Challenge: Tackle a British Atheist?

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Jedinovice

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OK, I’m new here and asking for some help.

The short request is, can someone (some people?) be willing, potentially, to engage with an atheist in fairly scientific discussion on the plausibility of the existence of God?

Now the long version…

I hail from the UK, in Surrey, England. The UK has, in the last 20 years, suddenly become super-atheist. You have no idea. It is no accident that Richard Dawkins comes from Oxford; this country is very antagonistic towards religious belief. Now, Dawkins ran a dreadful program called “The root of all evil” which was shown in February 2006. It was the sort of job you’d expect of Dawkins. Anyway, I was persuaded to write a small book refuting it (you can get it free from the Damaris website – though you have pay for the CD to log on which annoys me but there you go. I gave it free of charge.) I’m perfectly happy to email anyone a copy who wants it.

I gave a copy of the book to a work colleague who is (or has been) FIRMLY atheistic and supported Dawkins in ‘The Root of all evil.’ To my amazement he read the book in a day and gave me favourable review! I was shocked. This guy, nice bloke though he is – and he is – has been REALLY scathing of religion. I quote, “All religious believers are weak minded.” That was his view of religion. We have ended up in email discussion since and it’s been good discussion – probably the best such discussion I have ever had! I am quite blown away. We’ve covered free will, some of the historical evidence for Jesus, (though I let him have the last word on that one saying I wasn’t going to try and prove Christianity until we had established the plausibility of there being ANY God!) and the teleological/cosmological arguments.

He seems to accept that religious believers are rational now which, trust me, is a long way from where we were! As I say, the discussion has been good but…
  1. I have less and less time outside of work as I am getting married. In Indonesia!!! I am also down with a medium term illness which saps my energy. He’s single and response in a day where I need a week! I can’t keep the pace I have been and will have to hand him over at some point.
  2. While the discussion has been good and he has been co-operative (I do give him credit indeed!) he is pretty decided upon atheism and is reading “The God delusion” and other works of Richard Dawkins. He reads ‘Nature’ Magazine and loads of other science pieces. He is pretty much a ‘scientific atheist’ and, thus, he was science, science, science in debate. In the end I am not a scientist. He’s thrown up data that I simply, as a lay person, cannot (and should not refute.)
So it’s reached the stage where he needs something of a specialist – someone with a scientific background who can argue (respectfully) on scientific terms especially (of course) on evolution. He certainly seems keen as he’ll respond THE NEXT DAY to anything I send him! So something is going on! But I can’t do into the minutae. We have agreed to move on from evolution (I said it was becoming a deadly embrace of him sending me a pro-evolution article and me sending him a pro-ID article and going nowhere.) But I feel it’s only right and proper to give him the chance to discuss with someone who can go further than I can. I can continue to work with him on the philosophical side of things.

Also, amazing, after years of scepticism at work, a number of people have been questioning and I am ended up responding to a lot of people. Some are not so science focused as this guy (He’s sort of the toughest one who is willing to debate.) So it’s easier for me as the range of acceptable evidence is not so limited. But all of these things are making too much for me with a wedding on the other side of the world to sort out (plus getting her into the UK which won’t be easy.) I am informed I have to attend at three embassies in Indonesia just for the wedding to legal!

In the end, I’m going to have to let this guy go to give my wife my time. This guy is single. But I don’t want it to look like we can’t speak from science or that I am backing out. Believe me, it’s incredible we’ve got this far and he now engages with religion with some degree of respect at all. So I would like to build on what we’ve done this far.
 
[Continued]

Any takers? On the one hand it’s a challenge. Brits are, right now, among the most entrenched atheists in the world and they really do believe science has disproven God, period! He is tenacious and knows stuff (even if I think he can’t see the wood for the trees sometimes!) He will not be easily influenced and I think a very, large part of him wants to be an atheist and this will affect his perspective. I don’t think this is someone ready to be baptised at all! But, on the other hand, he has been fair, respectful, never dropped to bad debate tactics and he has allowed me room to move away from evolution for which I give him great credit. I have often sincerely complimented him on his fairness in discussion. Given how far he has moved, I feel bad about leaving him at this point (or rather soon.) So I want a ‘phased handover’ in which I drop off my email argument and other here (perhaps) engage. I think he would like the thrill of the debate. He has certainly shown a real hunger for discussion and it’s real debate – that’s a rarity!

This may not fly, of course. He might only want email discourse and might only want to talk to me. I don’t know. I’m just asking. Note that my internet connectivity is limited so I can’t drop in often. I take his stuff home often, write a reply on my 386 and post it by email in the morning!

Any takers? Bear in mind, I might just introduce him later. If he’s happy with it I could put up some of his arguments for you guys to take a look at and discuss and he could join if he likes.

