Loftus John W. - God or Godless?: One Atheist. One Christian. Twenty Controversial Questions

We (John and Randal) enjoy formal philosophical debates about big and important issues, and they dont come any bigger or more important than the question of whether God exists. But as much as we love formal philosophical debates, they have their drawbacks too. For one thing, they often take way too much time. (Two or three hours in a stuffy lecture theater is a tax on anyones stamina.) For another, they often are a bit too formal (dare we say anal-retentive ?). And finally, they are often fixated on a narrow set of questions that, while important, have been asked a million times before, like Does God exist? and Did Jesus rise from the dead? Important and interesting questions to be sure, but there are different ways to slice the pie, and we think it is high time to approach from some fresh angles the same old debate over whether God exists.

With all this in mind, we wrote God or Godless? as a rather immodest attempt to address all that is lacking in the standard discussions. To kick things off, each of us chose ten debate statements in which the one who made the choice argued the affirmative while leaving the opponent scrambling to establish a case for the negative. I (Randal the Christian) seek through these debates to make a case for going with God, while I (John the atheist) aim to make the case for going Godless. With that basic formula in mind, we then tailored our twenty exchanges to address the weaknesses in the standard debates. First, weve cut down the length. Forget hours of ponderous argument, tortured rebuttal, and meticulous cross-examination: in each of our debates we were restricted to opening statements of about 800 words, rebuttals of about 150 words, and closing statements of a meager 50 words. As a result we managed to touch on all the main issues on the topic in question in a breezy debate that can be read in about twenty minutes. Second, we bypassed most of the traditional questions and topics to make way for some new angles and issues. And finally, so far as the formalism of academic discourse is concerned, lets just say that we werent wearing neckties when we wrote this book. We purposely sought to keep the mood light, and we left the official timekeeper at home.

Before we begin, wed like to point out one more thing. There is a handy bibliography at the end of the book that provides our suggested readings for each debate. Yes, we admit that we cannot exhaust each of these topics in twenty minutes. Our hope is that you view these brief debates not as the last word on any issue but rather as an invitation to further reading, discussion, and debate.

So without further ado, we turn to the task at hand. Pull up a comfortable chair by a roaring fire, don your most intelligent-looking reading glasses, pour yourself a cup of coffee or a snifter of port, and join us in addressing the grandest of questions: Should I go with God or Godless?