God is real

Let's start off by agreeing to leave the emotion out of it, though. As I am not an atheist I am happy to bring the news that we can leave the name-calling out of it. However, since I identify with agnosticism I have yet to be persuaded to believe in anything and so will, on principle, be disagreeing with you for the remainder of the debate. God, as far as my understanding goes, is not 'simply real'. I have yet to see the evidence in a way that I can find. .. well, evident. .. of the existence of God. The bible was not literally written by the Holy Spirit- in the infamous words of Russell Brand "he ain't got a pen! ". It is not a perfect book, and I will explain below in what ways the space allotted will allow why this is true. But first to recognize the latter half of your opening argument: You argued, "How you you go wrong in believing in a perfect being that loves you and cares for you, unlike these cruel gods that will torture you if you dont cook the steak to medium rare. (Also, if youre Atheist, and dont believe in anything, then you believe in not believing. You BELIEVE that there is no God or any supreme being or something that reigns the universe. You BELIEVE in something, then, dont you? )" My response to this would be that you can't go wrong- I think that for many people, a wide array of religions (but usually just one per person) do wonderful things for people. Many religions subscribe to a God that is a perfect being, and many religious people gain things like hope and the prospect of salvation (a valuable thing) from believing in them. I would also agree that Atheists do believe in something (that is, the lack of a God). This said, neither point stands to shed any light on whether God exists or not. I agree with you that the belief in a God can be quite beneficial, but that alone doesn't necessitate His existence, and so it is irrelevant. Moving on, I take it from your quote of the philosophical perfect being argument that you aren't into that stuff, so I will provide an alternative, more historical approach, as well as a few philosophical ones. The former will be directed towards your statement that "The bible is a perfect book, no errors or anything inconsistent can be proven". The bible contains many anachronisms, most notably large scale events like the genesis flood. A classic argument is that of radiometric dating- You would think something like a global flood of biblical proportions would leave a mark on the earth, but there are no geological records to prove this. In fact, radiometric dating can take us back ~62000 years, a ten-fold difference from the Bible's alleged 6000 year old earth. If one submits that the earth is 6000 years old, how can this be reconciled with the presence of fossils or banded iron dating the earth's crust back to the first presence of oxygen on the planet (something the Bible fails to mention)? I won't do most of the groundwork for this argument, because biblical inaccuracies are very commonly pointed out and very rarely refuted in a logical fashion- instead, I have found this fantastic site (. http://skepticsannotatedbible.com...) that lists contradictions, absurdities, injustices, interpretations, scientific contradictions, cruelty and violence, prophecy, intolerance, family values, women, language, sex, and politics. To run through a few examples: - How many men did the chief of David's captains kill? 2 Samuel 23:8 states "he lifts up his spear against eight hundred, whom he slew at one time", while Chronicles 11:11 contradicts ". .. the chief of the captains: he lifted up his spear against three hundred slain by him at one time. " Given that 300 is not 800, how can these both be true? - How did Antiochus die? 2 Machabees 9:5-28 makes the case that God killed him with an incurable bowel disease, while 2 Machabees 1:16-17 states very clearly that he was smashed with stones as he entered the temple in Jerusalem (his head was then cut off and his body chopped into pieces). Finally, 1 Machabees 6:8-16 says he was 'scared to death' by the Jews. - Where does Jesus cure the blind man? Mark 8:22-25 very clearly says it was in Bethsaida, but John 8:59-9:1-6 says that it was in fact outside of the temple. The point is not that anyone cares about whether or not John or Mark was correct in where the biblical Jesus cured the blind man, it is that the Bible is anything but 100% consistent with 'no errors', as you have stated. The above link has literally hundreds of contradictions, too, if you're interested in checking some more of them out. Transitioning into a more philosophical approach: Anselm's Proslogion (can be found here: . http://www.stanselminstitute.org...) stakes the claim that God exists based on a simple series of arguments: 1. One can imagine a being than which none greater can be conceived. 2. We know that existence in reality is greater than existence in the mind alone. 3. If the being we imagine exists only in our mind, then it is not a "being than which none greater can be conceived". 4. A being than which none greater can be conceived must also exist in reality. 5. Failure to exist in reality would be failure to be a being than which none greater can be conceived. 6. Thus a being than which none greater can be conceived must exist, and we call this being God. However, when Guanilo applies the same series of arguments to a patently false conclusion (see the Lost Island: . http://www3.nd.edu...), it can be seen that Anselm's argument was in fact invalid. An excellent review of the exchange can be found in William E. Mann's paper 'Locating The Lost Island' (. https://www.questia.com...). Something Mann touched on but didn't expand to it's fullest extent is the fact that if we can appreciate an island to be a thing which has no upper limits and thus could be infinitely perfected, we must appreciate the same of something else with similar parameters. .. The universe, perhaps. If we apply Anselm's same argumentative strategy, originally used to prove the existence of God, to a universe with no upper limit to how great it can be, we find that since there is no limit to greatness in conceivable universes, God (should He exist) could not under any circumstance create the greatest conceivable universe. In fact, there would be infinitely many conceivable universes greater than any one universe that this God could create, which opens it up to be wondered what this situation would tell about that creator's 'unlimited' power or 'unlimited' love for us. It becomes easy to imagine a being exactly like this God but with enough power to create these greater universes, thereby disproving the existence of God as Anselm argues it to be. St. Thomas Aquinas takes to a different approach: Aquinas says that he can prove God's existence in not one, but five ways. There are however numerous problems with these (more than one for each way), which I am dissapointed to not be able to discuss due to word limit restrictions. However, I would be happy to state these problems in my next argument, should you be interested. Most can be found here, anyways: . http://www.rejectionofpascalswager.net... On a closing note, professor emeritus Michael Martin procures a logical, truth-of-premise progression in the article found here: . http://www.patheos.com.... He states: "For example, although one cannot know with certainty if the concept of God is inconsistent, one can know with certainty that if it is, then there is no God. " Many of these debates seem to spiral into a "well you can't disprove Him! " type of thing, and so as Dawkin's said: ""That you cannot prove God"s nonexistence is accepted and trivial, if only in the sense that we can never absolutely prove the nonexistence of anything. " Bring on your proofs!