The Judeo/Christian god most likely exists

Thanks Pro. A bit of a tactical error on my part to not mention the BoP I suppose. It’s always controversial with this kind of stuff, but I would say it’s on you, as you have to prove god certainly exists before you can prove he doesn’t, and thereby if you were to prove certainly he existed I wouldn’t be wasting my time trying to prove he doesn’t. Anyways, on to rebuttals. 1. The Cosmological Argument Cosmological discrepancies are the last refuge of creationists and the like for proving god existed. Famed physicist Lawrence Krauss wrote an excellent book on this exact topic, called “A Universe from Nothing”. Indeed, what started the big bang is still up for debate. We can’t say for certain, and thankfully neither can you – and I dare you to try. If you want to extend the same kind of logical tautology; what exists must have been created, then what created the creator? The trouble with the traditional view of the big bang is that it doesn’t account for exactly what ‘nothing’ is. Something from nothing as a statement is nonsensical, but in the realm of physics, it is much more complex and troubling. As Krauss says, “…our discoveries over the past 30 years have completely changed what we mean by nothing. In particular, nothing is unstable. You take space, get rid of all the particles, all the radiation, and it actually carries energy, and that notion that in fact empty space - once you allow gravity into the game, what seems impossible is possible. It sounds like it would violate the conservation of energy for you to start with nothing and end up with lots of stuff, but the great thing about gravity is it's a little trickier. Gravity allows positive energy and negative energy, and out of nothing you can create positive energy particles, and as long as a gravitational attraction produces enough negative energy, the sum of their energy can be zero. And in fact when we look out at the universe and try and measure its total energy, we come up with zero.” (http://www.npr.org...) I can’t argue the science with near absolute certainty like I can argue evolution, however some of the best physicists in the world are working on it. Which is more sensible – that a cosmological architect super-being designed the whole thing (which brings up many more questions – Why? Who is he? How do we expect to know him? Who created him?), or that we are currently working on a reasonable mathematical answer rooted in quantum mechanics? We have begun to scientifically put the pieces of the puzzle together, and we can measure data – there still is no data for god. 2. The Moral Argument The moral argument is always an interesting idea to me – not a good one, but interesting. There is always a kind of schizophrenia with this argument. While you claim that the J/C god is a ‘true north’ for our moral compass, I observe that he is occasionally vile and impossible to reconcile from a moral perspective, for example, in 2 Kings 2:24, after the Prophet Elisha is mocked by some children, the bible says, “He turned around, looked at them and called down a curse on them in the name of the LORD. Then two bears came out of the woods and mauled forty-two of the boys.” When this happens in the biblical text, suddenly Christians claim that the will of god is sometimes hard to understand, but that we should just trust in his judgement. This goes back to my opening round. Anytime there is a hole, the official position of the modern church is to claim that the discrepancy is a matter of faith. Faith - or willful ignorance. I observe that the supposed creator of my morals committed an act that is vile. An act that would, in a Texan court room, be a crime more than worthy of the death penalty. There is an inherent gap in the argument. Did god give us moral judgement superior to his own? By the way, your claim that “Evolution cannot rationally account for this” is simply fallacious. We observe evolutionary morality in chimps and other creatures regularly. Group cohesion is paramount for survival. Making the group a comfortable place to remain in would have decided whether or not our distant relatives worked as a group or tried to survive alone. Chimps, for example, have the capability to remember and discern other chimps who previously did them favors, and will distrust chimps who previously were cruel. It’s perfectly rational to observe that our morals could have evolved from a more primitive version of morality found in primates – like everything else. I think it’s also perfectly reasonable to assume that religion was created as a way to keep the less morally inclined ‘in order’. Again, chimps have the capability for symbolic communication, a basic building block for religious convictions, ie: the cross. 3. The Resurrection of Jesus The resurrection of Jesus certainly didn’t happen. Jesus’ existence is debatable, but I don’t need to prove either/or. Let’s begin by assuming he was resurrected. If we believe the biblical account, Jesus is raised from the dead, and as he is raised, as it says in Matthew 27:52-53, “and the tombs broke open. The bodies of many holy people who had died were raised to life. They came out of the tombs after Jesus' resurrection and went into the holy city and appeared to many people.” That is remarkable! Not only is it remarkable, it makes the idea that resurrection equals savior a bit untrustworthy – apparently resurrection isn’t a big deal in the bible, after all, many holy people were raised as well. It also is completely unrelated to the existence of the J/C god. If I die and I raise myself from death (in theory) does that make the existence of a supernatural galactic dictator father-figure a possibility? If somebody does something supernatural why should that mean that god exists – and more importantly why does that prove the J/C god exists? Now let’s assume, correctly, that the resurrection didn’t happen. You won’t find any record of numerous holy zombies roaming the streets of Roman-occupied Jerusalem – and you’d think you might, after all, that kind of thing doesn’t happen very often. You won’t find plentiful accounts of a remarkable resurrection either, despite the fact that 1 Corinthians 15:6 says “After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers and sisters at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep.”. If you do find an account, it will, at minimum, be thirty years after the supposed resurrection of Christ, and it will be unreliable. Using the bible to prove the resurrection is like using the words of Frodo to prove that Gandalf existed. It is all man-made. While Paul was gifted with a personal visit from Jesus himself (after falling – probably on his head), apparently the rest of humankind will receive no such proof. It goes back to that old David Hume line; “Which is more likely – that a man rose from the dead or that this testimony is mistaken in some way?” That idea can apply to the entietity of Pro’s arguments. Just ask yourself – which is logically, without the application of faith, more likely. Even if I can’t prove something like the cosmological origins, does that mean that we can assume that the J/C god existed, apparently for the sole purpose of creating and watching after his favorite pet humans? So at this point, we can apply a couple philosophical razors: Hitchens’s Razor: “What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.” Occam’s Razor: “Entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily.” Sources: http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov... http://www.nytimes.com... http://eprints.gla.ac.uk... http://infidels.org...