(November 17, 2015 at 11:47 pm)TruthisGod Wrote: The debate topic has to be "Does God exist", not "Does the God of the Bible exist". That is one of my main terms and it's non-negotiable.

We already know you are going to trot out William Lane Craig points, since there really is nobody better than he is.  You are free to do so, but be forewarned that most here are already well-prepared to address the fallacies in any of those points.

As for the God of the Bible-- it should be pretty telling that no serious debater will attempt to defend it, even a Christian one.  There's a reason why it's called a Hole-y book.  I wouldn't dream of making you stick to such an obvious collection of fairy tales.

Not all that "without god you can have no knowledge" bullshit, nooo!

Or the cosmological argument, or the fine tuning argument...

We've heard all this hundreds of times before. Logical arguments are no substitute for evidence and are only as true as their initial assumptions. If those assumptions are a gross oversimplification of reality, or worse just plain wrong, the conclusions are worthless. Especially if those arguments contain fallacies.

Let's hope he has something new and some actual evidence!

If the debate topic and subject is not clearly defined and understood by both parties beforehand, the debate is pointless. The god concept has a plethora of definitions across different cultures and time-periods, and thus I feel it is quite necessary to define "god" before the debate begins.

I agree. If it's incoherent word salad, it's kind of a waste of time even setting the debate up.

If people could just settle for, "An intelligent being that created this reality", it would be so much simpler. They always have to give it loads of extra attributes which they can't possibly know about, even if such a thing existed. They just make it harder for themselves.

(November 18, 2015 at 1:02 am)TruthisGod Wrote: I'm happy to define God, but I'm not sure if it should be done prior to the actual debate or if it should just be done during the opening statement. If I define God, you may disagree, and then I don't know where to go from there. I'm not redefining God, and I think we all know what God is, so this shouldn't be a hurdle that gets in the way.

Actually I have no idea a god is. So Christians say he is omnipotent, others say he isn't. Hence there are thousands of denominations with different doctrines. Then on top of that you have deists whom describe a totally different god with altogether different properties, then you have Hindus, again totally different properties for a god. So unfortunately sir, I have no idea what a god and I'm afraid you will have to define what is a god before we have cogent debate on if one exists or not.

I would love it if someone brought something new and interesting. I really would. If they could somehow establish the existence of some weird special being, that would be great! Very exciting. But even a coherent argument I haven't seen before would be better than nothing.

Personally I think the topic needs to be more narrow as others suggest or they need to agree to allow certain assumptions. TiS could say that God is the God of the bible and is both omnipotent and omniscient and LV can accept that definition and allow debate to commence. TiS, it really is important that you define your idea of God prior to the debate happening or allow for a more defined topic.

Does God exist could be a discussion on Odin. Does the God of the Bible exist is far more narrow. The topic can be "Does God exist" so long as both parties agree on the presupposed definition of the term.

He doesn't want to try and prove Yahweh exists because that's impossible even if you give someone a deistic god for free. Even WLC clearly knows that.

Have one! I don't care. Have fifty

Proving (or even vaguely demonstrating) just an intelligent creator is a much easier proposition. But I doubt anyone would settle for that, it has to have go-faster stripes...

(November 18, 2015 at 10:19 am)Kingpin Wrote: Personally I think the topic needs to be more narrow as others suggest or they need to agree to allow certain assumptions. TiS could say that God is the God of the bible and is both omnipotent and omniscient and LV can accept that definition and allow debate to commence. TiS, it really is important that you define your idea of God prior to the debate happening or allow for a more defined topic.

Does God exist could be a discussion on Odin. Does the God of the Bible exist is far more narrow. The topic can be "Does God exist" so long as both parties agree on the presupposed definition of the term.

That was actually what I proposed initially.

(November 18, 2015 at 11:06 am)Lemonvariable72 Wrote:

(November 18, 2015 at 10:19 am)Kingpin Wrote: Personally I think the topic needs to be more narrow as others suggest or they need to agree to allow certain assumptions.  TiS could say that God is the God of the bible and is both omnipotent and omniscient and LV can accept that definition and allow debate to commence.  TiS, it really is important that you define your idea of God prior to the debate happening or allow for a more defined topic.

Does God exist could be a discussion on Odin.  Does the God of the Bible exist is far more narrow.  The topic can be "Does God exist" so long as both parties agree on the presupposed definition of the term.

That was actually what I proposed initially.

Did you?  I missed that somewhere.  Yes I would agree that is a far better topic for debate.