God is real
The debate is finished. The distribution of the voting points and the winner are presented below.
After 3 votes and with 4 points ahead, the winner is...
- Publication date
- Last updated date
- Type
- Standard
- Number of rounds
- 5
- Time for argument
- Twelve hours
- Max argument characters
- 10,000
- Voting period
- One week
- Point system
- Multiple criterions
- Voting system
- Open
In the first round, I would like you to state which God/Gods you believe in and what are the main reasons for why you believe.
To indicate that the New Testament is reliable, PRO will have to indicate how predictions made in the Bible consistently came true.
Just like with my calculator example, by performing calculations and obtaining the right answer every time, PRO has to demonstrate that one can use the New Testament repeatedly and consistently obtain accurate predictions.
Among others, these are some of the requirements for verifying reliability [1]:
It must be original.
It must be near the date of the event it describes.
Eyewitnesses are better than secondhand, which is better than hearsay.
If many independent sources make the same claim, its reliability increases by a lot.
Another qualification is if the historical document is a personal letter or is informal because that indicates that the author wasn’t writing it with the intention of it being shown to the public.
The New Testament is majorly eyewitnesses, composed a lot by personal letters, and is quite obviously original.
Take a look at this chart. [2] The time span for the New Testament is 25-50 years. The second lowest is FIVE HUNDRED YEARS. Not only that, most amount of manuscripts besides the New Testament is 643. The New Testament has 24,000. The New Testament is far more reliable than the other documents listed, yet it’s the one being questioned?
There are plenty of evidence to indicate that the New Testament is actually unreliable:
> There are plenty of instances where the New Testament authors disagree with each other:
1. Matthew and Luke disagree who the father of Joseph was
2. Matthew and Luke are the only one who knew of the Virgin birth
I am not a Biblical expert so I can only refer to better sources than me[4]
As to the genealogies, there are plenty of explanations. For one, one could be Joseph’s genealogy and the other could be Mary’s. Another explanation is that Joseph had two dads. By the laws of a Jewish marriage, if a husband died, his brother can marry his dead brother’s wife to help her with money or whatever. If this happened to Joseph, it would explain his genealogy. [3]
About the virgin birth one, how is that proof of the New Testament’s unreliability?
>There are many textual flaws with the New TestamentHere is a list of videos by Dr. Joshua Bowen[6], an Assyriologist who specialises in Sumerian literary and liturgical compositions, on all the translation issues with the New Testament(I can only cite him because I have no understanding of the old language in these texts while he is among the best there is, in that field)[Links cited in source[6] ]
The second link ,you cited, goes in depth explaining the prophecies Jesus allegedly made. Notice that I use the term "allegedly" here. The reason is because the article does not provide any evidence that Jesus actually did these things, the article just indicate that the Bible says Jesus did these things and that therefore, it must be true.I will refute that argument("The Bible shows that Jesus did all these extraordinary feats therefore it must be true") by using a reductio ad absurdum[5]
(Take an argument to its extreme to point out why it is not a good argument):There are 7 Harry Potter books. Each one of them cite Dumbledore. Even more amazing than that, there are three Fantastic Beasts books that also cite Dumbledore. Even better, there is a book written by other authors called "Harry Potter and the cursed child" where Dumbledore is also cited. If you go on certain websites, you can find thousands upon thousands of other authors writing stories about the Great Albus Dumbledore.
To prove that the Bible is true, you need to provide evidence from outside the Bible.
Your article provided nothing like these. It just keeps citing the Bible. Simply citing a book is not enough. You must have external evidence outside of it to prove it.
However, we know that the New testament is flawed and contain many contradictions and inconsistencies(Video links to Dr. Joshua Bowen's works and [4] ). Therefore, this indicates that the New Testament cannot be trusted to make reliable predictions. These prophecies ,that PRO seems to believe Jesus fulfilled, are extraordinary claims. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. PRO failed to provide any.
Sources:
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_method
[2] https://www.christianevidence.net/2017/10/is-bible-reliable.html
[3] https://zondervanacademic.com/blog/why-are-jesus-genealogies-in-matthew-and-luke-different/
This is incorrect. My opponent is pulling qualifications for being reliable out of thin air. The correct procedure is to look at how actual historians verify the reliability of historical documents.
This is incorrect. My opponent is pulling qualifications for being reliable out of thin air. The correct procedure is to look at how actual historians verify the reliability of historical documents.Among others, these are some of the requirements for verifying reliability [1]:It must be original.It must be near the date of the event it describes.Eyewitnesses are better than secondhand, which is better than hearsay.If many independent sources make the same claim, its reliability increases by a lot.
>"The New Testament is reliable. (It has more copies than other historical documents, and every single verse except 11 has been quoted. )"
Another qualification is if the historical document is a personal letter or is informal because that indicates that the author wasn’t writing it with the intention of it being shown to the public.
