God exists

Since rebuttals are optional for this round I will refute both R2 and R3 arguments in R4 no this round but do not let this stop my opponent from refutting my R2 arguments in this round.Argument 4:"There is no evidence that God doesn't exist" When confronted with criticism, theists will pull out this argument in an attempt to shift the burden of proof toward the critic. Although this tactic can feel very clever, it opens a door to absurdity. This argument seems to suggest that we believe in everything, even things we have yet to think about, until that belief is proven false. That's simply not a logical way to perceive reality. If the criteria for something being accepted as true was based purely on there being no evidence against it, an endless number of hypothetical objects could suddenly become "real." This has been the source of numerous playful thought experiments by skeptics around the world:- The flying spaghetti monster, who created the earth with his noodly appendage. - The dragon in Carl Sagan's garage, a thought experiment he describes in The Demon Haunted World. The dragon is invisible, floats in the air, generates no heat and is incorporeal, thus evading all forms of sensory detection.- Russell's Teapot, a hypothetical teapot that you cannot prove isn't orbiting the sun. Of course, all of these examples were designed in good fun. Bertrand Russell does not actually believe that there is a teapot orbiting the sun. However, ther is no way to definitively prove that these fanciful claims aren't true, which demonstrates the total absurdity of this line of thinking. Carl Sagan's invisible dragon argument shows the futility of ad hoc arguments in explaining reality. An ad hoc argument is one that makes excuses to rationalize away the valid criticisms of an argument without any evidence to support it. When the claimant desperately wants something to be true, she'll often employ an ad hoc argument to counter any arguments to her claim. The dragon in Carl Sagan's hypothetical garage cannot be seen because it's invisible. A skeptic might press for evidence. But its footprints cannot be observed because it hovers in the air, and the dragon's invisible fire is heatless. A rationalization can be formed to explain the absence of any form of evidence. These rationalizations don't make the original claim true. Indeed, it's easiest to make ad hoc arguments about things that don't really exist because that frees you up to create increasingly fanciful arguments. When applied to theism, this ad hoc reasoning can be seen in the increasingly vague descriptions of God. As theists may say: God cannot be comprehended or described. This falls under the ad hoc fallacy. Such rationalizations make God so vague that it becomes impossible to refute the idea, but they get the claimant nowhere closer to proving his claim Disbelief is not the same as belief in something else Arument 5 " The laws of logic prove the existence of God" One relatively new counterargument to atheism is the so-called transcendental argument for God, or TAG, as popularized by Matt Slick of Christian Apologetics and Research Ministry (CARM). Although the transcendental argument for God as displayed on the CARM website is fairly new, the ideas behind it trace back at least as far as Immanuel Kant. Kant introduces the idea and structure of the transcendental argument using certain logical truths or laws that are universal, unchangeable and absolute. What TAG actually says From a philosophical view, there are three logical absolutes: 1) Law of Identity: Something is what it is and isn't what it is not. Something that exists has a specific nature. For example, an apple is that apple, and a rock is that rock. In other words, whatever is, is.2) Law of Non-contradiction: Two opposing statements cannot both be true. For example, "this is an apple" and "this is a rock" cannot both be true if the object in both statements is referring to the same thing. In other words, nothing can both be and not be.3) Law of Excluded Middle: A statement cannot be both true and false at the same time in the same sense. For example, the statement "this is an apple" is either true or false; an object being an apple can't be both true and false at the same time. In other words, everything must either be or not be. These laws are necessarily absolute. They are always true, and there can be no exceptions. Someone who says, "This rock is an apple," makes no sense, as that statement defies the laws of logic; in order for a discussion to take place, all parties involved must agree that rocks, once defined, are always rocks and adhere to their definitions. The TAG argument builds on these laws of logic to provide the following "proof" of God:1) Logical absolutes exist.2) These laws of logic are conceptual in nature, not physical. They do not exist anywhere in the physical world.3) Because these absolutes are conceptual, they must have been conceived in a mind.4) However, these laws are perfect and absolute. Human minds are not perfect or absolute.5) Logical absolutes are true everywhere are not dependent on human minds. 6) Therefore, these laws of logic must exist in a perfect, absolute, transcendental mind.7) That mind is called God. Put in another way, logical absolutes must be the product of a mind, and thses laws are absolute, there must be an absolute mind behind them with that mind being God. In order for a logical proof to work, two conditions must be met: The premises must be true, and the structure must support the premises to their logical conclusion. Structurally, the argument is logically sound; if every premise were true, then the outcome would also be true. However, as we shall see, the premises are not true, which invalidates the argument entirelyThe Fallacy Of Equivocation The problem with the TAG is that the laws of logic are descriptive, not prescriptive. In other words, the laws are simply a desription of things we know to be true. The universe does not conform to logical absolutes because someone thought them up and is holding reality to that standard. These absolutes exist purely to describe patterns that we have observed as true in reality. To understand the difference between a desriptive and prescriptive law, consider this example: Gravity is a desriptive law. Isaac Newton didn't create gravity. It existed before he identified it and would have continued existing regardless of whether he had ever given it a name. The laws of gravity are simply observations made by scientists that explain natural processes. The traffic speed limit is a presriptive law. It was created and enforced by people, and it's meaningless without such enforcement. If no one came up with a speeding limit or held people accountable for speeding, speed limits would cease to exist. In the same way, the laws of logic are desriptive. No one made them up or wrote them in a handbook somewhere for them to exist. They were simply observed as always being true (rocks are always rocks because if a rock were anything else, it would cease to be a rock). Because the laws of logic are not prescriptive, they do not require the mind of a deity or any other mind to exist. Human minds can identify them and put them into words, but the phenomena these laws refer to would continue to exist regardless of whether a deity or anyone else thought about them. Proponents of TAG conflate the description of logical laws with the natural phenomena they refer to. Equating an object with its desription is like equating a phtograph of a car with the real thing; although the photograph accurately depicts an image of the car, you cannot apply the qualities of the photo in accurately describing the real car. Otherwise, you might erroneously extrapolate (incorrectly come to the conclusion that) cars are flat and fit in the palm of your hand. The same is true for the laws of logic . The statement "A=A" is a conceptual description of a physical property. The statement itself requires a mind to describe it. However, the physical property would remain true, with or without a mind to conceive it. What this means is that these desriptions themselves are what is purely conceptual. But the laws they desribe are not coneptual. What these laws refer to is the consistency of existence, which exists whether or not they're being described or identified by a mind. A rock is always a rock because it exists in reality. If there were no mind to observe the rock, it would still be a rock. Minds are necessary only to describe that phenomenon, not to make it true. The fallacy of equivocation occurs because the TAG argument uses logical absolutes in more than one sense. Logical absolutes, as described in step one of the TAG argument above, are physical underpinnings of the universe; in step two, they are the descriptions of those laws. Logical absolutes do exist. However, these laws are not conceptual in nature. We do not need any minds for them to exist. We only need minds to observe, understand and express these laws. Our perceptions of these laws are by no means perfect, unchanging or absolute. If the premises of TAG were sound, the argument still leaves much to be desired as evidence of the existence of God. If you were to accept the premise that universal concepts require a universal mind to think of them, there is nothing to suggest what that mind might be like. In other words, the TAG mind behind the rules of logic would not necessarily need to have any of the qualities commonly associated with deities, including benevolence, omnipotence, a role in the creation of the universe and a source of morality. There is nothing in the TAG to suggest that the hypothetical mind behind the rules of logic was capable of or responsible for anything other than conceiving of those laws. As such, it would fail to actually prove anything about the existence of deities or provide convincing reason to worship or attempt to create personal relationships with God.Sources in comments.