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Atheist, evangelist to debate God’s existence

By Kelly Ettenborough
The Arizona Republic

Bob Siegel, a Jewish convert to Christianity and an evangelist, won’t prove that God exists.  Dan Barker, an evangelical minister and faith healer turned atheist, won’t prove that God does not exist.  But in the Easter week debate “Does God Exist?” at Arizona State University in Tempe, the two sides will offer evidence for their points of view, answer questions and let the audience decide.

“In our heart of hearts, we know something is wrong.  God can’t be all-knowing and all-powerful and all-good at the same time,” said Barker, also a spokesman for the Freedom From Religion Foundation in Madison, Wis. “All you have to do is walk into a children’s hospital and you know there isn’t a good God. Parents are praying des­perately and the children are in pain and they die.”  Countered Siegel: “God doesn’t promise to be a genie in a bottle. God sometimes has his reasons for not an­swering our prayers. The idea that God could not pos­sibly exist if he doesn’t ex­plain every little thing to us is somewhat arrogant.”
  
Christian and secular hu­manist groups are co-spon­soring Wednesday’s debate Siegel and Barker debated once before, in 1986 at the University of California-San Diego, on whether Christian­ity is true.  Neither changed the other person’s mind, but the debate was lively, they said.

“All I ever hope to accomplish in a debate is to let the students hear the facts on both sides and let them be­lieve what is true,” Siegel said. “I think people will find there is much better evidence than they thought.”  Siegel lives in San Diego but spends much of his time on the road as a traveling evangelist. From 1977 to 1979, he was the leader of Campus Ambassa­dors at Arizona State Uni­versity. He’s started churches and written two books and 14 plays. He has his master’s degree from Denver Conservative ­Seminary.

Barker renounced his reli­gious beliefs in 1983. He had graduated from Azusa Pacific University with a degree in religion.  He was a teenage evangelist and was ordained a minister in 1975. He served as associate pastor at a Quaker church, an Assembly of God church and a charis­matic church.  According to polls, about 10 percent of Americans say they don’t believe in God. Events like this introduce people to non-believers, said Barker who is embarrassed about his past as a “faith healer.”  “The real winner of these debates is the audience, no matter what,” Barker said. “It helps to put a face on athe­ists. People talk about them, but do they actually meet them? Do they have horns?”

The campus secular hu­manist society worked with the Humanist Society of Greater Phoenix and the Christian groups to plan the debate in a rare collaboration.  “People have a lot of mis­conceptions on both sides,” said Andy Beck, a freshman philosophy major and a mem­ber of the Christian group, Campus Ambassadors. “It’s important to get the issue out there, and the debate is a good way to do that.”  Susan Sackett, a Scottsdale resident and president of the Humanist Society of Greater Phoenix, agrees: “It has given us a chance, especially the students, to have a dialogue going, which is important; and they can each at least see where the other side is com­ing from.”