Darwin's 'Rottweiler', Christian Apologist Heat Up God Debate

There is no good reason to believe in a supernatural creator, says a leading British atheist who believes religious explanations of how the world came to be, such as creationism, are petty and outdated – especially when modern science can now offer a better understanding of the existence of life.

Bestselling author of The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins, defended his atheistic view and contested Christianity in a much anticipated debate with Christian apologist John Lennox Wednesday night in Birmingham, Ala. It was a rare opportunity for Americans to witness two popular thinkers from Oxford University engage in a contemporary spiritual warfare – a friendly one – on the existence of God.

"Neither of us wishes to base his life on a delusion," said Lennox in his opening remarks. "But which is the delusion? Atheism or Christianity?"

Faith is blind. Science is evidence-based.

"Science uses evidence to discover truth about the universe. It's been getting better at it over the centuries," said Dawkins to a public audience. "Religion teaches us to be satisfied with not understanding."

Dawkins was elaborating on one of six major theses presented in his popular book that faith is blind while science is evidence-based.

After discovering Darwinism in his mid-teen years, Dawkins left his Anglican faith, never to return. And he has been defending Darwinism ever since, earning him the label "Darwin's Rottweiler" from the media.

Arguing that religion cuts through trying to understand the universe and provides an easy answer to its existence – attributing the cosmos to a maker – Dawkins says religion isn't really an explanation of how the world came about and "prevents further work on the problem." And he believes advances in science have achieved "an emancipation from that impulse to attribute these things to a creator."

Some faith is blind, Lennox agreed, but not all faith.

"As I read it, blind faith in idols ... in other words delusional gods, is condemned in the Bible," Lennox rebutted. "My faith in God and Christ as the Son of God is no delusion. It is rational and evidence-based. Half of the evidence is objective, some of it comes from science, some come from history and some is subjective coming from experience."

Further arguing against the notion that science contrasts with religion, Lennox reminded his opponent that science rose out of a theistic background, as Dawkins had also admitted earlier in the debate.

With time constraints, the debate provided little opportunity for a rebuttal from Dawkins, who spent much of his time contextualizing passages used from his book as points of debate.

The Designer is dead

Addressing the age-old topic of who created the Creator, Dawkins said as of now, science doesn't have an answer to the origin of the universe although Darwinism explains how life thereafter came about, he said.

"In a sense, you can say cosmology is waiting for its Darwin," said Dawkins.

Emphasizing that science is always making progress, Dawkins staunchly stated that the "creative designer cannot be a satisfying explanation."

"It's tempting once again to import the easy facile idea of a designer and to say that the designer twittled the knobs of the universe and the big bang and got them exactly right," he said, alluding to the physical constants (numbers) physicists assume to derive the rest of their understanding of cosmology. If the numbers were even slightly different, we wouldn't exist, he said.