DAVID ADAMS speaks to David Heenan about why he wrote his book, The Sceptic’s Guide To God, and why he has challenged Richard Dawkins to a public debate…
David Heenan isn’t one to avoid a challenge. That much was made obvious this week when Mr Heenan, a Christian author from the Gold Coast in Queensland, called on atheist Richard Dawkins to publicly debate him on the issue of whether God exists.
Mr Dawkins, the UK-based author of The God Delusion and among the supporters of a recent atheist advertising campaign which appeared on buses there, is expected to visit Melbourne in March next year as a keynote speaker at the Global Atheist Convention.
“I believe that the average person out there is just unaware of the huge amount of evidence there is for the existence of God and the reason that they can truly believe and then trust in Him.”
– David Heenan, author of The Sceptic’s Guide To God
Mr Heenan, author of The Sceptic’s Guide to God, says that given all the press Mr Dawkins receives, it was time for someone to provide an alternate view to Dawkins’ viewpoints – that God does exist – based on facts.
“I liken it to the Biblical event David versus Goliath. Goliath really strode across the battlefield of that time and…everybody was kind of scared of him – he was such a giant,” he says. “Well, Dawkins is also a giant in the world of atheists, but does that mean that we can’t challenge him? And, indeed, win in a battle with him? I think it’s time people did stand up. I mean, what have we got to be fearful of as Christians? We’ve got God on our side.”
Mr Heenan’s own story is one of a walk from scepticism to faith. While raised in a Christian household – his father was a church minister and at one stage Mr Heenan had even planned to go to theological college, the author says that for the first 20 years of his adult life, he was an agnostic.
He spent the next 20 years working in the advertising industry as first a writer and then creative director at some of the country’s leading advertising agencies for some 20 years
The turnaround came through a culmination of events, all of which happened in the space of a few months. They included financial stress caused when an advertising agency which owned him money failed to pay as he left the business, a breakdown in his relationship with his then-girlfriend of five years, and the discovery that, in what he now sees was probably a symptom of burnout, he had a great fear of his future.
“When you’re disenchanted with the career that you’ve been in for many years, to contemplate something else, well, it can be quite scary,” he says.
Like many people, Mr Heenan says that what had kept him going in life was the “carrots” that had, up until now, always been before him.
“The carrot of a new job or more money or a better car or whatever. Well, what do you do when you run out of carrots? I’d been very successful in my chosen career for many years – won awards and been very well paid – but at the end of the day, it was basically that I’d reached the point where it was all meaningless. Past achievements didn’t mean a thing and then, of course, I’d had this financial situation thrust upon me and broke-up with my girlfriend. So, suddenly in three major areas in my life, it was like a disaster zone.”
Mr Heenan, who was then aged about 40, says he sank into a pit of despair about the future.
“That’s when I really asked the question, after some 20 years, ‘Is there a God and, if so, can He help me? And I had a very traumatic, miraculous experience when I ask that question.”
Attending a church for a couple of months, he had presented himself at a service where the pastor was preaching on miracles, telling people that they would “qualify” for a miracle even if their faith was only as small as a mustard seed, that they accepted that Jesus came as a bridge between God and mankind, and that they had come to the realisation that people’s lives were in such a mess because they had been living according to their own needs and desires and not God’s way.
“I didn’t have any argument with that because I’d lived my life my way for the first 20 years of my life and basically I was at a dead end,” he recalls.
Mr Heenan went up the front for prayer, “not knowing what to expect”, and was prayed for by the pastor who simply asked God to “give David the miracle that he needs in his life.”
“He wasn’t aware of what had happened – how could he be? – but, having said that prayer, I was literally snap-frozen…I couldn’t move anything of my body except for my eyes and then it was just like a flow of low voltage electricity that started to pour through me from head to toe and after about 60 seconds or 90 seconds, that spirit of despair just went, bang!, out of me. That event, that miracle, just turned my life right upside down and changed my life forever.”
EVIDENCE FOR GOD? David Heenan’s book takes a look at some of the big questions of life.
Mr Heenan, who is now married to Melody and has three children and a stepson, says that since his dramatic experience of God, the evidence for God had simply accumulated more and more around him, leading him eventually to write the book, The Sceptic’s Guide to God.
“I believe that the average person out there is just unaware of the huge amount of evidence there is for the existence of God and the reason that they can truly believe and then trust in Him,” he says.
The book, which was only released this year after Mr Heenan spent two years researching it, is comprised of 30 to 40 “mini-chapters”, each of which covers a different subject – everything from the life and identity of Jesus Christ to creationism, what the Bible says about the future and his take on The Da Vinci Code – in a couple of pages. The text, which also includes some details of Mr Heenan’s personal journey to faith, is supported by numerous photographs – there are some 200 in the book – to help convey its message.
“It is not intended to be a totally exhaustive book – it would be obviously encyclopaedic if that were to be the case. But what it is intended to do is to really give people an insight, a quick glance or reference, so to speak.”
Mr Heenan, who has been travelling around the country talking about the book and the issues raised within in, says that as well as a useful resource for Christians, it is also intended for sceptics and designed for Christians to give it to their non-Christian friends.
“I’m already getting some exciting stories back on what’s happened when the book has been given to non-Christians.”
As for his challenge to Mr Dawkins? Mr Heenan, who has sent Mr Dawkins a copy of his book, says he hasn’t yet received a response but remains hopeful.
“It will be interesting to see what response he does come back with,” he says.
