Which is the more reasonable position Atheism or Theism?

[braxhunt]

Actually, you did criticize my arguments on the basis of having heard them before. You said, “With all respect, I've seen all of your arguments before, and many, many more.” That’s fine, I’m just pointing out that the alternative is true.

With regard to the Cosmological argument, whether or not the event known as the big bang was the beginning or not, you have still not dealt with the impossibility of an infinite regression. Even if there was a chain of big bang phenomena that stretch back through history, or even with a singularity, there still would have had to have been an initial point in time. Time would have had to come to exist. Furthermore, you have misstated my arguments. In my first premise I did not state that everything that exists had a cause, I claimed that everything that “begins” to exist must have a cause for its existence. Are you really arguing that the universe did not begin to exist? You claim that there is no law in science that states that everything must have a cause, however, causality is vital to understanding physics. Which is more reasonable, “something caused everything, or “nothing caused everything from nothing?” Certainly in philosophical discussion there are contingent states and necessary states. You asked, “the general belief is that god always existed. How, then, would it be a leap for you to believe that the singularity always existed?” This is a misunderstanding of what we know must be true of the necessary first cause. Whatever came before space-time did not begin to exist because “begin” is a temporal term. Thus, whatever was the necessary first cause of space-time had no beginning to its existence, thus satisfying the term “necessary.”

I have demonstrated that the universe must have had a beginning for its existence and you have, even if indirectly, argued for an infinite universe. Immediately following your claim that you do not maintain an infinite universe (with regard to regression since that is what you were responding to), you said, “you cannot say with any level of certainty that there was a beginning of existence.” This strikes me as talking in circles.

I have heard no response to my claim that “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 then again invoke the “god of the gaps” argument, but have not dealt with my response to that, stated throughout this debate including my first post, that whatever caused time, space and matter, must be non-temporal, spaceless and non-material. The cause of those things cannot be made of the caused thing.

Your response regarding Hitler and the societal need to remove murder and genocide may be the point to which we have evolved right now, on your view, but we cannot say that it will be the case in the future. It may be that societal norms change again in the process of moral evolution rendering societies views of genocide to be moral. Thus, far from declaring anything objectively wrong, we cannot even claim rape, murder, pedophilia, racism, genocide or anything else to be definitively wrong. Indeed, wrongness and rightness have no definitive meaning whatsoever on such a view. Your understanding has poor explanatory scope in that it describes a reality that you must then live in contradiction to (or as though it were otherwise). Furthermore Francis Collins, view is such that societal evolution is not sufficient to explain morality as it is experienced. That “is” his contribution to that field of study. If every time a scientist came to a conclusion that differed from what some of his contemporaries held, we would never have arrived at many of our modern advances.

Regarding Habermas, I did not cite any of his arguments, only that he has taken years to count the number of scholars that agree that Jesus actually lived (among other things), and has concluded that the overwhelming majority hold that he did He demonstrates this in an audio file here: http://garyhabermas.com/audio/audio.htm. But, if you don’t like Habermas, take agnostic Bob Price who claims that “there may be a few authentic sentences here and there but most of it was created and compiled by the early church and therefore does not contain much, if any early witness. Price admits that he is way out there on this one and that very few scholars, even in the liberal camp, would agree with him.” http://1peter315.wordpress.com/2008/06/ ... s-of-paul/. If the very man who has made it his primary focus to argue for Jesus non-existence admits as much I think we should put it to rest.

You didn’t ask me to provide extra-biblical first hand accounts of Jesus, you simply asked for first hand accounts by someone who would have been alive during the time of Christ and I provided you with the one most liberal scholarship, (see Robert Price on the infidel guy radio show, and Gerd Ludemann as I have quoted above) agree upon.

You claimed that soldiers who have given their lives in Iraq died for a lie, thus Christians who would have witnessed the resurrected Christ would have also died for a lie. I think the difference is obvious. Soldiers do not live or die based on whether they agree or disagree with every claim of their government. They live or die based on following commanding protocol, love for country self sacrifice and a variety of other factors. Christians who knew whether or not Christ had resurrected would not die if they knew Christ had not been resurrected as is was the lynchpin of their belief.

