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OP, towerpill, greetings. If you intend to support your post in debate/discussion, and if you haven't already, message the mods and request to be put on the approved submitter list. Your negative Karma score may limit your participation otherwise.

> * 1) God gives us free will because He chooses to have a relationship with us.

Let's start with just this first premise shall we? The usual general questions....

• Which God? Ok, I'll answer that one for you. The God under discussion is one of the various Christian versions of יהוה/YHWH/Yahweh. Sine OP did not present a specific list of attributes and claims of intervention/actualization associated with this God, the standard Christian claims apply.
  
  
• Free will. OP, what is free will to you in the context of this submission? However, this premise makes the claim that "free will" exists.
  
  
• Relationship: What do you mean by relationship? Like a sheep to the shepherd? Where the shepherd requires, and enforces obedience of the animals in going where directed or else the sheep may suffer; and where the shepherd uses the sheep for resources (e.g., milk, fur, and skin), and sometimes eats the sheep?
  
  
• OP speaks for YHWH. Interesting. OP, do you always speak for God? :) Or are there references/citations that you can provide to bad up the claim that "YHWH chooses to have a relationship with us [humans]"? If so, please provide said references to back up your claims.
  
  Ok, now for the implicit and explicit claims contained just within point/premise 1:
  
  
• God (YHWH) exists
  
  The existence of this God is just asserted without any supporting basis, argument, evidence, or knowledge - and since this is /r/DebateAnAtheist, and not /r/truechristian, /r/cataocombs, or /r/ReasonableFaith, Presuppositionalism is not accepted - and what do we say about the fallacy of presuppositionalism OP?
  
  Calling upon an argument from authority, William Lane Craig, the Great Christian Apologeticist god (lower case 'G'), who has said regarding Christianity (but is applicable to other Theist belief systems):
  
  "...presuppositionalism is guilty of a logical howler: it commits the informal fallacy of petitio principii, or begging the question, for it advocates presupposing the truth of Christian theism in order to prove Christian theism....It is difficult to imagine how anyone could with a straight face think to show theism to be true by reasoning, 'God exists. Therefore, God exists.' Nor is this said from the standpoint of unbelief. A Christian theist himself will deny that question-begging arguments prove anything..."
  
  Source: Five Views on Apologetics by Steven B. Cowan, page 232-233
  
  Or we can go with Drs. John H. Gerstner, Arthur W. Lindsley, and R.C. Sproul ....
  
  “Presuppositionalism burns its evidential bridges behind it and cannot, while remaining Presuppositional, rebuild them. It burns its bridges by refusing evidences on the ground that evidences must be presupposed. “Presupposed evidences” is a contradiction in terms because evidences are supposed to prove the conclusion rather than be proven by it. But if the evidences were vindicated by the presupposition then the presupposition would be the evidence. But that cannot be, because if there is evidence for or in the presupposition, then we have reasons for presupposing, and we are, therefore, no longer presupposing.” (source: Classical Apologetics: A Rational Defense of the Christian Faith and a Critique of Presuppositional Apologetics)
  
  Until OP, towerpill, can make a credible burden of proof to support that this God exists? If not, or you say you can but then do not do so, then the first point/premise fails catastrophically, and in doing so, renders the entire post - from the topic statement/question to the end of the submission statement - non-coherent resulting in a catastrophic failure of all points/conclusions OP is attempting to make.
  
  And thus ends the debate/discussion - on the first point/premise that OP makes. :( Well that's boring. Maybe OP can save the argument. OP, below the double line at the end of my comment is a generic challenge to support the existence of the necessary God of your argument/submission. If you can show, against refutation, that there is credible support or justification to accept the existence of the Christian version of the God YHWH, then we can continue debating/discussion.
  
  However, since OP will, of course, be capable of fully supporting the existence of YHWH, and will meet the challenge presented - for the sake of argument, let's play pretend and imagine that YHWH actually and credibly exists.
  
  
• Human free will is sourced from the God YHWH
  
  Ignoring for now what OP means by "free will" - let's examine this claim.
  
  YHWH is assigned the attributes of being the necessary Creator God of, well, everything, of all of existence (let's ignore the special pleading issue of 'what created YHWH?'), and also of having the attribute of omniscience (and other stuff, but these two claimed attributes will do for now).
  
  Which form of omniscience is being referenced when one says "omniscient"? The type of omniscience plays into support for some definition of "free will" or "free agency."
  
  For example; some external omniscience types:
  
  
• Voluntary Nescience: The future is alethically settled but nevertheless epistemically open for God because he has voluntarily chosen not to know truths about future contingents. Dallas Willard espouses this position.
  
• Involuntary Nescience: The future is alethically settled but nevertheless epistemically open for God because truths about future contingents are in principle unknowable. William Hasker espouses this position.
  
• Non-Bivalentist Omniscience: The future is alethically open and therefore epistemically open for God because propositions about future contingents are neither true nor false. J. R. Lucas espouses this position.
  
• Bivalentist Omniscience: The future is alethically open and therefore epistemically open for God because propositions asserting of future contingents that they "will" obtain or that they "will not" obtain are both false. Instead, what is true is that they "might and might not" obtain. Greg Boyd espouses this position.
  
