Theism, Atheism, & Agnosticism: RaviZachariasFan vs. wiploc vs. Tsurmon

[KnightWhoSaysNi]

This thread has been set up for a 3-way formal debate between RaviZachariasFan, wiploc, and Tsurmon.

RaviZachariasFan will argue for the position of theism (the belief that God exists), wiploc will argue for the position of atheism (i.e. "strong" atheism or the claim that God does not exist), and Tsurmon will argue for the position of agnosticism (the suspension of belief either way, i.e. a form of "weak" atheism). "God," for purposes of this debate, will refer to the Abrahamic monotheistic deity.

The debate will have 4 rounds and statements each round will be submitted concurrently, as agreed to from the parameters (http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showpost.php?p=1860053&postcount=68).

A Peanut Gallery (http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.php?p=1869262#post1869262) is set up in the Existence of God(s) forum for the rest of us to comment on the debate.

Good luck to all of the participants!

NS, FD Moderator

[Common_Cents]

I would like to start by thanking my compatriots on this journey Tsurmon and Wiploc. Also a great deal of gratitude is felt by me for IIDB for allowing a theist here. It is your site and your openness to debate is refreshing and admirable.

There are a few things that I would like to explore in this debate about God’s logical place in our world. I will attempt to refrain from Biblical references as much as possible as this isn’t a Biblical discussion and I know most of you could care less what the Bible says. I hope to go through these points with my esteemed colleagues as we search for the logical position in this very pertinent question.

1. The beginning and the theist position.
2. Love and its place without God.
3. Morality and Conscience without God.


Entropy is the exploration of the general “winding down� of the universe, the randomness and the dispersion of the universe from organization to nothingness basically. Now anything that has a beginning has an end. To flip that anything with an end has a beginning. Anything with a beginning has a Cause. Therefore what caused the universe? The first logical roadblock for theism is of course what caused God? To that I say that God created time and the universe and is independent of the laws that govern that plane. He is transcendent of it and therefore is not in it. Now while that can’t be proven with figures and measurements it is the only logical explanation for the universe being in existence in my opinion. The universe is heading to an end at some point. Most scientists agree that the stars are expanding from one another and the universe is expanding into basically nothing. To me the universe is like a person. It started small and has expanded and grown more and more with the passing of time but make no mistake it had an origin point. With an origin you must have a cause and the universe it seems to me requires a cause. It seems to me that God is the only logical cause that can be found for the universe.



Why has the notion of a God been so stubborn to fade away? I can answer that in many ways but one is Love. I would like to add a few quotes because I really want to show the importance of Love for it is often discounted:

This is my commandment, that ye love one another.
~ Jesus, In John 15:12

Love is like pi -- natural, irrational, and very important.
~ Lisa Hoffman

The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched - they must be felt with the heart.
~ Helen Keller

Gravitation can not be held responsible for people falling in love.
~ Albert Einstein

We are the only creatures that we know of that are so driven and held by love. The God of the Bible proclaims himself to be Love and that He made man in His own image thus passing love to us. With the breath of life He anointed man as separate from all of His other creations. In this plane of existence there can be no effect without a cause. So what caused love? In our plane of existence what sparked this paradoxical emotion that grips us all? If not from God where did Love come from? Without a self aware being how did love derive? Did the primordial ooze bring us love? Did the big bang have love? Did the eternal universe have love? I included the quote of Einstein and Keller because as Albert states love isn’t bound by facts and figures and as Keller said love isn’t tangible or visible. Through love you get your vision of why it is logical to believe in God. Love can’t be held to logic dictation, measured, weighed, seen, or touched yet no one discounts its existence. God can often seem irrational from our perspective. God can’t be seen, measured, weighed, or touched that doesn’t make believing in him irrational or illogical. The reason that most people by a vast majority believe in some form of God is because science and logic haven’t been able to explain away love. People look in the eye of their spouse or they look in the eye of their child and they feel something that can’t be explained away as solely a chemical reaction with no more merit than a burp. They love and they want to be loved and nowhere on this planet can we find a kindred creature. We have no other species that understands the struggles and thoughts that we have. So in our social nature we look beyond this world for a hope of someone that understands us. Isn’t that logical too? We as humans can acknowledge that we didn’t invent love. The search of God is in some part a search for love, that immutable fact that we can’t escape or deny. No other creature is so held by love’s sway. The only logical conclusion is that it derived from something bigger than us. So with no satisfactory alternative I think that it is logical to assume that an all loving transcendent creator bestowed this gift upon mankind.


Morality and conscience to me seem to be love’s way of fighting instinct. For an example we all have been in a relationship (I assume) where we had deep feelings for the other person. You love that person then one day another person who is attractive flirts with you. Now you don’t know this person but you are instantly attracted to them and instinct says go for it. Conscience and morality say “are you nuts?� Now animal’s go by instinct. I mean we rarely speak of animals being tortured by their conscience. Again without God where did morality and conscience derive? The origin of these things is vital in understanding them. Why are they in us? Where did they come from? Why all other creatures of evolution are spared these things? Apparently they aren’t needed; the animal world works fine with instinct as the basis. In fact when I hear most people talk about how they base their morality it is “empathy�. This is really to say that they feel for their fellow man or that love that they can’t see, touch, smell, or measure is the basis for morality. Conscience would seem to follow that same basis. Now did an amoral disconnected energy blob come up with morality/conscience and then bestow it upon man alone? Theism posits that God gave man morality and conscience because love can’t be given without them. That conscience and morality were bestowed to help man live peacefully and justly with one another.

These points are my inroad in this debate. I anxiously await my opponents opening shot so that we can delve further into this debate.

Thank you all for your time and effort to labor through my post.

Many blessings upon you all,

RZF.

[wiploc]

Thanks:
Thanks to Internet Infidels for hosting this debate. Thanks to Tsurmon and RaviZachariasFan for participating in what I hope will be fun and educational for all of us. I'm excited about testing this for-me new format.



Note on the starting date of the debate:
I knew that Friday was September 31 because that was my nephew's birthday. :)



Does the Abrahamic God Exist:

Does the commonly-believed-in Abrahamic god exist? Obviously not. The commonly-believed-in Abrahamic god is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent. If such a god existed, a god powerful enough to make everyone happy and good enough to make everyone happy, then everyone would be happy. Since not everyone is happy, the Abrahamic god does not exist.


What Should We Believe?
The question before us then, is whether it makes more sense to accept that an obviously non-existent god doesn't exist, or to believe that it exists in spite of its obvious non-existence, or to throw up our hands and act puzzled in the face of compelling evidence.

I don't want to quibble, pussyfoot, evade, obfuscate, hedge, weasel, dissimulate, fudge, sidestep, skirt, waffle, pettifog, or be irresolute, so I'm telling you straight out that it is better---more logical---to admit that the obviously non-existent Abrahamic god does not exist.



On Goodness and the Unknown Purpose Defense

Omnibenevolence: The omnibenevolent god is all good, all loving, purely good, totally good, infinitely good.

Good: Evil is that which makes people unhappy, and good is that which makes people happy. I would entertain other definitions, but this is the traditional definition, and I've never heard another definition that works. When Christians discover that this one isn't working for them, they say, "Well, what if good meant something else?" But they don't offer a substitute definition. So far, then, either good means wants people to be happy or it doesn't mean anything. Either, "God is good," means god wants us to be happy, or it is gibberish.

If, "God is good," is not gibberish, it follows that an omnibenevolent (all good, infinitely good, purely and totally good) god would want us to be happy, would want it very much, would want it so strongly that he had no significantly conflicting desires.

Therefore, when a Christian (Plantinga) argues, in effect, "What makes you think an omnibenevolent god would want to make you happy?" his argument is misdirected. That's like asking, "What makes you think a crack shot is good at hitting targets?" or "What makes you think a good driver tends not to smash into other cars?" If words have meaning, an omnibenevolent god would make us happy if he could.

Likewise, when a Christian here at II (I forget who) asks, in effect, "How can you demand that an omnibenevolent god try to make you happy?" he or she is basing his argument on confusion. We aren't demanding anything; we are merely noting what the word "omnibenevolent" means. So long as god is omnibenevolent, he will do his best to make us happy. That's what the word means.

To deny the meaning of the word without offering a workable substitute meaning---to say, for instance, "What if god had an Unknown Purpose more important than making us happy,"---is to retreat into nonsense, is to prefer gibberish over meaning, is to convert, "God is good," from praise into deceitful obfuscation.



On Omnipotence, and the Free Will Defense.

True omnipotence:
A truly omnipotent god could do anything at all, including violate logic. He could make square circles, married bachelors, and rocks so big he couldn't lift them. He invented the world; he wrote the rules; he can break the rules---including the rules of logic. If an omnibenevolent god were truly omnipotent, he could make us happy regardless of any little objections like free will or unknown purposes. Nothing could possibly be an obstacle to an omnipotent god making us happy.

It is obvious, then, that no god exists who is both omnibenevolent and true-omnipotent. Even Christians will agree with this, since, if they want to retain hope that their omnibenevolent god exists, they must posit some obstacle that prevents him from achieving the human happiness which he so greatly desires.

God then, if he exists at all, is not the truly omnipotent creator of all who can make or break any rule. When confronted with the logic of the situation, even the Christians who so desperately want to believe in god must admit that this god does not exist.

Punk Omnipotence:
Therefore, the Christians have embraced an oxymoronic or paradoxical solution. They still call god "omnipotent," but they say there are things he can't do. What are the things god can't do? Some say god can't do logical contradictions, some say he can't do miracles at all, some say he can't do anything extraordinary, and I have even run across the position that god can't do anything at all. (This last god couldn't even supersize fries if he worked at McDonalds.)

In my experience, the typical Christian position is to claim that god can do anything that doesn't violate logic. That is, he can feed a multitude with seven fish and seven loaves, but he cannot make a square circle. He can move the sun backwards in the sky, but he cannot be both possible-to-look-upon and not-possible-to-look-upon. He can create the first woman from dirt, or he can create the first woman from a rib, but he cannot make it true that both creation stories are fair and accurate representations of what happened.

