been reduced to absurdity. In his closing statement he told us he could not be certain that he actually exists. I find it fascinating that the foundation he stands on is so flimsy he cannot even intellectually say the he can be certain of his own life. What is even more amazing is that he then has the wits to say that those of us who are certain are “kidding themselves” but of course, he wasn’t certain about that either. Perhaps in certain circles where you need a dictionary to keep up with the conversation such ideas might sound relevant but for me personally it’s absurd.

            What it really comes down to is that Dan does not have anything that disproves my premise because he actually agrees with it, he just says that to look any further is unnecessary.  This is just another assertion and the opposite of freethinking. I think we could honestly just toss out all of the arguments given by a person who says they are not even sure they are the ones making the argument.

 Dan has spent a lot of time of the morality God because his real argument is that he simply doesn’t like the God of the Bible. But as I said before he apparently hasn’t even taken the time to understand the bible in context.  There are almost too many red herring’s to address on this issue because Dan seems to have thrown intellectual honesty out the window and is just quoting the sound bites of so many who have come before him.  For example, Dan mentions that Hitler was a professing catholic in good standing. Well, I would agree that the Catholics need to be held accountable but the genocide committed had nothing to do with Hitler’s belief in God. Hitler had a very negative view of Christianity and shared with his general that Christianity and Nazism were “incompatible” Hitler was simply working the system but all those who were close to him and from many of his own quotes he hated Christianity.

Dan wrote, I can objectively say that there was a net decrease in psychological and physical health (well-being) from Hitler’s actions without any reference to a “higher moral law”.

How can someone be objective when things like psychological and physical health can be subjective? You would have to have a universal standard in order to make such a claim. The wars against the German army caused physical harm to German soldiers, was that immoral too? I know this is a closing argument so I don’t want to pose a bunch of questions and not give Dan a chance to answer but I think we can see the flaw in his attempt to throw his definition in with all the other atheist struggling to define morality outside of God. But I would pose one more question, does physical well-being apply only outside the womb or does it apply inside as well?

When dealing with our presuppositions we find what our ultimate sources of faith are. Dan and I are both men of faith. That is all the word “Axiom” means, it’s a statement of faith. However, in Dan’s world view his faith is totally unjustified. He cannot account for the very laws of logic that we have been using this entire discussion. But how could he? He cannot even know for sure if that he exist. Without God you are reduced to absurdity, Dan will continue to use logic and reason and morality as though they are certain universal constants, and when he does so he will be borrowing from my world view.

Dan wants a God that fits into his pre decided conclusions, however any god that bows to the whim of every skeptic, especially to those who fail to even begin to treat the material honestly, would be a weak god. I know Dan attempted to try and respond to the design argument and a few other points but I wanted this to be more of a summation on my part than a rebuttal. I think Dan is terribly confused when it comes to modern cosmology on the views of the beginning of the universe. He like many, appeal to multi-verse theories and new time theories in a hope to somehow explain how everything came from nothing. Even if any of these are true you only push the problem back one more step. You cannot escape the problems that an infinite regress of time is impossible. He also does what Stephen Hawkins did in his last book and redefine nothing to mean “something”.

Dan knows God exist. He lives according to the Christian theist world view every day of his life. Our faith is not just some blind wishing that we hope is true, we can have reasonable faith in the God who has revealed himself through scripture and Jesus Christ. If Christ did not rise from the dead as Paul said, “then we above all men should be pitied.” However, the evidence shows He did rise and because of that we can have forgiveness of sin and unity with God.

Dan closed with a quote so allow me to close with one that I find a bit whimsical but relevant to the conversation.

“But for you to make this move would reveal the two fundamental tenets of true atheism. One: There is no God. Two: I hate Him.”
― Douglas Wilson