God's Not Dead

Thank you for presenting this debate topic and allowing me to engage you on it. I will do my best to be respectful and I certainly will not compare you to terrorists or criminals. Ideally, I will do my best not to engage in straw men arguments of any kind. If I do stray, I apologize in advance. But let me begin. You have taken the pro side of the argument that "God"s Not Dead." I will argue the "con" side of that equation, but first let me define my analysis. For God to be dead, he first must have been alive. To be alive, God must have existed at some point. To the extent that I am arguing that God Is dead, I am arguing that the idea of God is dead. There is no God. I am not arguing that there was once a living God and he has now passed away. I am also not going to argue against the existence of a "flying Spaghetti monster," though my arguments may well be applicable to the nullity of such an entity. I am instead going to focus more on the idea of the Christian God as a viable entity. In making these arguments, I"ll use the male pronoun out of convention. So let"s start. You state that "to say there is no evidence for a Creator is like saying a painting in an art museum could not have been painted because the art is not visibly present in the gallery." But with a painting, we know there must have been someone who created this masterpiece. We know this from a lifetime of physical evidence and experience. But we also know much about the world around us today and how it came into existence. Applying the scientific process to that physical evidence, we know that humans have evolved through evolution. We (and I speak generally as I"m an idiot when it comes to mathematics) have slowly gathered together an understanding of the universe and how it works. And our understanding tells us that we don"t need a painter to create the world around us. We may not know every detail of every nucleus in every atom, but we are narrowing it down. In doing so, we are lighting up the nooks and crannies in which God might be hiding. And it doesn"t look like God"s there. The above is an argument against the existence of any Creator. One of the stronger Philosophical arguments against the existence of a benevolent, loving Christian God turns on the existence of evil. I include in "evil" the kind of random smash-a-life-in events that prevent a person from ever forming any opinion of God"s existence or not. Presumably, if there is a God, our time here on earth has some meaning or reason. God does not explicitly make himself visible, because he wants us to learn about him through the wonders of the surrounding world and come to accept him through faith. In other words, we are born for a reason that matters on some level to God and we are given free will, because we are going to have an opportunity to recognize, accept, and have faith in the existence of God and follow the rules he lays out for humanity in the Bible. Now I need to lay out some assumptions for my next argument. They"re not critical, but I don"t want to put believes in your mouth without letting you reject them. I am going to assume for purpose of the debate that life begins at conception and a fetus is a human being in the Christian God"s eyes. Mind you, I am not conceding that God exists, but if he does exist, I presume those are fair assumptions. So how is the Christian God served by having millions of souls, of people, flicker into existence only to be extinguished? If they are real souls, do they as in Monopoly go directly to heaven, do not pass go, by passing jail? And I don"t want to be disrespectful, but if death as an infant when you are too young to form any opinion as to the existence of God results in immediate entry to eternal salvation and heaven, then isn"t that a good thing for the children? But of course, that"s an absurd argument. No one can argue that the death of an innocent child is a good thing (though you may argue as to whether a fetus is an innocent child or simply a clump of cells). So why would God permit it? If the millions of unborn children aborted do go directly to heaven, why not everyone? Of course, if aborted fetuses are not human, not souls, then abortion is not wrong. And if they are human souls, but don"t get to heaven, then that"s pretty horrific too. Also, don"t all miscarriages fall in the same basic category? It"s a conundrum. It makes no sense to me. We can apply this argument to the Holocaust or any number of random natural events or man-directed atrocities. Why send us to earth at all for a flickering moment if a stray bullet can send a child directly to heaven without any sort of understanding or faith in God? Epicurus put it this way, "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?" So I don"t get evil and the sort of random chaos that takes a life. It makes this argued for Creator seem a lot like the mindless force of nature where things happen for a reason, but the reason is the laws of nature and not some logical, coherent intelligent creator. Another argument against the existence of a living God is this. Why the mystery? Seriously, what does God gain by insisting on faith " especially as there is arguably a free pass on faith for anyone who dies before obtaining the ability to comprehend or have faith? If God did exist, why would he not make himself known to everyone not just some chosen people? Why did God harden Pharaoh"s heart rather than letting Moses open Pharaoh"s heart to the existence of God? For that matter, doesn"t the whole "God hardening Pharaoh"s heart" motive undercut the entire free will argument? So far I"ve offered two arguments. The first against the existence of any God. The second against the existence of a benevolent all-knowing, all-wise Christian style God. Now let me back up a bit and get "silly." Let"s say that God did once exist. Let"s say the Biblical stories are true and God once cast out Adam and Eve and worked miracles, set bushes alight, and answers prayers audibly. These things are not happening any more. Why would God give one group of people more evidence of his existence than another group of people? Is that fair? Is that just? Or is it more plausible to say that God, if he did exist once, is no longer alive. It might be time to knock on his door and do a wellness check? I look forward to continuing our debate and reading your response to my points. If there is some specific point you want me to address, please let me know. Sarai