The Christian God Does Not Exist

Con begins his statement by saying that he believes God is a "pure spirit who created the universe." While this is technically an accurate definition of the Christian God, it is merely necessary, not sufficient. For Con to prove his position he must not only defend the existence of a "pure spirit who ceated the universe," but he must further prove that it has the characteristics ascribed to it by Christianity which I listed in my first statement. He goes on to say, "I suppose I have all rights to place my Ideas in ways I can, regardless the conditions placed by the instigator." While Con of course has all rights to state whatever he wants here, he must prove the resolution to be false in order to win, and this does not allow for redefining God. If it did, then I could simply have taken up the same debate and said, "God really does exist, just look at the sun, that's God." This is absurd of course, as Pro obviously does not mean the sun when he says God. In a similar way, I explicitly stated in my opening statement that I define the Christian God as, "An eternally existent, morally perfect, immaterial being who created the universe and holds the attributes of omnibenevolence, omniscience, omnipotence, perfect mercy and perfect justice."As such, Con must not only prove his God, but he must prove one with the listed attributes. Con then claims he has seen the Christian God in the faith with which Christians pray everyday, the devotion with which the Church works for the welfare of the society, the efforts of the Red Cross as they work for the wounded ones, the efforts of the MSFS as they struggle for spread of education, and every great Man, Christianity has given the world." Con could mean he has directly seen it, in which case he has redefined the Christian God to be merely these actions and virtues listed He could also mean he has indirectly seen it, and that these things could not exist without the Christian God, so He must exist; my reply to this argument is that his is a bare assertion, Con has offered no reason why people should be unable to exhibit virtues in the absence of a God; as such, the argument is not substantiated as proof of God's existence. Now I will address Con responses to my three arguments: I. The Problem of Evil Con first responds to this argument by stating that evil is a cultural concept. I fail to see how this changes the fact that an all-powerful and all-loving being would stop the suffering we see around us. Even if evil does not exist, the argument retains all it's validity if one simply replaces the word "evil' with 'suffering'. He then says that Evil is not eradicated completely because people refuse to listen to "the call of their souls." This argument fails for two reasons. First, it does not address natural evil, the millions of people killed by disease, natural disasters and starvation have nothing to do with someone's refusal to listen to "the call of their soul." Furthermore, an omnipotent God would be able to eradicate all these things and more without needing to use humans as puppets. II. The Problem of Non-Belief Con begins by saying we all have a right to follow our religions; however, this misses the point, as I don't propose that the Christian God would force people to believe in Him if he existed. What I propose is that if the Christian God exists, then he would provide evidence for his existence, and he surely would not give a perfectly acceptable naturalistic explanation to all the phenomena he is said to be responsible for (evolution, for example) Con claims that only a few thousand follow Sikhism. This is false; according to several sources, the number of Sikhs is between 23 and 26 million[1][2][3], a far cry from a few thousand. Con then points out they do not all leave their religion due to lack of fellow adherents. This is irrelevant for two reasons. First, the problem of non-belief posits that God wants us to love and/or worship him. This appears not to be the case in Sikhism[4] III. The Problem of Hell Con responds to this problem by saying that if hell did not exist or even if we stopped believing in the idea, the world would be full of crime. This is unsubstantiated as well as false, as Sweden has the highest percentage of atheists or agnostics (estimated at up to 85%)[5], yet has a homicide rate of only 1 per 100,000[6]. Compare this with the United States of America, with only 1.6% claiming to be atheist or agnostic[7], and a homicide rate of 4.2802 per 100,000[8]. Also, atheists make up only 0.209% of the prison population[9], despite making up 0.7% of the United States population. This is all beside the point anyways, as an omnipotent, loving God could simply grant us a stronger desire to do good and avoid evil, solving the problem of crime from the start. Con claims that all religions believe in heaven and hell without any citation. Considering how absolute this statement is, I need only provide one counterexample to refute this claim. Here is a chart of numerous different religions: http://www.religionfacts.com... notice that the majority do not even mention heaven or hell. Conclusion: Con has done little to resolve the existence of a Christian God, given the characteristics I listed in my opening statement, with evil, non-belief, or the doctrine of hell. References: 1. http://www.adherents.com... 2. http://www.religioustolerance.org... 3. http://en.wikipedia.org... 4. http://en.wikipedia.org... 5. http://www.adherents.com... 6. http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu... 7. http://b27.cc.trincoll.edu... 8. http://www.nationmaster.com... 9. http://www.holysmoke.org...