Atheism Provides the more Rational and Realistic Worldview than Theism

I thank Con for his arguments but he scapegoats many indefensible positions that a theist must account for. His perceptions of creationist science are held in high esteem and I would be glad to show you the many reasons as to why it has not been accepted by the scientific community. It is statistically proven that the more educated a person becomes, the less religious they are likely to be (http://www.huffingtonpost.com...). It is also proven that atheists have a higher average IQ than all other denominations including agnostics and theists (http://en.wikipedia.org....). You are right that two percent of the world population is atheist however you refuse to acknowledge and present to the fair-minded reader that most people in the world are not educated, nor are they scientists. I have shown in Round 3 that the most trustworthy and respected group (scientists) are overwhelmingly atheist and agnostic. It must also be noted that atheism is rising while religiosity is in decline (http://www.huffingtonpost.com...). In most cases it seems, whatever a child is taught in the developmental stages of life, he/she will believe it for the entirety of their lives, as many people do not gain access to a sufficient education. Why Creation Science is Pitiful In 1997, a poll by the Gallup organization showed that only 5% of US adults with professional degrees in science took a young Earth creationist view. The problem with it is that it is not a scientific theory at all, which you have already agreed to. It is unfalsifiable by principle as no one has the absolute proof of the origins of the universe nor can it be tested. Young earth creationism is religiously motivated, such that most evidence they refer to are unreliable, biased, and many times contradictory to scientifically established data. This is the main reason why the scientific community discards this theory. All scientific data showing of an earth that is about 4.54 billion years old include: 1. The formation of sandstone. 2. The formation of limestone. 3. The formation of caves in limestone by carbonic solution. 4. The formation of stalactites and stalagmites in caves, by evaporative deposition. 5. The slow erosion of sandstone by stream flooding. 6. Slow erosion by the freeze-thaw cycle. 7. The slow weathering of hard minerals like granite. 8. The mineralization of petrified wood. 9. The sculpting of mountains and valleys by glaciation, missing in the tropics 10. Slow erosion by inflorescence. 11. Sedimentation in layers in which less-dense and more dense materials alternate 12. The formation of ice cores showing several hundred thousand seasonal cycles 13. The building of volcanic islands 14. Continental drift evidenced by matching coasts and mineral characteristics 15. The rise of mountains by continental subduction. 16. The decay of radioactive materials, including, for example, Argon39/Argon40 that does not depend upon knowing the original amount of an isotope. About twenty independent isotopes pairs having different half-lives support a common time line. 17. The rings indicating the seasonal growth of coral 18. The many reversals of the earth's magnetic fields as captured in lava flows 19. The visibility of light from stars that are more than 6,000 light years distant 20. The plastic folding of the earth's crust shown in rock layers There are many more as well (but I want to have some characters left for debating). It's conceivable that scientists could have made mistakes in believing that one or two pieces of evidence imply an old earth, but the amount of evidence is so substantial that it is not conceivable that mistakes were made in every case. Moreover, one time line is consistent with all the evidence, and they all cross-reference each other to give the same outcome. Now I still grant that it is possible for the earth to be 6,000 years old, it could even have been created last week but all the evidence shows otherwise. You may say that God created a young earth with evidence for an old earth, but it is still just another unfalsifiable assumption. I do not believe, the all-loving and all-powerful God you believe in would trick pretty much every single scientists for some impossible to prove reason. Evolution is the only scientific theory with real and genuine unbiased support from scientists around the world. Christianity is just as testable as any other religion. If Christians truly did have undeniable irrefutable prove of their impossibly unrealistic mythology then everyone in the world would notice this and quickly become Christians. Obviously, this is not the case. The Christians has just as much of an empty bag as the Muslim and the Jew. All religions are equivalent glimpses of the untrue. Con: I understand my opponent has a distaste for this, but regardless of who is doing the scientific tests, the results will still stand, no matter how much he dislikes those results… As I have previously explained, I will not and could not accept any evidence proposed from creationist sources for the reasons previously outlined. But in the spirit of debating I will try to appease your challenge to: “disprove the quantized state of the red shifts, not merely supply a different model where the universe has no center” even though the site you source is creationist-based. The evidence that all distant galaxies are flying away from each other is evidence of a uniform expansion of the universe, not evidence that we are in the center of it. This shows that even if we were on any other galaxy we would observe the same general motion. Redshifts happen when light or other electromagnetic radiation from an object moving away from the observer is increased in wavelength, or shifted to the red end of the spectrum. Therefore, there is no reason to believe that the earth is the only place in the universe that can observe redshifts. No reputable astronomer believes your view either. It is true that we see different redshifts in different locations, but it is simply incorrect to assert that earth is the ONLY place where we can see redshifts. Source for reference: https://en.wikipedia.org... Con: Asking the question “Can God create a rock so big that He can't lift it” does not disprove His completeness in power. A man cannot be a married bachelor. No one, not even a perfect being can create a paradox, and this is honestly an old and tired argument that I argue is a semantics argument that really won't sway any person either way as to whether God exists or not. Again, I have to clarify that the actual concept and practice of logical omnipotence is indeed impossible. It is not a semantic argument as we are not arguing over definitions, we already agreed to them. You cannot account for this fact and cannot answer the simple question with a yes/no answer: Can God create a rock he cannot lift? If you cannot account for this concept of omnipotence it is likely that it cannot and does not exist. This supports my thesis that God is not likely to exist. Con completely ignores my contention that if God is omniscient and God created the world, then God necessarily created evil, and knew each choice that every evil human will make. So Con's free will argument has no actual bearing, as even if I grant that God gave humans free will he would still know each evil action that is going to be committed as God is omniscient. God knew he would create evil, but did it anyway I see no reason why an all-knowing, all-loving, and all-powerful God couldn’t create a world with no evil. My opponent admits that God must always be more complex than the universe, and in this sense concedes the point that in this regard God is unlikely to exist due to Occam’s razor. I must clarify however that my opponent purports to misrepresent Occam’s razor by saying that nothing can be adequately explained if they were all simple explanations. Occam’s razor does not say this, it explicitly states that the theory which is the most brief but has equivalent explanatory power should be used, and is most likely to be correct. By correlation, a naturalistic universe is less complex and therefore more likely than one positing a God.It is important to note that although the atheistic worldview only has a stance on the issue of God, the beliefs of his existence plays an imperative role in many aspects of ones life. The atheistic worldview is more rational because their arguments are more logically sound and coherent in relation to the real world. The atheistic worldview is more realistic because God is not likely to exist according to all the evidence, and all human observations. The atheist is most justified in claiming that so far there has not been any compelling evidence or arguments for a God to be sufficient for belief in that God. I do not want to burden the audience with any more reading, so I will extend my previous arguments as I believe that they have not been adequately refuted. Some may believe that the atheistic worldview is lacking some spiritual basis. I would like to point out that any non-believer can experience highly spiritual events and marvel at the beautiful consistency of nature. For the harder questions in life I would point to philosophy. Christopher Hitchens once said along similar lines, "Where astrology ends astronomy begins, where alchemy ends chemistry begins, and where religion ends philosophy begins." I want to thank Con for his rationalism, intellectual honesty, and professionalism throughout the debate. The resolution stands: Atheism is the more rational and realistic worldview than theism.