The Bible proves there is a God.

The_conservative contended that the Bible proves there is a God.

He did not care to back that statement up or demonstrate his reasoning for believing such. He declined my invite so I'm opening it up to everybody.

Care to back that statement up? I contend that that statement is absolutely wrong.

I can't debate for what someone else said, but I can debate the comment that the existance of a creator can't be proven at all. Maybe it can't be proven to you, because you require more evidence than your own existance and the existance of our universe, but there are millions more people who do believe in some form of creator than people who don't. All the miracles and answered prayers in my life are more than adequate proof that my God exists, and although I don't believe that a single book could tell me everything about him, I know that he gives me the abilities to do things that others would never have the hope or faith in themselves to do. So maybe noone can prove it to you, but it already has been proven to me and many others. For the point of this debate, the Bible proves there is a God because it has survived for so long, been revered by so many, and still continues to change people's life. Once you realize it doesn't all have to be true and you stop trying to pick everything apart and just admit we humans are all messed up then it begins to make alot more sense.

I thank you for accepting this debate. And hope that it is fruitful.

I do require more evidence than my own existence and the existence of this universe for a good reason. The best data on the subject suggests that those things are entirely possible from a naturalistic standpoint. Or, at the very least, one could suggest some manner by which they could arise without a creator God and thus they themselves are not evidence thereof. For example, I could arise by a natural product of evolution and the universe could have originated from a causeless big bang 14 billion years ago. Likewise, I could be constructed by the elves... who also made the universe.

The fact that more people believe in some form of a creator is no more the point than the fact that there are more non-Christians than Christians. If sheer numbers prove you wrong, then certainly Christianity is false. Simply because many people believed in a geocentric world prior to Copernicus and Galileo does not suggest for a moment that the geocentric world view was correct. Though the number of adherents to Einstein's relativity was 0 prior to Einstein, it doesn't make it wrong. Just because nobody believed in Darwin's theory of evolution prior to Darwin, it doesn't make it wrong. The number of people who believe something does not dictate whether something is true or false. A large number of people believe that humans use 10% of their brains or that men have fewer ribs than women, both of these are categorically false and the number of people who believe such has no bearing on truth of the proposition.

The problems with reveled sources of information such as miracles and answered prayers (although statistics have never found it exceeding just random dumb luck) is that it cannot be incumbent on me to believe them. God may revel himself to you, but your telling me of this doesn't remotely rise close to the same level of evidence as it does for you. Thomas Paine in the Age of Reason put it thusly:

"Revelation is necessarily limited to the first communication-- after that it is only an account of something which that person says was a revelation made to him; and though he may find himself obliged to believe it, it can not be incumbent on me to believe it in the same manner; for it was not a revelation made to ME, and I have only his word for it that it was made to him."

One of the problems with citing personal experience as evidence of something divine is that it forces a person to either believe you are mislead, misleading, or misapprehending the situation. Denying your claims is to attack your character by saying, that I do not believe you have reached the correct conclusion drawn by this evidence. That said, I do not believe you have reached the correct conclusion drawn by this evidence. I contend that answered prayers are not evidence if there is statistically no more answered prayers than dumb luck should suggest.

I contend that prayer is essentially superstition:
http://www.whydoesgodhateamputees.com...

You are probably remembering the hits and forgetting the misses as many people commonly do. Though, this debate isn't about your reasons, which though not yet fully fleshed out, I doubt are good reasons (I've had people explain their miracles and answered prayers to my underwhelmity many times).

Further, you seem to have put the cart before the horse here. You argue that the Bible can't 'revel everything about God' and that 'God gives you some abilities to do things'. Where did you get to God from? The point of the debate is to show how the Bible justifies God, as such you cannot start from an assumption of God without making a circular argument. How do I know you're not just wrong? If you were wrong then the Bible might just not reveal anything and you might not have these special powers you claim to possess.

You offer something towards the idea that the Bible might have something behind it. Though these are hardly exclusive to the Bible and do not require any divine hand to be true. The Odyssey has survived a very long time. The Bhagavad Gita has been revered. The Koran has changed people's lives.

Further, you go ahead and suggest that the Bible doesn't have to be/isn't true. If the Bible is false, in whole or in part, how can it justify anything? It seems like you knocked out a pretty big leg right there.

Let me sum up your 'evidence' thus far: 'The bible is old and some people believe it' and 'it makes a lot more sense if we admit it makes no sense.' -- Couldn't many people be wrong? Couldn't it make no sense because it is nonsense?

How does a flawed nothing of a book, some misappropriated feelings, and fallacy of numbers lead to the conclusion that God exists?

I don't see much of an argument here.

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I've listened to a large number of theists give their reasons to believe in God and thus far I have found them unconvincing. Not just unconvincing but often so utterly absurd that I couldn't fathom believing it. God creates Adam and Eve out of clay (or Adam from clay and Eve from a rib) puts them in a magical garden where they get free range save a couple magical trees and they get tricked into eating from this tree and cast out of the garden. Because of this, all of their descents are blamed for wrong-doing even though they never did wrong. Finally to forgive this transgression against Him, God takes human form, then sacrifices Himself to Himself to give Himself permission to forgive these people who never did anything wrong themselves? If you telepathically communicate your love to this human-blood-sacrificed first century zombie Jew, you can get to live in paradise or have wishes granted.

Basically the core of the story relies on obvious myth: magical trees and talking snakes. It includes the idea that the sins of the father are the sins of the child (barbaric!). That you should be blamed for the crimes of your parents. Then, it comes around with the idea of atonement (barbaric!). That somebody else can morally be punished for your transgressions (which aren't even yours). And the atonement is blood sacrifice. That by spilling the blood of something or someone thing are made better (barbaric!).

The entire oddity raises some interesting questions, would you prefer that Jesus not have died for your sins? Would you prefer he live and there be no blood sacrifice for these things you did not do? Would you rather an innocent person die? If it came down to it, would you murder him?

The story makes no sense at all. How can this be evidence of God?

Anything more than book is old and people believe it? Because, as far as arguments go that no more proves the Christian God than it proves Zeus (some pagans) or Allah (Muslims)?

As far as time is concerned Hinduism is far older than Christianity.

Books don't really prove anything. The idea that the Bible proves God or God proves the Bible is a farce. Books are filled with words, they are only as true or as false as those words. Simply being old or believed doesn't justify anything. Likewise I can give examples of books both old and believed. Thing just as false as they are old and untrue as they are believed. You may write true things in a book, but that doesn't justify them in the least. Those things must live and die by whether they are independently true, verifiable, justifiable, evidenced, or acceptable. Simple existence within a book is never a justification for anything.