debate in Hickory Hills, IL (west suburb of Chicago), with Dr. Kirk MacGregor

-

When? Friday, Oct 24, 7-9:30pm

Where? Hickory Hills Presbyterian Church, 8426 W 95th St, Hickory Hills, IL 60457 (map)

What? The debate topic is: Does God exist?

Who? I will be debating Dr. Kirk MacGregor.

About the Debaters

Kirk MacGregor (Ph.D. in religious studies, University of Iowa) teaches religion and philosophy at Carthage College and the College of DuPage. He is the Director of the Chicago Chapter of Reasonable Faith. His research has been published in the Harvard Theological Review and Philosophia Christi.

Ben Wallis (M.S. in pure mathematics, Northern Illinois University) teaches mathematics at Northern Illinois University and Kishwaukee College. With interests in philosophy of religion, he co-hosted the podcast Goodness Over God from 2011 to 2012. His research has been published in the Journal of Functional Analysis.

Debate website (facebook)

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

James Anderson and non-contradiction

-
Dr. James Anderson has recently completed, with Greg Welty, the forthcoming paper "The Lord of Non-Contradiction," in which he argues for the existence of God from the laws of logic. We may divide the argument into two portions, the first where he holds that there is a necessarily existent mind, and the second that such a mind must be the mind of God. His summary of the first part of the argument proceeds thusly: "The laws of logic are necessary truths about truths; they are necessarily true propositions. Propositions are real entities, but cannot be physical entities; they are essentially thoughts. So the laws of logic are necessarily true thoughts. Since they are true in every possible world, they must exist in every possible world. But if there are necessarily existent thoughts, there must be a necessarily existent mind" (p20). Of course this is a summary only, and in the full paper each step in this argument is carefully defended with sub-arguments. For my o
Read more

Why did God want Jesus to suffer?

-
Christians face an interesting theological challenge regarding the crucifixion of Jesus, insofar as we want to know why Jesus had to suffer in order to save the faithful. God, being omnipotent, appears to have the power to save the faithful, regardless of whether he also sent Jesus to suffer on the cross. In order to explain why it was better for him to do so, we might be tempted to invoke the notion of justice. However, if we want to appeal to God's favorite system of justice to explain why Jesus had to suffer, then we must know why that system is ultimately good for us. Since we do not in fact know how God's rules of cosmic justice are ultimately good for us, then no appeal to those rules will serve as a satisfactory explanation.
Read more

Some comments on Brian Knapp's post

-
Unfortunately it has become somewhat common for atheists to deny that they have any burden of proof in religious debates. While this may sometimes be true in some limited sense, I find it problematic for at least three reasons: First, it seems quite evident that many of the atheists who employ this tactic are in fact positive atheists, which is to say that they take the assertive position that there is no God, rather than the weaker position of unbelief in the existence of God. Now, it may be more interesting to talk about the justification for theism rather than that for positive atheism, but nevertheless the position of the nonexistence of God does indeed require some justification, and so anyone defending that position certainly has a burden of proof in that regard. Second, even a negative atheist has basic obligations to facilitate communication. In any two-way conversation, each party shares some measure of responsibility not just for communicating clearly, but also for assi
Read more