Debate: The God Debate: Does he exist?
Side: yes

You cannot have it both ways. Faith is belief not based on proof or evidence. If you have faith, then you do not have evidence and if you have evidence then you do not have faith. If you want to say that you have faith in something, that's fine but don't turn around and say you also have evidence.Right, faith is required. As I explained previously, any evidence I've come across points towards a creator and starting with that assumption the Christian God makes the most sense. If you had absolute proof you would be removing the faith aspect of it which I don't believe will ever happen.Assuming the premises are correct this argument only goes to demonstrate that things which are caused have a cause. Obviously. This is nothing more than a redundancy. You need to show that this 'cause' must be God. The Kalam argument just assumes it is.I never said the argument proved the existence of the Christian God, merely that it is a powerful argument for a creator.Is it an absolute truth that there is no absolute truths?No.You just told me there are no absolute truths. I'm merely pointing out that is a logically fallacious argument to make. I think we can then assume that there is such thing as absolute truth, yes? Besides it sounds like you would like to keep making an absolute truth claim, merely "There is no God." Or better yet, "You're wrong" which would imply that you know what is right.It is a mathematical truth, but math is an invention of man.http://science.howstuffworks.com/math4.htm I believe that issue is still up for debate. It is either an invention of man or a discovery. Philosophers are still struggling with this one, so I would kindly ask that you don't treat your above statement as an absolute truth :)True, but you can corroborate it with independent written sources, and with archaeological evidence. Even so, there is a lot of subjectivity involved.Bingo. There is a TON of externally corroborated evidence that confirms many of the historical events regarding the Bible.'m not saying Jesus (Yeshua) didn't exist, I'm saying that many of the things written about him are false or exaggerated. In particular the miracles he was said to have performed. There probably are things written about Alexander the Great which are false, but because he was never said to have performed any miracles then that isn't an issue.Ah and there-in lies a problem. You call them false or exaggerated because you don't accept them, not because of any sort of evidence.If by legendary you mean "a person whose fame or notoriety makes him a source of exaggerated or romanticized tales or exploits" I believe this would describe Jesus quite well.Same comment as above.There were, I believe they were called "Jews".There is a distinction however. These people lived alongside Jesus. You would think somewhere in there, because the writings happened so close to his death that someone would have said... "Hey, I was there and THAT didn't happen!" Now I haven't heard of anything like that before, which is my point. Theoretically any Jews that saw Jesus performing miracles would probably be Christians would they not?Precisely, and yet people still see him as a messiah. Imagine if he claimed to have supernatural powers. Imagine if he had made that claim several thousand years ago, to a group of gullible nomadic herdsmen. See where I am going with this?I see you trying to force some sort of hypothetical situation as truth. If he claimed to have supernatural powers he would have to demonstrate them. Jesus didn't say, "Oh I can perform all sorts of cool magic tricks, but you can't see!" Unlike your hypothetical situation, Jesus supposedly traveled the country doing them so there would have been opportunities to refute them had they not actually happened.That's up to you to figure out. The burden of proof rest upon you, when you say that these events happened. I think the question is "If they can't be archaeologically proven, how did you come to believe in them?"The burden of proof doesn't rest on me, it rests on you. You can see this all the time in courts of law. If a witness were to have confirmation time and time again that he was telling the truth and then told you about something crazy that happened, should you at that point immediately disregard what he says? You have to take in all the evidence as a whole, which we can both agree will not absolutely prove one way or the other, which is where the faith aspect comes into play. I have faith that there is a God and you have faith that there isn't.And what qualifies one to determine which parts are literal and which parts are metaphorical?One who studies the Bible as a profession. I would consider them an expert witness. Granted a lot of the time it is difficult to tell but that's why you have to preform your own research before you take something at face value.The absence of a universe layer of silt within the geologic column. The fact that there isn't enough water on earth.Even so, the burden of proof rests upon those who say it did happen.Could be an argument for disbelieving that a global flood happened yes. Could also mean that it wasn't a global flood and just the flood of a particular region which would have seemed like a global flood to the writer. Now granted the below article won't go as far to say that this is the event the Bible describes, it does talk of an event that might be similar:http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/phenom_apr00.html?c=y&page=2 No, this is fallacious. If no evidence is currently present, then you have no reason to assume that it will become present. It could just as easily be refuted by future evidence as supported by it. We can only make judgements based on what is currently available.What you are talking about it just wishful thinking.So I assume we can stop believing in this multi-verse non-sense then? Can we also throw out common decent and many of Darwin's theories that are still waiting to be "confirmed" by archaeology? I wish everyone engaging in scientism would make judgement based solely on the current evidence as well.