Which is the more reasonable position Atheism or Theism?

[Will]

Braxhunt has requested that we hold a formal debate in the classical style. I'm not experienced in the style, but I'm usually up for anything.

Braxhunt has offered to present the positive case for theism, I will respond with a cross examination of questions to which Brax will answer. After that's finished, I will present the case for atheism, and Brax will respond with a cross. Then rebuttals and crosses, then summarizations.

Without further explanation or ado, Braxhunt can begin when ready.

Edit by Whitney:
non-participant comments:  viewtopic.php?f=5&t=3823

[braxhunt]

I want you to know what a privilege it is to be a part of this debate. And I appreciate my opponent for being willing to be involved. In all of my correspondence with him he has been humble, kind and all the other things that I should be as a Christian, but so often fail at. And I appreciate all of you who are following this debate, and the interest you have in this important subject.
   In this discussion I am going to lay out what I believe to be the most compelling arguments for the existence of the theistic God. I am going to use an acrostic to help arrange my arguments so that it will be easier to remember. The acrostic I have created is C.O.R.E. F.A.C.T.S. In order to demonstrate that it is more reasonable to believe that God does not exist, my opponent will have to overcome each of the arguments and demonstrate why they are invalid. It should be noted from the start, that these “core facts” are the arguments that best support my theistic worldview and so far in my discussions with skeptics and atheists I have, yet to hear a compelling reason why these arguments are invalid.
   The first core fact that I will put forth is C - Caused. The universe was caused. The argument has been classically known as the cosmological argument for the existence of God and it goes like this. 1.) Everything that begins to exist had a cause for its existence 2.) the universe began to exist, thus 3.) the universe had a cause.
   Now this argument in and of itself may not seem to imply God, but at closer observation I think you’ll see that it does. Modern astrophysics has now confirmed beyond a reasonable doubt what theists have said all along. The universe was not always here. Since the early 90’s physicists have had convincing evidence that the universe began to exist a finite time ago. When the background radiation wave still emanating from that explosion was discovered astrophysicist George Smoot claimed, “If you’re religious, It’s like looking at God.”
   Why would he say such a thing? Modern science accepts the premise that the universe consists of at least 3 things: Time, space and matter/energy. Whatever caused the universe to exist could not have been made up of these things or else it could not have caused their existence. This means, in brief, that whatever caused the universe to exist was not temporal, but eternal (non-temporal) not made of matter and does not occupy space. Confronted with this, then impending evidence, agnostic astrophysicist Robert Jastrow claimed, “For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.”

   In fact the argument is so strong that even without the evidence from modern cosmology, the universe had to come to exist for at least two reasons. 1.) Time cannot extend infinitely into the past because if it did there would never have been enough time to arrive at today, and 2) we now know that the universe is expanding rapidly. If it is expanding that means that if the tape could be rewound we would observe it retracting down to a single point and then nothingness.

This implies that an immaterial spaceless and timeless intentional (because only an intentional being could have intended a universe) being caused the universe to come into existence.

“O” is the second core fact and it stands for ordered. The universe exhibits incredible order. Stephen Hawking said in his book A Brief History of Time, “It would be very difficult to explain why the universe should have begun in just this way, except as the act of a God who intended to create beings like us.” Other scientists have said that it is like dozens of dials stand before us and if they were changed in the most infinitesimal way (if the gravitational force was slightly different or the strong nuclear force was changed or the electro-weak force) the universe would not be ordered as it is, but would result in chaos. This would seem to imply an intelligent designer.

“R” is for rules. The universe seems to have guiding rules. These rules are not only the rules of mathematics, and logic, but also the rules of morality. These rules are objective. 2 + 2 = 4. This is objectively true and will always be objectively true. The logical law of non-contradiction is objective. “A” can not be “A” and at the same time and in the same sense “non-A.” In the same way it is my contention that human beings have objective moral values. That is to say it is wrong and it has always been wrong to torture innocent babies for fun. It is and always has been wrong to murder or rape. To maintain that these morals are not objective, but are subjective would be to say that there was nothing really wrong with the slaughter of 6 million Jews in the holocaust, or that pedophilia is not really wrong. These would just be preferences on atheism because there would be nothing really right or wrong at all. In fact we couldn’t even speak of anything being better or worse than anything else. These terms are meaningless without objective moral values and object moral rules can only come from an objective moral rule-maker. I should also add that I am not saying that atheists cannot be moral. Indeed many atheists lead better lives morally than do many Christians. This is precisely the point. All men have the moral law written on their heart.

“E” is for experience. Though I would not try to convince you of my own experience of God. Without any compelling reasons to doubt these previous arguments, I see no reason to doubt my own experience of God. And it is an experience that I would invite others to seek.  

The F.A.C.T.S. arguments have to do with Jesus Christ. I think the best explanation for the events of the life of Jesus of Nazareth is that there is a God.

“F” is for Fatality. Jesus died by Roman crucifixion. This is accepted virtually across the board in modern scholarship. New Testament scholar Gary Habermas has counted the scholars for and against and shown that overwhelmingly Christ’s death is affirmed among even skeptics in scholarship today. The idea that Jesus did not die is the modern day equivalent of the “flat earth theory.”

“A” is for Appearances. Jesus appeared to many of his followers after his crucifixion. Though I will not use blind faith in the Bible, even the German scholar Gerd Ludemann (no friend to Christianity) affirms that what 1 Corinthians 15 says historically is true, namely that Jesus’ followers had appearances of what they believed to be the risen Jesus. Moreover, there are creedal statements made there affirming Christ’s resurrection that most scholars believe date back earlier than the documents themselves placing them incredibly near the event itself. In other words, we have almost immediate evidence of individuals who saw what they believed to be the risen Christ. Even the hyper-skeptical “Jesus seminar” affirms this truth.

“C” - is for Commitment level. The commitment level of the early Christian church was so great, they were so convinced of what they saw, that they were willing to die for that belief. Men will live for a lie, but they will not die for something they know to be untrue. Muslim extremists may die for a lie, but they do not know it to be a lie. They believe. Many of these Christians would have known (if the resurrection were a fabrication) and died for a lie anyway.

“T” is for Testimony. This kind of commitment level developed because it was based on eye-witness testimony.

“S” is for Solution. The best solution to the question of what to do with these facts is surmise that Jesus really did die and rose again. As my friend Mike Licona says, “If a man claims to be God and rises from the dead we should believe him.

If Jesus really did die and rose again we have a divine miracle on our hands and that is evidence for the existence of God.
   
These are the C.O.R.E. F.A.C.T.S. of my position. If Atheism is to be maintained, or for that matter agnosticism, then my opponent is going to have to respond to these arguments. Thank you.

[Will]

Cross Examination

C: Can you demonstrate that the universe is not eternal— eternal both into the future and into the past? Can you demonstrate that if the universe had a beginning, there are no explanations but the Christian god?

O:  Can you explain this quote from Hawking later in that very same chapter: "But if the universe is really completely self-contained, having no boundary or edge, it would have neither beginning nor end: it would simply be. What place, then, for a creator?" Why does order imply an intelligent designer? Can you demonstrate that order cannot be without an intelligent designer?

R: Can you demonstrate that morality is objective and predates the development of life on earth, as opposed to a system of behaviors that developed slowly as species became more social and morality and ethics became a necessary part of survival?

E: Have you ever taking any mind-altering drugs?

F: Can you cite non-Biblical references from the time Jesus was supposedly alive specifically detailing his death?

A: Can you cite non-Biblical references from the time of the disciples that confirm the appearance of Jesus and that rule out any other explanation?

