NEW YORK, May 3 (UPI) -- Actor Kirk Cameron and author Ray Comfort will square off in New York with two atheists to debate the existence of God live on ABC.com.
The debate will be Wednesday after the network rescheduled it from Saturday to capture a larger audience, Comfort said in a news release.
Comfort, who says he can prove God exists scientifically, said ABC originally offered him four minutes to present his case. After conferring with Cameron and the atheists, the time was raised to 13 minutes.
"I'm ecstatic. I can prove the existence of God in that amount of time," Comfort said.
Now, here at the Abbey we are, of course, always enthusiastic when people take a stand for the truth of God and His Word and Gospel. We're not fond of atheism, and believe it to be an arrogant, dishonest and silly thing. We're all for the enterprise of apologetics and think it's important that all Christians be "Prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks [them] for a reason for the hope that is in [them]." (1 Peter 3:15)
But when we hear of apologists who say that they "Can prove God exists scientifically" (emphasis added) and claim to be able to do so in 13 minutes flat, some deep misgivings begin to rumble within our collective gut. This is because we've seen and heard quite a lot of indisputable nonsense get passed off as Christian apologetics. Like, for example, this charming but frankly embarrassing attempt to prove the existence of God from the shape of a banana.
The thing is that apologists have been using cosmological arguments and arguments from design for centuries, and not too many atheists have been persuaded. First off, to reduce all that down to 13 minutes seems sort of cocky. If only Aquinas knew of the simple splendor of the humble banana. He could've saved a lot of ink on the whole five-arguments deal. The contemporary 'ID' (Intelligent Design) movement has been making a lot of great arguments which show that the irreducible complexity of interdependent systems that undergird all of creation points to a creator more reasonably than it does a blind, naturalistic process. And those arguments are, frankly, much more elegant than Mr. Comfort's banana. I really feel kind of silly for even having to say that.
The point is that the enterprise of apologetics cannot be simply evidentiary demonstration for two reasons. First, because the nature of unbelief is not primarily rational - it is ethical. The unbeliever is not ignorant of the truth such that when you show him the irreducibly complex interdependent systems of, say, the human body or the magnificent and highly sophisticated symmetry of the cosmos, or even the admittedly convenient, ergonomic design of the banana, his eyes will pop open in shock and he will exclaim, "By Jove, old boy! You've really got something there!" Nope. That's not what they do. Instead they write books like this and this.
They do this because in their sin, they are so ethically committed to "Suppressing the truth in unrighteousness" (Romans 1:18) that their response to every evidentiary "proof" in the universe of God's existence is, "Hogwash." Secondly, then, apologetics needs to transcend the rationalistic, evidentiary realm because in their unbelief, unbelievers have built their own philosophical foundation on their own set of epistemological rules. For the Christian apologist to try to prove the existence of God empirically, see, is to concede to the empiricist that his rules - his foundation - his epistemology - is the best one. The final one. The only one trustworthy enough to build a belief-system on. And at that point, we've given away the game and might as well just go home and console ourselves by watching strange Christian films conceived out of the same sort of biblical erudition.
4 comments:
Apparently this cake mix from a box thing has affected the field of apologetics as well.
It's obvious that these poor folks have never tasted the delicious authentic thing.
Maybe they've never actually eaten the banana. Let alone a banana split, with hot fudge and cherries.
And it's not like the banana is difficult to eat - what with it's pointy tip for ease-of-entry and all. Ahem...
This is the sad state of American Christian Culture. It stems from the fact that we Christians do not have any concept for the bigness of God. We assume that He is glorified by our trite tributes. We assume that because we said it in the name of Jesus, and we did it to honor Him (by our own standards), we have necessarily lifted His name on high. However, at the root, we want to do things the way we want to do them. Hence the banana.
But what does our Lord say? "I desire mercy, not sacrifices." He sees the heart, not just the whitewashed outward appearance, even if it is the whitewash of self-delusion.
"But Lord, did we not prophecy in your Name?"...
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