Christianity v Atheism

In this debate, it my intent to demonstrate that 1. a monotheistic God exists 2. this God is the God taught about in the Bible In order to do this, I will present a number of arguments for 1. the existence of a God recognized by the world's monotheistic belief systems 2. the rectitude of the claims of Christ First of all I will argue for a monotheistic Creator God. In order to establish one I will first say that there are two classes of objects in this world: those that contain within themselves the causes of their existence, and those which depend upon some external cause apart from themselves. For example, I depend upon my parents as a cause for my existence. Since we know that at least some things depend upon other things for their existence, then we must assume there exists an ultimate ground for the Universe's existence. If we do not assume that then we cannot explain the existence of anything at all. Eventually we must designate something which has the causes of its existence in itself as the cause of everything. If that's not it, we must go backwards even further, but eventually we must have a self-caused thing that is the ground for the Universe's existence. Atheist's say this is the universe itself, but there are good reasons, both philosophical and scientific, to think it is not. Energy and matter do not appear to have existed forever but to have started existing at the Big Bang. Also, energy and matter do not generate from nothing but have causes in the quantum world. So we must get to a neccassary being who is the ultimate explanation, the creator of the Universe. This is what most monotheists believe to be God. Secondly, I will present a moral argument for God. There exist a realm of real moral values and duties which we perceive in this world. Now of course an atheist may say these are illusory and ultimately explicable as second order phenomena. If we accept this, however, we could run a counter-factual argument to deny our physical senses are really correct. But obviously this would lead to premises which are less obvious than their opposites. Further there is a contradiction in thinking our moral senses are subjective. Moral subjectivism says we ought to think bad actions are wrong. But this is contradictory since it confers a moral obligation upon the person who accepts that moral belief system. So it seems logical to think there are moral obligations in this world. Now, on atheism, the existence of objective morality is inexplicable. But on monotheism, it is natural because it is simply obeying the will of the creator of all things- God. Thirdly, I will present an argument known as the argument from religious experience. Now people experience visions of divine beings. As I have explained in the moral argument, it is more obvious our senses are accurate than it is not in an argument. So in this argument we should conclude such experiences are true. That means people have real experiences of God, and that God exists. That is an argument that should make one embrace some form of theism and is obviously only addressed by it. Secondly I will use Bayesian probability theory to see the likelihood of Jesus being resurrected from the dead. Jesus of Nazareth made extraordinary claims. Now those claims were that he was the king of kings of the people of Israel and would establish Heaven. If Jesus was raised from the dead then he would have created his Heaven in an afterlife he had promised to establish if he had died. This was the claim he made after many religious experiences. Analysing the historical parts of the Gospels and the historical letters of Paul we see there are four pieces of evidence put forth that Jesus was raised: 1. Jesus was placed in an empty sealed tomb by Joseph of Arimathea after being crucified 2. the disciples discovered his empty tomb on Easter Sunday 3. people claimed to have seen Jesus after he had supposedly died 4. all the people who knew Jesus saw him and knew him as the person who had been crucified Now these facts raise the probability of Jesus being ressurected (otherwise a virtually zero probability) as being much higher against the background probability of a person being alive after being crucified over three days and three nights. We can see there is a lot higher chance that he was raised given these facts and the facts of the sealed tomb. According to the Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology, chapter 6, the probability of Jesus being raised given these facts is at least 65%. As it is more likely than not Jesus was raised from the dead, and it is supported in history, we should accept he was raised from the dead. If my other arguments hold, those two facts should add credence to God existing and Jesus being who he claimed to be, and this proves he was God and that Christian theism is true.