C: Can you demonstrate that the commitment level of the early Christian church is greater than every other known religion?

T: Are people capable of lying, exaggerating, embellishing, or remembering incorrectly?

[braxhunt]

First I would like to say that I appreciate the tone with which Will has performed the cross examination. Although to clear the record, no I have not ever taken any mind altering drugs and if Will has I’ll trust that he will inform me of any theological value found therein.

I would like to point out that I never claimed that the Christian God was the only possible designer based on the cosmological argument That is a misunderstanding. The contention is that theism is more reasonable than atheism when cosmology is considered.

With regard to your question about the eternality of the universe, yes I contend that it is a logically indefensible position to hold that the universe has always existed. In order for this to be so time would have to stretch eternally into the past. However, if time stretched eternally into the past there would be an infinite number of points on that timeline stretching infinitely back. If there truly were an infinite number of points on that timeline, this point on that timeline, that we are inhabiting now, would have never arrived. This is why I said in my opening remarks that we would never have arrived at today.

Stephen Hawking is a theoretical physicist. Thus, what he says about what the furniture (and form) of the universe might look like is to be taken as hypothetical. I mentioned him because he sees that if the universe has a beginning then it implies God. However, science is not in his corner on the hypothesis that the universe has no beginning or end. The simple philosophical demonstration I just mentioned above shows that there are no actual infinites in the universe. Moreover, Penzias and Wilson discovered the cosmic background radiation which demonstrates that the universe is in a state of expansion. If it is expanding then it’s expansion had to begin.

Concerning the question of why order implies intelligence, I would first say that the burden of proof would fall on the side of naturalism to demonstrate an example of random variation resulting in anything remotely like the level of complexity we observe in the universe. Bill Gates claimed, “DNA is like a computer program, but far, far more advanced than any software we’ve ever created.’’ beyond that I would remind you of the points I made in my opening remarks.

With regard to the moral argument I set forth, I do think that we can demonstrate that an objective moral code does exist and not only would I contend that it was an objective reality before mankind, but I would further say that it would be an objective reality even if man had never existed in the universe. Arguments such as Richard Dawkins selfish gene construct do not explain the moral actions taken by some which lend no help to their own situation or that of their offspring. For example, the Amish community that forgave and made food for the murderer of two of their girls; this would not be explained by the idea of moral evolution. Moreover, as I said before, nothing would really be wrong. If a man decided it was moral for him to go about raping young girls no one could tell him that he was morally wrong for doing so. It would merely be his preference. But, I think morality is objective and deep down I think we all know it.

I am prepared to produce extra-biblical evidence for the death of Jesus by crucifixion. Cornelius Tacitus lived from 55 A.D. to about 120 A.D. and claimed, “Consequently, to get rid of the report, Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus. . .” Pliny the Younger  and Thallus also gave testimony to his death. This kind of testimony is almost unheard of in ancient historiography. Because of this, eminent atheist New Testament scholar Gerd Ludemann claims, “Jesus death as a consequence of crucifixion is indisputable.” and fellow of the hyper-skeptical Jesus seminar, John Dominic Crossan admits, “That [Jesus] was crucified is as sure as anything historical can ever be."

I can produce first century confirmation of the appearances (Clement’s letter to the Corinthian church, for example) however, if what you are looking for is non-Christian first century confirmation, a note should be made. To ask for non-Christian eyewitness testimony of the risen Christ would be tantamount to asking for an eyewitness to a car wreck who doesn’t believe the car wreck happened. You asked if I could produce testimony that would rule out any other possibility. I would say that the resurrection is the only explanation that is not inconsistent, has vast explanatory scope and great explanatory power. Produce another alternative that you feel meets the requirements and I will deal with it. It should be stated that virtually no one, Christian or otherwise, in scholarship denies that the followers of Christ experienced what they viewed to be appearances of the risen Jesus.

Your question of whether I could demonstrate that the commitment level of the early church was greater than that of any other religion is a misunderstanding of the argument. That is not what I am claiming. In fact I can imagine no greater commitment level than that of those who die in an act of Jihad. My contention is that their commitment level was such that they were willing to die for something that they would have known to be untrue. Of course the faithful of many religions have died for things that are untrue. The difference is that many first century Christians died for something they would have known to be false.

Finally, you asked if people are capable of lying, exaggerating, embellishing or remembering incorrectly. The simple answer is “of course.” But I would not die for something I fabricated. The problem with this sort of argument is that it doesn’t explain the level of persecution that the early church endured.

[Will]

First I would like to say that I appreciate the tone with which Will has performed the cross examination.

My pleasure. If I'm reading this wiki article correctly, it's my turn to present the negative constructive, to which you will cross. Too bad, I have some interesting responses. C'est la vi.

Negative Constructive:
The nature of faith.
I used to be a Christian. I was born in a Christian home, went to church, watched my dad become a pastor, went on to teach Sunday School and eventually adult Bible classes in church. The single most important part of religious experience, I was taught, was faith. You have faith in god, you have faith that Jesus died for your sins, and you have faith that you're going to heaven for believing. Never were we asked to demonstrate the existence of god scientifically because that would mean that we didn't have faith. Faith had to happen without proof or it ceased to be faith. After leaving religion, I thought about this a great deal. What was faith? Why was it such an important part of Christianity, and as I studied more a part of Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, and any other theistic faith I could study? It didn't really occur to me until I had my first religious debate of this kind. I had a discussion (argument) with a friend of mine about the Shroud of Turin. He insisted that it was evidence of Jesus, and I had no idea why he was looking for evidence. Why would you need evidence when you have faith? Then it dawned on me. The reason he needed evidence was doubt. Just like me, faith wasn't enough for him. He had to try and rationalize and explain everything with evidence and science and whatnot. I felt badly telling him that the Shroud was a fake, but I didn't want to lie to him. Doubt is what happens when faith fails, and because many human beings are often curious and skeptical by nature, doubt has the tendency to enter even the most devout and pious believer's mind.

People don't believe in god because someone presents them with a very solid piece of verifiable evidence. That just doesn't happen. If such compelling evidence existed, you can bet that people like me, skeptics, would love to get my hands on it so I can test and verify it. No, people believe in god either because they're born into it, or because they're "born again", in that the church provides something for them, be it community, emotional support in a time of need, etc. When a skeptic like me is presented with supposed evidence for god, it's generally not difficult for me to systematically dismantle it not because I'm smarter or anything like that, but because religion requires faith. The supernatural requires faith. Now, I don't really have a problem with faith unless it makes people do harmful things, but faith isn't supposed to be rational or logical or scientific. It's something completely different. Show me a person that decides that the earth is 6,000 years old and he or she needs to invent a bunch of bonk science to back it up and I'll show you someone that's trying to deal with doubt.

With all respect, I've seen all of your arguments before, and many, many more. As a moderator of an atheist forum, I suppose I've put myself in a position to be exposed to a lot of people that want to convince me of god's existence using my own rules, rules of science and logic, instead of their rules, rules of faith. It's not that they're not capable of logic and scientific understanding, it's just that they're able to turn it off when it comes to the supernatural because it's worth it to them. But honestly, unless there's an entirely new argument or piece of evidence, I already know what you're going to say as I've responded to it many times with a very high rate of success.


