I attended a debate on whether God exists last Tuesday at Ryerson. My friend helped organized it. You might have seen a bunch of posters around school advertising the event. Dr. Kirk, a professor at Guelph, argued for the existence of God and Dr. Brown, a professor of philosophy at UT, argued against it.
Dr. Kirk brought up the 'first mover' argument. Namely, given that the universe had a beginning, a timeless, all-powerful entity must have existed to set it in motion. He also brought up the principle of Occam's Razor. That is: given two equally plausible theories, choose the simplest one. Dr. Brown on the other hand challenged that the existence of evil is incompatible with an all-loving God. He said given God is all-loving and all-powerful, He surely would be capable and would want to teach us moral values free of pain.
At the end of debate, there was a Q&A session with audience members. My friend asked Dr. Kirk, if what he said about there being a moral, all-loving God that created the universe, couldn't it be equally possible an evil God was responsible? His reply was that you must have faith. Of course, this question could not have had any other answer. Faith is the belief in something lacking in evidence whereas proof uses evidence to substantiate a case. The two are opposites of each other. There's no way around it. A debate on faith is over before it even started - end game, check mate, finito... whatever you want to call it.
In line with that thought, I asked both of them how a debate on God can exist if we cannot prove absolute truth exists. I pointed out that there is evidence things may not necessary have to be true or false. One example is
fuzzy logic where answers can be partially true. I also mentioned Plato's allegory of the cave. It describes a person raised in a cave. Furthermore, this person is tied to a chair facing the back where all he sees are shadows casted on the wall created by puppets held in front of a fire behind him. Now, consider what happens if this person managed to escape from their bonds. They would realize that shadows are merely caused by 3-dimensional objects held in front of light from a fire. Hence, a greater truth is obtained and the person's previous reality is rocked. Now, imagine they stepped outside the cave. They would see trees, animals and light emanating from the sun. In this context, they would realize they have been living in a cave their whole life. Again, a greater truth is obtained.
The debate reaffirmed my belief that under the masquerade of science-based claims that God do or do not exist, it is still a debate between idiots, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.