Debate Topic

[SlowPokemon]

No I meant reading it as a metaphor. I'm sorry for saying "lol" and "no" tho I didn't mean it to come off like that. Just that most religious intellectuals who study and interpret the bible don't take that story literally from what I understand

[mikey]

No Christian worth his salt reads the Noah and the Ark story literally lol

Christian worth his salt

Sodom and Gomorrah

salt

ayy

[Waddle Bro]

um sort of. The Christian Bible tells you the tells you that God said some words and they became so. It does NOT however say what occurred as these events were coming to be so. The best example of something like this i can think of is in the Inheritance cycle when Eragon talks about creating fires using magic. He states that he could start the fire by using a lightning strike, creating intense friction, heating the air etc. This can also relate to the story of creation. The Bible only says that God spoke and what he spoke came to pass. It does not explain the exact processes in how these events came to pass. For all we know both the Christian Bible and the big bang theory can be simultaneously correct. God could have caused the big bang to create the universe.

Your point is a little unclear, so you agree that both religion and science try to explain how things are or were? You seem to be directing the conversation off the rails because you're not focusing on the actual points. what are you contradicting?
Faith can't give you a rational reason on why things are the way they are, you need to use reason for that. You can't have knowledge without a stable foundation. Science, empirical information or religion can't provide you that.

[FireArrow]

1) Explain to me just how garden of eden is a "how"
2) If you're following the Christian God then you must then take in all aspects of the Christian faith which therefore includes the fact that God is all-powerful. I see no reason why God could have not decided to make the Earth look however old he wanted it to. Also based on this there is no scientific evidence to disprove this. Also the Christian Bible states that the Garden of Eden was destroyed in the Great Flood which science has proven to be a real life event.

1) "How were humans created." Science says humans came about through evolution, the bible states otherwise. I don't see how you can claim that this is somehow not a contradiction.
2) Show me this "proof." If you can link me to something actually scientific, then kudos, you win the debate. Also, why the hell would god go "I'm gonna make a planet for my creations to live on, but let me make it look like it's billions of years old first!" The only purpose that would serve is to give people a reason to believe he doesn't exist, which I'm assuming would be undesirable for him?

[Pianist Da Sootopolis]

Alright, here goes.
If religion only stayed at trying to explain the purpose of things there wouldn't be an issue. But that's not the case with most religions.
Christianity, the Garden of Eden, Satan as a fallen angel.. When interpreted literally, these are the given biblical explanations for how the world came about, given that the people who wrote it were desert dwellers, most of whom were illiterate (the writing of the book of Genesis is usually attributed to Moses). They didn't have the scientific knowledge we have, so it's not unreasonable to postulate that the stories in the Torah and the OT of the Bible are attempts to explain the natural world before the people of the time understood it.
And their ignorance shows. Snakes don't have vocal cords, so they can't talk. Even if you believe that Satan disguised himself as a snake that could somehow break this rule, that would be separate from the "explanation of the world" interpretation.
In a similar impossibility, the calculations for Noah's Ark are also impossible for the time. God spells out the dimensions of the Ark; he says it's to be 520 ft (+8 inches) long, by 86 ft (+9.3 inches) wide, by 56 feet tall. This results in just over 2.5 million cubic feet. This would be nearly impossible; wooden hulls past a certain capacity were known to twist apart in the water (due to water pressure IIRC, but I could be wrong about that bit), at which point when larger ships were built they used steel (see the titanic).
God "could" have done just about anything, in terms of deceiving us. But why would he have to do that? To hide from the species he created "in his image"? Hardly seems like the paragon of love and wisdom the Bible (the New Testament, at least) makes him out to be.
God is also hardly a nice guy. He's supposed to be all knowing, first off. This means he knows all that will happen. So, he created the humans. The humans turned to sin when they went into the Garden of Eden.
Since God is all knowing, he should have been able to see this. But in any case, he punishes not only Adam and Eve, but also the entire rest of humanity with them.
(Fun fact, menstruation's common explanation was the sin of Eve, but now we know exactly why that isn't the case)
Continuing on, humanity slowly goes down a sinful path (possibly because, y'know, they were cursed with it).
Then we reach Noah's Ark. Let's drop the skepticism for now, and just assume the story to be true.
This means that God created humans knowing that they would sin, cursed them forever, and then when they became even more sinful because he cursed them with original sin, he chose to drown the entire world with a giant flood, killing everyone but an old guy. Even had Noah tried to save everyone; if some old guy came to your house and said that the world would flood for 40 days and 40 nights, and the only way to not die was to get in a giant wooden boat with him and some thousands of animals, wouldn't he seem a little cooky?
Now we continue on to Christ. God has decided to give all of humanity the opportunity to redeem itself. And God is a reasonable person, so he's making it easy; he's sending down his son (which is simultaneously himself and the Holy Spirit according to many) to teach and heal the sick for roughly 33 years, but now must be tortured and executed for your sins.
"But what sins," You ask? Oh, you know, just the original sin from Adam and Eve.
The sin that you had no part in.
Anyways, he dies, and then he's resurrected by God. Funny how after the invention of recording there hasn't been any recorded cases of someone being resurrected by anything other than modern medicine.
So he's sent up to Heaven, and God has given the final verdict; you all must worship this man who came and died for you because the initial humans fucked up long ago.