The New Testament is majorly eyewitnesses, composed a lot by personal letters, and is quite obviously original.Take a look at this chart. [2] The time span for the New Testament is 25-50 years. The second lowest is FIVE HUNDRED YEARS. Not only that, most amount of manuscripts besides the New Testament is 643. The New Testament has 24,000. The New Testament is far more reliable than the other documents listed, yet it’s the one being questioned?
New Testament authors disagreeing with each other proves the Bible’s validity even more. For example, in police cases, cops become more suspicious when two witnesses’ stories match each other perfectly, because it is more likely that they rehearsed it together. The disagreement makes it much less likely that they faked it.
About the virgin birth one, how is that proof of the New Testament’s unreliability?
Can you provide specific examples? 12 hours is barely enough time to respond, and I can’t watch and respond to a whole video in that time because I have other responsibilities.
This is a total straw man. The Harry Potter books literally claims to be fiction, so of course it is not counted as real.
I did, the quotations of it and its extremely large manuscript base is proof of that. Documents like Homer’s Iliad have way less.
Again, I need specific claims from the videos to respond to because you didn’t give me enough time to look at them. Besides that, I believe that it is the DART rules that you actually have to make the claim in the round for it to count, simply citing a source is not enough.
Since PRO forfeitedtheir last round(Second time they forfeited a round in this debate), I can summarise my views here and conclude.
I will now rebut my opponent’s Round 4.
I would like to point out that PRO here is attempting to refute my argument where I was agreeing with their own sources. The argument on what it means for something to be reliable, comes out from that website as well[1].Reliability means that it is trustworthy and consistently good in its quality, according to PRO's cited website.
How does this disagree with my definition, that I also cited?
PRO claims that I pulled it out of thin air even though I clearly cited another website where they give the formal definition of reliability[2]. That part was to demonstrate that I agreed with the initial claim of their article. It is strange that PRO would challenge this.
I am not arguing against the existence of historical figures. So anything Historians have to say is irrelevant here. I was refuting your original argument:
My argument was that, to prove that the God of the New Testament is real, PRO would have to show how the article you cited failed to reach their own standards. All the article did was to point out that there were many authors who wrote that book, the New Testament has been published a lot of times and and it has been cited by many scholars. I could agree with everything here and that still does not prove that the New Testament is reliable proof/evidence of your God.
The only way it can be reliable is by consistently being right in its predictions.
I pointed out the many flaws in the texts to demonstrate the impossibility of its reliability and how it is in fact unreliable.
Whether or not there was a person back then who called themselves Jesus of Nazareth and said they were the Son of God, that is not an extraordinary claim(A lot of preachers back then did that too). So anything historians have to say on historicity is irrelevant. It seems like you forgot the title of the debate.
The title is: "God is real" You are for the motion, I am against it. NOT "Did Jesus exist?"
PRO is paraphrasing their own argument again. I will paste my earlier rebuttal here:You keep citing the New Testament to prove the New Testament is true. This is a circular reasoning. To prove the New Testament is true, you need to find evidence outside of it.
There is a massive difference between small differences in eye witness accounts("He had a watch on his left wrist" or "He had a bracelet on his left wrist") and the name of the father or Joseph or where Jesus was born etc. In the police cases example, the eye witnesses only disagree on small details. They would agree on the location of the crime, they would agree on what crime was committed, they would even agree that a crime was committed. They would agree about the approximate time of the crime(Maybe to a couple of minutes differences).
In the case of the New Testament, Matthew and Luke say that Jesus was a direct descendant of King David since Joseph follows that lineage while the Church says that Jesus was born of a Virgin. Was Jesus descendant of King David as the texts say or a direct Son of God as the church says? Only Matthew and Luke knew of the Virgin birth, the others assume Joseph was the Dad since they say Jesus was "born of the seed of David"[3]. In the link I cited in the initial round, they had a lot more of these largely significant disagreements[4] not a simple variation("He had a red watch" and "He had a red bracelet"). Here is another compilation of the massive discrepancy in the genealogy of Jesus[5].
This would require me to get a degree in Ancient languages and texts so I can answer you. This is why I have no choice but to cite an expert. Even if I was an expert, it would take me time to dissect these examples here. This platform is not appropriate for that. I used these videos because you claimed that the New Testament was reliable. I used these to point out how experts(in this field, experts who study these texts in depth) disagree with you. If you still disagree, bring that up to academics, email the guy or any of his colleagues. I cannot only refer to the experts. If you disagree with academia, that is on you. Figure it out with them.
I said right above my analogy that it was a reductio ad absurdum. The point of a reductio ad absurdum is to use your argument to demonstrate something we both know to be false. If the same argument you used can also be used for an absurd example, then your argument cannot sufficiently prove your holy book. I spend time making these arguments and being sure I understand what you are saying. So please do take time in actually understanding my arguments. And do not falsely accuse me of a strawman fallacy when you are the one who missed the mark.