And don’t forget the free book! 🙂
 
Sure, I’ll try. I am a Catholic and live in the US. I was atheist growing up or should I say, I just never got it. I met my wife when I was 20 or so and she was Catholic. I never formed opinions on their faith so I eventually attended church with her family over the years. I began questioning all the things about the Catholic faith and eventually became Catholic due to finding the truths I was always looking for. (That is the abbreviated story). Now, Atheist who grow up atheist and live with atheist and were never surround by religion will have a difficult time understanding scripture at first and probably for a long time so I am not going to bombard you with it. Please tell me what leads you to believe there is no God and that christians invented religion for whatever reasons you think. We need to start with the simply things here I think to maybe arrive at an answer. Thanks.
 
I am terrible at apologetics, but I will certainly pray for this man and anyone who takes the challenge to debate him. Just let me know when to start praying.
 
Jedinovice said:
this country is very antagonistic towards religious belief…

…at work, a number of people have been questioning and I am ended up responding to a lot of people. Some are not so science focused as this guy
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I come from England too… I’ve noticed that anti-religious feeling…

and I’ve also recently found myself engaging in quite serious religious debate with lots of people, young people…which has surprised even me… as I’ve said things I never knew I had feelings about until I got asked…

what do you think of the idea that:

to someone with faith, no answer in necessary…and to someone without faith, no answere is possible.

are you sure that any answer will be enough? or that he may get sidetracked by trying to find logical answers instead of finding faith.

S x
 
I am struggling to understand your objective, would the fellow consider simply logging into the forum? I have debated many atheists, though my knowledge of biology is rather limited. I actually have been for years asking questions to atheist which they typically refuse to answer as what is the moral base for atheism. or must we conclude to be atheist one surrenders moral behavior as a consequence. (short version). However we are not to pursue him privately through the forum. Frankly we all learn a lot from these debates. How are you proposing to form the debate?
 
Baby steps. This is probably a very large challenge that may be debated for a very long time. If an atheist has love in his/her heart and faith in others and can trust others then that is a good start. Science can not have anything to do with love and can not explain love, it comes from God. Love does not come from a test tube in a laboratory. If an atheist can prove to me that my feelings of love and caring was made from science then he has a lot of homework to show me. It is a difficult road for a lot of people but it starts one person at a time. I need to know there rationale, it would be nice to hear from them there own personal words and not pages of quoted articles from other atheist and scientists. Scientists try to prove while God has proven.
 
Just to clarify. He is asking for help, I don’t have an objective or aggenda I’m going to follow. If we approach individuals asking about faith and it’s reliability then we need to be sensitive to their concerns. I would hate to turn someone off by attacking what they believe and never get a chance to engage in conversation. I don’t want to debate but get to the simple reasons from their own heart and their own words. It’s too easy to slam scripture and say “This is it!” believe it or else. Jesus came to save one person at a time. I hope this person is open to mature dialogue and is open to his heart. I will pray for him whether he responds or not. It’s nice to hear from all of you and you all seem concerned as well. Thanks.
 
Texas_Roofer said:
I am struggling to understand your objective, would the fellow consider simply logging into the forum? I have debated many atheists, though my knowledge of biology is rather limited. I actually have been for years asking questions to atheist which they typically refuse to answer as what is the moral base for atheism. or must we conclude to be atheist one surrenders moral behavior as a consequence. (short version). However we are not to pursue him privately through the forum. Frankly we all learn a lot from these debates. How are you proposing to form the debate?
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Many thanks for people’s positive response. I’ll be offline soon so won’t post anymore after this today. I don’t know how to proceed yet. I want to give my colleague the offer of others to converse with and let him set the terms really. I think that’s only fair. I haven’t approached this with him yet. I’m doing more a of feasibility study. Certainly, as has been noted, baby steps are smart. I keep saying to him, “I’m not going to discuss the nature of God until we have established the plausibility of the being ANY God first.” I think we have established that religious belief is not irrational which opens the door a bit.

I think he’ll take good discussion full stop (I think, we’ll see) but to put a little meat on the bone here are a couple of quotes for people to chew on. This stuff is technical though! It’s not always like this but the latest response indicates the need for someone who CAN respond to this stuff. Rest assured, it’s not been this bad up to now! 🙂 But as an atheist he is going to need some to talk science to him at some point.

“According to the journal Nature on December the 7th geologists have uncovered evidence in the oil fields of Oman that explains how Earth could suddenly have changed 550 million years ago to favour the evolution of the single-celled life forms to the multicellular forms we know today. Researchers from MIT, the California Institute of Technology, and Indiana University show that there was a sudden change in the oxygenation of the world’s oceans at the time just before the “Cambrian explosion,” one of the most significant adaptative radiations in the history of life.” (He goes on to explain how this explains the Cambrian explosion.)

