people should not think that just because you go to hell god never loved you...

Hi. I would first and foremost like to thank my opponent for opening this debate. I look forward to the coming battles. With pleasantries finished, I would like to dive straight into the debate. My first argument is based on the meaning of the word "Love." It is true that love comes in many forms, and there is no way to certainly pin down a single definition, but at the base of all prescriptions and adaptations of love are the feelings of fondness, affection, attachment, and most importantly: trust. Without these base traits, love cannot exist. Any deity who would mistrust his children to a degree that he must place them through a series of tests shows that he does not truly love them. Were Yahweh to honestly trust us, he would have merely spawned us in heaven in his presence and before his court and honors. However, he has instead placed us on Earth and has had us born to men and women, and not delivered directly to Earth through him. This demonstrates that he does not believe all our souls are worthy, and he must challenge them to judge their theistic merit. In addition to his showing mistrust, it begs the question as to why he should believe our souls must be tested. Does Yahweh, perhaps, not manufacture our souls? Are they instead pulled from a pool, or is there a deity to which even he answers? Is he so imperfect as to create an imperfect soul, or is he just cruel? Since my opponent has made several opinionated statements disregarding reliable sources, I reciprocated similarly in my explanation of what love meant to me, and how it applied to the Judeo-Christian deity Yahweh. My second argument is based less on philosophy, and more on the scientific truthfulness of a few questionable claims made by my opponent. The first claim he made was "Does God allow disease in the world?" and shortly thereafter directly stated that "...these things [diseases] are the consequences of sin entering into the world, and in some cases the direct result of man's rebellion..." Science can fully prove that disease is the result of microscopic organisms or mutated genetics operating in a disagreeable manner with the biology and/or development of another organism, or host (as with parasitic infections) and can often be prevented. [1][2][3] Diseases of a greater degree such as cancer, leukemia, Parkinson's, Asperger's, and Alzheimer's are as attributable to definite causes as lesser diseases, such as influenza strains and various "stomach bugs," or gastroenteritis and allergic reactions. Thus, I believe I have wholly disproved that all disease results from sin. Some disease, such as fetal alcohol syndrome, may develop in a child due to a mother's poor decisions, but it cannot be attributed to the child. I also do not believe things such as cancer and leukemia that strike innocent children can be attributed to the poor decisions of anybody, not even the parents, and to say that such a thing is the result of poor moral conduct is an abhorrent thing and is intolerable by my personal moral standards. Continuing my argument, though on a more philosophical level than my previous paragraph, my opponent asked "Does God allow jails and prisons for some people? Does God allow the electric chair sometimes? Does God allow sin to break homes and hearts? Does God allow war?" and then stated the same as the latter quote in my previous paragraph. God does not allow these things; men allow them. Prisons are man made, executions are man performed, and war is man waged. God may intervene in these, but he does not, due to the conceptualization of free will, which I shall move on to in a moment. Prisons, executions, and war may all be necessary to some degree. Were WWII never waged against Nazi Germany, Hitler and Himmler would have succeeded in eradicating Jews, Blacks, Hispanics, Orientals, Pacific Islanders, and many other races and ethnicity they found unsavory. Personally, as a 3rd generation descendant of a Polish Jew who fought in the USMC in The Great War and WWII, I am very thankful that war efforts pressurized Hitler to making rash militaristic tactical decisions, thus ending the war and, highly likely, preserving my own life today. I am also thankful that rapists, murderers, kidnappers and treasonous countrymen, and any combination are not free to roam the same streets as my mother and sister, and that a number of them do not utilize my tax dollars for essentials (food, clothing, water, shelter) by living. My opponent has stated that out of all the previous sins listed, there is not one that "comes close to the sin of keeping Jesus Christ out of your life." I would like to point out that I would personally prefer a man to walk up to me and state that he does not believe in Jesus than a group of men beat me senseless, tie me up and hold my eyes open (much like Alex DeLarge had done unto him in A Clockwork Orange), and rape my mother and little sister, then murder them right in front of my very eyes, then state that they love Jesus Christ and proceed to repent for five seconds, then go next door and do it to my neighbor and his wife and kids. I would also like to point out that, as a Jew and one of Yahweh's chosen people, I do not believe in Yeshua. Does this mean that I will go to hell, despite not believing that Jesus of Nazareth was the messiah? I digress. Continuing my argument on a scientific level again, I shall make my next points. I am not sure where my opponents arguments originated, as I see no relevance to the current debate, yet I will refute them anyway. My opponent has claimed that "You break the law of gravity, and it breaks you!" I know what he meant by this, but he then continued on to say "Fire burns. Gravity kills. Water drowns." Gravity will not kill. Gravity is simply a force of nature; it has no will to speak of, and ergo the intent of murder cannot exist. [4] Fire is less likely to burn you if you take proper safety precautions around it, just as water is less likely to drown you if you master the basics of swimming and attempt to stay as far away as possible from water deep enough to cause asphyxiation. My opponent stated that "You jump off a high building, the law of gravity will take care of you. You might say, 'God is love,' all the way down, but you're still going to get splattered when you hit the bottom!" I would merely state that gravity does not kill this man. This man kills himself by willingly thrusting himself off a tall building with full conceptual understanding of gravity and its nature. Simply put, the laws of physics cannot be broken. [5] This also brings me to my final point. Free will. A man can never be truly free. There are laws that restrict us and bind us and keep us tied to where we are, and despite the willpower and the thinking, pondering, and conceiving, it is highly unlikely that these laws that restrict us may ever release us. A man cannot will himself into flying, and then spontaneously combusting, therefore free will as it means intrinsically does not exist. We live in an eternal prison of physics, and it was not meant that we should stray, and it is not known if we even can. This concludes my argument for this round. I wish my opponent the best of luck in the next round. Sources: [1]http://web.archive.org... [2]http://www.nlm.nih.gov... [3]http://www.nlm.nih.gov... [4]http://books.google.com... [5]http://books.google.com...