You cited authors in the New Testament. You need evidence from outside the New Testament that the New Testament is true.
Hence why I used that Dumbledore example. Harry Potter and the cursed child and Harry Potter and the Order of Phoenix were written by different authors. However they both agree that Dumbledore existed. Therefore, Dumbledore existed.
Again, this is a reductio ad absurdum[6].
For eg, Noah's ark is mentioned in Matthew and Luke among others. You cannot just cite these other authors to prove Noah's ark was a real thing. You need to find evidence outside the texs like proof of a flood, proof of a massive ship being used to carry these animals etc... To that I can simply point out to the various flaws in the Noah's Ark story. I will not do it here since I don't know if you even believe in this story. But I can provide evidence against it in the next round, if you believe in it.
In the first round, you also just cited these websites and barely gave any actual arguments. I had to read through them all before responding. So if that's true, then we both did it. You cannot expect me to dissect ancient languages here and explain to you why they are flawed. Those would require me to get a degree in that field. That's unreasonable of you to expect that of me.
Kiss my goddamn ass.
undecidedly undecided
Conduct to con: pro “effectively” forfeited two rounds of argument. While the rounds were 12 hours, it’s incumbent in pro to read the debate configuration before hand.
Arguments
Pro argues the bible is reliable, and that Jesus fulfilled 300 prophecies.
Con points out that there pro has not justified the reliability of the Bible, and points out some examples of unreliability, these on their face seem pretty damning to the reliability of the Bible.
Con points out that the primary justification for Jesus fulfilling 300 prophecies, citing the Bible. Con provides an excellent argument - using Harry Potter and usain bolt autobiography to justify why I shouldn’t consider this validation
Pro starts off by arguing that cons definition of reliability is incorrect, that it should be viewed in terms of a historical document.
While I’m largely sympathetic and agree that the exact definition con uses is not ideal, for “reliability” of the Bible to be justification of a supreme deity - pro must do more than show that it meets basic historical standards.
As a result - pros argument in defense of reliability appears to be more of a set of an excuses as to why the Bible isn’t reliable. It’s either a reliable document or not, factual errors, incongruities clearly undermine that position.
Pro goes on to object to the Harry Potter example as Harry Potter is self professed fiction - which imo misses the point of this argument. Pro drops the usain bolt argument which is far more relevant.
Pro reiterates that the Bible has been cited more than the Iliad. How this proves the Bible is reliable, I am not certain.
Cons rebuttal was to defend the definition as supported by pros sources. He then goes on to separate historicity from the claim of Gods existence.
Con also argues that pros logic is circular - using the bible to prove the Bible.
Con pointed out his Harry Potter example was absurd but intentionally absurd, and pointed out that witnesses of the Bible disagree on major points.
Pros round 4 was largely a set of rejections / there was little in the way of objective rebuttal.
So, the main issue hinges on reliability. Even if I assume everything pro said was correct about historical reliability - it doesn’t establish that a supreme deity exists - as historicity of content and that contents philosophical claims are not the same. Using a reliability scale more into cons position - the Bible clearly doesn’t meet the reliability criteria set out by his source, as shown by con.
Pro did not respond to the issues of predictions and prophecies that con highlighted - and as this debate was setup for pro to have the burden of proof (I would give him benefit of the doubt on the amount of proof he has to provide), the arguments provided clearly are not sufficient to meet it.
As a result: arguments to con.
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>Reported Vote: RM // Mod action: Not Removed
>Points Awarded: Tied.
>Reason for Mod Action: Votes which do not award points are not subject to review because no standard exists in the COC against by which they can be removed.
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>Reported Vote: Wrick-It-Ralph // Mod action: Not Removed
>Points Awarded: Tied.
>Reason for Mod Action: Votes which do not award points are not subject to review because no standard exists in the COC against by which they can be removed.
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Oh ok lol
I know. But it feels good to type it.
And? Lol everyone knows that
I believe no gods exist...…………………………………………………...
I go like 2 huge assignments right after I accepted lol
I would like to point out a typo on my part in the last round and correct it here.
"My argument was that, to prove that the God of the New Testament is real, PRO would have to show how the article you cited failed to reach their own standards. "
I meant for it to say "My argument was that PRO would have to prove that the New Testament is reliable. The article you cited fail to reach even their own standards."
What does that even mean? Lol. I rebutted you and that's it. I did not insult you, I did not make derogatory comments towards you. I don't know what you mean by "hostile". Now it's your turn to respond to me.
I expected you to rebut, but I didn’t expect you to be so hostile and formal
I have no idea what you are talking about. This is a website called debateart, I opened this debate with main theme: God is real, and I took the CON position. Even if this was a discussion, whatever that means, do you think I would just read what you said and never rebut it? You agreed to the debate. Do you think people just come here to discuss with people without challenging each other?
Dude, what are you doing?
Dude, you said this was a discussion, not a debate, what are you doing?