I read about ten pages, then skipped to the end. Just throwing my two cents in.
There's two things to debate really. Whether each side is possible, and whether each side is possible. And of course you have to define what statement you are putting forward.
So if no one objects, there's the theist side which states "There is a God." where God is defined in some way where the conditions of being God are "is absolutely benevolent", "can alter anything in the universe at will", and "knows absolutely everything about anything in the universe, except perhaps not the future."
Then there's the atheist statement, which is "There is no God."
To prove that God exists, you would have to find direct evidence that there is a single being that has those three conditions, with no other explanation. To prove that God does not exist... well, you can't. Unless you find logical fallacy within the conditions given. And there is quite a good debate on that, if you look into The Problem of Evil.
So the possibility of the existence of God hasn't been disproven (unless you take The Problem of Evil).
And the impossibility of "God does not exist" hasn't be proven (unless you have some verifiable evidence you're not sharing).
Which brings us to part two, probability. Now that one's a lot blurrier, but I do recommend looking into debate techniques. It's a pretty subjective thing, what you consider the probability of the existence or nonexistence to be. I think a lot of the mutual hate between the two sides has to do with thinking that the other side is saying "Your side is impossible", rather than "I think your side is improbable." I won't get into that so much, but suffice it to say that I think reasoning, statistics, and logic play a heavy role in there.
And as for myself, I'm pantheist. Which for me is functionally like atheism. But as for what I propose, it's that "There is a divine force holding the universe's laws together. It is as nonsentient as the force of gravity, but is undefined except in any given universe." Basically, it's a fancy way of saying the multiverse is one giant RNG, and the universe we generated with came with certain physics quirks like gravity and quantum entanglement. It isn't very provable. Or disprovable. Then there's the probability thing. From my point of view, it's the best explanation for some of the weird paradoxes and oddities of things like quantum physics and black holes and the fabric of spacetime. From another's view, it may seem perfectly stupid. I'm sure we could have a fascinating discussion. And/or one or the other of us says something that sways the whole probability thing one way or another, and one of us says "Well crud, I guess I'm with your idea now."
So yeah, happy debating, I think debate is good as long as people think when doing it. And staying civil is nice.
Author
Topic: Atheists (Read 407645 times)