The religious guy came prepared to rebut atheism and appeared to have the stronger arguments although he fibbed at one point which I will quote word for word below. The atheists whole argument boiled down to the creator being bad for allowing so much suffering in the world, which has merit. But notice the atheists argument does not disprove a creator but only suggests he is imperfect if he exists at all. The atheist therefore erroneously concludes God does not exist.
The religious guy passes over the atheist’s argument and completely ignores his point that the creator allowed so much suffering in the world and instead focuses on the moral consciousness of good humans being of the Good God. And that moral consciousness is doing good things with science. Never mentions the suffering that occurred during evolutionary processes. This is when the religious guy tells a lie using sophistry, lots of words to throw up a smoke screen. Here is what he says but notice his conclusion that Darwin is wrong does not follow logically the assumption. This is his attempt to mislead the audience to reject evolution in order to counter the atheists sole point, that is, evolution caused suffering.
The new atheist offer no ground for the faith that they themselves cannot do without. After all if human life has been cobbled together by mindless unguided processes why should we trust our cognitive faculties and the validity of any belief that they produce atheism and science included. John Grey gets it exactly right. Modern humanism is the faith though science human kind can know the truth and so be free. But if Darwins theory of natural selection is true, this is impossible, the human mind serves evolutionary success, not truth! This reduces all rationality to zero. Far from atheism being great it seems to me that it is irrational anti-scientific and incoherent even though emotionally its proponents seem unable to take this on board.
What?! He asserts, “If natural selection is true…all rationality is reduced to zero.” Again, What is this nonsense he spouts? The fact is, If natural selection is true, then rationality is increased by it. It is obvious the religious guy has no idea what he is talking about but he needs to overturn evolution because the very fact of it impugns the creator for unnecessary suffering. To his credit the religious guy later admits that he does not know all the mysteries but he does believe in a good God rising in the moral conscious of humans.
What both sides of the argument fail to perceive is a bad “God of this world” (2 cor 4:4) which reconciles each side of the argument. A bad creator or demiurge of the material world explains unnecessary ignorance and suffering in evolutionary processes and the rising moral consciousness explains the Good God, namely, the “spirit of Jesus“ bringing order to creation.
The debate highlights the strenghts and weaknesses of both sides but there is a middle ground where the strengths of both arguments surpass the weaknesses of both arguments. A good God exists in humans who is opposed to the bad god in humans. Not till this material world is returned to the good God IN TOTAL will it become perfect again.
”For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me.
So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members [my flesh] another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!” (Romans 7:18)…that is, the rising moral consciousness in humanity!