Christians call this god "omnipotent," even though there are things he can't do. The only purpose I can see for this sleight of mouth is that it allows Christians to hide from themselves the fact that they don't really believe in a truly omnipotent god, in the traditional Abrahamic god, in the---to put it bluntly---the original Christian god.

Nonetheless, they do believe in some god, and they call that god "omnipotent," punk though he be. I don't raise this distinction between punk-omnipotence and true-omnipotence because one can exist and the other cannot; the punk-omnipotent god cannot exist any more than the true-omnipotent god. I raise the distinction for other reasons. One is to point out that the Christians have already---before this discussion begins---betrayed the god of their fathers.

The other reason is that I am a pedant. I don't like to talk nonsense. I specifically don't like to say "omnipotent" when I mean "not able to violate logic." But as long as I can start by pointing out that we are using a special usage of the word "omnipotent" which means "not really omnipotent," then I am happy to continue. So, on the assumption that "punk-omnipotent" will be what Ravi and Tsurmon mean when they talk about "omnipotence," I will be happy, from this point on, to adopt that usage: "omnipotence" = "punk omnipotence" = "the ability to do anything, even miracles, but only insofar as there is no violation of logic."

Omnipotence and Free will:
Even an omnipotent god cannot both give us free will and not give us free will, because that would be a logical contradiction. Even an omnipotent god cannot make us both happy and not happy, because those are opposites; a happy-but-unhappy person would be a contradiction, something that is as far beyond the power of god as a married bachelor or an omnipotent being who can't defeat iron chariots.

What can an omnipotent god do? Anything that doesn't involve contradiction. While he can't make a candy that is both sweet and not sweet, he can make a candy that is both sweet and sour. While he can't make a person who both has free will and doesn't have free will, he can make a person who both has free will and is happy. This is inherent in the very definition of the god that modern Christians believe in. He can do anything that doesn't involve logical contradiction.

"But how would he both give us free will and make us happy?" is not a relevant question. We don't know how he could give us free will at all. We don't know how he created the universe by an act of will. We don't know how he fed the multitude with seven loaves and seven fishes. We don't know god does any miracle---not one of them. Therefore one cannot make one miracle among many seem implausible by asking how god would do it. "It would take a miracle," is all the answer there can be. The alternative is to conclude that god cannot do any miracles that we can't explain. Since we can't explain any miracle, this would amount to believing that the "traditional Abrahamic god" does not exist.

So, if we don't want to abandon the Abrahamic god, we have to say god can do miracles that don't make sense to us. In which case, "How could god give us free will and still make us happy?" is an irrelevant question. If it doesn't make sense, that may be what makes it a miracle. If it isn't a logical contradiction, that means it something an omnipotent god can do.

Which returns us to the problem of evil (PoE): So long as some people are unhappy, we know that the omnipotent and omnibenevolent god of Abrahamic tradition does not exist. An omnipotent god could make everyone happy, and an omnibenevolent god would make us happy if he could. The Christians, therefore, have demoted their god from true-omnipotent to punk-omnipotent for nothing. The one is just as impossible as the other.

We know that impossible things don't exist. The traditional Abrahamic god is impossible. He is as impossible as a good driver who hits every car he passes, as impossible as a perfect marksman who never hits anything he shoots at, as impossible, even, as a merciful god who tortures people forever.

1. We know that the traditional Abrahamic god is impossible.
2. We know that impossible things don't exist.
3. Therefore, we know that the traditional Abrahamic god does not exist.

Conclusion:
It is illogical to believe the traditional Abrahamic god exists. It is also illogical to believe that we don't have grounds for taking a position. What is logical is the belief that the traditional Abrahamic god does not exist.

crc

[Tsurmon]

I was born a Christian. That is, both my father and mother were Christians, my grandfather was a deacon at our local church, and my father even preached there occasionally. I believe I was saved--that is, asked Jesus to forgive my sins and not send me to hell--at the age of four. At twelve, I began to have my doubts about Christianity, due in part to the large amount of reading I was doing, in particular Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein. This lead me to struggle for a year or so with some difficult theological questions, like the goodness of God, the existence of Hell, and all that. After that, I became an atheist. I told no one, and I attended church three times a week right up until I left for college. I have, for the past year of so, chosen agnosticism for my chosen faith. Or rather, lack of faith. First, I must be clear on my definition of agnosticism, which is:
“The belief that there is no proof either that God exists or that God does not exist, and that such judgments require a leap of faith.� Of course, an agnostic is then one who doesn’t take a leap of faith.

Now, most people--well, how would I know, but I assume most people--consider agnostics to be lazy atheists, or a less radical version of atheism. Sometimes, but not always true. Just because an agnostic lacks faith, doesn’t mean that one has no opinions. An agnostic looks at a religion, for instance, Christianity, and they consider it is perfectly possible that Christians are and have been right all along, although very doubtful, and yet still entertain the notion that the whole thing is nonsense. Both are possible in the mind of an agnostic.

However, this doesn’t rob the agnostic of opinions. Agnostics just have two for each religion. For instance, if Christianity is right, I still wouldn’t follow it because the idea of a vengeful god tossing most of his created world sounds horrible to me, and at least in Hell I could converse with Socrates, Twain, Heinlein, and all those other great guys and gals. If it’s wrong, then so much the better, though it doesn’t tell just who is right.

Here, the agnostic holds an advantage over the atheist. An atheist must rely on his own faith that science is right and religion is wrong. This forces him or her to focus on the evidence of their stance. Since no amount of evidence will ever settle the question--well, short of God actually appearing and saying “I told you so!�, though even that could be rigged by aliens I suppose--atheists are locked in an eternal debate with theists over who is right and who is wrong.

An agnostic on the other hand says, “Yes, you might be right. I may very well be on my way to hell in a hand basket. However, until you prove your theory, I have no reason to believe you are right.� And in some cases, “…and, even if you are right, I still wouldn’t follow your religion.�

You see, an agnostic doesn’t have to bother with the question of burden of proof. Theists and atheists both try and place the burden of proof on the other, but is impossible to place it upon an agnostic since they ARE the ones with the proof since their proof lies in the fact that neither atheists or theists have any irrefutable proof.

One of the key principles of agnosticism is lack of faith. We are true skeptics. The theist believes that their blind faith is the greatest attainable virtue. For instance, the only thing you have to do in Christianity to get into heaven is believe in Jesus. That’s it. All other morals are irrelevant in deciding whether or not your going heaven. Personally, I think this is just stupid.

Faith is belief in something you have no proof for, which is ironic since so many Christians want to prove that their religion is the One. If Christians found proof, then faith, their greatest virtue, would become obsolete, a neat little paradox right there. Since faith in Jesus is the one thing that will surely get you into heaven, if you knew for a fact that every word in the bible was true because you were there and saw it for yourself, had then had a near death experience where you visited heaven, woke up with a golden harp in your hands and a magical bread loaf that could feed thousands, and could see thousands of angels and miracles happening all around you, it wouldn’t become a matter of faith. It would be common sense. With proof, the Christian religion’s very moral code would be shattered.

For now though, there is no proof, so Christians must rely on Faith. The only problem is that their faith is based on just an idea. Other people have different ideas which they also have no proof of. Since neither side can be confirmed, convincing one party that the other is wrong is difficult, if not impossible. What’s more, only one faith can be right and all the other ones are wrong. Further, none of us might be right. So, faith is a flip of the coin; no, not even that. It‘s more like a throw of a die with an infinite number of sides and believing that your number will come up. If you happen to believe in the wrong thing, your blind faith avails you nothing, and you won’t know you were wrong until it is too late. Of course, it isn’t actually hazardous until you start acting on that faith, betting on your number of the infinite sided die. Faith in Allah led the hijackers of 9/11. It led the Germans to try and eradicate the Jews. It has been responsible for more wars and more death than any other cause.

Atheists too have faith, though it is mixed in with science and actual evidence. The atheist assumes that the only world that exists is that which they are able to perceive. Throughout history, this kind of logic has been proven wrong. For instance, people used to think the world was flat. Since it looked mostly flat, not round, this was the accepted idea. It fit in with their primitive logic as well; after all, if the earth were round, wouldn’t the people on the bottom fall? The would go to their graves believing that the earth was flat. However, no matter how much these men of science believed, the earth was still round. The human senses are limited. The human brain is capable of error. We’ve yet to step outside of our solar system and our understanding of reality can be limited at best. We’ve come along way, but there just because we think the Big Bang created the universe, doesn’t make it so. Some many years from now, that theory could be shattered, to be replaced by an old one.

That isn’t to say that agnostics have a problem with science. Science is great. I love science. Today’s science is built upon rational facts and observations that are entirely consistent and make perfect sense, and just because an agnostic believes that it is impossible to know everything doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try.

To finish, let me present you with an analogy that I think very well sums up the three sides of this debate:

A theist, an atheist, and an agnostic peer into a dark room. The room is pitch black and it is impossible to make anything out within it. The theist presumes the room is full of monsters or maybe a chair, and the atheist assumes that since they can see nothing in the room, there isn’t anything in the room. Should the light be turned on in the room, the atheist would correct that assumption, and so will the theist, unless they insist that there were monsters and that they are just hiding, but so long as it is shrouded in darkness, they will hold fast too it.

The agnostic sees the room and realizes that they have no idea what is in the room. It is pitch black, they can’t see what’s in it, so it would be impossible to figure out what is in the room. The theist and atheist might argue whether or not there is anything in the room, yet it is impossible argue with the agnostic since he or she says that either one of them might be right.

Well, that about wraps up my opening comments. Short, yes, I know. Word Count says I still have 509 words left. Oh well, cut me some slack, eh? I’ve been a theist and an atheist 12 and 6 times longer than I’ve been an agnostic. That, and this is my first debate. Eh…best shut up now and wait for the rebuttal…

[Tsurmon]

First off, let me apologize for not thanking anyone in my opening remark. I am new to this, and the matter simply slipped my mind. In any case, I’d like to thank both Ravi and Wiploc for taking part in this debate, nightshade for moderating, and the IIDB in general for being just so cool. Now then, onto business! Great opening remarks, guys, though as I expected you seem to be going at each other rather than me, which is making things a bit easier for myself in some ways, and harder in others. I feel like a devil’s advocate, but that’s cool.

