god is real

So here is a general definition from Merriam-Webster:"the perfect and all-powerful spirit or being that is worshipped especially by Christians, Jews, and Muslims as the one who created and rules the universe. " (1) The O3 God, though, is defined as omnipotent, omnscient, and omnibenevolent. I'll define these terms one by one. omnipotent -- having virtually unlimited authority of influence (2) omniscient -- having infinite awareness, understanding, and insight (3) omnibenevolent -- "The concept of omnibenevolence stems from two basic ideas of God: that God is perfect and that God is morally good. Therefore, God must possess perfect goodness. Being perfectly good must entail being good in all ways at all times and towards all other beings" (4) real -- "being an actual thing; having objective existence; not imaginary" (5) My opponent, in instigating this debate and arguing the affirmative, will possess the sole burden of proof. He must prove categorically that God exists, whereas I must only neutralize his arguments and prove that there is at least a possibility that God doesn't exist. My chief argument will be that there is not enough evidence -- in fact, there isn't any evidence, which Pro himself admits -- and a simple appeal to Occam's Razor renders this resolution negated. I will first lay out what my opponent must be able to prove in order to win this debate: P1: If (x) condition has been met, then God is "real" P2: (x) condition has been met. C: Therefore, God is real. My goal, therefore, is to negate the sequencing of his argument: to prove either that the condition he has offered is unlikely or unfounded, or that it does not lead us to the conclusion that God exists. I'm going to begin by responding to my adversary's arguments by which he must fulfill his BOP in order to win, and then, if space permits, I will offer my own. Pro states, "You say theirs no proof for the existence of god but there there is no proof that proofs that he is not so what proof is there. "I had trouble deciphering Pro's argument, but I think what he is saying essentially boils down to this: (1) There is no proof that God exists (2) There is no proof that God doesn't exist(3) Therefore, it's a wash The problem, however, is that this isn't a wash beause the burden of proof is on the instigator and the person making the positive claim. In order to win this debate, I don't need to prove categorically that God doesn't exist, but merely cast enough doubt that Pro is unable to fulfill his BOP. If he condedes that there isn't any evidence for God, as I believe he may be doing, this debate is already over. Pro states, "God is something to believe in other then your self science really does not know anything. " Pro admits that God is subject to belief and faith, and cannot be proven by science -- which, again, is effectively a concession of this debate and admission that he cannot fulfill his BOP. However, he takes this a step further and tries to say that "science doesn't know anything. " To translate the claim, he is saying that science is irrelevant and virtually on an even playing field with faith. This is patently absurd. Science is based on a method by which people test again and again falsifiable hypotheses. Faith isn't falsiable, meaning that we cannot test it, meaning that the question of whether God exists has no truth value whatsoever. There is as much evidence for God, for instance, as there is for Big Foot. If Pro concedes this point, the debate is over. Pro states, "Theories for everything is changed every 100 years or so. What we know now will be different 200 years from now and they will laugh at us for being so stupid. "Pro suggests that science is eclectic. This is actually true. What we know now is different from what we know prior to the Scientific Revolution, and we would laugh at people who believed in a flat earth or perfectly unchanging heavens and so forth, or that we get night and day and everything around us because a "God" did it. But this is a position supporting my stance, not his. It isn't enough to say that "theories change" in order to discredit science, because all he is doing is lending credence to the scientific method. The scientific method is either plausible in Pro's eyes or it isn't. If it's plausible, this debate is over because God cannot be proven. Now that I have refuted Pro's contentions, I will provide a few of my own. Due to the character constraint, these are by no means the entirety of my arguments. C1) Problem of Evil This is a summary of this argument from Michael Tooley (6): "1. If God exists, then God is omnipotent, omniscient, and morally perfect.2. If God is omnipotent, then God has the power to eliminate all evil3. If God is omniscient, then God knows when evil exists.4. If God is morally perfect, then God has the desire to eliminate all evil.5. Evil exists.6. If evil exists and God exists, then either God doesn't have the power to eliminate all evil, or doesn't know when evil exists, or doesn't have the desire to eliminate all evil.7. Therefore, God doesn't exist. "The crux of this case is that, if God exists, we look to him as knowledgeable of evil, including of what is yet to happen, powerful enough to put an end to it, and all-good, meaning that he would want to put an end to it. However, evil stil exists. So how can God be concurrently omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent? C2) Occam's RazorHere is a pretty good summation of this principle: "When you have two competing theories hta tmake exactly the same predictions, the simpler one is the better. " (7) In reference to this, Stephen Hawking wrote the following in A Brief History of Time (7)(8): "We could still imagine that there is a set of laws that determines events completely for some supernatural being, who could observe the present state of the universe without disturbing it. However, such models of the universe are not of much interest to us mortals. It seems better to employ the principle known as Occam's razor and cut out all the features of the theory that cannot be observed. " This leads us to the conclusion that, if we have another, more plausible explanation with fewer assumptions than the theological case for God, the explanation with fewer assumptions is usually accurate. In this case, this would be self-creation, though I don't have enough time in this round to elucidate the case. C3) No evidence This similar to C2, but it's merely pointing out that the BOP is on the theist, and lack of evidence would mean that he would lose this debate. Russel's Tea Pot analogy bears this notion out (9). The case, essentially, is that it is impossible to disprove the existence of the teapot between the Earth and Mars orbiting the Sun. But if someone were to claim that the inability to prove a negative means that this must be prima facie true, we would say that this person is presenting a nonsensical claim: we would accept that absence of evidence is evidence of absence. So why wouldn't we apply this same logic to the existence of a deity? I have more arguments, including some quantum mechanics, but I'm going to pass back to Pro since I run low on characters. Sources: (1) . http://www.merriam-webster.com... (2) . http://www.merriam-webster.com... (3) . http://www.merriam-webster.com... (4) . http://atheism.about.com... (5) . http://dictionary.reference.com...; (6) . http://plato.stanford.edu... (7) . http://math.ucr.edu...(8) A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking, page 57(9) . http://rationalwiki.org...'s_Teapot