• Inherent omniscience - the ability to know anything that one chooses to know and can be known.
  
• Total omniscience - actually knowing everything that can be known.
  
  Personally, I posit that the external application of omniscience is not-relevant. Rather, in regard to the free will vs. omniscience argument, the attribute of internal omniscience is the relevant attribute.
  
  Internal omniscience can be defined as: the God Entity has, at a minimum, true or perfect, and intentful, knowledge of the results or actualizations of all cognition's by the Entity. That is, the Entity knows, to a level of complete certainty, any event/effect/causation/interaction/whatever, the actual actualization that results from purposeful cognition by the God.
  
  In other words, God's willful creation is exactly as God cognitively intended.
  
  Additionally, internal omniscience has hierarchical priority (is a necessary logical truth) over claims/arguments of external omniscience (a contingent logical truth).
  
  Ignoring the effect of this internal omniscience on the concept/question of "Does this postulated God have free will?" - the combination of internal omniscience and the purposeful cognition of the creation of everything (as The Creator God) results in a wholly hard deterministic universe, or total and full predestination; free will is an illusion and all of existence (sans God - the issue how this God came to exist is outside this discussion area) is a script to be played out without variation (including your question and my response).
  
  So, with a true omniscient Creator God, you, OP, me and everyone else is a mere puppet against the emotional needs/wants/desires of this God. Dance puppet! Dance!
  
  And with this God-type, there is no free will except illusionary - which is to say, with the attributes assigned to this God, free will or free agency is refuted/negated. And the first point/premise again fails catastrophically.
  
  
• The God YHWH has the capability to make a "choice" (i.e., "He [YHWH] chooses..") - YHWH has free will of some kind.
  
  OP, can you support this claim? And in your supporting argument that YHWH has "free will," can you also provide support to show why YHWH, a God that is claimed to be sufficient onto YHWH itself and without needs/wants/desires, would make a choice? or choose one actualization over another?
  
  Until support is provides, the claim "He [YHWH] chooses..." is unsupported and rejected for lack of any, let alone credible, support.
  
  Finally,
  
  
• The God YHWH has a "relationship with us [humans]"
  
  And what type of "relationship" are you referring? Many Christians claims that YHWH has a loving relationship with YHWH's adherents (and where the cherry-picked canon scripture supports that the relationship YHWH has with non-adherents can be described as "You are either with YHWH, or you are fucked.").
  
  If this typical claim of Christians (the relationship with God is based upon love) is accepted, you if you mean "love" via inclusion of pain and suffering, then I concur the Bible supports a loving God.
  
  Many Christians claim a position that they have a relationship with Jesus (fully human/fully Yahweh), and with Yahweh (and some with the Holy Spirit). "Love" and "glorification" are examples of emotions/actions within a relationship. But what of the "loving" relationship of adherents with Yahweh and/or Jesus?
  
  [Character Limit. To Be Continued.]

> Yea, the belief that the laws of logic give you access to truth is the very thing in question.

So you don't believe that logic is a valuable tool for accessing the truth?

> Arguing that they do that by restating that they do that is begging the question. You ought to know that as a teacher.

AGAIN, there's a difference here.

I believe in the laws of logic because I can observe and use them and they have never failed me. The moment they begin to fail me, I will stop using them.

YOU have just inserted an extra step without justifiable cause.

> So again I am going to ask where in what I have said to you, did I imply anything about metaphysical or epistemological solipsism?

You're being ultra-literal to the point of annoyance. I'm fairly certain you understand the point I'm making, but you're being dense as some kind of weird power-move.

I wasn't saying you were talking about solipsism. I was comparing your incessant reference to some sort of capital-T "Truth" to the impracticality of taking a stance of hard solipsism.

While I AM a hard solipsist, there is no value in injecting that into every discussion. As human's we HAVE to process things in the terms of what we can know to the best of our ability. I think we can agree that the only thing we can know with absolute certainty is "I exist." But that doesn't mean I have to reserve the same certainty for thing like "the rules of logic."

I am 99.99999999999999999999999999999% confident in the laws of logic. In practical terms, in reference to our discussion, that's what matters.

> I've asked questions about the preconditions you use to make sense of your reality.

I wouldn't call them preconditions necessarily, but I will engage in the spirit of your argument rather than being a pedantic, ultra-literalist annoyance.

The only thing I know is that "I exist." The preconditions I accept with 99.999999999999999% confidence (because I have observed them) are the reliability of the laws of logic, that others exist, and that we share a reality that operates with consistent rules.

> Nothing that I've said to you is dealing with the degrees of confidence one has in their beliefs.

Here's an example: "Last but not least, this assertion presupposes that the speaker knows the future will behave like the past, so it falls prey to the problem of induction."

I never said you were talking about degrees of confidence. I am making an observation about your requirements for degrees of confidence. ^ The above is something I know with 99.99999999999% certainty. Your inability to agree on that demonstrates an impossible standard for confidence.

> Propositions are inherently theory-laden, for example, your assertion here is only metaphysically viable and intelligible if we assume reality to be a certain way.

Yes, which I do, because it's consistent with the reality I've experienced, and from what I can tell, everyone else experiences.

