Atheism relies on the belief that nothing is needed to have anything occur.

"I intend to keep this from being a stereotypical debate." What does my opponent mean by that? "the personification of some force" That seems awfully vague. The definition would be better if refined to "a supernatural being, worshipped as the controller of the universe". But I think God has to be at least conscious, and preferably omnipotent. *** My opponent and I are essentially arguing over the problem of causation. I am going to offer two contentions, both of which are also rebuttals to my opponent's point. Contention 1: First Cause Why must there be some supernatural entity that created the universe? The universe could be the first cause just as easily as a god. Firstly, what was the big bang? In the beginning, all matter and energy in the universe was compressed into a singularity. The entire universe existed on a very small scale, and much like with black holes, the laws of physics did not apply in the same way. Time did not exist. Then, the singularity rapidly expanded and the universe was filled with matter and energy. Why did this expansion suddenly happen? Well, it didn't. Since time was created along with the universe, the big bang was the first event. It required no cause. Contention 2: Necessity of God If the universe did have a cause, it was not by necessity a god. I know of four hypotheses for the origin of the universe, none of which require a god. 1. The big bang was the first event. Nothing came before it because there was no "before". 2. There exists an infinitely large quantum field. Random fluctuations within this field cause particles to come in and out of existence. One day (if you can count "quantum time" in days), a massive singularity was created, creating the universe. This may seem a little implausible, but things like this happen on the microscopic scale within our universe. 3. Outside the universe, there are massive four-dimensional membranes. They move about, and sometimes smash into each other. When this happens, it triggers a massive release of energy otherwise known as the big bang. (From Einstein's Big Idea by NOVA) 4. The readers have probably heard of the big crunch. It is the event that occurs when the universe collapses on itself. It is postulated that when the universe collapses on itself, it then bounces back, causing another big bang. Eventually, there is another big crunch, followed by another big bang. This cycle continues indefinitely. *** "There is no cause for gravity. We don't know why mass bends space." Some things don't have a reason. For example, according to my opponent, god exists. Why does god exist? Sure, we "know" that He does in fact exist. But why? The reason is, there is no reason. Some things just don't have a reason. "We don't know why certain chemicals tend to act a certain way." In addition to the above, this is a God of the Gaps fallacy. Simply because we do not know what causes something doesn't mean the cause has to be God. Two thousand years ago, we didn't know why there was night and day. The Greeks attributed night and day to God. But we now know that it wasn't actually God, it was actually the rotation of the earth. The same can be applied here. An unknown cause does not imply that the cause must be God. [1] http://www.superstringtheory.com... [2] http://www.existence-of-god.com...