God is contradictory.
Let's look at a very basic construct of god common to most religions:
- God is not evil, but in fact benevolent
- God understands what evil (I'm using "evil" loosely here) is and that it exists
- God is omnipotent
- God intervenes, or somehow is active in his creation
Assuming these axioms, one (like Epicurus) must conclude that one of these things is wrong.
Is god willing to prevent evil, but unable? If so, he is not omnipotent.
Is god able to prevent evil, but not willing? If so, he is not benevolent.
Is god both willing and able to prevent evil? This cannot be as there is evil.
Is god neither able, nor willing? If so, he is not god.
I would be uncomfortable having an understanding of the universe which is inherently contradictory. Science, math, logic, they all follow definite rules and those rules are eventually knowable and you can even make predictions based on those rules. If, however, there were contradictions in science, math, or logic, they would fail to be useful to me in understanding reality.


There are better explanations as to the roots of theism.
I'd like you to imagine yourself living in Northern Africa about 20,000 years ago. You're a member of a roving tribe of hunter-gatherers. Life is relatively simple: you wake, eat, hunt, eat, then sleep. On a bad day, you have to fight off a predator or deal with harsh weather, on a good day, you have extra food from before or mate. You're able to do so well, better than other competing species, because you're able to understand other members of your tribe. You may not have a fully formed language yet, but through various gestures and noises, you can communicate, and you're able to understand them because they developed similar abilities. Commonality—the ability to understand what they are thinking and postulate what they are trying to communicate—has given you a huge survival advantage.

The process of your species' development means that you have a natural curiosity. The same curiosity that your ancestors used to develop the first tools, shovels, clothing, and hunting weapons. The curiosity has grown as members of the species with more curiosity have been able to develop better technologies for survival and have had the opportunity to mate more, passing along that trait. You're the culmination of many, many generations of curious people. You were curious about how the short-nosed bear was able to access bone marrow in a kill, so you used a heavy stone and a strong stone as hammer and chisel to crack the thick bone of a bison. The nutrient-rich marrow helps to feed you and your tribe, and they now have a new technique for extracting more from each kill. High-five.

One day you're feeling particularly curious about the sun. What is the sun? It brings light, heat, better fruits and vegetables and means that there will be more prey to be caught. It's pretty darn special, you reckon. But how do you understand the sun? You don't have thousands of years of scientific discovery to tell you that it's the mass of incandescent gas at the center of our solar system, so you're left with what you understand. You understand basic communication, personal relationships, and sympathy. So you test it. One day, you try a ritual of some kind, and the next day happens to be warm. Or cold. Or anything, really. You take that to be a direct result of what you've done, and religion is born. Soon you're not as much a hunter as you are a shaman or priest, interpreting signs from the sun and teaching other members of your tribe what pleases the sun.

When we look back to the very first religions in recorded history, they're mostly polytheistic and naturalistic, or worshiping natural phenomena. Even today, when we encounter lost tribes that have never come into contact with civilization, they generally have naturalistic religious practices and beliefs. Notice that in my hypothetical I did not violate any laws of science or logic. All of what I described could very well have happened without any divine intervention or supernatural occurrence.

The alternative is incredibly complex and requires the supernatural. Before time began there was a creature which has always existed with limitless power and the ability to know everything. One day (actually not one day, as time didn't exist yet) this being decided to create reality. Depending on the religion, he/she/it created the universe with the world in it. No existing religious texts describe the universe beginning the way scientists believe (boom, matter, gravity collecting matter into discs, inner discs igniting and outer discs turning into asteroid fields and planets, some planets happening to be solid instead of mostly gas, some of those planets have the right combinations of things to eventually have liquid water, abiogenesis, evolution of single celled aquatic organisms, multicellular aquatic life, complex aquatic life, simple land plants, complex land plants, complex land animals, etc.), so there was even more supernatural stuff going on. In Judaism, Christianity and Islam, it's heavens and the earth, light, expanse between waters, oceans and land, vegetation, day and night, water creatures, birds, land creatures, and humans. Not exactly the order scientists have rested on.

So let's say that you take two average people born without religion (as people aren't born knowing religion). You take each of them aside and the first person is told the story about the hunter-gatherer worshiping the sun, the second person is told that god is real. How do you think that would turn out?

Thanks for reading.

[braxhunt]

Cross Examination

I also am looking forward to the rebuttals, Will. There are plenty of things you said that I wish to engage directly when the chance arrives.  

1) First, I would like to know what kind of evidence it would take in order for you to be convinced that theism is true.

2) What is your understanding or definition of the term faith with regard to Christianity? On what basis have you established that understanding or definition?

3) You claimed, “I've put myself in a position to be exposed to a lot of people that want to convince me of god's existence using my own rules, rules of science and logic, instead of their rules, rules of faith.” On what basis do you claim that the rules of science and logic are only available to skeptics and atheists?

4) Is it your contention that the premises that you set forth in your opening remarks, regarding the problem of evil, are the only possibilities available to us?

5) You claimed, “No, people believe in god either because they're born into it, or because they're "born again", in that the church provides something for them, be it community, emotional support in a time of need, etc.” can you demonstrate that this is a universal norm, or is it merely conjecture?

[Will]

1) First, I would like to know what kind of evidence it would take in order for you to be convinced that theism is true.

The problem is that one cannot demonstrate the supernatural naturally. Let's say that god appears in front of me and I ask him to prove his power. "God," I'd ask, "please demonstrate your power by doing something which cannot be explained." He does something like making the earth suddenly rotate in the opposite direction, which I then begin to investigate. How would I investigate this? Modern science cannot explain this, but what if there is a perfectly reasonable explanation? What if this god is an impostor, an individual from an intelligent and more technologically advanced race of beings that can easily reverse the rotation of the planet? Because that explanation may not violate the laws of physics, it's actually more likely than the god hypothesis.

I suppose the answer is "Such evidence likely does not exist, so I can't predict what it would look like".

2) What is your understanding or definition of the term faith with regard to Christianity? On what basis have you established that understanding or definition?

Education in the church was the source of my understanding of faith. People have faith in god, they don't investigate god carefully in a laboratory and come to a verifiable conclusion.

3) You claimed, “I've put myself in a position to be exposed to a lot of people that want to convince me of god's existence using my own rules, rules of science and logic, instead of their rules, rules of faith.” On what basis do you claim that the rules of science and logic are only available to skeptics and atheists?

Those same rules are available to everyone, but they don't always apply to everything. 99.9% of the time, I'm sure you are just as capable as I to utilize science, logic, deductive reasoning, etc. in your everyday life to help you through, but when it comes to religion, requiring verifiable scientific evidence doesn't work. You are welcome to look back at the archives of this forum to see all of the theists that have brought fourth arguments like the god of the gaps, cosmological fallacy, etc. In every one of those cases without exception, there has been either a mistake or assumption which can be found, exposed, and then corrected for.

4) Is it your contention that the premises that you set forth in your opening remarks, regarding the problem of evil, are the only possibilities available to us?

The best argument I've ever heard in response to the Epicurean god-paradox is regarding free will, but even that doesn't negate the argument. The facts are still there and they are still contradictory.

5) You claimed, “No, people believe in god either because they're born into it, or because they're "born again", in that the church provides something for them, be it community, emotional support in a time of need, etc.” can you demonstrate that this is a universal norm, or is it merely conjecture?

I can demonstrate that most people are religious because they're born into it. That can be verified by the fact that if you are born into a Christian home, there's a very, very high probability that you will be Christian for the rest of your life. If you're born into a Muslim home, there's a very, very high probability that you will be Muslim for the rest of your life. This applies to all religions. No statistics are available as to the most common reason for born-again believers to join their new religion, so I suppose that would be conjecture. Unfortunately, the only information we can draw on is personal experience.

[braxhunt]

I await your first rebuttal, and am looking forward to mine.

