CFI UK Debate - Does God Exist?

God and the Bible was the title of an all day event held by CFI UK at the Conway Hall in London.

A morning talk was given by Professor Francesca Stavrakopoulou on what she called The Real Religions of the Bible, or The Uncensored Bible. The theme of this talk was those bits of the Bible that are rarely mentioned. Most likely because they are rather priapic, or, at least, that is how it seemed, as the 'penis' references moved into double figures. The God of the Old Testament used to put it about a bit, it seems, and it's not at all clear how immaterial he was. Stavrakopoulou was very articulate and, to every issue raised, thoughtful and nuanced.

In the afternoon Professor Stephen Law and Professor Keith Ward debated whether God exists. This being the CFI, it was clear where the sympathy of the audience lay, and it wasn't with Professor Ward. His presentation was familiar to many of us who have read liberal theologians; his God is a mutable, vague beast that seems to be specially designed to reify the art of goal-posting moving, so that wherever one shoots, one is bound to miss. A couple of things, at least, defined this concept: first, that his God could not do anything he felt was immoral; and second, that his God concept could not run counter to scientific facts. In this way he inoculates his belief from attack, I suppose, because his God is bound to conform to his (Ward's) moral beliefs, so no awkward silences when the Canaanite genocide is mentioned, and if science shows some aspect of his belief to be factually wrong, he will simply change his belief, so no awkward silences when talking snakes are mentioned.

The panel, with some minor celebrity spotting thrown in.

Obviously this means that as Ward's moral sensibilities change during his life, so does his God, and as science changes our view of the universe, so does his God change. I got the impression Ward is distinctly relaxed about this, seeing it as an enlightened approach. I think it is to be encouraged amongst believers, because it seems to be almost the opposite of dogmatic, and comes close to the Humean ideal of proportioning one's belief to the evidence. But I suspect that few Christians would find this Will 'o the Wisp deity satisfying, and, as Stavrakopoulou pointed out, it lacks magic.

Later, in response to the problem of evil, Ward renounced omnipotence as a feature of his God, which puzzled many in the crowd who assumed Ward was a Christian. Someone asked him outright if he were, and his reply was that he was a priest in the Anglican Church. 'Not enough information!', I shouted.

In the end it seems there is something about Ward's experience of the world that renders him a believer; a sense of the noumenal, morals and beauty were mentioned.

Stephen Law did not specifically address Ward's talk, but presented his excellent Evil God challenge, which, briefly, points out the empirical fact that no-one (? Satanists?) believes in an evil god, although practically all (if not all) the arguments for God do not give us any clue to His goodness. If a theist can see that belief in an evil god is ludicrous (and they seem to), they should likewise agree with atheists that belief in God is too, since the arguments for both are effectively the same (although often mirrored).

I think here Ward falls back on his subjective experience; in a discussion of HADD, for example, which Law was citing as a defeater for Ward's belief in a hidden agent, Ward said he thought he had HADD, but it was given to him by God so he could sense Him! How could one argue anyone out of these sorts of beliefs?

An interesting debate, but I think I would have liked to have heard more from Ward about why he doesn't give up his God's benevolence, as well as His omnipotence, given Law's Evil God Challenge (or, indeed, His existence!). Presumably he just has an undeniable intuition that this thing he senses the existence of is good. That may be, but it seems a wholly unsatisfactory response to anyone who does not have that feeling.

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Waterloo at Wellington for Theists

Another debate organised by Intelligence Squared, this time at Wellington College in Berkshire. The motion was 'Atheism is the new fundamentalism', proposed by Richard Harries, former Bishop of Oxford and Charles Moore, opposed by A C Grayling and Richard Dawkins. Moderated by Anthony Seldon, headmaster at the school. He's a professor at the College of Teachers. Who teaches them, one wonders. This one was streamed online, so I won't go into too much detail; I think it should be available to watch very soon.

EDIT: watch the debate here.

Outside the venue

Celeb watch; two sightings. Seventies chanteuse, Lynsey De Paul (who'd have thought?) and Jeremy Paxman.

Richard Harries

The very *motion* is an ad hominem response to atheism, in my opinion; rather than address the arguments, cast 'new' atheism (they tend to qualify the atheism) as the new fundamentalism, and consequently dismiss it as worthless. This implicit notion fed through to both Harries' and Moore's opening statements, which addressed what fundamentalism is, and why it's a bad thing (no argument from me there), but also name-called Richard Dawkins, sitting bemused opposite them. Harries called him an 'attack dog' and Moore described a scene in which 'Commandant Dawkins' would have theists all gunned down, presumably for daring to object to rational argument.

A C Grayling

The tenor of both presentations was that atheism, as represented by Dawkins, adopted a *certainty* about the truth that was not justified. I think Harries called it "not allowing for the great 'perhaps'". This seems very odd to me, because faith in god is surely about banishing doubt from one's belief - I blogged on this some time back, prompted by an article by a Catholic priest.

Charles Moore

For me, this is a straw man; whilst new atheist scientists consider that the Christian God is almost certainly non-existent, they cannot discount any god's existent, nor the existence of Russell's teapot, and Dawkins corrected them on this point. Harries made the point that The God Delusion doesn't mention the 'balance of probabilities', but chapter 4 includes quite a discussion on this. Interestingly, Grayling as a philosopher seems less bound by this scientific principle, and happily confirmed his certainty about God's non-existence. This I could only agree with if he's talking about some concept that suffers from non-cognitivism. Which might apply to God.

Richard Dawkins

After many demonstrations of good sense from Grayling and Dawkins, Harries was left grasping at the value of the numinous, as if this was the heart of the matter. Moore complained that such debates never analysed the more complicated ideas that were at issue (this after a question on consciousness, I think). A pretty vacant comment, after he had spoken for a motion that 'atheism is the new fundamentalism', an approach that is *calculated* to dismiss the arguments of one's opponents.

