God Probably Doesn't Exist

I am trying my hardest here to acknowledge your side seriously; I am showing you why I cannot go into certain areas because it would cause assertions that I cannot back up. I am not able to answer certain questions or respond certain ways, I was giving you an example of the logical fallacy that was in play. I did not use it as a last resort or my argument in total because suggesting an argument is bad because of logical fallacy… is another logical fallacy. I thoroughly dislike intellectually dishonest people or those who can’t see life on either side. I am not saying I dislike you, but I have come across many people who are very single minded, I avoid closed minded as they are educated on several aspects; however single minded is more appropriate as they are driven in one direction. Since a lot of our discussion so far has been a lack of awareness of definition, regardless of how many dictionary definitions we put in; there is a lot more of what we did not know than what we did, and if I was to conclude or push further without fixing these issues up, it would have turned very ugly for me. My intent here is to show why God probably does not exist, and I do apologise that it has taken such a long time to come around to a position where I can actually argue it doesn’t. It was a frustrating route and I do acknowledge this, but I do hope you acknowledge that also; many arguments are well pronounced, don’t get me wrong, they are well thought out and rounded. However, my lack of response doesn’t conclude my forfeiture or lack of knowledge of it. There is a time and place for certain things to be answered; I do not want to straw man anything here. “The purpose of debate is to come to a fuller, deeper, richer understanding of the truth. That is the goal, at least, and it is to that goal that I strive. I hope Pro feels the same.” ~Honestly I do, it will just take a little longer than a quick answer to ask if a God is possible or not. “This is not a difficult point to understand, so there is no reason why so much space has been wasted trying to hash out the proper definition of God. Indeed, Pro himself agreed to debate me on the premise that God, understood according to my definition, does not exist (round one, note three). It is improper debate etiquette for him to argue definitions after agreeing to use them, and I do not appreciate it.” ~I was attempting to show how it is impossible to make a vague statement a conclusion. I accepted the fact that this God in question was these things, but how am I supposed to argue that a God that is all of these things does not exist? You do realise you came into this debate highly one sided and completely inappropriate to debate anyone; I am simply aware of what needs to be taken place in order to get a correct standing for myself to debate you, I do apologise if it has taken a toll on your patience though, this was not my intent. “Pro fails to give any good argument for the resolution. Consider his two arguments: (1) God is undefined, and (2) God’s existence is unfalsifiable. With respect to (1), I have consistently and repeatedly defined God in an intelligible and meaningful way, and Pro just does not get the point. This failure should be clear from the fact that instead of dealing with my responses to two loosely related objections, Pro takes issue with my phrase “loosely related”! Moreover, I have already indicated how the above definition sets limits on what God is and places Him in the appropriate categories, and Pro does not care to disagree.” ~If you were on my position, arguing that a god probably does not exist, how would you go about it? It’s not a simple thing to ask, and simply because you don’t appreciate my conduct does not mean it’s not necessary, that’s like if I claimed your god made the earth in 6 literal days about 6,300 years ago, the universe being also very young with light made on the way. I could just show this to be false and make your God false too. You would need to re-determine what God is and that he didn’t have to do it this way; also, just because I listed what many Christian followers believe the structure of their creation story went… this is an example and not Christian. You literally have to show different terms. If I said, 25,000,000,000 light years away, the sky is purple. You would need to do a lot of maths experiments and get a lot of things sorted out before you answer my statement, if you were to take my position. I am trying to say that a vague concept of life can’t be a conclusion for a God, you can believe that, that’s fine. You can state that, sure… but you can’t use it in a debate. If I said that someone was robbed, and people asked me more questions, we are not questioning if someone was robbed any more, we are asking how, why, when, where, what… Do you understand where I am going with this? “The implication is that God so-defined makes no assertions about the world. His existence is therefore untestable. My response, however, should be clear. First, if God’s existence cannot be disproven, then Pro cannot establish the resolution. He does himself no favors by proclaiming the untestablility/unfalsifiablility of God, for that just is to admit failure. Pro’s counter-response is clearly a straw man. I am not arguing that atheism is a lie because there is no reason to think that God does not exist. Rather, my point is that theism is not disproven by a lack of evidence in its favor. Why? Because absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.” ~Since we can’t test something without assertions that are also testable, I have no ground to stand on, this doesn’t present an argument against me, this shows your bad setup and biased outlook on a debate setting. As for your statement of ‘absence of evidence is not evidence of absence’, I would agree with you, just because at the moment I have nothing to stand on, this doesn’t mean I have lost… “Second, God’s existence is testable. If a contradiction could be demonstrated in the concept of God, for example, God could not exist. If unjustifiable evil exists, God does not exist. If human freedom is shown to be inconsistent with divine foreknowledge, God cannot exist (assuming humans are free). If evolution is shown to be unguided, God does not exist. Further, even given a general concept of God, if God is the personal Creator of the universe, the universe must have begun to exist. If Pro could give some evidence for the eternality of the universe, then God does not exist. In all these ways, God’s existence is testable. Of course, if Pro’s point is merely that God’s existence has not beenfalsified, then he and I are in agreement.” ~You do realise you could refute everything I say based on perspective at this point? I will answer your questions but also show how you could refute it. If I said a paedophile was a an example of unjustifiable evil, you could simply argue that it was a nature / nurture issue, that it was a vampire affect, that it was somehow in God’s ‘plan’. An example of unguided evolution? Again, this is based on perspective; I could argue that the recurrent laryngeal nerve shows unguided evolution, in mammals, this nerve avoids the direct route between brain and throat and instead descends into the chest, loops around the aorta near the heart, then returns to the larynx. That makes it seven times longer than it needs to be. But you could just say it was his ‘plan’… Now I hope you are beginning to see my problem, I wanted you to define God in every aspect, because if you didn’t you could just say he made it that way, or he does it that way… You could argue anything you like and I have nothing to say because none of it is testable, they are all basic irrational assertions based on one question; ‘how did we get here?’ ‘if we are here, someone must have made it.’. More specifically on your statement “if God is the personal Creator of the universe, the universe must have begun to exist. If Pro could give some evidence for the eternality of the universe, then God does not exist.” Why is God a personal Creator of the universe? Where did you get this assumption? You know very well that science has no found out how the universe came to be… so your result it. Because we don’t know, therefore god must have done it. My question is, why? I could argue, ‘what made god’, but he would be self-existent, my question would then be, why couldn’t the universe be like this? In each of these questions that are turned around, you could not give a response either. Because you have no idea either, you have made conclusions based on shabby assumptions of philosophy; however, philosophy should be based on what we do know, not what we don’t. The assumption of a god is a nice thought, but people live fine lives that are morally right in the eyes of the community they are involved in, they also share the same good things and possibly better than those who do believe in a God. Even if I was to claim that because there are extreme religious people around, this doesn’t prove God to be immoral, they are just doing it wrong. “2.2 Objective moral values and duties exist - No objections from Pro.” ~We made them ourselves. “2.3. Therefore, God exists-The conclusion follows necessarily from the premises, premises we have been good reasons to accept and no good reasons to doubt. God’s character serves as the standard of moral value, and His commands form our moral duties.” ~What commands? Those in Islam? Surely not, those in Christianity? Surely not… Look at extremists. “In short, cosmology and moral experience come together to give us good reason to believe that a morally perfect, personal Creator of the universe exists.” ~Believe what you like, know that it will never be shown to be true, it will always stay in unknown and probably not true. I will be making a post in round 5 showing the positives on how I think a god could be true. I know I am not supposed to, however i think it would only be fair on Pro to show how he could very well be correct.