God exists.

"The affirmative has regarded all of my arguments as 'fallacious'... (opponent) The main reasons I labeled my opponent"s argument fallacious were because they were indeed fallacious. "1. Morality does not require any religious belief. Many people believe that without religion, the planet will descend into immoral chaos. The reality is that the majority of heinous crimes committed against people on this planet across all of recorded history have their roots in religious beliefs. However, the ability to distinguish right from wrong does not require any religious beliefs. In addition, animals who are incapable of understanding our human concept of religion show clear evidence of instinctual understanding of moral behaviour and distinguishing between right and wrong." (Opponent) I agree with you that morality doesn"t require religious belief. You don"t have to believe or know something is right to be doing the right thing. No one is disagreeing with this point, and including it in your argument is either a red herring or a strawman, and that is definitely fallacious. "2. The belief that there is science in religion is incorrect. Scientists can understand 4% of the universe and this statement explains the difference between science and religion. The former is willing to reconsider ideas, theories, laws and rules put forward as long as there is evidence to disprove them. Is the opposition capable of reconsidering their opinions or did they enter this debate with a fixed opinion in mind?" (opponent) My opponent made the claim that Scientists can understand 4% of the universe. This is clearly unreasonable, and at best irrelevant to this discussion. Whether or not scientist can understand 4% of the universe has no impact on whether God exists or not. What if God is in the other 96%?Science is defined as the intellectual and practical activity encompassing the systematic study of the structure and behavior of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment. It is possible to become religious through scientific means, while continuing to be a scientist. Therefore, my opponent"s implicit claim or suggestion that Science and Religion are always mutually exclusive cannot be taken seriously. For example, if I as a theist am provided with sufficient evidence that Allah exists, I will convert to Islam. If I am provided with evidence for agnosticism, I will proceed to convert. But in all of my efforts, I have scientifically been presented with the most evidence for Christianity. I am not Christian for fun. I don"t believe off of blind faith, that is actually the opposite of what the bible teaches. Lastly, I don"t need to have an open mind if I already have the truth. The question is, does God exists, and by extension, "if so, which?". "3. "The mortal enemy of faith is knowledge." This is a scientific fact that has been demonstrated by researchers at the University of British Columbia. The basis of any religion is that you must believe something someone else tells you is true, even though your mind tells you it is false and it makes no sense to you. There is name for that: fideism. Without fideism -- "exclusive reliance in religious matters upon faith, with consequent rejection of appeals to science or philosophy." -- the concept of religion would not exist." (opponent) That is not a scientific fact, that is a subjective quote. 2+2=4 is a fact, faith and knowledge being opposites is an opinion. The basis of Christianity is Christ and his teachings. Faith comes as a result of being convinced that something is true. You aren"t forced to be a Christian. But if you have found that Christ did indeed exist and what he said was indeed true, then you definitely should listen to what Christ said to do. THEN, and only then does faith come in. Jesus said he was the way, the truth, and the life. You can either accept or reject that statement as true or false, but you cannot imply that all religions are somehow lacking of substance, purely based on faith. When Christians say we have faith in God, this doesn"t mean we believe Him without evidence. This simply means that we do not know everything, but we trust that God knows the best for us. So in summary I reject this idea of my opponent, because it is false. "4. The roots of religion can be easily challenged. e.g: the "devil" was not present in religious texts until the nomadic monotheists ran into polytheists and borrowed the idea." (opponent) This is completely irrelevant to whether or not God exists. Red herring. Plus, it doesn"t matter where the religion originated, it matters if it is true or not. "5. Religion, throughout history, has been used to control the masses, rather than enlighten them. An example of this includes the Christian crusades, and the present day suicide bombings by Muslims. If this is the purpose of religion, religion itself seems to be morally incorrect." (opponent) The religion itself is not necessarily morally incorrect, it is