Regarding a point of mine that mutations at a genetic level cannot cause an increase in complexity (new data) he responded with:

"Mutations can do, mutations can undo. Some mutations add information to a genome; some subtract it. By any reasonable definition, increases in information have been observed to evolve. We have observed the evolution of:

Increased genetic variety in a population (Lenski 1995; Lenski et al. 1991)

Increased genetic material (Alves et al. 2001; Brown et al. 1998; Hughes and Friedman 2003; Lynch and Conery 2000; Ohta 2003)

Novel genetic material (Knox et al. 1996; Park et al. 1996)

Novel genetically-regulated abilities (Prijambada et al. 1995)"

He goes on. He’s clearly been reading over Christmas to throw stuff at me!!! (Which is a good thing! He’s hungry for knowledge. I don’t want the only thing he reads next to be ‘The selfish gene’ by Dawkins. That is next on his list!)

There’s room for technical and non-techniocal discussion here, though. He is not a biologist. He works in IT.

I’m not subscribing to ‘Nature’ though!

Many thanks for everyone. Prayers would be appreciated. I will not name names yet, see how he feels. He has been extremely good in discussion and he deserves to be taken seriously and responsibly.
 
You can count me out on the topics of all the science stuff, I know that science has come from one source and he knows more than any of us all the pieces of the puzzle. I hope he can stay focused on his own feelings and not blow us away with article after article of science and theories and MIT things. I will not be able to have any heart to heart conversation if I am having to read this all the time. We should approach each other openly like children to their parents. I think too much information at once will derail this important discussion. We should here his personal story from his heart.
 
Jedinovice said:
[Continued]

Any takers? On the one hand it’s a challenge. Brits are, right now, among the most entrenched atheists in the world and they really do believe science has disproven God, period! He is tenacious and knows stuff (even if I think he can’t see the wood for the trees sometimes!) He will not be easily influenced and I think a very, large part of him wants to be an atheist and this will affect his perspective. I don’t think this is someone ready to be baptised at all! But, on the other hand, he has been fair, respectful, never dropped to bad debate tactics and he has allowed me room to move away from evolution for which I give him great credit. I have often sincerely complimented him on his fairness in discussion. Given how far he has moved, I feel bad about leaving him at this point (or rather soon.) So I want a ‘phased handover’ in which I drop off my email argument and other here (perhaps) engage. I think he would like the thrill of the debate. He has certainly shown a real hunger for discussion and it’s real debate – that’s a rarity!

This may not fly, of course. He might only want email discourse and might only want to talk to me. I don’t know. I’m just asking. Note that my internet connectivity is limited so I can’t drop in often. I take his stuff home often, write a reply on my 386 and post it by email in the morning!

Any takers? Bear in mind, I might just introduce him later. If he’s happy with it I could put up some of his arguments for you guys to take a look at and discuss and he could join if he likes.

And don’t forget the free book! 🙂
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I would give him a copy of Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis.
 
I only want to talk to him personally not scientifically. If he is interested in debate only I will be of no help. I have no interest in debate if he is determined to stay atheist (God help him). However, if he is truly looking further in his search with openess then there may be something worth talking about. I dont’ want to be involved in this if he wants to just debate. I wish there was a magic wand to help but I just know of a cross.
 
Texas_Roofer said:
I actually have been for years asking questions to atheist which they typically refuse to answer as what is the moral base for atheism.
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I’ve seen this question before, and it is irrelevant. It takes for granted as to where morality comes from but doesn’t acknowledge, that nobody really knows for certain.
Texas_Roofer said:
or must we conclude to be atheist one surrenders moral behavior as a consequence.
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No we must not, that is one of the most unfounded accusation I’ve heard.
 
R_McGeddon said:
I’ve seen this question before, and it is irrelevant. It takes for granted as to where morality comes from but doesn’t acknowledge, that nobody really knows for certain.

No we must not, that is one of the most unfounded accusation I’ve heard.
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Hey, good to hear from you again, can we take up the issue in some detail after the new guy is invited in?
 
It sounds like he’s reducing everything to a scientific argument and avoiding all the philosophical and personal aspects. Atheists like that tend to think that all of life and knowledge is confined to science. But this ignores many aspects of a human being – intelligence, memory, imagination, love, conscience.

Another very interesting argument I read recently concerns the so-called evolution of two-sexes. There is really no way for that to work. A single being supposedly emerged from non-living matter through a random process – but then another compatible being had to evolve also to be a partner for reproduction.

