Debate: Does Goes Exist?

[FunkyMonkey]

I will be arguing for the existence of God, and am looking for someone to argue against the existence of God.

Definition of God: God is essentially comprehensible , but we can use descriptions such as these to get an apprehension. God is The Maximally Perfect Being. All-powerful, all-good, all-present, necessarily existent, non-material, eternal, non-spacial. Furthermore, theology will be that of Orthodox Christianity (the original form of Christianity).

This debate will be one on one, with a format that looks like this:

First post: acceptance
Second post: opening arguments
Third post: rebuttals
Forth post: second rebuttals
Fifth post: conclusions

Each post will be a maximum of three thousand words. Finally, each debater will have up to four days to post. I'm not looking for judges, just want to engage in a friendly debate!

[FunkyMonkey]

Essentially *Incomprehensible

[Mr. Hyde]

So, if I understand it correctly, the format is this:

1: Someone accepting to debate the issue.
2: Each individual's opening arguments would be their first posts AFTER agreeing to debate the issue.
3: Each individual rebuts the opening arguments of the other.
4. They counter each other's counter.
5.Closing statements.

Correct? I'm a bit rusty, but if you'll accept, I'll tackle the subject with you and argue against God's existence.

[FunkyMonkey]

So, if I understand it correctly, the format is this:

1: Someone accepting to debate the issue.
2: Each individual's opening arguments would be their first posts AFTER agreeing to debate the issue.
3: Each individual rebuts the opening arguments of the other.
4. They counter each other's counter.
5.Closing statements.

Correct? I'm a bit rusty, but if you'll accept, I'll tackle the subject with you and argue against God's existence.

That's it! I hope this will be a fun debate!

---------- Post added at 09:14 PM ---------- Previous post was at 08:18 PM ----------

The question of God's existence has been one of the biggest questions that could be asked. The answer to this question will change one's views on morality, existence, the search for happiness and the search for meaning. There are two general ways one comes to the conclusion that God exists: through personal experience of God and/or through evidence. In this debate I will take the second path. I will argue for God's existence based of the existence of the universe that surrounds us and the existence of the moral law within us.

The Cosmological Argument

Premise one: Anything that exists has an explanation of its existence (either in the necessity of its own nature or in an external cause).
Premise two: If the universe has an explanation of its existence, that explanation is God.
Premise three: The universe exists.
Conclusion one: Therefore, the universe has an explanation of its existence. (from one, three)
Conclusion two: Therefore, the explanation of the existence of the universe is God. (from two, conclusion one)

Let me explain each premise.

Premise one:

Take me for example. The explanation for my existence either is that I exist necessarily (I have to exist and could logically could not be non-existent) or there is some external cause of my existence. I don't exist necessarily because I began to exist, I was born and thus have an external cause for my being.

Premise two:

Firstly, we know that the universe does not exist necessarily because modern cosmology tell us that it began to exist. Therefore the universe has an external explanation of its existence. The universe is by definition, all matter, energy, time and space so that which is outside of the universe would be non-material, not bound by energy (omnipotent), timeless and non-spacial (omnipresent). Furthermore, this explanation would have to be personal in order to bring the universe into existence. In total we have a non-material, omnipotent, timeless, omnipresent Person: God.

Premise three:

Not much to be said here.

Conclusions one and two

If the three premises are true, then both conclusions follow. You might wonder what the explanation is for God, and that is He exists necessarily. This is because there is no external cause for God because He didn't begin to exist.

The Moral Argument

Premise one: If God did not exist, objective morality would not exist
Premise two: Objective morality does exist
Conclusion: Therefore, God exists

Premise one:

If God does exist, there is an ultimate source of morality above us. If God does not exist, we are the "top of the ladder" and we would be the ultimate source of morality. This, however, would make morality person relative and subjective. For me, stealing might be good but for you stealing is evil. We would both be right because we are on the "same level". Keep in mind that I am not saying atheists cannot be moral, I am only saying that on atheism there is no grounding for objective values and duties.

Premise two:

If morality was person relative and subjective, we would expect societies over the ages to have very different systems of morality. But, we see the opposite. We see that certain things such as love is seen as truly good and that torturing babies for the fun of it is truly evil. Experience shows that morality is objective and that there is a moral law within us.


Conclusion

I gave two arguments for the existence of God. There are many, many others but I will stick with these for now. What my opponent would have to show is that both my arguments are false and provide strong arguments against the existence of God. I will turn it over to you now, Mr. Hyde.

[mican333]

I know this is suppose to be a one-on-one debate but there hasn't been a response for a while so I'm going to step in. If you feel this is inappropriate, feel free to not reply.

Also, I do not argue from the atheist perspective but the agnostic perspective - as in neither theist or atheist can really support their position. That's not to say that either side is incorrect - just that they cannot provide the kind of external evidence or logic it would take to make their case in an online debate forum.

