This thread is for comments on the Formal Debate: Can Christianity Be Rationally Defended?.

You wait years for a formal debate then...

First blood to Will. http://www.rationalskepticism.org/forma ... 40928.html

If it can be called blood. I look forward to the quantum wibble later.

BTW, I strongly advise the participants not to even read this thread for the duration of the debate. It gets distracting and can cause confusion, as one of my opponents found out when he started injecting the objections to his points made by others in a peanut gallery thread for our debate. It's hard not to look, but it's for the best.

Very much looking forward to this. I quite like the contributions of both Will and Byron.

I don't think will's off to a very good start by alluding to a deistic, or fine-tuning argument for a probable god. We'll see how this goes, but any argument proceeding from the notion that god is "highly probable" seems built on sand to me. But I'll be interested to see how he takes his argument - I'll be impressed if the only glaring flaw is the assumption of god's existence, because I think even assuming a deistic god doesn't allow a rational defence of Christianity.

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Or, to be more precise,

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THWOTH wrote:First blood to Will

-iamlanecraig.

Much like a friend who makes a promise and you have no direct evidence of whether or not he or she will keep the promise, faith in the Biblical understanding and usage is defined in a similar manner. It is an assurance.

Bit of a skewed analogy here. You have evidence of your friends existence and hopefully of prior isntances of him keeping a promise.
You have no evidence for the existence of a God or any of the miraculous events described in the bible.

By showing the high probability of an existence of a "god" through examples of quantum mechanics, and cosmology, laws of order and chaos, we can establish a foundation for deism.

As Dillahunty said, if you have no precedence or evidence for X, you cannot determine how likely X is, especially not when X is so vague a concept as God(s).

By showing the historicity of the resurrection of Jesus we can close the gap onto Christianity.

The historicity of Jesus, much less his resurrection is not established and I don't think Will be able to make a convincing argument for the latter. But we'll see.

By showing the reliability of the Bible we can be reassured about the contents of the book.

This should be easy for Byron to deal with.

Two new formal debates in such a short span of time? What happened to this forum!

Will wrote:By showing the high probability of an existence of a "god" through examples of quantum mechanics, and cosmology, laws of order and chaos, we can establish a foundation for deism.

That'll be interesting..

campermon wrote:

Will wrote:By showing the high probability of an existence of a "god" through examples of quantum mechanics, and cosmology, laws of order and chaos, we can establish a foundation for deism.

That'll be interesting..

I assume Will made the untintentional mistake of typing deism, because last I checked Christianity is theistic, not deistic.

Off we go again. Nothing new. Plenty old.

campermon wrote:
That'll be interesting..

Indeed, if wrong, and a little clichéd. The only foundation that can be thus built is a foundation for a cause (and a weak foundation at that), not a causal agent. Still, it'll be fun to see the attempt, not least in light of Will's journey since joining us...

I doubt Will actually believes the entirety of what he is arguing for here. None the less, it should be interesting.

Personally i hope he spends the majority of his time on points 3 and 4. The statistical analysis of miracles is a waste of time, same with quantum woo. What would be interesting is seeing him defend the idea that Jesus rising from the dead makes Christianity more plausible. Do we extend this logic to all situations? "I thought the democratic party had some good policies, but those republican senators can rise from the dead! That's got my vote!