No God = No Concept of God = No Believers in God

In the beginning... In this section of my opponent's opening statement, he outlines the underlining ideals of his argumentation. He states that man has always relied on God's existence as an explanation, and this is apparently is due to less than obvious reasons, assuming God does not in fact exist. This apparently gives pro the idea that he can jump from this initial claim, to the conclusion that the concept of God wouldn't even be possible unless he existed in reality. This seems to be founded on a baseless assumption. This assumption is that there are less than obvious reasons for why God's existence has remained an explanation for events we do not understand. Therefore, he must exist. This is clearly a non-sequitur. The only thing not obvious is how his conclusion follows from the initial premise. Of course, I contest the point he is attempting to get across, to the furthest extent. I think the reasons are fairly obvious for why the concept of God would exist even if God didn't. Imagine a time when human beings knew virtually nothing about how natural processes within our space-time region worked. If you take this time period into account, it seems apparent that the only hypothesis they could use to explain things with would be intelligent minds who are able to cause things. Why is this? Of course, it's because they are intelligent beings themselves who cause actions to occur. Without being able to understand the non-sentient acts within nature, and truly relate to anything but minds and other conscious minds, it does seem extremely obvious why one would posit a conscious mind as a cause of something that there is no explanation for (especially the important life questions, due to emotional reasons involving purpose). Since this conjured up being obviously could not be seen (this being was just conjured up in the mind, after all), and natural beings around them can be seen, it seems that anyone positing this invisible cause, would assume the being is super-natural as a side effect. The above is a plausible scenario in which the seed of the idea of God is planted with regards to the human race, without God needing to actually exist at all. One may then ask, why has the idea of God still remained relatively strong in light of all the knowledge we gain of science? This is because of a little mind trick called "Theology on the Edge" as John Shook puts it. Basically, it doesn't matter if science can explain A with B, theists can just claim that God is responsible for, or guided B. If we find out that it was actually C that was responsible for B eventually, theists can just say God was responsible for, or guided C (and so on and so forth). Man, the almighty. As far as this section is concerned, it's clear that I already refuted these assumptions in the section above. Pro tells us to imagine a time of ancient man. All they would experience is the natural world, so if a volcano erupted or example, there would be no reason for anyone to come up with a super-natural explanation. But, my argument in the section above addresses this very notion. These humans would only experience the natural world, however they would have virtually no comprehension of the explanations for the events that happen in the natural world. Since they are all intelligent beings who cause events it seems obvious that they would posit an intelligent being as an explanation for things they did not understand (consciousness and intelligence is what is most familiar, clearly). However, this being cannot be seen and obviously must be more powerful than us (these humans would not be able to cause a volcano to erupt). Thus, this concept of an invisible causal agent would be deemed super-natural. This means, that so far, Pro's case is overwhelmingly faulty and without sufficient defense. Imagination Pro's argument here seemingly boils down to this: "Without the need to communicate, we would not speak; without the horse, we would not imagine unicorns; without lightning we would know nothing of electricity; and without a divine or spiritual being, we would not conceive of God." - Pro Basically, without a wolf actually existing, we would never imagine the idea of werewolves. Without a horse existing, we would never imagine the idea of unicorns existing. This contradicts Pro's whole case however. Pro tried to argue previously in the ("Man, the almighty") section, that man only experiences the normal world, and would therefore have no reason to conceive of anything out of the ordinary or super-natural: "As these creatures grow, and learn, nothing out of the ordinary happens, surely no God appears, no angels, no spirits, no divine entities. Only the natural world, in all it's wonder...Though it's been etched in our brains, that the primitive resort to deities and supernatural answers, we've not seen the point in our existence, where the concept of deities would naturally form." - Pro In this section however, he finds it perfectly reasonable to assume the super-natural from the natural, by citing how humans could conceive of a supern-natural unicorns (it's horn is conceived to have the ability to make poisoned water drinkable and to heal sickness[1]) just from the existence of a natural horse. This in an embarrassing blunder for Pro, because this is incoherent. Either you can derive super-natural concepts from observations from within a strictly natural reality, or you cannot. My opponent it seems, it trying to have it both ways without logical foundation. Now, lets call whatever we know to exist x, and whatever idea we imagine based off of what we know to exist, y. Pro is trying to say that a divine being is x, and God is y. The problem? A divine being and God are more or less synonymous. It would be more accurate to say that x is natural, and y is would be supernatural (with y, once again, just being the concept or idea). Therefore, it would make more sense to say that without natural and intelligent beings capable of causation, the idea of an ultimate supernatural intelligent being capable of causation would not exist. Basically, humans being's existence is a necessary condition which needs to be in place in order for the the concept of God to exist. However, there is absolutely no reason to think God's actual existence is a necessary condition for the mere concept of God to exist.Thus, my opponent continues to clumsily fail to meet his burden of proof in light of my objections to his case. Conclusion Pro presented an extremely weak case. His initial argument, is that all ancient humans would experience is the natural, therefore, there would be no reason to conceive of the super-natural. I debunked this notion by demonstrating that even though these beings would only experience the natural, this doesn't entail they know how anything naturally works. Due to being intelligent beings capable of causation (with consciousness and thought being all they experience), one could only imagine them positing an invisible and intelligent being capable of causation to explain the unknown due to being intelligent agents capable of causation themselves. Therefore, this conceived being would have to be invisible (the being is just conceived, so obviously they couldn't see the conceived being), and more powerful than us to cause natural events we see in nature. Humans could have called this being God, without him existing at all. This alone negates the resolution. With regards to the second argument, this contained an example involving a super-natural concept deriving from the existence of a natural horse. It seems this statement is incompatible with his initial argument, making this a huge error on my opponent's behalf. Either way, I showed that one only needs to assume human being's existence for the existence of the concept of God to be possible. Pro presented no valid argument that God's existence is necessary for the mere concept of God to exist. Sources [1] http://en.wikipedia.org...