So my rebuttals to your position are:

The Cosmological Argument

Premise one: Anything that exists has an explanation of its existence (either in the necessity of its own nature or in an external cause).
Premise two: If the universe has an explanation of its existence, that explanation is God.
Premise three: The universe exists.
Conclusion one: Therefore, the universe has an explanation of its existence. (from one, three)
Conclusion two: Therefore, the explanation of the existence of the universe is God. (from two, conclusion one)

Premise two is not an accepted premise. I do not see why one should agree that if the universe has an explanation, it must be God.

The Moral Argument

Premise one: If God did not exist, objective morality would not exist
Premise two: Objective morality does exist
Conclusion: Therefore, God exists

Premise two:

If morality was person relative and subjective, we would expect societies over the ages to have very different systems of morality. But, we see the opposite. We see that certain things such as love is seen as truly good and that torturing babies for the fun of it is truly evil. Experience shows that morality is objective and that there is a moral law within us.

I don't think there's a moral consensus on any issue. At least some of the Nazis thought that it was a good thing to kill whole groups of certain people, babies included.

And even accepting that there is are moral positions that everyone holds, it can be argued that they are just products of natural selection. Humans are more likely to survive if they cooperate so those who are cooperative, be it through accepting societal morality or being naturally inclined to be cooperative, are more likely to survive and pass on their morals and dispositions to future generations, while truly evil people are more likely to be excluded from the society or killed and also more likely to be seen as an undesirable mate and therefore not pass on their morals/genes.

[Mr. Hyde]

First, let me say that I'm sorry about the absenteeism. I'm in the process of packing up my family and moving to another state, so my schedule has been hectic and is looking to continue that way for some time. Once everything settles I should be able to be more punctual. Having said that, I'll present my opening arguments, arguing from the position of a strong atheist.

The search for what lies beyond ourselves is, at its core, a central driving force for man's rise to prominence on earth and his continued dominance of his environment. The quest for more gave us everything from fire to the ability to stare back at the planet that birthed us in awe. But in that quest we have seen little evidence of anything greater, and I would posit that, indeed, there is nothing greater than ourselves.

I'm not as skilled at structure, so I'll present mine differently.

While the universe most certainly does exist. And while all things extant require an explanation, it requires a significant leap of logic to assert the universe was created by a deity of some kind. It requires less of a leap, more a hop really, to assert that the universe has a beginning. The belief that the universe has a beginning comes from back in the early 1900s when several scientists noted that certain galactic bodies appeared to be moving away from us, among other things. Then,

In 1927, the Belgian Catholic priest Georges Lemaître proposed an expanding model for the universe to explain the observed redshifts of spiral nebulae, and calculated the Hubble law. He based his theory on the work of Einstein and De Sitter, and independently derived Friedmann's equations for an expanding universe. Also, the red shifts themselves were not constant, but varied in such manner as to lead to the conclusion that there was a definite relationship between amount of red-shift of nebulae, and their distance from observers
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Histor...ig_Bang_theory

So the original explanatory power of the BBG was that if the universe is constantly expanding NOW, then every day prior to now is must have been measurably smaller until we trace it back to a point at which it came into being (not an actual "BANG" which is kind of a let down). Now, this ultimately doesn't answer whether the universe actually BEGAN or just existed at an immeasurably small size. But there IS an alternative that agrees with the Big Bang Theory, does not violate the laws of thermodynamics, has a degree of evidence, and allows for a universe that is infinite in time and finite in space. I give you, Peter Lynds theory for a Finite Universe Without Beginning or End.

He opens with by touching on the second law of thermodynamics. Hot flows to cold. Now, what he argues here is that (and I'll insert my own analogous comparison) if you consider an arrow fired at a target. Imagine the arrow is cut into segments, all flying in a straight line towards a distant target. The 2nd law states that no segment in the arrow can change direction and head backwards. If it did, it'd be reversing entropy. So the arrow flies until the tip reaches the mark. But now there's a problem: Each segmented piece now is traveling from hot to hotter instead of hot to cold. So it has to change direction again (this is the increased randomness as a system breaks down). So now we see the flight of the arrow at the back leading the charge back towards the origin point (which now holds less energy than at the tip or furthest point). The rest of the segments follow suit. Cosmologically, this would be the rubberband-like Big Bang to Big Crunch where the universe expands to maximum stretchiness and begins to collapse on itself. This also means that it could never collapse into a singularity. Once it hit the critical point it would necessarily expand all over again.

This is evidenced, by observations in the cosmic microwave background:

Oxford University physicist Roger Penrose and Vahe Gurzadyan from the Yerevan Physics Institute in Armenia have found an effect in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) that allows them to "see through" the Big Bang into what came before.
....
The discovery doesn't suggest that there wasn't a Big Bang - rather, it supports the idea that there could have been many of them. The scientists explain that the CMB circles support the possibility that we live in a cyclic universe, in which the end of one “aeon” or universe triggers another Big Bang that starts another aeon, and the process repeats indefinitely. The black hole encounters that caused the circles likely occurred within the later stages of the aeon right before ours, according to the scientists.
http://phys.org/news/2010-11-scienti...verse-big.html

So we have two general points that favor the non-existence of God as a creator figure for our universe. The first is a model of a cyclical universe that is finite in space and infinite in time. And the second is observational evidence that such a model may actually be the most accurate. In light of such information, there we are left with little reason to see in the story of our universe the hand of a divine author, and more reason to see that we may be, unfortunately, just the eternal collision of atoms in space. Like gears turning in an automated machine.

