A Public Debate: Does God Exist?

• More about Michael Willenborg
• More about Stephen J. Hurlin

Review of the debate

by Udo Karsten

The debate on the topic “Does God Exist?” was interesting enough, but the two speakers had two very different approaches to the topic. In his opening speech Mike Willenborg had a very rational and philosophical approach (and perhaps a bit unfamiliar to this particular audience) in showing how we could meaningfully come to the conclusion that God exists (and what characteristics such a God would have) from the fact that the universe had a beginning and that the universe exists. Willenborg thereby seemed be getting at reasons why we could believe that God exists and by doing so were answering and affirming the topic and question of the debate about whether God exists.

Steve Hurlin on the other hand, attempted no argument to affirm the statement that God does not exist, which seemed very strange given the very specific topic and question of debate, “Does God Exist?”. Although he might have been better at engaging the audience rhetorically with his very conversational/testimonial approach, it was nothing more than that: a personal testimony of the fact that he lost his faith after being very active in his church and how after he did some research in the area of neuroscience, he became convinced that the claims that Christianity made, specifically about the existence of the soul, were false. Unfortunately for Hurlin, one was left wondering how neuroscience exactly disproved the existence of something like the soul, and whether if this has been done, how such a fact would deny the existence of a being like God – a point that Willenborg later challenged him on.

Hurlin’s main suggestion in his speech seemed to be that when any person really starts thinking critically about the claims of Christianity or about the belief in “some personal being floating in the sky somewhere” (sic), then, at least for him personally, he finds it impossible to hold to a belief in a supernatural being like God. I must admit that I find this to be a very arrogant statement that atheists often make, for the suggestion is clearly that nobody can really be a Christian and a thinking/intelligent person at the same time. More problematic in the context of a debate (which presupposes some kind of argument for ones position) was that Hurlin wanted to convince the audience of all this by merely asserting that this was the case and not by showing by some careful thinking of his own that either he had good reasons to deny God’s existence, or where the flaws lay in Willenborg’s reasons for accepting God’s existence. Even where Hurlin did attempt to engage with Willenborg’s argument from causality for the existence of God, he merely managed to show how poorly he understood the argument.

One could grant Hurlin the benefit of the doubt for his lack of argumentation by agreeing that the time allocated for making a sufficient case for ones view was wholly inadequate. Yet, Willenborg managed to have at least tried, while Hurlin didn’t make any attempt, but resorted to stating unargued conclusions which no thinking Christian (yes, thinking) would grant him.

After the opening speeches and rebuttals of each speaker, there were 30 minutes of questions from the moderator, Roedolf Botha (of Dialoog Christian Community in the east of Pretoria), followed by another 30 minutes of questions from the audience. Both Hurlin and Willenborg fielded these questions gracefully. All in all the debate was a good opportunity for understanding opposing viewpoints, even if some of these views were explained and argued for in ways less than satisfactory. Participation and responses from the audience were done in good spirit and contributed to an enjoyable and stimulating evening.