Resolved: Some type of creator outside of the universe exists.

There are many arguments advanced by Christians that attempt to infer a God's existence by the alleged evidences of intelligent design in nature. All are deeply flawed in that they commit the fallacy of first presupposing design in order to prove a designer, putting the cart before the horse. One of the most popular of these is the watchmaker argument, first advanced by theologian William Paley in 1802. Basically it goes like this. If you're walking through the forest/along a beach/wherever, and you see a watch lying on the ground, you could pick it up and tell just by looking at it that the watch could not have just materialized there out of nothingness for no reason at all. Clearly this is a highly intricate piece of machinery, deliberately created and manufactured for a purpose. From here, the argument points out that since organisms in nature exhibit just as much complexity in their makeup as this watch, it is reasonable to assume that nature is the work of deliberate design too. And this is the first and most obvious problem with the watchmaker argument: it is nothing more than an assumption, based upon an appearance of order. The appearance of order in nature is not alone sufficient justification for assuming that this order is the result of purposeful, intelligent design by a supernatural - trees providing oxygen etc.- but most of the sciences have shown us that there are practical, mechanistic explanations for how and why things work in nature the way they do. In order to mount a convincing argument that things in nature require a Divine Creator to explain them, Christians must first demonstrate that it is impossible to explain them in any other way, and such design arguments as the watchmaker argument fail to do this. Viewed another way, the structure of the watchmaker argument is self-refuting. The hypothetical person noticing the hypothetical watch on the hypothetical beach thinks it looks designed...but compared to what? In order for one to recognize design, one must have a concept of non-design as a frame of reference to work from. So if the watch looks designed compared to its natural surroundings, then that clearly implies those natural surroundings were not, in fact, designed, though they may exhibit the appearance of order. Even if one were, for the sake of discussion, to take the watchmaker argument seriously, it would still not be a strong argument that the designer inferred by the comparison of watch-to-nature bears any resemblance to the Christian God. For one thing, no watch is made by a single person these days; they are usually made by factories employing thousands of workers. And the factories that make watches are not the same factories that make chairs, Styrofoam cups, computers, or Winnebagos. So why assume that nature, with all its dazzling variety, must be the work of only one designer? At best, the watchmaker argument can be said to be an argument for polytheism, or a highly clever and advanced race of aliens who have figured out how to make solar systems and planets. Still another refutation along these lines is that watches do evolve. The modern digital watch was not dreamed up in every detail by anyone in the modern day. It evolved from older watches, which evolved from analog watches, which evolved from hourglasses, sundials and other time-keeping methods. Each step in the "evolution" of the watch was achieved by people thinking about older designs and coming up with new ways to improve them. So if the analogy is going to work, it's going to have to allow at minimum for God experimenting and modifying his design through an evolutionary process and selection. This is important when you consider that many creationists try to use this argument to refute evolution. Finally, it can be pointed out that Christians who argue from design take a highly selective view of nature. One woman who called The Atheist Experience some months ago couldn't understand why we weren't convinced of God's existence because of "all the beauty" in nature. We pointed out that while things like butterflies, waterfalls, and sunsets were indeed beautiful; other things like earthquakes, cancer and the Ebola virus were not. "Beauty" is a human concept that individuals apply subjectively to things we observe. One must wonder why the loving God of Christianity would consider it "beautiful" to set nature up so that animals in the wild had to massacre one another to survive. Surely God would not take pleasure in the death agonies of a gazelle having its throat torn away by a ravenous cheetah...would He? If God is such an "intelligent designer," why couldn't He have created "meat trees," so that the carnivores could pluck their meals every night and leave the gentle herbivores alone? Do we know with absolute certainty that the universe is not the result of deliberate design? Well, no. But any sort of objective view of nature must lead one to conclude that the specific design arguments of Christianity are invalid, as it makes no sense their supposedly omni-benevolent God would design a nature so harsh and cruel. Q: How can anyone possibly be moral without believing in God? A: Pretty much the same way that anyone else can be moral: by considering their actions, weighing the consequences, and deciding whether they are doing more harm than good to themselves and other people. Despite what evangelists tell you, the threat of hell is not what stops most people from, say, going on a mass-murdering spree. Even if there was no hell, there are still bad consequences for bad behavior. Our society has laws that threaten criminals with fines, imprisonment and sometimes death. And even if those laws didn't exist, there would still be the threat of punishment from other sources. For instance, if you commit a murder, the victim's family and friends might come looking for revenge. Nobody likes to be taken advantage of. The justice system just makes the whole process a little more orderly, which is a good thing. However, it seems like the threat of punishment and the promise of rewards is not really the only thing that keeps people from being bad. With or without religion, people don't like to be hurt, and they usually recognize that other people getting hurt is a similarly undesirable thing. Jesus didn't invent the principle of treating others the way you would like to be treated; it was around for centuries before. When people are in danger of being mistreated, they seek out protection through cooperation and relationships. Society is simply a much larger extension of those relationships. With rare exceptions, people (atheists included) don't really have the urge or desire to run out and kill or steal or otherwise harm other people. And honestly, when people say "If it weren't for God holding me back, there would be nothing to stop me from being a criminal", we worry about them. If your grasp of right and wrong is so shaky that you can't stop yourself from doing bad things, and you need someone threatening you with eternal punishment to keep you in line, then we wonder how safe you really are to be near. Q: What is Pascal's Wager? A: It's a well-known logical argument why you should believe in God, even if there's a strong chance that it might not be true. Simply put, the argument is that you should believe in God just because there's a chance that you might go to heaven and avoid hell. Blaise Pascal, a philosopher and mathematician in the 17th century, first formally put the argument forth. He is considered the founder of probability and he made other significant contributions. There's also a programming language named after him. Pascal's wager, in a nutshell, is this. No one knows for certain whether God exists. Maybe he does, maybe he doesn't. It's a gamble whether you believe in god. I will continue this next round.