To RaviZachariasFan:

“Entropy is the exploration of the general “winding down� of the universe, the randomness and the dispersion of the universe from organization to nothingness basically. Now anything that has a beginning has an end. To flip that anything with an end has a beginning. Anything with a beginning has a Cause. Therefore what caused the universe? The first logical roadblock for theism is of course what caused God? To that I say that God created time and the universe and is independent of the laws that govern that plane. He is transcendent of it and therefore is not in it. Now while that can’t be proven with figures and measurements it is the only logical explanation for the universe being in existence in my opinion. The universe is heading to an end at some point. Most scientists agree that the stars are expanding from one another and the universe is expanding into basically nothing. To me the universe is like a person. It started small and has expanded and grown more and more with the passing of time but make no mistake it had an origin point. With an origin you must have a cause and the universe it seems to me requires a cause. It seems to me that God is the only logical cause that can be found for the universe.�

-RaviZachariasFan

Here you explain that the most logical explanation for the universe is that God created it. Possible. However, what makes the abrahamic God the God that created the universe? Isn’t it equally possible that the Hindu God Siva is the creator? Or any other God of any other religion for that matter? Simply saying that science can’t explain the creation of the universe doesn’t mean that that your chosen religion does.

Next, your talk about love. Basically, you say that humans, unlike all other animals, have love and that there is no possible explanation for it except the God of Abraham. Again, here I could simply say that some other God could very well have created love, not yours. In fact, I just did. However, let me go further:

What about love strikes you as being so divine? We have opposable thumbs, and other animals don’t. We have massive intellects, which other animals don’t--well, possibly dolphins, but we still have thumbs. There are thousands of traits unique to the humans that separate us from the animals. Of course, there are thousands of traits that separate the platypus from other animals too.

Logically, love is based upon the two driving factors in all humans: Sex and Survival. We care about our lovers because they give us sex, we care about our children because they ensure the survival of our species, we even care about other people because it normally has a pay off.
Finally, morality. Something you said struck me as interesting.

“Conscience and morality say “are you nuts?� Now animal’s go by instinct. I mean we rarely speak of animals being tortured by their conscience.�
-RaviZachariasFan

True, animals normally don’t struggle. However, maybe it is the opposite. Maybe they don’t struggle because their vision is clear and they know what is right and wrong in their own mind. Animals don’t go to war with each other, rape is impossible in mammals since females give off a scent and the males oblige, stealing doesn’t work with a society that owns nothing. Morally, animals seem to be much better off than man.

“Theism posits that God gave man morality and conscience because love can’t be given without them. That conscience and morality were bestowed to help man live peacefully and justly with one another.�
-RaviZachariasFan

Here, though, one must ask, if your God gave us all of these things, why so much murder, rape, war, and just suffering in general amongst men? Surely if we had been divinely imbued with such traits they would have more than a little importance. Also, why is this morality so fickle? Just look at the viewpoints of conservatism and liberalism. They disagree on tons of issues: abortion, gay marriage, taxing the rich, etc. Both say that they are right and that the other is wrong, and they mean this in a completely moral sense. If our sense of right and wrong is divine, how could there be so many disagreements about it?

Well then, onto Wiploc’s opening statements.

On Goodness and the Unknown Purpose Defense

During this section, Wiploc proposes that since God is so powerful and so good, why does he not actively make people happy? An easy argument would be that when Adam and Eve--not Adam and Steve mind you! That never happened--were banished from the garden of Eden, God made sure there would be plenty of suffering for them from then on. Then, there is the whole concept of hell. Lots of suffering there. Really, the God of Abraham doesn’t strike me as being good or kind or benevolent. He has a full range of emotions, though he does seem to lean a bit to the whole suffering thing. In any case, what makes you think that if God existed, he would have to be benevolent? Why not spiteful?

It is true that most Christians try and present their God as being kind and benevolent, but the Bible has countless contradictions that seem to say otherwise. If you proved that God wasn’t benevolent, you are left with the choice that he either doesn’t exist or does exist and isn’t benevolent. Your logic is:

1. If God exists, he must be benevolent.
2. Therefore, if he is not benevolent, he does not exist.
Circular logic never works.

On Omnipotence, and the Free Will Defense.

This one is rather easy. You say it is illogical for God to be both omnipotent and totally good. Since God wants all people to happy, and has the means to do so, he should logically do that. For him not to would defy logic. Now, how could someone defy logic? He would have to be…oh yes! Omnipotent. I never agreed to the whole distinction in omnipotence, because I’m not faced with the problem of an omnipotent and benevolent God, so logical contradictions are perfectly possible.

You say that God is able to give us free will and make us happy and the same time, and yet we have free will but aren’t happy, so God doesn’t exist. Who is to say that God doesn’t want us to be happy? What if he takes pleasure in our suffering? Then, using your own logic, God able to give us free will and make us suffer. We have free will and suffer. Therefore, God must exist.

Oh my, this one is even shorter than my last one…

Oh well, I think I covered the important details. Thanks again for this debate; I can’t wait to see your next posts!

[Common_Cents]

To Wiploc,
First we need to define “Good�. I reject the notion that good is simply making people happy for one particular moment at one particular time. A crack addict will be happy with his fix but is that fix “good’ for him? The problem with Wiploc’s entire argument is that it seems to suggest good as instant gratification. That somehow ever being unhappy automatically disproves and discredits God. That being happy in one moment at one time is being good. Good is a long term thing. If an action is long term a positive contribution to your life then it is good. Getting a crack addict in detox where he will suffer painful withdrawals and cravings will be evil and bad to him in the short term but in the long term it will save his life. Is it therefore evil to detox him since he won’t be “happy� for a time? Of course not because you have a long term view of what is taking place. To say that the Abrahamic God can’t exist because omnibenevolence is contradicted by people being unhappy is a fallacy.

Another thing I find interesting in Wiploc’s definition of good is that in it he defines what Evil would be. He is illustrating that to have one you have to have the other. You cannot have good without evil. It isn’t good unless a counterbalance exists. Never in the Abrahamic God view is there a notion that God can be evil so this assumption that the Abrahamic God can do anything is wrong. God CANNOT do evil.

As stated evil must exist for good to exist therefore if good exists then bad must exist. However with the human body pain is not always a bad thing and unhappiness isn’t always a bad thing. Without pain you could fall asleep in a fire and perish in flames. Pain sensors alert you to this and you can avoid further damage. You touch a hot stove as a child and you pull back instantly because of pain. Unhappiness or evil can be used to shock you into the right path. Again the true test of good isn’t that you are happy at one moment at one particular time. The true test of good is the overall progression and effect it has on your life from the moment it happens.

Also for Good and Evil to exist you must have choice. If man can’t choose then man can’t be good or evil. Unless you are a free moral agent in this existence then you can’t be considered Good or Evil. We don’t think of a gun as evil but the operator for the gun has no say in how it is used. What is the significance of this? Choice begs free will and choice can’t be tampered with or it is useless. Therefore the Abrahamic God in his benevolence wished man to experience goodness or happiness that required evil and choice. Good can’t exist without both choice and evil so God gave them all 3 in his wish for man to be happy.

The obvious next line is that God can just break logic. That if God is truly all powerful then he could break logic and make logic so man wouldn’t be bound by choice and evil. Again that is if you want instant gratification and robots. God is interested in true happiness and true good where man is good and happy in the long term. God can’t do evil because he said he wouldn’t. He isn’t bound by anything but his word therefore he limited himself but once he limited himself he is bound to uphold it.

I’ll conclude by saying that Wiploc did assert in his definition of good a definition of its opposite trait evil. He then said that the mere existence of evil demands that God couldn’t exist if God is benevolent. Hopefully this post will help you to see that Good requires evil and choice to exist and that a omnibenevolent God in his search for happiness accepted the other two that came along with it and indeed it was necessary. It certainly doesn’t disprove his existence and logically it makes sense that Good not only requires Evil but that both require choice that can’t be trampled.

So let’s see:

1. Good isn’t measured by instant gratification.
2. Good can’t exist without Evil.
3. Good can’t exist without choice.
4. Since Good and Evil are intrinsic unhappiness is bound to happen.
5. Unhappiness can be a good thing.
6. God can’t take away evil or choice without removing Good with it.
7. God is good but can’t be evil.
8. God can’t do ANYTHING.
9. God can’t take away choice/free will without violating his benevolent want for humans to be happy/good.

To Tsurmon,
The analogy you used is really not a great one for this debate IMHO. For the room isn’t completely dark. We have much light on many sides. While we don’t have the whole puzzle we don’t have a blank slate either. Let me try an analogy on you for a moment.


An atheist, agnostic, and a theist walk in a busy diner. They sit down and no one comes to wait on them. They wait for a while and still no service. The atheist says that they should leave. He says that it is obvious that no one is going to serve them and for proof he cites the long wait with no one appearing and that he hasn’t seen a waiter in 20 minutes. It is logical says the atheist to assume that if they were coming they would have already been there. The theist says that considering the location, the people eating, and the hectic atmosphere that it is logical to assume that service is available although it isn’t in the timely manner we would like. That however is no reason to assume that no service possibility exists. The agnostic says that a long wait without service isn’t compelling enough evidence to assume that no service is forthcoming and that the location and proof of eating people is in no way a reason to assume that service does exist. However he doesn’t offer any reason why he thinks neither of his colleagues are right thus really isn’t saying anything at all other than that he can’t make up his mind.

