The Teleological Argument is a sound argument for God's existence.

An intelligent Designer of the universe and/or humans does not equal TheismPro moves the goal postsPro has decided they will not try to justify the existence of "God" based on intelligent design. Pro has said things like. .. "The only plausible explanation for our existence is that the universe had a designer, God. "Considering Pro decided to use the warn out obnoxious cliche of "it takes more faith to believe. .. .. ", I think Pro should be held to the claims they have made. Pros first premise "P1) The universe resulted either from design or chance. "Pro seems to think that some one can present a false dilemma and if no one presents a third alternative that proves them right. This is the I am right until proven wrong fallacy. Consider the following. ..1) Either I am in Australia or AfricaIf no one presents another alternative, does that prove me correct ? of course not. As I said, unless the proposition is (X) or (not X), chances are there is a false dilemma. But I am willing to withdraw my objection here until they respond. If by chance Pro means something absent intelligent/intentional design, then sure no problem, cause that was what I said in the previous round (intelligent design vs non intelligent design). If Pro means something different then we probably have a problem here. So Pro I am asking you to define and explain what you mean by "chance" as stated premise 1 & 2 of your argument. AnthropomorphismPro is utterly dismissive here, Pro remarks about how people "see" intelligent design. Yes and people see faces in the clouds, but are they real faces or are they just seeing them ? People see intelligent design in say humans, but is it real or is it just in their head ? , that's the question now, and since humans have a tendency to give non human things human attributes I beg to differ with Pro, anthropomorphism is relevant. Improbable events happen all the timeYou will recall I showed how improbability doesn't prove intent. That's all I wanted to establish here. All this done, with you and me in mindYou will recall that I showed you can't prove intent based on the fact that if x,y,z had not happened then we would not be here. Christopher Hitchens elaborates on this point. .. "This, there's a certain arrogance to this assumption all of this—all of this extraordinary development was all about us and we were the intended and the desired result and everything else was in the discard. The tremendous wastefulness of it, the tremendous cruelty of it, the tremendous caprice of it, the tremendous tinkering and incompetence of it, never mind at least we're here and we can be people of faith. It doesn't work me, I have to simply say that and I think there may be questions of psychology involved in this as well" [1] Weak Anthropic Principle Pro changes what the WAP is saying. It doesn't we are here BECAUSE the universe is compatible with our existence, it makes the point that any observer that is dependent on X,Y,Z can only exist where X,Y,Z is the case. As Kyle says. .. "The WAP is significant in that it makes the improbability of any one universe (i. e. our own) irrelevant. We should expect that our universe has features compatible with our existence, since, after all, we exist. "Nick Bostrom explains. .. "a selection effect is introduced by the fact that the instrument you use to collect data (a fishing net, a mail survey, preserved trading records) samples only from a proper subset of the target domain. Analogously, there are selection effects that arise not from the limitations of some measuring device but from the fact that all observations require the existence of an appropriately positioned observer. Our data is filtered not only by limitations in our instrumentation but also by the precondition that somebody be there to "have" the data yielded by the instruments (and to build the instruments in the first place). The biases that occur due to that precondition—we shall call them observation selection effects—are the subject matter of this book. [2] In gambling analogy arguments for intentionality, the gambler who keeps on winning against the odds is said to be the beneficiary of some rigging of the game. Pro presents the same kind of reasoning. In order for humans to exist look at all the improbable events that had to happen, the game is rigged, it was intended to be like this, its intelligent design ! !! How does Pro account for this observation selection effect in there probability argument ? they don't. Paintings, Buildings, Watches and the UniverseSize + complexityPro says. .. "I am saying that smaller, simpler things (like paintings, buildings, and watches) require an intelligent designer, so larger, more complex things require an intelligent designer"Pro is trying once again to take a set of complex things that require intelligent design (man made objects) and then say well this proves more complex things that are not man made require intelligent design too. Fallacious reasoning. Complexity and size can't be used to infer intelligent design, cause simple, small things like tic tacs according to this type of reasoning mean we should infer that tic tacs are not intelligently designed, but we know this to be false. Pros new argument1) Paintings, buildings, and watches require an intelligent designer.2) The universe is infinitely more complex than paintings, buildings, or watches.3) Therefore, the universe must have been intelligently designed. Infinitely complex? I'll grant alot more complex. As I said before, you can list all the man made objects you want as Pro does in premise 1, but this doesn't get you to therefore the universe is intelligently designed. This kind of reasoning also back fires consider the following. .. .1) A universe requires an intelligent designer (Granted for reducto)2) A sheet of paper is infinitely less complex than the universeC) Therefore a sheet of paper is not intelligently designedNow perhaps Pro or some one else will claim, hey just because the universe is intelligently designed doesn't mean a sheet of paper isn't designed, you can't base intelligent design on levels of complexity and size. .. .. .. .. exactly. As I said before this type of argument assumes that a universe or humans are put together the same way as watches and thus concludes if the watch needs an intelligent designer then so does the universe or humans. This is never proven, it's assumed as a priori. Does this datum suggest that God created our world ? Sam Harris explains. .. "In the face of any scientific finding there are two different questions you can ask. You can ask does this datum suggest the existence of God ? or you can ask is this compatible with the existence of God ? These seem similar but have very different results. Take one fact, that 99.9% of all the species that have every lived on earth are now extinct. Does this fact suggest that an omniscient and omnipotent and perfectly benevolent God has designed our world ? Not at all, that's probably the last thing you would infer from such a fact. But ask the other question, is the fact compatible with the existence of the biblical God ? the answer to that question is yes, and it is always yes, you must simply add caveats like who can understand the will of God, he may of wanted to destroy his creation for some reason that surpass our reasons of understanding. & "Given the gaps in science and given the elasticity of religious thinking it will always be possible to reconcile the most gratuitous non sense with our modern scientific world view. This is not the same thing as having scientific reasons to believe in God" [3] That's it for me for round 3. Sources [1] . http://hitchensdebates.blogspot.com.au...[2] . http://www.anthropic-principle.com...[3] www. youtube. com/watch? v=i9GZOrxypTc (note: you might have to add "http://" to see the video. I did this to stop the video being shown in my post, this isn't a video debate. )