The God of the Bible exists.

Regarding my opponent's syllogism, I will be primarily challenging the second premise. However, the first premise is not entirely accurate, either. It can be reduced to "The fine-tuning of the universe is due either to physical necessity or chance. " If it is by design, then the designer made decision based either on physical necessity or on chance. This goes hand-in-hand with the argument for indeterminism, but that is a whole different debate. ======== ". .. if the expansion rate of the universe had been one part in a hundred thousand million million less than what it was, then the universe would have collapsed on itself. " This claim is unsubstantiated. In fact, it is easily disproven by the fact that the universe's expansion rate is accelerating. (. http://arxiv.org...) "Yet another example is the fact that the universal quantity of protons must be within one part of ten to the power of 37 of the quantity of electrons, otherwise stars and planets cannot form due to electromagnetism dominating gravity in range. " Another claim that my opponent has provided no evidence for. Such claims are not credible. My opponent's entire list of examples of fine tuning will not be addressed; they all suffer from lack of substantiation. ======== Contention 1: Multiverse Theory One possibility to account for what my opponent claims are "fine-tuned" laws is Multiverse Theory. (. http://quasar.as.utexas.edu...) This theory proposes that there are multiple -- possibly even infinitely many -- universes, each with different universal constants. It is therefore far more probable that conditions to support life would arise by chance. By Occam's Razor multiple universes are more likely to exist than a deity, because we already have evidence that one universe exist while we have no (direct) evidence of the existence of a deity. ======== Contention 2: Carbon Chauvinism Carbon Chauvinism (. http://www.knowledgerush.com...) is the belief that life can only be carbon-based; more generally, it is the belief that life can only exist in the circumstances that we observe in our own environment. However, we have no reason to believe that life could not exist in conditions that are very different from our own. It is unreasonable to make the claim that life could not exist if the universal constants were slightly different: life might still exist, but in a very different form. ======== Contention 3: Outcome Fallacy My opponent postulates that because life exists and life is improbable, therefore life was designed. This is a fallacy that I do not know the name of, so I will call it the Outcome Fallacy. If you generate a number between one and a trillion, whatever number you get you can point at and say, "Hey look! That number only had a one in a trillion chance of showing up! This number generator must be rigged! " A comparison in hindsight cannot be used to properly assess probability. Although life may not exist in other possible universes, other things would exist -- things that would never be possible in this universe. But it would be fallacious to point to those universes and use their unique traits as evidence of design. Similarly, it is fallacious to assume that life had to be designed. Maybe the probability of the strength of electromagnetism being exactly what it is is very small. But it is just as small as the probability of it being any other particular number. ======== Contention 4: God of the Bible My opponent has attempted to prove the existence of some supernatural entity. However, the existence of a supernatural entity in no way necessitates that such a supernatural entity is the God of the Bible. ======== Conclusion I have presented five rebuttals to my opponent's argument (one direct response and four contentions). If any one rebuttal remains standing at the conclusion of this debate, then my opponent's case will be defeated.