Rather than restate the argument, you can read it here:

arn.org/blogs/index.php/2/2006/12/31/title_16

But I think the science debate will go on forever. It’s a convenient place to hide behind details and snippets of research – but the bigger issue is avoided. What about the nature of God as revealed through history?

There are many other arguments regarding justice, authority and meaning or purpose in the universe that he should be dealing with – rather than the details of biology which will just cause him to argue without purpose.

The fact that he is willing to embrace evolutionary theory which is supported by extreme improbabilities means that he already has faith – it’s just that he is directing his faith in science. But why? Why insist that science will have answers to these questions when there are enormous gaps in what is known.

The fact that atheists will fervently insist that science will eventually explain everything is significant. It’s a defensive posture and not a truly impartial one. They should admit that it is very likely that science will never find the answers that they claim it will.
 
Jedinovice said:
By any reasonable definition, increases in information have been observed to evolve.
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Well, it depends what he means by “reasonable”. One of the most common “proofs” that mutations increased information was the mutation of fruit flies where the increase was represented by flies that grew an extra pair of wings. But those flies were deformed and crippled – and therefore an evolutionary dead end.

Increase in specificity, sophistication, complexity, function as well as information (those are forms of information as well) are very far from having been observed.

The challenge for the researcher is to use random mutation to grow, develop or create new species. As with the fruit fly example, mutation is just destructive and in that case, killed off the creature.

This is actually so obvious that it can’t really be denied. If random mutations created positive advances – then randomization would be used more frequently for problem solving. But just the opposite is used in a science lab. Instead of random accidents, scientists use order, design, purpose and control to come up with answers.
 
R_McGeddon said:
I’ve seen this question before, and it is irrelevant. It takes for granted as to where morality comes from but doesn’t acknowledge, that nobody really knows for certain.
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Jesus Christ stated that He knew for certain. He died and rose again to show his conviction. I don’t know what more He’d need to do, but I don’t think you can say that “nobody knows for certain”.
 
Oh, I thought I provided a response to a previous post, but I accidentally edited it and now I cannot edit it back.
  1. I have less and less time outside of work as I am getting married. In Indonesia!!! I am also down with a medium term illness which saps my energy. He’s single and response in a day where I need a week! I can’t keep the pace I have been and will have to hand him over at some point.
  2. While the discussion has been good and he has been co-operative (I do give him credit indeed!) he is pretty decided upon atheism and is reading “The God delusion” and other works of Richard Dawkins. He reads ‘Nature’ Magazine and loads of other science pieces. He is pretty much a ‘scientific atheist’ and, thus, he was science, science, science in debate. In the end I am not a scientist. He’s thrown up data that I simply, as a lay person, cannot (and should not refute.)
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I do not know if he actually reads those papers, it takes time to read scientific papers. If I read about 3 peer-reviewed articles from scientific journals in a day, I felt like I have done a good job as it takes me a long to assimilate the information. I am referring to papers about molecular evolution (not cosmology papers as I do not understand that topic). I do not think saying (some name et al. year actually means he fully comprehends the information in those papers).

Nature is a best describe as a journal, not a magazine. Funny how Science has the website of sciencemag.org although it is a journal.

Reading *Nature *is a hallmark of a scientist as they derive their knowledge from experimentation, and reading peer-reviewed articles written by people in their field of expertise and people who are reporting a experiment that they performed.

I think it is impossible to argue against evolution from a scientific perspective.
So it’s reached the stage where he needs something of a specialist – someone with a scientific background who can argue (respectfully) on scientific terms especially (of course) on evolution. He certainly seems keen as he’ll respond THE NEXT DAY to anything I send him! So something is going on! But I can’t do into the minutae. We have agreed to move on from evolution (I said it was becoming a deadly embrace of him sending me a pro-evolution article and me sending him a pro-ID article and going nowhere.) But I feel it’s only right and proper to give him the chance to discuss with someone who can go further than I can. I can continue to work with him on the philosophical side of things.
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Bring up the origin of life, I will be happy to provide my own critiques of whatever model he brings up. Unlike evolution, the origin of life deals with the origin of Darwinian evolution.

I have read my fair share of scientific literature on this topic and so far there is no answers available to answer this question… Only I can come up with is criticisms for the dominant models and it seems to me no answer is obvious. I do however believe that God was not involved in the origin of life. For a while, I accepted the hypothesis that an intelligent designer created life.

Don’t worry, I can cite scientific literature to support my own arguments. Two can play that game 🙂 . I only offered this because I am interested in discussing the origin of life in technical detail. I understand the biochemistry quite well and I can make my arguments without reference to a designer.

Unfortunately, this message board does not have a peer-review system for arguments of that nature. I think invoking scientists such as Gerald Joyce and Robert Shapiro to read my criticism would consume their own time.
 
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