God's Not Dead

All of Pro's arguments are either based on an argument from ignorance or violate Occam's razor or misuse science. In my next round I will debunk these in detail, however I will first offer my case. 1. There is no evidence for god, however there is anti-evidence. -The problem of evil: This a huge problem for theism, many chalk it up to free will, but this is inadequate. Logic: God exists. God is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent. An omnibenevolent being would want to prevent all evils. An omniscient being knows every way in which evils can come into existence. An omnipotent being has the power to prevent that evil from coming into existence. A being who knows every way in which an evil can come into existence, who is able to prevent that evil from coming into existence, and who wants to do so, would prevent the existence of that evil. If there exists an omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent God, then no evil exists. Evil exists (logical contradiction). Evil and god as described by theism can not logically co-exist. Gratuitous evil possess an even bigger problem. Babies born with cancer is no one's free will, it naturally occurs. How can one reconcile this? NO Poor design: If theism was true and the universe was designed for life why is it that life has to adapt it or die? This makes no sense. Also 99.9% of life ever to exist on the planet has gone extinct. 99.9% of the universe we know is baron. 2.5 of the water is drinkable 15% of the world is hospitable. We are terribly insignificant in the universe; it is almost absurd to think it was designed for us. Math:-Sheer mathematical implausibility. How many gods have been proposed in history? Over 3000. Let's take this one god, and put this over 3000. The calculation gives us the answer of 0.00033333. If we care about math, it is ridiculously improbable the god we are discussing exists. Now my opponent and I agree that 99.99999% of these are false. We just differ on this one. 2.As we learn more and understand the human condition we understand god as a natural phenomenon and kill supernatural explanations: -Why have people invented gods? Well throughout history, gods have primarily been invented to explain things. Thor-- the lovely Norse god of thunder. People used to not understand natural forces, so they invented gods to explain them. Is god's existence explained by thunder? Nope We could go on for quite a while about god's and what they symbolize. But the point I'm trying to make is, is that god's are usually present when we don't know something. This is referred to as god of the gaps. I'm not saying my opponent is doing this, she just is suffering from a misunderstanding of the science. The main point is the more we learn the less we need gods. -For power and to justify bad things. Humans are naturally good. If we naturally thought killing and acts like killing were moral, we would not have made it this far. Naturally humans will strongly resist the notion of burning people at stake, but if you introduce god, and contingent punishment people are all for it. The Nazi party thought they were doing gods work. Islamic extremist appeal to god to justify there poor acts. Now I'm not saying religion is all bad; I personally think religion is great, but I am saying it is trivially easy to justify bad things with god. -Consolation Humans fear the unknown. Death is profoundly scary, so it is incredibly normal for someone to create something for consolation. The same is true for justice, we want justice. Theists love saying, hey if there is no god people can do whatever they want and they will have no punishment. Well yea that's true, but then there would be no justice, so it's sensible that someone would create a false justice paradigm to deter bad acts. 3: Theism is utterly incoherent: My opponent has defined god as: Infinite, eternal, omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, spiritual, volitional, truthful, loving, living. He has added a few additional traits that I was not anticipating, however he has made this god even more unlikely . I tried to copy and paste the content from my prior essay on the contradictions of god and there is not enough characters, so I shall have to paraphrase in order to make my points. God is essentially a square circle. God can not be omniscient and be volitional. If god is omniscient then he knows everything. If he knows everything then he knows his own future. If he absolutely knows his own future then he can not change it(because he would have known he would change it, thus being apart of his original plan). Therefor god can not be omniscient and volitional. Love and hell are incompatible: Hell is a huge problem. Now I will concede that if my agnostic atheism has harmed anybody, or caused me to harm anybody and god thinks I need to be punished, then fine, but not forever. The point of a punishment is to bring about more well being for the individual later. What greater good can possibly come from someone being in hell forever? NONE. "God has all wisdom. He works everything out for the good of his people ", obviously not, because eternal suffering is to no one's greater good. What does this say about the character of individuals in heaven? They can manage to enjoy themselves, while countless people burn in agony. Let's add god's omniscience. An infinite amount of years ago god was aware of your birth, death and fate. Propose you end up in hell, god knew this for all eternity, yet he let you be born, only to suffer, and yet he is going to fault you, even though he knew. You know this is not characteristic of a loving god. -Omnipresence and eternality/ infinite being: It is also agreed that god is eternal and given god has omnipresence, it follows that god has been present everywhere forever. It is accepted that the universe has existed for thirteen point seven billion years, but given god is eternal, god existed prior to that. However it is also accepted that there was nothing before the universe, so it follows that god was present everywhere when nothing existed. It logically follows at that time god was nothing. This is often avoided by saying god exists outside of space time. For this to be the case, the word exist would have to be used in a way that is completely different from its usual definition. If one was to say god existed before time, it is the same as saying god existed for no unit of time, and in the general usage of the word exist, if something exists for no unit of time, it doesn't or didn't exist. In regards to space, the same problem arises; if god was to exist before space, it is the same as saying he existed in no space, and consequently if something exists no space, it does not actually exist. It can still exist as an abstract concept, such as numbers, but the definition of god is that god actually exists. The implications of god's omnipresence is contradictory to the concept of god. Theism is even more incoherent but I must stop in order to get to my point four and five. I shall have to be brief. 4: Does there need to be a god? Well not for the universe existing: -Quantum physics. First on causation. Not everything has a cause. Particles come into existence with no cause. Quantum physics applied to the universe, will produce a universe from nothing. 1. Let's visit the multiverse. The multiverse is a natural consequence of inflation. Via BICEP2 Primordial gravitation waves have been detected, which is almost indisputable proof of inflation. Inflation accounts for the: 1.Uniformity. The cosmic background radiation is quite uniform. Inflation adequately accounts for the uniformity. A uniform region expanded rapidly, evolving into our visible universe. 2. Mass density. Inflation predicts the omega should 1. The Planck satellite measures the omega as 1, which means our universe should be flat, which it is. 3.Small non-uniformity. The small non-uniformity in the universe is easily accounted for by quantum fluctuations, which have been observed in the CBR. As explained the multiverse is a consequence of inflation. All the other predictions have come true. I would say that would constitute a good reason to think the multiverse is true. Via inflation, some parts of the early universe expanded more than other, created bublbles of space time, which later developed into other universes, and our universe is just a bubble universe and requires no creator just a prior universe. The multiverse can be eternal. Very briefly on morality: No god is needed for morality. We rationally deduce morality from the consequences of our actions. next round I will address the rest of the points such as: the bible more quantum physics spirits consciousness more models. http://en.wikipedia.org... http://environment.nationalgeographic.com... http://www.godchecker.com... http://www.scientificamerican.com... http://www.scientificamerican.com...