God doesn't exist.

Thanks Toviyah for your first rebuttals, now on to my last rebuttals and concluding remarks. :~] Defending Atheism as the Default Position Toviyah disagrees with my claim that atheism is the default position, and says that if anything agnosticism is the default position. Agnosticism is, like my opponent correctly pointed out, a withdrawal of judgment rather than an outright rejection of existence. The philosopher William L. Rowe has said: “An agnostic is someone who neither believes nor disbelieves in the existence of a deity or deities.” (1). The word agnostic has also been used in other instances aside from the question of God’s existence. For example, a physicist might say “I’m agnostic about the existence of the multiverse.” I think agnosticism is appropriate in some circumstances, but not in others. When it comes to the question of God, or any other supernatural claim, I think disbelief or atheism is the better view to take. As I stated earlier, most of us are not agnostic about the existence of the Flying Spaghetti Monster or Santa Clause, we simply just believe those things don’t exist. To help put this idea into an easier perspective, let me put forth a thought experiment. Imagine we have a murder that took place at 11:00 PM. The next day, detectives and forensic technicians arrive at the crime scene to figure out what happen. There are two competing explanations among the investigators. The first explanation is that a ghost is responsible for the murder. The second explanation is that a human being is responsible for the murder. One investigator says there is no evidence for the existence of ghost, so it’s reasonable to assume that a ghost is not the murderer. Another investigator says the ghost explanation can’t be ruled out, because we have no evidence against the existence of ghost, and therefore we should be agnostic about whether the ghost is the murderer. Out of these two hypotheses, which one do we think is more reasonable to accept? The disbelief or atheist view which holds that ghost don’t exist due to lack of evidence? Or the agnostic view which holds that the ghost explanation is a real possibility and can’t be ruled out? I think most of us would say you should believe the ghost explanation is false, until good evidence has been presented in support of it. We should use the same line of reasoning used in this thought experiment, and apply to the God hypothesis. The person making the claim “God exist” has the burden proof. And if such proof cannot be met, disbelief or atheism is the default position, not agnosticism. Defending Atheist Argument from Suffering Toviyah says that at the beginning of mankind's history, human beings were in a joyful state with God, and at this time were given the ability to reason, use langue, and have freedom of the will. However, overtime human beings became dissatisfied with the life they had and rebelled against God. This rebellion caused suffering to enter the world. But God, being morally perfect, could not stop humans from causing each other to suffer, for that would violate their free will. The problem with this argument is that it completely ignores the fact that suffering was around even before there were human beings. For billions of years animals have been trying to survive and reproduce. This process is known as natural selection. In their effort of surviving many animals died and suffered from the existence of carnivores, disease, heat exhaustion, freezing temperatures, starvation, serious injuries, birth defects, deformities, and so on. It was not human beings that caused suffering to enter the world. Suffering has existed ever since there have been sentient beings. It’s also worth mentioning that there is suffering in the world that is not caused by free will. Natural disasters such as hurricanes, tsunamis, earthquakes, droughts, volcanoes, mudslides, avalanches, ect. are not caused my humans acting on their free will. But these things of course do cause suffering in the world. So it seems like the free will defense is incomplete, as it hasn’t explained away the suffering that animals had to endure for billions of years, or natural disasters that are not caused by human free will. However, I’m not done yet. There is still more to be said about the free will defense. Earlier in my opening statements, I argued that God could have given us both free will and moral perfection, thus resulting in us choosing the good every time. This objection to the free will defense came from the philosopher J.L. Mackie, and I think it’s quite powerful. However, Toiyah disagrees with me, and thinks that if we had free will and moral perfection, then we wouldn’t truly be free. This is because when it would come to decision making, one would only be able to choose what is morally perfect, and not be able to choose anything evil. Therefore it is not freedom in any sense of the word. This objection made by Toviyah is literally disastrous. He has just shot himself in the foot. For if we are to accept this objection by him, then we must also accept that God does NOT have free will! After all, theists believe God has free will and moral perfection. Under Toviyah’s line of reasoning, we have free will and God does not. But if that’s the case, this implies that God is not omnipotent. Skeptical Theism Doesn’t Work I already bought up this objection in my opening statements. Skeptical theism is: “a strategy for bringing human cognitive limitations to bear in reply to arguments from evil against the existence of God.” (2). Con states that we are limited beings with limited knowledge and capacities. And therefore we can't make any judgments on the existence of suffering. Because it could be the case that God allows suffering in order to bring about a greater good. But it’s not exactly clear why God, being omnipotent, would need to use suffering in order to bring about a greater good. As John Mackie pointed out: “if God has to introduce suffering as a means to good, he must be subject to at least some causal laws." (3). God having to obey some causal law would mean that he’s not omnipotent. So this objection by Con doesn’t get us around the atheist argument from suffering. Not only that, but skeptical theism can be turned around on its head and be used to justify the complete opposite of an all-loving God, namely, a perfectly evil God. Suppose I were to argue that there exist an all-powerful, all-knowing, perfectly-evil God. And that the only reason there is love, laughter, and happiness in the world, is because this God uses those things to bring about greater suffering. Therefore we are no position to judge the various good things in the world, because for all we know, evil God uses those things to make us suffer more. You see what I did there? I used the same skeptical theist approach to justify the view that there exists a perfectly evil God. So in summary, if my opponent wants to use skeptical theism to justify belief in a perfectly good God, then I can also use skeptical theism to justify belief in a perfectly evil God. Thus skeptical theism doesn’t solve the atheist argument from suffering against the existence of a perfectly good God, and so my argument still stands stall. Finally, near the end of his skeptical theist defense, Con states that it may be logically impossible for the good to come about without the suffering. But as I already stated earlier, if God is subjected to some causal law that only allows him to bring good through suffering, then he is not omnipotent. So this doesn’t help his case for God’s existence. My moral “dilemma” Con states that in order for my atheist argument from suffering to work, I must posit objective morality or moral relativism. He says: “For evil must exist in a concrete form if Premise 2 is to be supported.” For the person reading this now, I want you to scroll up to my atheist argument from suffering in round 2, and look to see if I used the word “evil” in premise 2. Go on. Do it. I’ll wait. As you can see, I don’t use the word evil in premise 2. I use the word suffering, not evil. The reason for that is because I expected Toviyah to bring this objection up, so I, being careful, used the word suffering instead. That way he would not be able to bring morality into it. I myself could be a moral nihilist and believe that morality is an illusion, and still argue that an all-loving God doesn’t exist due to the suffering there is in the world. So his objection is a red herring. It's also worth noting that objective morality can exist without God. Quite easily in fact. Just look up the euthyphro dilemma to see what I mean. Conclusion In this debate I have demonstrated that the suffering there is in the world is incompatible with the existence of God, and that the term omnipotence is a pointless attribute. On top of that, I have shown that even if my arguments are unsound, we will still be committed to atheism since my opponent has failed to establish the existence of God through the ontological argument. Finally, let me say how much I enjoyed this debate. Having a discussion on this topic with Toviyah has been really fun. Toviyah is a very intelligent young man who argues with force and charity. He is a worthy opponent and I wish him the best! (: Sources:http://en.wikipedia.org...http://plato.stanford.edu...http://www.ditext.com...;