[Will]

C - Caused. The universe was caused. The argument has been classically known as the cosmological argument for the existence of God and it goes like this. 1.) Everything that begins to exist had a cause for its existence 2.) the universe began to exist, thus 3.) the universe had a cause.
   Now this argument in and of itself may not seem to imply God, but at closer observation I think you’ll see that it does. Modern astrophysics has now confirmed beyond a reasonable doubt what theists have said all along. The universe was not always here. Since the early 90’s physicists have had convincing evidence that the universe began to exist a finite time ago. When the background radiation wave still emanating from that explosion was discovered astrophysicist George Smoot claimed, “If you’re religious, It’s like looking at God.”
   Why would he say such a thing? Modern science accepts the premise that the universe consists of at least 3 things: Time, space and matter/energy. Whatever caused the universe to exist could not have been made up of these things or else it could not have caused their existence. This means, in brief, that whatever caused the universe to exist was not temporal, but eternal (non-temporal) not made of matter and does not occupy space. Confronted with this, then impending evidence, agnostic astrophysicist Robert Jastrow claimed, “For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.”

   In fact the argument is so strong that even without the evidence from modern cosmology, the universe had to come to exist for at least two reasons. 1.) Time cannot extend infinitely into the past because if it did there would never have been enough time to arrive at today, and 2) we now know that the universe is expanding rapidly. If it is expanding that means that if the tape could be rewound we would observe it retracting down to a single point and then nothingness.

This implies that an immaterial spaceless and timeless intentional (because only an intentional being could have intended a universe) being caused the universe to come into existence.

1 Everything that begins to exist had a cause for its existence
2 the universe (actually all of reality) began to exist
3 [therefore,] the universe had a cause
What does this argument have to do with god? Nothing in this suggests a Judeo-Christian or Muslim god, nothing in it suggests a Pagan god, nothing in it suggests even any kind of god. It could just as easily be something which we cannot possibly understand in any way. This could just as easily demonstrate a new scientific phenomena. The bottom line is we don't know what caused the big bang. Scientists are still working on it, so we don't have an answer yet. Still, that answer being unknown does not automatically fall back to "god did it".

This is what we call a "god of the gaps" argument. If something is unexplainable by science, it must therefore be attributed to god. I cannot explain why American Idol is popular, therefore it is evidence of god. I cannot explain quantum superposition, therefore it's evidence of god. Obviously, these are not logically defendable conclusions, as the logic is fallacious.

“O” is the second core fact and it stands for ordered. The universe exhibits incredible order. Stephen Hawking said in his book A Brief History of Time, “It would be very difficult to explain why the universe should have begun in just this way, except as the act of a God who intended to create beings like us.” Other scientists have said that it is like dozens of dials stand before us and if they were changed in the most infinitesimal way (if the gravitational force was slightly different or the strong nuclear force was changed or the electro-weak force) the universe would not be ordered as it is, but would result in chaos. This would seem to imply an intelligent designer.

I'm going to tackle the ordered part of this instead of your suggestion that Stephen Hawking is a theist.

You didn't really go into detail on this one, so I'm going to assume you're making the fine-tuned universe argument, which I'm afraid is flawed. The universe is ideal for life because life has evolved within the laws of nature. Any life form which formed for different laws would die out and not continue on. Whatever the laws of nature might be, they are necessarily ideal for anything existing within that reality.

Let's say that the earth didn't revolve around an average star, but a red giant. Abiogenesis occurs and life begins to evolve. Instead of the mutations that work best with an average star, the mutations that work best with the red giant survive, and life continues to evolve according to the reality in which it exists. Let's say that gravity is stronger, so stars form more quickly and burn faster, and planets revolve at a greater distance and faster. Still, any life that happened on these worlds would have mutations, and any mutations that fit with higher gravity would mean better survival.

The universe isn't ordered for us, we've adapted to the universe. For proof of that, all you need to know is that 98% of all species to develop on earth have died out.

“R” is for rules. The universe seems to have guiding rules. These rules are not only the rules of mathematics, and logic, but also the rules of morality. These rules are objective. 2 + 2 = 4. This is objectively true and will always be objectively true. The logical law of non-contradiction is objective. “A” can not be “A” and at the same time and in the same sense “non-A.” In the same way it is my contention that human beings have objective moral values. That is to say it is wrong and it has always been wrong to torture innocent babies for fun. It is and always has been wrong to murder or rape. To maintain that these morals are not objective, but are subjective would be to say that there was nothing really wrong with the slaughter of 6 million Jews in the holocaust, or that pedophilia is not really wrong. These would just be preferences on atheism because there would be nothing really right or wrong at all. In fact we couldn’t even speak of anything being better or worse than anything else. These terms are meaningless without objective moral values and object moral rules can only come from an objective moral rule-maker. I should also add that I am not saying that atheists cannot be moral. Indeed many atheists lead better lives morally than do many Christians. This is precisely the point. All men have the moral law written on their heart.

The arbitrary lawgiver? No, I'm afraid there's a simple explanation for human morals, and it lies, like the answer above, in evolution. This is one of my favorite answers because I love evolutionary sociology.

I'm going to assume you understand the principles of evolution. So let's say that you're back 20,000 years ago, again. Life is a struggle for survival and adaptation. Humans that cared for their children were more likely to have their genes passed on to the next generation, so that trait became strong. Humans that cared for their kin also were more likely to have their genes passed on to the next generation, so that trait became strong. Mating for humans requires cooperation in order to stand the best chance at success, so humans which could cooperate with and feel attached to our mates were more likely to have their genes survive. Finally, as a social species, cooperation within the tribe, band or what have you meant a better chance at survival. The cost of having to split resources was outweighed by the benefit of cooperating for hunting, protection, and gathering, so the humans that were best at cooperating within a basic social structure would be more likely to survive and pass on genes.

Morality's genesis was in evolutionary survival, not in being handed down from a creator. Killing many people is damaging to the species, so it is immoral. Raping a child damages the next generation and is thus damaging the species. Rape contradicted what I explained above about mating and cooperation.

Unfortunately, these moral realities are often ignored in religious texts, such as the Torah/Bible. Beating children is endorsed in proverbs 13:24. Murdering people is constantly in the Bible (Deuteronomy 17:12, Leviticus 20:13, Leviticus 20:27, Exodus 21:15 , and my favorite 2 Chronicles 15:12-13). Rape is ordered by the God of the Bible in Judges 21:10-24 (and a few more times in Deuteronomy). Indeed, there is even genocide ordered by God in the Bible (Leviticus  26:7-9). I can list similar verses from the Qur'an. It is my contention that one cannot attribute the source of morality to a character which is immoral.

“E” is for experience. Though I would not try to convince you of my own experience of God. Without any compelling reasons to doubt these previous arguments, I see no reason to doubt my own experience of God. And it is an experience that I would invite others to seek.  

I see no reason that you should doubt the experience of a Muslim that has experienced the presence or Allah, or an ancient Greek that experienced the presence of Apollo. Their experiences are no less or more real than your own experience. If I told you that I died and experienced no heaven, you would doubt my experience?

“F” is for Fatality. Jesus died by Roman crucifixion. This is accepted virtually across the board in modern scholarship. New Testament scholar Gary Habermas has counted the scholars for and against and shown that overwhelmingly Christ’s death is affirmed among even skeptics in scholarship today. The idea that Jesus did not die is the modern day equivalent of the “flat earth theory.”

I'd really like to see citations for this, because I've already verified many times that this isn't true. There is no extra-Biblical evidence of the existence of Jesus, which is peculiar because historical records from Palestine around 2000 years ago are quite well documented. The first historical records of Jesus (the Gospels) are from early Christians around 70AD, which is at least 40 years after the supposed ascension, and well after the deaths of any disciples or really anyone that knew Jesus as the life expectancy back then was about 30-35 years. In other words, there are no existing first-hand accounts of Jesus in existence.