> Notions like functioning, and practicality do not make sense absence the existence of some value system. A value system isn't intelligible unless we have access to knowledge concerning those values. The main branches of philosophy all presuppose one another. None of them make sense in an epistemological vacuum, you need context. You need a theory.

And again, I have a value system. If you bothered to ask about that rather than just spouting "YOU DON'T HAVE THIS, AND YOU BELIEVE THAT." then you would already know that.

My value system is inherently built into my neurobiology as a human being through evolution. This is a fantastic book that goes in depth into this if you care to learn more.

But in short, I value being alive, being happy, propagating my species, and helping others to be happy. I value these things because that's how we evolved. If humans didn't value these things, we wouldn't have survived.

Because of those values, I value knowing the truth as it helps me with those goals.

> I am arguing holistically. I am saying, you do not believe in God, and thus the theory that provides the context for your presuppositions does not involve God, but some other thing that you're either aware of or unaware of.

Here is the most important part of this argument. I want you to justify you assertion that something other than what I've already said is required to justify my use of logic.

> If your unaware of it, it's game over, because all things will be ultimately known in virtue of your lack of knowledge, which is an absurd conclusion.

You keep saying this, but it's a completely unintelligible concept.

At best, it's a confused and unjustified assertion. At worst, it's an intentionally deceptive word-salad.

> If I said I know A because of B and B because of C and C because of I don't know, then I don't know B, and I don't know A.

And now we're back to that ludicrously impractical standard for knowledge. (This time, with a side of hypocrisy)

I don't need to know how to build a car in order to drive it and know that it works. I just need to test it, I just need to drive it. Likewise, I don't need to know WHY logic works to use it. I can test it, I can use it, and until it fails me, I can be practically confident that it works.

Now let's move on to the hypocrisy. Given your A => B => C argument, we'll say your C is God. Is that fair? So how do you know C? (And try not to use the Tu Quoque fallacy.)

> God is only the conclusion of circular arguments, because he is ultimate.

I've already addressed this, and you failed to respond in kind. So I'll try again.

"Logic is only the conclusion of circular arguments, because logic is ultimate."

^ This is the second most important piece I'd like you to respond to.

> If that which has the highest ontological status is impersonal, then it is by definition irrational.

Another meaningless word salad.

> So you're arguing that from impersonal stuff moving around we get law-like operations that will function in the future like they did in the past. This however is a leap in logic I am not going to allow you to make, because I am trying to discuss ultimate context, not normative claims that will be interpreted by that ultimate context.

And again, I could reverse this on you with the same ridiculous rhetoric, but replace "God" with "Logic."

> No they aren't. Are you of the opinion that all knowledge is derived through empirical observation?

To some degree, yes.

Obviously, as a philosopher, I will have to clarify.

We can come to philosophical (lower-case k) "knowledge" through syllogistic arguments, but these syllogistic arguments ultimately have an empirical foundation. We could not construct logical arguments without having first observed and understood the nature of reality (laws of logic.)

> I would say that is what makes it a transcendental. A precondition for other states of affairs.

Okay, sure. I feel like you're agreeing with me now.

> You think I made up Orthodox theology? I am not 2000 years old my man. It discovered it in history, and in my experience.

And here you go being ultra-literal just to condescend again. You know that's not what I was saying. Stop being disingenuous.

If "Jokes on you, I didn't make it up. Someone else did." is your argument, you're getting worse at this. Fortunately, I know you're not that stupid.

> You cannot empirically demonstrate a universal claim my man.

I didn't say you had to. I just want you to justify it.

> The law of identity says for any X, X is X. It uses a universal quantifier. If you're going to demonstrate logic through circularity, like Aristotle, then it's perfectly valid for me to demonstrate the ultimate ground of logic through circularity.

No. It isn't. Because we can test this law and confirm it's reliability.

No one with half a brain is saying this is some grand, universal, objective truth. Logic isn't a dogma. It's a tool. A reliable tool, that we will continue to use as long as it's reliable, and throw it out if we discover it is not.

> You're again using that term practical. That's a term that only make sense relative to some end.

An end which I have already discussed.

> How do you know that this end is objectively better than another, so that you can deem it truly practical?

I don't. I don't believe there's any way to come to some truly, universally objective evaluation. That is why we must discuss these things. It's the same with morality. I have no reason to believe there is some universal dictum for ethics. We must communicate with one another, come to terms on a common goal, and then we can "objectively evaluate" certain actions' contribution toward that goal.

I understand this idea makes theists uncomfortable. I too think it would be easier if there were some objective truth about morality that we could discover. But until we can actually demonstrate that, there's no reason to believe it, and just accepting rules that some goat farmer made up several millennia ago is harmful. I get it. Accepting that there are no right answers is a hard pill to swallow. But it's a "fact" of reality you need to come to terms with.

I wish I had an endless supply of food and water so I could end world hunger. But I don't, and pretending I do is harmful. So I accept reality.

> As I pointed out earlier that would logically entail that all propositions that you make henceforth are ultimately in virtue of your ignorance, and the epistemic chain of justification for all of your claims breaks down. You've been reduce to absurdity my friend, due to you denial of the Triune God as that which is ultimate.

There you go again, saying things without justification. Meanwhile admitting to your own use of the reductio ad absurdum fallacy.

