There is no evidence, and no tenable arguements, for the existence of any gods.

Pazmusik: "To start with, your opening round was just a long-winded version of saying, "there is no evidence for god because there is no evidence for god." I'm a little confused as to why this is important." Reply: Because when you are debating, you need to make your points as simple and to the point as possible. Plus, it saves time. Pazmusik: The argument is: "No evidence has been presented.... that conclusively proves the existence of gods." Reply: No evidence conclusively proves anything. Rather we have ideas with hierarchies of evidence. We could be 99.9% sure that evolution happened and that a world wide flood didn't happen 6,000 years ago. But we don't prove anything 100%. That's why in a court of law, you only have to prove innocence beyond a reasonable doubt, not all doubts. So to apply this standard to god and not everything else is unfair. Pazmusik: "If you want to argue against my first premise, present some evidence for the existence of gods. If you want to argue against my second premise, demonstrate how believing something with a lack of evidence is rational." Reply: The first one I'll get to in a little bit. For the second one, it is not an issue about how believing something with lack of evidence is rational (more on this later), it's that sometimes you can be rational and still get the wrong answer. Rationality does not equal infallibility. Suppose you are at the airport. You are eager, yet running a little behind, to get to your vacation in Great Britain. You see the terminal that says "London" and rush on board. However, you find out mid flight that you boarded the plane going to London, Canada and not London, England. You arrived at the wrong conclusion for a rational reason. But rationality is self-correcting over time. We can always improve on what we know, which is why the spirit of learning is a lasting frontier. Pazmusik: The point is moot. A person's argument from religious experience amounts to nothing more than hearsay testimony. As lone support of a claim for omniscient, omnipresent supernatural beings, it's utterly insignificant, despite its emotional and personal importance. Reply: To you it is moot, but to the person it's not. And if it is at least possible that we atheists are wrong, then it is possible that the person's experience might be right and hence a rational reason for believing. Pazmusik: If we lived in a tropical environment, and neither of us had any knowledge that water could exist in any other form than liquid, and then you went to the Rockies and returned with stories about snow, then you would simply be making a claim. Were I to accept it, it would be solely from hearsay testimony, which is insufficient as evidence. I would have to have faith. Reply: Yes, you would be taking it based on faith, but I wouldn't. So likewise, it is at least possible that the person that has the spiritual experience to have evidence, but not any kind that can be of use to anyone but himself. Pazmusik: "But let's further this analogy. Let's say you come back from the Rockies and you tell me not only that you've witnessed a new phenomenon called snow, but that you played around with it a bit and learned that when you warmed it up it became water.. hence, snow was not an unknown mystical thing... " Reply: No, but the property of it freezing would be a mystical thing. Even if I knew that ice was frozen water it doesn't change anything with the analogy. Pazmusik: However, we'd be in an environment brimming with examples of other physical and chemical changes. Reply: But none of that demonstrate freezing. Again, that doesn't change the analogy in any significant way. Pazmusik: Your claim of snow, supplemented by concrete evidence that elements CAN and DO undergo physical changes, now becomes much stronger and can be accepted with more reason than if you simply arrived from the Rockies and said "There is a thing called snow. Believe it." Reply: Again, showing that things change doesn't do anything to show how water freezes. But suppose it wasn't just me who experienced ice, but rather a large fraction of people from the village we lived in. Furthermore, assume that we don't live in a day and age where refrigerators have been invented. Wouldn't all of our similar testimonies be at least some type of minimal evidence for the existence of ice? So wouldn't it then be rational to believe in ice? Pazmusik: You have not presented any arguments opposing my point. If you are suggesting that we sometimes employ blind faith with other things besides belief in gods, I agree with you. But how does that oppose my argument, that we employ blind faith to believe in gods? Reply: You are not addressing my point in that not everyone "blindly" believes in god and it may be possible that their reasons are right. Aquinas, Desecrate, and others didn't believe in god because of blind faith, but because they put together arguments for it. Intelligent design would have been the most rational explanation before evolution came along and shattered it. Pazmusik: Interestingly, I cannot find anywhere in my original argument where I suggested that faith is lazy or that theists don't want to look for evidence. Reply: I can. (from round 1) "it requires not just a simple blind faith to believe in a god, but a faith that must systematically oppose the realities of human knowledge and understanding, as well as rational awareness." The key words here being "blind" and "systemtically oppose the realities of human knowledge." Blind, as in not wanting to see, and "systemtically oppose the realities of human knowledge," as in you have to close our eyes and shout lalalalalal with your fingers in your ears to believe in god. You said to believe in god, you must employ a system of opposing reality. That means not wanting to look for evidence against your beliefs. Now you could have gotten carried away and forgotten what you were typing actually meant. But there it is. Pazmusik: That's simply a straw-man fallacy. Please refer to my original text; Reply: One-step ahead of ya. Pazmusik: I have not only seen DNA and electrons, but I know HOW we are able to see DNA and electrons. I have learned and understood how restriction enzymes work, how they discern adenosine, thymine, guanosine, and cytosine. I once wondered how humanity can see DNA, so I studied gel electrophoresis. Reply: First, unless you are a professional scientist, I don't think you really have. But the point about DNA doesn't really matter, because I could just refer to any other phenomenon. Have you ever seen photosynthesis? But let's pretend you were a scientist and you told me how all these things were. You are doing the same thing that I would be doing in the ice thought experiment: telling me how things are based on your experience. But you are at an advantage in that what you are describing can be replicated. It is at least possible that what the person with the religious experience is describing is beyond our capacity to document and that are brains did not evolve to grasp that complexity. Hence, they would be rational in believing in god. And the fact that so many similar cases appear, it at least means that there is something to be explained. Before I run out of room: You say it is okay to believe in aliens without evidence, but god is not off the hook? Science is not subjective, but it is not infallible, but has nothing to do with god. Religious experience isn't something that can be scientifically tested. Science may test other things that can give an account of it, but you can't examine all the cases yourself. I'll expand on this in the next round.