Your comparison of your near death experience to Jesus death experience I have already explained. You had, as I said, a near death experience, not a death experience. However, if you claimed to be God and died, brain cells and all and then rose again three days later, you better believe I would give it a second look. Also, I have posted historical evidence for Jesus, and demonstrated that modern scholarship agrees with me. Separate from my C.O.R.E. F.A.C.T.S. argument I must say, that the idea that a common carpenter from the backside of the ancient near east who never traveled very far from his home, never wrote anything down, and limited his followers during his earthly ministry would 2000+ years later still be the most influential human being in history is impressive enough, but your belief that he never even existed makes it almost as remarkable as the claim that something came from nothing without a necessary cause.

You said we may have to leave the issue of what “faith” is alone. I am fine with that as long as you no longer confine theists (particularly me) to an understanding of that term which is not in keeping with the orthodox position. My heart goes out to you that your church experience developed in you a misconception of what Christian theism has always held on this issue. This passage is not relevant to my argument, but 1 Peter 3:15 actually warns against Fideism.

On the “problem of evil” you have presented a faulty dilemma in that you have presupposed that God cannot both exist and evil exist. An assumption has also been made that God’s actions should line up with your understanding of morality. Besides the fact that you don’t believe morality is objective, your argument rests on the premise that the bad things that happen are bad, or evil. But, as you said there is no objective basis for morality. Terms like good, bad, better, worse, and evil have not real basis. In other words your argument that God allows evil presupposes that there is objective evil.

You claimed, “What is theism without religious texts? It's nothing.” I find this to be an amazing statement since throughout this debate I have not referenced scripture to demonstrate theism one time. In fact you have quoted more scripture than I have. It is precisely my contention that one can arrive at theism without any religious texts. However, if you would like to pore a little scriptural gravy on it, Romans 1:20 says the same claiming, “For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities his eternal power and divine nature have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.” Now don’t misunderstand me to say that I don’t view scripture to be important, just that it is not necessary to establish theism. Since I have not used scripture in my argumentation for theism it would not mean theism was not true if the scriptures were never written. This is another faulty dilemma.

With regard to your commission of the genetic fallacy, I do not agree, nor have I seen you demonstrate that Christianity has a naturalistic explanation.

Anthony Flew did not commit the “god of the gaps” he argued the same as you have for decades and to say he doesn’t understand it is untenable. His position is that the complexity that we see in DNA has no naturalistic explanation and is positive evidence of a designer. When positive evidence is introduced for God the “god of the gaps” argument is no longer on the table.

The null-hypothesis is only active when there is no outstanding evidence to the contrary. I am glad to hear you say that you would be willing to evaluate the evidence and are open to the possibility of God’s existence, and I hope that such will be the case.

[Will]

Negative summary:
By the very own rules of a religious person â€"god is benevolent, god understands and is aware of evil, god is omnipotent, and god intervenesâ€"I presented the old Epicurean argument. Nothing in it has been disputed other than "it's a false choice", without demonstrating any alternative choice. In the second affirmative rebuttal, it was suggested that I'm not living up to my own beliefs. Of course not, the Epicurean paradox doesn't speak to atheism or skepticism, it seeks to demonstrate that theistic beliefs in god are contradictory, so it follows that each of the rules in the paradox are entirely theistic, including objective morality.


I presented a non-supernatural root for theistic belief that the affirmative ever admitted could have been the case. The only argument I got was "nor have I seen you demonstrate that Christianity has a naturalistic explanation". This argument is about theism, not specifically Christianity.


The final point was a question of the very legitimacy of the other side as it violates it's own rules in debating at all. The argument against my point was that one church body don't accept that officially. That doesn't really demonstrate anything, though. The church is officially against many things it actually endorsees. "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." That's not the definition of faith.

