A Civil Religious Debate

Actually, they don’t contradict themselves. Here are the two verses in question:

And throwing down the pieces of silver into the temple, he departed, and he went and hanged himself. (Matthew 27:5)

(Now this man acquired a field with the reward of his wickedness, and falling headlong he burst open in the middle and all his bowels gushed out.) (Acts 1:18)

They are simply told from two different perspectives. Judas was given the money, was he not? The priests refused to receive the money back. The money was still Judas’, so legally he bought the field. As far as the actual circumstances of death, the second account only omits the actual hanging. It’s possible (and even likely) that Judas didn’t quite get it right, and the rope broke (hence the fall).

There are no necessary contradictions there.

I believe in a Supernatural God. I believe that He loves us and wants to reach us to get us to heaven. My argument starts from a fundamental premise of existential uncertainty. For, given my premise, and assuming the best, I have shown that a God exists. I have shown that if you believe God doesn’t exist, then you are certain to go to Hell. But if you believe God does exist, then my argument gives a reason to believe in Him and His love for us, which is what any loving God would want. We all know that we exist. We can use the five senses to prove to ourselves that we exist. One of the ways that we can use our sense to validate the world around us is touch. Touching things like a marble floor or the leaves on the trees just outside the front door can lead us to believe that we are real and the world around us is real. We base our sciences on the five senses as they are the tools that lead us to understand the world around us through experiments. We have named that very practice Observational Science. A fundamental law in the physics realm that we have discovered using Observational Science states that matter cannot be created or destroyed. It only takes a different form. For example, when you burn wood in a fireplace, the wood is not disappearing, but turning into oxygen, carbon dioxide, and many other gaseous chemicals. We can also apply this principle to origins. What we have discovered regarding the Conservation of Matter contradicts that of what we have speculated through Historical Science: The spontaneous creation of the universe as a result of the Big Bang. All throughout history science and theory have been changing as a result of new discoveries that either prove or disprove a certain hypothesis, but the one thing that seems to stick throughout all the contradictions is The Big Bang Theory. If The Big Bang Theory cannot explain things like how the universe was created if matter cannot be created or destroyed or the faint sun paradox, then why aren't we discarding it and looking for another solution to the issue of origins? This is what leads me to the existential uncertainty part that makes my argument unique and strong. Evolution argues that we are all just animals that have evolved slowly over millions of years. Our species came out on top as a result of what many secular scientists call Natural Selection. If we came out on top when we allegedly emerged from Africa, then why is there still more powerful animals out there like gorillas and lions that could easily wipe out a human? Our existential crisis lies there. The lions and gorillas should have wiped out the human race assuming we were a more primitive and less evolved species back in that time period.

First of all, one can prove a God or Creator exists, just using the universe and logic. You do not need any other explanation. For example. Since the universe is revolving, there has to be somewhere for it to revolve. Since everything is in some form moving, then there has to be a mover for this motion. Therefore, there has to be some divine omnipotence that is constantly doing all the things in the universe.

Secondly, why do we need billions of years to discover or evolve? A short time ago, scientists said that mankind is only a few hundred years old. Now they think that the humans started in the Ape-like form, 6-7 million years ago. Do you think those scientists will continue finding more and more humans fossils for the next 10-20 billion years? Most likely they will stop discovering any "humans" fossils in the next 5 billion years. Will you complain? I doubt it.

Thirdly, why does there have to be one ultimate Creator? If the physical world is all one - yes, it revolves - it is moving - what about all those atoms? Are all those atoms moving? What forces do those atoms have to move by themselves? Can it be one material, flowing physical world without an ultimate divine essence that is the energy behind it all?

Also, what do you mean by "why would God wait about 200 000 years before he revealed himself to humans"? Is religion created in one day, or God in one day? Do the trees just grow big one day, or do they have to grow day by day? Do they grow bigger with each passing day? Do they have a certain age limit? They might have 50-70 years, but not much more, because that is all that is given to them. Why should our religious ideas be any different? Why should a God has to reveal himself to humans in this specific time frame? Did He needs to wait until we became more intelligent, or until we learned to speak or ...?

When Adam ate from the tree, does that mean God lost something? Then what? And does this mean that God now owes us anything? Is that why we are praying? Is that why humans want to please Him, or should we please Him just because of the fact that He is the Creator and He deserves that?

Also, you should not need to rely on other religions for your argumentation, because each religion has the right to persuade a person to believe in its ideas. That is the difference, rather than the fact that one religion believes in the existence of God and the other one doesn't. Like Judaism, Islam and Christianity were at war with each other hundreds of years ago, they are now spreading the same message: "God exists". Since you are using the Bible to argue, then you have to accept that the Bible is an absolute truth and you have to believe in God and accept Christianity. The Torah is for Jews, the Qur'an is for Muslims, and the Bible is for Christians.

And about the other religions: they are talking about the same Creator. Although you might believe they are talking about some God that is not talking about the same God as the one in the Bible, yet they are talking about the same God. That's why they are divided in so many different religions, because all those people might be saying something different, but nevertheless they are speaking about the same thing, and they are all speaking about the same Creator, same Maker, and same Master.

Dear friend, you are very wrong, and you need to stop giving those false ideas, because only God knows what is good for you.

Yes, evolution is a good explanation of how our morals arose - groups could outperform individuals but required trust, cooperation, etc.

Naïve evolutionists think that everything evolved because it benefits survival. This is simply false. The reason is deeply rooted in biology and is called inclusive fitness, or fitness in relation to others. It can be explained like this:

Human females preferentially choose a mate who shows evidence of health and good genetic quality. A primate with strong, muscular arms, teeth, and feet is a more attractive mate.

If a primate has offspring, each offspring receives half the genes from the male and half the genes from the female. Biologists call this passing on genes from parent to offspring.

Thus offspring can receive genes from their father that make them healthy and well-adapted for living, passing genes to their offspring, but they can also inherit genes from their mother that make them sickly and maladapted.

The fittest offspring will survive and pass their genes on to the next generation, whereas the sickly and maladapted offspring will die, which cancels out their passing their genes on to the next generation.

The moral argument for evolution is not about selfish genes. It is about altruistic genes. The genes that allow for a person to take care of his children and make sacrifices to raise them, which are the same kind of genes that allow a person to protect the weak and helpless.

Inclusive fitness describes genes that promote survival, health, and reproductive success in relation to others. Morals are necessary for groups to operate effectively.

Evolution better explains our blend of cooperation and competition than a morality derived from an all-good, loving god.

Morality, as we use the concept, could not have resulted from the process of natural selection.

Natural selection did not create the higher order processing that allows us to reason about justice, mercy, right and wrong, or about the kinds of complex emotions that lead to moral judgments and prosocial behavior. The biological mechanisms required for such reasoning are qualitatively different from mechanisms like vision, hearing, or digestion.

If I throw a bucket of sand up in the air and then try to calculate the odds that each grain of sand would land exactly when and where it did - at what digit number would we conclude that I never threw the bucket?

Accepting the conclusion (never threw the bucket) is one that derilects the evidence (the way each grain of sand is randomly distributed in mid-air).

The odds of each individual grain of sand landing exactly as it was intended to when it escaped the bucket, given the evidence, is one.

Complexity alone is subjective

Naïve evolutionists believe that every evolutionary phenomenon occurred through random mutations which transformed species or trait frequencies (or which inhibited or increased some harmful or beneficial trait). However, this is not the case. Evolution has not occurred simply through the accidental accumulation over time of random mutations in our genomes.