just being used by corrupt people. Saying Christianity is wrong because there are some people out there that do bad things and call themselves Christians is like saying all Muslims are members of ISIS. Or that all atheists are stupid just because some of them are. This point is totally invalid. "6. In the case of the Bible, entire verses, stories and anecdotes were falsified for the sake of making a point. Even the concept of the "holy trinity" is a fabrication created not by any god, but for political reasons by a zealot named Theophilus of of Antioch in 412 AD. Plot holes, inconsistencies and illogical, impossible things can all be exploited by atheists." (opponent) I need evidence for this extreme claim. How can you say that the holy trinity is a fabrication, if you are not sure whether or not there is one? Who else said in GENESIS, "Come let "US" make man in "OUR" image? Was God insane and talking to himself? As an atheist, don"t presume to tell Christians which part of their belief is accurate or not. Just stick to refuting the dumb and errant arguments, and intelligent Christians will provide meaningful ones that can further our knowledge on the topic of God and religion. "7. Religion has often been used to explain the unexplainable. The Greeks used Poseidon to explain how earthquakes happen, which we now know is due to the movement of tectonic plates to relieve pressure... (opponent) Once again, none of this says anything on whether or not God exists or not. Plus I detect an association fallacy being used. The Big Bang Theory is well substantiated, but it cannot be said that it necessarily must be true. Some big scientific discovery may come along and dispel the Big Bang Theory. Nothing here stated by my opponent disproves God in any way. "8. Christians believe that God is omniscient and knows everything has happened and will happen. They also believe that God knows every thought our mind will create before we think it. In this case, is there indeed free will? They also believe that God is omnipotent and can do anything. If God can do anything but doesn't lift a finger to stop all the disasters, massacres and wars that have happened, are happening now and will happen in the future- does that make him a psychopath who enjoys watching our misery." If you knew with 100% certainty that somebody else was going to drink a cup of water at twelve at noon, does this mean that the person didn"t choose to do so? Of course not! They chose to drink the water, and you just so happened to know that they would. Thus, foreknowledge is compatible with free choice, and so this portion of your argument doesn"t work. Additionally, Christians believe that God is the source of morality. You cannot make a moral judgement (a negative one) on God, because God is the ultimate good (if he exists). So your personal disgust with God doesn"t disprove him. If God exists, it doesn"t matter that he allows people to get hurt, or some things that you perceive as bad to happen. He has the right to do that because he is God. Additionally, as Christians, we believe that God orchestrates things for the ultimate good. So even if it looks bad now, God has a plan in which people can be saved, and rescued from the inevitable evils that occur. Of course, this point my opponent raised is somewhat understandable, but it doesn"t disprove God. It just makes him seem evil. That is why it is called the Problem of Evil. Of course, at best, all this argument says is that God may or may not exist, but if he does exist, he is pretty mean, IN MY OPINION. I stress the opinion part, because, just because humans, from their limited perspective, form the opinion that God is evil, doesn"t mean he truly is evil. He may have motives or valid reasons for allowing what occurs in this world. We do not know why, and we cannot claim to know why. Therefore, we should not attempt to condemn God for his own actions. To conclude, out of all my opponents points, he presented 4 fallacious arguments (1,4,5, and 7), 3 ignorant and false arguments (2,3, and 6), but only one semi-legitimate argument, (8). Even so, all my opponent was capable of doing was to say, God may or may not exist, but if he does, I don"t like him. I could reverse his last argument by stating, the only reason why you are able to morally condemn God is because there is an objective moral system. Some people inadvertently follow some of it, but God is the only basis of it, I assert, and my opponent has been unable to disprove that. So in short, evil exists, objective morals exist, and lastly God is the only possible basis for objective moral values. It follows logically and necessarily then, that God must exist. Assuming now that my opponent accepts my premises, he must accept my conclusion, in which case he should seriously consider becoming agnostic at least, if not Christian. Hats of to my opponent for a great debate. I hope we both can find the ultimate truth. Good luck everyone. Vote well!