The final score: 363 for, 1070 against, 85 don't knows. Predictable from the feeling I got inside the hall.

Oh, and I said to Jeremy Paxman in the moving throng on the way out, 'Can I ask you how you voted?'. 'Well, there you are then', he replied, cryptically. I should have pressed him, but I imagine he gets fed up with that in public.

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May the Force be with You

The queue outside the venue

I attended this event tonight, at the Methodist Central Hall in Westminster. The motion was 'The Catholic church is a force for good in the world', proposed by Ann Widdecombe and the Archbishop of Abuja. Against were Christopher Hitchens and Stephen Fry. Moderation by Zeinab Badawi. My journalistic skills are not good, so I apologise for any failures in recall, and any misrepresentations; this is as I remember it, but I am not impartial. The event was filmed, so it will hopefully be on Youtube before too long. Apologies also for the poor quality of the piccies from my mobile phone!

My wife spotted the large organ

We did a bit of sleb spotting, but the only one worth reporting, that we saw, was Derren Brown; look:

That is him, honest

A good atmosphere in a packed hall; the antagonists entered...

l to r: the Archbish, AW, CH and SF. Yeah, really

An initial poll showed roughly 600 for and 1000 against the motion before the start of the proceedings.

The Archbishop started off, with a rather waffly preamble, re-stating often that the Church was a force for good, and that he had spent his life in the institution and had become more convinced of it as time went on. Referred to the many good works done by Catholics around the world, in health and social care, and education. He kept it light; not very convincing, but came over as a pleasant and humorous guy. He did mention that one or two mistakes had been made by the Church, for which apologies were appropriate.

Christopher Hitchens followed, and attacked mercilessly. I've seen a few Hitch debates online, but this one didn't include any of his usual rhetorical gambits. Instead he took the ball passed by the Archbishop and ran with it brilliantly; he insisted that any representative of the Church should start any such discussion with a long list of apologies; he ran through many of them, such as the Crusades, the Inquisition and the Holocaust; the torture of Galileo and anti-semitism. He continued relentlessly with modern day problems, such as child abuse and their obsession with condoms. He pointed out that the Holy See had lifted the excommunication on Richard Williamson, a holocaust denying bishop. He left the floor with a buzz going around the room at the ferocity of the attack.

Ann Widdecombe won a cheer from the Catholic supporters by accusing Hitchens of a gross misrepresentation of the Church. She scoffed at Hitchens' examples of Catholic bad behaviour - the sack of Constantinople, for goodness sake, she laughed. Time does heal, apparently. She despaired at the constant harping on about child abuse, and that the Church should be judged on such matters according to the morality of the time (!). She talked about the billions raised by the Church and used for good causes around the world, through the 1 billion Catholics. Talked about the many health care facilities run by Catholics - a very high percentage apparently. Talked about the many Catholics persecuted by the Nazis and how many churches harboured Jews during that war. All in all, a combative effort from the Tory firebrand.

Stephen Fry started by hoping that he marshalled his facts well, since this was a subject that really *mattered* to him. He was *passionately* against the motion. He ironically agreed with AW's notion that we can dismiss such historical events as the Crusades and the Inquisition as being too long ago, but then spoke beautifully about the echos of history in *all* of us, and in that very room. He pointed out that history was clearly of major importance in her Church, through the notion of Apostolic succession, so she could hardly scoff at events 800 years ago. In the square mile, where we sat, the Church had burnt people for distributing Bibles in English. This point was very well made. If AW wanted the church to be judged by the mores of the time, for slavery, torture and child abuse, for example, whence absolute morality? He attacked the idea that he was considered by her Church to be morally evil, just for being him. He objected to being called a pervert by sexually dysfunctional churchmen! It was a tour de force to which I can hardly do justice.

I'll mention two questions in the Q & A; a woman asked the panel about the 10 commandments -that these were surely a great work of the Catholic church (surely shome mishtake?). Hitchens pointed out the egotistic nature of the first three (or four?) commandments. The Archbishop scored a bit of an own goal by telling us that his father converted to Catholicism, but was already aware of the ethical commandments through his previous African religion; "Exactly!", shouted someone in the crowd. A chap asked Ann Widdecombe how a woman could be an MP but not a priest; not for the first time, AW said that the theology was too complex for such a discussion (and such fools, it was implied) but basically a woman could no more stand in for Jesus Christ than a man could stand in for the Virgin Mary. This doesn't so much explain her point but rather re-state the problem. Why, indeed, could a woman *not* stand in for Jesus Christ? A priest doesn't have to do anything gender specific. Or does he? I think we should be told.

The atmosphere was quite frenetic all night, with a lively audience; in the closing statements, AW scolded Fry for calling the Archbishop sexually dysfunctional. Perhaps that was a little harsh. The outgunned Archbishop said that he had resisted preaching all night, and that most of the preaching had come from the other side. I think I have to agree with this; the Archbishop didn't sermonise, and spoke calmly - the emotion was certainly emanating from Hitchens and particularly Fry. But this emotion was backed by great reason, evidence and good sense. I think it was Mackie who said that emotion backed by reason was virtue. A virtuoso performance, then. By contrast the theists were rather subdued.

A further poll at the end revealed a massacre of the not-so-innocents; some 200 for and 1700 against, I think.

This proves nothing, of course; debates are usually won by the best debater, or by the vagaries of the audience mix, not by the truth-tellers; although, IMO, the truth-tellers did win on this occasion. A ray of hope from the night; both Hitchens and Fry issued challenges to the Catholic Church that they *can* clean up their act, and at least partially atone for their past crimes. One or two Catholics in the audience seemed very keen to take this to heart. Let's hope that many do.

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