There's Valid Reasons to Disbelieve in God

Thanks Con. A.N.C I'll summarize my opponents main points. It's easier on the readers and on me when refuting 1, God the entity and God the word are separate 2, God is understood and experienced 3, Alien analogy 4, Logic is relative 5, Attack on the perfection justification 6, God and the Universe 7, Meaninglessness and Atheism 1, God the word and the entity. The only way Con can make this objection is if he misunderstands what a word is. A word can't just be any jumble of letters, a word is “A unit of language, consisting of one or more spoken sounds or their written representation, that functions as a principal carrier of meaning” [1]. You can't refer to something as being within what we experience without trying simultaneously to make it a word. When you're saying God is “X” you're attempting to assign a word to it. If Con's statement here is true, then it's self defeating. How can Con say the word God is different from the entity without actually using “God” to explain it? You're analogy with humans is false. Since there's no way to actually define God. There's no dispute on what to call it, the dispute is that you can't call it! 2, God is understood and experienced “You don't have to be omnipotent, omniscient, or omnibenevolent to understand or experience God.” This is a misunderstanding of the argument. The argument is about defining God. Since God's properties aren't meaningful then neither is the being which they're being prescribed to. How do you actually know you're experiencing God if you don't know what “God” means? Believers claim all the time that they understand what God is doing in their lives. They also claimed to have experienced him during prayer or worship. Again, the argument is about defining God. Not that people can't understand or think they understand what God is doing. How can you say you experience God if we have no understanding or experience of the attributes that make up God? How do you distinguish it from just something like psychosis, delusion or wishful thinking? This is also irrelevant, as to give something meaning, it must be objective. We can't subjectively define something by subjective personal experiences. Would you conclude a “zsgarbub” is meaningful if I claim to have a personal subjective experience with it? If you really did have an experience with this thing called “God”, you still must meaningfully define it! If believers are the only ones who understand and experience God then how is Con going to prove there's reasons to believe in God. You would already have to believe in it to get to have a definition. 3, Alien analogy Con gives an analogy as an attempting to give us a better understanding of his argument 2. An alien with one eye wouldn't need two in order to understand how we see; nor does he need to understand us in order to experience us. Fallacy of false analogy. An alien would still have an eye to get a basic meaningful understanding of how humans see with two eyes. It's also a misunderstanding of P2. The premise is talking about reference for meaning, not actually understanding the specific thing. One need not understand something in order for it to have meaning. That's why I included experience. Certainly he might not understand if I were to punch him in the face, but that would not stop him from experiencing the pain; however, he could also understand just fine. He could have just urinated on my shoe, in which case my resulting attack would not have been totally unexpected. False analogy and a category mistake fallacy. The argument is about defining words, not events. 4, Logic is relative This is by far the strangest objection I've ever seen to this argument Con states if P1 was logically proven then religion would've been disproven long ago. However no matter how much evidence there is of something, someone can deny it. Especially if it goes against something very personal to them -religion-. Con's argument holds no weight, because there's no argument. All Con does is quote someone and accepts it. Con hasn't gave any reasons to believe logic is relative. The person Con quoted is a novelist and screenwriter [2]. Why should we trust what he says on philosophical matters just on his word? The book that's being quoted from -A Prayer for Owen Meany- is a story about miracles that happen to a boy after he hits a foul ball [3]. Nothing to do with logic or philosophy. Furthermore, there's many reasons to show logic isn't relative. Logic is used in math [4], computer science [5], and language [6]. Does Con think these things are subjective? Does Con think that just disbelieving in math makes it untrue? 5, Attack on the perfection justification Since God is the ultimate perfect being, it would make perfection meaningless when applied to God. The perfection we understand and experience is within our imperfect selves. This is exactly what was shown above this, which was ignored by Con. 6, God and the Universe The agreed definition of God is “The Tri Omni Creator of the Universe.” It's a contradiction to say God created the Universe, but always existed within the Universe. God couldn't create something that he was already existing in. It's like saying you can lift a chair above your head while you're sitting in it. If Con's objection is valid, my argument would still work. Since God would still exist outside of this dimension which we know and understand. 7, Meaninglessness and Atheism I already showed how the two were related. God being meaningless would disprove the statement “God exists” however there's nothing wrong with the atheist assuming meaning for argument's sake to use other arguments against the existence of God. The atheist can do this without problem because they already lack the belief in God. The theist can't do this since they're basing their beliefs on God having meaning. Con never actually goes after the justifications of P1 as quoted by Michal Martin and George Smith. The Problem of Evil. Con's response can be summarized in one broad point. 1, Free will Con gives us the free will defense. However why couldn't God make man in such a way that he would always freely choose good? If God is omnipotent he would be able to do such a thing. Two other questions can be raised. Is there evil in heaven? And Is there free will in heaven? I'll expand on this when Con answers these two. Even with free will we're still limited. For example, many things can be done to a building We can 1, Paint the building 2, Pee on the building 3, Punch the building However we can't 4, Jump over the building 5, Turn the building into an invisible pink unicorn 6, Lift the building above my head Does the inability to do 4-6 violate free will? Why couldn't God put evil in the same category as 4-6? Con says there must be a Yin-Yang conservation of good and evil. He said it was logical, even though logic is suppose to be relative. His argument is that God must have evil in order to say somethings good, like God. However this would mean in order for God to be eternally good, there would also have to be eternal evil. According to Con evil came into existence when A&E sinned. Would this mean that God wasn't good until they sinned? Since evil must exist in order to call something good. Also Epicurus' question “Why call him God?” was only to the response that God isn't able or willing. Not to the route you took. Adam and Eve Con says Adam & Eve are the reason why evil is in the world. However were Adam and Eve perfect? If so, then they couldn't become imperfect. Since it would say what is perfect wasn't really perfect. Yet if A+E weren't created perfectly then God would basically be baking a cake and yelling at it for not tasting good. It would also mean God brought about an imperfection. Con hasn't made a case for his proposition. The burden of proof was agreed to be shared in R1. The resolution is affirmed Sources [1] http://www.debate.org... ^ All within there.