> How do we explain that we all seem to know what is right and wrong?

We are all descended from ancestors who lived in small groups. Cooperation and empathy were crucial adaptations for living in small groups. Typical people (that is, people with empathy) are capable of recognising the emotions of others, and instinctively respond to those emotions. Morality is something built on top of this, and is informed by what we know about human behaviour and human experience. And, there's a lot we don't agree on, but the basics (things like killing and stealing) people do.

Check out: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_morality

> Why do we all look for and want meaning if this is a meaningless world?

This is a great question, one that I've not encountered before. I don't think the world is meaningless at all. If you believe that the only meaning possible comes from a deity, then certainly, I can understand why you might think that a godless world would be meaningless. But, we're intelligent beings capable of making value judgements. We are more than capable of assigning our own meaning to things.

I would argue that for our species, our sense of self-worth is tied to our understanding of our purpose. As social beings, we have evolved to be happy when we belong to a group, fulfilling some role that is important or unique. Life can be tough, but it's made better when we know that our struggle has some compensating benefit - being a parent can be really challenging, but people still do the 2am feedings because they know that there is a child that is relying on them. I'm not happy unless I accomplish something, or solve a problem, or make someone's life just a little bit better. If we did not derive meaning out of raising children or being cooperative and social with other members of our species, it would likely be that we would not have survived this long.

> How can we know what is true? If our brains have evolved to ensure our survival and not necessarily tell us what is true... how can we be sure of anything?

We test things. We build models of reality in our heads, and we run simulations to predict the outcomes of our actions. If we find that the outcomes closely match what we predict, we can be confident that they are correct insofar as they produce accurate predictions: someone once said that all models are wrong, but some are useful..

So, we care less about ultimate truth, and are more interested in relative truth. What do I mean by this? Well, imagine for a moment that this reality is just a computer simulation, one so good that we don't know it's a simulation. The best we could hope to do in such a case is to understand the rules of this simulated reality. The rules might not be the ultimate rules of the reality in which the simulation runs (say, the laws of physics governing the computer that's running the simulation.)

I don't have absolute certainty in most things. At best, I have varying degrees of confidence, based on justification. For the things of which I'm very certain, I can point to the reasons why I think what I think and I can explain why those reasons are sufficient - invariably, this has to do with things like empiricism.

> How do you as an atheist defend the fine-tuning argument? The chances of a world existing with life, even existing at all, is incredibly low. Did we really just get extremely lucky?

Incredibly low, perhaps. But consider the number of habitable planets in our own galaxy, and the number of galaxies in our observable universe. The statistics of large numbers allows for the rare to become common.

It's also worth pointing out that if the gravity of Earth was a bit stronger or the Earth was a bit closer or a bit farther away from the Sun, perhaps a different life would have evolved here, and that different life would be remarking how the Earth is perfectly suited to that life. This is exactly what Douglas Adams was talking about with the parable of the sentient puddle. We evolved to fit this environment - not the other way around. We look the way we do because nature has taken the "clay" and pressed it into a people-like mould, and a cheetah-like mould, and a sequoia-like mould, and so on.

> What do you think is the best argument against Christianity?

Probably an utter lack of any credible evidence for any of its supernatural claims.

Also too, when you learn how the bible came to be as we know it today, it becomes very difficult take the claim seriously that it is inspired by a deity. Karen Armstrong's book A History of God is an excellent read that shows how the character of Yahweh evolved over time, beginning as a provincial war god before being promoted by the Yahwist cult, supplanting other deities in the Canaanite pantheon, before large chunks of what would eventually become the Old Testament, were re-written as though Yahweh had always been the one true god - it really strains credulity. You can see a video summary of the key parts of the book here.

You have quite a few misconceptions about evolution. I am a former creationist myself, and everything finally "clicked" for me reading Jerry Coyne's book "Why Evolution is True". If you are serious about your questions, I'd encourage you to read it.

My answers to your questions:

1. Evolution doesn't have a "goal" in mind. Changes happen naturally (mutations), but they will only stick around in a population if they are adaptive in some way (better for the creature). It's pretty cool that evolution eventually produced us, but this was not inevitable in any way, nor an "end goal" of evolution.
   
   
2. Not sure if you are looking for a literal crocoduck or something, but we have tons of transitional fossils (in a way, all fossils are transitional). Coyne's book talks quite a bit about evidence of whale evolution, where transitional fossils are very clear.
   
   
3. Physics is descriptive, not prescriptive. It is simply a description of how things work, it's not a set of rules imposed from someone else that matter has to obey/follow. So it didn't have to "be in place" before anything.
   
   
4. In our view, Earth appears to be very well suited to support life (us, specifically). But this is actually backwards, we were shaped (by evolution) to be perfect for life on this earth. It's like a puddle saying "this is an interesting hole I find myself in, it fits me rather neatly, doesn't it?" (courtesy of Douglas Adams). Regarding life on other worlds, space is pretty big, so lots of people expect to someday find a planet somewhere else out there that could also support life. The fact that we don't yet have the technology to find them doesn't mean they aren't there.
   
   
5. If you want to be precise, the Big Bang was more like a very rapid expansion of stuff, but I don't have a problem describing it as an explosion, as long as you don't use that analogy to make other unwarranted assumptions.
   
