The existence of a supernatural God

My opponent failed to introduce the debate properly. He did not state his resolution (a title is not a resolution); did not lay out any general rules or rules for the rounds, and he did not define any essential terms. If I wanted to I could define "supernatural god" in a way that nobody accepts just to make it an easy win for myself. But that would not make for an interesting debate, so I will not do that. The only statement my opponent made in his post for round one was that the burden of proof is on the one making the positive claim, who he says is me in this case. This needs to be questioned. First of all, many would disagree that the burden of proof always falls on the one making the positive claim. For example, if I say that the world which I perceive actually exists, and my friend says that it does not exist, does it make sense to say that the burden of proof is on me because I am making the positive claim? Of course not; the burden of proof falls on the one making the claim that goes against what our reason and experience tell us. Even if the burden of proof does always fall on the one making the positive claim, that does not mean that atheists are off the hook. They often make positive claims. Does the term "positive atheism" ring a bell? Positive atheism refers to those arguments from atheists that make positive claims about God, mainly that his attributes conflict with each other [1]. I would say that my opponent is ignorant of these arguments, or that he finds them ridiculous, as most sober-minded people do, but he has presented his own positive atheism in past debates [2], so he knows what he said is false. But since my opponent did not present any arguments here, he does not appear to want to defend any of them. He may only be interested in negative atheism. But even with negative atheism, atheists often make positive claims still. For example, if an atheist objects to the cosmological argument, he usually does so by making positive claims about physics. Or concerning arguments about design, atheists will often make positive claims about evolution. Positive claims just can"t be avoided. Get used to it. The atheist philosopher David Steele believes that the positioning of a burden of proof one side in debates about God"s existence is illogical. [3] With all that I just said, I have to concur. In his profile comments, I noticed that qopel also said repeatedly that atheism is not a worldview. Of course it is a worldview, unless one is using a non-dictionary definition of the word "worldview." It is a view of the world. Just because atheism does not imply that one holds other worldviews does not mean that atheism is not a worldview. The fact that atheism is a worldview does not make it illogical or false, so I have no idea why some atheists find it so important to tell the world that atheism is not a worldview. It"s nothing to be ashamed of. I am a theist, a capitalist, and a realist among other things. All of which are worldviews, and I"m not ashamed to say that. With that cleared up, I present my positive arguments for the existence of God. ARGUMENTS (1) Beauty and Art Human beings have the ability to perceive and comprehend beauty. We take pleasure in hearing certain melodies. We may feel captivated by a sunset or a roaring sea. We also have the ability to create art. We need art to survive. We do it for moral, pleasurable, and instructive reason. This is exactly what you would expect if a God existed who loved us. He wants us to be happy and to have an insight into the value of reality. It is exactly what you would not expect if the world were only the result of evolutionary forces. Beauty or art have absolutely no survival value. What could they have evolved for? How could they even have evolved? How do you make the leap from creatures who have no sense of art or beauty to creatures that do, or to use a geometrical analogy, how do you evolve a square out a circle? The answer? You don"t. Beauty and art cannot come from nature. They have no place in nature. The existence of beauty and art therefore point to the existence of a God who loves art and beauty, and who wanted to share it with us. (2) Morality and Moral Behavior Our experience tells us both that there is moral order and that human behavior often follows that moral order. We have an intuition that torturing innocent people is wrong, for example, and we engage in behavior that accords with this intuition. This moral order cannot be derived from nature. As the atheist philosopher David Hume explained, you cannot derive an "is" from an "ought". From the fact that kicking someone causes pain it does not logically follow that you ought not to be kicked. [4, 5] But if the "is"es are not natural, they must be beyond nature. Again we are forced to look to God for an origin of morality. And since moral behavior appears to follow from the moral code, moral behavior transcends nature as well. Evolutionists have only explained how animals could engage in the appearance of moral behavior (reciprocal altruism, kin selection etc.) but humans often engage in behavior that contradicts the benefits from these models. We find no answer in nature for human morality. Again, we must look to the supernatural. (3) Free Will Our experience confirms that we have free will. Unlike animals, whose behavior is almost entirely predictable and extremely limited in range, human behavior is vast and displays a wide range of creativity. This implies freedom of the will. Since science tells us that the natural world is determined by natural laws, while random mutations and subatomic indeterminacy also occur. None of these include or entail free will. But since we have reason to believe that free will exists, we must look beyond the natural world for its origin. We must affirm the existence of God. CONCLUSION I have presented three positive arguments for the existence of God. My opponent must explain why he thinks they do not work. [1] Atheism: A Philosophical Justification (1990) Martin, Michael [2] http://www.debate.org...[3] Atheism Explained: From Folly to Philosophy (2008) Steele, David [4] A Treatise on Human Nature (1748) Hume, David [5] Ten Philosophical Mistakes (1985) Adler, Mortimer