It is unreasonable to believe in atheism.

I hope to learn a lot from this first experience with debate. org. Secondly, thank you for the advice on setting up a structure for the round in round 1, I'll make sure to do that in future debates. Your structure sounds acceptable (I assume that since there are only three rounds, that your 2 and 3 points will be both be this round). I will start by going back to the points I outlined in round 1: 1) In this point, I am arguing that an atheist must believe in evolution, and that evolution is a poor theory to believe. This corresponds to my opponent's point 2. A man holds one belief or another in order to help explain the world, people, events, etc. so that life will make sense to him. When someone becomes an atheist, they have to in some way explain where life on earth came from. Science tells us that life does not just randomly appear, so it had to have come from somewhere. The only options available to a man are evolution or some creation story from some god. Please present another reasonable option (since we are talking about what a reasonable man would do) for a man to choose and still remain an atheist, otherwise we have to assume atheists are required to believe in evolution. Evolution is a theory which lacks thousands of the transition fossils it would need to be solidly accepted as a scientific fact (despite what the media currently believes). 2) My second point has not been contested yet, and it deals with the question of what is known as the Prime Mover. Scientists tell us and it is obvious in our lives that for something to move it must be pushed by something else. But that other thing would have been pushed by something which would have been pushed by something etc. The only way to reconcile this infinite chain of cause and effect is believe in a God who is outside of the physical world, and who is capable of starting the chain of movement without having been moved himself. 3) My third point is that atheism benefits you nothing to believe in it whether it is right or wrong. This corresponds with my opponent's argument 3. In the example he gave, he is basically arguing that a reasonable man should not believe in something completely irrational. This is true. However, belief in God is not irrational, it is the most rational belief that you could have. To believe in God and heaven is like believing that the ocean has a bottom. No one has ever explored the very depths of the ocean floor, but we assume that it exists, because it is rational to assume so and the evidence would suggest it. Just so, as my first two points show, it is, at the very least, reasonable to believe in God. If it is reasonable to believe in God, then it is in the reasonable man's best interests to believe in him since not believing will benefit him nothing and possible cost him everything. I believe that the only unaddressed point is my opponent's point 1. He argued that atheism is not a belief, but rather a non-belief. However, a non-belief is a belief in and of itself. The definition of atheism is as follows: Atheism - the doctrine or belief that there is no god Thus, an atheist is one who believes in atheism and atheism is defined as being a certain belief. This being said, an atheist can accurately be said to ‘believe' in atheism, and so the resolution stands firm. The other point my opponent said was that there are strong and weak atheists. However, the difference is miniscule. The strong atheist asserts that ‘there is no God' and the weak atheist merely lacks a belief in God. Even if our ‘reasonable man' were a ‘weak' atheist, being a reasonable man, he would still have to come up with some other theory to explain life's existence as we know it. Thus, all of my previous arguments still apply. Thank you, and I look forward to seeing my opponent's rebutals.