Con (Theist) Will Not Fulfill His/Her Burden of Proof in Establishing The Existence Of God

I thank Con for her honest concession to the use of two unreliable sources, and her perseverance in finding two others. However, I do not think one to be reliable (the website advocating the standing sun) as it does not come from a scientifically literate basis, it comes from a geocentricity website written by “biblical astronomers.” They are unreliable at face value because geocentricity is the belief that the Sun rotates about the Earth. All the real astronomy done by NASA and pretty much every other secular non-biased astronomy organization has proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that the Earth rotates about the Sun. Ockham’s Razor Ockham’s razor states that we must not multiply assumptions beyond necessity. Ockham’s razor is not about how many questions can be asked for each theory (as Con advocates), it is a heuristic that helps in many cases to decide which hypothesis to choose. Con states: “the majority of questions Pro ask concern the existence of G-d, not the revelation at Sinai.” I again clarify that for the revelation at Sinai to occur as Con states (with everyone hearing God) we MUST assume that this God exists. Therefore, the questions I ask are necessary resultants of the assumptions produced by Con’s God hypothesis. Take the example of the explanation for the diversity of life on Earth. One possibility is that evolution through natural selection occurred through completely natural processes. The other is that God uses or guides evolution through natural selectrion to create us. Ockham’s razor clearly states that we can eliminate the God hypothesis as it is an unnecessary additional assumption. The same is true for the Mount Sinai event as everything can be explained through natural means without assuming the addition of supernatural beings. This is the core of Ockham’s razor; every natural explanation will always be simpler than any explanation of God because God necessarily entails a more complex being of tri-omni potential in addition to its existential assumption. Rebuttals Con: “In response to Pro's rhetorical question, I answer, (somewhat humorously, granted) only G-d knows…The idea of an all-knowing G-d take away any authenticity to questions like this because the questions presuppose that we know what the proper way to run the world is.” Your response presupposes God exists and is a common cop-out right next to “God works in mysterious ways.” We certainly do know that genocide, slavery, human sacrifice, and rape are all bad ways to run the world yet the Torah consistently advocates it. My point in showing the following examples is to show that the Torah itself is unreliable, not only in regards to miracles but in moral instruction as well. It is unlikely any omniscient and omnibenevolent God would ever create or inspire such an atrocious book and it is up to Con to show otherwise. Here are a few examples which substantiate my claims and show I’m not just blowing smoke: 1) “And the Lord, your God, will deliver them to you, and you shall smite them. You shall utterly destroy them; neither shall you make a covenant with them, nor be gracious to them (Deuteronomy 7). This is God’s instruction for the Israelites to commit genocide on Hittites, the Girgashites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Perizzites, the Hivvites, and the Jebusites. It advocates killing of strangers who worship a different God, killing of all the inhabitants including women and children of the land that they conquer, and intolerance as well (they cannot intermarry; they must destroy all their relics). If Con wishes to continue to purport that we do not know this is the wrong way to run the world then she can do so. However, admitting this would only subject her to showing how perverted her sense of morality has become. 2) “However, you may purchase male or female slaves from among the foreigners who live among you. You may also purchase the children of such resident foreigners, including those who have been born in your land. You may treat them as your property, passing them on to your children as a permanent inheritance. You may treat your slaves like this, but the people of Israel, your relatives, must never be treated this way” (Leviticus 25:44-46 NLT). The Torah clearly approves of slavery in many passages it states how to obtain slaves, how hard you can beat them, and when you can have sex with the female slaves. While many apologists will try to soften these passages by saying that slaves were actually indentured servants, we must not take their word for it. We must read these passages ourselves and be honest that they clearly state that slaves are property, and that many Americans in the South (before the Civil War) used the Bible as their ultimate justification for slavery. As Steven Weinberg puts it, “Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.” 3) "Take your son, your only son – yes, Isaac, whom you love so much – and go to the land of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains, which I will point out to you" (Genesis 22:1-18). This passage explains how Abraham takes his own son, Isaac, up on a mountain, and builds an altar to burn him. He also lies to his son and has him help build the altar. Abraham then ties his son to the altar and puts a knife to his throat. He then hears God tell him this was just a test of his faith. I can only hope that Con does not see this story as admirable because frankly it is disgusting and should be reason alone to never want to worship such a God regardless of whether he exists or not. 4) "If a man happens to meet a virgin who is not pledged to be married and rapes her and they are discovered, he shall pay the girl's father fifty shekels of silver. He must marry the girl, for he has violated her. He can never divorce her as long as he lives" (Deuteronomy 22:28-29 NIV). Imagine if the Torah was ever taken seriously and was implemented as the law of land. If Con was a virgin and then was raped, she would be forced to marry her rapist without ever being able to divorce. But that is all quite alright because in exchange Con’s father would receive fifty shekels of silver. If anything Con should be glad that nobody takes the Torah’s laws seriously and that people like me often criticize and ridicule it. If it ever got to the point where people made it the supreme law, the world would be a much worse place. Con’s rights as a woman would also be thrown out the window (can provide many more examples if you wish to challenge me on this). Con: “This means that we must believe Paul hasn't just made this up in order to place any credibility in the story. I challenge Pro to come up with another religion containing a tradition of mass revelation that was not dependent on the word of one person for transmission.” All of a sudden Con becomes a skeptic in regards to mass revelation of another religion. Con refuses to apply the same amount of skepticism to her own claims. How can we know that 2.5 million people were all at Mount Sinai? How do we know that whoever has written this did not just make this up to place credibility in the story of Mount Sinai? The belief in the resurrection of Jesus does not depend on the transmission of one person, because 500 people were supposedly present and there is now an estimated 2.18 billion Christians in the world today. It is easy to see that Con is engaging in special pleading and refused to answer my challenge from Round 2 which states she must name at least 100 individuals of the 2.5 million she claims was present. I do not need to name any of the 500 individuals that Paul proclaims because I think both Sinai and the resurrection never happened. The only thing this aims to show is that Con will refuse to accept the Resurrection miracle without any names but will easily accept the Sinai miracle under the same circumstances. Both are substantiated by anecdotal evidence alone but Con refuses to scrutinize her beliefs under the same standards of evidence. Con also continues to pose (with an inadequate analogy) that the Mount Sinai event is verifiable when I have already shown how and why it is not. Many stories begin as myths, and over time it becomes impossible to verify them as ancestors who lived in that time frame have died off. The myth then becomes a story which is told to children as truth. We must always remember that many stories come into fruition this way and that in ancient times people were much more gullible as skepticism was not the norm and science was nonexistent. Another important point to note is that the Torah was written a long time after these supposed revelations. As for the Chariot wheels claimed to be found on the Red Sea, I need more time to research this claim but for now I can only reference one source which counters it (http://www.truthorfiction.com...). I will try to expand on these findings later, what I ask from Con is that she shows any miracle that has a firm scientific consensus. It does not matter which religion’s miracle I just want one. I also thank Con for her intellectual honesty in understanding the circular reasoning confusion. It seems I have shown thus far why Con has not fulfilled her burden of proof, so I await Con’s final rebuttals with a skeptical anticipation.