A Perfect Being Can Exist

1. Knowledge of God "The honorer, the dishonorer", "The life-giver, the life-taker", "The avenger, the pardoner", "The forgiver, the subduer", "The originator, the everlasting", The first, the last". These are all examples of contradictions within my opponent"s long, unnecessary list of secondary attributes, and there are more. These contradictions imply that God doesn"t exist (see my first argument on this subject). If you look at my opponent"s definition for primary attributes, you would see that this confirmed one part of my argument: "The term God lacks a positively defined A [primary attributes]", and my opponent confirms this. I later showed that this definition of God made that concept invalid, and therefore he does not exist. If God has free-will, as some Christians believe that he does, then how can he know everything? These are some of the attributes of God that are logically incompatible; thus making the Theist God impossible. So, "Thus the characteristics of God as supplied by Christian theologians (and other theologians) are nothing more than meaningless and contradictory concepts wrapped in theological garb."5 I conclude with this argument: God is often described as omnipotent and omniscient. But this problem arises: 1. God is all powerful. A. Therefore, he can change the future. 2. God is all knowing. A. Therefore, he knows the future. 3. A being who knows the future is powerless to change it. 4. Hence, an all-knowing, all-powerful, and freewilled God is impossible. 2. Demographics My opponent"s argument here relies on the idea that a significant proportion of the world believes in a "higher power". However, not only is this an Ad Populum fallacy, it is also irrelevant. If 4 billion people decided to drink poison, should you do it? My opponent fails to respond to my argument as to why different beliefs are so widespread, and why most are concentrated in one general area and culture. Atheism permeates the world, while theism is subject to cultural background. Therefore, atheism is more probable than theism. 3. The Problem of Evil But how does giving man free-will relate to physical evils such as earthquakes, famines, plagues and floods? Thus, the free-will explanation cannot explain the existence of natural calamities that befall man. But the free will explanation cannot even satisfactorily explain moral evil. If God is all powerful, he could have created all man with free will and with a predisposition towards doing good. But according to the same theologians, man is sinful by nature, with a predisposition for doing bad. God's action in giving man free-will and at the same time giving him a predisposition towards doing bad is no different morally from a man who drinks, on purpose, in front of a recently reformed alcoholic! If we describe such a man as irresponsible and immoral, why do we persist in calling such a God good? The abstraction "man" used above is also misleading. All of mankind have free-will; some, a small minority, some men-and women-, chose evil and rob, kill, cheat and maim. Are the more numerous victims to be consoled by saying that this is a consequence of their (the victims) having free will? In other words, are the innocent victims somehow responsible for the crimes on themselves because they have free will? The right to be protected from crimes is basic for all citizens in the world; any government that fails to deliver a reasonable amount of protection from these would be condemned and duly removed from power. Yet somehow it is okay for the all powerful God to give men free will and allow them to suffer the consequences from the minority who misuse it. To say that all will be rectified in the afterlife where the good will be rewarded in heaven and the bad will be punished in hell does not resolve the issue. As George H. Smith observes: [N]o appeal to an afterlife can actually eradicate the problem of evil. An injustice always remains an injustice, regardless of any subsequent effort to comfort the victim. If a father, after beating his child unmercifully, later gives him a lollipop as compensation, this does not eradicate the original act or its evil nature. Nor would we praise the father as just and loving. Yet, this is exactly what the Christians claim their God to do. He allows the faithful to suffer (remember Job!) and later rewards them. This God cannot, by any moral yardstick, be called good.1, 2, 3 4. The Clich" There is no difference between believing in the tooth fairy and believing in God. In the end, every religion is just a collection of fairy tales revolving around one, or a group of unseen, out-of-this-world gods who seek the betterment (or sometime detriment) of mankind in an attempt to explain natural phenomena and evil. The tooth fairy and God are unseen, unheard, and not even sensed. If you don"t believe in the tooth fairy, you shouldn"t believe in a God. 5. The Earth"s Imperfections An elliptical orbit is not perfect. A circular orbit is. In fact, like I mentioned in the last round, the Catholic Church had a big fuss about it because they claimed that an elliptical orbit of the planets made God"s creation imperfect. Perfection is defined as "An unsurpassable degree of accuracy or excellence [i.e. symmetry]." An elliptical orbit is not symmetrical, therefore it is not perfect, and therefore God"s creation is imperfect. As for the shape of the Earth, the Earth is not so elongated as to call it an egg. The Earth is not an ellipsoid. In fact, when have you ever seen an egg with a bulging center and flat tops? Also, the same principle of asymmetry, imperfection, unomnipotent creation applies here as well. On evolution itself, my opponent obviously did not read my argument. Evolution is also imperfect. I will requote some of my argument: "Why did God design the eye so poorly that it has had to undergo over forty macro redesigns since its first configuration? Why did God combine the breathing passage with the eating and drinking passage? This necessitated the introduction of an epiglottis to prevent choking (1,000s choke to death every day worldwide). Other mammals do not have this dangerous arrangement." That is an imperfection in evolution, and there are many more if you reread my round 2 argument about this. Evolution is by no means perfect whatsoever.4 If God truly was/is all knowing and all powerful and knew that It could not create a perfect universe then it would firstly not even attempt creating a universe and secondly would destroy an imperfect universe. The fact that we currently exist in an imperfect state implies that God is not all knowing and not all powerful and does not exist. Works Cited: 1 http://www.rejectionofpascalswager.net... 2 Stein, The Encyclopedia of Unbelief: p191 3 Smith, Atheism: p84 4 http://www.god-does-not-exist.org... 5 Tobin, P. The Rejection of Pascal"s Wager