Convert me

The question of what happened exists and very much makes sense. We know that whatever existed before the Universe was stable. Then, what happened for something like that to suddenly explode and form a new World/Universe? I admit that there are people who don't agree on everything. However, the majority of Muslims didn't care about that cartoon incident. In eastern Europe (I'm forgetting exactly which country it was) only an extremist group of Islamic "freedom fighters" protested. The majority of the Islamic world didn't really care. In America, it was a group of zionist Jews, yes Jews, who gave the Muslims a bad reputation. Therefore, whilst there are always small minorities that disagree, the majority of humans do agree on most matters. That's why the UN works. It's why the EU works. The materialist position can account for lust, not love. Love would include affection, not just regard, as my opponent stated. For there to be affection, there must also be a non-physical property involved, something non-materialistic. Morality is rooted in our thinking (our minds), which takes place in our brain, yes. Thinking occurs seperately from the physical world. I could imagine I was talking with God whilst in the physical world I was eating a cereal bowl and watching TV. As I said, the two worlds do sometimes influence each other, but the mental and physical world can exist independently. They might depend one on the other; without the physical world there is no mental world, and without the mental world one cannot be "intelligent" (by this I mean the definition of intelligence: the capability to learn) which in turn means that progress is impossible. Objective morality does exist. The majority of people pursue happiness, and nobody thinks this is wrong/evil. They might feel that the methods the person uses to achieve happiness are wrong/evil, but not the final motive itself. Our ambitions and dreams can be defined as a pursuit of greater happiness. Consider this; an animal wouldn't have jumped either. Animals do have superior intellect to plants, but inferior to humans. Therefore, following this logic, they shouldn't be able to go that far in their reasoning process. However, they do. Why so? We can explain the existence of sociopaths quite easily; the spirit tells us what is right and what is wrong, and this influences the thinking process that makes us do something. However, in sociopaths, the mind corrupts this spirit, and makes it say what it wants to say. It is no longer the spirit talking, it is the mind. Anybody can tell it, but not a sociopath. They are looking for the spirit, for their sense of morality, to say exactly that. And it does. They don't care whether it was or wasn't the mind. This explains guilt. The spirit tells us that what we did was wrong, and therefore we seek to own up to it as a way of reducing the sense of wrong. Contradicting senses of morality also exist because, like I said, it is the mind that eventually carries out the action, the spirit merely suggests. Let's look at abortion. The spirit tells us that murdering another baby is wrong. It also tells us that a woman should have the right to choose what it wants. It tells us that the baby is free of sin. It also tells us that it might suffer if it is born. And so on. The mind might value some things more than others. This leads to the contradicting senses of morality my opponent states. My opponent states that thoughts are just processes of the mind. I pose the question: what process accounts for thinking? And indeed this statement would mean that the mental world is a sub-world of the physical world, which we know it isn't. It is a whole seperate World, as is discussed by some branches of philosophy and, more importantly, psychology. My response to my opponent's dopamine theory; on Christmas, millions of people around the World come together and give each other presents, be they Christian or not. They do it out of joy and goodwill. I doubt any of them think that the gifts helped the economy. Therefore, those actions did not, in fact, benefit society, but they still produced joy. My point was that God has been established as a fact over thousands of years. Therefore, we would need a lot of evidence to deter people from God. As for the resurrection, here is a debate I recommend my opponent and the audience read: . http://www.debate.org... those who can't be bothered, I shall summarise it here. The resurrection of Jesus Christ is historically probable due to the amount of evidence and sources that state so, the number of witnesses and events (Paul and James becoming Christians, for example, the Apostles seeing Jesus), and the lack of alternatives. By the rules of historiograph; a position is demonstrated, when the reasons for accepting it significantly outweigh the reasons for not accepting it. .. A finding of historicity is essentially a default position, meaning that we have no other reasonable way to account for the presence of a story in the text. Karma depends on the person's feelings as well. The prophet Muhammad also brought extreme good to the World. He preached one of the most tolerant religions of the World. He liberated millions of oppressed people. He brought smiles and hope on the faces of millions. The majority of people he conquered were oppressed people that lived better under his rule than they did before. Child marriages weren't seen as a criminal offense back at the time. In fact, the bride's parents encouraged it. Therefore, his good deeds far outweighed his bad deeds. Just bringing God's word to the people was a huge good deed. Therefore, this generated more good Karma than bad. I thank my opponent for a great debate and wish him luck. May the best man win! SOURCES: All mentioned previously and; . http://en.wikipedia.org...(Ayn_Rand)