On my initial post I was attempting to make headway into God as a logical position. To further that I would like to say that atheistic evolution states that Chance+Matter+Time=Everything. Three variables that are constantly changing can’t give you something absolute. Therefore atheism can’t have absolutes. Therefore if you believe in atheism you can’t be too sure that it is true since your belief excludes absolutes even the absolute that there is no absolutes. So does the world have absolutes? I think that is easily proven by the fact that Non-Contradiction, and Cause and Effect are both absolutely true. You can’t have something that violates Non-Contradiction. Either something is true or it is false it can’t be true and false at the same time. An effect demands a cause absolutely. These are two absolutes and they show that atheism’s lack of absolutes is a lack of logic. The atheist is then forced to either say that 3 distinct varying entities added together can give you an absolute or they must disprove that absolutes exist. It is a case of setting the facts to fit your opinion instead of setting your opinion to fit the facts. So:

1. Atheism requires the lack of absolutes.
2. The world has absolutes.
3. Atheism is illogical since it doesn’t coincide with the facts.

[wiploc]

Ravi's first cause argument:

I'm trying to make Ravi's first cause argument rigorous enough to refute. Untangled, it goes something like this:

1. The universe (being everything) cannot be caused by something else.
2. Therefore the universe cannot logically have been caused.

3. But, entropy increases, therefore the universe will end.
4. Anything that ends begins.
5. Anything that begins is caused.
6. Therefore the universe must have been caused.

7. Therefore, the universe must be caused, but not logically caused.
8. Therefore, the universe must be caused by something illogical.
9. God is illogical.
10. Therefore, god---the only stipulated-illogical thing in this argument---must have caused the universe!

That's his position, as best I can make it out. Doubtless I got parts wrong, but not out of malice. We'll have to let Ravi tell us which parts I screwed up. My reactions to this interpretation of Ravi's argument:

1. Stipulated.
2. This assumes that causes precede effects. Ravi, please take a position on this issue. Do causes necessarily precede effects? Or could the beginning of the universe be caused by a later event like some 25th century lab experiment? Because if causes do precede effects, and if time is part of the universe, then the universe cannot have a cause, divine or otherwise; and if causes don't necessarily precede effects, then the beginning of the universe can be caused by some later event. Neither alternative provides an argument for god.
3. Non seqitur: Increasing entropy does not entail an end of time.
4. Non seqitur: Ends don't imply beginnings.
5. Beginnings do not necessarily imply causation.
6. If it would take a miracle to cause the universe, and would also take a miracle for the universe to be uncaused, how can you conclude that one is more likely than the other?
7. You can't use contradictions in a logical argument.
8. See #7.
9. Stipulated.
10. That's not logical.

Ravi, I'm assuming I made misrepresentations in the above restatement of your position. I invite you to use my errors as an opportunity to correct me, to clarify your position.

But note: Your first cause argument looks to me irredeemable. There's no way you can save every step of it; and every step of a logical argument has to work. You would do better to abandon this in favor of a better argument, if better arguments exist.



We are the only creatures that we know of that are so driven and held by love.

You should meet my dogs.



The God of the Bible proclaims himself to be Love …

The bible---shot thru with self-contradiction---is evidence of nothing.



... He made man in His own image thus passing love to us.

This "made in his own image" stuff never did make sense. The obvious meaning is that we look like him. Since we don't look like each other, that meaning is false. Since the claim is false on its face, Christians strain for an interpretation that can be "true" in some distorted sense. Thus the notion that we are "in god's image" mentally. But god is timeless, ubiquitous, transcendent, unknowable, etcetera. According to Christians, god is infinitely unlike us. Therefore, to pick any particular trait, and to claim that we share that trait with god because we are "made in his image" is an inherently arbitrary move.



If not from God where did Love come from?

If not from a bicycle, where did love come from? Notice that your argument is no stronger than mine. An argument that is no stronger than its contrary has no logical or persuasive value.



Without a self aware being how did love derive?

Same response. You can't pretend to be persuasive by putting your conclusions in question form and hoping everyone just goes along with them. If there is no reason to believe there is a god, then there is no reason to believe god created love.

Note also that the form of your argument is self-defeating because it can be turned around: "If he isn't a fiction created by people, where did god come from?" You can't answer that any better than I can answer your questions. If an unanswerable question is to be taken as proof, then I have just proved that god is a fiction created by people.



God can often seem irrational from our perspective.

Either we can make logical arguments about god or we can't. It will never make sense to say that god is logical enough for you to make claims about him, but not logical enough for me to refute them.



Again without God where did morality and conscience derive?

This is a repeat of your love argument. If you can name anything I can't explain, love, conscience, whatever, you think you get to assign a random origin to it---and you pick god! But you can't explain love or conscience either, and you wouldn't let me say that means they came from marmosets. Your argument is no stronger than contrary arguments; therefore it is without logical or persuasive value.

My argument, on the other hand, the PoE (problem of evil) argument, is irrefutable: I have delivered a conclusive and bulletproof case proving that the Abrahamic god does not exist.

Consider this question, Ravi: Why are you using bad and hopeless arguments to do Christian apologetics? It's not because you want to be unpersuasive. It must be because you don't know any good arguments. People with good arguments don't use bad arguments. If you had good arguments, you would be using them. Christianity has had 2000 years to come up with a good argument. It has networks of clubs, churches, radio and TV stations, and the internet to promulgate that good argument if they had it. So I think it is logical to conclude, at least tentatively, that Christianity has no good arguments. If they had one, you'd have heard of it. If you'd heard it, you would be using it.

Atheism, then is a fair and logical response to the arguments you have made in this debate.




First, I must be clear on my definition of agnosticism, which is:
“The belief that there is no proof either that God exists or that God does not exist,

In my opening statement, I used the PoE to prove that an omniscient, omnipotent, omnibenevolent god does not exist because it cannot exist. If you are agnostic about that god, you are wrong, and you have been proven to be wrong.

The Pharaohs of Egypt, on the other hand, definitely did exist. Therefore, it is obvious and proven that some gods do exist and some gods don't. Therefore, the agnostic position, as you have defined it, seems unsalvageable.

This current debate is specifically about the Abrahamic god, the omniscient, omnipotent, omnibenevolent god. That god has been shown not to exist. Therefore, as regards that god, the atheist position is logically impeccable, and the agnostic position is clearly wrong.



Of course, an agnostic is then one who doesn’t take a leap of faith.

You make such leaps many times a day. Is your home where you left it? Is your family still alive. Do your car brakes still work? Has the rest of the world switched to red-for-go and green-for-stop? Is there a lion in your bathtub that disappears each time you go into the bathroom but which will one day eat you instead of disappearing? You may be technically agnostic on such issues, but you are emotionally a believer. You have beliefs. You act based on your beliefs.

The Abrahamic god has been shown not to exist, but there are many other gods who will greatly punish your non-belief if they exist. You don't lose a moment's sleep over them, I assume. Pascal's wager gives you no indigestion, am I right?

There are many many things where agnosticism would seem to be theoretically defensible, but where active disbelief is the fruit of a healthy and logical mind. Easter bunnies and Jehovah-like gods are among those things. It makes as much sense to assume that Jehovah-like gods don't exist as it does to assume that there is no lion in your bathtub.

Atheism, therefore, is proven to be true with regard to Jehovah himself, and is a healthy and logical attitude towards gods who are similar to Jehovah.

If agnosticism conflicted with atheism, if it said one should withhold opinions about all things unproven, then agnosticism would be dysfunctional and paralyzing---and illogical.



For instance, if Christianity is right, I still wouldn’t follow it because the idea of a vengeful god tossing most of his created world sounds horrible to me

Admit it: an all-good god cannot also be vengeful and vicious: the Abrahamic god is logically impossible.



An agnostic on the other hand says, “Yes, you might be right. I may very well be on my way to hell in a hand basket. However, until you prove your theory, I have no reason to believe you are right.�

That is my position as an atheist. I have no reason to believe the Christians are right; and, given the absurdity of their arguments, it is a reasonable working premise---a reasonable tentatively-held belief---that they are wrong.



Of course, it isn’t actually hazardous until you start acting on that faith, betting on your number of the infinite sided die.

I like your analogy. Now ask a mathematician whether he believes that you would not roll a seven on the first roll of an infinity-sided die. According to your own analogy, there is as much reason to believe that the Abrahamic god does not exist as there is to believe that a single cast of an infinity-sided die will not produce a seven. Withholding belief in the face of infinity-to-one odds is not the mark of superior logic.



The atheist assumes that the only world that exists is that which they are able to perceive.

Nonsense. Blasphemy. "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy."



A theist, an atheist, and an agnostic peer into a dark room. The room is pitch black and it is impossible to make anything out within it. The theist presumes the room is full of monsters or maybe a chair...

I like this analogy too. But remember, we are dealing with the Abrahamic god---not with monsters and chairs. So: you and Ravi and I are peering into a darkened room. Ravi says the room contains a just god who casts people into eternal hellfire, an unchanging god who repents, a logical god who can be seen but cannot be seen, a truthful god who is the author of lies, a loving god who invented sin, a miracle-throwing god who can't reconcile free will with happiness, an omnipotent god who can't defeat iron chariots, an omnipresent timeless god who walks in a garden and gets around by elevator, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.

The atheist doesn't know what's in the room, but he knows we can fairly assume that the room doesn't contain the self-contradiction described by the theist.

And the agnostic? If he disagrees with the atheist on this point, then logic is against him.



Conclusion:

1. Ravi's theistic assertion, that there might be some kind of a creator god, is not a defense of the Abrahamic god, and is not logically defended.

2. Tsurmon's agnostic position might be put this way: we should never form any opinions based on less than absolute proof; therefore we should not have opinions about unproven Jehovah. This form of agnosticism is wrong both in the general and the specific cases. Reasonable people do opine on less than proof; and Jehovah is proven not to exist.

3. As the PoE irrefutably proves, the Abrahamic god is a logical contradiction. It does not exist because it cannot exist.

crc

[wiploc]

Part One: Reply to RaviZachariasFan

To Wiploc,
First we need to define “Good”.


I did that: Good is that which makes people happy. This is the traditional meaning of the word.

You, on the other hand, after saying we need to define the word, have failed to offer a definition. Indeed, you have conformed to my usage: good is that which makes people happy. You did point out that things can be both good and evil, causes of both happiness and unhappiness. You are clear on your point---with which I entirely agree---that something which causes more happiness than unhappiness is still a net good even if it isn't a pure good. Further, something which causes a small happiness is still a minor good even though it isn't an infinite good. None of this serves to refute anything I said: an omnibenevolent god wouldn't settle for just long term happiness if it could also achieve short term happiness; and an omnipotent god could achieve both.




