JORDAN PATTERSON
Staff Writer
Does God exist?
Two professors squared off on April 6 with clashing point of views. The only things missing were the capes.
A question that has lingered around for centuries was, once again, the focal point of conversation. Dr. Dale Tuggy and Dr. Stephen Kershnar of the Philosophy Department stood in front of a fully seated room in the Science Center to debate just that. Students were given ballots to indicate which debater they thought won the night.
Tuggy relied heavily on analogies to relay his message to the crowd. A picture of an HTC smartphone displayed on his accompanying PowerPoint guided him through his opening. As he read from his paper and paced back from side to side, he asked that people set aside their emotions to hear what he had to offer.
“Perhaps you have an object in your pocket right now, like this,” Tuggy said as he flashed us his phone. “Suppose we ask, why does this exist? In principle, there are only so many ways we can answer, the least plausible is that it simply has to be.”
Tuggy ran down a list of theories that he would simply discredit.
“Nothing comes from nothing,” Tuggy said.
Sticking to his HTC analogy, he argues that we can assume that the phone was made by one or more intelligent beings. Tuggy then quickly posed the same questions to the cosmos and our very lives.
According to Tuggy, we didn’t just poof into existence. We haven’t always been here and the cosmos couldn’t have caused itself to exist.
“It’d first have to not exist, and then while it doesn’t exist, it has to exercise a power,” Tuggy said. “Things that don’t exist don’t have powers. That’s just nonsense.”
Tuggy questioned why people are so quick to dismiss the idea of being created by an intelligent designer. He argued that he didn’t have to prove how a potential God could have been created but simply show that a potential God is plausible.
“If we found a pawprint in the dirt, and I reasoned that it was made by a mountain lion, I really have explained why the pawprint was there,” Tuggy said. “I don’t have to also explain why the mountain lion exists and why he was walking this way recently.”
His explanation is that God’s existence exists independently of the cosmos and was present before the Big Bang.
If anyone in attendance found salvation in Tuggy’s opening 25 minutes, the next 25 may have been rough.
Kershnar’s opening line was straight to the point. Accompanied by a PowerPoint and a handout that laid out his argument points, he jumped right in.
“So, what’s my thesis?” Kershnar asked, setting himself up for a powerful opening. “God does not exist.”
Kershnar criticized the validity of the most popular God-related arguments. What philosophers call the ontological, cosmological and the fine-tuning arguments were the basis of his presentation. He argued that since the ontological theory (that God, as all-powerful, must exist by definition) is improbable and since the cosmological theory (that the universe needed a cause, which is God) has its roots in the previous, its validity breaks down.
“The best arguments for God’s existence fail,” Kershnar said.
In fact, Tuggy’s own presentation seemed to give Kershnar material for his turn.
“If a theist can not defend the ontological argument then he can not defend God’s existence,” Tuggy said.
Junior English and philosophy double major Kassidy Beckstein wasn’t persuaded by either professor but was intrigued by the arguments.
“I was kind of expecting more persuading arguments not just a layout of facts and philosophical ideas,” said Beckstein.
Although she didn’t believe there was winner, citing positives and negatives in both presentations, she was pleased with the debate.
“I thought it was interesting and it brought up a lot of good points. I’m glad as many people showed up as they did,” said Beckstein.