   
6. Some other primates do have sharper teeth and claws. How a particular trait in a specific creature evolved is mostly speculation, but I could see situations where higher intelligence would be an evolutionary advantage over physical prowess.
   
   
7. I used to be a Christian. I am an atheist now because I examined my faith in great detail, and concluded that it didn't hold up to scrutiny. I am open-minded though, if we see evidence that suggests that God is real, I'd be willing to consider it.
   
   
8. To borrow from Matt Dillahunty: I want to believe as many true things, and as few false things, as possible. So the only thing that would make Christianity more attractive is if I had any reason to suspect it was actually true.

Hi r1mmer, welcome to the community!

It looks like you have gotten some pretty good responses here but let me try to put the answers more concisely:

The Bible fitting together: There are three main issues here.

-One, the argument is fundamentally flawed because anyone can add to a common theme in a semi-coherent way as long as he read the preceding books. Even if there were no contradictions, there doesn't need to be an external omniscient guiding hand for the next guy down the road to read the previous books and write a little more without contradicting them.

-Two, the current composition of the Bible are the accepted books, chosen by church elders out of many candidates. Of course they would exclude the books that don't fit. (I believe others have linked some sources for this.)

-Three, the contradictions are there if you take a deep breath and think critically about them. A good example to start with is the crucifixion and what it meant. In the first Gospel written (Mark) a distressed and confused Jesus cries out to God about being forsaken and dies. In the last Gospel written (John) a calm and collected Jesus commends his spirit to God and dies. The stories are different and the meanings are different. I would highly recommend reading this book for all the details.

On a side note here, if someone argues that the Bible is infallible, I like to use the contradictory numbers of horse stalls for Solomon's horses. It's a number and much harder to defeat with the typical tactics like reinterpreting meanings, although they certainly try (It clearly says stall, not the number of horses lol.) Here are a bunch more numerical contradictions.

Starting year for our calender: This one is pretty easy. Starting dates for calendars all over the world throughout time are retroactively applied to an important event in that various culture at that time. Winning a great battle, forming a nation, the fictional birth date of a deity are all starting points that have been used after the fact. Just because Jesus was important to a culture 500 years after he supposedly lived doesn't mean anything spectacular actually happened at the starting date of the calendar they invent. That needs to be verified using other evidence. Here is the wiki link.

Morality is arbitrary: These are always the funniest arguments from Christians because when it comes down to it, everyone forms moral beliefs the same way regardless of specific religion or lack thereof. It comes down to cultural expectations and personal taste. The fundamental basis of morality is rooted deep in our psychology in universal, innate, evolutionarily derived psychological systems. Each of us may innately favor one more than another, like respect for authority over empathy, or even lack some of them altogether in rare cases. Our culture fills in the specifics over these systems and there you go. The question you should be asking your Christian friends is why they are attracted to the themes of love and forgiveness in their faith. If you didn't value those things to begin with, you wouldn't be drawn in. And why can there be so many different takes on morality from the same book? If you have little empathy and a lot of respect for authority, slaying the infidel is easy, but much harder to do if you have much more empathy than respect for authority. Jihad being a actual religious fight or an internal struggle are radically different interpretations derived from the same book (sorry, drifted into Islam for the example there) and the difference is in the person.

The Exile, North/South kingdom split, hundreds of places, events, kings, emperors, etc, etc,.... This is why, though they don't treat it as automatically true, archaeologists and historians still use the Bible as reference material for their work. It's a good indication of culture, and a useful tool to corroborate findings in various areas. Obviously things like the great census don't appear to have occurred, and tales of things like David's kingdom are hugely overstated, but there is much truth there. It just can't be read unquestioningly like a textbook.

I suggest you look at something like The Bible Unearthed (can find free PDFs of it online) for a more balanced view than your site which appears to be about as trustworthy as answersingenesis.org

Each culture put their own touch on it.

For example, the Hindus came from Vedas, Muslims were Arabic pagans, etc.

What they did is took new ideas, and they succeeded by incorporating the old ideas. Which is to be expected. Nobody is going to simply give up their entire heritage.

Point is, for all their outwardly difference, many scholars still recognize a common theme, they are all defining ultimate reality for their culture. They all hold it is ineffable, beyond description, but then attempt to describe it anyways.

I highly suggest A History of God, the book I linked to if you're serious about knowing what many educated people know about theology. I know Sean Carroll considers the author, Karen Armstrong, a respected friend.

"The Traditionalist School was founded in its current form by the French metaphysician Rene Guenon, although its precepts are considered to be timeless and to be found in all authentic traditions. It is also known as Perennialism, the Perennial Philosophy, or Sophia Perennis, and as a philosophy it is known by Aristasians as Essentialism. The term Philosophia Perennis goes back to the Renaissance, while the Hindu expression Sanatana Dharma - Eternal Doctrine - has precisely the same signification."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traditionalist_School
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perennial_philosophy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absolute_%28philosophy%29

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conceptions_of_God

>Conceptions of God in monotheist, pantheist, and panentheist religions – or of the supreme deity in henotheistic religions – can extend to various levels of abstraction:
>
>1. as a powerful, human-like, supernatural being, or as the deification of an esoteric, mystical or philosophical entity or category;
>
>2. as the "Ultimate", the summum bonum, the "Absolute Infinite", the "Transcendent", or Existence or Being itself;
>
>3. as the ground of being, the monistic substrate, that which we cannot understand; and so on.