“A” is for Appearances. Jesus appeared to many of his followers after his crucifixion. Though I will not use blind faith in the Bible, even the German scholar Gerd Ludemann (no friend to Christianity) affirms that what 1 Corinthians 15 says historically is true, namely that Jesus’ followers had appearances of what they believed to be the risen Jesus. Moreover, there are creedal statements made there affirming Christ’s resurrection that most scholars believe date back earlier than the documents themselves placing them incredibly near the event itself. In other words, we have almost immediate evidence of individuals who saw what they believed to be the risen Christ. Even the hyper-skeptical “Jesus seminar” affirms this truth.

How many people claim to have seen bigfoot first hand? How many people report having been abducted and sexually assaulted by aliens? Do you believe in the existence of something simply because someone has reported to have experienced it? Would you believe me if I told you that when I was on a commercial flight from Dallas/Ft. Worth to SFO I saw a pegasus flying outside my window?

“C” - is for Commitment level. The commitment level of the early Christian church was so great, they were so convinced of what they saw, that they were willing to die for that belief. Men will live for a lie, but they will not die for something they know to be untrue. Muslim extremists may die for a lie, but they do not know it to be a lie. They believe. Many of these Christians would have known (if the resurrection were a fabrication) and died for a lie anyway.

People of all religions and all politics die for their beliefs. It does not make them any truer, in fact it communicates obsession.

“T” is for Testimony. This kind of commitment level developed because it was based on eye-witness testimony.

Same as above. Pegasus?

“S” is for Solution. The best solution to the question of what to do with these facts is surmise that Jesus really did die and rose again. As my friend Mike Licona says, “If a man claims to be God and rises from the dead we should believe him.

I had heart surgery when I was 5 years old. Part of the process meant having my heart stop beating for about 15 seconds, leaving me very much dead. If I had claimed to be god before going in to surgery, would I be god?

[braxhunt]

Cross examination of negative rebuttal (Note to observers: During cross examinations I’m not presenting or defending my arguments. I will do that in rebuttal.)

1) Is it your assumption that the teleological (fine tuning) argument is aimed exclusively at the improbability of the development of biological organisms? How do you explain the incredible degree of fine tuning found throughout the universe, aside from life forms?

2) Is it your view that there are no objective moral values?

3) Can you demonstrate that the life expectancy in the near east during the first century was only 30-35 years? If so, can you demonstrate that it is highly unlikely that any of Jesus contemporaries lived to at least 70 A.D.?

4) Can you point me to a documented account of any instance wherein a group of individuals experienced an alien abduction (or the equivalent) and were so convinced that they were willing to die for the veracity of such a claim?

[Will]

1) Is it your assumption that the teleological (fine tuning) argument is aimed exclusively at the improbability of the development of biological organisms? How do you explain the incredible degree of fine tuning found throughout the universe, aside from life forms?

One cannot demonstrate that the universe is fine tuned unless it can be determine what the likelihood is that the universe could be another way. Certainly we can imagine in what ways the universe could be different, but without understanding basically everything about the history of our universe, there's no way we could say, "Ah, but there's a 25% chance it could have happened like this...". Basically, no such fine-tuning can be demonstrated at all, regardless of what the unnamed scientists you were citing claimed. In fact, Stephen Hawking himself on page 124 of A Brief History of Time basically endorses what's called the "weak anthropic principle", or the idea that if conditions weren't right for humans as they are, sure humans wouldn't exist, but we can't speak to the likelihood of our particular universe.

2) Is it your view that there are no objective moral values?

Not from religion, no. One could argue that the moral code which developed as humans developed socially is objective, but I think that would be an unfair stretching of the word "objective". At best we have a collective of subjective morals. Objective morals would suggest an outside and supreme player to judge, and you can't assume god when you're making the case for his/her/its existence.

3) Can you demonstrate that the life expectancy in the near east during the first century was only 30-35 years? If so, can you demonstrate that it is highly unlikely that any of Jesus contemporaries lived to at least 70 A.D.?

http://http://www.utexas.edu/depts/classics/documents/Life.html
The problem with your second question is that I was referencing a specific piece of evidence which is attributed to a specific author (though we're not 100% sure about that one because it wasn't attributed until 150ad), Mark the Evangelist. According to our best understanding, Mark was a traveling companion of Paul and never met Jesus, though he may have been alive before the supposed time of Jesus' ascension. It's widely assumed that Mark got his information orally from Peter.

4) Can you point me to a documented account of any instance wherein a group of individuals experienced an alien abduction (or the equivalent) and were so convinced that they were willing to die for the veracity of such a claim?

They wouldn't need to die for the veracity of their claim, so it's not the same thing.

[braxhunt]

It is important to note that you respectfully criticized my arguments because you have heard them before and others have already engaged them. This seems hardly fair since you subsequently used the "Problem of Evil" argument which is literally ancient and has been engaged many more times and by many more philosophers than any of mine.

You claim that I am arguing for the “god of the gaps,” but this is a misunderstanding of the cosmological argument. Respectfully, this may be why many atheist continue to argue poorly against this argument. In order for this to be a “god of the gaps” argument it would require that we have no evidence for the cause of the universe and so we assume God. On the contrary, I stated before that the cause of something cannot be the something that is caused. Thus, since the universe is made up of time, space and matter, it is a necessary that whatever caused those things to come into existence is not made up of them. This means that far from no evidence, we have positive evidence that whatever caused the universe to exist was eternal, spaceless, not material and intentional in that it had to intend to create. It would have to be all powerful to create the universe out of nothing and these attributes are enough to justify that theism is more reasonable than atheism.

You never responded to my argument that an infinite regress is not possible. Rather, we heard an argument for the infinite universe. Steven Weinberg and Hawking himself admit that it is outdated. In fact Hawking claimed of the background wave radiation that it was, “the final nail in the coffin of the steady state.” By the way, I did not claim in my argument that Hawking was a theist. It is common in debate to use the very words of your opponents. My point was that Hawking admitted that if the universe was not infinite it would be hard to surmise anything other than a creator.

You claim that the universe is not fine tuned because we cannot demonstrate that it could have happened any other way. 1) If we were in a room with a beautiful painting we would never have had to see another beautiful painting to surmise that the painting had been painted. 2) There are literally infinite numbers of other possibilities, and 3) the greatest probability is that the universe would never have come to exist at all on its own because out of nothing, nothing comes!

I appreciate your honesty in admitting that moral values are not objective without God, but I wonder if everyone observing really understands the implications of this. This would mean that if another dictator such as Adolf Hitler were to come to power and his ideology became the norm, so that it was considered good for mankind to kill Jews in horribly torturous ways, then there would be nothing really wrong with that. It would also mean that if an alien race came to earth and had a different morality that said treating humans like cattle was the way to go, then this would not be wrong either. These would just be preferences. Are we really willing to say that? By the way, I am not arguing for this position based on what others have done, but it is interesting to note that Francis Collins who headed up the “Human Genome Project,” not only became a theist, but a Christian theist because he became convinced of objective morality. He would be well aware of what the influence of evolution would be on this matter.

You claim to have verified that the majority of scholarship does not affirm the historical reality of the man, Jesus. However, you may feel this way, but this is highly unlikely since you would have had to have counted them. This is a process that takes years, even longer if you don’t have access to major online paid databases. Gary Habermas has counted. He lays out the data in his book, “The Historical Jesus,” and describes the process on his website. Moreover, I have sited some of the most skeptical scholarship out there, naming Gerd Ludemann and the “Jesus Seminar.” Moreover, Bob Price does deny the historical Jesus, but at least he admits that he is on the fringe of scholarship. - See his debate with Habermas and Licona on the Infidel Guy radio show.

