As I'm currently working as a teacher, I have nothing to do for the next two months, and a lot of time to kill.  I am quite keen on debate.  In particular, I like debating about religion.  This is not so much because I am passionate about the topic, but because it is a unique topic to discuss.  It gets into the very nature of what truth is, what evidence is, what can justify a belief, and so on so forth.  Since topics on religion inevitably end in a debate about religion with people getting upset, I thought I'd make a topic with the expressed purpose of debating about religion.  

To hopefully make this a topic that is not full of bans, I'm going to lay down the following rules.

1.  By posting, you consent to have your beliefs challenged, and possibly insulted.  If you are sensitive about this sort of thing and do not enjoy having your beliefs challenged, then don't post. 

2.  While I am not here to offend or provoke, I will give my honest opinions on beliefs.  I imagine that my opinions may be offensive to some.  If you are going to be offending by me calling your ideas ridiculous, then you'd be better off not engaging me.  You may call my ideas ridiculous if you find them to be so.  I will not attack any person holding beliefs, only the beliefs themselves.

3.  If at any point, a conversation becomes unfruitful either participant may simply make a post saying ONLY "I don't feel this is productive" or something similar.  After this, the other participant will say NOTHING beyond possibly "It was nice taliking to you" or something along those lines.  They will not attempt to get a last point in, or try to goad anyone into posting further.   This way, nobody has to feel obligated to keep defending their points in fear of "losing" the internet debate.

Now, I'm willing to debate whatever facet of religion anyone would like to discuss.  I'll explain my beliefs so that people know how to respond.  If you try to mischaracterize my beliefs, I simply won't respond.

1.  I am an atheist.  By this I mean that I do not believe in any deities or supernatural things.  I don't think it is impossible for those things to exist, but that there is no compelling reason to believe that they do.

2.  I do reject the Judeo Christian god/Jesus/Yahweh/Jehovah, if you believe that the Bible to be a literal and accurate description of his attributes and character.  If you view the Bible as metaphorical, I find the existence of this particular god very very unlikely, but not impossible. I do however believe that belief in this god is irrational.

3.  I belive that the idea of a personal god, one that cares about humanity as a whole or individuals, is incredibly incredibly unlikely.  

4.  I find the idea of a deistic god (one who created the universe and does not interact with it) to be pointless.  If such a god existed, it would not have much bearing on how to live one's life.

5.  I find the idea of some force or being beyond current human comprehension, that some may call a god, to be actually somewhat likely.  As with the deistic god though, I don't think it's relevant.  So if you want to argue about a first cause, or something like that, then I will, but I don't think the conversation is useful.  

6.  I think that organized religion is a fundamentally bad thing.  

7.  I believe that nations should be entirely secular.  As in, religious ideas should not be a factor in laws and policies.  Conversely, the government should have no hand in discouraging religion.

So, if anyone wants to have a (hopefully) interesting and productive conversation with me or someone else, come on in and throw out an issue to be debated. 

1. I believe the Bible. I believe that the supernatural obviously exists and has obvious proof. What I believe about the Bible is that we must fully submit to God to be saved.

2. "If" there is a God, he is technically just as far away from us, whether personal or not. Since we are limited and God is infinite, we are infinitely away from fully understanding God in both circumstances, so the same amount of distance.

3. I find the idea of a deistic God (one who created the universe and does not interact with it) to be pointless. If such a god existed, it would not have much bearing on how to live one's life.

4. I believe that the first cause is valid.

5. I believe that organized religion is usually bad, but good things can come out of it sometimes.

6. I believe that nations should have freedom of religion, and that they should have laws that are closer to the Bible (Not 100% like the Bible).

I basically did what you did to show my stance. I'm okay with Muslims, other Christians, Atheists, etc. challenging my beliefs.

IOk.  Cool.  I didn't necessarily mean for people to respond to those six points.   If we discussed all of those that would be a bit of a convoluted conversation, so pick a topic to focus on.  For me, I think 1 and 6 to be most interesting.  I STRONGLY believe that the laws should not be based on the Bible.  I also would be interested in what you think the obvious proof of the Bible is.  Which of those would you rather discuss?

The first one.

Ok.  So for clarification, do you believe in the Bible literally?  Like Noah really had an arc and angels really came to earth, or do you believe in it on a metaphorical level?   What does saved mean to you, and what does it mean to be not saved?  

I just ask because Christians vary widely on whether or not Hell is literal, and whether or not the Bible iteslf should be taken literally.  After that, I'd be curious as to what you feel is obvious proof for the Bible.

Literal

Ok.  So what do you think the evidence for this is?

When I said "first" I was talking about the law-Bible thing. But either way it is fine.

Mostly the historical background behind Jesus and the New Testament. If it was all intended to be metaphor/non-literal, I don't think it would make sense to have Jesus, a person in the Bible that we know existed, to refer to people like Noah, Abraham, etc. as people who literally existed.

If you want to switch to the other topic we can do that.  Just let me know and I'll drop this line of conversation.

So, first off we do not know that Jesus existed. Most historians tend to agree that he did, but it is far from proven. It is difficult to prove that anyone existed back then, and even people like Socrates are not confirmed to have existed. Moreover, even if it was confirmed that Jesus existed, what he said is as far away from historically verified as you can get.

And what you said indicates the Jesus, if real, felt that the Bible was literally true. But, if a character within the story referred to other characters in the story as true, that does not make it so. Do you have evidence outside of the Bible that would confirm its accuracy? Because, saying the Bible is true because a character within it said it is true is kind of circular.

Well that did bring one idea to my mind: That from your perspective, the Old Testament authors could have believed differently than the New Testament authors. What I was saying is that, the book of Acts (for example) is written as if the events physically happened, which doesn't make sense if it was intened to be metophorical, which suggests that the intention of the Book of Acts' author was to record events (real or fake) in a way to make it sound like it actually happened rather than a meaning behind all of it that teaches a moral lesson or something in that regard.