Excerpts of War 43a

Just got done with one of the larger non-forum debate I've had so far. I was challenged privately on youtube to give "empirical evidence" for a divine creation or creator. This is very simple to do, but is so rarely understood or (as in this case) so rarely accepted. The debate went something like this and it is posted for all to read at the URLs in the post titled "Excerpts of War 43b".

After defining what empirical evidence was, to make sure he wasn't going to wiggle out of it, we began. The first evidence I listed which is scientifically verifiable (as far as science can verify anyhow) is that things exist without natural cause. Meaning no natural process or law is known that can create matter or information from nothing. Simple enough, but my debater seemed to think this wasn't empirical. He then decided that I was using a "god of the gaps" argument. If you don't know this is when a person holds a starting position on a topic as well as an ending, but then does not have a reason to make the jump from that starting position to their conclusion. An example would be, "I don't know where the universe came from so God must have done it." Yet this is not the argument I proposed, instead pointing to known natural laws and their shortcomings. Then reasoning that if natural processes are not up to the task their is logic in concluding that the super-natural is at hand. Looking to simply make a crack in his foundation to work with, smomething that might open the door to more than the natural world in our discussion.

This didn't seem to get through to him and he went on mocking and making comments about me deciding on God by way of "lack of knowledge". To which I remarked (over and over) about the nature of his belief and how it is no less filling in gaps than I. In fact, his is even more so than mine ever has been. He would mock my conclusion for not being scientific enough for him (without giving his reason for doing so), but would then state that he believed evolution even though science doesn't fully understand it. In essence he believe evolution was a guarantee even without empirical evidence or a complete knowledge on it. I believe the two faced nature of his argument reveals his distaste for God more than it does a rational belief in science.

And so on we went round after round, occasionally I would list other evidences that could be dealt with empirically or logically and he would mock them or ignore them. At points he would attempt a refutation, but they were not strong arguments as they were self-defeating either by way of logic or non-empirical hypotheses. (Remember that 'he' demanded we remain empirical.) The real dissapointment is that all the way through he made the same mistakes, logical fallacies and the like, while holding to his presupposed evolutionary stronghold. It never once let him consider that God could be creator. I did try to get him to talk about presuppositions (as it would have helped us get to the real point of the debate) but he never remarked on the proposal.

One good thing was that at the end I was told "now unless you have some great revelation please ...give it up" and I excitedly took that opportunity to reveal what has happened in this debate as well as offer up a very compact gospel message...step by step, referring to scriptures all the way. It is posted below along with the ULRs holding the conversation. Feel free to look them over if it is something you’d be interested in. If not that is fine as I'll be leaving them up for a long time anyway in case they are needed for proof of the actual conversation we held in the future.