Barker Debate
+ Cardinal George Pell,
14 Mar 2010
Last Thursday I debated American atheist Dan Barker at Macquarie University.
Mr Barker was a teenage Christian evangelist and was ordained a minister in 1975. He served in several evangelical churches, preaching for nineteen years before renouncing the Christian faith in 1984.
He is now co-president of the Freedom from Religion Institute in the US, and travels the world to convert people to atheism. About 300 people attended to hear us debate the topic "Without God we are Nothing".
My claim is simple. When we consider the origins and nature of the universe, and the miracles biology reveals every day, it is more reasonable to believe in God than in atheism or agnosticism.
The universe is finely tuned and seemed to know we were coming. Scientists have put the odds of a random shuffling of amino acids producing life at one chance in 10 to the power of 40,000. It is a very small chance. The number of sub-atomic particles in the entire universe is about 10 to the power of 81.
How purposeless forces could spontaneously produce life is unknown. The only two possible explanations are blind chance or a creative intelligence greater than the universe, which Christians and other believers call God.
Strangely for an atheist, Mr Barker did not want to discuss science. He argued instead that explaining the mystery of the universe by referring to the mystery of God explains nothing.
He claimed there is no proof that anything spiritual exists. When I pointed out that love and forgiveness are invisible but real and powerful spiritual forces, he dismissed these things as simply products of the biology of the brain.
To his credit Mr Barker acknowledged that if chance is the explanation for the universe then human life is devalued. To use his words, we are just like broccoli or dogs. No one really believes this, although some of his supporters noisily claimed to be like broccoli.
At the same time he argued that if God does not exist, life is more meaningful and more free. There were many such contradictions in his case.
While it was mostly good-natured, at the end of the debate Mr Barker's veneer of civility slipped. He made a disgraceful attack on Mother Teresa of Calcutta which won him few friends.
I do not know why atheists have to attack examples of heroic Christian goodness. Perhaps there should be another debate on the topic "Without Christianity, Atheists are Nothing".
