God exists

Oftentimes these debates manifest themselves into irreconcilable differences rooted in philosophical problems that men greater than us have wrestled with for millennia. Thankfully here, we've gone the opposite direction. Much of this is now very simple. I'll address your responses to my last post to begin. I am starting to feel successful in my argumentation now watching the direction this debate has taken. On your first point regarding altruism. In your first paragraph you give three rebuttals to my assertion that altruism is better explained by biology than mysteriously by some sort of God. You essentially argue: 1. "when we respond kindly to people who treat us horribly, we often do it reluctantly, grumbling, with no accompanying feeling of joy, but something inside us tells us still to do the right thing even to those who don't like us." 2. "evolution is not a reasonable answer anyway, because survival of the fittest holds that this is a dog-eat-dog world, and when a lion eats a zebra for food, he feels no remorse" 3. " there has never been found a particular substance responsible for such emotions anyway" None of these are true and none of these provide evidence that a god exists. On point one: I stated that humans are instinctual in their altruism, and your description only proves that the instinct to do well can override a "reluctance". If the will to do good was god given, why should he care whether it were to a so-called "enemy" or not? Your second point isn't true. No serious student of biology would ever tell you that evolution is "survival of the fittest". First off, you are thinking of natural selection, which is the means by which most scientists attribute evolution. And even so, natural selection is more like "survival of the most reproductively able"- that is, the ability to reproduce continues a specie's genes, not it's fitness. Therefore, a healthy population of altruistic animals WOULD increase odds of reproduction. And lastly, again, this is factually incorrect. Serotonin and Domamine provide these biological "rewards" and this is well known. "There is no good reason in an evolution worldview to presuppose that altruism would exist among any particular species. It doesn't exist now among animals..." Again, two factual inaccuracies. First, I have already showed why altruism would be beneficial in a social society: the individuals' livelihood is directly affected by the group's. And your second point, altruism does exist among animals and this is basically a consensus in the study of biology. Here are some examples: in dolphins: http://www.bio.davidson.edu... in Chimps: http://www.sciencedaily.com... in Birds: http://findarticles.com... In the second part of your argument, you asserted that the "programming" and "symmetry" and "complexity" proves that it must have been designed. But again, I am telling you: you cannot view the universe outside the very narrow and limited prism of the human mind. If your 2nd grade teacher never told you what symmetry was, a symmetrical figure would bear no more "intelligence" to you than an asymmetrical figure. Again, we can unfortunately only understand the world through our own biases and subjectivity and language. If I drew 6 cards labeled 1,3,4,2,6,5 out of a hand at random, and arrived at 1,2,3,4,5,6 you would assert some sort of intelligence, but in reality, this is a mere pattern that your mind has constructed. A so-called intelligent sequence is only given significance through our own subjective processing, or as you say, "god". As for the origins of our universe, we have one thing in common: WE BOTH DON'T KNOW. We can't; there is just no way to know. So you attribute what you don't understand to god, but what an absurdity this really is. Your argument for intelligence through pattern which you made again I have already dismissed. It hasn't held up. "Con, please tell me, if all mankind ageed that the holocaust was not evil, but was good, would that make it truely good, or would mankind simply be wrong? If you agree that manking would be wrong, then there is a higher law outside out opinions, but from where? I'll finish this reply in the next round." The answer is simple, man's "opinion" on whether the Holocaust was evil or not does not matter. The Holocaust wasn't evil or good, it just was. IT JUST WAS. Was what? It existed. It is a historical fact. Some call it good, most call it bad. To me it is evil, but just because I firmly believe this doesn't mean it was evil beyond human experience. We humans assign morality, not a god. May I ask you, please stop responding to the debates further in each round? It is disrupting the flow of the debate. You chose the 8,000 character format, and thus should abide by it. If you cannot refute my entire argument in the allotted space, start to summarize. But we cannot have a fruitful debate addressing points from two rounds ago. Cheers