By now many have heard the debate between Sye Ten Bruggencate and Matt Dillahunty in Memphis. I never heard of Sye before but after watching the debate, it was clear that Sye’s views the existence of God much like William Lane Craig does. No matter what evidence you present, if it’s in the Bible, then they believe it. Nothing will convince them otherwise.
The photo at left is about one of the gems that Sye said. I’ll return to that in a minute. I want to first address how he started the debate, if you could call it that. He starts by laying out his argument as follows -
1. It’s reasonable to believe something if it’s true.
2. It’s true that God exists
3. Therefore it’s reasonable to believe that God exists.
And he said it with a straight face! Of course if something is true, it’s reasonable to believe it. The question is is something true? I would believe in dragons if they were shown to be true, in other words, existing. Since there is no evidence that dragons exists, it’s not necessary to believe they exist. The same could be said of fairies, unicorns, aliens, etc. I believe there is a basketball size diamond buried in my backyard. Does my belief that it’s there make it exist? If it really existed, I would be digging up my backyard.
Just like most fundamentalist Christians, Sye assumes God exists, not because there is evidence of God’s existence or non-existence, but because he was probably taught as a young child that God is real, like most kids are taught today. The belief is now so entrenched in him, that Sye, like Craig, can not not believe. No amount of evidence will convince them otherwise.
The other skill that Sye and Craig have is that they are great at linguistic gymnastics around the God question. For example, is what we perceive as real really real? How do we know what is knowledge and not some false perception that we take as knowledge? It makes my head hurt when I hear them bamboozle everyone with a string of words that sound OK by themselves till you spend a second to try to unpack it and make sense of what they just said.
Reasoning is not something that Christians want to do and to some extent, debating with Christians is futile. Take the photo at left. Basically Sye is saying the Bible is true, and that’s it! Don’t try to show me something, like the Koran, that contradicts my belief. I won’t hear it.
Finally in another part of the debate Sye said he doesn’t do Bible studies with Atheists or non-believers. I wonder why. Is it because that the challenge to his beliefs is something he is uncomfortable with? Like many that spout the Bible, all they want is to say their BS to a willing flock that keeps saying “Amen” at the correct time. It’s been said elsewhere, if you could reason with Christians, there would be no Christians. Hopefully someone who is fence sitter when it comes to the God question will be persuaded to examine their belief more closely. One can only hope.