Does God Exist? A Debate between John Koster & Frank Zindler 1989 WMUZ

[Osama S Qatrani]

My Recent Research on the 1989 WMUZ Debate

Dear ,

I recently completed a research paper analyzing the 1989 WMUZ Detroit debate between John P. Koster (Christian apologist) and Frank R. Zindler (atheist). In this study, I not only reviewed the arguments but also commented on the specific questions posed during the exchange.

Although I am a believer in God — and one might expect me to align with John Koster — I deliberately maintained neutrality in my analysis. To me, it was clear that Frank Zindler appeared stronger in this debate. The reason is simple: Koster relied on the Bible as evidence, but this was a weak strategy against an opponent who neither believes in God nor accepts scripture as authoritative. From the start, this deprived him of common ground.

What Koster could have done, instead, was to appeal to shared foundations: science, reason, logic, and empirical evidence. Even without going too deep into technical details, a non-specialist can still use scientific reasoning to highlight explanatory strength. That would have provided a more solid ground for dialogue.

My full paper is available here:
From Rhetoric to Explanatory Power: A 2025 Re-Assessment of the Koster–Zindler 1989 Debate

https://www.researchgate.net/public...Id=68d1e829220a341aa14e5e57&showFulltext=true

DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.18232.20486

I would greatly value your thoughts and feedback.

With respect,
Osama S. Qatrani

 

[steve_bank]

What does Osama actually believe?

Is this you?

https://www.authorea.com/users/939174-osama-s-qatrani

 

[NoHolyCows]

My Recent Research on the 1989 WMUZ Debate

Dear ,

I recently completed a research paper analyzing the 1989 WMUZ Detroit debate between John P. Koster (Christian apologist) and Frank R. Zindler (atheist). In this study, I not only reviewed the arguments but also commented on the specific questions posed during the exchange.

Although I am a believer in God — and one might expect me to align with John Koster — I deliberately maintained neutrality in my analysis. To me, it was clear that Frank Zindler appeared stronger in this debate. The reason is simple: Koster relied on the Bible as evidence, but this was a weak strategy against an opponent who neither believes in God nor accepts scripture as authoritative. From the start, this deprived him of common ground.

What Koster could have done, instead, was to appeal to shared foundations: science, reason, logic, and empirical evidence. Even without going too deep into technical details, a non-specialist can still use scientific reasoning to highlight explanatory strength. That would have provided a more solid ground for dialogue.

My full paper is available here:
From Rhetoric to Explanatory Power: A 2025 Re-Assessment of the Koster–Zindler 1989 Debate

https://www.researchgate.net/public...Id=68d1e829220a341aa14e5e57&showFulltext=true

DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.18232.20486

I would greatly value your thoughts and feedback.

With respect,
Osama S. Qatrani

As written, your comparison is circular. You characterize the naturalist option as a set of disconnected stories for laws, fine-tuning, and consciousness, then you adopt a decision rule that favors whichever view unifies those domains with fewer assumptions. If one side is framed as fragmented and the other is defined by unification, your rule guarantees the outcome. That is a feature of the setup, not a result of the evidence.

Calling unified naturalist contenders “speculative” doesn’t fix the asymmetry unless you apply the same standard to your “organizing Mind.” Both are high-level posits. Either you permit both onto the field and compare them under a common metric, or you exclude both. Anything else is special pleading. Likewise, pointing to the explanatory gap about consciousness does not by itself raise the probability of your hypothesis over a live naturalist model; it only shows that some naturalist accounts are incomplete. To claim “best explanation,” you have to show that your hypothesis makes the total evidence more likely than a well-specified rival, not merely that the rival is unfinished.

“Fewer assumptions” has to be cashed out, not asserted. What counts as an assumption? How are you measuring parsimony? What priors or penalties are you using? Without an explicit scoring rule, “simplicity” is rhetoric. And a unifier that accommodates everything after the fact but forbids nothing in advance is not an explanation; it is a re-label. If your view genuinely earns its keep, state at least one novel, risky expectation that would come out differently under a unified naturalist alternative, constraints on parameter distributions, structure in the space of possible laws, or differentiating neural-dynamic signatures not post hoc gloss.

Finally, please correct the basic historical errors about the debate’s date and host. They don’t bear on the philosophy, but they do indicate whether the piece is disciplined about matters of fact.

If you revise so that both sides are given their strongest unified formulations, you quantify the simplicity claim, and you add a discriminating prediction, the paper becomes a test instead of a foregone conclusion. If you choose not to do that, the honest label for the piece is a perspective, not an argument for “best explanation.”

NHC

 

[Wiploc]

I would greatly value your thoughts and feedback.

You hint about having arguments, but you never actually make one.

You want us to believe that you can somehow use the fine tuning argument (and two others) to support your conclusion that god exists, but you never step up and show how that would be done. In the end, your hint of an argument is no stronger than, "If god doesn't support the Broncos, why are sunsets orange?"

I'm available if you want to discuss your arguments further. If you have good arguments, I may be able to help you articulate them more persuasively.