I thank my opponent for the opportunity to do this debate. God debates are always enjoyable, and I love devil's advocating. This is a blatent plagiarism of my own previous case that I ran here.
My case demonstrates, hopefully, a preponderance of evidence for the reality of the Christian God. There are two elements I should have to prove:
Why we should accept the reality of God
1) The Descartes argument. It is impossible for a being to be all-perfect, all-knowing etc and not exist. Therefore such a being must exist. The existence of God can thus be logically deduced.
2) The Lewis Argument. If there was no God to create the universe, then the universe must have been an accident. If the universe is an accident, so is our thinking. If our thinking is an accident, we have no reason to believe it. This is absurd because we have already established the universe exists but cannot establish our existence as a subset of said universe. The only other two options left are nihilism and God. The existence of God can thus be evidently deduced.
3) The Pascal Argument. Either God exists or it does not. If we believe it exists, rewards are huge or naught. If we don't believe it exists, rewards are negative or naught. Therefore it is a safer bet to believe it exists. The existence of God is thus a worthwhile belief (this argument does not set out to show that God exists, but it's an important point because even if God did exist, that doesn't mean we should accept God, for example if God had become irrelevant).
4) The Kant Argument. Any attempt to refute God that holds any weight relies on logic. Therefore the argument presupposes the existence of logic. Logical truths cannot be proven without reference to God. Therefore any argument against God presupposes the existence of God. The existence of God is thus a precondition for this whole discussion.
Why the resurrection of Jesus is likely to be true
1) The testimony of hundreds of people, written down by the best scholars of the day. If the resurrection had been false, surely the Jewish authorities could have lulled this rebellion by simply producing the body of the crucified? There are more sources for the resurrection of Jesus than there are for Julius Caesar's conquest of Gaul. It is one of the few narratives from ancient times apparently not to have much legendary development.
2) The fact that many of the witnesses during the immediate period after the death were hostile to Jesus, such as Paul. Many were skeptical, and went on fact-finding missions. We do not have any sources for about 150 years that doubt the resurrection of Jesus, despite much research going on.
3) The lack of any plausible competing account that really explains the event of the empty tomb and the post-resurrection sightings to over 500 people near the tomb.
I look forward to my opponent's case.
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"Omnipotent, Omniscient and Malevolent Extra-Universal Entity". This debate does not ask for theological justification for belief in God (Resurrection of Jesus, Pascal's Wager etc.) but proof of a God (Ontological, Lewis, Kantian) that has objective existence to all observers. The BoP lies exclusively on the government side in this debate, for the government side has the positive unscientific claim. Moreover, "existence" here means that the opposition has to affirm the modal operator G (if G is defined as God's existence), which affirms that God exists in this reality, not in some imaginary reality; the opposition cannot assert possibly-G, but perhaps he might find a way to prove that necessarily-G. For my part, if my demonstration proves not-G, then I shall consider my BoP fulfilled.
- By definition, God is a being than which none greater can be imagined.
- A being that necessarily exists in reality is greater than a being that does not necessarily exist.
- Thus, by definition, if God exists as an idea in the mind but does not necessarily exist in reality, then we can imagine something that is greater than God.
- But we cannot imagine something that is greater than God.
- Thus, if God exists in the mind as an idea, then God necessarily exists in reality.
- God exists in the mind as an idea.
- Therefore, God necessarily exists in reality
- Now, it does not take a genius logician to see these arguments through. The language of propositional calculus have proven, via pure reason, the truth functions of such logical laws. There are some fields that deny these laws, such as the deviant logicians, but their negation of these laws demonstrate that God does not exist. But let us dismiss the deviant logicians for now, and move onto proving the it is the nature of such statements that allow for them to be demonstrated to be true. Now, not every logical law can be proven: some of them are conjectures waiting for refutations. The perfect example of this is the law of identity. x=x, just as admin=admin. It is a conjecture waiting to be refuted. These arguments do not need explanation for why they are true. But let us say that God mandates it so. If God mandates it so, then God has the abilities to mandate it not so: that (x=¬x) is so. However, if God mandates this (as he is omnipotent), does that mean that God can mandate that God is not God? Then if that is possible, then God cannot exist, for God has just mandated that it is possible that He is not Him! Hence the mandate that logical truths bases it's premises on God is fallacious. Then this leaves us with the conclusion that God does not mandate logical truths, and henceforth, God's existence cannot be proven on these grounds.
