Salutations brother atheists ,
I would like to ask you to help me in some way. My class is having a religious debate next week , and it will last for something like 10-20 days (8 classes in total) , so i was wondering what do you think about my position. I have my own personal views which i will present , i also watched and wrote down many arguments from Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkings (great fan of those two) , and i took some nice quotes of many famous people about religion. I also made many of mine own arguments i am planing to use to counter theirs if they choose the regular christian/muslic stuff. So I would like to hear if you have any advices or anything to add for my upcoming battle , because i would rly want to make them think about their beliefs and question it strongly. Thx in advance :)
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Sure thing, if you provide some of the structure of what you would be presenting them maybe we could help you out a bit more.
A good thing would be to familiarize yourself with logical fallacies. I wouldn't suggest pointing out every fallacy the opposing side uses, but you can try to be aware not to use them yourself and ask leading questions that point out the flaw in those arguments. Also religion is a broad topic to debate, is there a more specific topic, or different topics each day?
There are going to be diferent topics yes , so you can suggest those too. We were thinking something like ``is religion force for good in the world`` or similiar , we might also argue the exsistance of god. The structure is created spontaneously and it will be like , majority of religious against us 5-6 of atheists. Its not very well organised because proffesor isnt thinking of it as an important task , but i think the message can be sent trough. When we have something to say , no matter is it opening line or rebbutal we rise our hands and he chooses one from each side to talk. So , we could use nice topics , thx so far :D
You might want to watch some debates on youtube, there are many. There are some iq2 debates around religion that are decent, where the theists make some decent points regarding religion being a force for good.
Always remember that the theist has the burden of proof when it comes to god. Personally, I don't care much for what is comfortable, what is "good", what gives people hope. I care more for what is true. No theist has been able to provide demonstrable evidence for the existence of god.
In a debate it is good to set a playing field, so ask them if they want to debate with biblical "evidence" or empirical evidence; the topic will help with this.
Some other possible topics:
Biblical contradictions
Theodicy
Vicarious Redemption
Thanks :)