Calum Miller vs. Peter Atkins "Does God Exist?" Debate - Oxford 2012

For Calum Miller's post-debate thoughts: http://dovetheology.com/apologetics/a...

For Prof. Peter Atkins's BHA profile: http://www.humanism.org.uk/about/peop...

Our first debate takes on the question "Does God exist?", with Medicine undergraduate Calum Miller taking on Professor of Chemistry Peter Atkins

Peter Atkins is a British chemist and former Professor of Chemistry at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Lincoln College. He is a prolific writer of popular chemistry textbooks, including Physical Chemistry, Inorganic Chemistry, and Molecular Quantum Mechanics. Atkins is also the author of a number of science books for the general public, including 'Atkins' Molecules' and 'Galileo's Finger: The Ten Great Ideas of Science'.

Calum Miller is a 3rd year undergraduate medic at St Hugh's college and a rising star in the world of Christian apologetics. A member of apologetics.com and creator of apologist website http://www.dovetheology.com ; Calum is well within his element debating natural theology.

(p.s. please disregard the note at the end of the video which says you can use youtube annotations to click through to the links. Turns out youtube doesn't support external links in the videos, so you can use the ones provided at the top of this info section instead)!

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  Education

[noreexic]

I'm an atheist, are you replying to the wrong user?

[MrAaronvee]

What a low level of debate here! Scientists cannot say where the Big Bang came from, and god-botherers cannot say where their deity came from. Then, by equating those 2 failures, the god-botherers try to claim that the argument is evenly balanced. What logical basis is there for equating 2 unknowns?

[MrAaronvee]

So you think that something possessing a rich structure cannot appear spontaneously within a completely uniform environment? One can easily disprove that using everyday materials (and, no, I am not referring to some sort of chemical reaction, crystallisation, electrolysis or solidification).

[noreexic]

Which scientists are they, all I am are of is that the Big Bang explains the expansion of the universe from a singularity, it does nothing to explain the origin of that singularity

''Everything that began to exist requires some kind of explanation of its existence.''

Intuitively that may be so, but intuition means NOTHING in physics. And anyway everything that is physical and began to exist we know of has been caused by something else physical. We don't however know the origin of physicality

.

[ecsagun]

Contemporary science agrees that the universe began to exist. Everything that began to exist requires some kind of explanation of its existence. Theists hold that God is the best explanation for this cause for a cause of the universe would have to be spaceless, timeless, materialess, has always existed (ie uncaused& beginningless). I can only think of two things that hold those attributes namely abstract objects (ex. numbers) or God. Since abstract objects cannot cause things, therefore God.

[Brandon Jones]

I'm a Popperian, what do you think I'd say about inductive reasoning?

[Calum Miller]

Thank you for your thoughts, Brandon. Care to back that up with any argument? Can you point to such refutations, especially of Bayesian arguments from induction?

[Rayvvvone]

"I guarantee, you will not find one serious scholar who will agree with one statement you just said."

- no true Scotsman either.

[Rayvvvone]

"If God, as an external agent outside of the universe, did not create the universe out of nothing, then how did it get here out of nothing."

- If God did it out of nothing, how did he do it?