God is Real and Jesus Lives & Evolution is Unfounded

Thank you for offering this debate topic. I hope it is a fruitful and interesting debate. My opponent makes a number of claims which are categorically untrue. 1) The Bible is not filled with scientific principles. The science of the Bible is typical for the Hellenized world of the writing of the Bible. There are no anachronisms or any scientific information which was ahead of it's time. All the ideas in the Bible, such as a flat earth with corners on pillars, are all contemporary ideas to the time period. It isn't a Biblical idea that the sky is made of metal and opens up to allow the waters of the heavens to meet the water of the Earth, the rather odd idea of the firmament was actually an older idea taken from the culture. To wit, even St. Augustine recognized that the Science in the Bible was wrong and advised individuals not to take the Bible scientifically. "It not infrequently happens that something about the earth, about the sky, about other elements of this world, about the motion and rotation or even the magnitude and distances of the stars, about definite eclipses of the sun and moon, about the passage of years and seasons, about the nature of animals, of fruits, of stones, and of other such things, may be known with the greatest certainty by reasoning or by experience, even by one who is not a Christian. It is too disgraceful and ruinous, though, and greatly to be avoided, that he [the non-Christian] should hear a Christian speaking so idiotically on these matters, and as if in accord with Christian writings, that he might say that he could scarcely keep from laughing when he saw how totally in error they are." 2) "It is ill-refutable(sic) that God created the universe." It is untrue that the universe need be created and the imposition of God in the position is unneeded and ad hoc. This general argument is almost certainly going to follow the typical template of all such arguments: a) There is a problem, Q. b) For various reasons Q is a serious problem. c) God solves Q. d) The same problem applies to God. e) God is immune to problem Q. However, the sudden invention of God to solve the problem is unjustified and lacks foundation. One need show that God is a solution in the first place before asking people to refute the proposition. 3) Intelligent Design and mathematics do not indicate that the universe was intelligently designed. I'll go ahead and predict this is the intro to the fine tuning argument. That the universe is so precarious with the laws of physics that any fluctuation would cause life to be impossible. This is however in error for a number of reasons. First, the fact that we exist shows that we must exist in a universe that can support life. In general, the idea itself is reduced to a hypothetical by the seeming truism of the anthropic principle. Further, most of the cited knobs to be fiddled with by a divine fine tuner are all related and changing one seems to change the other accordingly. (See Youtube video at 7:55 if the link to that point didn't work). http://www.youtube.com... 4) Mathematics does not prove evolution doesn't occur. The boot strapping power of evolution is such that the odds do not apply. It's like asking what are the odds of rolling a hundred dice and getting hundred 6s. But, with the ability to reroll the lowest dice at will as many times as you want. Well then, the odds don't apply, you'll be done in short order. While if you suppose the odds to be 1 in 6^100 (6.53318624 ï¿½ 10^77) you'd wrongly think the odds are high, when, in fact, there aren't any odds at all. If the given prerequisites for evolution are met, evolution *will* occur. Further, an additional problem occurs with the calculations of odds. They usually use some amino acids or DNA sequence in order to wrongly provide such odds, but the minimum requirements for life are absolutely unknown. All such "calculations" either for the favorable ease or daunting impossibility is predicated and wrong and insufficient information. --- That said, allow me to address my side rather than simply refuting your, yet to be made, arguments. Evolution is a fact and a theory which explains a wide variety of seemingly unrelated facts in a compete and fulfilling way. http://www.talkorigins.org... Evolution is a process by which simple mutation and reproduction serve to create a robust design for life by adding little bits of advantage via random mutation being selected for by non-random processes. Thomas Malthus proposed a novel economics theory which served as a starting point for Darwin when applied, not only to humans, but to all organisms on the planet. Given any organism such as, let's say crickets, if every organism which was to survive did survive and had as many offspring as possible the entire planet would in very short order be completely covered with crickets several feet thick. There must, necessarily, be a struggle for life and success in life and every organism which could exist cannot exist. Predation, failure to find a mate, starvation, defeat by other organisms and other factors must serve to regulate populations. However, there must from time to time be an edge exerted by one of those organisms in the struggle for survival which gives it a leg up to that individual, providing an advantage which its brethren lacks, allowing that organism to survive more than others of its species. That survival and mating, will spread that advantage to all of it's progeny. Just as those same natural forces should also weed out any random flaws in the organisms by way of mutations which make them less fit. Ultimately this produces a non-random improving process, which by it's very nature will produce random variants better suited to its environment without the need for intervention to illicit such improvements. Now, it isn't difficult to imagine that this process might work. In fact, it's hard to imagine that such a process could fail. It should work from a sheer algorithmic point of view, but it also works as a matter of practical fact. We see evolution occurring in the short term and in the long term. We have fossils of lizard-jaws becoming mammal jaws, dinosaurs becoming birds, fish becoming land-walkers, land-walkers becoming whales, and the diaspora of every living creature on this planet radiating out from simple forms to more adapted and complex forms. We can see the microscopic bacterial parasites that we previously to defeat with a novel adaptation of fungus (penicillin) have novel adaptations of their own to become immune. We have seen within our lifetimes strains of viruses change and adapt to the human immune system revealing things about ourselves that we didn't even know. We have both large and small examples of this process at work. Both in the wild, in the lab and in the bones of our ancestors. We have amazing and astounding predictions over the last 150 years bearing fruit and explaining the previously unexplainable. Nothing in biology makes any sense except under the light of evolution. -- If an all powerful God existed and stood by watching the holocaust, that God is evil. Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God? -- "Jesus loves the little zygotes All the zygotes in the world Jesus gives them birth defects Missing fingers, crooked necks Jesus loves the little zygotes of the world." -- However, I await your arguments. I may have miscalculated or not accounted for all of them. Please, let us hear the justification.