God Does Not Exist

Thanks to my opponent for completing their first rebuttal, we will begin right away: Incompatibility between Religion and Science? My opponent starts with the dubious assertion: “The Bible claims that God designed, and created life, in his own image. (Although this contradicts your definition, as the definition states that he has no body parts” Hebrew root of the Latin phrase for image – Imago Dei – meaning image, shadow or likeness The original definition of image does not restrict us to only a physical likeness but rather, a likeness in being or attributes... God endowed humanity with explicit free choice, dominion and self-awareness that the rest of creation does not share. Since humans share in some of the divine attributes declared by God, then it stands logically that we were created in His image. This does not pose a contradiction whatsoever.the main premise of my opponents argument in this section is best displayed in this assertion: "Evolution makes a much more convincing explanation for why we are here." underlying this idea seems to be the presupposition that somehow evolution and Christian theism are otherwise incompatible.. ("but the literal interpretation of the creation of humans by God must be accepted") Let me introduce that this is not the case, the creation narrative does not restrict us to the '6 literal days' as my opponent would object. Genesis 1 is open to a wide variety of interpretations and one is by no means barred to the literal interpretation...Now the real issue in this situation is faced by the atheist.. In a study conducted by Barrow and Tippler in their book: "The Anthropic Cosmological Principle"... They found that their are 10 steps within the course of human evolution that are so improbable in their reality that before they could happen, the sun would have ceased to be a main sequence star and the earth would be incinerated... This includes the probability in the evolution of the human genome to be between 4 to the negative 180th power to the 110th power.. and this is only one of the ten steps! So the occurrence of evolution on this planet is quite literally, a miracle can in fact, be used to bolster the "fine tuning" argument that I addressed previously.. and unfortunately for the atheist, there really is no way of explaining this 'miracle' rather then chalking it up to the astronomical odds... The theist however, has a perfectly reasonable explanation for this phenomenon which lies in that of an intelligent designer superseding the process of biological development... Which makes it clear that evolution alone does not make a much more convincing explanation for why we are here. Alleged contradictions in the ‘traditionally defined’ God: My opponent gives the well-known ‘omnipotence paradox’ as an example of Gods contradictory nature. He asserts: "Could God create a stone so heavy he could not lift it?" If yes: God's power is limited, because He could not lift the stone. If no: God's power is limited, because He could not create the stone. Hmm… Seems airtight does it not? Well if you’re dealing with other ‘traditionally’ defined Gods such as Allah from an Islamic conception, then yes there is an irresolvable issue. However, only the Christian God is able to answer this dilemma... and the answer is in fact, yes. Let’s remember that in the definition provided, the Christian God exists tri-personally or if you will, as a Trinity Definition of Trinity: “The Christian Godhead as one God in three persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.” http://www.oxforddictionaries.com... Now if we look at the attributes and activity of God the Son (Jesus) according to the NT, we see that He is fully God and fully man (Philippians 2:1-11).. HE is the creator of all things (Col. 1:16), His state of omniscience was limited (Luke 2:52).. and he was unable to carry his own cross after being brutally tortured by the Romans (Luke 23:26). We can then logically substitute the ‘cross’ in this situation for a rock in which, Jesus was unable to lift although still remaining ontological God in nature. So can God create a stone too heavy that He cannot lift? Yes! Does this limit his omnipotence to the point of self-contradiction? No! Since the Christian God is able to humble himself (in form) due to his hypostatic union, He is the only God able to solve this dilemma. Thus, refuting my opponent’s assertion of this being a self-contradictory idea. The last little bit my opponent brings up is this idea of omniscience and free will. He asserts: “if God knew I would eat the pizza, there would be no way that I could decide to not eat it, because if I did, I would prove God wrong.” This seems to me a fundamental misconception of Gods foreknowledge which is ultimately dependent of your theory of time in relation to God’s eternal nature. If you believe (like some theologians) that God is essentially ‘timeless’ and not bound by time, then every event whether it be in the past, present or future is manifest before God.. It is like a book, where we are stuck smack dab in the middle and God is the author able to read any part from the beginning to the end. On the other hand, if you believe that God does inhabit time at a specific point and just looks ahead to see future events, you still don’t have a problem... Neither in these situations do you have issues with God knowing the future and our free will... After all, we all know the sun will rise but that does absolutely nothing to cause it. The fact is, if for whatever reason you decided to change your mind and not eat that delicious pizza, that would have been the choice that God foreknew. “God knowing what we are going to do does not mean that we can't do something else. It means that God simply knows what we have chosen to do ahead of time. Our freedom is not restricted by God's foreknowledge. Our freedom is simply realized ahead of time by God.” https://carm.org... Temporal Necessity in Causation? *I think this title is a bit better than the “I like it” argument. In this section of my opponents opening argument, I’ve taken the liberty of forming his objections into a deductive argument for better simplicity: (1) Causes must precede their effects in time (2) There is no time prior to the beginning of time (the origin of the universe) (3) Therefore, the universe cannot have a cause Now I’m interested, what makes my opponent think that time presupposes causality? Why cannot one timeless entity (say a #) depend timelessly for its existence on another timeless entity? Why could not God sustain a number in a timeless existence? I’m interested to hear why it is impossible. When we look at the entire sphere of causality, we see that there are two types: temporal and logical. Immanuel Kant gives a prime example of logical causality, imagine a heavy ball resting on a cushion from eternity past, the physical proximity of the ball and cushion will form a concave depression (indentation) in the cushion that is co-eternal with the ball and cushion... Now if I may ask... What is the cause of this concavity? The ball nor the cushion has temporal priority over the other.. In my opponents view, there cannot be a cause for this causality (since is neither is temporarily prior), this just simply isn’t a valid conclusion however, as a contingent property, the concavity of the cushion begs for a causal explanation! We then have an example of a cause that does not precede its effect in time or rather, in a different manner: logically. If the ball did not exist, the concavity of the cushion would not exist. The ball is logically prior to the concavity, though not temporally prior to it. This is a great example in displaying how the concept of causation is logically coherent outside the bound of a temporal framework. My opponent is falsely concluding that there is only one form of causation which the atheist philosopher Alexander Pruss concludes is ‘unconvincing’ while remarking: “apart from full or partial reductions of the notion of causation to something like Humean regularity and temporal precedence, …there is [not] much reason to suppose that the cause of a temporal effect must even be in time.” Now to answer my opponent’s assertion: “If there was no point in time where the universe did not exist, then there was also not interval of time where it could have been caused, or created. If something is as old as time itself, like the universe, it has always existed, and therefore needs no cause, or creator.” This seems to be a dubious play on words, He uses ‘always existed’ as term to define time within the bound of time which is terribly misleading since we understand (as my opponent himself claims) that time had a beginning… It is a finite property that is subject to the same laws of causality as everything else and needs a valid explanation for its existence… It seems that my opponent is suggesting an infinite regress... But nonetheless, we must object that a timeless entity did in fact, because the universe since there is no point ‘in time’ where this cause had the opportunity. Overall, my opponent will need to show how it is impossible for simultaneous causation to occur outside the bounds of temporal necessity which we have not seen so far. Conclusion: Let’s keep in mind the following solutions to my opponent’s objections: A). Evolution poses more problems for the atheist B). the Christian conception of God solves the omnipotence paradox C). foreknowledge holds no causal relationship to free agents D). their are models concerning causation outside the bounds of temporal necessity Sources: 1). https://theosophical.wordpress.com... 2). https://reasonablefaith.org...3). http://www.relevantmagazine.com...