Yesterday evening Kyle Butt, evangelist of the Church of Christ, met Dan Barker, the president of the Freedom from Religion Foundation to discuss the existence of the God of the Bible. Mr. Butt made some unfortunate errors in his speech that were quite disappointing to me, but overall, as in all cases, the truth was clear and evident. A man who sets out to speak against the Bible and the God it reveals is setting out on a hard road, in fact an impossible one! David long ago said, “The fool has said in his heart, “There is no God.” (Psalms 53:1) And this being the case, anyone who tries to affirm such a thing is going to set himself up to look like a fool! I would like to examine some of Mr. Barker’s arguments against the existence of the God of the Bible and I believe that Barker’s Blunders will be clearly manifest.
Denominationalism
Mr. Barker is an intelligent and well studied man, and like the great “Goliath of Infidelity” Robert Owen who met Alexander Campbell many years ago, he has seen the ungodly nature of religious sectarianism. He brought up the fact that Bible believers cannot agree on the nature of God and how the Bible should be understood as is evident by the hundreds of “denominations of Christianity.” But this in no indictment against the Bible or God, but rather it is an indictment against human creeds and worldly wisdom! Every time that human traditions and creeds have been abandoned and men have resolved to “speak were the Bible speaks, and be silent were the Bible is silent” true Christian unity is the result! On top of the fact that Mr. Barker was never a New Testament Christian, but rather a member of a religious sect of human origin, the particular group that he was a part of is one that has had an infamous history of haoxery and scam and is highly emotional, however, the Bible make no mention of that religious sect and it developed hundreds of years after the death of Christ and the establishment of the Church! Let this be a lesson two great evils in this world. First, to the Atheists, establishing that religion has been perverted and changed does not in any way defame the beauty and the perfection of primitive Christianity, which can be accessed through adherence to the scriptures alone, and second to the advocates of denominationalism, do you not see that your defense of division in the body of Christ heaps shame and reproach on Christ himself! Remember the words of the Apostle Paul, “Now I plead with you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you all speak the same thing, and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be perfectly joined together in the same mind and in the same judgment.” (1 Corinthians 1:10)
No Evidence for God
Mr. Barker’s next claim against the existence of the God of the Bible was founded in the old claim of Atheists that “there is not evidence the God exists.” It seems that they think if they say it enough times it will be true, but still there are arguments that have never been answered that be cry the essential existence of God, and not just any God but the God of the Bible! Only the Bible offers an adequate explanation for the origin of the Universe. (Genesis 1) Only the Bible offers an explanation for the moral sensibilities that exist in men. (Romans 2:12-16) Only the Bible offers an explanation for the first cause! (Genesis 1:1) Only the Bible has remained unchanged and un-met in its explanation of things, while the greatest minds in the scientific community have been proven wrong time and time again! The more I study human science, the more I find that human science is so incredibly undependable and subject to change as new theories are accepted that I would not be able to sleep easy at night if I were to put my confidence in science alone! The world is flat. Matter is eternal. Lead can be turned into gold. Matter spontaneously generates. The universe is geocentric. These and scores of other embarrassing myths were once held to be scientific fact by the great Barker’s and Dawkins’ and Darwin’s of ages past and now they are regarded as foolish legends! How long will it be until Darwin’s theory of evolution joins these ranks? Already many reputable scientists are expressing strong reasons to doubt the theory. (Many of them reasons that have been raised by Bible-believers since Darwinism began) Certainly there is evidence for God and not mentioning it is not the same as answering it!
Bible Discrepancy
Mr. Barker “quoted” 14 alleged discrepancies in the Bible and gave Mr. Butt 10 minutes for his answer. In this Barker used a brilliant, and age old debating ploy of heaping far too many arguments on his opponent for him to possibly answer in the time he had to rebuttal. However, Mr. Butt gave a good response, that being that none of these alleged discrepancies were “new discoveries.” Every one of them have been addressed and answered more than adequately thousands of times in books that are readily available. The contradictions that Mr. Barker claimed to find were the result of taking passages out of context, setting the Old Testament against the New (ignoring the New Testaments explanations of these differences) and failing to consider the full nature of God! In a future article we will give consideration to these and other such alleged discrepancies.
The problems that Mr. Barker has found with the Bible and the God of the Bible are his problems and the product of human error. I appreciate Mr. Butt for his stand for the truth and to Mr. Barker I say that for all of your zeal and dogmatic infidelity you made some fatal blunders when you attempted to use false science and men’s wisdom to wrestle with the word of God! – CED