Not only did I provide you with first century extra-biblical evidence for the historical Jesus, but the evidence you cited for the life expectancy of first century individuals actually confirms my position and refutes yours in that it shows that if an individual survived infancy they had a fair chance of living beyond what we would consider “midlife” by today’s standards.  Besides, Tacitus lived to be 61, and Josephus lived to be 60, just to name a couple.

You claim that people of all persuasions died for their beliefs. Fine, I did not contest that. I argued that these individuals would have died for something they knew to be untrue. I have already cited evidence for the appearances from skeptical scholarship. This is why skeptics like Bart Ehrman try to explain the appearances based on delusion or group hallucination.

You claim that you died and came back to life. You had a near-death experience, not a death experience. However, if you really believe that you died, brain cells and all, and rose again, then I don’t know why you have a problem with the resurrection.

You seem to have a poor understanding of what the term faith means within Christianity, which is understandable because many Christians do too. But Orthodox Christianity has never held that faith means blindly accepting something without any evidence at all. On the contrary, Christianity has historically maintained that its adherents have trust (faith) in what God will do in the future based on what we can demonstrate happened in the past. Such an idea as you described is known as “Fideism” and has been rejected by even the Roman Catholic church.

As far as presenting arguments for the reasonability of atheism, you have really only used the well known “Problem of Evil” argument alongside what has come to be known as the “Atrocities of the Old Testament.” The problem with the “Problem of Evil,” is that it commit’s the fallacy of the "faulty dilemma." Basically, it assumes that God would have no basis for allowing evil, if he is a good God, thus God cannot exist. However, there maybe good reason to allow evil in the world. And it is certainly not a problem unless one both believes in God and is at the same time a mortalist which is unlikely.

As far as the “Atrocities of the Old Testament,” this is not a debate regarding bibliology or biblical inerrancy. While I personally think there are answers to all the passages you brought out, even if you were able to show that these are inconsistent with the nature of God it would only effect those scriptures and not God’s existence. Once again, although I have my own views I am not arguing for biblical inerrancy here.

You used a hypothetical explanation of how religion forms. However, even if this is true of how some religions have come to be (and I’m sure it is) it is a leap in logic to assume that it is how all religions form. Moreover, you have committed the “genetic fallacy” which is an attempt to discredit one’s belief based on how they arrived at that belief.

You also argued that most people are a part of the religion they are a part of because they were born into that religion. Once again this commit’s the “genetic fallacy.”

You claim that people don’t come to faith because they examined the evidence and arrived at the conclusion of Christianity. This is simply not true. I know many people who have arrived at Christianity through an examination of the evidence. Besides I don’t see how you could demonstrate such a claim.

Finally, you admitted that there is no evidence you can imagine that would convince you of theism because any natural explanation would be better than a supernatural one. This is a presuppositional embrace of naturalism and indicates that one is willing to follow the evidence as long as it does not affect his own prior commitment. It is what philosophers call theoretical accommodation. David Hume held the same view and has been discredited for it. Anthony Flew spent his life defending atheism, but recently embraced Deism because he rejected this a priori assertion against the supernatural and rather followed the motto “follow the evidence wherever it may lead.”

[Will]

Do you think that the age of an argument is relevant in determining whether it is correct or incorrect?

What in the cosmological argument specifically leads one to theism? Why are any and all scientific hypothesis regarding the beginning of existence dismissed, instead replaced specifically by the concept of god? Is this not the very definition of the "god of the gaps" fallacy?

Hawking has said that the current incarnation of the universe is not infinite, but what has Professor Hawking said about the Cyclic model?

How can one compare a painting, something we know to be created, with the universe, something we are debating whether or not was created? Moreover, if we were in a room with a painting and had no knowledge of any other rooms to compare our room to, is it possible (or rather not completely impossible) that the painting could have another explanation?

Is it possible you missed my discussion about how morality developed from evolution and that things like murder, rape, etc. are considered innately wrong because of said evolution? And are you aware that many scientists are concerned about Francis Collins' religiosity?

Have you read "Review of Habermas" by Peter Kirby, which demonstrates numerous mistakes on the part of Christian apologist Gary Habermas?

Are you aware that the Epistles of Clement are dated at around 96AD, a full 66 years after the supposed ascension of Jesus and roughly 26 years after the Gospel of Mark, which I referenced as the first written accounts of Jesus? If one were to assume an author would have at least needed to be over 10 years old to properly recollect something, would that not at least suggest an age of about 76 years old, which would have been highly improbable for that time period? And can you demonstrate that the Gospels that appeared in circulation before the Epistles of Clement did not influence Clement's writings at all?

Can someone know something to be true, but still be wrong? Many people died because they knew communism to be superior to capitalism, and yet history would seem to suggest that regardless of their faith they were quite wrong. Doesn't that suggest that dying for something does not make it true?

Why would you compare something which happened in the 20th century, under the strict control of well trained modern surgeons with the crucifixion, death, 2-3 days of being dead, and being resurrected by angels or god? And how does that respond to the point I was making, that personal, unverifiable experience is immaterial to debate?

Since it's impossible to use science to suggest that the earth was created in 6 24-hour days, why would you suggest that faith does not involve suspending science or reason? Since it's impossible to demonstrate that heaven exists, why would you suggest that faith does not involve suspending science or reason?

If the Bible is inaccurate about god slaughtering people, committing genocide, and ordering murders and rapes, why would you assume that the rest of the Bible is accurate? Why would you assume any of the Bible is accurate? Why would you assume the Torah or Qur'an are accurate? Thus why would you assume that theism is accurate?

If I can demonstrate a way for one religion to begin, why would that way not be possible for another religion? And are you aware that if a genetic fallacy is used in tandem with other evidences and arguments which establish the illogical conclusions of an opponent it ceases to be a fallacy?

Can you present verifiable studies which explore the reasons people join a religion which include "examination of evidence"? If not, can we agree that this point is not demonstrable because personal experience cannot be verified in this format?

Is it unreasonable for me to use established science and logic as determining measures for the existence of god or gods? Is my using these measures presupposing naturalism, or is it presupposing verifiable reality?

[braxhunt]

1) No, I do not think the age of an argument really matters. I responded to your Epicurus argument. The reason I mentioned its age and the overwhelming attention that has been given to it is precisely because you criticized my C.O.R.E. F.A.C.T.S. argument since it is comprised of arguments that are familiar.

2) The Kalam (impossibility of an infinite regress) aspect of my cosmological argument invalidates all other known cosmological explanations. Kalam alone would be a “god of the gaps” argument, but not when the necessary definitions of the first cause I mentioned previously are considered.

3) Hawking’s cyclical model (or any other of the many cyclical models) still does not solve the problem of the impossibility of an infinite regress so long as there are points (events, or points in time) on the timeline. The reason for this is that if there are points then there must be a first point.

4) My contention is that even if we had never seen a painting it would be evident that the painting had been created because of specified complexity. You may be used to seeing this argument posed against evolution, but Darwinism is helpless here because there is no mechanism. I’m not sure I follow your second question, but if I understand what your asking then I would say “no.”

5) I did not miss your argument from sociological evolution, and I’m quite sure it does bother “some” other scientists that Collins disagrees with them.

6) I read the electronic document by that title found here: http://www.christianorigins.com/habermas.html unfortunately I saw no where that Kirby specifically addressed the opinion of the majority of scholarship argument that I brought up, and so it is irrelevant to the point I was making.

