I don’t know how many of you caught the debate between Way of the Master, an evangelical Christian television program and ministry created by actor-turned-evangelist Kirk Cameron and Ray Comfort, and the Rational Response Squad, but you can watch it right now on Abcnews.com. I’m not sure how much longer the news station will keep the debate on their website, but surely it’ll be on youtube before too much longer. For those of you who don’t know, the Rational Response Squad is garnering national news coverage for their “Blasphemy Challenge” in which they encourage people to deny the existence of God and the Trinity (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit). Way of the Master is famous for its “man on the street” style of ministry, in which Comfort and Cameron get people to admit they are lying cheating murdering adulterers. Not exactly the way I’d do it, but hey, at least they’re out there. Right? Ok, moving on…
After watching the debate a few times online, it’s clear that the Rational Response Squad claimed the victory. Way of the Master had promised before the debate that they could prove the existence of God in thirteen minutes, without using faith or the Bible. Sadly, within just a few minutes they had utterly broken their promise. Now, I don’t claim to be able to prove that God exists any better than Comfort and Cameron. I can’t even say that I would have done better in their places. But I am going to try to answer a few of the questions that were brought up in the debate that I feel were unsuccessfully answered by the Theists and some of the weaker arguments of the Atheists that were not seized upon.

Question one: “Is God a projection of your culture?” In other words, you are only a “Christian” because you were born in a predominantly Christian culture. If you were born in Pakistan, your religion may be called “Islam”. God is relative to whichever culture you were born into. When they were asked this question, the general answer from Cameron and Comfort was: “It doesn’t matter what culture you were born into, God can still call you.” While I don’t disagree with this point, I don’t feel that it satisfactorily answers the question. I probably would have responded with the question: “If you, an atheist, were born in one of those places, wouldn’t you more than likely be a religious person instead of an atheist? Does that make atheism a culturally relevant idea? You are only an atheist because you were born into a culture of atheism.” Moreover, simply because an idea isn’t accepted the same way across cultures does not make it any more or less true. The Maya, for instance, had a concept of a mathematical zero long before the Europeans. Did this mean that “zero” only existed in the Yucatan Peninsula and not in England? Absolutely not. We accept that Mathematics, Physics, and indeed all sciences transcend their cultural underpinnings. There is scientific, universal truth, even though it can be expressed differently in different cultures. Why can the same not apply to God?

Alright, that’s a long enough blog for now. Again, my goal is by no means to tear down the Way of the Master or how they conducted themselves during the debate. I’m sure that it’s only with the gift of hindsight and hours of meditating on these topics that I’ve been able to come to these conclusions. I simply want to give some alternative answers to these difficult questions. I’ll post some more about this topic later.