The Christian God VS Everyone else: Morality, Logic & Reason and Epistemology.

First, let us return to the opening statements : 1) "The God of the Bible exists and this why and how universal moral absolutes exist. " 2) "Similar to his version of morality, my opponent also holds the position that the laws of logic are products of the human mind, and are conventional. He claims that the laws of logic are not absolute but instead, are also conventional, or agreed upon. " 3) "My opponent stated that we gain knowledge by experience and observations. " Now, if we want to exploit the rules of formal debate, these conditions were proposed as a resolution which was a union of assertions, i. e. , the resolution is affirmed if and only if all satisfy the burden of proof. If either does not, the union is falsified. However, I would urge the voters to not be so restrictive as the opening was simply extremely ambitious, I will therefore be just as ambitious in closing and ask for any vote to note that the resolution is falsified if and only if the intersection is refuted (i. e. all assertions have to fail to satisfy the burden of proof). "Yes, this is the Christian presupposition, and I've demonstrated that you also have your own presuppositions. I presupposed that the God of Bible exists, and my assertion was based on that. You're presupposing that God does not exist and that morality must be man made conventions. " I never advanced the presupposition that God does not exist, meaning it was claimed without argument. In fact no where in this debate did I even assert that it was a fact that God did not exist. What I contended were two things : 1) That logical absolutes do not exist, and further that there are multiple logical systems, and none of them apply absolutely. 2) That morality is an evolved behavior. 3) Observation is foundational to knowledge (but this is not an if and only if condition), i. e. , knowledge can be so gained but it can not be so claimed that knowledge can only be gained by such a constraint. Now #1 and #3 were explored in decent detail enough to affirm the resolutions, #2 was simply noted and not explored in detail and really requires its own debate as it is an extremely complex subject, is there a rape gene for example, is a topic of considerable research and contention in behavioral science. That being said, I did explore in detail the problem which comes with the proposed counter to #2 which is defining moral to be the nature of God. This is a classical problem and I simply presented classical arguments. I have my own, but the extremely diverse nature of this debate precluded them from being presented in detail. "No it wasn't actually. You couldn't provide a ground to why you would call a rapist evil. " That is true, I did not answer it directly, I answered it indirectly noting that was had no Bibles for many things, and yet we do not run around in arbitrary circles, this point was never refuted and thus stands. "You've even admitted on youtube that if in the future, rape becomes accepted, it will then be considered moral. " Care needs to be taken when sourcing an outside reference, especially if it is part of a debate. Those who enjoy debates will often explore Pro and Con to gain experience. I can easily argue for either Pro/Con on that statement, and in fact on YouTube now I am exploring both sides (with different people). "The problem here is you're mistakenly asserting that we have the ability and authority to determine what is good and evil apart from, and unaided by, the one who revealed to us what good and evil is in the first place, God. " No, it is precisely because you can not do that which is foundational to the problem. "God is eternally good. He was perfectly good before he commanded anything, being perfectly good he could only command goodness. " Indeed, this is the other horn, if good is only defined by God's nature it can not be said God would only command goodness, because anything God commands by definition is good, that is how it is defined. Once you argue that God can only do goodness this means there is something else which defines good and God is bound by that, thus it (God) does not define good. "As you can see we only appeal to ONE system of logic when we are talking about truth/reality. " Again, no, I have cited a reference to a direct observational experiment which can not be performed with classical logic, is the contention really that electrical engineering works on principles which are not reflective of reality - that seems absurd. "That is a heap of sand" one would argue that you need fuzzy logic for that, but if you define "heap of sand" as a specific amount or weight of sand then the statement could only be true or false. " This is an extreme claim, and again, if true as noted - reduce a fuzzy logic controller to a classical logic controller (which is far simpler to program and implement). It would be akin to an assertion that you could describe quantum observations with classical mechanics - if you were precise enough with your calculations. Excellent, and now as Feynman would note, lets see the math. "I can draw a pardoxical picture, that does mean it can exist in reality. " Note there are indeed fascinating illustrations of the behavior of the eye, machines/models can even be built which exploit such behaviors, but the understanding of them is well known and can be explained by understanding how the eye processes information. Once it is understood exactly how the observation is being interpreted there is no paradox. The eye (and brain) is however not fully understood and thus there are still some apparent paradoxes which are currently being researched such as motion blindness which can be exploited to create what seems to be a paradox : . http://www.michaelbach.de... "The Christian God is hypothetically falsifiable since it has very specific claims and implications that can be refuted . .. " Again note that it was asked on multiple occasions as to how this claim can be demonstrated and falsified. It was unanswered aside from simply noting that it can be done. I would assert that resolution is thus negated. "Is this not the atheist position? " As noted, atheism is not a position on knowledge, it is a position on if God exists which comes from the application of a particular framework which produces knowledge (usually rationalism [evil negates God, etc. ] or empiricism [i. e. , there are no observations of God, etc. , but not always). In closing, given the above parameters I would assert the resolution is negated, but would encourage further debates to have a much tighter and focused resolution, especially when the subjects are so vast and intricate. I will close with a quote from Feynman, which is a little relevant to this debate, but more so simply because of the subtle (or maybe not so subtle) irony : "Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts. "