Loyola Asks, Does God Exist?

The Theology Department hosted a debate in the Crown Center Auditorium March 25, in which a pair of professor-student duos faced off to examine the question — does God exist? 

With theology instructor Molly Greening as moderator, the team of Associate Professor of Christian Social Ethics Aana Marie Vigen and second-year philosophy and religious studies major Faith Mercer, who argued for the existence of God, went up against the team of Professor of Theology Colby Dickinson and fourth-year philosophy major Jack Jones, who argued against the existence of God. 

The students made opening statements to an audience of more than 240 of their peers. Each had seven minutes to outline their side’s general arguments.

Jones began by addressing some common arguments for why God must exist. He introduced the first cause argument, which posits everything has a cause. This causal chain isn’t infinite, and God is often established as the end of the chain as the cause for the universe. Jones then refuted the idea God must be the first cause.

“Who is to say there isn’t a giant turtle that created God, or if the first cause was the Big Bang,” Jones said. 

He also disputed the claim the universe’s complexity requires God to be its creator, arguing evolutionary processes resulted in this intricacy, not God. Jones also made a moral argument against the existence of God and said faith in God can be used to justify human atrocities 

“They serve to prove individual and group sovereignty, empowering violent regimes to silent decanters with absolute claims,” Jones said. “Historically, these are claims to the divine power of monarchs — the divine right to imperialism — or manifest destiny.”

Before ceding the floor to Mercer, Jones ended his speech with the claim God was constructed by humans to explain the unknown.

In her opening statement, Mercer immediately pushed back against Jones’ stance on the chain of cause ending with something other than God.

“There is something unique about this first cause for the universe — it itself is uncaused,” Mercer said. “But what has no beginning? No end? No start? No finish? God.”

She also disagreed with Jones’ claim that the complexity of the universe could come from something other than God. She said the order, purposefulness and complexity of the universe means it must have been created by an intelligent designer.

She disagreed with Jones’ opinion on the morality of faith in God and said she didn’t believe God was invented by humans to explain what they couldn’t empirically answer. 

“The absence of scientific evidence and empirical reasoning produces doubt, but what is faith without doubt?” Mercer said. 

Once the students finished their opening arguments, the two teams engaged in a series of questions relating to the existence of God, trading off between professor and student responses. 

The first question posed to the professors concerned the worldwide existence of god-worshiping religions and the multiple understandings of God which often contradict each other. 

Dickinson responded by saying humans often project their own shortcomings onto a supernatural being in a process he called moral outsourcing. He said it’s more convenient for people to attribute their failings to supernatural causes instead of using reason, taking responsibility for their own actions or accepting there’s no rational cause for their suffering. 

“It’s much easier to blame some supernatural existence and to say that’s the reason this happened to us,” Dickinson said. 

Vigen said believing in God actually encourages personal responsibility. She also said humans can’t comprehend the world’s many contradictions, and God is an answer to those discrepancies. 

The event ended with a round of student questions. These questions, of which there were too many to answer, included queries about how the two teams would define God, if God has a gender and how morals can exist without God.

Vigen said her intent was to inspire interest about the subject and create a space for students to discuss difficult topics in a meaningful way. Both her and Greening said they felt the debate was a success and were happy with the large turnout.

Dickinson said the debate wasn’t able to sufficiently address the question of God’s existence because it’s such a vast, but he was happy to have sparked interest among students.

“There are so many more issues we didn’t get to — probabilities of coincidence, the political implications of proofs for God’s existence, questions about theodicy and much more,” Dickinson said.