DOES GOD REALLY HATE AMPUTEES?, OR WHAT DOES SCIENCE AND REASON TELL US ABOUT THE EXISTENCE OF GOD? The title of this panel discussion comes from a website discussed by atheist Sam Harris in his book, Letter to A Christian Nation, that insists that there are no “answered” prayers that could not be written off as coincidence. Despite all of the healings from sickness or close calls averted, he says, God never, ever, heals an amputee, no matter how many people are praying it (and despite biblical promises that whatever is asked in faith can be received). Harris’s book (as well as his lengthier The End of Faith), and Richard Dawkins’s, The God Delusion, have become extremely popular, arguing intelligently from the position of science, human suffering, and biblical problems that there is almost certainly no supreme being or personal deity. Aside from the conviction of personal testimony, can science and reason be usedjust as convincingly for the existence of God? How might believers respond just as intelligently to the newly popular atheist movement? Are there aspects of these discussions that Latter-day Saints, in particular, might contribute to?

DEVERY S. ANDERSON, DUANE JEFFERY, JANA RIESS, ARDEAN WATTS, and R. DENNIS POTTER