The Atheists vs The Believers: 1st Period (Part 2 of 5)

This blog is a contiuation of a five-part series dealing with the argument between atheism and belief in God. Today we begin with the First Period of the metaphysical hockey game introduced last week in the "pre-game show."

The crowd has been anxiously filing into their seats and everyone is finally ready to go, so with no further ado: The opening face-off.

Lining up to take the draw are esteemed philosopher and Saint, Thomas Aquinas and renowned evolutionary biologist, and outspoken atheist, Richard Dawkins. Aquinas is known for his attempts to reconcile faith and reason and is most known for his "Summa Theologica", a massive work that includes the well known "quinquae viae", or the "Five Ways." Dawkins is a prominant anti-creationist who in his book "The God Delusion" argues for the non-existence of God and points out religion as a major source of evil in the world. He discusses the "Five Ways" directly in "The God Delusion" and dismisses them saying: "The five 'proofs' asserted by Thomas Aquinas don't proove anything...". Dawkins also argues that it is unimportant to study theology in order to disprove it in the same way "most of us disavow...the Flying spaghetti monster, without first immersing ourselves in books of Pastafarian theology..." With this in mind, it is clear that right from the opening face-off, this is truly going to be one hell of a match (figuratively speaking of course).

With the players ready to go referee Immanuel Kant skates to centre ice to drop the puck. The animosity in the air is palpable.

Dawkins looks ready, but Aquinas knows exactly what he wants to do. Years of research and philosophical training have prepared him for people like Dawkins who are willing to refute his arguments without even understanding them. Just as the puck is about to be dropped Aquinas looks out from under his helmet and says "If you don't believe theology is worth studying, why do you systematically try to refute the"quinquae viae" in your book?" With that said, and Dawkins slightly unsure how he should answer, the puck is dropped and Aquinas wins the draw back to McGrath. As he skates away Aquinas politely mentions that at no time did he ever call the "quinquae viae" proofs of God's existence but that it was rather people like Dawkins who gave it that appellation many years later.

Although there is no goal scoring yet, momentum seems to have shifted to the Believers after Dawkin's philosophical weakness being exposed early. As expected, the Believers have started out with a tight-checking style mainly stating their belief as they dump the puck in while waiting to pounce on a mistake by the Atheists.

The Atheists however play with scientific precision. Dawkins recovers from his early blunder, firing several well-aimed shots on goal, including the dangerous "flexibly definable God" argument. This shot implies that God can be seen as a "filler" in the increasingly few gaps in our knowledge left unexplained by science. With this promise of religion soon being rendered history by scientific progress, the Atheists gain new life. They are beginning to overwhelm to Believer's defence who are only able to try and deflect these shots wide of the target in the hope of making it to the end of the period unscathed.

Unfortunatly for the Believers, with a few minutes left on the clock, young Oxonian defenceman Alistair McGrath admits the validity of Dawkins refutation of the long-treasured Christian belief of "intelligent design", leaving him all alone on a break-away. At the last second McGrath reaches out and trips up Dawkins by saying intelligent design and William Paley's "The watchmaker" (which is a 19th century argument that argues that if one were to find a watch on a beach that would not assume it came to be on its own, but rather that there was a watchmaker who designed it; Paley goes on to infer that the world is the same and that it is too sophisticated and "intelligently designed" to occur on its own) is a 19th century argument that it is not representative of contemporary Christianity, but it is too late. The whistle blows and Immanuel Kant crosses his arms over his head. Penalty Shot!

The crowd is on their feet as Dawkins starts in. He skates out wide to the right side and cuts back in across the top of the circle, gaining speed and hoping to catch the Believers goaltender out of position with his favourite "there almost certainly is no God" manoeuver. It appears to work as the goaltender starts to follow Dawkins across exposing the bottom right-hand corner of the net. Dawkins fires and already has his arms in the air when out of nowhere a big, "Christian" goal stick slides along the ice and deflects the puck up over the net into the crowd. No goal!

Dawkins looks back, wondering how he missed a sure goal and sees Jesus standing in the crease, staring right at him as if to say: "you're going to have to do better than that."

Indeed it appears as if saying there almost certainly is no God proves nothing but the improbability of God, which Jesus defeated with an equally inprobable save.

After two more minutes or spirited (or perhaps "lively" would be a more appropriate term) but goal-less play the buzzer sounds and the first period is done.

0-0. A scoreless, but extremely entertaining period of metaphysical hockey leaves nothing resolved, but many interesting ideas to think about over the next week leading up to next Wednesday's 2nd period.

The Atheists hold a clear advantage in shots, outshooting the Believers 9-2 and were the stronger of the two teams over the 20 minutes. It looks like they may have to change their tactics a little bit to get through the tight checking of the believers and get their shots through to the net. Faith is proving a difficult defensive tool to get around and the experts are saying that if they want to break through with some goals they will have to stick to their strength of using fact based evidence instead of probabilities. In an interview with Athiest coach Jean-Paul Sartre, he suggested that perhaps the Atheists will be looking more towards their experience in the 2nd frame to try and get back to the "essence" of their ideology.

On the other side the Believers are not overly pleased or disappointed with the 1st period. They played to their strength and it didn't fail them, the score is still even. Believer coach Karol Józef Wojtyła commented that his team needs at some point to find some offence and emphasized the importance of the defence stepping up into the attack. Only time will tell if these coaches make good prophets or whether their words fall on deaf ears.

Either way, the 2nd period promises to be evilly exciting.

Check back next week for period 2 and the continuation of "The Atheists vs The Believers" at 5pm EST on Wednesday April 8th.