Religion/God

Should be interesting. Second I'd like to make it clear that I am actually NOT an Atheist, rather, I do not subscribe to a particular religion and would consider myself to be essentially Agnostic. However, I believe I can argue the case against God and am interested in doing so. Since my opponent has not set any specific guidelines to this debate, I'll simply give a brief summary of my thoughts on the topic and try to touch on some of the most important aspects, then see where my opponent takes it from there. I'd like my opponent and any readers to first understand that in reality, the case AGAINST God is really more of a LACK of a case FOR God. Essentially, Atheists see much more plausible and explainable answers to their questions about the Universe in Science than they do in Religion. A common analogy to explain this idea would be this: Imagine I am at home and all the sudden I hear a noise come from the other room. If I were to handle it Scientifically, I would make observations and conclusions, such as walking into the other room to see what's in there, and deciding what caused the noise based on what I see. If I were to do this and find nothing in the other room, I might assume the noise came from a pipe in the wall or something of that nature. However, I could ALSO just assume that a magical, invisible elephant was making the noise, and that I just couldn't see or touch him. Even though there is no evidence AGAINST this magical elephant claim (as it is basically impossible to disprove, just like God), there is still no argument for it. The same is true of God. Actually, not even, seeing as Science has disproved much of what is contained in many religions, making it so that they can only be accurate if you operate on faith alone. You basically have to assume that God is tricking us and Science isn't real in order to believe in EVERY aspect of the Bible, or of the Tora, the Qur'An, etc. While you might claim evidence of God DOES exist, in the Bible or the Qur'An or whatever you might think, Atheists would say that these texts DO NOT provide sufficient evidence, as they are very old and comprised of the writings and beliefs of countless different individuals. They were written over periods of hundreds of years sometimes, and many of these texts have been translated countless times. These truths make religious texts much less reliable in the eyes of Atheists, as there seems to have been a lot of room for changes to be made and for different individuals to make things up or misremember events. You also have to account for the time period these texts were written in--back then humans had access to far less knowledge and were far more likely to think up supernatural explanations for things they couldn't explain (ex: ancient peoples believing rain was caused by some rain god crying, because they did not understand the Rain Cycle yet). Another reason many Atheists do not believe in God is that the God of the Monotheistic religions (Christianity, Judaism, and Islam) provokes multiple Logical paradoxes. According to these religions God is omnipotent (all-powerful), omniscient (all-knowing), and omni-benevolent (all-loving). However, basic logic will quickly show you that these things can not all be true. Omnipotence is logically contradictory in general; the commonly presented paradox is this: If God is all-powerful, he should be able to create a rock that is SO heavy, even he himself cannot lift it (based on the definition: if a being is all-powerful, they should be able to do literally anything conceivable). But if God could create this rock, and he was indeed unable to lift it, he would be rendering himself NOT all-powerful; because of this paradox, it seems it is logically impossible for a being to be all powerful. Another paradox presented by the omni-descriptions of God is this: If God is all-knowing, he knows about all the evil on earth. If he is all powerful, he has the ability to stop these evils. If he is all-loving, he will do anything and everything he can to help whoever he can. These 3 things cannot be true, as if they were there would be no evil on earth. Some Christians argue that God purposefully does not intervene to give us free will, which is an interesting explanation, however the Philosophical rules of logic will tell you that it is still logically conceivable for God to give us free will AND to have never created evil in the first place (something that an omni-benevolent being WOULD do if given opportunity, based on the word's definition), therefore God would still fail to meet the requirements that Monotheistic religions hold him to. I'll end my first argument here and sum it up again with this: Most Atheists simply don't believe in God because the only evidence that exists for God has very little scientifically testable basis. Also I'd like to reiterate that I am actually NOT an Atheist, so my opponent should not worry about converting me or anything like that haha, I actually do believe in a higher power, I just am not convinced of the total legitimacy of any existing human religion.