I reject the notion that good is simply making people happy for one particular moment at one particular time.

Me too. An infinitely good omnipotent god would make people happy all the time: not just short term, not just long term, all the time. Such a god does not exist.



Good is a long term thing. If an action is long term a positive contribution to your life then it is good. Getting a crack addict in detox where he will suffer painful withdrawals and cravings will be evil and bad to him in the short term but in the long term it will save his life. Is it therefore evil to detox him since he won’t be “happy” for a time?

God is like a painful detox? That god could exist. It is the Abrahamic god who cannot exist, the one who, like a painless detox, causes both long term and short term happiness. The Abrahamic god is not a mix of good and evil, but rather purely, totally, and infinitely good.



You cannot have good without evil.

Nonsense. That's like saying you can't have dark without light. If there wasn't any light, it would be dark. There is no reason in the world to think that an omnipotent god couldn't create happiness without unhappiness. If he couldn't, he wouldn't be omnipotent.



... pain is not always a bad thing and unhappiness isn’t always a bad thing.

God is like a painful dentist? He causes unhappiness now in order to cause greater happiness later? Again, this god could exist, but this god isn't omnipotent. Dentists cause short-term pain because---lacking omnipotence---they cannot achieve their long-term goodness without causing short-term unhappiness. Face it, if your dentist was omnipotent so he didn't have to cause pain, and if he still caused you that pain---just for his own pleasure---he'd be a really bad dentist.



Also for Good and Evil to exist you must have choice.

Nonsense. If god created us directly into Hellfire, we would be unhappy. Choice doesn't come into it.



If man can’t choose then man can’t be good or evil.

This doesn't make sense. Perhaps you are confusing evil with sin? There are people who believe that sin requires free will (though that would make the story of Eve and the apple problematic) but this doesn't bear on our discussion.



… the Abrahamic God in his benevolence wished man to experience goodness or happiness that required evil and choice. Good can’t exist without both choice and evil so God gave them all 3 in his wish for man to be happy.

Ah, the free will defense. The free will defense fails because unhappiness---not free will---is the opposite of happiness. Since free will is not the opposite of happiness, even a punk-omnipotent god could make people both free willed and happy. (It might take a miracle, but that's what gods are good at.) If a god couldn't make people both happy and free willed, then he wouldn't be omnipotent, and he wouldn't be the Abrahamic god.




The obvious next line is that God can just break logic.

I'm not clear on whether you are actually taking this position. If you are, it is self defeating: A true-omnipotent god could make people both happy and free willed, even if that involved a logical contradiction---which it doesn't.




2. Good can’t exist without Evil.
3. Good can’t exist without choice.
4. Since Good and Evil are intrinsic unhappiness is bound to happen.
6. God can’t take away evil or choice without removing Good with it.
7. God is good but can’t be evil.
9. God can’t take away choice/free will without violating his benevolent want for humans to be happy/good.


Numbers 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, and 9 assume that god isn't omnipotent. That's my job, to show that the omnipotent omnibenevolent god doesn't exist, but you are doing it for me.




An atheist, agnostic, and a theist walk in a busy diner. They sit down and no one comes to wait on them. They wait for a while and still no service. The atheist says that they should leave. He says that it is obvious that no one is going to serve them and for proof he cites the long wait with no one appearing and that he hasn’t seen a waiter in 20 minutes. It is logical says the atheist to assume that if they were coming they would have already been there.

I don't have to show that there is no waiter at all; I need only show that there's no Abrahamic waiter: It is totally obvious that this place doesn't have omni-quick service. There shouldn't be any dispute on that issue.



… atheistic evolution states that Chance+Matter+Time=Everything. Three variables that are constantly changing can’t give you something absolute. Therefore atheism can’t have absolutes.

This doesn't make enough sense to be refuted logically, so I'll just dump a jumble of disordered refutational moves: Evolution is no more atheistic than gravity is. Atheism doesn't deny "absolutes." Atheism doesn't say everything is made of time, chance, and matter. Atheism doesn't say "everything" is a constant. If time, chance, and matter are always changing as you say, isn't that already an absolute? You won't find a mathematician or logician who'll say variables can't make a constant.





Part Two: Reply to Tsurmon


… what makes you think that if God existed, he would have to be benevolent? Why not spiteful?

I'm only arguing that the Abrahamic god doesn't exist.




It is true that most Christians try and present their God as being kind and benevolent, but the Bible has countless contradictions that seem to say otherwise.

Agreed. But since they are contradictions, they can't be true. If you want to say that the Abrahamic god is all-good and part evil, I'll go along with you---but that's still a contradiction, so he still doesn't exist.



If you proved that God wasn’t benevolent, you are left with the choice that he either doesn’t exist or does exist and isn’t benevolent. Your logic is:

1. If God exists, he must be benevolent.
2. Therefore, if he is not benevolent, he does not exist.
Circular logic never works.

Try it this way:

1. The Abrahamic god is "perfect" (omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent).
2. Therefore, any god who's not perfect is not the Abrahamic god.
3. A perfect god cannot logically exist if suffering exists.
4. Suffering exists.
5. Therefore, a perfect god does not exist.
6. Therefore, the Abrahamic god does not exist.

Technically, I suppose you could argue that all the gods of Genesis are "Abrahamic," though some of them resemble the modern god of Christians no more than rhubarb resembles rutabaga. I understand us to be debating the existence of the god that most modern Jews, Christians, and Muslims would recognize. With regard to all other "gods," I point out that the more god-like they are, the less likely they are, and the more likely they are, the less godlike they are: Anything unlikely enough to be plausibly called "god" is presumptively non-existent.

Further, agnosticism is not the normal reaction to strange propositions. Maybe I don't really know my name; maybe I'll grow six inches tonight; maybe the moon has turned to green cheese since the last visit of the astronauts; maybe a sandworm from Dune will swallow my house next time I go inside it; maybe we were all created five minutes ago with all memories intact; maybe I'm the only person who exists and I'm just imagining everyone else; maybe I'm trapped in the Matrix; maybe the Easter bunny exists; and maybe a deviant variation on the standard Abrahamic god exists. These are all possibly true but presumptively false. If you didn't form beliefs on such things---if you walked around with no beliefs in your head---you wouldn't be rational. Yes, you can pick any one of those questions and study it until you achieve agnosticism, but you can't do it with all of them. Atheism is the default position on all of these questions; it is the fruit of rational minds.

The standard Abrahamic god (omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent) does not exist. Maybe some deviant version exists; you can withhold belief on that if you want to. But withholding belief on that is no more logical than withholding belief on whether Thor and the Easter bunny exist.

The agnostic's burden in this debate is to show that it is more logical, more reasonable, to not form an opinion than to form an opinion. You can't do that. It would be as hard to show that we shouldn't have opinions on deviant Abrahamic gods as it would be to show that we shouldn't have opinions about Thor and the Easter bunny. (Admitting that our opinions might be wrong, is a different thing than not forming opinions.)



<snip> I never agreed to the whole distinction in omnipotence, because I’m not faced with the problem of an omnipotent and benevolent God, so logical contradictions are perfectly possible.

In which case, nothing---not even logic---could keep an omnipotent omnibenevolent god from making everyone happy all the time. We know for a fact, therefore, that such a god does not exist.
[/quote]



You say that God is able to give us free will and make us happy and the same time, and yet we have free will but aren’t happy, so God doesn’t exist. Who is to say that God doesn’t want us to be happy? What if he takes pleasure in our suffering?

What if the omnibenevolent god doesn't exist? Then the Abrahamic god doesn't exist.

Yes, but what if some other god exists? Then he isn't the Abrahamic god.

Yes, but what if he is, you know, godlike in some way, and I still want to call him Abrahamic for some reason? Then the "perfect" Abrahamic god still doesn't exist, and there is no more reason to believe in your "imperfect" Abrahamic god than in the Easter bunny.

Yes, but what if I want to be agnostic about this imperfect "Abrahamic" god? That's your choice. It won't be any harder than being agnostic about the Easter bunny. But Easter bunny atheism is still the obvious default position, as is atheism with regard to deviant versions of the Abrahamic god.






Summary:

A mildly good god, one who is interested in long term happiness but not short term happiness, is theoretically possible. But he is not the Abrahamic god. And there is no reason to think he exists. Nor is there any more reason to withhold belief in this god than in Thor or the Easter bunny. With regard to the Abrahamic god, Atheism makes sense; agnosticism is marginal; theism is unjustifiable.

[KnightWhoSaysNi]

RaviZachariasFan and Tsurmon,

I'd like to remind you that the deadline to submit your next statements has passed. However, as the rules permit, you'll have a 3 day grace period, extending the deadline to Oct. 20.

Thank you for your consideration,

- NS, FD Moderator

[Common_Cents]

Wiploc,

Cause must predate effect. I stick my hand in the fire and it burns me. I don’t get burned and then stick my hand in the fire. Logically cause must predate the effect. The universe is the same way. What must be presented by the atheist is a model where effect predates the cause. Then we can work from there. Until then we must work from the notion that Cause leads to Effect. The universe as it stands is an effect without a cause and based on what we know to be true that is illogical. God makes it logical. You get a transcendent being that creates both the universe and time. Now the thing here is that I have yet to hear causation from you. You give me an alternative to examine. God as it stands isn’t lacking on explanation. In an issue as key as this one we need an alternative. You seem to posit that God is not a good answer/cause so I would like to know what cause you posit or why you don’t require one. Of course God has merit as an answer. God gives you a transcendent independent cause that you need. Outside of that there is no model presented that can explain how this universe came about.


1. Every effect requires a cause..
2. Cause predates effect.
3. The universe needs a cause.
4. The universe needs an independent source from which to derive.
5. Atheists must present a cause for the universe or explain away the need for one.

Far be it from me to question your pets but I would examine whether they love you or what you do for them. There is a difference.

