God's Not Dead

Hi :). Thank you for participating in this discussion. I believe the answers to the following questions point to the existence of God and can help get our conversation started: -Do you think it's inconsistent for someone who lacks belief in God to work against His existence by attempting to show that He doesn't exist? -On a scale of 1-10, how sure are you that atheism is truth? Define truth. -Are you a materialist, physicalist, or something else? -Is atheism a worldview and why/why not? -I know not all atheists are antagonistic to Christianity, but for those who are, why so and what's the need to? Did you believe in God at one time? If so, what made you lose faith? Do you believe the world would be better off without religion, and specifically Christianity? -Do you believe faith is a mental disorder? -Must God be known through the scientific method or would that be making a category mistake by requiring material evidence for an immaterial God? -Do we have purpose being humans, and if so, how would that be determined? -Where does morality come from and are there moral absolutes that you could name?What makes something moral and what is the basis of your morality? Do any actions automatically have moral value, such as rape, or do we assign its moral value? -Does evil exist and could you define it? If you believe that the God of the Old Testament is morally bad, by what standard do you judge Him being bad? -What would cause you to believe in God and what would you consider evidence: rational/archaeological/testable in a lab? -Would society run by Christians or atheists be safer and why? How would you know if a society is improving morally? -Do you believe in free will and do you see any problem with defending the idea that the physical brain, which is limited and subject to the neuro-chemical laws of the brain, can still produce free will choices? -If you believe in evolution and that the universe will continually expand forevermore, is it probable that brains would evolve to the point of exceeding mere physical limitations and become free of them, thereby become "deity" and not be restricted by space and time? If so, is it probable that some sort of God exists? -Was atheist Joseph Stalin wrong for killing over 42 million people in the 1900s and why/why not? -From your perspective, is rape wrong even if it furthers the species? If you say rape is wrong because it harms someone, why is harm the morality standard? -If you believe something is morally wrong such as rape, should you do something about it and what gives you the moral right to do that? I believe Atheism is a negative position. Not believing in God and choosing to not exercise belief/non-belief. I never hear any evidence for atheism's validity. There is no proofs that God doesn't exist. That isn't saying atheists haven't attempted offering proofs. But they're always invariably insufficient. How do you prove there is no God in the universe and that in all places and all times there is no God? If there was proof of God's non-existence, then atheists would be continually using it. Atheism is very difficult to impossible to prove since it's attempting to prove a negative. Therefore, atheists must have faith just like I do as a Christian. That's not something atheists like to claim, so they go attacking/negating any evidence presented for God's existence in order to earn intellectual credence, if they can create an evidential vacuum for no theistic argument to survive. In negating theistic evidence, atheism justifies itself. The only way atheism is intellectually defensible is in the abstract realm of simple possibility. The atheist would propose the possibility of no God, but stating that something is possible doesn't mean it's reality or wise. If I said it's possible there's an ice cream factory on Jupiter, does that make it intellectually defensible or worth believing as a possibility? Claiming a possibility based on nothing but possibility, is not sufficient for viability. They must come up with more than possibilities and lack of evidence or there really must be an ice cream factory on Jupiter. The atheist should step on the band wagon and start defending the Jupiter ice cream's existence. Christians give evidence such as fulfilled biblical prophecy, Jesus's resurrection, the Transcendental Argument, the entropy problem, etc.. Refuting evidence God's existence doesn't prove atheism. Atheism is intellectually indefensible. They can only say there's no convincing evidence for God so far. They can't say there's no evidence because they can't know all evidences that possibly exist. This logically means that there could be evidences presented in the future that will suffice. They must see there's maybe indeed proof that's undiscovered. So all claimed atheists are agnostic since they can only be skeptical. That's why atheists need to attack Christianity since we challenge their beliefs. They like the universe with only one god: themselves. If we theorized about the manifestation of Christian Immaterial, we would expect evidences to display transcendence/personhood. The Bible infers God exists outside the material world as a living being. Evidence wouldn't be restricted to materialistic because it wouldn't be distinguishable from the material realm. If presented, the materialist atheist would have three options: accept it, dismiss it based on their materialistic worldview, or examine it and decide later. Examining transcendent evidence needs a standard not restricted to a materialist worldview. This would work against their own position. Since a Transcendent God who created the universe wouldn't be limited to it, but would transcend it, then we expect evidence for God's existence would be transcendent and would exhibit qualities of a Personal Being who is not dependent on the physical universe. If the Transcendent Christian God exists and entered our material world, then His manifestation would be self-revealing through a decision to reveal himself and wouldn't be external revelation, but internal revelation. This self-revelation would reveal His truth and goodness. His self-revelation wouldn't be self-contradictory or subject to human approval since this would be subjecting the natural to supernatural, a category mistake. Any self-revelation of the Christian God would be miraculous and couldn't be explained by materialism. How would we test this self-revelation in a laboratory? Miracles could be verified. They couldn't be repeated because this wouldn't suggest a God who acts out of his own will. They would suggest material phenomena that's repeatable/ predictable. Materialistic atheists wanting scientific proof for God's existence is simply making the wrong request. If you truly want to find out if God exists, you must change your worldview to include the possibility of God's self-revelation to you. It would be impossible without. Is there Transcendent Evidence? The Christian worldview says God is self-revealing, authoritative, and miraculous. In the Bible, we find the self-revelation of God and never see the questioning of God's authority. It also contains the miraculous records, from the parting of the Red Sea to the eyewitness accounts of the Jesus's resurrection. You may ask how other religions claim the same thing? We'd have to look at their truth claims and apply the same tests, such as internal consistency and the miraculous. Atheists discount the Bible with its evidence because it doesn't fit within their presupposed materialistic worldview. The Bible's claims of being authored by God cannot be accepted by them. Atheists claim the Bible says "God exists therefore God exists" is faulty logic known as circular reasoning. It's not circular reasoning when we 1st examine what transcendental evidence might be (self-revelatory, authoritative, and miraculous), and then propose something that meets the criteria. Bible-rejecting atheists rejecting God's authorship based on a non-transcendent materialistic worldview is a category mistake. Rejecting the Bible based on materialism cannot validate his materialism as being true without begging the question. Materialistic verifications are based on materialistic assumptions. If atheists attack the Bible based on their idea of moral absurdities in it, then by what objective/ non-subjective moral standard does he judge the Bible with? Atheists saying the Bible is illogical with contradictions would need proof using the transcendental laws of logic, which don't fit in their materialistic worldview. Atheists attacking the Bible based on logic is faulty because materialistic atheism commits the logical fallacy of begging the question. Materialism/atheism can't be proven. How are atheists "proving" there's no God and that materialism is right without assuming its own validity? Whether or not atheists accept it, the Bible meets the evidence of a transcendental God in it's self-revelation/authority/miracles. If you keep the unverifiable materialistic worldview, you will never be able to discover if God actually exists. Materialism theorizes matter as the only thing that exists and everything can be explained naturally. This means that everything would operate within physical laws, including the human brain. Materialistic atheists have no intellectual justification whatsoever to trust his own thinking because he couldn't exceed physics/chemistry. There'd be no reason to rationality conclude since their brain would be mechanical. How does 1 chemical state leading to another state produce logical thought? The human brain is sophisticated, but restricted to physical laws and responding in predictable ways would mean the same responses would always occur. Atheists would have no reason to trust their thoughts about reality. Materialistic atheism is self-refuting since it can't rationally defend its truth and could never be known as truth if our brain is pre-programmed to fail.