Instigator / Pro
14
1485
rating
91
debates
46.15%
won
Topic
#1388

The Christian God does not exist

Status
Finished

The debate is finished. The distribution of the voting points and the winner are presented below.

Winner & statistics
Better arguments
6
3
Better sources
4
4
Better legibility
2
2
Better conduct
2
2

After 2 votes and with 3 points ahead, the winner is...

David
Parameters
Publication date
Last updated date
Type
Standard
Number of rounds
4
Time for argument
One week
Max argument characters
10,000
Voting period
Two weeks
Point system
Multiple criterions
Voting system
Open
Contender / Con
11
1632
rating
20
debates
72.5%
won
Description

Thank you, Fruit_Inspector, for accepting this debate!

Topic
The Christian God does not exist

Structure
1. Opening arguments
2. Rebuttals
3. Defense
4. Closing statements

either all of them exist or none of them exist

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@David

"We have NO evidence of Paul outside the Bible – including the Jewish Talmud"
Argument from silence is a fallacy btw.

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@Dynasty

Yes

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@David

"There is NO records of Jesus anywhere in the Talmud;"
Have you read it?

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@OoDart

Thanks for the feedback!

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@David
@Fruit_Inspector

---RFD (1 of 3)---
Interpreting the resolution:
Pretty straight forward, with definitions open to argumentation.

1. Biblical Defects
I will say right off the bat that I do not buy the conclusion to pro’s five-part logical form (unless I’m mistaken it’s also not a syllogism, as that implies just two premises and a conclusion). It follows that the bible is not evidence for God (a step or two more could connect that to the probability ... don’t get me wrong, this is well executed, it’s just not an instant victory).
Con does an ok job defending the time discrepancy, even if it feels like it’s missing a couple key details. Pro points out that the time ends up in reverse of what it would be by cons defense.
Con’s defense of the prophecies got bad, as he dropped the bible being true to use a defense that it did not mean what is written in it (a really bad example of special pleading).

2. God is Incoherent
A genuinely nice syllogism introduction followed by some detailed discussion of attributes. A highlight being the comedy of monotheism on three distinct gods. Con much later defends t his that because they are all gods, they are all God (I don’t follow this logic at all, other than to understand that he believes it strongly).
These are basically dropped by con. Denial by assertion, and throwing a link out without saying any reason something is wrong just that someone else could make a convincing argument against it, just doesn’t cut it... This isn’t to be mean, but 10,000 is a lot of space, and how you budget it is part of debating.

3. The Bible is Unique
It’s an old book with lots of authors, and there are no disharmonious pieces of the bible (unless it’s countered I’ll treat that as true, but the different books included in different bibles wholly refutes this claim). It contains prophecies... “While these characteristics do not prove the claims of the Bible, it shows the prominence of it over any other book.”
Small thing I feel the need to clarify, “...rather than dismissing it as mythology.” As a couple nuns I know would say: Of course it’s mythology, which is not in any way a dismissal of it, merely an acknowledgement of our language.
Anyway, pro swiftly lists the fallacies to refute this contention. He then showed the existence of older religious texts, which by con’s argument would mean they’re better. And of course pointing out the failed prophecies he listed pre-refuted the prophecy talk offered by con.

4. The Bible is Trustworthy
It’s a very reliable collection of documents...
Pro casts doubt on the witnesses, for not being eyewitnesses, and then one who claimed to be an eyewitness but plagiarized those non-witnesses. He goes on to suggest John did not write John, and of course implies there’s much more.

5. The Bible is Exclusively True
Everyone else is wrong was the opening takeaway from this... The rest did not get much better, talk of how wonderful and perfect theocracies are, and a couple claims against the entire audience (and himself) which I cannot in good conscience repeat.
Pro counters the morality claim by pointing out how repugnant the biblical laws are, by citing ones such as how fun it is to murder babies, plus calls to commit rape and genocide. Con tries to defend these with special pleading that it was God being wishy washy...

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Arguments:
See above review of key points. Pro showed that the bible failed too many times (con even agreed with the logic in the first contention), and no other big proof of God was offered for consideration.

Sources:
These probably should go to pro, but I’m a little too tired to add the justifications for that right now.

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@David
@Fruit_Inspector

I’ll try to get this voted on in the next couple days.

its the same animal as the jew ish g*d

do any of them?

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@David

I recommend you listen to dr james white and his explanation of textual tradition. erasamus only worked with a few greek manuscripts and translated the vulgate to some greek as well. Compared to today where we recognize over 5k greek manuscripts. alot of bibles keep interpolitions because of "tradition" or "familarity" and obviously want their books sold and not exposed for perserving textual variants. many people read kjv and there are Kjv Onlyist movements that say it is the best translation of recieved text. Notice i said "recieved text" not majority or critical text. Textus receptus is also a "recieved text" most of which is based off of erasamus and his limited manuscript supply and besa who i believe comments on his works and adds to it, not knowing that one of the greek manuscripts wasn't an orginal, but i could be wrong about besa.

How do you explain the utter perfectness of how our organs and body parts are arranged if not for an intelligent designer? Or the immense beauty that surrounds us every day, and the way nature works perfectly with one another?

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@Fruit_Inspector

Thank you.

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@David

I realized I made a mistake on one of my links for sources in Section B of my response:

"The best guess we have on when the prophecy was fulfilled is King Nebuchadnezzar’s attack on Egypt in 568 BC (https://www.jstor.org/stable/27927044?read-now=1&seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents, see page 187-188, view with free account)"

This is the correct link to the article I meant to cite. My apologies.

oooh this gonna be good