I think you misunderstand the made in his image statement. Man like God knows right from wrong. Man like God can Love. Man is a smaller version. We aren’t exact clones but we share many of his traits. We are his children. Children aren’t their parents but they are in the image of their parents right down to reflecting their actions at times. To say Man is made in God’s image is to say we share some of his traits.

Let’s look at this, for you say that if not from a bicycle where did love come from and then say that has no less merit than me positing that an all loving God created it. My argument has much more merit. The bicycle or any other benign inanimate object being the origin point of something as profound as love is indefensible. Love exists. Love deeply effects and drives mankind. It most definitely must be explained. If you can so flippantly say that conscience, morality, and love could come from anything is to greatly devalue their importance in this debate. Let’s compare our differing views of their origin.

I offer a self aware all loving being that gave the gift of love out of his benevolence for our species. You offer nothing to explain it and say that you can substitute “frying pan” in the place of God and it has no less merit. That is insane to me and it might be a big reason why atheism is followed by only 5% give or take of the globe’s population. Not trying to help you gain converts but people need cause. People require a reason for things to happen which is something atheism has to this point proven inadequate at providing. Why is it illogical to posit that a bicycle or random object is a possible origin of love, conscience, and morality? Because they are transcendent of this universe. All three are in this world but clearly not of it. As evidence just look at how they defy the universe they are in. Morality and Conscience are diametrically opposed to instinct and nature. What feels good is rarely what your conscience and morals will teach. When someone betrays you it is nature and instinct to turn your back but love for some reason refuses to abide by this. You have to make an effort to love and be moral. It isn’t a natural state. It is their but it is fighting constantly against nature. Those three giant facts of life which are morality, conscience, and love are not of this world so it is logical to assume that something outside of it provided them. I know the position of atheism is that since the theist is making the positive argument they must only deflate their argument and they have won. But if you want to do away with theism you must offer alternatives. To simply say the other side is wrong and offer no other view is useless. Ross Perot was great at listing the problems of America he just didn’t have any answers. If atheism would like to become the prevailing view and cast aside God you must offer a cause for the universe, love, morals, and conscience or explain away cause completely. For as it stands God is the only option a logical person can take in my view. Atheism hasn’t given me any argument against Cause/Effect nor have they offered any alternate Cause to the realities that I face in everyday life.


Tsurmon,

Actually as of yet other than God there is no posited cause for the universe. Even the Big Bang is an effect without a cause. Theism is the only one even offering a cause. Since this is a debate about the Abrahamic God I don’t think we need to get into Hinduism and the opposing religions here. Although your question is valid I don’t want to derail the debate and Hinduism is maybe the most complex religion out there today. Hinduism could be a debate by itself.

Animals and humans on a structure level are very similar. We are all carbon based life forms. We all must consume and reproduce. I think at the basic level we are very much alike especially mankind and mammals. However on the complex level of intellect and love etc we are nothing alike. I’ll go so far as to say that we cannot find one kindred animal on the planet that loves and grapples with moral issues like we do. I think that the reason for that is that they weren’t given conscience, love, and morality which are the things that we have that place us in opposition with instinct and nature. They are in a way clear about their existence. They are only bound by instinct which is in a way freeing for them. I do disagree with your definition and reasoning behind love. Obviously with animals it can be seen that love isn’t a prerequisite for Sex and Reproduction. Which is why it is easy to see love as a grander design and transcendent of nature. It isn’t necessary in the sense that we need it to reproduce. In fact if nature and laws of nature are our only code then there is no reason for love, conscience, and morality. By that I mean the big 3 are not practical or necessary in the animal world and so we humans which are also animals don’t need them either to survive. They do however exist and again theism is the one offering clear and concise reasons for their existence.
The reason there is a struggle about morality is because you have people wishing to live by instinct instead of morality. You have the “if it feels good, do it” crowd. Man isn’t perfect but it is a testament to the existence of an absolute morality that we have people fighting it. For in a room full of blind men there is no one discussing light. It isn’t even a notion or a dream. If absolute morality doesn’t exist why would it ever come up in any conversation? Why would we discuss something that never existed? This is also a good question to ponder about God. If God doesn’t exist how did the notion ever come about? If we all lived in darkness forever and light did not exist would light ever be discussed? If we were all blind and had always been blind forever light and color couldn’t even be conceived much less talked about. If God doesn’t exist I wonder how we came to be talking about Him at length.

As I said earlier in reference to your analogy we aren’t looking into a pitch black room. We have a canvas upon which to base our thoughts. Things like love, morality, and conscience are things that transcend this world and they are in us and through them we capture a glimpse of the infinite. The reason the question of God goes as far back in history as we can see is because love, morality, conscience, and the awesomeness of the universe are ample evidence in the existence of a higher power. The onus is on the atheist/agnostic to give ample cause to these things independent of God otherwise what are we doing here? To win an argument it seems that you not only demolish your opponent’s points but you make real concrete statements of your own.

[Tsurmon]

First off, I’d like to apologize for this late entry. I won’t say I’ve been too busy to work on this, but you are all free to assume that. Really, I’m just a little bit lazy and a little bit nervous. Anyways, onto business.

To Ravi,

I’m a little hurt that you only spend one paragraph on my argument’s and a paltry three lines at that. You attack my analogy, saying that the room isn’t dark. Then, you present your own analogy. I suppose I should strike at that.

Your analogy is flawed in that it has facts.

“The atheist says that they should leave. He says that it is obvious that no one is going to serve them and for proof he cites the long wait with no one appearing and that he hasn’t seen a waiter in 20 minutes. It is logical says the atheist to assume that if they were coming they would have already been there. The theist says that considering the location, the people eating, and the hectic atmosphere that it is logical to assume that service is available although it isn’t in the timely manner we would like. “

Here, the analogy falls apart. Religion isn’t based on facts from which one can make logical deductions. It is based on faith. Whatever “facts” it has come into contradiction with every other religion. Since all these “facts” contradict one another and asserting their validity is impossible, facts become irrelevant within religion. It cannot be deduced logically because you would have to accept the facts from each religion because you can no more disprove them than you can prove yours.

Well, now that that’s taken care of, on to Wiploc.

“In my opening statement, I used the PoE to prove that an omniscient, omnipotent, omnibenevolent god does not exist because it cannot exist. If you are agnostic about that god, you are wrong, and you have been proven to be wrong.

The Pharaohs of Egypt, on the other hand, definitely did exist. Therefore, it is obvious and proven that some gods do exist and some gods don't. Therefore, the agnostic position, as you have defined it, seems unsalvageable.

This current debate is specifically about the Abrahamic god, the omniscient, omnipotent, omnibenevolent god. That god has been shown not to exist. Therefore, as regards that god, the atheist position is logically impeccable, and the agnostic position is clearly wrong.”

I suppose I should have been more specific, naming the God found in the bible. For that, I apologize. I took too much for granted. That is the god I was referring too. As for him being logically impossible, I believe I already discussed that in my second statement.

“You make such leaps many times a day. Is your home where you left it? Is your family still alive. Do your car brakes still work? Has the rest of the world switched to red-for-go and green-for-stop? Is there a lion in your bathtub that disappears each time you go into the bathroom but which will one day eat you instead of disappearing? You may be technically agnostic on such issues, but you are emotionally a believer. You have beliefs. You act based on your beliefs.”

True, I suppose you could look at such matters of leaps of faith. However, we have lots of proof that, right or wrong, is at least consistent. Matters of religion however are by their nature inconsistent with each other since each one will invariably contradict the other, atheism not excluded.

“The Abrahamic god has been shown not to exist, but there are many other gods who will greatly punish your non-belief if they exist. You don't lose a moment's sleep over them, I assume. Pascal's wager gives you no indigestion, am I right?”

My view of death is a bit hard to explain. It is the Great Unknown, the abyss staring back at you if you will. While I realize it is human nature to fear and hate the unknown, I don’t. I am yet young and still consider myself immortal. Death is a far off thing. And yet, I imagine that even if I were on my deathbed I wouldn’t fret to much. It is like Socrates said,

“I say that to die is gain; for eternity is then only a single night. But if death is the journey to another place, and there, as men say, all the dead abide, what good…can be greater than this?”

The “single night” he refers too is the end of existence should atheism be right, just so I’m clear. Basically, he says that dying is really a win/win situation. Either you don’t exist, in which case you won’t be there to mind it, or you do and your existence is far greater than it was in life.

As for Hell, the way I see it, if the Creator of the universe is really so vain and evil to send non-believers to Hell, Heaven hardly seems like a step up.

“Admit it: an all-good god cannot also be vengeful and vicious: the Abrahamic god is logically impossible. “

I don’t. If God is omnipotent, he can defy logic and therefore be all-good and vengeful and vicious at the same time. In any case, I’m not so sure the bible seems to suggest that God is all-good in the first place.

“I like your analogy. Now ask a mathematician whether he believes that you would not roll a seven on the first roll of an infinity-sided die. According to your own analogy, there is as much reason to believe that the Abrahamic god does not exist as there is to believe that a single cast of an infinity-sided die will not produce a seven. Withholding belief in the face of infinity-to-one odds is not the mark of superior logic.”

Who said he won’t roll a seven? All that I am saying is that you don’t know what will roll. The atheist on the other hand assumes he will roll a 5, and the theist a 6. The agnostic assumes that predicting the roll is impossible and that to gamble on such a thing irrational.

Me: The atheist assumes that the only world that exists is that which they are able to perceive.

You: Nonsense. Blasphemy. "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy."

Kinda odd that you would quote Hamlet, a play about ghosts…

“I like this analogy too. But remember, we are dealing with the Abrahamic god---not with monsters and chairs. So: you and Ravi and I are peering into a darkened room. Ravi says the room contains a just god who casts people into eternal hellfire, an unchanging god who repents, a logical god who can be seen but cannot be seen, a truthful god who is the author of lies, a loving god who invented sin, a miracle-throwing god who can't reconcile free will with happiness, an omnipotent god who can't defeat iron chariots, an omnipresent timeless god who walks in a garden and gets around by elevator, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.

The atheist doesn't know what's in the room, but he knows we can fairly assume that the room doesn't contain the self-contradiction described by the theist.

