Convince me that the Christian faith is the truth

Thanks to my opponent for his argument. I ask that the voters disregard the forfeit in voting. Pro says that he disagrees with my clarification about not having to prove every aspect of Christianity, but then contradicts himself by agreeing to go with it anyways, so I'm not quite sure what to make of that... the point is that there are quite a few different interpretations of Christianity, so all I can reasonably be expected to do is affirm the core tenets which all Christians unanimously agree on. Also note that Pro does not contest my approach to affirming Christianity-- he agrees that if I can affirm the three premises which I put forth, then the rest of the standard narrative which defines Christianity is probably true as well. . == Affirming Christianity == P1) God exists Pro concedes that a creator God exists, which is good because that was easily the most challenging burden of proof to fulfill in this debate. However, he takes issue with this creator God being invested in human affairs, saying that the fine-tuning of physical constants does not directly facilitate the development of life. However, there *is* evidence of fine-tuning being involved in the development of life too; I actually wrote a whole section about it last round but had to delete it due to a lack of characters. According the famous evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould, evolution is a radically contingent process [1]. In other words, any given evolutionary path is dependent on such a large number of random events (e.g. volcanic eruptions, continental drift, ice ages, asteroids, etc), that if someone were to "replay the tape" of Earth's evolutionary history, things would likely have turned out entirely differently. This obviously also applies to early development of life on primordial Earth; one scientific paper illustrates this particularly well: "The formation of the Earth as a planet was a large stochastic process in which the rapid assembly of asteroidal-to-Mars-sized bodies was followed by a more extended period of growth through collisions of these objects, facilitated by the gravitational perturbations associated with Jupiter. The Earth's inventory of water and organic molecules may have come from diverse sources, not more than 10% roughly from comets, the rest from asteroidal precursors to chondritic bodies and possibly objects near Earth's orbit for which no representative class of meteorites exists today in laboratory collections. The final assembly of the Earth included a catastrophic impact with a Mars-sized body, ejecting mantle and crustal material to form the Moon, and also devolatilizing part of the Earth." [2] Every single one of the aforementioned events had to occur in order for Earth to be suitable for the development of life. There are no specific numbers available on the individual probabilities of these events occurring, but it is safe to say that the combined probability of all of them happening "just by chance" is incredibly small. Even if the conditions on Earth were right for life, the probability of crude cells developing from organic compounds is still incredibly small. Sir Fred Hoyle calculated that probability to be about 1 in 10^40 [3]. As the source states, there are some problems with the assumptions involved in coming up with that number, but it is nonetheless safe to say that the actual probability is still extremely small. Thus, there most likely *was* fine-tuning involved in the development of life on Earth, just as there was in the establishment of physical constants. Following the logic presented last round, we can reasonably believe that God is invested in the future of his creation because it makes no sense for him to go through the trouble of fine-tuning the universe to produce intelligent life only to just abandon it. We can also find evidence for this in the fact that billions of theists around the world and throughout history have reported having "transcendental experiences" (i.e. dirext interactions with God); the sheer number of such incidences makes it highly likely that many of them are legitimate, thus leading to the conclusion that God is personal and is involved in human affairs. P2) Original Sin Pro's response seems to completely miss the point of this argument. It doesn't really matter how we decide which actions qualify as "sins". All that matters is that it is in human nature to commit those sins on a regular basis, and thus the Christian doctrine of "original sin" is true (which is important because it's necessary for the Christian concept of Jesus dying for humanity's sins to make any sense). P3) Resurrection a. Pro requests that I provide sources outside of the Bible for the resurrection, but there really isn't any reason to; as explained last round, the four books of the Gospels are reliable historical sources which were each independently written-- they just happen to have been compiled into a single book a couple centuries later. I have provided four different sources each confirming the resurrection of Jesus, and Pro is discrediting them for no reason at all. Pro says that "word would spread like wild-fire" if a man came back from the dead-- and he's right: it did. That is why Christianity spread so incredibly fast after Jesus died-- because news of his resurrection was spreading like wild-fire. The majority of people at the time were not literate, so it shouldn't be surprising that written documentation of the event is not prevalent. Instead, let's look at the effects of the event for evidence that it occurred-- "Christianity was wide spread in the Roman Empire within 80 years of Christ's death". b. Pro has misunderstood my argument. I am not saying that all religions need miracles in order to survive; I'm saying that due to the specific context of Christianity's development, with the Messiah prophecy and all, something like the resurrection would have been necessary for anyone to continue believing that Jesus was really the Messiah. The Council of Nicea is irrelevant because, as Pro notes, it was just 300 or so people voting on the issue; what matters more is what most Christians actually thought, and they were preaching that Jesus is divine long before Nicea, as evidenced by later books in the Bible. . == Negating Evolution == I greatly appreciate that Pro is willing to discuss whether or not Christianity and evolution really contradict, rather than being a rule-stickler and forcing me to defend Creationism. However, Pro's only response to my argument is that the Bible contradicts evolution... I literally wrote three paragraphs last round on why a literal interpretation of the Bible *doesn't* necessarily govern what Christians have to believe. Pope John Paul II openly stated that the Bible can be interpreted metaphorically and that Evolution need not be denied [5]. Pro has no rational basis for believing that Christianity and Evolution are mutually exclusive. . In conclusion, the Christian faith remains affirmed. . [1] http://www.philbio.org... [2] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov... [3] http://www.coppit.org... [4] http://www.xenos.org... [5] http://www.ewtn.com...