Instigator / Pro
0
1500
rating
25
debates
42.0%
won
Topic
#3514

Atheism is flawed, God has to exist

Status
Finished

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

Winner & statistics
Winner
0
1

After 1 vote and with 1 point ahead, the winner is...

Intelligence_06
Parameters
Publication date
Last updated date
Type
Standard
Number of rounds
2
Time for argument
One day
Max argument characters
10,000
Voting period
One week
Point system
Winner selection
Voting system
Open
Contender / Con
1
1731
rating
167
debates
73.05%
won
Description

I am a religious person, and it makes no sense to me how atheism is such a thing and why many people follow it. It is clear and evident that God has to exist

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@FLRW

But for it all to have a beginning, there must be something before this. As there is no such thing as nothing. If you imagine 0 cannot make 1. So this option of nothing making something is false. The universe needs to be made from something and this something needs to exist always and never have a beginning or end. Independent from all dependencies

For cosmologists, the origin of the universe is clear. They can see that galaxies are accelerating away from each other and when they play this motion in reverse, the universe contracts to a single event. This suggests it all began some 14 billion years ago in an event we now call the Big Bang.

By contrast, cosmologists are less clear how it will all end. One possibility is that the expansion of the universe will continue to accelerate, driven by a mysterious force called dark energy. In that case the expansion will be infinite and forever.

But another option is that the role of dark energy will lessen over time, causing the accelerated expansion to stop and transition smoothly into a slow contraction. This possibility dovetails neatly with the idea that the universe is continually expanding and contracting in an ongoing cycle.

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@whiteflame

Yes I agree to an extent. I think that logic is needed however I did need to put references in.

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@rayhan16

I think the main reason why you lost this debate in my opinion is on display in that last comment. You argued several times in response to Intelligence_06 that certain arguments of his have already been debunked, and largely assumed that it was obvious why that happened. I don't see any links in either of your rounds, so you're relying on the logic you provide to support statements that his arguments were either irrelevant or lacked support. I've seen debaters manage to defeat evidence with logic before, but doing that requires specific responses directly addressing the evidence presented. Voters aren't just going to take your word for it that these points are invalid - they need to see the specifics of why they're invalid, and assertions about the state of the universe (e.g. the existence of what can be called "nothing" and what that means for quantum fluctuation theories) cannot stand alone without meaningful support, either logical or evidence-based.

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@whiteflame

Very well stated.

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@Barney

In my perspective, I think that it's untrue as it has been debunked many times and it's just a theory. It doesn't disprove that God exists but only makes claims about the universe which are simply not true in my opinion

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@rayhan16

I likewise disagree with that static universe theory, but it is one route to denying the absolute requirement of God.

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@Barney

The static universe theory still doesn't even make sense. This isn't me trying to get you to vote me, just want to use common sense. The universe is expanding, not static

I did read this debate, but due to the definitions in play I'm torn. Leaning toward con due to the cleverness of pulling the old static universe theory; but it's pretty close for me. I don't think I'll be voting.

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@3RU7AL

No, he is saying God is Gravity.

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@rayhan16

> general

ok, so you're basically advocating for DEISM

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@FLRW

https://mythoslogos.org/2014/10/13/einsteins-judeo-quaker-pantheism/

Einstein definitely did believe in a monist/pantheist God, he was talking about the Abrahamic God, as i said pantheistic Gods can be much more impersonal. Simply give Einstein a google along with the term pantheist.

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@Ehyeh

The letter in which Einstein made those comments is pretty famous. In January 1954, Albert Einstein wrote a letter to Jewish philosopher Eric Gutkind, in which the physicist responded to Gutkind's book Choose Life: The Biblical Call to Revolt. Gutkind's book, as this Commentary review explains, sought to reconcile religion, science and humanism, by drawing upon scripture to urge people to bring about a better world. Einstein, who had read the book at the urging of a friend, wasn't buying it. In his letter, Einstein dismissed the concept of God and religion altogether. "The word God is for me nothing but the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of venerable but still rather primitive legends. No interpretation, no matter how subtle, can (for me) change anything about this," he wrote. The letter sold in an auction in 2018 for $2.9 million..

Einstein, a Jew, was harsh in his view of Judaism, which he wrote in the letter was "like all other religions, an incarnation of primitive superstition."

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@3RU7AL

general

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@FLRW

I'm unsure of where you got that quote from, but he definitely was a pantheist. Maybe he was talking strictly in terms of the Abrahamic God? pantheistic interpretations of God are generally much more impersonal.

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@rayhan16

> I am Muslim

are you creating your argument to be "muslim specific" or are you constructing a more general argument for "some sort of logically-necessary first-cause" (aka "god") ?

I also think like Stephen Hawking.

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@Ehyeh

Einstein said in 1954, one year before he died, "The word 'God' is for me nothing but the expression and product of human weaknesses; the Bible a collection of honorable but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish,"
So yes, I think like Albert Einstein. Maybe that's why I got into Harvard and MIT.

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@Ehyeh

> "I think like Albert Einstein" that's funny because Albert Einstein did believe in a God, a pantheistic form of God derived from Spinoza.

bingo

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@FLRW

> I am am atheist, and it makes no sense to me how religion is such a thing and why many people follow it.

https://youtu.be/8FcW2l-GL74

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@FLRW

"I think like Albert Einstein" that's funny because Albert Einstein did believe in a God, a pantheistic form of God derived from Spinoza.

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@3RU7AL

I am Muslim

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@Intelligence_06

I'll try to get through it over the weekend.

I am am atheist, and it makes no sense to me how religion is such a thing and why many people follow it. It is clear and evident that God does not exist anymore.
Well, I think like Albert Einstein and religious people think like Tammy Faye.

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@Intelligence_06

did you happen to get PRO to explain exactly which specific "god" they believe "must exist" ?

because many "christians" seem to magically become DEISTS when attempting to debate this particular topic

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@Barney
@whiteflame
@3RU7AL
@Novice_II

How about some votes?

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@Barney

Nice link.

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@FLRW

There is no such thing as nothing. Also for the universe needs to exist, it needs to be made by something which is independent. Otherwise we would not be here. You can give all the theories in the world, this point cannot be refuted

Unfortunetly, nothing exists independently of human sense and/or perception.

GOD = NOUMENON

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@Barney

Unless I have been misinformed by the council, most things the current system of American churches preach outside of the Bible either commit the Didit fallacy or are related to that.

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@rayhan16

You may wish to study the following:
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Didit_fallacy

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@Intelligence_06

My bad for making it quite short, I was impatient because I wanted to get it over and done with quickly

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@rayhan16

Well, it is a 1-day round for a topic I have long forgotten how to do. I am literally typing this in between my math classes.

It has been 2 years since I did anything close to this sort of debates.

I actually agree to this topic heading but not to most of the reasoning given inside it other than the 'something from nothing' angle.