7) I was going the extra mile in providing you with first century extra-biblical evidence for Jesus. You did not originally ask for extra-biblical first-hand evidence of Jesus you claimed, “In other words there are no existing first-hand accounts of Jesus in existence.” However, while I still maintain and have demonstrated (with your data) that first century life expectancy was permitting, I think Paul’s first letter to the Corinthian church satisfies. Paul would have had first hand evidence. And the “Jesus Seminar” doesn’t deny the historical data in 1 Corinthians 15.

No, someone can not “know” something to be true and be wrong. This violates the law of non-contradiction. They can, however, believe something to be true and yet be wrong. Communism is not a singular event it is an ideology, thus the comparison is invalid. For example, it makes no sense for some to say, “does everyone remember yesterday at 4:00pm when communism happened?”

9) I wouldn’t make that comparison, you did. And you didn’t ask did Jesus really say that (unverified personal claims) you said, “If I had claimed to be god before going into surgery, would I be God?”

10) I have not argued here for a 6 day creation and 6,000 year old earth. I have not argued in this debate for the reality of Heaven. I have my own views, but that is not the subject of this debate.

11) I did not say that the Bible was inaccurate on those matters. Nor, did I claim that the Bible is accurate on other matters. Once again I have my own views, but as I have not argued on the basis of the biblical testimony (with the exception of 1 Cor. 15 which holds a special place among scholarship) whether the Bible is accurate or not is not the subject of this debate. If you would like to have another debate on that subject I’ll be happy to accommodate. All I’m saying is there is no reason to hold me to something I have not argued. However, you then make a broad leap from biblical accuracy to theism. I don’t see why Biblical inerrancy is a necessary state (philosophically speaking) for theism to be true.

12) I didn’t say that the way you described would not be “possible” for Christianity to have begun that way. I am claiming that there is no warrant for thinking so. Moreover, it is certainly not a necessary state. With regard to your comments on the logical fallacy, you haven’t demonstrated that your opponents view is illogical so the fallacy stands. However, it is incorrect that the genetic fallacy would then grant logical justifiability.

13) I was merely responding to your claim that no one comes to Christian belief via evidence. Based on that, the driving point behind your question should be directed at your own comments.

14) On the contrary, I think you have abandoned science and logic at the point of the existence of God. Your refusal to allow those same measurements to be used in these cosmological waters exposes a presupposing of naturalism. It is much like the Richard Lewontin quote, “It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is an absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door."

[Will]

I'm finally of Benadryl, so hopefully this will make more sense.

It is important to note that you respectfully criticized my arguments because you have heard them before and others have already engaged them. This seems hardly fair since you subsequently used the "Problem of Evil" argument which is literally ancient and has been engaged many more times and by many more philosophers than any of mine.

I didn't criticize your arguments because I've heard them before, I was using them to illustrate the difference between the rules of science/logic and of faith.

You claim that I am arguing for the “god of the gaps,” but this is a misunderstanding of the cosmological argument. Respectfully, this may be why many atheist continue to argue poorly against this argument. In order for this to be a “god of the gaps” argument it would require that we have no evidence for the cause of the universe and so we assume God. On the contrary, I stated before that the cause of something cannot be the something that is caused. Thus, since the universe is made up of time, space and matter, it is a necessary that whatever caused those things to come into existence is not made up of them. This means that far from no evidence, we have positive evidence that whatever caused the universe to exist was eternal, spaceless, not material and intentional in that it had to intend to create. It would have to be all powerful to create the universe out of nothing and these attributes are enough to justify that theism is more reasonable than atheism.

I need to clear a few things up. The Big Bang model does not suggest that something came from nothing, or that everything was caused by the Big Bang. According to physicists such as Hawking, existence as we know it expanded from a small, superdense singularity about 13.7b years ago. The big bang was the moment of transition from singularity to universe. That singularity, which existed before the big bang, is not "nothing" and it is not "god", as it is not sentient or intelligent. Because we know next to nothing about the singularity, we cannot claim with any certainty that it came first. I'm sure you're thinking, "well, eventually we'll get back to a point where something began", but that's not supportable at all. There's no actual rule in science that says, "everything that exists has a cause", or that there's some sort of "first cause". Because of the nature of the singularity, that it was of such a great density and heat, there's no way for us right now to determine it's origin or, assuming it had a cause, what its cause might be.

Let me put it in these terms. In theism, the general belief is that god always existed. How, then, would it be a leap for you to believe that the singularity always existed? There's certainly no evidence that the singularity had a beginning.

You never responded to my argument that an infinite regress is not possible. Rather, we heard an argument for the infinite universe. Steven Weinberg and Hawking himself admit that it is outdated. In fact Hawking claimed of the background wave radiation that it was, “the final nail in the coffin of the steady state.” By the way, I did not claim in my argument that Hawking was a theist. It is common in debate to use the very words of your opponents. My point was that Hawking admitted that if the universe was not infinite it would be hard to surmise anything other than a creator.

The "infinite universe theory" states that the universe exists everywhere and for all time. I never made that argument. My argument is that you cannot say with any level of certainty that there was a beginning of existence, which I demonstrated above.

You claim that the universe is not fine tuned because we cannot demonstrate that it could have happened any other way. 1) If we were in a room with a beautiful painting we would never have had to see another beautiful painting to surmise that the painting had been painted. 2) There are literally infinite numbers of other possibilities, and 3) the greatest probability is that the universe would never have come to exist at all on its own because out of nothing, nothing comes!

You still can't demonstrate the likelihood that it could happen any other way. In order to demonstrate that the universe is fine tuned, you must demonstrate the probability of it being tuned the way it is and in order to do that you need to know what the alternatives are and how likely they are. No one has that information, it is unknown, thus assuming god is responsible is god of the gaps.

I appreciate your honesty in admitting that moral values are not objective without God, but I wonder if everyone observing really understands the implications of this. This would mean that if another dictator such as Adolf Hitler were to come to power and his ideology became the norm, so that it was considered good for mankind to kill Jews in horribly torturous ways, then there would be nothing really wrong with that. It would also mean that if an alien race came to earth and had a different morality that said treating humans like cattle was the way to go, then this would not be wrong either. These would just be preferences. Are we really willing to say that? By the way, I am not arguing for this position based on what others have done, but it is interesting to note that Francis Collins who headed up the “Human Genome Project,” not only became a theist, but a Christian theist because he became convinced of objective morality. He would be well aware of what the influence of evolution would be on this matter.

Murder is bad for survival, therefore the people without murderous tendencies survived better, thus to not murder became an innate trait for nearly all societies. Innate moral tendencies are generally normalized throughout every population because our ancestors all went through virtually identical processes of evolution when it comes to murder. Hitler, an extreme case, is an example of social norms, groupthink, and a number of other things overriding innate moral tendencies. All of this is verified by the very best evolutionary biologists or evolutionary sociologists.

Here's what worries me: If Dr. Francis Collins believes in objective morality, what reason would he have to study the evolutionary roots of morality? He wouldn't, thus cutting off an entire area of science from his worldview. The evolutionary roots of ethics is a very active field of study right now, and it could use a mind like Dr. Collins', but because of his theistic, religious beliefs he wouldn't be able to reconcile his theism with science. Isaac Newton made the same mistake, believe it or not. Normally, Newton didn't mention god in his writings. When Newton cracked the universal law of gravitation, there was not "and god did this". Why? He understood it. The problem came when Newton was trying to apply the two body problem to the entire solar system, and instead of continuing to create more mathematics in order to explain the stability of the solar system, Newton says:

The six primary planets revolve about the sun in circles concentric with the sun, with the same direction of motion, and very nearly in the same plane...
This most elegant system of the sun, planets, and comets could not have arisen without the design and dominion of an intelligent and powerful being...