Faith:
1 a : allegiance to duty or a person : loyalty b (1) : fidelity to one's promises (2) : sincerity of intentions
2 a (1) : belief and trust in and loyalty to God (2) : belief in the traditional doctrines of a religion b (1) : firm belief in something for which there is no proof (2) : complete trust
3 : something that is believed especially with strong conviction; especially : a system of religious beliefs <the Protestant faith>
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/faith
The only reference to evidence is one definition that describes faith as "firm belief in something for which there is no proof". Either faith is the wrong word used in every church in the world, or the faith I described i more correct than the affirmative is willing to admit.

All of my points stand. There is an entirely non-supernatural explanation for the existence of religion and theism, theism is contradictory by its very nature, and arguing the side of theism violates theistic rules. I would suggest, based on these, that theism cannot be the more reasonable position.

Thanks.

[braxhunt]

In my closing remarks I’d like to point out some of the interesting themes of this debate and mention some of the conclusions we are justifiably warranted in arriving at based on C.O.R.E. F.A.C.T.S.

Will has mentioned the “problem of evil” argument, and relied almost exclusively on it throughout the duration of this debate. However, this argument is understood by philosophy to commit the fallacy of the “faulty dilemma.” He claims that I have not offered an alternative, but he himself mentioned several alternative possibilities argued by theists today. So long as even one of those arguments is even remotely possible a philosophical “defeater” has been established and the “faulty dilemma” stands. Moreover, this argument assumes attributes of God that are not necessary for theism to be true.

He argues that his naturalistic explanation for how theism could have developed is sufficient to answer theism, but not Christianity. Fine, but if Christianity is true then theism is true. Moreover, such an explanation maybe “sufficient” to explain how theistic ideas developed, but it is not “necessary” for theism to have developed. Even worse it is insufficient to explain the cosmological, teleological and other C.O.R.E. arguments I put forth. In short, it doesn’t get the job done.

Will has claimed that theism demands that theists do not debate their position. Based on what? I see absolutely no basis for such a claim.

He argues that “faith” based on Webster’s dictionary does not allow for the orthodox position. So what? The etymological use of faith among theists need not match the modern western understanding and more importantly, from a Christian perspective, Will never dealt with my scriptural passages that demonstrate that Christianity has always argued against fideism.

He has misrepresented, sidestepped and in some cases ignored the kalam cosmological argument. He has used straw man arguments repeatedly, arguing against a young earth model, 6 day creation model, inerrancy of scripture and holding me to a definition of faith to which I do not subscribe.

We have heard no answer to the infinite regression, nor the necessary attributes of the first cause which taken alone makes theism more reasonable.

With regard to objective morality we have only heard a rejection of the work of one of the greatest minds in modern day genetics, Francis Collins.

Rather than dealing with death and resurrection of Jesus we have heard the fringe hypothesis that the most influential individual in human history never existed.

And we have heard rhetorical claims that no individual has come to faith based on the veracity of apologetic evidence. Something that I know is untrue of some viewing this debate.

Since these arguments, particularly the cosmological, have not been answered I think it is much more reasonable to accept theism than atheism,.

Since these will be the final official comments of this debate, I want to say a final word.

I really, really do appreciate your tone, Will. You have been cordial at least and respectful at best. I find it interesting that you and I share such a similar background. We both had fathers who were Christian pastors, we were both raised in a Christian home, and we both have a passion for getting at the truth. It breaks my heart to hear that what led you to a rejection of theism was the idea that the faithful doubt. Surely, you have doubted your atheism. Doubt is healthy. I sometimes doubt my wife’s love, but this does not mean I am not married. We have both studied greatly the evidence and read some of the same books. The only difference is that I concluded that theism was correct and you concluded atheism. Since I am done debating I want to make a sincere invitation to everyone here. God does exist, he cares about all of you. He created the very atoms that comprise your body. As the father he exists outside of the material universe, as the Son he entered it and died that you might transcend it, and as the Spirit he makes such a connection possible. I would invite each of you, if only in your private moments to trust him based on what we know he has done in the past, that he will do what he claims in the future.

Thanks so much.

Braxton Hunter