God's Not Dead

Ill try to work in order from the top down on your points, keep in mind this is my first debate so I may get a bit confused to how the whole thing works. However you have asked so many questions and put forth so many arguments that i'll have to skip some along the way in my opening arguments maybe ill come back to them. Ill try to address the ones that I feel are most notable. - We are not working against god (because he does not exist) we are working against the idea of god, and ideas people have about the reality of the universe - like Sam Harris I try not to call myself or use the word atheist rather non-believer. Why? because there shouldn't be a word for not believing in fairy tales, is there a word for not believing in astrology or santa claus? No. I am 99.99999999%and so on sure that god does not exist (ill get back to why that number is not 100%) - My philosophy draws on aspects of existential nihilism -'is atheism a worldview'? The definition of worldview is "A collection of beliefs about life and the universe held by an individual or a group" so yes - I used to be a fundamentalist Christian, lost faith after reading the bible, and the world would be absolutely better off without religion especially the three main monotheistic religions - Faith by definition is the belief in something without proof, and the teaching that faith is a virtue is a ignorant teaching that can only breed stupidity -(skip) - as an existential nihilist I believe no, however one can make one's own life meaningful in a subjective manner -morality is a extremely complicated (and perhaps an entirely different debate to be had) and would take pages and pages to discuss where it came form, in Richard Dawkins 'The God Delusion' he dedicates an entire chapter to this issue however in short my argument would be that it is a type of byproduct of evolutionary mems (not a misspelling I mean mems). Yes genocide is objectively wrong (somthing Moses and religious types obviously dont agree on in relation to the amalekites) - Yes evil exists and the Abrahamic god is evil. By the standards of common sense drawn from our morals, anyone who authorises genocide is an evil coward - Something like the return of Jesus (as a former preacher of the rapture) which will never happen - it depends on the level of the belief in god and the type of person, certainly not a fundamentalist christian or anyone who claims to draw their morality from scripture. But if the only difference was belive than the non-believer. The new moral ideas of women's rights and animal rights are definitely a step forward in relation to your question, along with the abolition of slavery (again something if people get their morals from god is perfectly ok) -the issue of free will is an entirely different topic of debate (I recommend reading 'Free Will' by Sam Harris which has some interesting arguments against free will) I however an 'agnostic' on the issue of free will -many scientist do believe we will eventually be able to upload our consciousness to a 'computer' but an immortal consciousness is in no way a step towards being a theistic god (maybe a deistic god in relation to the creation of your own immortality) - of course he was morally wrong I have already shown my views on genocide and beings that authorise them, yes he was an atheist but did not kill for aesthetic reasons rather his own political ideology and aspirations -(skip) -obviously, because it harms a fellow human being and suffering is always bad (another issue religious people disagree on) Now to the argument Yes it's true you cannot disprove (ATM) the existence of god (this is why i'm 99.9% sure), to use Richard Dawkins argument the same way one cannot disprove the existence of the 'invisible flying spaghetti monster' or your ice cream factory on Jupiter but this in no way adds any credibility to the argument that he is real. So to turn you own Ice cream factory argument around on you no atheist would ever defend that position because atheists only believe things based on evidence (thus why the disbelief in god), the only people who would believe if there was one on jupiter would be people who if they found that it said so in some 'holy book' even despite observations of the plant. A claim based on faith rather than evidence. This "proof that's undiscovered" argument that you forwarded is the weakest argument I've ever heard of. By that logic every single fact ever could always have "proof that's undiscovered" which is a completely irrational way of thinking. I do believe that there was a fellow named jesus 2000 years ago who had a following, but he was certainly not the son of god or performed miracles and there is absolutely no evidence for this to be true. The only evidence you can claim is gospel writings which Ill now address. All biblical historians christian and others of different worldviews all cite that the first gospel (Mark) was started not when Jesus was alive or even directly after his death, but at earliest 40 years after his crucifixion and up to 150, so everything we know about the life of Jesus is based on hearsay evidence which in my country Australia does not hold up in a court of law so why do we think it hold up in a debate. now for my first argument Let's say that the consensus is that our species, being the higher primates, Homo Sapiens, has been on the planet for at least 100,000 years, maybe more. Francis Collins (a devout christian) says maybe 100,000. Richard Dawkins thinks maybe a quarter-of-a-million. I'll take 100,000. This is what you have to believe In order to be a Christian, for 98,000 years, our species suffered and died, most of its children dying in childbirth, most other people having a life expectancy of about 25 years, dying of their teeth. Famine, struggle, bitterness, war, suffering, misery, not knowing how disease spread or what earthquakes or storms were all of that for 98,000 years. Heaven watches this with complete indifference. And then 2000 years ago, thinks 'That's enough of that. It's time to intervene,' and the best way to do this would be by condemning someone to a human sacrifice somewhere in the less literate parts of the Middle East. Don't lets appeal to the Chinese, for example, where people can read and study evidence and have a civilization. Let's go to the desert and have another revelation there. This is nonsense. It can't be believed by a thinking person. On the issue of morality i'll keep it short and sweet, Name one moral action or statement performed by a believer that could not have been done by a nonbeliever, it cannot be done; however think of a evil moral action or statement that could be made by a believer that could not have been made by a nonbeliever and you can think of some straight away. You do realize when you talk about atheism that you are an atheist to? you're an atheist to allah, zeus, thor, poseidon and every other god that has ever being invented, atheists just go one further. My last point is on the evil behind religion and the totalitarian celestial dictator that is your god, this is a god who tells us what we should eat or not eat, what to do on our days of (sabbath) how to punish people and for what crimes (often calling for death for the most insignificant crimes like disrespecting your parents), tells us whom we can sleep with and in what position, can punish us just for what may occur to us in our thoughts, all this and if we don't obey we must suffer an eternity in an agonising torturous hell, this is an evil teaching and when taught to children child abuse.