It is reasonable to believe in the Christian god

My opponent has said there is no such thing as the Christian god per say, well he is defending the god of Christianity not the god of Islam. While evolving from the same stories, these gods are distinctively different. As for his arguments: 1.A belief is rational if rational people believe it. Simply no it is not. You could list a bunch of otherwise rational people who believe in Bigfoot, yet their belief in Bigfoot is not rational, the same with aliens and many more irrational claims. This statement is simply nonsequitor. 2.Belief is rational if it has parsimonious explanatory value of facts in our world. Again simply no, just because their isn't something we don't know and we can make up a constant that could explain it doesn't mean its rational to believe it. An angry Bigfoot could explain why my garage was trashed last night, but is it reasonable to believe that, nope, this simply is not enough to make it reasonable to believe something. You must demonstrate why this is most likely the the right explanation. As for fine tuning, it could point to any god if it were really an indicator, but in reality it is not. In any vast universe we should expect there to be certain things that are unlikely. There is no reason to believe that this leads to the conclusion that it was created for us. Such a vast universe and a Christian believes that it was created for people who make up such a tiny spec of it. That my friends is the opposite of reasonable. Its completely unreasonable. Morality make far less sense in the Christian worldview. An all powerful all loving god could have morality so much better understood. Yet, what do we get, a system that looks a whole lot more like people trying to figure out which actions benefit society and help our survival. Even my opponent knows this, since after all he knows that at the very least he if a little child was about to get run over by a car, he certainly knows he doesn't do it because God says so or because he cares about the child's well being( a product of evolution, as we are a social species). He would certainly have to admit that benefiting society would be as good if not a better reason to save the child then simply god said so, especially since the god he is referring to was involved in 2 child sacrifice schemes, Jepthah and Abraham. 3. A belief is rational if it can explain deep mysterious of human existence and serve as a compass in life If materialism is true.... Sounds like my opponent is arguing here that he doesn't want it to all end so therefore belief in resurrection and more is reasonable this is nonsense. I don't want to believe I'm poor so therefore it is reasonable for me to believe there is a stash of a million dollars buried in my backyard. Is that reasonable, nope, same reason here. While I would contend Christian societies are better on a whole, I will not do that here, what I do contend is that my opponent may not know what it means to be in accordance to logic if he thinks a argument from utility clearly a logical fallacy is reasonable. This simply means that we may want to adopt some of the Christian precepts to run our societies, it does not mean that we ought to believe in the supernatural claims of the religion. 4. A belief is rational if there are rational arguments for its truth Here we go my opponent has finally made a statement that is actually true. Yet at the the end of the day his argument basically gets to any god. I could take time to refute that argument but it would waste space since even if we accept it is true, we would still be unreasonable to believe in the Christian god since that argument could easily be used for thousands if not millions of other gods. Therefore we are left just picking one of the thousands of possible choices and just assuming we are right, that sounds just about as reasonable as me guaranteeing I will win at a roulette table 3 straight times by putting my money down on 3 the first roll, 28 the second roll, 12 the third roll. It could happen, but because its so statistically unlikely based on the current data its completely unreasonable to believe it actually will. 5. A belief is rational if the opposing view has serious flaws Here he is using a false dilemma. It is quite that simple. It is not materialism or Christianity, there are many other worldviews to consider so this entire point is flawed. Its a very typical mistake when people are holding unreasonable beliefs its a form of logic called Reductio Ad Absurdum, reduction to absurdity, which is valid if and only if there are 2 options. It is not in accordance with logic if you use it when there are many worldviews and attempt to only disprove 1. So while I disagree with his claims about the universe, this cannot make it reasonable to believe in the Christian god so therefore no need to disprove those irrelevant claims. As for his rebuttals to my arguments: free will-the ability to choose how to act (http://www.merriam-webster.com...) See the problem my opponent doesn't get as many don't is that the relationship I am referring to is not of causation, but of entailment. If god knows X will happen it entails that the universe is set up in such a way that X will happen. There simply is no way to reconcile this, because lets say God knows I will call out late to work on June 30, 2014 at 9:43 am. He has always known this. At which point did I freely choice to do this? If I freely chose to do this, what other choose did I have but to do this, that wouldn't have completely falsified the statement that God knew I would. You guessed it. None. Thats the point God knowing the future, means the future is predetermined and this cannot be reconciled by saying god is outside of time, since it would still mean everything is predetermined as god simply would exist at all points of the linear timeline. My opponent could say well god knows all possible options, but that is not within the definition of the God we are discussing as this god would know which world would actualize, not just the possible options, and with that said there is only one actualized world option and hence no choice. Now for the problem of Evil. My opponent must not only say that there is a possibility, because as we have seen believing in things that are just merely possible is not reasonable, he must say its very probable. Now I ask my opponent this question: If your god exists then the most loving choice in every single child rape and every single child murder and every single child starvation was to sit there and let it happen. This is inescapable based on Christianity, I want to know, how likely you believe that is true? Is this really probable. Also if a police officer ignored any of this would it be reasonable to believe that there was a greater good in any single instance? No, didn't think so, why believe it for God on every single instance. Now onto his resurrection response. He has not defended the resurrection as having actually happened which to be show it was reasonable he really ought to have done. Instead he appealed to a miracle, which by definition believing in miracles is believing in the least likely event. This is not reasonable. It is the very opposite of being in accordance to logic. Again my opponent has conceded being reasonable instead opting for faith which is not based on logic or reason. As for my data, I pointed out earlier this was not an option to say my data is based on nature, since after all my data is just as valid with god, because if god exists he presumably could have resurrected any body, so we know it is highly unlikely he would choice to do so based on the same data. He never even addressed my argument he actually just tries appeal to authority, which was irrelevant to the actual argument about the resurrection vs Salem witches so that argument stands. More in my closing statements.