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

To believe the totality of a religious dogma is in no way equivalent to having trust that a bridge won't collapse upon crossing it. The later is trust based on evidence, the former is not.I would disagree. My faith in Christianity and Jesus is based on a foundation of evidence that I have found to be credible. A lot of that evidence is more scientific than ever. Any argument for the existence of God which includes the phrase "...then that cause is God" in the premise, is an invalid argument.The argument goes like this:1.) Whatever begins to exist, has a cause of its existence (i.e. something has caused it to start existing).2.) The universe began to exist. i.e., the temporal regress of events is finite.3.) Therefore, the universe has a cause.It does not say the Christian God is that cause. If you take the argument to be true then a timeless, spaceless, immaterial, personal being with the unimaginable power and knowledge created the universe.There is no such thing as 'Absolute truth' and even if there was humans would not be capable of grasping it. However I will say that science historically has been the most reliable source of truth. Revealed Religion on the other hand has been the most reliable source of false promises and exaggerated claims.Well that's self-defeating isn't it? Is it an absolute truth that there is no absolute truths? 2 + 2 = 4. I would think you would agree that is an absolute truth? Science is not the only way to truth, after all you can't empirically prove a historical event for that would require being able to repeat the experiment or to otherwise witness the event for oneself.Are we to believe the son of God is not capable of writing? Many of the details of Jesus' life were not written until 60 or 70 years later.I don't really think this is relevant. Should we not believe that Alexander the Great existed because he was not writing journals about each event that happened? The emperor of Ethiopia Haile Selassie I, was and still is believed to be the messiah by Rastafarians WHILE HE WAS STILL ALIVE, even after he explicitly told them that he wasn't.Kind of a misleading example. What biblical historians mean by legendary is that the documents were written so closely to the actual events that it is highly unlikely that the activities associated with Jesus are of a legendary quality because there would have been people who were still alive that could have disputed them. This emperor of Ethiopia never claimed or demonstrated any sort of super natural ability and thus is not a valid counter example.Do any of these verified events include rising from the dead, walking on water, turning water into wine, talking bushes, angels, or stopping the sun in the sky?How would one archaeologically prove this happened? All of the historically confirmed events are only confirmed because they found ancient cities and tablets talking about the same people the Bible describes. Could you please provide me concrete evidence that Socrates actually existed and actually said the things attributed to him? Depending on how literally or metaphorically you take the Bible, I would argue that no Global flood ever occurred.You can't take the Bible as ALL one or the other. Some parts are literal and some parts are metaphorical. You can argue that no flood occurred, but do you have proof that it didn't? Remember, "There is no evidence of that" is not a refutation of what the Bible says. One could fall back on the, "Well I'll just wait until archaeology proves it to be true at a later date" just like you heard from Darwin in regards to common ancestry.