Resolved: God exists.

Thank you for your opening arguments. Argument one: The Kalam cosmological argument.1. Everything that began to exist has a causeThat is not a necessary truth. The law of causation is derived from observation and not a priori reasoning, and therefore, like all empirical conclusions, the law of causation could be false. This is all the more so since we cannot even guess at the probability of it being true when discussing a unique event like the origin of a universe. For no statistics derived from events within a universe have any categorical analogy to the universe itself, which is drastically different from its parts. For example, the origin of the universe marks the beginning of time, yet we have never observed anything comparable to a beginning of time, and it seems self-evidently incoherent to propose that time had to have a cause, since "cause" seems to be an inherently temporal concept, void of meaning outside the context of time itself. This also begs the question, "who created god? " Surely, he is MUCH more complex than anything he created.2. The universe began to exist. How sure are we of that? Not very. Though we have good evidence that the observable universe began about 14 billion years ago, we know nothing at all about what existed before then. For example, a leading contender to standard Big Bang theory today is Brane Theory, which posits that the Big Bang was just a Local Bang in a much larger metauniverse. On that theory, which is entirely consistent with all current scientific evidence, the universe could have been around for an eternity before that event occurred--and in fact, such events might happen all the time, like every few trillion years. Other theories posit that the Big Bang was a "bud" from another universe, and that in fact there are an infinity of interlocking and budding universes, stretching back endlessly. And so on. Not only are such theories consistent with empirical evidence, they are coherent. Therefore the proposition "the universe began to exist" is not necessary but only true to some measure of probability. How probable? The likelihood of it being true is inscrutable to us, because we lack the information we need to assess probability here. Therefore, any conclusion derived from this premise shares the same inscrutable probability. In short, it gets nowhere better than agnosticism: we just don't know. How is the logical explanation God? Who created him? You need to address this. I'm now going to drop down to the 3rd argument. Argument three: Plantinga's modal argument. My opponent, sadly, has not defended ANY premises. I'd love to have a defend of P2-5. Just take "God" and transfer that to anything you don't believe in--like the Invisible Pink Unicorn (Blessed be her holy hooves). Therefore, my opponent really needs to defend this. Moral ArgumentI'll be honest, this one is the only one I seen every single debate. This is by far the best argument--but fails miserably. This beg the question, "Which god are we to follow? " Every religion has its own, "morals" and "laws" so which one is it? Let me give you a quote. "Hence today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord. " "My feelings as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter. It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded by a few followers, recognized these Jews for what they were and summoned men to fight against them and who, God's truth! was greatest not as a sufferer but as a fighter. In boundless love as a Christian and as a man I read through the passage which tells us how the Lord at last rose in His might and seized the scourge to drive out of the Temple the brood of vipers and adders. How terrific was His fight for the world against the Jewish poison. To-day, after two thousand years, with deepest emotion I recognize more profoundly than ever before the fact that it was for this that He had to shed His blood upon the Cross. As a Christian I have no duty to allow myself to be cheated, but I have the duty to be a fighter for truth and justice. .. And if there is anything which could demonstrate that we are acting rightly it is the distress that daily grows. For as a Christian I have also a duty to my own people. " -Adolf Hitler, in a speech on 12 April 1922 (Norman H. Baynes, ed. The Speeches of Adolf Hitler, April 1922-August 1939, Vol. 1 of 2, pp. 19-20, Oxford University Press, 1942) Know who said that? None other than Adolf Hitler! So my point is, what god are we to follow? Does God make things right because it is already right and things wrong because it is already wrong; or are things right/wrong cos he made them that way? Back to pro!