Obviously, I'm advocating that 2 and 3 are what many of the religions were stressing. I think conception 1 is what many people think, but those with some theology know it's more about 2 and 3.

I know that I always thought it more like 1, which is why I was an atheist. Turns out, there is more to it than what I naively assumed.

edit: added link to Armstrong's book

The best introductory book on evolution I've read (and I've read quite a few) is "Why Evolution Is True" by Jerry Coyne. However, it's directly challenging to believers, so it seems unlikely that she'd be willing to read it.

I don't know of a good video overview, but this is an entertaining and accessible example of evolution in action: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0jFGNQScRNY. Things like that can crack the door open a bit.

Overall, though, if your girlfriend is a "true believer of the Bible" you should expect that that's what she's going to remain. There's a chance she'll change, or that you'll be able to show her things she hasn't considered before and she'll be open-minded enough to accept that information and think about it, but you shouldn't count on it--and you'll likely create a lot of friction if you try.

So the question you might want to ask yourself is whether or not you can live with her beliefs.

Remsburg, that's funny. Hey, at least you've read up the topic, that's better than most do. Granted, you've constructed a straw-man, as if any credible scholars accept the gospel narratives as truth. But that's awesome, there's hope for you yet.

Regardless of your ideological stance I do recommend this book:
http://www.amazon.com/The-New-Testament-Historical-Introduction/dp/0199757534

And if you don't like it you can always put it in your diaper.

Sorry, I'm being way too wordy here, and I'll try to keep future responses shorted. I divided the answers into "Biblical accuracy" and "Morality" for the sake of clarity. Thanks for the considered responses and the patience to read it.

>My Reasons to Believe in Christianity: As I mentioned before, this is not the time for me to respond to your comments regarding my reasons to believe (although I would really love to another time) lets stay focused.

I should have earlier said something which is a standard caveat in theistic debates:

I care whether my beliefs are true. I accept that not everything I believe is true, and want to change accordingly. I do not wish to compromise knowledge of truth with that which is convenient, easy, or even may lead to otherwise positive outcomes. If any argument rests on favoring such factors over truth, it's not one I can accept.

In addition while I'm willing to not question further your reasons for believing that means any point you make which rests on assuming your belief, is essentially an empty noise, because I'm still ignorant as to why I should consider it true. I can understand your position, but without that knowledge I can't agree with it.

>If that were true that the core beliefs changed sure I would agree, I'll have to ask you for a source as well on this these claims

Sure, here's the wiki on Yahweh which, of course you shouldn't just assume true, but contains the relevant links for each statement, as well as books by Karen Armstrong, Mark Smith and others. Studying the history of the Hebrews show people who integrated stories from different cultures they assimilated with, ideas of gods changed over time, bits of which were then taken by later groups to be the only unchanging truth, even when we know that isn't the case.

That's the reason the God of the Old Testament is obsessed only with one tribe, fails in his goals repeatedly and has limited powers, why the earlier versions of the texts don't mention a Christian Satan or hell, and talks about not worshipping the lesser gods. Because while it was rewritten to conform to later beliefs, it was born from a polytheistic tradition.

>Again if you can prove significant changes to the texts of the Bible only then you would have a case here, if you cannot, identifying how it spread does not seem to have any relevance.

The story of casting the first stone isn't found in any earlier copies of the Bible, nor is handling snakes, as I said. Much of Mark's story of Jesus' death, and most of Paul's letters, were written by later scribes. The delineation of the trinity only shows up in one passage, and was discovered during the time of Erasmus, an admitted forger who said scripture and documentation should be based on providing 'medicine' for the people rather than truth, and who was called out as a fraud by fellow Christian historians of the time. It probably wasn't Erasmus himself who came up with it, but rather the faction of theologians pushing the trinity. Earlier scholars such as Origen mention nothing about it, even when discussing the concept. And then of course there's the King James Bible, a book written with flawed methods based on inaccurate sources with a political agenda in mind.

Also NaphtaliC is bang on. It's simply absurd to call any book translated between two languages 99.5% accurate that's longer than two pages. For several languages across many centuries? It's impossible and easily proven untrue by anyone whose read the earlier versions. If I pick up two copies of the Bible in the store today by different publishers, they aren't 99.5% accurate with each other, let alone ones from thousands of years ago in different languages.

>however the point remains that they are extremely accurate given the time span of its existence and given the comparison to the accuracy/# of copies of other ancient texts we have.

Right, hopefully you can step back for a moment before we get into details, and think about this as if the Bible weren't a book you believed in, and were trying to analyze objectively.

We have no originals, or copies of them. What originals did exist came only after decades of oral transmissions. Which means we could have 5 billion copies of first editions, and they would be reliable only as to their content, not as to reality.

This whole thing about 'given the time span' and 'in comparison' is completely irrelevant to the question. In a court you can't say "Well it's less hearsay than that hearsay" to make it reliable.

