God Most Likely Does Not Exist

Con: Thank you for the interesting post. To clarify my beliefs, I am a Christian. I'll be responding to your arguments in bold to avoid confusion. I've shortened some of your points for brevity but I don't believe I've skipped over anything. If I have let me know. Yes, you have responded to most of my arguments but to no avail. None of your responses seem to be logically sound or backed with evidence. They are regurgitations of scriptures and Christian teachings which you give no reason to believe. You believe in the Christian scriptures and reject all others without basis. You have not met your burden of proof or shown any reason as to why God’s existence is more likely than any of the other naturalistic explanations that I have outlined. You also did not respond to Occam’s razor and how it supports my thesis that God is not likely to exist. Con: God is love. Regardless of culture, social differences, and religion, God knows your heart and accepts you for believing in Him and acknowledging that He died on the cross for your sins. There are differences in religion that still acknowledge Jesus Christ as savior. I do not believe that entrance into heaven is limited only to Christianity, and I believe that differences in religion resonate better with people of different cultures - every believer is furthering his development and by having differences in religion it helps relate with culturally diverse people. The idea of vicarious redemption is an evil and immoral preaching of Christianity, as it places all of the punishments from ones sins on somebody else. One must accept the consequences of their actions in all cases, putting it on a mythical man who nobody can prove is the son of God is ridiculous. If this teaching was true then I could rape whoever I want then ask Jesus for forgiveness and be ready to do it all over again. This example may seem farfetched but it seems to be statistically prevalent among priests (http://en.wikipedia.org...). Many people do not even acknowledge the fact that Jesus died on a cross, was born of a virgin, or was resurrected. There is no evidential basis to assert these claims but even if I granted them as true it would still not mean that his teachings were morally correct, that he was the son of God, or that God exists. It is much more likely that these teaching are man-made just like every other religion. You also assert that having different cultures and religions is preferable because it helps diverse people relate. What about religious wars and controversies? It is much more irrational to let people remain hostile and divided over one of the most important questions to mankind then to unify humanity and reveal indisputable proof. Con: Rather than altering physics, a miracle can be being present in the right place at the right time. Many extraordinary events happen everyday. I would agree that many extraordinary and improbable events occur every day. I mean what are the chances that the fly in my room is at exactly that one position that it is in? What are the chances that I sit next to exactly six distinct individuals of all possible people in the world? Point is, these probabilistic scenarios are impossibly rare but occur every single moment. They mean nothing. Improbable coincidences are too often confused with miracles. It is much more likely that human perception is fallible than the suspension of the natural order (a miracle). Con: The same could be true of atheists, too. A wise person will apply skepticism and logical inquiry to everything they believe. The difference is atheists do not believe things based on faith, theists do. Atheists are the skeptical ones. Theists claim to know things that are impossible for any human to know in this age and time. Theists claim to not only know that a God exists, but that they know the mind of this God, and how he wants us humans to act. The atheist does not say that God does not exist absolutely 100%, rather that there is no evidential basis to support belief in a God. Therefore, the atheist has the more likely and realistic worldview. Con: While God cannot be scientifically proven in a controlled setting, He has left evidence for us to see - the reason He did this is so believers would have faith in Him. Please show me and the world your indisputable evidence, why would God make it so hard for other to obtain his truth? If God was really supporting you, then why are your arguments so unpersuasive, illogical, and lacking in evidence? Because it applies, please explains your thoughts on Schellenberg’s hiddenness argument (http://en.wikipedia.org...): 1. If there is a God, he is perfectly loving. 2. If a perfectly loving God exists, reasonable nonbelief does not occur. 3. Reasonable nonbelief occurs. 4. No perfectly loving God exists. 5. Hence, there is no God. Con (in response to the omnipotence/omnibenevolence argument): This is more of a semantic argument. It's like asking to draw a square circle. God cannot sin, and it would be sin to contradict Himself. He is perfect and infinitely more complex than anything conceivable by the human mind… Evil is not from God. Mankind fell by their own free will and thus evil entered into the world. The same way darkness is the absence of light, evil is the darkness in absence of God. The omnipotence and omnibenevolence arguments are not semantic arguments in the slightest; they are logically sound deductions and consequences. I do not use definitions to support any of the premises or conclusions in any of the arguments. You agreed to the definition of a God that is all-powerful, all-knowing, and perfectly good, and you must defend your unsupported claims. Do not be a scapegoat, when the questions get hard to defend. Humans have free will because it is evolutionarily beneficial to a species, not because God granted it to us. It is nonsensical to say that humans would not have free will if it wasn’t because some God granted it to us. It is equivalent to say that all humans would act as robots without any choices, this claim has no merit and I challenge Con to prove it without reference to scripture. Con: I do not believe in evolution. Why not? It passes all the criteria for a scientific theory, it has passed many rigorous experiments, and it is actually the only game in town with accurate predictive power and explanations for various features of various organisms around the world. Creationism is a joke in the scientific community as it should be. One weeks’ worth of peer-reviewed evidence/articles for evolution trumps all the peer-reviewed creationism articles ever published. Con: We know that matter is not created nor destroyed. The logical explanation is that God created the matter that makes up the universe. Here you make a typical logical fallacy. You say that matter cannot be created then you say it was created by God. You can’t have your cake and eat it too sir. You did not even explain why this is the most likely possibility of the four I have listed. I have given you reason to believe that the creation of a universe without a God is more likely due to Occam’s razor. You have avoided this point completely. Con: God doesn't do irrational things, humans do. Sin entered the world after mankind disobeyed God. War, human suffering, hatred... Evil of all kinds are not from God. It shows us how much we need His love. By living a life of sin, that is the result. Again, please give me a good reason to believe this scriptural nonsense, you do realize I am an atheist right? I require proof of such claims. I have also responded to how the Christian way of handling sin is reprehensible (vicarious redemption in a response above). In response to the arguments you posted: 1) So what if hydrogen in the universe is decreasing? How do you know that the universe did not exist in some other form before the big bang? Why couldn’t the big bang have occurred through naturalist causes or uncaused causes? 2) I would agree that evidence shows the universe is expanding and that it has a beginning. This does not mean that God did it however, it could have been created naturally. It is more logical to assume God did not create the universe because God is more complex than the universe (Occam’s Razor). If God can be eternal than so can the universe. 3) Entropy in the universe disperses energy into different forms. I do not see how this supports the existence of a God in any way. 1) How can this universe be intuitively designed if you just agreed that stars will eventually reach a “heat death” meaning that energy would not be available for humans to live in the future. Seems like indifferent design. 2) Beauty does not support the existence of God, you could have argued for it if you like but you didn’t. 3) How do you know that other life forms cannot and do not exist in a universe with different parameters? Con argues from ignorance in most of his claims, and I see no compelling reason to believe any of your assertions as they are not even close to the truth. Con did not meet his burden of proof. All of my arguments stand quite firm as Con’s refutations and wild claims have no compelling evidential support. The resolution stands, the existence of God is not likely, but the creation of the idea of God by man is highly likely.