The Judeo-Christian God exists.

1. AcceptanceI accept. I'd like to thank my opponent for creating this debate. I look forward to a good discussion!2. Burden of ProofI assume that the burden of proof in this debate will be shared. As the existence of God can neither be proved nor disproved, the winner of the debate will be determined by which side presents the better arguments in favor of their position. My opponent's burden will be to provide arguments and evidence to show that the Judeo-Christian God does not exist, while my burden will be to provide arguments and evidence to show that the Judeo-Christian God does exist. In order to win the debate, then, one must tear down each of his opponent's arguments and provide at least one sound argument in favor of his own position.3. RebuttalI will begin by responding to each of my opponent's points before moving on to provide my own arguments."The Judeo Christian God does not exist because there is no reliable proof of his existence"As I stated earlier, the existence of God can neither be proved nor disproved. However, later in this round I will attempt to provide arguments as evidence for the existence of the Judeo-Christian God."Hinduism predates Judaism; Jainism Taoism Buddhism Confucianism predates Christianity. Dozens of other religions which are now regarded as mythology also predate Christianity"The temporal order in which religions originated has nothing to do with the truth of any of these religions."Why didn't God introduce Christianity into the world before all of the other religions existed?"Why should we think it's necessary that God ought to have introduced Christianity before any other religion? I see no reason to believe this. Perhaps God had a good reason for sending Christ to Earth at the time He did. It's entirely possible that the time of Christ's arrival on Earth was selected in order to maximize the spreading of the Gospel. I think one would be hard pressed to show that this is not true, as any objection would be mere speculation. "If the first man and woman were created by God why weren't they Jewish/Christian? Why didn't they teach their descendants to be Jewish/Christian?"Who's to say that it's necessary that the first humans ought to have been either Jews or Christians? There seems to be some underlying assumption at play here, but I see no explicit issue with a non-Jewish and non-Christian first human."Why did Judaism/Christianity only officially become a religion 2000 years after Hinduism?"Again, the temporal order in which religions originated has no relevance."If God is willing to stop evil and able then from where does evil come? (In this case, evil can include natural disaster, disease, etc)If God is unwilling to stop evil but able then he is malevolentIf God is willing to stop evil but unable then he is not omnipotentIf God is unwilling to stop evil and unable why call him God?"As you can imagine given the comment that was posted on this debate, this argument isn't really substantive. God is unable to stop evil (due to the existence of free will), but this presents no issue toward God's omnipotence. If one has omnipotence it means that being is able to do everything logically possible. As stopping evil is impossible in light of free will, God remains omnipotent evil while evil exists in the world. "Prayer does nothing"Is this a reflection on your own experience or is it a subjective opinion? Maybe prayer does nothing for you, but there have been hundreds of millions (perhaps billions) of people throughout the centuries who can attest to the power of prayer. The fact of the matter is that prayer did something for a great deal of people. Prayer not doing anything for you does nothing to show that prayer does nothing for anyone else."If God is omnipotent, omnipresent and omniscient, he would already be aware of every man's problems"Correct."Only he can decide when (if at all) he wants to fix it as it is Gods Will"Correct."Therefore praying to God will do nothing as he already knows of the issue and has already decided when he will solve the problem"This conclusion does not follow. I agree that God knows of our issues and that He alone decides whether or not He will fix them, but it is entirely possible that He takes our prayers into account when deciding whether or not He will fix our issues. To disagree with this would require that you know the mind of God, which is of course itself evidence for His existence.4. Argumentsi. God is the best explanation for the origin of the universe.P1: Everything that begins to exist has a cause.P2: The universe began to exist.C1: Therefore, the universe has a cause.Defense of P1: I will not spend much time on premise one, as it is fairly self-explanatory and relatively uncontroversial. Simply put, something cannot come from nothing. This is supported by reason as well as by experience. No one has ever witnessed a material object (say, a tree) pop out of nothing in front of their eyes. The idea itself is absurd, as everything within the natural world has a cause for its existence.Defense of P2: There is both philosophical and empirical evidence that verify premise two. In order for this premise to be false, one must assert that the universe is eternal. This suggestion contradicts both science and reason. Let us start with the philosophical evidence for premise two. Reason alone can show us that the idea of an eternal past (with an infinite number of past events) is impossible. The absurdity of infinity is shown in this example:I begin with an infinite amount of coins. I subtract an infinite amount of coins from my original count. How many coins do I have left? (Answer = an infinite amount of coins)I begin with an infinite amount of coins. I subtract three coins from my original count. How many coins do I have left? (Answer = an infinite amount of coins)In both cases, I subtracted the same exact number of coins from my original count, yet I arrived at contradicting answers. This, along with several other examples (i.e. Hilbert's Hotel) go to show that infinity does not exist in reality.Now, let us take a look at the empirical evidence supporting this premise. Aside from the obvious Big-Bang model of cosmology, which estimates that the universe came into being from nothing about 13.8 billion years ago, the Borde-Guth-Vilenkin Theorem shows that any universe which is on average in a state of expansion (as our universe is) cannot be eternal.http://now.tufts.edu...ii. God is the best explanation for objective moral values and duties.P1: If God does not exist, objective moral values and duties do not exist.P2: Objective moral values and duties do exist.C1: Therefore, God exists.Defense of P1: Here again, premise one is relatively uncontroversial. If there is no God, then we have no standard from which to deem particular moral acts "good" or "evil". In order for objective moral values and duties to exist, there must exist a perfect standard: God.Defense of P2: Each of us have a sense of morality which tells us that certain actions are objectively "good" or objectively "evil". For example, I can clearly recognize that altruism (self-sacrifice in order to further the well-being of others) is objectively good. I can also clearly recognize that raping and torturing a child is objectively evil. I have no more reason to doubt the reliability of these moral senses than I do to doubt the reliability of my physical senses. In other words, for any argument given in an attempt to show that our moral senses are not valid (and objective morality is therefore not valid), I can construct a parallel argument to show that our physical senses are not valid (and the physical world we experience through these senses is therefore not valid). In order for one to disagree with premise two, one must believe that an action like rape is just as "good" as an action like generosity, and that no objective distinction can be made between the nature of "goodness" of the two acts.