- 3. Argument from Reason
- The Argument from Reason goes along the lines of the following:
1. Since everything in nature can be wholly explained in terms of non-rational causes, human reason (more precisely, the power of drawing conclusions based solely on the rational cause of logical insight) must have a source outside of nature.
2. If human reason came from non-reason it would lose all rational credentials and would cease to be reason.
3. So, human reason cannot come from non-reason (from 2).
4. So human reason must come from a source outside nature that is itself rational (from 1 and 3).
5. This supernatural source of reason may itself be dependent on some further source of reason, but a chain of such dependent sources cannot go on forever. Eventually, we must reason back to the existence of eternal, non-dependent source of human reason.
6. Therefore, there exists an eternal, self-existent, rational Being who is the ultimate source of human reason. This Being we call God
I shall attack the notion here of "non-reason". There is a huge difference between irrational thoughts, which could make something lose all it's credentials, and non-rational thoughts. Irrational thoughts are via definition non-rational; for example, I might irrationally believe that admin has a crush on nzlockie. This is an irrational thought which would, if it were the basis of all my reasoning, would be faulty. This irrationality is present in many philosophies that are unpopular nowadays; in Nazism (with it's racialist irrationalism), in Fideism (with it's Catholic irrationalism) and in Salafism (with it's Islamist irrationalism). Non-rationality would, of course, lead to a much different result; our neurons firing, for example, is a non-rational cause. There was no reason it fired; we cannot determine it's firing, but yet it is with this firing that a whole plethora of logical reasoning leads to. For example, it was the result of the firing in neurons in my brains the led me to conclude that, from the premiss that men are mortals and that Socrates is a man, that Socrates is Mortal. This is non-rational, yet it is perfectly justified. Perhaps C.S Lewis's argument had some non-rational cause in the creation of his argument. So in retrospect, yes, human reasoning can come from non-rational cause if the credentials were still to be preserved. [7]
Apart from this, there is another inconsistency in this argument: we reason everyday. From philosophers to laymen, we reason about everything, from why we should eat food from why Admin is the best Admin in the world. If the source of this reason is this being called God, then we would see the following things: that (a) neuronal events are to be both predictable, and determined, and that (b) we should find a pattern in moral objectivity relating to "God's" system of morality, in this case, the Christian morality.
Let us start with the more abstract first. In the probability of (b), in which God controls our moral reasoning, we should see objective moral reasoning and standards to all societies. There should be moral objectivity in such weird and obscure fields as Gay Marriage, and even abortion. However, we know for sure that this moral objectivity does not exist, for there are disagreements over it. Henceforth, if God is the ultimate source of human reason, then objective morality is a must. Objective morality does not exist, hence God is not the ultimate source of human reason.
Furthermore, neuronal events, if under such a moment, should be pre-determined by events preceding it directly. This is very much like what the fatalists argue; that events are determined. However, neuronal firing are as indeterminate as indeterminacy can get. It is proven that "single neuron exhibits different responses to repeated presentations of a specific input signal" suggesting that there are determinants that could control them. Unless the Gods of the Gaps argument is used, and shows that every neuron has a consciousness directly connected to God, in which case there would be more determinants for the movement of the neuron for which God would use for the control of the neurons. [8,9]
4. Tirades from Spinoza's Graves
"One substance cannot be produced by another substance."
It is impossible that there should be in the universe two substances with an identical attribute, i.e. which have anything common to them both, hence one cannot be the cause of the other, neither can one be produced by the other.
This is the fourth proposition from Ethica by Spinoza. Quite simply, it refutes the extra-universal theory. A substance is, as Spinoza defines it, a thing which is "which is in itself, and is conceived through itself: in other words, that of which a conception can be formed independently of any other conception." Even if there is another substance, Spinoza mandates that we do not know it's attributes, as we live in one monist substance which is self-conceiving. If we, henceforth, say that one substance would create another substance, then the created substance would not be a substance, but a mode of the substance. There is only one substance conceivable in this world, and that substance is Nature, or the Universe.
CONCLUSIONS:
From these points (that logic is not based on God, that Substance is One, that Ontological Arguments are Unsound, and that Logical Truths do not depend on God), I mandate the resolution negated!
