Debate about nothing?

On April 18, 2013, American Atheists’ Dave Silverman debated Christian apologist Dr. Frank Turek at the Broadmoor Baptist Church in Shreveport, Louisiana. The topic: “What Better Explains Reality? Theism or Atheism?” You can see the entire debate at http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/ and search to the April 21, 2013 entries.

The debate was good but I struck by Frank Turek’s speaking style which was fast paced and tossing out many, many expressions that, I suspect, went past the heads of the audience who, I’m guessing, were mostly Christians. Reminded me of a used car salesman’s ad on TV. Dave Silverman held his own and was deliberate and specific to the debate topic. I think he did a good job against a slick salesman. Who won? Watch the video and decide for yourself.

I want to focus on Turek’s use of “immaterial, timeless and spaceless” to describe his God. I’m guessing that many in the audience didn’t pick up on what that really meant. This was an example of how Turek tossed out things as a way of baffling the audience with his bullshit.

Now towards the end of Turek’s opening remarks, he had a slide that had the following –

“None of these can be explained by Atheism

CRIMES = Cosmos, Reason, Information, Morality, Evil, Science

All of these realities have an immaterial source or foundation. Therefore when Atheists cite anyone one of them to support Atheism, they are stealing from God in order to argue against Him (and stealing is a crime!)”

I found it interesting that Turek used the acronym CRIME to buttress his argument against Atheism. Framed this way, Atheism is seen by the audience as BAD. So right off the bat, Silverman was cast, not directly, but by inference as a criminal in some sense. I wished that Silverman would have addressed this head on.

Under the heading of Cosmos for example, Turek proclaimed that his God was immaterial, timeless and spaceless without offering any proof or further explanation. How does an immaterial (has no matter) timeless (no constrained by our concept of time) and spaceless (occupies no space) being be and how can this thing exist in the first place? Secondly, how does He, She, or It have the powers that Turek ascribes to it? And just how does Turek know this? But at the same time this thing that Turek talks about loves, hates, forgives and causes things to happen here on Earth. Pretty good for basically nothing thing.

Turek also spent a lot of time talking about how everything must have a cause. This is an old tired argument. I guess he has to bone up on the latest thinking by cosmologists, such as Lawrence Krauss, who says that nothing CAN create something all by itself. In fact nothingness is very unstable. So if Turek’s argument is that this universe could have ONLY happened by his immaterial, timeless and spaceless God, he doesn’t offer any explanation how that can be. Science doesn’t need a cause for the Universe. It just happened!

I guess his whole argument came down to there has to have been some cause to the universe and unless science can show something else, God did it! Ta Da! Sometimes these old tired arguments that Christians keep trotting out, are getting wearisome. But, hey, they really can’t come up with anything new. Think about it.