Just when you thought the University of Malta was only about censorship and condom machines, the Great Atheism Debate suddenly rears it head on campus. RAPHAEL VASSALLO on how Thursday’s event echoed a wider tremor currently being felt across Europe and the world
Depending on whose version of ‘The Truth’ you happen to believe – i.e., Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection, or the Creationist view that the entire Universe was created out of nothing in just six days – human beings have existed for either 200,000, or 6,000 years.
Neither is a particularly long time, when you also consider that (according to science, anyway) life on earth began around four billion years ago. But still: whether we’ve been around for 200 millennia or a good deal less, it is safe to assume that a considerable portion of that time (i.e., when our ancestors weren’t too busy hunting mammoth, and fighting off sabre-toothed cats) was squandered in the active contemplation of God.
Who is this God person, anyway? Does He exist? If so, does He play an active part in our lives... or did He limit His input to just starting up the Creation machine, only to leaves it to its own devices? And more to the point: would there be any purpose to our own existence, if there wasn’t a God to make everything worthwhile in the end?
I suppose it was a little ambitious to expect all these questions to be answered by a small panel of university students (with one lecturer thrown in for good measure) in just one hour’s worth of discussion on campus last Thursday.
But in a remarkable break with tradition, it must be acknowledged that the organisers of Truth or Dare: Science and/or Religion? actually came close.
First, however, a small word about the panel. Representing the more recognisable orthodox view of life, the universe and everything – i.e., that religion’s ‘rightful’ place lies at the heart of scientific debate – were third-year medical student Claire Cassar, and second-year architecture student Samuel Cassar – both supported to an extent by philosophy graduate (and Junior College lecturer) Jean Paul de Lucca.
Both students based their own religious convictions on their own personal experience, with Samuel Cassar framing the argument in a way that would to an extent dominate the rest of the debate.
Science, he claimed, may be indispensable to determining most aspects of reality... but it is entirely powerless to explain deeply emotive topics such as love. Raising a general giggle among the audience, Cassar claimed that a purely scientific analysis of ‘kissing’ would take into account the exchange of saliva between individuals, the effect of the resulting experience on the body’s sensory nervous system, and so on. But we all know there is a good deal more to the subject than these purely biological observations alone.
Similarly, Claire Cassar echoed a widely held conviction, both in and outside Christianity, that the ‘Spirit World’ cannot by definition be understood by scientific means, as it lies entirely outside the sphere of scientific method (though she would later elicit applause for her honesty, when she freely admitted that ‘there was a possibility’ she was wrong).
Holding the fort for an entirely more atheist view of the Universe was Ingmar Bondin, an IT graduate currently reading for an MA in Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence. Science, Bondin argued, presents us with various models of assessing reality with a view to determining “The Truth”. It may not be a perfect system and it often made mistakes; but it remains the only reliable method of approximating ‘The Truth’ (‘The Truth’ being a somewhat important consideration for Ingmar, who insisted throughout that any debate on science, religion, and the relationship there between had to depart from the question, ‘What is Truth?’)
On their part, computer science researcher Christian Colombo and first-year Philosophy student Christopher Fenech appeared to occupy the fringes of popular opinion on the subject... Colombo declaring a qualified faith in God, while Fenech freely admitting to his own uncertainty in the matter, while raising perhaps the most convincing argument against faith based on purely personal experience (i.e., if a man believes himself to be followed in a dark alley at night, the fear he will experience as a result will be ‘real’... the actual conviction, on the other hand, may not.)
All in all, an intensely riveting debate, made all the more enjoyable by the sheer extent of audience participation. Judging by the number of chairs furnished by the organisers, the event was expected to attract an audience of around 20 at the most. But more than triple that number turned up on the day itself: and nearly everyone wanted to get a word in edgewise.
But what made this event all the more compelling was the distinct sensation that – as opposed to other campus debates, including the condom machine polemic, or the recent ban on campus newspaper Ir-Realtà – the focus was for a change entirely in synch with current intellectual debate on the global stage.
This encompasses the recent emergence of an altogether more radical and aggressive breed of atheism, as well as ongoing international controversies about religion’s position at the heart of Europe’s cultural identity... as evidenced by the recent “Italian crucifix” European Court ruling.
Whether the speakers themselves were aware of this or not – and I strongly suspect they were, though the connection was not made in any direct way – the main arguments on both sides of the spectrum can also be found in the science sections of nearly all mainstream international newspapers and journals across the world... in part on account of Charles Darwin’s 200th birthday (celebrated in Malta by means of a touring exhibition of Evolution among State schools) as well as the fact that outspoken atheists such as Richard Dawkins, Dan Dennett and Christopher Hitchens, among others, are literally taking the fight against Faith to world religious authorities: challenging the previously unchallengeable, and in the process inviting criticism for setting up what many fear is actually a whole new religion by a different name (only without any ‘God’ concept to prop it up).
From this perspective, it matters little that the campus debate failed in the end to reach any form of conclusion: either on the existence of God, or the validity of religion in any scientific context. Altogether more significant was its timing – in perfect step with academic debate the world over, and shortly after the local religious authorities reasserted their authority with renewed vehemence.
So who knows? Maybe there is intelligent life on the Tal-Qroqq campus after all...
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