Last night, my friends and I (which consisted of nearly the entire St. Louis ring of skeptical bloggers!) had a small debate night at my apartment in St. Louis. 9 People attended, and 2 groups of people debated 2 topics.
The first was a debate between Pastor Keith and War_On_Error. Their topic was “Does God Lie?” The debate dissolved into a group discussion before it finished, mostly because P. Keith and War more or less agreed! That’s okay though, because instead of talking about whether or not god lies, we talked about the real point of the debate. The real point of showing that god lies (or deceives, if you are bothered by the word lie) is that people can be mistaken about what god wants. Out discussion was on whether or not it might be better (from a standpoint of convincing some people that they don’t have a “special knowledge” trump card) to have a conversation about how hard Biblical interpretation is. If we can convince people that Biblical interpretation is hard, then maybe we can convince them – for example – that someone doesn’t have absolute proof by mandate from their god that they should vote down civil rights for homosexuals.
Next, Saint_Gasoline and Inquiring Infidel debated the Kalam Cosmological argument, with Inquiring Infidel pretending to be William Lane Craig. While they were debating, I kept thinking that since lots of people don’t know what “M-theory” and “string theory” mean in any detail, that Saint Gasoline, with all of his appeals to physics, would sound like, “blah blah blah blah” to Inquiring Infidel-Craig’s more macro approach. I did think it was kind of amusing that Infidel-Craig brought up Hilbert’s Hotel, calling such a notion absurd, when god is basically equally absurd, at least in the, “god is timeless, eternal, and ultra-powerful” sense. We speculated that a timeless being could not have thoughts, because thoughts entailed a time structure. Alas.
For the March debate night, Andrea_The_Nerd and I are debating gay marriage. The second debate is still up for grabs.
The debate night for April will be couples debate! Andrea and War will debate debating (“debaters are great!” vs. “debaters are wankers!”) while Flimsy and I will be debating marriage (“Marriage is awesome!” vs “Marriage is for suckers!”)
Also, the best part of debate night is Debate Kitteh! She decided to hang out on the lectern for the entire first debate, playfully batting at people’s notes.
Once of these days, I swear, we’ll move to more public debates.
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As far as a timeless being not being able to have a series of thoughts, I agree. If you had asked me/Craig about it during the Q&A, I probably would have asked why you think that’s a problem. God cannot remain timeless and have a temporal series of thoughts any more than God could create a timeless football game. I don’t see how God’s inability to bring about a non-temporal temporal series is any more a constraint on his power than his inability to bring about a square circle. So I’m not sure there are any obvious absurdities. Of course, many atheists may think the concept of God is an absurd one, but you have to give a reason why if you want to convince anyone of this.
Hehe, I like your nickname for him better. He usually shortens it to WoE, which is rather depressing-sounding.
Hmm… maybe I should try this during sex. The neighbors will hear me crying out for “War! WAR!”
This might be a rather naive and perhaps an easily dismissed question, but why must we assume that we understand the rules that govern a non-temporal being? If I’m correct, we have a rather fuzzy idea of how time works at best…at least I do…so why should we conclude that it is impossible for a non-temporal being to step into temporal-like characteristics (like having thoughts)?
Look forward to your thoughts on this one, readers. Feel free to email me about it if we want to save some blogspace.
Nunnkind, I think that Craig basically agrees with you. He thinks that God was non-temporal, but through his act of creation entered into time. Craig has written quite a lot about time and its relation to God. Although I see a timeless being entering into time as extremely weird, I think time is a weird enough concept in general that I don’t dismiss it as impossible. I think there are far more serious problems with Kalam.
oh dang, I read the title and thought it said “Date Night” not “Debate Night.” Less interested. HA!