The Great Debate | Greg Bahnsen vs. Gordon Stein: Does God Exist?

Update: 2020-07-06

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SEGMENT ONE

I. OPENING STATEMENT—BAHNSEN

A. Introductory Remarks About the Nature of the Debate

1. Defining Terms

♦ The Argument is for Christian Theism

It is necessary at the outset of our debate to define our terms; that is always the case. And in particular here, I should make it clear what I mean when I use the term “God”.

I want to specify that I’m arguing particularly in favor of Christian theism, and for it as a unit or system of thought and not for anything like theism in general, and there are reasons for that. The various conceptions of deity found in world religions are in most cases logically incompatible, leaving no unambiguous sense to general theism – whatever that might be.

I have not found the non-Christian religions to be philosophically defensible, each of them being internally incoherent or undermining human reason and experience.

Since I am by the grace of God a Christian, I cannot, from the heart, adequately defend those religious faiths with which I disagree. My commitment is to the Triune God and the Christian world view based on God’s revelation in the Old and New Testaments. So, first I am defending Christian theism.

2. What the Debate is About

♦ We are debating about philosophical systems, not the people who adhere to or profess them

Our concern is with the objective merits of the case which can be made for atheism or Christian theism, not related subjective or personal matters.

The personalities of those individuals who adhere to different systems of thought are not really relevant to the truth or falsity of the claims made by those systems. Atheists and Christians can equally be found emotional, unlearned, intolerant or rude in their approaches.

The Great Debate: Does God Exist? Bahnsen v. Stein

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Subjective claims made about the experience of inner satisfaction or peace – claims that are made in earnest by both Christians and atheists in their literature – and promotional claims made about the superiority of Christianity or atheism.

For instance, some atheist literature suggests that greater mental health comes through the independence of the atheist outlook. These sorts of things are always subject to conflicting interpretations and explanations, being, I think, more autobiographical, rather than telling us anything for sure about the truth of the system under consideration.

The issue is not whether atheists or professing Christians have ever done anything undesirable or morally unacceptable.

One need only think respectively of the atheist involvement in the Reign of Terror in the French Revolution, and the professing Christian involvement in the Spanish Inquisition.

The question is not whether the adherents to these systems have lived spotless lives, but whether atheism or Christian theism as philosophical systems are objectively true. And so I’ll be defending Christian theism, and I’ll be defending it as a philosophical system.

B. A Concession to Stein’s Area of Expertise

My last introductory remark is something to the effect that I want to concede to my opponent all issues pertaining to The Control of Ovarian Maturation in Japanese Whales, the subject of his doctoral dissertation in 1974 at Ohio State.

Dr. Stein is a man of intelligence, and that’s not a question in this debate. I would not pretend to hold my own in a discussion with him in the empirical details of his narrow domain of specialized natural science.

However, our subject tonight is really much different, calling for intelligent reflection upon issues which are philosophical or theological in character. For some reason, Dr. Stein has, over the last decade, left his field of expertise and given his life to a campaign for atheism. Whatever his perception of the reason for that, I do not believe that it is because of any genuinely cogent philosophical case which might be made for atheism as a world view. And it is to this subject that I now turn for tonight’s debate.

C. Opening Case for the Existence of God

My opening case for the existence of God will cover three areas of thought: the nature of evidence, the presuppositional conflict of world views, and the transcendental argument for God’s existence

1. The nature of the evidence

How should the difference of opinion between the theist and the atheist be rationally resolved? What Dr. Stein has written indicates that he, like many atheists, has not reflected adequately on this question. He writes, and I quote, “The question of the existence of God is a factual question, and should be answered in the same way as any other factual questions.”

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The assumption that all existence claims are questions about matters of fact, the assumption that all of these are answered in the very same way is not only over simplified and misleading, it is simply mistaken. The existence, factuality or reality of different kinds of things is not established or disconfirmed in the same way in every case.

We might ask , “Is there a box of crackers in the pantry?” And we know how we would go about answering that question. But that is a far, far cry from the way we go about answering questions determining the reality of say, barometric pressure, quasars, gravitational attraction, elasticity, radio activity, natural laws, names, grammar, numbers, the university itself that you’re now at, past events, categories, future contingencies, laws of thought, political obligations, individual identity over time, causation, memories, dreams, or even love or beauty. In such cases, one does not do anything like walk to the pantry and look inside for the crackers. There are thousands of existence or factual questions, and they are not at all answered in the same way in each case.

Just think of the differences in argumentation and the types of evidences used by biologists, grammarians, physicists, mathematicians, lawyers, magicians, mechanics, merchants, and artists. It should be obvious from this that the types of evidence one looks for in existence or factual claims will be determined by the field of discussion and especially by the metaphysical nature of the entity mentioned in the claim under question.

Dr. Stein’s remark that the question of the existence of God is answered in the same way as any other factual question, mistakenly reduces the theistic question to the same level as the box of crackers in the pantry, which