The Judeo/Christian god must be the one true god

Thanks Pro. C1: Logical analysis of a god Faith is never an adequate way to judge if something exists or if it does not exist. Don’t you know I’m the son of god? How do I know I’m the son of god? I feel it in my bones. I see it in the sunset and in all the little things that happen to me – I know my Father in heaven is looking out for me. Every time I preach at my church that I’m the son of god, I feel filled with joy and I’m reminded that I must be the son of god. That sounds ludicrous – but if you only change it a little bit, you’ll obviously find that the argument of faith is much the same. I say this to point out that the argument is simply invalid. You can’t say you know something exists if you have no proof – feelings in your gut, serendipitous events – all of these kinds of arguments should at best be ridiculed. They’re rubbish – toss them in the recycle bin. Epicurus said it best some two thousand years ago: Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then He is not omnipotent. Is He able, but not willing? Then He is malevolent. Is He both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is He neither able nor willing? Then why call Him God? C2: Scripture does not prove god Scripture is fallible, untrustworthy and certainly a fraudulent piece of fiction. How to show this? I could try and cherry pick verses to show that god contradicts himself constantly, or I could point out that the entire wanderings in Egypt, or the conquering of Israel by Moses and company was entirely made up and has no archeological proof. Instead of doing that, I’ll really zero in on one story. I can show this point with a historical analysis of the birth of Christ. There never was a census at the biblical date - Luke says during the reign of King Herod a census was called. A census was called, but not until some eight to ten years after Herod was dead. It was the Census of Quirinius. After Herod's death in 4 BCE, his Kingdom was split between his sons - who were deeply unpopular. Sulpicius Quirinius was sent in to take over. He was immediately more popular and in 6 CE he held a census for tax purposes. I say all this to show to you that careful records were kept in this time period. Jesus had to be born in Bethlehem according Micah 5:2. So the authors would have been put in a tough spot. How to get Jesus to Bethlehem. They used a census! - and they picked one closest to Jesus' supposed birthday. Then they remember Hosea 11:1. They've got Jesus to Bethlehem, but not to Egypt. In order to get Jesus to Egypt, a fabrication must occur. Herod will kill every boy in Bethlehem. There’s a problem. Herod is already dead at this point, so he could not have called a census and could not have ordered Jewish genocide - even in Antiquities of the Jews, written by oft-quoted ancient third-party biblical commentator Flavius Josephus, it makes no mention of this massacre. Second of all, you would never travel in a census, the tax collectors would come to you, and they had to come to you in those days because land and livestock had to be linked directly to its local owner. This is the first time in history anybody has suggested you would have to return to your hometown for a census. How did Herod know about the Messiah? Uh-oh. They must create wise men to ask King Herod where Jesus is. Thus, the wise men are created, again, from thin air, and they arrive on the already dead Herod's doorstep following a god-given star that gives bad directions (after they chit-chat with Herod, suddenly the star appears over the exact right spot). Now they've got Jesus to Egypt. (I mean, this is so Python it's just a bit much.) They now realize that the timeline is totally bungled. They'd have us believe that Herod is still around for some time while they stay in Egypt waiting for him to die. But he's actually been dead all this time, and while he's been dead, things have been happening in the thriving political environment of Rome. In Matthew 2 it says that when Herod died Joe had a dream in which god told him to go back to Israel because the bad guys are dead. It says “But when he heard that Archelaus was reigning over Judea in place of his father Herod, he was afraid to go there, and being warned in a dream he withdrew to the district of Galilee. And he went and lived in a city called Nazareth…” It's a bit confusing. I thought Joe and Mary were from Nazareth to begin with. Perhaps not? In any case, they return to Nazareth after realizing Archelaus is reining over Judea. But remember when I went through that history? The census was called by Sulpicius Quirinius - Archelaus' replacement. C3: Nature does not prove god God is proven through nature, because nature is complex and beautiful - No. Don’t ever mistake complexity for design. Our complexity and the complexity of nature evolved slowly over millions and millions of years. Often theists can’t or won’t conceptualize such change taking place. It’s not the easy answer – the easy answer is ‘goddidit’. Evolution, however, is a fact as much as the theory of elasticity is a fact. It’s usually a failure to see the forest for the trees. How often I hear responses like, “I’m no monkey!” or “I didn’t come from pond slime!” It’s just some fundamental misunderstanding of evolution. No, we don’t come from apes – us and apes shared a common ancestor some millions of years ago. We evolved separately from apes. The time scale this evolution happens on is tremendous and difficult to quantify, but it must be quantified to some extent in order to understand how evolution works. What about the big bang? Well, this is the cutting edge of science. We thought the universe was losing acceleration – then we found it was accelerating thanks to dark energy. What is dark energy? I don’t know. Does that mean it must be god? No. The absence of knowledge simply proves the absence of knowledge, not the existence of god. Who started the big bang then? Probably, nothing. Could it have been a prime mover? Unlikely given the sheer chaos of the universe, but possible. Is that prime mover the god of Abraham? Nearly impossible to prove, and very unlikely. How do you get to the question: “What caused the big bang?” You assume that everything must have a beginning. So then if everything has a beginning, and indeed that is how you got to the question in the first place, the question must be asked: if god was the start of the big bang, who started god? If you say nobody started god – then you are left with few options. He is ‘outside space and time’, or which thereby proves my point that nobody started the big bang is just as valid because both points make the same assumption – that nothing can start something, only mine exists without the premise of a prime mover. If you say he exists outside space and time, then how does he interact with us? How does Moses go get the commandments from something outside space and time? What is space and time? Space and time is reality. We traverse through time in a three dimensional space. Therefore something outside space and time is at best a hypothesis – it’s unknowable and therefore non-existent by definition. We can only judge reality by reality. You are left trying to prove something that exists both in and out of space and time and that has literally nothing to do with our total experience as material human beings traversing space. Good luck. C4: Morality does not prove god The infamous Numbers 31: Now therefore, kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman who has known man intimately. But all the girls who have not known man intimately, spare for yourselves. Numbers 31:17-18 Or New Testament rules for slaves? Slaves, obey your earthly masters with deep respect and fear. Serve them sincerely as you would serve Christ. Ephesians 6:5 What about those bizarre rules? Do not allow a sorceress to live. Exodus 22:18 Does god think sorcery is real? Does Pro think sorcery is real? Should I belong to Hufflepuff or Gryffindor? Thanks.