There is a God

I'll get started. 1. "But it is only Con's opinion that there is no evidence. You cannot know all evidence for or against God, therefore you cannot say there is no evidence for God. " I'm not claiming to know all the evidence for or against God. It is not just my opinion that there is no extraordinary evidence. (This distinction is important. There is some evidence, tenuous as it may be, but none of it is extraordinary. ) Keep in mind that you accepted the burden of proof for this debate. You are the one who needs to show that there is extraordinary evidence, which you have thus far failed to do. 2. "Con seems to beg the question here. I can say "The lights on my house work fine without presupposing electricity. " That's actually not true, and you have created another false analogy. Electricity is presupposed in this case, because your light could not work without it. My point was that the universe functions perfectly well without presupposing God. You have yet to show any reason for it to require God to work; assuming you can do that, you will then need to explain why the Judaeo-Christian God is necessary for this, and not any other 'prime mover. ' 3. "Basically an argument from bad design. I agree we do live in a fallen world as a result of sin. God did not design organisms to be perfect. To do so would be to create an equal of Himself. " God is apparently a very inept designer, then. My argument isn't just that the universe isn't perfect; it's that the universe, our world, and our lives are ruled by randomness, chance, and seemingly purposeless and senseless destruction and chaos. Why would God, an all-powerful being, fine-tune the universe and then put our galaxy on a collision course with another galaxy? To try to work God into this equation, one must fall back on the unfalsifiable "We don't know" or "It's part of his plan" argument. Arguments from design: "You're implying that unless humans design something, we can't infer design. " No, I'm not. I'm implying that it's illogical to try to infer design from things that show no evidence of being designed. The argument from design is very weak, and fails for multiple reasons: 1) The entire argument is fallacious. It can be refuted like this: Some things that look designed do not have a designer. From 1, it is not the case that everything that looks designed has a designer. From 2, the second premise of the argument from inferred design fails. 2) It fails to account for objective evidence: Many things that look designed can be observed during the process of their creation processes. Many of those creation proccesses will involve a designer. Many of those creation processes will not involve a designer. From 3, the second premise of the argument from inferred design fails. In other words, we can watch an airplane get built and observe its designer(s). Likewise, we can watch evolution by natural selection take place and observe that there is no designer. 3) Infinite probability: Assume the Argument from Inferred Design to be true All designers look designed All designers are more improbable than their designs From 1 and 2, there is an infinte regress that must be terminated From 3 and 4, the termination point of that regress must be infinitely improbable From 5, this termination point would be impossible Therefore, the Argument from Inferred Design must be false. In other words, once we regress back to God, we cannot go any further because he is infinity improbably. Since he is infinitely improbable, his existence is impossible. (Refutations 1 - 3 all came from source 1. ) Zero-Energy universe: "This is nothing but a mathematical trick to try to get around the 1rst Law of Thermodynamics. " It does not do this. In fact, it accounts for the first law of Thermodynamics. This is a quote taken from the Astronomy Society of the Pacific: "Quantum theory, and specifically Heisenberg"s uncertainty principle, provide a natural explanation for how that energy may have come out of nothing. Throughout the universe, particles and antiparticles spontaneously form and quickly annihilate each other without violating the law of energy conservation. These spontaneous births and deaths of so-called 'virtual particle' pairs are known as 'quantum fluctuations. '" [2] "The result is that the work is still positive. For work to be negative the force would have to push the mass in the opposite direction from which it is applied. " Wrong again. Another quote from the same website easily disproves this: "All of these particles consist of positive energy. This energy, however, is exactly balanced by the negative gravitational energy of everything pulling on everything else. In other words, the total energy of the universe is zero. It is remarkable that the universe consists of essentially nothing, but (fortunately for us) in positive and negative parts. You can easily see that gravity is associated with negative energy: If you drop a ball from rest (defined to be a state of zero energy), it gains energy of motion (kinetic energy) as it falls. But this gain is exactly balanced by a larger negative gravitational energy as it comes closer to Earth"s center, so the sum of the two energies remains zero. " [2] "The other problem is that empty space and/or the quantum vacuum aren"t nothing; they"re something. " Thank you for reiterating my point. Krauss's point is that 'nothing' in this sense actually refers to something with zero net-energy. Nothing further to add here. The quotes from David Albert do nothing to disprove Krauss's theory or my assertions. He simply states that it does not account for 'why the world should have these fields. ' It doesn't attempt to account for this. Such a question is one of philosophy, which is fitting considering David Albert is a professor of philosophy. I think we can safely assume that he knows less about theoretical physics than Krauss, who is an award-winning theoretical physicist. I'm running out of room so I'll try to summarize the last few arguments: "How can an atheist account for the laws of logic? " We don't need to. Atheism is simply the lack of belief in a god. However, the laws of logic are 'absolute' because they are based in the world that we live in as it is. Saying "I have a round square in my pocket" is illogical because that is not the way our world is. Round squares do not exist. But why does God follow from this? Just because our world is a certain way does not necessitate a deity. Pro fails to establish this connection. "This conclusion fails to understand that logic is not separate from God's nature, but is a reflection of God's nature. Since God's nature does not change, the principles of logic cannot change. " This is circular and is not supported by evidence. Prove that logic is a reflection of God's nature. As I have said, the principle of logic do not change because there are certain things in our world that do not change. I still fail to see how God follows from this. Keep in mind that it is not my responsibility here to explain why logic absolutes exist and why they don't (although I have tried to anyway). It is, however, your job to prove a connection between them and God. So far, all you have done is list some logical absolutes, assumed God, and then tried to connect them. You have not shown a link between the two and you have not provided a reason for assuming God in the first place. Remember the burden of proof you agreed to. And I do apologize for some of these responses being a little terse. As I said, I am running out of room here, but I feel I got the point across well enough. Sources: 1 - . http://rhetoricsanspareil.wordpress.com... 2 - . http://www.astrosociety.org...