Official debate with local pastor.

[Abracadabra]

It would really help me out if you guys could give me some advice or a few spears to throw at him. haha

Ok, if you're going to be debating the biblical fables specifically I can give you some ammunition.

My first advice would be to steer clear of any arguments of whether or not a 'God concept' could possibly exist. All those arguments do is distract from the real issue which should be the fables themselves.

So moving on to the fables,...

Begin at the beginning. Don't allow the preacher to begin with "Christ", or an assumption of the existence of Satan, or the assumption of "original sin" or anything like that.

Force him to start the debate at the beginning of the fables, and work through them in that order.

What's the foundation of the religion? The foundation is the supposed 'Fall from Grace'. So that's the place to begin.

Should we believe the tale of the "fall from grace"?

That's the first question you'd want to debate.

Well, what does that tale claim? It claims that God told Adam and Even not to eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

Well, the first oxymoron there is that if Adam and Eve didn't already know the difference between good and evil, how could they know that to disobey God would be considered to be 'evil'?

Planting a tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the midst of a garden that contains two individuals who do not already know the difference and asking them not to eat from it would be a really stupid thing for a God to do in the first place.

Moreover, if Adam and Evil did not already possess the knowledge of good and evil prior to eating this fruit then they could have only done this in a state of pure innocence, and not out of a desire to choose 'evil' over 'goodness' (a concept that they supposedly couldn't even yet understand)

So the whole tale starts out with an oxymoron.

So what happens next? An evil serpent comes along and suggests to these innocent kids that it's ok to eat the fruit from this tree after all. So innocence prevails and the curious kids decided to find out for themselves because they know have conflicting information.

So they eat the fruit and suddenly realize that they are naked which is 'evil' and they grab fig leaves to cover their nakedness. The irony here is that if being naked was evil then they had clearly been doing something evil all along and didn't even know it. (but that's a trial detail, don't get hung up on that)

Here's the real meat,...

What does this supposedly all-wise God then do to solve this problem?

Well, he turns to the serpent and curses the serpent as follows:

Gen 3:14 And the LORD God said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life

First, did this supposedly all-wise solution solve the problem?

Well, no it didn't. In fact, according to Christianity this evil demon is still running around beguiling people to this very day.

So not only was this solution to the problem violent and stupid, but it didn't even solve the problem. This God failed to solve his problem by making this serpent crawl on his belly and eat dust.

Then God turns to the woman and curses her with a violent punishment:

Gen 3:16 Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.

So here God curses the women with greatly multiples sorrow in conception and childbirth, and gives a green-light for Adam to become a male-chauvinistic pig who rules over his wife.

A very violent and crude (even cruel) curse, and again. Did this solve the problem?

Well, clearly it didn't solve anything. Supposedly this curse upon Eve applies to all women, not just Eve. And evidently it has absolutely no effect at all, because according to these fables all humans continued to sin constantly after this including the women.

So once again, this God's violent curses and punishments didn't solve anything. So once again this God failed to solve the problem at hand.

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Personally I'm done right there. The whole rest of the religion is based upon these absurdly idiotic tales of a "Fall from Grace" where a supposedly all-wise God delves out outrageously idiotic punishments that don't even begin to solve the problems at hand.

So what's the point in even going any further. The foundational story is already utterly absurd and does not portray a truly all-wise God. All these amount to are stories of a truly stupid God who thinks that cursing people with mean and cruel punishments could be a viable solution.

So I'm don't already. It's futile to even bother considering any more of these utterly absurd stories.

~~~~~

But just in case, the preacher isn't convinced let's fast forward to the Great Flood.

Since God's original handling of the problem of sin failed, every thought of every human became evil to where it was an utterly hopeless situation.

One question there would be to ask how a supposedly all-wise God could let things get so far out of control in the first place? Why didn't he jump in earlier and nip this in the bud?

Secondly, how does he handle this out-of-control situation?

Well according to these fables God selects a few sinners to save (remember all men are sinners so Noah and his family must necessarily be sinners). He has them build a boat to save the animal kingdom from a great flood, and he destroys the rest of mankind with a flood.

That's how this unchanging God deals with sinners. (remember this God must have an unchanging character if he is to be dependable and trustworthy, so God cannot change in character)

Question? Did this crude and violent solution solve the problem? No it did not. Clearly sin continued to be a major problem even after the flood.

So once again, this supposedly all-wise God failed to come up with a solution that solved anything.

Where do we go from here? Well, let's finally jump into the New Testament and address Christianity specifically.

Supposedly mankind was still sinning out of control. So God tries a totally new approach. He supposedly sends his only begotten son born of a sinner-woman via her cursed sorrowful childbirth. (Mary had to be a sinner, because all have sinned without exception)

So Jesus was born of a sinner through cursed sorrowful childbirth.

What does Jesus do? Well, he renouncing the judging of others (which the previous God of Abraham had commanded people do to). After all how could people stone sinners to death if they didn't first judge them to be sinners?

So Jesus rejects the idea of judging others, and he also renouncing the stoning of sinners by sinners (i.e. by any human being because all men and women are sinners)

What else does Jesus do? He renouncing the seeking of revenge. The God of Abraham taught people to seek revenge as in an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. But Jesus renounced that and taught people to forgive others and to turn the other cheek instead of seeking revenge.

So here Jesus is renouncing everything that the God of Abraham stood for.

What do the rumors of the New Testament proclaim about Jesus? Well they proclaim that Jesus is the sacrificial lamb of God sent to pay for the sins of mankind and give them an opportunity for grace and everlasting life.

Is this supposed to be the same God who handles sin by drowning everyone out?

That's not a change in character? It sure is. It's a blatant about face. It's an extreme contradiction to the character of the God of Abraham.

Therefore it makes absolute no sense to give these rumors that Jesus was the "Christ" any consideration at all.

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I could go on and on and on, with endless absurdities and contradictions associated with these fables and superstitious rumors, but I'm tired of typing.

So good luck with your debate!

Hope you get some ideas from some of the absurdities that I've pointed to.