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

Mind over Matter My opponent and I are at an impasse. He is failing to understand my argument, and seems to think he can refute it without addressing my challenges. Perhaps if I give an analogy, it will help clear the clutter: Imagine we saw a bunch of letters in the sand, following a certain pattern that spelled out in plain english “Hello. ” I am arguing that chaos cannot produce order. When one sees this pattern in the sand, one recognizes that there was a sender, a person who ordered the matter so that a receiver could understand the message. What my opponent would be saying, in this analogy, is that the way that the marks in the sand form is not information, but just a “fact of the universe”, it just came to exist on its own, through no intention. I challenged him to propose a method in which chaos can give rise to order, and he has repeatedly refused to accept that challenge. If chaos cannot produce order, then my argument stands: There is a sender who ordered the universe. If my opponent argues that he is not convinced, or still wants to state that I am making an equivocation fallacy, that is fine, as the intelligent voter will recognize that he has not attacked my argument. Prime Mover I demonstrated to my opponent the impossibility that space and time could be eternal, and he yet still continued to assert that they are eternal. I ask the reader to question who really is the one continuing the same invalid argument, even when having been disproved multiple times. Historicity of Jesus My opponent finally understood the impact of my argument, that the apostles would not have willingly proclaimed the gospel to the point of persecution and death if they realized it was a fraud. And, since they were the witnesses of Christ, that either means they were delusional, or that they correctly reported what they saw. Since my opponent claims that the apostles convinced themselves of its truth. However, I already refuted this when showing that the apostles directly denied hallucinating. Realizing the power of this argument, he then repeats the same argument as before, that the apostles didn't write any of it down, even though I refuted this with evidence. He then argues that if Jesus was resurrected (without the means from the Christian God), it would give a reasonable answer as to why the apostles accepted him as some type of god. Now, my opponent is being very inconsistent in his arguments. I do recognize that he puts in trollish topics, and equates the Christian God to a magical ball (straw-man and false equivocation), which makes it difficult to take my opponent seriously, especially when he's requesting sound arguments. My opponent also argues the Exodus never happened, again, without any evidence, and only making baseless assertions (he posts links to biased sources with no evidence, only more baseless assertions). If anyone is interested in the historicity of the Exodus, here is a link to some information: (1) It contains links to a movie and many books on the subject, including an agnostic Egyptologist supporting the evidence of the Exodus event. There were records of hebrew names living in ancient egypt, statues fitting the descriptions of biblical characters, reports of plagues from God destroying the cities that match the biblical descriptions, etc. If my opponent wants to make more specific claims that the Bible is inaccurate in history, I welcome the easily refutable arguments and will tackle them in my final round. Historicity of Genesis My opponent argues that the “experts in the field of science” (no true Scotsman and appeal to authority fallacies) consider those who support genetic entropy as terrible. I would like to ask him to supply evidence so we can see which scientists are critiquing the arguments of genetic entropy, and what are the arguments that refute it? My opponent argued it was interesting that I support mainstream historians, but not mainstream biologists. First, this is incorrect. Mainstream historians do not believe the interpretation of events in which Jesus was resurrected from the dead. Mainstream historians merely accept the basic facts of history, and they alter in the interpretations of events. This is like biology, creationists and evolutionists accept the empirical facts, but differ on the interpretations of it (specifically in reference to origins). He continues to argue that the minority position is automatically false (bandwagon fallacy), and continues to argue that creationists are motivated by money (ad hominem), still without showing evidence as to which creationists are making bank. Ironically, I would argue the inverse. Creationists are constantly attacked by the rest of the field, they lose their tenure, and end up losing vast amounts of money. I would ask my opponent, why would a rational person do this, unless they were convinced of the evidence of creation they continue to report? Miracles My opponent argues that the explanation of someone being raised from the dead is a case of mistaken attribution. Okay. What is the correct explanation of events? If someone has been declared dead, and they are then prayed for in the name of Jesus, and they come back to life, and this has been reported multiple times, how is it then irrational to not at least consider the possibility that the correct explanation is God? To not even want to consider a possibility that has strong correlations seems intellectually sloppy to me. Problem of Evil I don't think my opponent correctly understands the difference between the logical problem of evil and the evidential problem of evil, because his using the logical problem. The logical argument states that God cannot logically exist. The evidential argues that it is unlikely that God exists. I ask that my opponent clarify which position he is taking. If he is taking the logical, this has been refuted for millenia, and atheists concede to the arguments. This is why the evidential problem of evil was created. If my opponent is arguing for the evidential, it does not prove that God doesn't exist, it merely argues that God is likely to not exist. In the specific case that my opponent offered, that of rape, he argues that God ought to prevent the raper from committing the act. However, the results in violating his free will. I would like to also acknowledge the Socratic and Stoic answer to the problem of evil: No evil happens to a good person. The argument is that we are entirely in control of our own free will. Events can happen to us, from other people or from nature, but we choose how we respond to the actions. A person can harm my body, but they can't harm ME (my soul, free will, what have you). Given the stoic response to evil, I have successfully refuted the objection that bad things happen to good people. No evil touches a good person. Morality My opponent attempts to use the Euthyprho dillemma to refute my moral argument for God. This is simple to refute, and like the problem of evil, has been refuted for millenia. Recall the argument to the prime mover. Whatever it is, it is the first thing that has ever existed. It is necessarily eternal. Because of this, ontology gives birth to teleology. The prime mover exists (ontology), and continues to do so (teleology). As teleology is the study of purpose, morality falls under this principle. Since the nature of existence is to continue to exist, this is then the essential principle of morality. Morality isn't above God, or God doesn't arbitrarily define morals, rather, morality is part of the nature of God (the prime mover). This is an objective definition of morality found by logical conclusions. On the other hand, my opponent subjectively defines morality with no premises to justify his definition. He then states that he understands his definition is subjective. If that's the case, then my opponent is arguing that all morality is relative. Given this, I can easily demonstrate that my opponent cannot consistently live out this conclusion. If morality is relative, he then cannot object to anyone else's own definition of morality. So, if another person defines morality as doing what ever they want, he then cannot refute their claim. He must accept the validity. If somebody wants to steal from him, he can become upset that he lost possession of an item, but he cannot attempt to correct the other person from their “wrongdoing”, because there was no moral crime done. But people do not act this way. People become upset when others disobey intuitive moral guidelines. At the end of the day, who would you find as more trustworthy? Someone who considers that the entire universe was created by chaos, that death is the finality of everything, and that morality is relative, or someone who believes in God, works on becoming a better person, and believes that everything they do has an eternal consequence? Some of us believe are brains are intelligently designed, others, not at all :) Good luck to Pro for the last round of arguments. I look forward to replying to your challenging conclusions! (1) . http://shop.patternsofevidence.com...