Friday, September 03, 2010

Matt Slick vs. Dan Barker Debate: Is there Reason to be Good Without God? MP3 Audio

This is a debate that took place between Matt Slick and Dan Barker onSept. 26, 2009, at Newberg Christian Church in Newberg, Oregon. The topic: "Is there Reason to be Good Without God?" Matt Slick's opening statement here.

Full Debate MP3 Audio here. (2hr 20min)

Enjoy.
Posted by Brian at 7:30 AM
Topics: , , , , , , , ,

8 comments :

Anonymous said...

Slick hit a homerun! You have an ethicist/philosopher debate a philosopher. He's exercising his gift beautifully. This debate made my day!!

Friday, September 3, 2010 at 3:04:00 PM GMT+1
Joe said...

I did not find this debate to be very helpful. Slick's goofiness and arrogance hurts his Christian presentation in my opinion. Slick needs some help from Aristotle and Aquinas.

Friday, September 3, 2010 at 6:21:00 PM GMT+1
bossmanham said...

Ugh. I listened to this debate at work today and could only get through half of it. It was extremely frustrating to listen to Slick miss so many opportunities to point out Barker's (who is far from an intellectual giant) irrational position.

Slick, while right for pressing Barker for justification for his moral theory, went about it the wrong way. He shouldn't have simply ended his opening statement where he did, but should have presented reasons Barker's position is untenable as a moral theory. Barker was relying on some kind of anti-harm utilitarianism. Basically, if someone acts in a way that will bring about the least harm, that is the good action. But we could formulate obviously morally unacceptable actions that could potentially bring about less harm in the future. Someone could have killed Hitler as an innocent little baby and it would have deterred many deaths. But is it right to do that? Further, we can't know the future results our actions will impact.

Then we can get into the subjective nature of who determines what harm is. Is harm just pain? Well Barker admits that sometimes pain is necessary to bring about good; but then he continued to appeal to pain. Is harm what the majority says? Slick, thankfully, pointed out the fallacy in that reasoning. Barker kept insisting that he didn't have to justify his definition. You do if it's that contradictory. Slick just missed too many chances, and was just kicked in the cross examination.

Don't get me wrong, I like Matt Slick. I just think he missed it here.

Tuesday, September 7, 2010 at 10:47:00 PM GMT+1
bossmanham said...

One more thing about Barker. He is pretty ignorant of the translation issue of Hitler's Table Talk. It is not as cut and dry as he states at all. Richard Carrier says that the Genoud-Trevor-Roper is faulty, which may be the case, but Carrier concedes that in the translation that has been accepted, the Picker and Jockmann translation, Hitler criticizes the church as well. So I wonder if this is one of those necessary lies he talked about?

Wednesday, September 8, 2010 at 11:22:00 PM GMT+1
Unknown said...

Is there Reason to be Good Without God?

There is a good reason to be good without God,

YES, if
1. the God that Christian claim is true
(God said in Jer 31:33...I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people)
(Which shew the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the mean while accusing or else excusing one another;) {their conscience...: or, the conscience witnessing with them} {the mean...: or, between themselves Roman 2:15), whether or not people reject or accept God, the rain and the sun light is given to all human being, so is the moral law. God put it in the hearts of all men...
2. God of the Christian exists, therefore all human being have a good reason to live good life whether or not the accept God...

NO, if
the God that Christian claim is untrue (if there is no God)

1. Can you imagine a cat calling himself, I am a cat? No, the cat is called as cat because men exist in the first place. Unless men exist the cat will have no name, no identity… by this I mean we will never know what is what if something doesn’t qualify something… (we need a qualifier)
therefore, if God of Christian doesn't exist then it is not possible to live a good... who will then judge, that something is good and the opposite is bad???? Atom? Nature? tree?

Good cannot be define if God doesn't exist

Sunday, October 17, 2010 at 1:47:00 PM GMT+1
Ron said...

In order to fully understand God, we must abandon the requirement that all phenomena has a physical material explanation that we can detect with human technology. As human science has proven over and over again, phenomena which we can not see today is often tomorrow’s new discovery. Atoms did not exist, until man had the tools to find them. Electrons did not exist until man had the means to identify their existence. DNA was only a theory until the end of the 20th century. Human technology has been unable to detect all that is physical, and has thus far proven to be totally inadequate in our quest to understand the spiritual.

Saturday, October 23, 2010 at 9:40:00 PM GMT+1
Unknown said...

Rev Matt Slick could have done a much better job here. To me as a Christian he lost a debate hands down.

He was too arrogant. He spent the whole ebate saying that it was Dan's task to prove why we can be good without God without him arguing why God makes us good.

Total failure.

Thursday, December 23, 2010 at 8:04:00 PM GMT
Anonymous said...

Matt used his tactic well. Atheists and atheists alike love to pull the "proof card". By Dan's own terms, he failed...miserably so.
He only made assertions based on what he prefers.
Matt knows his stuff, but I agree...He needs to work on his tact.

Friday, May 31, 2013 at 5:39:00 AM GMT+1

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