The Argument for/Pro presented in the debate "Atheism is reasonably impossible" is flawed

( Please don't take my sad attempts to be funny too seriously ). Below is a quote from your argument in your original debate which I cut and pasted into my second round response. Look again. It is an indication of your deep misunderstanding of the position you which to discredit. "Ergo, Atheism requires materialism, the belief that nothing exists but the physical world. " I can't believe I missed that quote when looking through my previous argument. .. It's kind of embarrassing. .. feel free to deduct points. At the point of writing that argument, I thought my argument only refuted materialism, so I felt the need to prove that Atheists must be materialists. However, through debating my argument I have gained a better understanding of it and now realise it applies to all Atheists, whether materialist or not. I think I have made my current position on this clear in the previous rounds, saying that I don't think all Atheists are materialists. Now onto matters that are relevant to our argument. You can restate the same thing five different ways, but it remains your intuition and nothing more. There was a time when it was intuitively clear to people that the world was flat. They were wrong and I have no reason to believe that your intuition is anymore correct. This was not 5 different ways of stating it. This was a chain of logic. 1. Inanimate objects cannot make decisions, in fact, they cannot do anything at all. And. .. 2. To determine (Determine, verb: Cause (something) to occur in a particular way)it's own behaviour an inanimate object must make a decision on which way to behave. And. .. 3. Inanimate objects cannot determine their own behaviour. And. ..4. Inanimate objects appear to have a determined behaviour. Ergo. .5. The behaviour of inanimate objects must be determined by an external force. You also seem to believe that deterministic theories attribute complex behavior to matter and energy. In fact they do not. An object in Relativity Theory actually behaves very simply. It simply follows the path of maximal aging. See: . http://www.science20.com...... Irreducible complexity would be a problem. Irreducible simplicity is not. Oh, I think it is, at least in this case. From my understanding, this law greatly simplifies the reason why objects move as they do. But it is still a law, one that is both absolute and non-physical, and thus subject to my argument. It may be simple, this law, but it still defines a behaviour. When I said:There is another problem with your argument. It appears to be completely at odds with empirical results. You claim that matter behaves the same all the time. This is not true. Deterministic Newtonian physics was displaced by Quantum Mechanics more than 80 years ago. Electrons passing through a double slit from a single source do not end up in the same place. At best we can come up with a probability distribution that can account for the pattern. This is not a traditional deterministic natural law. Perhaps it is not traditional, but it is still deterministic, in a way. When the electrons go through the double slits they always get a bit messed up don't they? Always being the key word. Feel free to find more by Googling it. You will win a Nobel Prize in Physics if you can refute it. Sorry, I meant to say your conclusions. As in, “I conclude that from this experiment errya's argument is at odds with empirical results. ” I will remind you again of the cautionary tale of the flat earthers. Also, direct observation is not necessary to confirm theories. Theories make predictions that can be tested. Multiverse theories make predictions too. The difficulty lies in creating or finding the conditions to test them. Here is one such attempt: . http://physicsworld.com...... Just because a theory in the past that everyone thought was ridiculous was proved right doesn't actually provide any evidence for multiverses. There is actually no evidence for it. That idea in the article was simply speculation on to how one might be able to tell if a multiverse did exist. They have done no tests, and even if the microwave background matched up, there would still be no conclusivity. This is because if it didn't match, it would not prove multiverses wrong, so if did match, it would not prove multiverses right. Quote: But he notes that a positive detection would be "spectacular". "Such a case would offer suggestive evidence in support of string theory," he says. "On the other hand, no evidence in the CMB data for a collision between two universes would not rule out string theory, it would simply extend the widely held belief in the field that string theory is unfalsifiable. " One argument I think works well against multiverses is the ol' “Flying Spaghetti Monster” from South Park, an argument which is often used when I am debating Atheists. It doesn't work very well against God, but I think the Multiverse Theory fits it perfectly. Past all the silliness, at the heart of it is the argument if we can't sense something or see it's effects in any way, why should we believe in it? It would be like believing in the flying spaghetti monster. Considering the abysmal lack of evidence for multiverses, why should we consider their existence reasonable? Reasonable being the key word. We could not observe the Big Bang, but we were able to confirm it by detecting the background radiation it predicted. We're not here to debate the big bang, but I humbly suggest you use the word “confirm” a little more lightly. I look forward to reading my opponents response.