It is used because historians do often have to work with unreliable materials, and that's fine. But when we question the Bible more than other ancient works, it's not because there's a double-standard, it's because historians admit those other works are also not reliable, we just work with the best we have.

In addition the textual accuracy compared to other books ignores two key points:

1. We can prove many parts of it aren't true. There are factual claims as to events and geographic details which are wrong, because they weren't written by people who were there. Textual accuracy is an indirect way of trying to prove what factual accuracy directly disproves.
   
   
2. The nature of the writings impact reliability. Paul was a self-confessed lunatic and murderer who had visions and claimed to bring people back from the dead himself. The gospels of John and Matthew were a few among many competing political/religious factions of Christianity trying to define the growing religion. For any other religion, you'd agree it's obvious such sources can't be treated as reliable without independent confirmation. Yet for all the contemporary historians examining Judea in that time, there is no record of Jesus. Something which is plausible if he was a very minor figure, but not with the accounts of mass miracles and turnouts and political turmoil that the gospels claim of him.
   
   Every argument you've made for the Bible's accuracy better fits the Quran and the Book of Mormon. They were better recorded sooner in time from known sources. But they also aren't true.
   
   >Homer's Illiad is commonly cited as the next runner up in terms of this criteria and frankly does not hold up quite as well as the Bible did.
   
   Thanks for proving my point. Homer's Illiad isn't true. It's a story of gods, possibly inspired by real events, that was written after oral transmission. So even if we had a first edition signed by the author, 100% word accurate with our copies today, no one would pretend this made it accurate history, unless they were a Greek worshipper looking for justifications for belief, rather than a historian.
   
   >http://carm.org/is-the-bible-reliable
   
   Yeah, I knew Carm would be cited because they're the main source for this stuff. Carm is unapologetic about putting the Bible first, and facts seconds as needed to get people to believe the Bible. Their numbers have been examined, and it's all based on arbitrary standards as needed to manufacture impressive statistics. That there were thousands of references to Christianity in the mid-1st century proves Christianity existed, it's not at all the same as proving the stories from the time were accurate, or that those stories match the accounts we have now, except where we have surviving fragments from that time, of which we have very few.
   

Not the complete concept of the Christian god can be scientifically tested, but many of his attributes. I've already covered some in this post: http://www.reddit.com/r/DebateAnAtheist/comments/1j2z9t/to_all_modern_or_new_atheists_on_this_sub_you/cbaoehv. Most important and well established is the prove that prayer has absolutely no effect on the real world. Another one would be that the notion of omnipotence - omniscience - omnipresence - omnibenevolence is logically self-contradicting and inconsistent with god's supposed behavior. If your concept of god stands and falls with these attributes, then yes, there's almost no chance your god can exist. You can of course always change your notion of god and come up with a concept that is harder to disprove. Which is by the way exactly what religions have constantly been doing during that past 4,000 years. I'd recommend http://www.amazon.com/dp/0345384563

> I don't disagree with it, but that's just the thing; the Bible is, as far as now, historically accurate in the things we have evidence for

Go spend a few weeks reading archeology and textual criticism, and then try to tell me that with a straight face again.

I recommend starting here. Then you will know enough about the state of the field to go hunt down primary sources from the past 10 years, and see how his thesis has become the mainstream consensus.

Then maybe read a book on the formation of some doctrine, like the doctrine of hell. Hell is a late development in Judaism, and was shamelessly stolen from surrounding cultures, just like most all the rest of the biblical stories and ideas.

> One can't prove that there is or isn't a god, and that seems like a stalemate.

I can't prove there isn't a deity, but I can give strong evidence that irregardless of whether he exists, the bible is a very flawed human creation and all supposed revelation is dubious at best.

I was a fundamentalist a bit over a year ago. Then I actually read a lot of archeology, biblical textual criticism, psychology, neuroscience, cognitive science of religion, as well as the best books on Christian evidence like N.T. Wright's "Resurrection of the Son of God."

I'm sad to say that the case for naturalism of religion is much much stronger then any of the mutually incompatible claims religionists make by themselves. This is the main reason I am no longer a Christain.

If you want to look into the evidence against what you believe and want a good introductory book, I'd recommend this one. It covers a lot of ground, and then you can go look at any of the sections that interest you in more detail.

FYI, just for future reference. It's "premise", not premiss. And precedent, not president. Consistency, not constancy. I'm not trying to make anything of it, I just proofread by instinct, and I can't use a red marker on here.

> unwritten premiss to your points seem to be that precise word for word constancy needs to be present for these texts to be constant with eye wittiness testimony

I don't think anybody's claiming that John pretends to be an eye witness to the tomb opening; after all, he said only one woman was there, so clearly he wasn't there himself. Obviously there's a lot of hearsay in the gospels.

But the events of easter morning, and my other favorite example, Jesus's last words before dying, are really really absolutely crucial. These are the fundamental parts of the whole new testament, and the whole christian faith.

The fact that all of the gospel writers get these wrong, is actually kind of a big deal. Read some more Bart Ehrman. This is actually the main topic of Jesus, Interrupted. Regardless of the fact that Jesus seems to have different personality traits in the different gospels,

How are we supposed to treat this book as the word of god, when it's clearly the fallible work of men who didn't even bother to get their story straight, and who can't remember the simple details of the most important events of their lives?