[Trainer Ave]

well you know if someone wanted to make up a religion they could just say that all they had to do to get to heaven was to eat a million donuts. I could be long-winded here and use reasoning to prove that there is a god (i am not talking about the christian god but just a monotheistic deity) Christianity is too inconvenient and it spells out exact moral values while also retelling a large portion of history. Also the Christian God is all-powerful. He does not follow the rules of science. Also if you want to question his purposes then please explain to me the passage "My ways are higher than your ways. My thoughts are higher than your thoughts." It seems to me that while we may not see a purpose there may still be one we don't know about.

[SlowPokemon]

If you don't mind, would you mind actually using your solid logic/reasoning to say that there is a god? Because I can't think of any sort of reasoning that would make me believe that that belief is incontrovertible.

[Pianist Da Sootopolis]

One cannot truly believe something they are not convinced of. You couldn't truly believe the sky was green no matter how hard you try.
Christianity isn't the only religion to spell out exact moral values; Judaism does this, as does Buddhism (which is more of a philosophy than a religion), as does Islam, and as have thousands of religions before Christianity that tell similar stories.
The passage you cited was written by man in a holy book. As for an actual argument, it's a cop out; it basically says "God isn't wrong because he's God, and he's right by definition".

[mikey]

Pianist, most of your logic is faulty on the basis that not all religions believe the same thing.  Half the stuff you said is just false

[Pianist Da Sootopolis]

In the long wall of text I was speaking of Christianity. If you are referring to my earlier post, that isn't a fallacy.

Christianity is too inconvenient and it spells out exact moral values

This is what I was commenting on. Whatever Christianity being "too inconvenient" means.
He said that it spells out exact moral values when I pointed out that there are plenty of religions come and gone that were regarded with esteem equal to or greater than the 3 big Abrahamic religions of today

[Trainer Ave]

for the reasoning proving the existence of a monotheistic god read Mere Christianity by CS Lewis. He starts out the book by talking about why there must be a god to begin with and then talks about what is belief are (I guess were since he's dead) and why he believes them. This book proves that there must be a single god. It does not prove that it is the Christian God, although he is the main one talked about.

[FireArrow]

If I told you to pick up a biology text book would you consider that adequate proof of evolution?

[Trainer Ave]

Actually evolution is still considered a theory. However for the sake of your question i would still read it.

EDIT: I always take into consideration every possibility

EDIT 2: Also whether or not it is "adequate proof" depends on how accurate and how in depth the text book goes

EDIT 3: Either way, you may still have valid points but so does CS Lewis. His book made perfect sense to me and btw I was an atheist when i read it.

[MaestroUGC]

You're confusing "theory" with "scientific theory":

noun 
1. a coherent group of propositions formulated to explain a group of facts or phenomena in the natural world and repeatedly confirmed through experiment or observation

[KefkaticFanatic]

There are some things that are theories, however that is mainly that there is debate in how they occur, not whether or not they have occurred.  The entire civilized world and scientific community has accepted such things.  Examples:  evolution, climate change, gravity

Meaningful debates occur when discussing the extent, methodology, origins, and finer details of the lot.