[Fluffypancakes]

Just my humble opinion, and not to be misconstrued with not wanting to debate, but I think the entire debate of creationism is rather useless. You can neither prove, nor disprove the existence of an entity such as God.

[futureboy]

Arguments could be presented for why some proposed deities cannot exist, but I have to agree - the actual existence of any deity can't be proved not disproved.

However, as soon as one recognizes this limitation, they must - to maintain intellectual honesty - revert to the null hypothesis and withhold belief.

[Belthazor]

Just my humble opinion, and not to be misconstrued with not wanting to debate, but I think the entire debate of creationism is rather useless. You can neither prove, nor disprove the existence of an entity such as God.

Obviously, it is quite difficult to prove something does not exist, however, it seems to me, all you need to prove a deity exists, is for said deity to be willing. A God that is Omni-everything could certainly have given us the bible (just a for instance, there is very little to limit the ways a Omni-deity could prove it exists) in a way that would leave no question as to it's author and it's truth. And sure, what "proves" something to me, might be different than another person, but this should present NO problem for Omni Deity to overcome. Indeed, if God is the source of objective truth and Omni-everything, it should be quite simple.

Now, if the question is, "can any given human prove a deity exists", that is a bit harder. To expand on that thought, if God created our current universe in all it's vastness, and heaven, hell etc., just for human's, why would God make it impossible to know/prove that was true?
I have heard it argued that would violate human freewill, but have seen that argument soundly defeated here on ODN. So why else would God create all these things for man, but leave him basically in the dark about the truth of it and unable to ever know for sure? You could argue "faith", but that seems a weak point given the importance of the question. After all, your "eternal" life depends on the answer (of God's existence).

I see absolutely no evidence of "objective morality" in human's

On a related note, how can anything "non-material" and "non-spacial" even be said to "exist"?

[mican333]

Obviously, it is quite difficult to prove something does not exist, however, it seems to me, all you need to prove a deity exists, is for said deity to be willing. A God that is Omni-everything could certainly have given us the bible (just a for instance, there is very little to limit the ways a Omni-deity could prove it exists) in a way that would leave no question as to it's author and it's truth. And sure, what "proves" something to me, might be different than another person, but this should present NO problem for Omni Deity to overcome. Indeed, if God is the source of objective truth and Omni-everything, it should be quite simple.

Now, if the question is, "can any given human prove a deity exists", that is a bit harder. To expand on that thought, if God created our current universe in all it's vastness, and heaven, hell etc., just for human's, why would God make it impossible to know/prove that was true?
I have heard it argued that would violate human freewill, but have seen that argument soundly defeated here on ODN.

I haven't seen it defeated here so I don't accept that it has been. And even if it were defeated, there are many other motivations for keeping certain knowledge from human beings. It is beyond question that giving humans any incredibly significant knowledge alters the course of human civilization (as evidenced by the changes in out civilization by what we've learned and discovered on our own) so undoubtedly God would drastically "change the equation" for humans. There are an endless number of reasons why God might not want to do that and the free will issue is only one of them.

So why else would God create all these things for man, but leave him basically in the dark about the truth of it and unable to ever know for sure? You could argue "faith", but that seems a weak point given the importance of the question. After all, your "eternal" life depends on the answer (of God's existence).

Assuming God does punish those who lack a certain belief after they die but that is not necessarily true even if God does exist so this issue doesn't really matter.

I see absolutely no evidence of "objective morality" in human's

Which doesn't mean that it doesn't exist.

[Belthazor]

I haven't seen it defeated here so I don't accept that it has been. And even if it were defeated, there are many other motivations for keeping certain knowledge from human beings. It is beyond question that giving humans any incredibly significant knowledge alters the course of human civilization (as evidenced by the changes in out civilization by what we've learned and discovered on our own) so undoubtedly God would drastically "change the equation" for humans. There are an endless number of reasons why God might not want to do that and the free will issue is only one of them.


The Bible clearly states that God has interacted directly with large numbers of humans on numerous occasions.
"significant knowledge" does not equate to knowing our "creator" exists.
The Bible says watch out for false gods, but if you can't prove the real God, the Devil could have written the Bible and how would we be able to know?!?!?


Assuming God does punish those who lack a certain belief after they die but that is not necessarily true even if God does exist so this issue doesn't really matter.


You misunderstand, I was talking about attaining eternal life, not some sort of punishment.


Which doesn't mean that it doesn't exist.

I realize you are not the Op, but in post #4, Op made it sound like it would be clearly obvious that to anyone that "objective morality" exists. I was challenging that thought.