Does God Exist? -QUICK DEBATE-

Basically, there are two ways that we can know that God exists. The first way is by examining our world. If it has certain attributes that give it the appearance of design. The second way is that we can know God exists if He has chosen to reveal Himself to us. If God has spoken to us, this provides us with a convincing reason to believe in Him. Therefore, I will defend the existence of God using these two methods. My intent is to show that it is more plausible to believe that God exists than to believe that He does not. The Kalam Cosmological Argument: 1) Everything that begins to exist has a cause of its beginning. 2) The universe began to exist. 3) Therefore the universe has a cause of its beginning. I am willing to defend each of the two premises if you object to either one. It is clear that if the first two statements are true, the third statement follows logically and necessarily. This, in and of itself, does not mean that God exists, but it is part of the puzzle. One might say the multiverse is the cause of the universe in which case I would show the following argument: 1) Everything that begins to exist has a cause of its beginning. 2) The multiverse began to exist. 3) The multiverse has a cause of its beginning. Also bear in mind that there is zero evidence of such a multiverse existing, but even if it did, that would not change the argument. The argument that this must be an intelligent cause is somwhat philosophical. The cause of water freezing is the temperature being below 0 C. If the temperature was always 0 C, it would be impossible for the water to begin to freeze a finite time ago. This is because if the cause exists, the effect must also exist. Therefore, if the cause is eternal, the effect must also be eternal. Since the effect (the universe) is not eternal, either its effect is also not eternal or it is personal. This is because a personal agent, with free will, who has existed for all of eternity, could freely choose to do something a finite time ago. The Fine Tuning Argument: There are a number of constants in the universe that must be exquizitely fine-tuned, or the universe would not be here now. This is not like the earth's distance from the son. These constants affect the whole universe, not just a part of it. If the strength of gravity were off by a tiny ammount, the universe would have either collapsed back in on itself, or it would have stretched out so fast that no galaxies, stars, or planets could have been formed. If even one of these constants were off by a tiny fraction, life would not exist. Some of those constants with the level of fine-tuning are listed: Ratio of electrons: protons- 1:10^37 Ratio of Electromagnetic Force: Gravity- 1:10^40 Expansion Rate of the Universe- 1:10^55 Mass Density of Universe- 1:10^59 Cosmological Constant- 1:10^120 The probability of all of the variables lining up in a way to make life possible is less than the probablility of 1 in the number of subatomic particles in the universe. This makes chance out of the question. The most reasonable explanation for this is the universe was created with us in mind. The creator knew we were coming. http://www.godandscience.org... In order to get around the God hypothesis, atheists have come up with the idea of the multiverse. The idea is that, if there are an infinite number of universes, one is bound to have all of the variables line up exactly. In my view, this is a very risky bet, but the hypothesis has a few problems. The first one is that there is zero evidence for a multiverse. The second problem is that small patches of order are much much more likely than large patches. Since it would be much more probable for the universe to create a single brain with the illusion of complexity rather than the complexity we actually see in the world. In other words, if the multiverse theory is correct, chances are, everything we see is simply an illusion. Language: Every form of writing that we know has an author. If you walked in the kitchen and saw a note saying "take out the trash - mom," you wouldn't automatically assume the wind made that. You would assume that a person made that since it contains information. In fact, you might think your friend was insane if he did not believe a person wrote it. The presence of information in the form of language is, in and of itself, enough evidence of intelligence that it would be silly to deny it. If your friend believed that the wind wrote that, I'm sure you would demand some pretty good evidence. There are several levels of information, and most of them are impossible without intelligence. DNA contains the highest level of information in the form of language, so by the same principle, it must have been created by intelligence. This is yet another reason to believe in God. Revelation: The last piece of evidence is the fact that God chose to reveal Himself to us in the form of a man names Jesus. Jesus preached and taught for 3 years and gained a following of many disciples. Jesus has 12 close disciples who were also called apostles. The ministry of Jesus is recorded in the four gospels; two of which are eyewitness accounts, and the other two are records of eyewitnesses. Because of this, we can analyze these texts just as we would do with any other eyewitness account. The first question we must ask is are the manuscripts reliable? Do the copies we have accurately represent the original documents? Even the most skeptical scholars will answer yes. We have over 24 thousand manuscripts in the original language, and we have earlier manuscripts for the New Testament than any other ancient historical document. Using all of these manuscripts, we find that only 20% of words actually have a textual variant in which at least two manuscripts dissagree out of the 24 thousand. Of these 95% of these 20% are easily identifiable as scribal erros. The remaining 1% of the New Testament of which we are not sure contains no important doctrinal truths. God's sign of aproval is that He rose from the dead. This is a falsifiable claim upon which Christianity rests. Most historians, even atheistic ones, have come to the conclusion that Jesus existed, he died on a cross, he was buried in a rich man's tomb, his body was missing three days later, and his apostles and many of His other disciples had actual experiences of Jesus alive from the dead. Now, these scholars are quick to point out that they didn't necessarily actually see Jesus; they simply believed they had seen Jesus. The reasons for this conclusion are vast, so I will only go into some of them here. Firstly, we have every reason to believe that the writers of the New Testament were honest and reliable. Every historical event that they mention happens exactly where, when, and how the writers said. Scolars are constantly amazed by the accuracy of Luke and Acts when events are confirmed by archeology. Also, writers of the New Testament include embarassing details that they never would have added if they were making the story up. For example Jesus is recorded as sweating blood. I'm sure you have never seen anyone sweat blood, and you wouldn't be alone. People at this time mocked the gospels for saying that, and Christian theologians tried to make up a spiritual reason for sweating blood. 2000 years later, we now know that sweating blood is a rare condition that appears with people who are about to be put to death. Finally, we know they were honest because they were all willing to go through bloody deaths intead of recanting what they saw. Many people die for a lie that they heard from others, but no one is willing to die for something they made up. The disciples died for something that they believed they saw. Either they were mistaken, or they Jesus really rose from the dead. They knew Jesus intimately for years, so recognition is no issue. Hallucinations, like dreams, are also not an option since they affect individuals, not groups. Jesus rose