The more I think about it, the more convinced I am that the only right way to have this debate between believers and atheists is to argue from the Bibl3e. Philosophy is a lost cause for the Christian point of view. There is no value in defending theism as a general principle wince it can support antibiblical and therefore antiGod positions such as evolution. There is simply no point in this. Debski tries to do this here and it isn't until the very end when he finally starts to argue from the Bible that he makes any worthwhile points in this debate, as I see it anyway.
Hitchens gets away with all sorts of things thta should hvae been soundly squashed early on from the Biblical perspetive. Dembski says he is sticking to the philosophical perspective because he believes that's what the rules of the debate require, meaning that's how you have to argue for God's existence. But why? The Biblie gives plenty of evidence for God's existence and I think the Christian debaters make a big mistake not to work out their best arguments from that source.
Hitchens makes arguments against the idea of a loving Creator God based on the evils and destructive elements in this world and the universe itself, and it isn't until the very end that Dembski finally says that this world is not the world God originaloly created but the broken world of death and deisease and destruction and sin that was the conseque3nces of the Fall, the original sin of our ficrfirst parents in eating of thte forbidden rtree. As Paul says in Roma ns 5, death came through the sin of the one man Adam, and sin and death have reigned in the human race ever since because we are all descended from Not exactly part of the debate problem , Adam. So all arguments that this world doesn't look like the lovely place created by a loving God is easily answered from the Bible. It ISN'T that original lovely created place. And the reason is sin, disobediencde of God.
Hitchens makes a couple of comments I have to answer: I get so tired of hearing this lie that Israel is occdupying lands that are not theirs. No, they bought whatever belongs to anyone sle and own it rightly, but the fact is that there were very few people living in that area when the Jews cam e to settle the land. Mark Twain described it as a barren wilderness. and the "Palestinians" today are NOT natives of that area, they are a motley collection of Arabs from all over the Middle Easy who cfame to work for Israel cdas it was building up its land and settlements. They were made refugees by the Arabs that attacks Israel, who warned them to flee before the attack. They are not Palestinians and never were Palestinians.
He also informs us that we're only half a chromosome away from chimps and that we are all covered with hair at some stage in the womb. Well, I looked up the hair, it's not ALL of us but SOME of us who get this hair coat in the womb and if you think it makes us look like chimp babies you'll be disabused of that notion when you read that it's "fine" and "downy" hair. And although half a chromosome doesn't seem like much of a a difference I think we really need to know more about this supposed massive similarity. In any case the similarity can be accounted for by the similairties in body structure which is what DNA is all about after all, there being no reason whatever to assume genetic relatedness on the basis of phyisocal similarities though this is what the evolutionists are always doing. Design similarity is enough of an explanation. W DNA makes the bodies needed by animals and humans to navigate this physical world. Each animal has it's own particular body plan and ours although similar to chimps is not the same body plan at all the way say all cats have the same body plan or all dogs or all tri.lobites. The proportions are too different.
Abnd then he ends with an objection to the authoritarian nature of God. He wouldn't want to have a father who had authority over him every minute of his life and would never go away. And he thinks all religion is authoritarian the way Islam is or Roman Catholicism. Well I agree that those two religions are totalitarian buty that's because they are pagan religions. Romani Catholicism killed fifty million true Christians in six hundred years of the Middle Ages. There is nothing Christian about that. And Islam prescribes murdering all non Muslimas. That is nothing at all like true Christianity which was recovered at the Protestant Reformation. The liberties and rights of individuals in western civilization all come from True Christianity if only through the cultural versions of it. No,not from rationalism.
As for God being authoritarian, it's hard on us as fleshly human beings because we are at odds with God, but through faith we are a new creation that is in tune with the Creator God so that there is nothing but perfect agreement between our nature and His. The fleshly unregenerate human being is always at odds with God but salvation is the recovery of our essential alignment with Him so that all our thoughts are as His thoughts and we can enjoy Him forever more as the Westminster catchism tell sus.
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/hDD8957XuA4" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>
