Third Rebuttal

by Daniel Adams

Mr Guthrie writes "We have a general consensus of the ontological status of 'Death' and, as such, any opposition to the claim "Death exists" now carries the burden of proof. "

This is true for the case of "Death exists" for it has already been conclusively proven (which would require that there was evidence that somebody somewhere, sometime had died). Once this has been established, then Mr Guthrie is right in claiming that the burden of proof then switched to the negative claimant - the person claiming "Death does not exist".

To draw the parallel to the relevant topic, if the positive claim "God exists" has already been proven, then the burden of proof switches to anyone who later claims "God does not exist". However, since it has never been proven that "God exists", we have thus far received no reason to lift the burden of proof from the positive claimant, that is the person claiming "God exists".

However, since it appears that there is going to be no convergence of opinion on the matter of which party holds the "burden of proof", that is we can not agree who is obligated to prove his case, I suggest that we instead leave the matter of the burden of proof unresolved, and in the spirit of debate, regardless of the burden of proof, both present our cases respectively for and against the existence of God.

In the second of my arguments which I put forward, I then wrote >"If Mr Guthrie can prove to me that there does not >exist a giant, pink, invisible, infinitely powerful gnome, then I will be >more than happy to in turn prove to him that God does not >exist, because whatever arguments are used to disprove the existence of the >gnome may be equally well used to disprove the >existence of God."

This was in part connected with the burden of proof argument. My reasoning is that at present I have no more reason to believe in God than in an invisible, infinite, giant pink gnome. Or for that matter, a giant invisiable, infinite gree spider. Or.......ad infinitum. The point is that there is no evidence pointing towards the existence of any of these beings, but for some reason a belief in God is granted substantially more credibility in modern society than a belief in any of the latter two beings. It was my hope to get Mr Guthrie to explain exactly why we should grant the existence of God any more credbilty than a belief in the gnome or the spider. Mr Guthrie did not do this. Instead he responded...

"There are essentially two mistakes committed here and one reason to discredit the gnome story. (i) He did not qualify the gnome's characteristics as "invisible" until this last rebuttal. Instead, he just declared that the gnome was 'infinite.'"

Irrelevant. I now state that one of the gnome's characteristics is irrelevant. The point still stands. Why is that you do not believe in my gnome yet you believe in your God. It is my supposition that you cannot disprove the existence of my gnome.

He continues......

"As such, there are no repercussions for empiricists if the gnome is said to be a physical object with infinite power. As for other realists, such as me, I do not think that this is a problem. Consider that Mr. Adams himself, I'm sure, does not believe in the gnome. If he does not, then he must have some evidence to support that assertion, right? So it is not beyond evidential reasoning to discredit the gnome's existence."

Mr Guthrie is quite correct in stating that I do not believe in the gnome. He is wrong however in stating that I have evidence to support my assertion. Because, basically, I have no assertion. I am not stating I believe that he does not exist, but rather that I fail to believe that he exists. Since I have been shown no evidence for the gnome's existence, I do not believe in him.

This too is Mr Guthrie's position, although he does not state it. Perhaps unwittingly, he has himself accepted my entire argument that the burden of proof lies upon the positive claimant - the person claiming that the gnome/Gode exists. I will now say to Mr Guthrie -

Why is it that you do not believe in the gnome. It is for one of two reasons. Either

(i)You have some evidence to dispute the postive claim "the gnome exists". Whatever evidence it is that you feel you have, please reveal it, for that same evidence if you do indeed have it, can be used to disprove the existence of God. Or...

(ii) SInce the positive claimant (me) has provided no evidence that the gnome exists, you do not believe in the gnome. If this is the case, then Mr Guthrie has just accepted that the burden of proof lies upon the positive claimant. That is, it is up to Mr Guthrie to prove to me that God exists, and not up to me to prove to him that he does not.

I think maybe Mr Guthrie realises this because he goes on to state why he believes the case of stating "the gnome exists" is different from the case of stating "God exists". He says...

".....there is no historical context surrounding the existence of the gnome (an example of a historical context would be that gnomes are not claimed to be the sources of the universe and absolute moral values)."

Ok, I hereby state that my giant pink, invisible, infinte gnome created both the universe and absolute moral values.

I next questioned why an all-poweful, all-loving God would allow people to experience pain and death. Mr Guthrie replied that the existence of pain and death were not at odds with the existence of God provided that God had "imaginable reason" for allowing pain and death to continue, when he could prevent it.