And the agnostic? If he disagrees with the atheist on this point, then logic is against him.”

Ah, but logic can be suppressed by an all-powerful being, yes? So long as God isn’t punk omnipotent as you say, he very well exists within the realm of logic because he can ignore its rules.

Conclusions:

1.) RaviZachariasFan seeks to prove God’s existence. He seeks out evidence to support his claim. However, such evidence doesn’t exist and “spectral” evidence can’t be considered conclusive because it contradicts with other “spectral” evidence. Religion is based on faith. For example, I typed the word Faith into an online bible and received 492 results. I then typed in proof and received only 8 results, 4 of which concerned whether or not a woman was a virgin. Hehe. The point is, all religions don’t encourage believers to seek proof, for they’ll find none. Instead, they ask for faith.

2.) Wiploc uses a mad-lib version of God, attaching whatever variables he needs to make his case. Since it’s not very likely that God is going to correct him, he’s free to make these assumptions. It is as though I were to say birds can fly and he were to respond that penguins can’t. By his logic, by proving that one version of the abrahamic God is impossible, the punk omnipotent, omni benevolent one, all versions of the abrahamic God are impossible. However, seeing as to how Jews, Christians, and Muslims still can’t decide which version of the abrahamic God is right, let alone whose profit was right, no one definition can be considered the standard norm.

[wiploc]

Wiploc,

Cause must predate effect.

Then it follows that the universe is uncaused.

"Universe" refers to everything that exists, including time. If causes precede effects, then the universe cannot be caused, because nothing can precede everything that exists. The universe could be infinitely old and unbegun, or it could have begun without cause. In either case, according to your rule that causes precede effects, the universe must be uncaused.

There's no way around that argument.

Given that result, you might be tempted to change your rule; you might say, "Okay then, what if causes didn't always have to precede effects?" That wouldn’t help you, because then the beginning of the universe could be caused by some future event. In which case, no metaphysical explanation is called for.

Either way, then, the first cause argument turns out not to support the existence of god.




1. Every effect requires a cause..
2. Cause predates effect.
3. The universe needs a cause.

No. As established above, those premises, if true, prove that the universe cannot have a cause.




4. The universe needs an independent source from which to derive.

You made that up.




5. Atheists must present a cause for the universe or explain away the need for one.

Atheists get to say they don't know.

If theists made up good explanations, you then could argue that a good explanation is better than "I don't know." But when you offer only, "Where did love come from? Therefore, my religion is right," that's worse than no "explanation" at all.

Theists never present a cause for god, nor do they explain how god can cause the rest of the universe. If they don't explain, they are in no position to demand that atheists explain. It is unreasonable to demand explanations for things you can't explain yourself.




I think you misunderstand the made in his image statement.

You said, if I remember correctly, something like this: God is love; man is made in god's image; man must have gotten love from god, in whose image he is made; therefore---since there is no other known "explanation" for the origin of love---the Abrahamic god must have created the rest of the universe.

I pointed out that that was arbitrary and unconvincing. One might as easily have argued that the Devil is hateful so we must have gotten our hate from the Devil, therefore the rest of the universe must have been created by the Devil, rather than by the Abrahamic god.

The one argument is exactly as strong as the other, which means they are both exactly worthless.




Love exists. ... It most definitely must be explained.


If I have to explain where love came from, why don't you have to explain where the Abrahamic god came from?

And you can't explain how love can come from god any better than I can explain how it can come from a bicycle. If you want your explanation to be worth something, it has to be stronger than rival explanations (particularly, stronger than rival explanations that are deliberately made to be absurd). Yours is not stronger than any other explanation, nor stronger than no explanation.



Morality and Conscience are diametrically opposed to instinct and nature.

To make this case, you would have to show that we would be better off without them. In fact, they are quite helpful to us. Cultures with these memes will naturally supplant those without them. If cultures without a sense of morality were to triumph over those with, then you could argue you had evidence of a miracle.



But if you want to do away with theism you must offer alternatives. To simply say the other side is wrong and offer no other view is useless. [quote=RaviZachariasFan]

Believers in the Abrahamic god are clearly wrong. Truth is never useless.


[quote=RaviZachariasFan]
Theism is the only one even offering a cause. Since this is a debate about the Abrahamic God I don?t think we need to get into Hinduism and the opposing religions here.

First you demand alternative explanations, then you refuse to deal with them.



If absolute morality doesn?t exist why would it ever come up in any conversation? Why would we discuss something that never existed?

That would prove that every god exists, and also that atheism is true. "Why would atheism come up if it weren't true?" You've got me convinced. :)






True, I suppose you could look at such matters of leaps of faith. However, we have lots of proof that, right or wrong, is at least consistent. Matters of religion however are by their nature inconsistent with each other since each one will invariably contradict the other, atheism not excluded.

But they also contradict the position that you have taken in this debate. If that is the strength of your argument, then your position is impeached as much as any other.

You can base your agnosticism on other religious stances contradicting each other, but my case is stronger than that. I show that Abrahamic theism contradicts itself! Thus, I am right to believe that the Abrahamic god doesn't exist. Logic is with me.



If God is omnipotent, he can defy logic and therefore be all-good and vengeful and vicious at the same time.

If logic works, the Abrahamic god doesn't exist. If logic doesn't work, agnosticism is not logical.

People who retreat into irrationality try to do so selectively, two-stepping between two contradictory positions. They want to get to make logical claims themselves, while dismissing other people's claims on the grounds that logic doesn't work. That's not good practice. If you want to do without logic, you have to go first: admit that your agnosticism is illogical. Only then is it fair to try to dismiss my argument on the grounds that you aren't being logical.




Who said he won?t roll a seven?

I do. I say that on an infinity-sided die, the odds are grossly against rolling a seven. We get to assume it won't happen. Furthermore, as I've shown with the PoE, it's impossible.



All that I am saying is that you don?t know what will roll.

We know it won't be a seven.



The atheist on the other hand assumes he will roll a 5, and the theist a 6. The agnostic assumes that predicting the roll is impossible and that to gamble on such a thing irrational. [quote=Tsurmon]

I'm here as an atheist with regards to the Abrahamic god. If the Abrahamic theist is predicting a six, then my prediction---my only prediction as an Abrahamic atheist---is that the die won't come up six. Even if we ignore the fact that the Abrahamic god is impossible, the odds are infinity-to-one in my favor.


[quote=Tsurmon]
2.) Wiploc uses a mad-lib version of God, attaching whatever variables he needs to make his case.

Actually, I described what I think of as the standard Christian god, the one I assume we are talking about.



By his logic, by proving that one version of the abrahamic God is impossible, the punk omnipotent, omni benevolent one, all versions of the abrahamic God are impossible.

That's the god I am used to, my parents' god, the god of the churches I have attended (Unitarians aside). It's the god I assume we are debating. But, in case you want to talk about other, similar, gods (call them, "near-Abrahamic), I addressed them too. I addressed them separately. It is not fair or correct to say that I attempted to refute the near-Abrahamic gods by refuting the Abrahamic god.




However, seeing as to how Jews, Christians, and Muslims still can?t decide which version of the abrahamic God is right, let alone whose profit was right, no one definition can be considered the standard norm.


It may be, as I said before, that near-Abrahamic gods exist. But we have no reason to think so. There may be an infinity of possible near-Abrahamic gods, but there is a larger infinity of non-near-Abrahamic gods. (I forget what mega-infinities are called, "aleph-somethings," maybe.) So, if you'll hand me my infinity-sided die again...

We have no reason to believe the near-Abrahamic gods exist. We also have no reason to believe the Easter bunny, Thor, the Great Pumpkin, or the invisible-lion-in-your-bathtub-who-will-eat-you-if-you-ever-try-to-bathe-again exist. There is nothing wrong or illogical with assuming that such weird and improbable things actually don't exist. Reasonable people do this. Sometimes they make exceptions. Linus made an exception for the Great Pumpkin. You can make an exception for near-Abrahamic gods. But it isn't wrong, it isn't illogical, to just assume they don't exist. We have to assume that most unlikely or absurd things are untrue. That's how we get thru the day.

If we adopted agnosticism toward everything that might be true, we would be psychotically paralyzed, unable to make any decision, unable to decide whether sitting down would destroy the world, whether the invisible lion in your bathtub will really kill you if you bathe, etcetera. So, agnosticism is not, in general, a good or logical or healthy thing. It is true that an otherwise reasonable person can get by while choosing to be agnostic about a few unlikely or absurd things, but that doesn't make agnosticism more reasonable than atheism.

Disbelief in near-Abrahamic gods is every bit as reasonable as disbelief in Thor and the Easter bunny. Such disbelief is the fruit of logical minds.



Thanks guys, this has been fun. I look forward to joining you in the peanut gallery.
crc

[KnightWhoSaysNi]

RaviZachariasFan and Tsurmon,

I'd like to remind you that the deadline to submit your concluding statements has passed. However, as the rules permit, you'll have a 3 day grace period, extending the deadline to Oct. 30.

Thank you for your consideration,

- NS, FD Moderator

[Common_Cents]

I again would like to extend my deepest thanks to IIDB and my fellow comrades on this journey. It has been a very good learning experience for me and I have enjoyed it immensely.

This is the conclusion of this debate and I’ll give you an overview. We have touched on some profound areas. PoE is Wiploc’s main assertion to disprove the Abrahamic God. However God can be omnipotent with the existence of evil and pain. In the Garden of Eden you have choice, good, and evil all together with a harmonious society. You have rejection of that by man and God allowing his creation free will.

The problem with the argument is that it goes against logic. You must have evil to have good. To say that God can’t exist if evil exists is like saying you can’t be in love if you and your wife have an argument. Growing pains, growing up, loss, etc are learning tools that we hopefully use to evolve. Yes evolve into greater beings. Isn’t that love? Isn’t that true good? Isn’t the hope that your creation will become greater than it can conceive is being benevolent?

You must have choice and you must have evil. Even Wiploc defined Evil while defining good. You need both and you need a choice. That isn’t against the Abrahamic God that is just common sense.