From The Principia, General Scholium, Isaac Newton

That's Isaac Newton, at the end of his knowledge, invoking intelligent design. You know what the sad part of this is? Newton is probably the greatest scientific mind in the history of mankind. He would invent new kinds of calculus for fun. But because he bowed to "God did it", we ended up having to wait for Laplace to figure it out 100 years later. The math Laplace did was not above the level of Newton, Newton probably could have done it in his sleep, but because he bowed to a theological belief instead of a scientific belief, a belief which can be tested and verified, Newton never got to see the beauty of perturbation theory. What if we miss out on that breakthrough in evolutionary genetics because Dr. Collins just accepts the concept that there's an objective morality? That'd be a big disappointment and it would make a very strong case for theism being less reasonable.

You claim to have verified that the majority of scholarship does not affirm the historical reality of the man, Jesus. However, you may feel this way, but this is highly unlikely since you would have had to have counted them. This is a process that takes years, even longer if you don’t have access to major online paid databases. Gary Habermas has counted. He lays out the data in his book, “The Historical Jesus,” and describes the process on his website. Moreover, I have sited some of the most skeptical scholarship out there, naming Gerd Ludemann and the “Jesus Seminar.” Moreover, Bob Price does deny the historical Jesus, but at least he admits that he is on the fringe of scholarship. - See his debate with Habermas and Licona on the Infidel Guy radio show.

Please cite specific evidence. You can attribute it to Gary Habermas, but I can't read a whole book as a part of a debate. What do you feel are maybe the 3 strongest pieces of evidence that Habermas have? I'd like a chance to refute those specifically.

Not only did I provide you with first century extra-biblical evidence for the historical Jesus, but the evidence you cited for the life expectancy of first century individuals actually confirms my position and refutes yours in that it shows that if an individual survived infancy they had a fair chance of living beyond what we would consider “midlife” by today’s standards.  Besides, Tacitus lived to be 61, and Josephus lived to be 60, just to name a couple.

You didn't demonstrate it was extra-Biblical, or that it had a source independent of the Gospels.

You claim that people of all persuasions died for their beliefs. Fine, I did not contest that. I argued that these individuals would have died for something they knew to be untrue. I have already cited evidence for the appearances from skeptical scholarship. This is why skeptics like Bart Ehrman try to explain the appearances based on delusion or group hallucination.

How many soldiers have put their life on the line and died because they thought that Iraq had something to do with 9/11? Turns out that Iraq had no connections to 9/11, but those soldiers are still quite dead. I don't call that evidence, I'd call it a tragedy. Just like someone willing to die for his or her religion is a tragedy. Anyway, I'm not sure that "if you join our side, we require the kind of belief that could cause you to die" is a good argument for "theism is the more reasonable position".

You claim that you died and came back to life. You had a near-death experience, not a death experience. However, if you really believe that you died, brain cells and all, and rose again, then I don’t know why you have a problem with the resurrection.

As your friend said, "If a man claims to be God and rises from the dead we should believe him". I was alive, dead, then alive again. Had I claimed that I was god before this procedure, according yo Mike Licona's statement, he would believe me to be god. I would not be god, therefore the axiom is faulty. Anyway, I have yet to see you post historical evidence that there was a Jesus, let alone evidence that he rose from the dead.

You seem to have a poor understanding of what the term faith means within Christianity, which is understandable because many Christians do too. But Orthodox Christianity has never held that faith means blindly accepting something without any evidence at all. On the contrary, Christianity has historically maintained that its adherents have trust (faith) in what God will do in the future based on what we can demonstrate happened in the past. Such an idea as you described is known as “Fideism” and has been rejected by even the Roman Catholic church.

My understanding, like your understanding, comes from my experience in church. I was taught by my father, who was taught by Concordia Seminary, which is the authority on LCMS doctrine. Now you're right that the official stance of the Roman Catholic church (which does not represent all of theism) is that fideism is a thing of the past and that Thomas Aquinas's logic is sound, but that belief isn't necessarily what's taught in the churches. We may have to leave this one.

As far as presenting arguments for the reasonability of atheism, you have really only used the well known “Problem of Evil” argument alongside what has come to be known as the “Atrocities of the Old Testament.” The problem with the “Problem of Evil,” is that it commit’s the fallacy of the "faulty dilemma." Basically, it assumes that God would have no basis for allowing evil, if he is a good God, thus God cannot exist. However, there maybe good reason to allow evil in the world. And it is certainly not a problem unless one both believes in God and is at the same time a mortalist which is unlikely.

You can't claim that it's a faulty dilemma unless you step up to the plate with an alternative I can respond to. I'm aware of the free will argument, the heaven argument, the "god is beyond logic" cop-out, and the "without evil there is no good" fallacy. If you've got something new, I'd like to get a chance to see it before you simply declare that you're right and I'm wrong.

As far as the “Atrocities of the Old Testament,” this is not a debate regarding bibliology or biblical inerrancy. While I personally think there are answers to all the passages you brought out, even if you were able to show that these are inconsistent with the nature of God it would only effect those scriptures and not God’s existence. Once again, although I have my own views I am not arguing for biblical inerrancy here.

I couldn't disagree with you more. What is theism without religious texts? It's nothing. Christianity and Islam, which constitute the majority of theists in the world, base their theistic beliefs on these texts. If these texts can be demonstrated to be incorrect or in err, the position that theism is reasonable could be called into question.

You used a hypothetical explanation of how religion forms. However, even if this is true of how some religions have come to be (and I’m sure it is) it is a leap in logic to assume that it is how all religions form. Moreover, you have committed the “genetic fallacy” which is an attempt to discredit one’s belief based on how they arrived at that belief.

It's only a genetic fallacy if the origin of a thing does not speak to it's continuing meaning or context. In this case, it very much does.

If there is a non-supernatural explanation for the origin of religion, why is the supernatural explanation more correct?

You also argued that most people are a part of the religion they are a part of because they were born into that religion. Once again this commit’s the “genetic fallacy.”

Same as above.

Finally, you admitted that there is no evidence you can imagine that would convince you of theism because any natural explanation would be better than a supernatural one. This is a presuppositional embrace of naturalism and indicates that one is willing to follow the evidence as long as it does not affect his own prior commitment. It is what philosophers call theoretical accommodation. David Hume held the same view and has been discredited for it. Anthony Flew spent his life defending atheism, but recently embraced Deism because he rejected this a priori assertion against the supernatural and rather followed the motto “follow the evidence wherever it may lead.”

Antony Flew fell into the same trap that got Newton, god of the gaps:

My one and only piece of relevant evidence [for an Aristotelian God] is the apparent impossibility of providing a naturalistic theory of the origin from DNA of the first reproducing species…

http://http://secweb.infidels.org/?kiosk=articles&id=369
It's a shame, because we've actually had several wonderful threads about the various current natural hypothesis for abiogenesis on this forum.

I'm not presupposing anything. If provided with evidence for something, I will investigate it honestly and using the metrics of science and logic will come to the best conclusion I'm capable of regardless of my atheism. The fact that I'm unwilling to use supernatural metrics only comes from the fact that I remain unconvinced of the supernatural. You have to bear in mind that because the onus is always on the side of the believer (as no one is born religious). If I find it compelling, the burden has been met. If I find it un-compelling, as I have so far, the burden will not have been met. Anyway, it's not a presupposition, but something in statistics called "null hypothesis".