On the Existence of the Judeo-Christian God

Thanks for accepting - I really like this debate topic. In my rebuttal, I will first provide brief evidence for each of the points I asserted earlier and follow this by refuting the "flood" myth you referenced. Intercessory prayer does not work: There have been a number of studies of intercessory prayer, but the largest and most comprehensive one was completed just recently. The results of the study can be found in this news release: http://web.med.harvard.edu... I have access to the technical paper since my school has a subscription to the journal, but cannot link to it since that would violate copyright laws. It differs in no significant way from the news release. The results show that heart bypass patients that were prayed for had the same complications that those who did not. In addition to this study, amputees that are prayed for never spontaneously regrow limbs. This may seem ridiculous, but according to the bible, it should work. No Evidence for Jesus: We have no evidence for Jesus's existence outside of scripture. What we do have is numerous Roman records from around the time he would have been stirring up trouble, an there is no mention of him. In addition, if he had attracted as much attention as the bible claims, some historian on the era would have written about him, which we do not find. No Evidence of Miracles: Same as above, basically. Scientific Inaccuracies of the Bible: The bible gets everything wrong, from Genesis forward. The world is NOT 6000 years old (Genesis, Exodus, Kings, Ezekiel, Mark), which is what genealogies add up to. Animals, plants, and so forth were NOT created in there present forms (Genesis), as the bible says. Disease is NOT caused by evil spirits, but by germs. The sun is the center of the solar system, NOT the earth, as the bible claims. And so on. Literary Analysis of the Bible: The bible is not one cohesive document, but many scripts, written by different men and has been revised many times over the years. Also, it would have originally been written in Hebrew, and translated to Greek, Latin, and finally English, even in a perfect world. As it is, it was probably translated many more times. In each translation, meanings are lost and passages are mistranslated. this is NOT the same book supposedly written by God some 2000 years ago. in addition, the Gospels were NOT written by the apostles that they are attributed to. Mark, the first Gospel that was written, has been dated to around AD 65, and the rest are written between then and AD 110 or so. No one, especially in the ancient world, lives that long. In addition, these books are quoted anonymously until about AD 180, when the names suddenly appear. Differences in Beliefs (combined two points): Different sects of Christianity interpret passages of the bible very differently. If this were the divine word of God, one would expect interpretations to match. This causes the creations of sects, much like Martin Luther's split from the Catholic Church in 1517. We can see more recent splits, like the Mormons in the 1800's and even fringe "cults" today. Some die out, others do not. If the bible were divine word, we would expect to be getting fewer groups, as we found that one interpretation was the correct one. Instead we are getting more splits. Inconsistency of Religious Experiences: If there were one supreme god, religious experiences in all pars of the world would have a single source. They should all be similar, like everyone seeing angels or a sea of fire in hell or whatnot. Instead, what we get is people seeing their own version of heaven or hell or nirvana or what have you, and for some reason these visions always match the individual's beliefs. You never hear of a story where a Christian gets in a car crash, sees the ancestor spirits, and converts to Shintoism. This argues that people create their own religious experiences, rather than them coming from an external source. I should also mention that "firsthand" accounts and "eyewitness" testimony are unreliable under the best of circumstances. Add religion to the mix and it just goes downhill. That summarizes the points I listed earlier. Now on to the flood myth. Yes, many cultures have flood myths. Many cultures also have myths about lightening striking their enemies, and plagues, and superhumans (read: humans who do impossible things, like Hercules, Jesus, Lugh, and so on.) and everything else. This is because all of these cultures did not have the knowledge to explain these things rationally, and so made up stories to satisfy their curiosity. But let's take the flood myth specifically for a moment. Many of these early cultures lived on rivers, because that is where the fertile land is and the river makes for easy transportation of goods and another source of food (fish). Rivers flood. It is a fact of life. But because the people living by the rivers could not explain WHY the rivers flooded, the gods (or God) was usually the cause. Finally, let's take a look at the scientific evidence for a world-wide flood - none. Geologists are able to tell when an area of land was underwater by looking at the layers of rock and soil. They also can date these layers to find out when it happened. If there was a worldwide flood some 4000 years ago, it should be easy to look at the sediment layers and find a layer where all of the land had been underwater, dated about 4000 years ago. Guess what - we don't find it. This would be the most obvious evidence, but there is others. We have Egyptian hieroglyphs that go that far back, as well as Sumerian cuneiform writing. While they do report floods of biblical proportions (pun) the dates given are different, as are the gods they attribute it to. In addition, these writings are MORE than 4000 years old. According to the bible, all of thesis people were killed during the Flood. This directly contradicts reality, as these civilizations continued to leave records throughout the Flood period and after. In conclusion, the flood myth is an extremely poor example of biblical evidence to use, as I have shown above. I look forward to your next entry!