Resolved: Christian Faith and Reason and/or Science are Fundamentally Irreconcilable.

Pro brings up some interesting arguments. Let's get to work. Pro seems to believe that Hebrews 11:1 offers a complete definition of what faith means according to the Bible. Whilst the passage does shed some important light on what faith is, it does not provide an exhaustive definition of it. Let me give an example to illustrate what I mean. "The Bible is a book Christians read." Whilst this statement is a clear and accurate statement about the Bible, it by no means provides the definition or the complete list of properties possessed (or at least believed to be possessed) by the Bible. The fallacy in stating that this sentence is a definition because of the verb "to be" is that this verb may denote a description of only one property of an object and not the definition. In the same way, Hebrews 11:1 tells faith is the assurance of things unseen. That is not all that faith is. My opponent says "Confidence, I can be confident in anything I choose to be confident in, vague. Hope, I can hope for anything I choose to hope for, vague. Neither confidence or hope require outside support. To this point, faith has no support. It hangs in thin air." This is the equivalent, in my example, of saying "Christians read a lot of books, some of which are not reliable. Christians read a lot of books, some of them they do not agree with. Therefore, the Bible is not reliable or a book Christians agree with." My opponent is using a logical fallacy know as an argument from ignorance. He says (not a quote) "One verse does not give me enough information to determine whether faith is backed by evidence, therefore it is not backed by evidence." Ironically, this is the same fallacy many theists use in their arguments when they say "Science does not give me enough information to determine whether the universe came in to being naturalistically, therefore the universe did not come in to being naturalistically." I find it rather ironic that pro is falling victim to the same logical fallacies that his fellow atheists rightly condemn in Christian apologetics. To say that faith "equals unsupported belief" is neither a conclusion that can be drawn from the passage nor a correct conclusion. In my last round, I explained that "faith is based on on the evidence of Jesus' life, death, and Resurrection." I would like to explore this theme a little further than necessarily required by the resolution because it is important to understanding Christian faith. This will hopefully demonstrate as false pro's oft-repeated claim that faith is belief without evidence. Christianity was founded by Jesus Christ in the first century AD. The three facts that nearly all scholars agree on about Jesus are his existence, baptism, and crucifixion. [1] The four canonical Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, were written by 2 disciples and 2 very early converts. [2] These people, especially, the 2 disciples, would be in prime position to know exactly what Jesus really taught and whether his resurrection occurred or not. Obviously, if they were telling the truth about Jesus' resurrection, then Christian faith would be vindicated. Now, pro is inevitably going to claim that the early disciples lied about Jesus' resurrection. This is not a reasonable claim as there is very little reason for the disciples to invent the resurrection, and many great reasons to keep their mouths shut and let Christianity die. Their leader had just been brutally murdered by the authorities for his beliefs, and every disciple knew coming out in his support could cost them their lives. Why would they invent a religion based on a man just crucified for his role in Christianity knowing any of them could be next? Indeed, why would many of the disciples who were martyred for the faith refuse to recant their beliefs though they had a chance to deny Jesus and live? [3] [4] Plenty of people have died refusing to recant a legitimate belief, but how many people would be willing to die for what they know is a lie? The only logical explanation that a valid examination of the evidence gives is that the disciples who spread the claims of Jesus' resurrection were telling the truth, vindicating Christian faith by the use of reason and evidence. Now that I have given evidence that Christianity is true, I shall return to rebutting my opponent's arguments. Pro attempts to show using the "definition" of faith that Jesus didn't rise from the dead. Firstly, I would like to point out that I do not believe that just any faith is a path to truth. When I talk about faith, I am talking about Christian faith as described in the resolution in round one. I have already explained that Hebrews 11:1 does not provide the definition of the faith, so pro's case falls flat. Obviously, pro's feeble attempt at "faith" doesn't qualify as Christian faith as I described in round one. Pro asks if his reasoning is sound. The answer is a resounding no. This was almost as big of a letdown as Jolly the Green Giant was, which fails for the same reasons. Con attempts a reply to my description of science as it should be to someone with a Christian worldview. When he claims I cannot say God created nature, I would like for him to understand this was within the context of what science's role is in a Christian worldview, not attempting to prove the validity of the Christian worldview. When I talk about great scientists that believe or believed in God, I am not trying to prove that God exists. Rather, I am illustrating the strong relationship that faith and science have traditionally had over their histories. My point was that Christian faith in particular massively aided the development of science. I acknowledge that this does not disprove that Christianity and science cannot be reconciled, but it demonstrates that many great minds throughout history saw not conflict but profound ties between faith and science. I understand that Albert Einstein had a somewhat watered down version of monotheism as his faith, but he is generally agreed upon as having believed in a God. The reason why he would say that the word god is a sign of weakness is that he believed in an impersonal god, which is not what the word "god" normally designates. [5] Con then attempts to defend his arguments from round one. Last round, I delivered a powerful rebuttal to his arguments. We can summarize his argument as follows. 1. Science and faith are separate and answer different questions. 2. Things that are separate and answer different questions are irreconcilable. (Implied) 3. Therefore, science and faith are irreconcilable. Pro only explicitly states items 1 and 3 in his argument. However, logically speaking, in order for premise 3 to follow from premise one, premise 2 must be true. In my last argument, I showed this was false. Pro fails to make the case that things which answer different questions are irreconcilable. I demonstrated using his own argument technique that science and morality are not compatible. What I showed doing this is that just because science cannot answer a question, this does not mean that a method to answer that question is not compatible with science. The belief that murder or rape is wrong is hardly "irreconcilable" with science. Con utterly fails to rebut my knock down attack on his faulty methods. Con also tries to play with the definition of the word "world" to show that Christian faith and science are incompatible. He claims that, since science answers questions about the natural world and faith about the spiritual world, only one can be right because there is only one world. However, his use and my use of the term world are very different. This is like saying that Roman history, studying the Roman world, and Han Dynasty history, studying the Chinese world, cannot coexist because there is only one world. As you can see, the term world can be used more like the word "realm" than the term "universe." My opponent's last attempt to throw mud at the wall and see what sticks failed to stick. He claims that faith as defined by myself is a very loose idea. I would encourage him to reread round one, wherein I defined an unambiguous definition of Christian faith, which is the topic of the resolution. He again tries to derive a "faith based contradiction," but remember I am not arguing for faith as "hope and confidence." I am arguing for Christian faith as defined in round one based on evidence. In summary, pro seems to have a chronic misunderstanding of Christian faith, despite the fact that I defined this term in round one. If he found this definition ambiguous or confusing in any way, he should have either noted this in the comments section before taking the debate or noted his objections in the first round. Pro's arguments rely on semantics and non sequiturs, and he fails to address any of my arguments. Sources 1- http://www.stowkungfu.com... 2- http://carm.org... 3- http://m.christianity.com... 4- http://amazingbibletimeline.com... 5- http://www.godandscience.org...