Edited April 2023
A review of Does God Exist? The Debate between Theists & Atheists by J.P. Moreland and Kai Neilsen with contributions from Peter Kreeft, Antony Flew, William Lane Craig, Keith Parsons, and Dallas Willard.
This is an excellent and very stimulating book, including the preface, which is very well done. It places the debate in a firm category and gives an overview of the topic. Both debaters are highly qualified and interesting. The supporting contributions add much to the discussion by giving several thoughtful viewpoints. The book contains another discussion about ethics, which I will not list below for brevity.
Yes! A Defense of Christianity (Moreland)
Thesis: It is rational to believe that God exists
No! A Defense of Atheism (Nielsen)
Thesis: It is irrational to believe in God
A Christian's Rebuttal (Moreland)
An Atheist's Rebuttal (Nielsen)
Closing Argument for Atheism (Nielsen)
Closing Arguments for Christianity (Moreland)
Moreland backs his thesis that it is rational to believe God exists by arguments from cosmology, design, experience, the existence of morality, the existence of the mind, and the historical account of Jesus and the Bible. When asked, "why believe that God exists?" these arguments provide several justifications to the reasonableness of that belief. One can be a rational thinking person and believe God exists. In fact, with these arguments one may be pressed to explain why they believe he does not exist and what else can be put in his place for these phenomena.
Nielsen argues it is irrational to believe God exists because of the incoherence of the term and idea "God" as presented by theism. If this term is self-contradictory and unintelligible, then to say that we believe in God is irrational and meaningless. His arguments deserve to be commented on first for, as he says, without a consistent rational view of "God" no other arguments can get off the ground. Cosmology, design, experience, and history may point to something but it cannot be the "God" with which we are familiar if that idea is irrational.
Much of Nielsen's argument hinges on the attribute transcendent often assigned to God. He admits that if this attribute is dropped then some problems of incoherence go away, but this is as unfair as dropping omnipotent from the Problem of Evil discussion and still maintaining we are talking about God in the classic theist sense. How do we make sense of God's transcendence with regard to human experience and reference? Transcend is to "rise above; to surpass; to outgo; to excel; to exceed" (New Weber's Dictionary). To say God is transcendent is usually to mean that God's existence transcends the universe (he exceeds the physical), that his knowledge transcends human knowledge (he both excels and surpasses our knowledge), or that his methods and motives transcend understanding (his reasons surpasses our understanding or our ability to grasp all of the factors involved). As the debate is centered around the question of God's existence, the first is of primary concern.
Nielsen states religious experience cannot be legitimate as this experience cannot be of a transcendent being and must therefore be something else. I believe his view of transcendence differs from that held by the theist. Theism assigns omnipresence to God. This means his presence is infinite, or without limit. If this presence is truly everywhere as omni implies then it extends to the physical universe also. If it is a presence in the physical sense (pantheism) then this may run into difficulty in explaining how it is in fact also transcendent. But if it is a presence in the spiritual sense (theism) then this presence may be immanent by being close at hand to all physical points and transcendent by exceeding the physical realm to beyond. There is no limit to God's presence. There may or may not be a limit to the physical realm. God transcends the physical, being present in a dimension beyond those of space-time. As neutrinos can transcend a balloon and be found beyond the balloon while also inside it, so too can God transcend the universe while also being present inside. (This is difficult to illustrate as our thinking is so bound to space-time examples.) Hence, God's transcendence is intelligible.
I believe that Moreland's critique of Nielsen is an accurate one. That is, the mistake of thinking we cannot know things unless we know them exhaustively. We could never know God exhaustively, just as no finite container can hold an infinite amount. It is unlikely we know anything exhaustively. But does this mean we can know nothing or experience nothing? We may know a subset of what God is like even if we do not know him entirely. An experience of God is possible and intelligible given that God is present in the universe. We've asserted this in contrast to Nielsen's understanding of transcendence. This experience would not be of the full God, as Nielsen rightly claims, but to say that it is not of a part of who God is, reaches too far. We may experience some of his love, his power, or his presence even if it is not the full extent of each. A person who sees a picture of me sees only a two dimensional image. They are not experiencing the full me in sound or sight or being. But they may gain an understanding of me well enough that they could even recognize me when meeting me in person. So too, we may not experience God in full form but we may sense enough to know him a bit. And be able to recognize him when we meet him again. Hence there is no logical ban on experiencing, or observing God. He could be observable (though only in part).
