The Bible teaches that water baptism is for - to obtain - the remission of sins.

Sorry about the forfeit, had a power outage last night and couldn't get online. Anyways, back to the debate. As to your requests: 1. As I don't know what Mark 16:16 is, I'll go with the quote from (1.) and hope that it is what you're referring to. "He that eats and sleeps shall be saved; but he that doesn't eat shall be condemned." This supports the negative in a sort of roundabout way, which I'll go into later. By the way, I knew what you meant, but what you were really asking for was, "He that___ and___ shall___ receive $1,000, but he that does not___ shall not___ receive it."(I would've filled the blanks with fights, wins, immediately, fight, immediately) 2. Being baptized, receiving forgiveness of sins, confessing faith, believing, loving God. I only put baptism first because children are usually viewed as incapable of sin and baptism most often occurs during early childhood. 3. I'll accept the translation, but truthfully I haven't made enough of a study of the Bible to be able to quote verses off the top of my head. My sentence that you asked for supports my position in the following manner. Anybody that eats and sleeps will be saved from death. Anybody that doesn't eat will die, and as they aren't eating anything(and presumably not drinking either) they will lack the stimulants necessary to stay awake long enough to die from sleep deprivation, only from starvation. I postulate that maintaining life functions is more critical than baptism, as suicide is sinful. Even if starving yourself to death is an incredibly slow and stupid way to kill yourself, it's still suicide, which is a mortal sin. As a person who isn't particularly religious, I say that staying alive until one meets death from some uncontrollable factor will probably matter more than whether or not one was baptized. I have absolutely no intention of having a discussion on Biblical grammar. Past, present, and future participles will find little welcome in my end of the argument. I'm accepting the quotes as they are presented to me as I have no Bible to reference, but make no mistake I'm not having an argument about grammar. Refutations: 1.So, what are we arguing? We are arguing that baptism, with the use of water, is meant to cleanse the souls of men in some fashion. My opponent, however, simply launches into a long and confusing discussion on grammar, which has coincidentally backfired. He says, "there is no way in Greek or English to invert the position of 'shall be saved' and 'is baptized': such is not possible grammatically nor logically, and no translation thus translates the passage." If there is no way to reverse the position of being saved and baptism, that immediately disproves my opponents point. If salvation is irrevocably before baptism, then there is no debate. The statement, " Therefore, baptism is placed squarely between an unsaved person and salvation..." is completely incorrect according to the interpretation of the grammatical structure of the verse presented by my opponent. The use of the word "Therefore" implies that my opponent has played some kind of logical trump card, which my opponent has not. Other than a grand pronouncement that it is absolutely NOT possible to translate the verse which he has clearly supplied a translation for, there is absolutely no reason to believe that the entire first section of my opponents argument does anything but support my position. 2. Once again, my opponent argues my point for me. If the entirety of Acts 2 teaches salvation by faith, even if not faith exclusively, then the Bible is clearly placing a heavier emphasis on the act of belief rather than the ritual of baptism. Just because baptism is mentioned, doesn't mean that it is the primary delivery system of salvation. 3. I once again submit to the clearly superior Biblical knowledge base that my opponent is arguing from, but here I choose to insert my heathen interpretation. There are some historical records which show stories from the Bible actually happened, and others that do not support such claims. For the sake of argument, let's assume that Paul is a real person. He has met Christ, and believes in his word. My opponent implies that Paul has found faith, but the guilt of his sin still weighs on him. So Paul seeks a more physical affirmation of his faith. His sin is gone, but it's like an amputated limb. He can sense it, but it isn't there. So he partakes of a ritual which removes his doubt. Basic psychology. Christ was divine, but his followers mere mortals with all the limitations of mortal men. Unless our ancestors had a sixth sense for sin that we've lost, then there's no reason why this should be implausible. Back to what I was saying, my opponent has made no response to my claims that swimming is now a holy act. Furthermore, my opponent implies that baptism is meant to repeatedly remove sins. If something is done for the remission of sins, why would it be possible to only do it once? I further my earlier argument by stating that baptism has absolutely nothing to do with being forgiven. If it did, it would be a common practice to carry some holy water rather than subject oneself to the tedious process of confession. In terms of actual practice, and arguably in terms of Biblical events, baptism is meant to formalize entry into the church/faith of Jesus Christ. Take note of the fact that nobody is ever repeatedly baptized. By stating that the ritual of baptism exists for the purpose of removing sin from a soul then there would be some mention of somebody doing it again. But there isn't. The only purpose I can see in baptism is to perhaps wash away the sin of not being a member of the church/faith, in which case baptism only removes one sin in the first place not multiple sins as implied by the resolution. Two of the three main Biblical references made by my opponent support my position and the statement I made in that last sentence. Thank you. I eagerly await your response.