CITATIONS:
[1] http://www.iep.utm.edu/ont-arg/#SH2d
[2] Proslogion, Print
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Missing_Shade_of_Blue
[4] https://school.carm.org/amember/files/demo3/2_logic/3logic.htm
[5] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Morgan%27s_laws
[6] https://www.proofwiki.org/wiki/Law_of_Excluded_Middle
[7] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_reason#Criticisms
[8] http://carm.org/omniscience-freewill
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Standard of proof
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Round Forfeited
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For some reason, my opponents keep forfeiting against this case.
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Round Forfeited
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Round Forfeited
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The descartes argument differs slightly from the anselm argument btwPosted 2015-01-14 07:33:32
In the words of a fellow internet warrior, "Stop trying to recruit Kant into the ranks of the religious"Posted 2015-01-14 07:31:28
*rages*
stupid me, o well!Posted 2015-01-05 06:41:05
Stag, you are definitely confused about Kant's stance on religion. He did spend a lot of time refuting the Cosmological, Ontological and another argument for God, but at the same time, he proposed the argument as presented here as a alternative for this. He proposed this thing called religion within the limits of reason and that sh!t. If you've been doing Christian Apologetics, then you would have known this well enough. Gov. is using these arguments in a perfectly fine way, from a perspective that it is used correctly. Descartes didn't really propose the argument, just defended it (Meditation 5). Anselm proposed it in some of his works. The Lewisian Argument I do not know much about, but I know how to refute it. Some of gov.'s points are ignoratio elenchi, but apart from that, the assertion that Kant was an atheist, and all these arguments are used incorrectly, is as correct as asserting that Spinoza liked monotheism.Posted 2015-01-03 18:23:39
Well, we can debate this too StagPosted 2015-01-03 10:07:56
*cough* there is a stab in my debate roundPosted 2015-01-03 10:07:34
Admin IS using all these arguments wrong though. I spent enough time doing Christian apologetics to know that. Posted 2015-01-03 10:07:19
Kant was definitely an atheist, or he was just bs'ing himself. He made a dozen refutations of Christian theologians without one stab at arguing a god exists. Posted 2015-01-03 10:06:28
That was NZlockiePosted 2015-01-03 10:04:44
It's one specific variation of the Ontological Argument.
And of course they don't convince me either lol, my goal in the debate from here on will be simply to disprove any arguments 18Karl brings up.Posted 2015-01-03 09:55:23
Stag, Kant was not an atheist for sure. Maybe not a orthodox Christian, but at least a deist. His philosophy of religion was basically "religion within the limits of reason". The Descartes argument is not wrong. It was his P5 proof in Meditations, although it's true name is the Ontological Argument.
They don't convince me. Posted 2015-01-03 03:37:54
Aren't you the guy who campaigned me to stop people posting possible arguments in the comments section of a debate? Or was that nzlockie lol, I can't remember.Posted 2015-01-02 22:55:16
Ahhhh! All 4 of their arguments were used absolutely wrong! Especially the Descartes argument. Kant was an atheist for god's sake. Posted 2015-01-02 22:52:19
Ahhhh! All 4 of their arguments were used absolutely wrong! Especially the Descartes argument. Kant was an atheist for god's sake. Posted 2015-01-02 22:52:08
was preparing for thisPosted 2015-01-02 22:17:51
Nope, tomorrow usually means 24 hours. Bring it on! Posted 2015-01-01 15:26:10
is there a problem?Posted 2015-01-01 15:25:42
wait wotPosted 2015-01-01 15:24:58
yey thanks!Posted 2015-01-01 01:34:09
I'll take it tomorrow if nobody else does. Posted 2015-01-01 01:33:36
Just take it now please. School starts in one month.Posted 2015-01-01 01:32:02
I will do this in a month... Just need something to be read before take this topic.Posted 2015-01-01 00:12:27
Stag, if you won't accept the def, leave so others can have the chance thnxPosted 2014-12-30 02:35:09
I will keep an eye on this debate.Posted 2014-12-30 01:56:07
But...... I do not believe god is omnipotent, omniscient, and especially not extra-universal. I really do not like generalizations of 2 billion Christian's beliefs. If we are going to debate this, you need to remove the definition. This debate is also too long for me. You would need to shorten it to three rounds and 8000 charactersPosted 2014-12-29 06:22:30