I enquired exactly what this "imaginable reason" was why God allowed 12-year old girls to be raped when he could prevent it. Mr Guthrie replied...

"If I can come up with any possible reason whatsoever, the incompatibility argument is then dissolved. Consider that a 12-year-old girl is permitted to be raped in order to cause her to seek spiritual salvation in Jesus Christ. The assailant, having witnessed the conversion of the little girl, then becomes apologetic> and also receives Christ as his spiritual savior. "

I can truly say that I am completely stunned by the lack of logic in this reply. Mr Guthrie fails completely to see that an all-powerful, all-loving God could have prevented the rape from occuring in the first place. Why would an all-poweful, all-loving God feel it necessary for a man to rape a child before he could believe in God. An all-powerful, all-loving God would have foreseen that the rape were going to occur and have intervened, preventing it from happening. We are left with a few alternatives.

(i) God was not able to prevent the rape from ocuring. In this case, either he does not exist, or else is not all-powerful, and therefore not a God.

(ii)God exists, and was able to intervene but chose not to. So, he conciously chose to let a girl be raped when he could have prevented it. Such a God is dispicable, and not to be worshipped.

Mr Guthrie has then completely failed to address the so-called "Problem of Evil"

Mr Guthrie continues...

'Secondly, how does Adams justify his claim to know that something is "evil"? Does he believe in objective moral values? The late University of Oxford atheist J. L. Mackie poignantly observed, 'If . . .there are . . . objective values, they make the existence of a God more probable than it would have been without them'

Mr Guthrie is exactly correct. I, as an atheist , do not believe that there are objective moral values. I believe that at least some of those reading this debate will wonder what we are talking about when we refer to "objective morality" Basically, objective morailty states that certain actions are fundamentally "good" or "bad". Such classification obviously denotes some sort of arbiter of "good" and "bad" valued, ie it implies the existence of God. I was very careful only to talkof 'death', 'pain' and 'The Problem of Evil', and not label the rape of the girl as "evil". I do not believe the rape of a girl to be objectively evil, but rather that it is "bad" in the mind of the girl, it is "bad" in my mind and "bad" in the minds

of most people. There is however, nothing absolutely "evil" about the rape of a small girl. I do not believe that there is any such thing as evil. Mr Guthrie displays extreme intellectual honesty when he then states...

"The reader must understand that what I am suggesting here is not that non-theists cannot recognize moral values, but that non-theists simply have no objective basis upon which to ground such values."

He is to be congratulated for not trying to profit as many do from arguing dishonestly that a lack of objective morality equals a lack of morality. If I had stated that I believed in objective moral values, Mr Guthrie would be quite correct in pointing out that such a belief must entail the existence of an arbiter or judge of what is "evil", namely God. Since I do not hold that there is an abjective morality, his point is nullified.

ONE GOOD REASON TO SUGGEST THAT THEISM IS TRUE

Mr Guthrie continues...

"(1) Everything that begins to exist has a cause for its existence.

(2) The universe began to exist.

(3) Therefore, the universe has a cause for its existence.

What caused the beginning of the universe? Where did it come from and why does it exist instead of nothing? The evidence points to a timeless, changeless being."

We know that the Universe "began" as the Big Bang, exploding outwards from an incredibly small point. This is proven scientific fact which I believe Mr Guthrie accepts. It is evidenced basically by the fact that all the galaxies are moving apart from one another. This is clearly indicative of a common point of origin, and shows that an explosion such as the Big Bang occurred. Mr Guthrie implies that this was the "beginning" of the universe and that at the time of the Big Bang it was basically magicked into existence by a divine being. He has no evidence to support this. I would maintain that it was at least as probable that the "beginning" of the universe was a part of a regular explosion-implosion loop cycle, and that the universe as we know it did not actually "begin" in the Big Bang, but that it did pass through the Big Bang as part of its cycle. It therefore did not begin, and thus has no need for a creator.

I have then shown that the "Problem of Evil", a misleading title, since I do not believe "evil" exists, still stands. Perhaps we should rename it the "Problem of death and pain" to clarify this point. Whatever, we have still to hear from Mr Guthrie why it is that God allows pain and death to exist when he could presumably prevent it. Thus my argument that God does not exist, because pain and death exist, still stands.

I have also negated Mr Guthrie's argument that the Universe must have had a creator.