Since you want a new thread for each book I'll mention this in a separate comment. The bible Unearthed is not a book about atheism, but rather a book about archaeology. It's dry reading at times but if you want to have a much better picture of the history and historicity of the old testament there isn't a better resource. It goes into dating methods based on historical evidence, what evidence exists to confirm biblical characters and what evidence should exist but is conspicuously absent (despite thorough searching). It's a great academic summary that is maybe a bit dated but still largely accurate (as far as I know anyways).

There have been purported holy books written since probably ten minutes after writing was invented for the first time.

We know that many of the myths in the bible were copied from earlier myths. We know that many of the parts of the bible are the same story rewritten by different people.

There are many excellent sources of study in how the bible came about. You may be interested in beginning with something like Karen Armstrong or Google the various wonderful books on the subject.

The current original version of the bible, not accounting for various translations and changes in interpretation and by subsequent councils and dictatoral decree for various political reasons, was crafted during the Council of Nicaea in 325 AD where various decisions were made by voting about what content to put in, ignore, avoid, etc.

>A lot of people in this thread split hairs in terms of burden of proof

Because the burden of proof is critically important to the conversation and something you don't seem to be very cognizant of. I'd suggest reading either Smith's Why Atheism or Atheism: The Case Against God to understand why the burden of proof is so essentially integral to the case of atheism as more rational than theism. You could learn a lot by reading some articles on the subject as well, if you haven't already.

>all those arguments are moot for the simple fact that its not possible to know either way.

Alright. You're misunderstanding atheism/theism. "Theism," semantically, means a "belief in God," yes? Belief and knowledge or distinctly different. Nobody is claiming to know God doesn't exist as an atheist categorically. God, as a concept, is non-falsifiable. Further, God is so subjectively and arbitrarily defined that it is nearly impossible to know if we're even talking about the same concept.

However, what you can do is falsify a particular notion of God, in which case it is possible to know and reasonable to believe a particular notion or definition of God can not exist. For example, the philophical "God of the philosophers" which is touted as all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-loving by definition is logically inconsistent.

Just as I know a married bachelor does not exist, I know a certain type of God does not exist because the mere concept is logically incoherent and intrinsically meaningless. I can expound upon my argument for these certain types of Gods if you so desire.

Prima facie it sounds like you merely do not understand the definitions of atheism, agnosticism, burden of proof, and knowledge to a degree where you can be justified in making the claim you make in your title. While I feel very confident in arguing that you are wrong, I think you would greatly benefit by researching all of these topics. Here is a great video to get you started. Here is a good article on the burden of proof and how it is incredibly important to understand. If you really want to understand the topic, read either (preferably the first) of the books I highlighted earlier. Here and here are articles contrasting atheism and agnosticism.

> Tradition and religion are separate for me from the idea of god. An argument you make to me against one will not affect my belief in the other. I am actively religious and regularly pray to a personal god that I don't believe in. This is because my faith has 3000 years of archeologically confirmed history, and at least 1000 more of oral tradition.

Ehhh... no.

Much of the history in the hexateuch has been disproved. Evolution disproves the sudden creation account in Genesis 1 and 2, geology disproves the global flood account in Genesis 7. Egyptology and archaeology have disproven the account of the Jewish captivity. A lack of evidence for Moses casts serious doubt on his existence. A glaring lack of evidence that 2 million people wandered the desert for 40 years disproves the exodus. The implication of doubting the Jewish captivity and subsequent exodus implies that the giving of the Law never happened. Evidence that Jericho was unoccupied during the alleged time of Joshua means that the fantastic story of marching around the city until the walls fell was completely false.

I highly recommend that you watch this documentary, The Bible Unearthed. It's based on a book by archaeologists Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman. Dr. Finkelstein is the Jacob M. Alkow Professor of the Archaeology of Israel in the Bronze Age and Iron Ages at Tel Aviv University and is also the co-director of excavations at Megiddo in northern Israel.

I also recommend that you read A History of God by Karen Armstrong. Belief in the Jewish god did not arise as a monotheistic religion, but started from the pantheistic religions of the Canaanites. Also, we know that the Pentateuch was heavily edited through the centuries, and we've identified at least four different editors/authors. That's troubling, if you believe the text to be "divinely inspired".

Also, if you want a quick video overview of everything I'm saying, I suggest you watch A History of God by user Evid3nc3

Also if you're interested in a reference that solely focuses on the topic from a philosophy of religion angle, J. L. Mackie's The Miracle of Thesim is a fairly solid of the arguments with some comment on their modern formulations. Mackie lived long enough to respond to Plantinga, but not WLC.

Why Evolution is True

That book talks about all the things Kiwi mentions, and has a list of sources.

It's a good read too.

Edit: if you don't want to waste time and money reading a whole book, here's an article by the author summarizing his book

Forbes -Why Evolution is True

Who Wrote the New Testament and The New Testament a Historical Introduction are both good places to start. The latter is by Bart Ehrman, who Bikewer mentioned.

For the Old Testament there's The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts

Will she read? If so: http://www.amazon.com/Why-Evolution-True-Jerry-Coyne/dp/0143116649/ref=tmm_pap_title_0