The Existence of God

Firstly, I would like to apologize to my opponent for neglecting due diligence in checking her gender, and thank her for graciously ignoring my error. I accept, with reservations, the definition of God as active in the universe: taken separately from the other traits, I doubt there is any meaningful way to discuss that point. Concerning the omnipotence of God: We agree that 'God is all-powerful' implies that 'there is no power that god does not have'. The issue here is with the universe of discourse. I take the universe of discourse to be limited to that which exists. Since the power to create something that cannot be moved by an omnipotent being cannot exist, it is not a within the universe of discourse: While God does not have it, God is not required to have it. Simply put, 'all-powerful' means having every power which exists, so a power which does not exist is not a counterexample. If you were to define your unicorn as the "all-colorful" unicorn, it could not be both invisible and pink, but it would not have to be invisible because invisible is not a color. My opponent's first premise in her presupposition of atheism is as follows: "1.If a claim is extraordinary, then in the absence of extraordinarily strong evidence in its favor, the claim may be considered false." I dispute this premise, on the basis that it holds true only when there exists one or more ordinary claims to be considered false. Lack of an ordinary alternative is extraordinary evidence that one of the extraordinary claims is true. That is: 1) There is an explanation 2) The explanation is not ordinary 3) Therefore, the explanation is extraordinary. The alternative to a creator is no creator. If there is no creator, then either the universe formed out of nothing, or it has always existed. In our experience, things do not form out of nothing, and so this claim is extraordinary. If everything always existed, it has already existed for an infinite time: in our experience, things loose energy over time (entropy), and so there should be no energy remaining: this is also an extraordinary claim. Therefore, we cannot reject a the claim of a creator as extraordinary, because all competing claims are also extraordinary. If we cannot reject the existence of a creator, can we reject certain attributes of that creator? Which of the following claims is more extraordinary? If a creator exists, the creator is unfathomable. If a creator exists, the creator is fathomable. I submit that the latter is the more extraordinary of the two. How would you fathom a creator? A big bulldozer? A bulldozer cannot form a star. If a creator exists, what is to stop the creator from setting the standard for perfection such that the creator meets that standard? If we got to decide what perfection was, it would be ordinary to define that standard such that we ourselves met it, and so it is ordinary to expect the same from a creator. Thus, the existence of a god has not been shown to be significantly more extraordinary than any alternatives. Furthermore, my opponent defined an extraordinary claim as "A claim that contradicts the accepted physical laws or our common sense, everyday experiences in the world". The example of unicorns is extraordinary because presumably unicorns, if existent, should have been found. Since we are working from the premise that God is transcendent, we have no reason to expect to see a caged God in the zoo. To examine the proposed paradoxes of omniscience: First: God has killed human beings. To show that he cannot know the satisfaction of unjustly doing so, one must demonstrate that the same satisfaction cannot be derived from justly doing so. More generally, to show God can not have experienced the pleasures derived from sin, it is necessary to show that the same pleasures cannot be derived from non-sin. (This disputes statement a2.) Second: Human beings can take pleasure from sinful actions. However, it has not been shown that they take pleasure in the sinfulness of their actions per-se, for any reason other than that their actions indicate they are not obeying someone else. To show that God cannot have taken the same pleasures from his actions, it is necessary to show that there is some other pleasure derived from sinfulness itself, or that all of God's actions are in obedience to someone else. (This disputes statement a2.) Third: All three arguments about omniscience presuppose that God must do a given thing in order to know what it's like to do a given thing. However, consider the example of hearing a story by a good author about doing a given thing. You get a sense of what it's like to do that thing. If they gave you more details, and pictures, and narrated it out loud so you could hear the emotions in their voice, you would have an even better sense. To show that God cannot know something from someone else's experience, it is necessary to show that either that he cannot know perfectly what a person is thinking, or that the limiting case of being able to experience the hypothetical author's thoughts directly is insufficient to produce knowledge equivalent to performing the author's actions oneself. (This disputes statements a2, a6, b3, and c6.) Fourth: All arguments about omniscience (having all knowledge) rely on a definition of knowledge that includes experiential knowledge in addition to factual knowledge. Some definitions of knowledge clearly omit experiential knowledge. For example, in the OED, definition 4b for knowledge reads: "The apprehension of fact or truth with the mind; clear and certain perception of fact or truth; the state or condition of knowing fact or truth". (This disputes statements a4, b2, and c3.) (Fifth [And I don't mean this as a get-out of jail-free card. Seriously, pretend it's not here when you vote for who won the debate. If I would have lost without it, that means I lost. It confuses my opponent's assumption that God is a singular being anyway]: Christians believe God is triune, which means that 3 persons are somehow 1 God. So far Jesus isn't the ruler of the universe, so not all parts of God always meet all those criteria.) To conclude, none of my opponent's arguments suffice to show that there is not a god. I look forward to her next round of arguments and the clarification of her premises. Sources http://photo.pds.org...