There is no evidence for the existence of a supreme deity.

I ask my opponent to watch his conduct. After a quick review of his profile, I found that another similar debate was forfeited due to his lack of appropriate conduct. Saying things like "This is the funniest argument" and sarcastic comments do not make you look smart, you just look insensitive and rude. _________________________ In response to my opponent's arguments: A The argument from revelation "We can predict the exact course of the revolution of the Earth to within mere centimeters and you don' see me going around saying the only way to predict that is if god told me" Of course people don't claim that god told them this because god obviously did not tell them. It was measured by humans, and so it is attributed to science. The difference is that this incident was claimed by shepherd children who obviously could not have scientifically predicted this, and yet their predictions were spot-on. If it was so scientifically provable, why wasn't there any scientific prediction besides the children who were told through a revelation? Saying that god is the explanation is not intellectually lazy, it is intellectually rational. B The argument from miracles or testimony My opponent seems to think that because the earliest accounts of Jesus were written decades after his death makes these not count as "external evidence". First, the earliest record was a mere five years after his death, not decades. I also ask my opponent if he believes in what Alexander the Great's actions. The earliest biography of Alexander the Great was written four hundred years after his death [1], so why do you say that just because a source is not written at the exact time it would have happened makes it invalid? What Penn and Teller have done are mere tricks and stunts that they even admit have explanations, but Jesus' actions do not have any human explanation and thus require a divinity. My opponent asked for evidence that Jesus did miracles, and I supplied it in round 1 (see source [3], round 1). C The argument from majority. My opponent makes no rebuttal to this, and so he accepts my response. So, this argument should simply be thrown out, as it does not help or harm either of us.“And yes I said that space would not allow me to provide all the reasons people believe in god and I am right about that. However, I should have also said that if you would like to bring any arguments for the existence of god I will be happy to disprove them. After all, the burden of evidence is on you.” My opponent tries to prove his statement by just repeating it. However, I will not get caught up on this - I just wanted to point it out. _________________________ I will now defend my own arguments: Moral Argument My opponent attempts to make me recognize the truth of evolution, yet his only support to it is that he says it’s true. Because there is no support given for his claim of evolution, his argument is simply invalid. My opponent claims that animals who got along had a greater chance to find a mate, so evolution writes morality. This is just false. Animals actually fight each other for dominance to find a mate [2], so why isn’t morality just a “bigger is better” policy? “Slowly but surely more of the chimps who didn't kill others reproduced versus the ones who could not get along with others” – no, the chimps who did kill or fight others found mates while the ones who were killed or beaten obviously did not. So, morality could not have just developed through evolution because fighting is good for survival, but not good for the moral principles everyone agrees on. If I killed everyone I encountered it would be “survival of the fittest”, but it would not be moral. My opponent argues that my point of morality does not prove anything by simply saying “your moral arguments again brings no external evidence for the existence of a god”, but does not give any reasoning for why not. He simply ignored my argument, and so concedes and thus found nothing wrong with it. To respond to his claim that I am Christian – I am not. I am agnostic, just check my profile. I am playing a sort of devil’s advocate here simply because I enjoy debating religion, and for the sake of this debate my argument (which you did not prove did not make sense, again - you need support for your claim) could point to the Muslim god or a Hindu deity, I just have to prove that there is in fact a deity of some sort to win. Creation My opponent misunderstood my argument. I argued that everything needs a cause except for the supreme deity. So, god does not have a cause (he is the “unmoved mover”). Everything was created by something else, except for the one thing that created everything – a supreme deity. Impossibility of Disproving Existence My opponent says that I made dozens of claims, yet I did not, and my opponent can reject their truth as we are not even debating them. You cannot prove a universal negative, so I guess you would be correct in saying that I could not, for certain, prove that you are not holy. I can, however, prove an affirmative – that there is a supreme being, and I have done so in this debate. Either way, the pro will lose the debate on the ground that he is trying to prove something that is not provable. In response to my opponent’s quote from Leviticus, I see no relation whatsoever to the debate. We are not discussing laws, we are debating whether a deity exists. _________________________ Thank you. Good luck to the pro and I await his response. [1] http://www.asktheatheists.com... [2] http://www.bookrags.com...