Jesus Christ is the Son of God

I'll begin by thanking Pro for this debate. Thank you Pro. I would like to begin this round by reminding the reader that Pro's claim requires three things to be true. If any one of these points fail or aren't prove to a reasonable degree by Pro, then the proposition isn't confirmed. In the round 1 acceptance portion, Pro never asserted that we would work from the assumption that a god exists and that Jesus existed. In order for the proposition to be confirmed, Pro must prove 3 things. 1. A god exist. 2. Jesus existed. 3. Jesus was the son of said god. The proposition fails if any one of these points haven't been demonstrated to be true by Pro. Pro uses the word "demonstrate" in an interesting way. "The third round, I will demonstrate that He (Jesus) paid the price to take away the sins of the world,. .. ." But his "demonstration" only consists of cited Christian text. That isn't demonstrating that his claims about Jesus are true claims. It only demonstrates that a Christian text makes these claims. Pro clearly works from an assumption that the text is true, then wishes to use the text to prove the "truthfulness" of the claim found in the text. This is circular reasoning and is unsound. Citing Christian text doesn't prove the claims in the Christian text. Pro responds to my objection that using the Bible as proof for the claims in the Bible is flawed reasoning by stating, "prove to me unquestionably that any claims in the Bible are false. " Two responses here. One, I don't need to. Pro is making the claim. It is Pro's responsibility to prove his claim. Second, I have. Pro claims god is self evident (to everyone) by citing a Biblical passage that says such a thing. Clearly there are those in the world who don't believe. This simple fact is evidence that this passage is wrong. Pro tries to work his way out of this problem by claiming that those 850 million who don't believe have "hardened their heart toward the evidence. " This is quit the claim by Pro. Are we expected to believe Pro knows what is in the hearts of these 850 million non believers? As a non believer let me offer a quick testimonial. I was raised to be religious, Baptised Lutheran, mandatory Bible study. I even spoke in tongues at the age of 11, faking it mind you. But, I gave it a try. At the age of 14, I realized all those claims those adults were making were claims that they couldn't KNOW to be true. I adopted a neutral position concerning Christianity based on this realization. I decided I wanted to know what was true and assumptions won't get you there. After 5-6 years of sporadic thought on the subject, Christianity failed. It simply doesn't make sense for many reasons. No hardened heart. Just reason and logic applied to the claims my culture was making. Pro then tries to appeal to popularity, another logical fallacy. "31.5% of the worlds population identify themselves as Christians. " Popularity doesn't prove truth. At one time most of the world believed the Earth was flat. Pro's argument that a god created the universe is nothing more than a god of the gaps argument. "The universe is made by God. " This is just a claim. I'm just as justified claiming fairy's made the universe. Or that advanced scientist made the universe. I raised this general objection to Pro in round one. "Even if we were to concede a builder, we cannot comment of the properties of the builder. " The universe doesn't give us that information. Pro never addressed this point. If we concede the universe was built (for the sake of argument), that doesn't get us to the Christian god. Pro never aduquately addresses this point. Pro wishes to offer further support for Biblical claims with "God said the Earth is circular. " Then cites the passage. This passage actually goes against Pro's claim. The Earth isn't a circle. The Earth is a sphere. God, or more likely, the men who wrote the Bible got it wrong. I will build on this a touch. Mark 9:1 Jesus (if these are his words) predicts an impending apocalypse. "Truly I say to you, there are some of those who are standing here (Judea 25-30 CE) who shall not taste death until they see the kingdom of God after it has come to power. " 2000 years later, it is safe to assume they're all dead. Mark 13 (complete chapter), Jesus followers ask him what signs will THEY see. Here are a few more astronomical perceptions that are wrong. Mark 13:24, ". .. the sun will darken and the moon will not give its light. " The moon reflects light, it doesn't have its own light. Mark 13:25, "and the stars will be falling from the heavens. .. " This is a complete misunderstanding of the what stars are and the nature of the Cosmos. Stars don't fall. If a star was close to the Earth, it would be the Earth falling into it, not the other way around. And the nearest is (aside from the Sun) four light years away. There will be no falling stars. We can clearly see, that the authors of the Bible have clear misunderstanding of the Cosmos. God gets the shape of the Earth wrong. Jesus gets the moon wrong, stars falling wrong, and the first century end wrong. This looks more like ignorant man taking a stab at a few things than an omniscient being. Moving along. Pro makes a subtle switch to one of his arguments for god. The amazing fact that the Earth is in the habitual zone of a star. I point out this is a statistical certainty, based on the size of the universe. He than abandons his original point. Hops on my point, "it even more impressive that there are Trillions (number much larger than that) of planets out there. .. " This was never a strong argument by Pro. His original argument was easily refuted by shear size of the universe. This second one is nothing more that point to something amazing and arbitrarily assigning credit to the thing he wishes to exist. Pro then address my Josephus point. To his credit, "This is true. .. " referring to my point that Josephus was born after Jesus claimed crucifixion and in no position to validate the events. Particularly the claim that Jesus was the son of the Jewish god. He makes some claims about who Josephus might have spoken to, regarding Jesus. But nothing is sourced and he never mentions how Pro knows who Josephus spoke to and when. I think the simple fact that at best Josephus would've been writing 25 years after the resurrection is enough to question Pro's claim that Josephus verifies the existence of Jesus. Also, Pro never mentions what Josephus wrote about Jesus. Maybe Josephus wrote, "some people say a man named Jesus was crucified and was the son of our god. " If that is the writing, then that isn't much verification. Pro should've found what Josephus recorded and given us those quotes. Pro concludes round 3 by citing another Biblical passage and then claiming, the "Above (meaning quoted passage) is also proof that Jesus Christ died for our sins. .. " Once again we are back to Pro trying to use the Bible to prove the things the Bible claims to be true. What else would we expect? I find it a bit shocking that Pro doesn't notice the logical problem with this. He is a Christian. If this is valid, a Muslim could do the same thing. Muslim, "Mohammad is a prophet. Here are the passages that prove it right from the Koran. " Pro doesn't buy that argument. So why does he think we should? You must do better Pro. Proposition, "Jesus Christ is the Son of God. " 1. A god exist. Pro's primary argument is a god of the gaps argument. This is a fallacy and the arguments have been refuted. 2. Jesus existed. The only non Biblical source Pro uses is Josephus. However, Josephus was born after Jesus resurrection (if that happened), no quotes to what Josephus actually said regarding Jesus. This isn't strong enough to establish the existence of Jesus. 3. Jesus is the son of God. This is by far the weakest point in Pro's arguments. Pro's only support for this is Christian text. Which is exactly what we would expect to find in a Christian document.