These various references and experiences of "God" can be confusing and Nielsen raises a key objection that given experiences with God could be true, which of these "revelations" do we trust? Here is where all of the arguments from cosmology, design, experience, and history weigh in the most. The revelations that best explain and least contradict the truth as we can determine it through history, experience, and science deserve the best hearing. Those that are plausible, non-contradictory, and the most influential should be investigated. In his concluding remarks Nielsen states we do not have time to investigate everything and even the theist often dismisses many philosophies on little hearing. I agree. We should limit the field by necessity. Christianity deserves to be the foremost worldview to investigate given its influence, evidence, and explanatory power. Antony Flew's objection about falsification is an interesting one. Under what circumstances would a believer in either position agree that they were wrong and their belief is false. For Christians the falsification condition is clearly stated by the Apostle Paul, if Christ did not rise from the dead then our faith is in vain (1 Corinthians 15:14-19). Should this historical event be proven false then Christianity is to be abandoned. It may be unclear in other theistic philosophies what this condition may be. It is unclear what this may be for many atheists as well. How could an atheist be convinced that they had "seen God" given he may be experienced only in part? This experience could merely be integrated into the natural as Nielsen suggests in his arguments as an "unexplained phenomena". Having specific, contorted falsification requirements can become just as unfair as theists are accused as being. Hence, Christianity, unlike many philosophies, not only marshals significant evidence for its truthfulness but also contains clear falsification conditions that can be tested.
The rationality of the idea of God being established, Moreland's argument presents another reason to believe God exists beyond a weighing of human experience. This is his cosmological argument. He argues that the universe was created a finite time ago, necessarily finite do to the impossibility of an infinite past or an eternal physical universe.
As he states, there are two potentials for the existence of the physical universe. Either it began or it has always existed. Both of these views present serious difficulties for the atheist. If the universe began, what kick started it so that things began to change as they certainly change now? Even an always existing universe cannot have been static for eternity past. At some point, it became dynamic. Isn't this another form of saying the universe had a beginning? A universe which existed infinitely in the past has the infinite regression issues mentioned in Moreland's arguments above. Scientific theories have gone back and forth on this as noted in the contributions1. Some theories present an eternally existing physical universe. If true, this undercuts the scientific theoretical evidence for a finite universe, but it does not resolve the impossibility of crossing an infinite past. Something must have started it. The universe had a beginning. Theism's answer for this beginning is the most reasonable.
1. Moreland supports his theory both with the Big Bang and with the 2nd Law of Thermal Dynamics. The Big Bang postulates that the universe can be wound back in time to a single point in which space-time sprang into existence. Thermal dynamics states that all systems lose energy and the universe would have lost an infinite amount if it had been around an infinite amount of time. Parsons tries to clear up this up by undercutting the impossibility of crossing an actual infinite and the scientific evidence for the Big Bang. He proposes Stephen Hawkins theory from A Brief History of Time in which the universe is finite but unbounded in time. According to this view, time is like a sphere with no beginning or end. Hence, the need for a beginning or an end is unnecessary. No need for a Creator. Like the Steady State theory, jokingly mentioned by Nielsen, the universe need no longer be wound back to a single point but rather could have existed in another form, or the same form for eternity. Craig critiques this view noting that first; it "presupposes the World Ensemble ontology" (147). This assumption requires a view of the cosmos "in which our universe is a fluctuation in a sort of super-space, where all physically possible space-times are embedded". Craig points out that "this is a piece of speculative metaphysics no less objectionable than theism; indeed, I should argue, more objectionable because the reality of time is ultimately denied as all dimensions... are subsumed into superspace" (148). Why is there more reason to believe that we live in a multiverse in which all possibilities exist than to believe in a Creator? Second, the theory replaces real time with imaginary time. Imaginary numbers are used for the coordinates of the time dimension. Craig notes, "but if one translates the equations back into real time, one discovers the singularities are still there" (148). Not only is imaginary time unintelligible, as no one knows what is meant physically by imaginary time, but it also confuses time with space by making time indistinguishable from spatial coordinates. Thus this theory should be rejected in favor of the Big Bang. That being the case the question of a Creator comes right back in.
Update: Since this book's publication in 1990, multiverse theories have become massively more popular in the media and movies. While they are increasingly well-known, they have not had a corresponding increase in evidence for their existence. Multiverse theory is the front runner for a non-theistic universe given the real objections philosophers like Moreland have raised.
References
Moreland, James Porter and Kai Nielsen. Does God exist? : the debate between theists and atheists. Nashville: Prometheus Books, 1990.