No believer in any religion that includes an afterlife can provide me with a sound argument

"Of course, my opponent is a materialist, and does not want to accept the logical conclusion of this argument. " That is Ad Hominem. "Information is the underlying principle, and matter is the medium through which it is expressed. " No, Information is simply a description of the matter, not its cause. " If minds didn't exist, the physical laws of the universe would still exist. What are the laws, other than the necessary ordering of information?" The "Laws" are our way of describing events that occur regularly. Information, as you seem to want to define it, is necessarily tied to everything, but it has no causal power. I think you are equivocating legal laws with physical ones. "A weak rebuttal was produced," A weak rebuttal? I showed that your premises are unjustified and thus your conclusion is unjustified. What you have done is tried to argue that the wetness of water can exist without the water and then done some mental gymnastics to take that flawed separation and turn it into a god. Let's re-examine your argument P1: Information is the underlying principle of reality. -As I showed, information, in the way you try to discuss it is just a property of reality, not its cause. P2: Information requires a sender. -Communication requires a sender, rote information exists whether or not it is being sent C: There is a sender that caused all of the information (order) in reality. -This does not work because you equivocated information between premise 1 and 2 and even if you hadn't premise 1 is false. To your Prime Mover Rebuttals: "My opponent argued that the prime mover is quantum fluctuations that have changed form since the start of the universe. This statement is simply false. The prime mover is what caused everything to exist. It itself must be beyond space, time, and limitations. These are necessary, prima facie conclusions. " If the quantum fluctuations are eternal, then they are a perfectly reasonable prime mover. What does beyond space, time, and limitations mean and why do you think that a prime mover must be unlimited? I do not see these as evidently true. "So, even if my opponent wants to argue that quantum fluctuations did cause our universe to exist, that still doesn't answer what he understands to be the ultimate first cause of reality, if it isn't God." You would need a first cause for your god. Typically apologists do a bit of special pleading here by calling their god an uncaused cause, but I can do the same with quantum fluctuations. "My opponent asked for me to provide a source from my argument from quantum mechanics. I was proving an a priori explanation to a well known principle in physics through logical reasoning- a source is only relevant in a posteriori arguments." I still reject this, it is ludicrous to give a one sentence explanation of quantum physics. That said, it isn't that important to your arguments. "My opponent then makes the claim that the prime mover of all reality could be a ball." I specifically said a magic ball. You must have missed that bit because all of your rebuttal is defeated by the magicness. The magic ball that pours out matter and energy is a perfectly fine prime mover. This once again shows that prime movers need not interact with all of reality(if you read my explanation in the prior round). The prime mover is typically referred to as the uncaused cause, that which is responsible for all motion and/or matter in the universe. My magic ball pouring out matter and energy fits this without needing to constantly maintain its creations or being able to interact with them. It is apologists who add lots of bells and whistles to the prime mover to try to show that a god exists. "Here is the link: " That is a really bad source. It is a random church with no citation claiming that most historians believe things that seem to support the beliefs of the church. I can make a very similar website and claim that no historians believe those things and call it a source. " I would argue that Jesus made very specific claims while he was living. " Nothing he said was written down until hundreds of years after he died and it was not by anyone who had any direct encounters with him(if he existed at all). There is no way to verify his words, but even if there were it still would not prove that he was God or that there was an afterlife. I will explain. In the popular series "The Highlander", there are immortals who can only be killed by decapitation. All other methods of killing are nonfatal to them. They appear to die, but after a period of time they revive. If such an immortal were crucified, his body would appear to die, then he would resurrect. If he made religious claims, those claims would be false despite his immortality. I will try an even more direct way of saying it. If I claim X, Y, and Z and then prove X, it in no way proves or even implies that Y and Z are true. " Are you arguing that the lesser mystery is that many people lied about a savior, then went on to preach to people so that they would be punished by cruel and unusual torture, rather than an ultimate God performing a minor miracle of raising one person from the dead?" Yes. I am arguing that people doing things that we have seen done and have mechanisms for is less mysterious than an all powerful magician for whom we have zero evidence. By the way, dying for your beliefs is not unique to Christianity. By this logic, pretty much every religion is proven true which is impossible since they are mostly mutually exclusive. "My opponent then attacked the character of those scientists" I "attack" them because there are much better explanations for them espousing science that runs counter to the evidence and that is financial motivation. "He then asked for a reference to papers published in scientific journals that corroborate this argument. Here is a link to a fountain of scientific papers on the subject:" Most of these papers have nothing to do with the subject, but I will address a few of the ones that are at least relevant. http://www.worldscientific.com... This one uses a computer model to test mutations on a hypothetical bit of DNA. They determine that as you get more complex, beneficial mutations become more rare. The conclusion was not that you cannot evolve to a human over billions of years, rather that using their computer model you can show that evolutionary rates of change slow as the DNA gets more complex. However, we are assuming that their computer model is a good one. http://www.worldscientific.com... Another computer model we are assuming is good and that is being run properly. A huge issue with all the studies that even remotely relate to the idea of genetic decay is that they have had almost no impact at all in science. You can use search engines like Google Scholar to determine if this research is actually used by anyone in the field. When I type random words into there I get studies that are cited thousands of times. The first article was cited 5 times. The second was cited 6 times. Most of these citations are the authors citing themselves. This tells us that people in science find no value in the research used to support this hypothesis. My opponent is bringing up fringe science rejected by pretty much all experts in the field. As I said before, there is a motivation for this. Creationist organizations will pay people who would otherwise not be very successful in science to produce studies like these regardless of whether they are even remotely true. If you examine the history of science, when new ideas come around that challenge the mainstream, they are examined and either rejected or accepted based on their merits. Unlike religion, science is not some dogmatic practice where we start with an answer and look for evidence. Scientists start with evidence and follow it to an answer.There is no holy book of science. Science is constantly improving and reaching new conclusions. For example, quantum mechanics was thought to be crazy nonsense by some of our best scientists, but after sufficient testing and proof, the scientific community accepted quantum mechanics. "perfect creation with decay fits the model" Of course magic fits as an explanation, but you need to demonstrate that is exists. "I would argue that since so many people around the world now have documented evidence of their testimonies, and that well trained and educated physicians can corroborate the claims, it would be irrational to dismiss miracles as impossible or false. "Argument ad populum + Argument from authority=double fallacy. This is not proof of miracles, though it might be evidence of mistaken attribution of causation or confirmation bias. I watched parts of the long video and all of the short one. All I am seeing is more mistaken attribution of causation and stories of miracles that mostly occur in 3rd world countries. I am not seeing anything that looks like a miracle. If you want evidence of miracles, find a study showing that prayer correlates with healing and that it is specific to your religion(ie not a placebo). Find a person who had his head chopped off and grew a new one. Don't point me to things that have naturalistic explanations. Evidential Argument from Evil: This deals with an Omnipresent, Omniscient, Omnibenevolent, Omnipotent (4O) God. 1) A 4O god can prevent all evils that do not lead to a greater good. 2) A 4O god is aware of all evils that do not lead to a greater good. 3) A 4O god would want to prevent all evils that do not lead to a greater good. 4) Evils that do not lead to a greater good exist. C) A 4O God does not exist. Examples of evils that do not lead to a greater good: AIDS(esp in babies) Pain experienced by a person on his deathbed Rape of children A deer suffering as it burns in a forest fire