The causality of the universe is key. Love, morality, and conscience along with the causality of the universe present a huge logic gap for atheism. What do we do about Cause and Effect? Wiploc states that Cause can come after effect. Now if you believe that go with it. I just haven’t seen this happen.

1. Cause predates effect.
2. Every effect requires a cause.
3. The universe, love, morality, and conscience are effects that require a cause.
4. The universe requires a cause outside of itself.
5. Love, morality, and conscience are transcendent of this universe and require a cause that is also transcendent.

Which of the 3 views in this debate can coincide with these facts? Theism gives us this. We have a Cause predating effect. We don’t attack valid true things like love, morality, and conscience. We accept that they exist and we accept their importance. Atheism must seek to devalue them to the point that a boulder could generate them because if they admit how powerful and significant they are they might have to give real answers to their beginning.

This is the question at hand. The beginning is the key. Can we have a beginning without God? Can love derive from anything else? Logically speaking God is the only answer to the question of the beginning. To believe that something derived from nothing isn’t logical. Atheism at its most basic core has to posit that everything came from nothing at all. Or they must say that the universe had no beginning. Entropy states that the universe is ending. Logic again states that ending demands a beginning. The infinite universe can’t have an ending. Therefore the universe did have a beginning. Beginning requires cause and what cause can atheism produce? The object of critical thinking must be to arrive at solutions/answers. What answers does atheism posit? Not much. A vast majority of the world believe in God of some sort because there really isn’t an alternative. Atheism complains, it never actively answers anything. So with no real logical opposite I must say that logic goes against atheism.

To sum up why I find the atheist position illogical here; the problem of evil isn’t something that makes the Abrahamic God illogical. In fact logically speaking you need evil to have good and you need the ability to choose to be good or evil. God wants you to be good. You can’t be good without the ability to choose good and choose b/w good and evil. The problem of causality on a host of issues must be addressed fully. Theists answer the questions facing us while atheists seek to devalue and dismiss solid facts. Theism offers a cause that is logically required. The Abrahamic God offers a logical cause for love, morality, and conscience. Until atheism can answer questions of cause in a satisfactory manner it is not logical to follow it.

Tsurmon and agnostics have a few things to decide. You can’t be this passive about the evidence that has been presented to you. You say that we know nothing thus can’t come to logical conclusions about the question of God. That is patently not true.

We know that every cause requires an effect. We know that we exist. We know that the universe exists. We know that these effects require a cause. We know that the universe can’t have a cause that is in the universe because for if it is in the universe then it wasn’t around when the universe was caused. We know logically that the universe will end and that if the universe was infinite that it couldn’t end. We know many things sirs and madams. You do have enough evidence to make a choice and decide what you think is true.

I think that it isn’t logical or honest to say that you can’t make a choice. The reason that I can’t offer more than 3 lines to some of your arguments is because while you are brilliant and articulate you still aren’t saying anything. I summed up what I needed from you. I need you to actually make choice so that I can counter it. If you think that Cause and Effect is still up in the air tell me why. If you think that love could be a logical outworking from an inanimate object or benign universe let me know. Same for conscience and morality everything needs a cause. With the Abrahamic God you have the infinite eternal cause. He is transcendent of everything else. Wholly separate and the only cause. That is the theist position. You can say it lacks logic. That is fine but you must offer why. You must offer your case. Agnostics often times feel that the devil’s advocate is their position. A devil’s advocate is defined as someone who points out the weaknesses of a person’s arguments. That is great but to be thought of as logical we need to see the strengths of your worldview.

It is a copout IMHO to say that we can’t know or that we don’t have any thing to go on. We have tons. We have absolutes. In a universe that according to atheism says Time+Matter+Chance=everything you are told to believe that 3 variable things created a universe that contains absolutes. The sum contains things that weren’t in the equation. There is no constant chance, time is variable, matter is constantly changing and yet the world of absolutes that we live in is somehow derivative of that?

You do have questions. Valid questions that must be answered. You do have evidence that must be weighed. It isn’t a dark room with no vision available. It is a world full of facts and full of evidence and you Mr.Tsurmon must play the jury instead of devil’s advocate. You have been presented the case. Everyday in your life you see it. Logic is defined as reasoned and reasonable arguments. You need arguments. You need substance. Simply pointing out weaknesses of others doesn’t make a worldview logical.

In closing Atheism offers a world void of a logical Cause. This is a fatal flaw that leaves it with no foundation and no relevant claim in the world in which we live based on the facts that we know up to the current time. Atheism is thus illogical until it can offer reasoned answers to pertinent questions such as the cause of the universe, love, morality, and conscience.

Agnosticism rests on the notion that we don’t know enough to make a decision. Therefore until Agnosticism can disprove all the facts that we do know…such as Cause/Effect, the presence of absolutes, etc then it isn’t being honest about what we actually know. Before you can say there is no evidence either way you must disprove that which has been offered.

Theism gives a reasoned and reasonable argument for the facts that we face. We offer in the Abrahamic God a transcendent being that gives cause to a finite universe. We have a logical answer to the question of the origin of love, conscience, and morality. We never dodge or demean any fact. With the infinite absolute foundation of God, we can explain the existence of absolutes and offer the Cause that is logically required for all of existence. We don’t have the perfect proof but neither does the opposition. However we have taken the evidence we do have and have made logical reasoned decisions based on it. That is why Theism is the most logical and specifically the Abrahamic God is the most logical belief that can be held about existence, origin, and the facts we face.


I am extremely grateful for the opportunity and I would like to say that everyone from Nightshade, to Wiploc, to Tsurmon, and all of the staff that I have encountered have been nothing but respectful and kind to me despite our differences in opinion. I hope that I have been as gracious in return. It has been and honor and a profound pleasure. My apologies on my tardiness. It has a long personal story to it. I appreciate the extensions. I hope you don’t think less of me.

[Tsurmon]

Sorry once more for the late entry.

To Ravis,

“Since this is a debate about the Abrahamic God I don’t think we need to get into Hinduism and the opposing religions here. Although your question is valid I don’t want to derail the debate and Hinduism is maybe the most complex religion out there today. Hinduism could be a debate by itself.“

Yes, this debate is about the Abrahamic God. However, that’s no excuse to give him credit for something you don’t know he did. What I’m saying is that there is no evidence that specifically targets him as the Creator. He is no more qualified than ANY other god.

“The reason there is a struggle about morality is because you have people wishing to live by instinct instead of morality. You have the ?if it feels good, do it? crowd. Man isn’t perfect but it is a testament to the existence of an absolute morality that we have people fighting it. For in a room full of blind men there is no one discussing light.�

There are two types of moral struggles Man goes through: Types where we go against our instincts, that is behave in a way no animal would in a negative way. Things like war, rape, and murder. Then there are the struggles where we are resisting our instincts, things like premarital sex and basically things religion tells us not to do, of which war isn’t a part of course…

As such, animals don’t have problems because they act according to their instincts. You seem to equate acting towards one’s instincts as acting wrong. There, we disagree. For instance, it is instinct that makes a parent take care of her child. Logic dictates that we abort, abandon, or kill the child. After all, children are high maintenance, whiny, and very expensive. Instinct makes us love children.

“If God doesn’t exist I wonder how we came to be talking about Him at length.�

Arguing something’s existence does not cause it to pop out of thin air. Wish it would though…that’d be sweet…

To Wiploc,

“Agreed. But since they are contradictions, they can't be true. If you want to say that the Abrahamic god is all-good and part evil, I'll go along with you---but that's still a contradiction, so he still doesn't exist.�

Here you are saying that the Bible is absolutely true, so God can’t exist. Seems fishy. Wouldn’t it be equally likely God does exist and that the Bible has the facts wrong?

“I understand us to be debating the existence of the god that most modern Jews, Christians, and Muslims would recognize.�

The abrahamic Gods of the Jews, Christians, and Muslims contradict themselves constantly. The abrahamic Gods any ONE of these contradicts themselves constantly. This seems to suggest that concrete statements about God don’t exist. You say that God MUST be omni benevolent. That if he weren’t, he would not be the God of Abraham.

And yet, the “evidence�--think bible-- of God being omni benevolent is scarce. The bible suggests a rather malevolent version of God. You say he is benevolent simply because if he weren’t, you whole line of reasoning would fall apart.

“In which case, nothing---not even logic---could keep an omnipotent omni benevolent god from making everyone happy all the time. We know for a fact, therefore, that such a god does not exist.�

My point was, if he was truly omnipotent, he could be both omni benevolent and sadistic at the same time. A silly argument, but you were the one to suggest the idea that God could defy logic.


Conclusion:

Ravis’ whole argument is that love and other emotions elevate mankind above its animal brethren and that the only possible explanation of this is that his God did it. He also says that since the universe needed a Cause to be created, his God must of done it.

I say that, even if love and the creation of the universe made it evident that a creator was behind it--and that’s a very big if--he has made no argument that it was his God that did it.

Wiploc’s argument is simple. Abrahamic Gods must be omni benevolent and omnipotent in some way or the other. Since this statement combined with the suffering of the world contradicts itself, God can’t exist. However, he hasn’t said WHY God is has no choice but to be omni benevolent.

Wiploc creates an abrahamic God who lives within a contradiction. It’s been proven that people have different versions of just what God “is�. Disagreements on the nature of God has been debated--and often warred over--for thousands of years. And yet, Wiploc says that “his� version of God is the Final Word on the subject. All the christians, jews, and muslims have it wrong. He knows that God is omni benevolent and that everyone else is wrong. In doing so, he has lumped himself with them. His opinion on the nature of God can be given no more weight than anyone else’s.

My argument is that since no one is able to make a concrete statement about God without contradicting another person somewhere, statements about his existence can’t be confirmed. We simply don’t have any proof and only have opinion.

I’d like to thank both Wiploc and RavisZachariasFan for their participation in this debate. It’s been a fun and thought provoking experience for me.

[KnightWhoSaysNi]

This concludes the formal debate on theism, atheism, and agnosticism. We would like to thank RaviZachariasFan, wiploc, and Tsurmon for their participation. Discussion can be continued in the Peanut Gallery.

- NS, FD Moderator