Dose God Exist

I have rephrased his three arguments and explained why they fail to support his conclusion. 1- no evidence for God: There is no evidence for God. Complex beings do not simply always exist. They are always the process of evolution. Because God is a complex being, he is extremely improbable. (a) My opponent says, without argument, that there is no evidence for God’s existence. Rather than examining the arguments that have been put forth for God’s existence, my opponent ignores them. Let me briefly offer three of the arguments: [a1] The modal cosmological argument (the argument from contingency) The existence of the universe is not logically necessary, therefore it could have been different or it could have not existed at all. In order for the universe to exist, something must cause its existence. The universe cannot cause its own existence because existence is not contained in the essence of the universe, just as existence is not contained in the essence of a dog. God is the best explanation for the cause of the universe since he is so radically different from everything else in it. To simply posit another natural thing to explain the universe brings up the same problem as before, but positing God, while it is does not give us an ultimate answer (nothing does), the God hypothesis at least goes with the territory more. [a2] Humans have the ability to see and appreciate beauty in all areas of life. This ability does not have its roots in evolution, for evolution is driven by survival, and the ability to see and appreciate beauty is not necessary for survival. Since the origins of beauty are not to be found in nature, we must look above and beyond nature (to the divine) to explain it. [a3] Humans have the ability to behave morally. Scientists have put this down to our genes behaving selfishly, doing things because of such tactics as the belief in reciprocal benefits the subject and the object helped by the subject, good behavior towards one’s family to ensure the survival of one’s genes. These theories fly in the face of evidence that this is not what encourages most decent people to behave morally. Moral behavior of humans cannot be explained in evolutionary terms, so we must again look beyond the natural world to find our answer for it. Also, moral behavior is exactly what we would expect if God existed. (b) We do not know that complex beings do not simply exist. That conclusion goes beyond the evidence. We would expect this to be true of any ordinary thing that we find on earth, but to say that it is universally true goes further than the evidence will allow. To think that because a complex thing like an eyeball, which is an ordinary thing among many others, must be the result of a long process of evolution, then a complex thing like God, something in a different category altogether from the eyeball, must also be the result of a long process of evolution is extremely irrational. The rules of one category do not necessarily apply to another category as well. Hence, God’s complexity makes him neither probable nor improbable. 2- the problem of evil: There is so much evil in the world. If you believe in God then you have to believe that this is will of your “loving” God. This is a non-sequiter. The fact that there is evil in the world does not entail that it the result of God’s will. The evil may be here despite God’s will. All of our experience tells us that the evil in the world comes from two sources: people and nature, not God. So if evil is not the result of God’s will, then why does not God prevent it? Because if all evil will be eliminated anyway in death, then intervening to prevent or eliminate it now would be redundant. Since redundancy is irrational and unnecessary, it would be irrational and unnecessary for God to eliminate evil. Hence, the problem of evil is no problem for God at all.3- stupid design: Earthquakes kill 25,000 people each year. I’ve heard the “stupid design” argument before, and my opponent did not even frame it right. He just rehashed the problem of evil, so his third “argument” suffers from the same problem as the previous one. Read above. Hence, this false third point also fails to disprove God. The puzzling video that my opponent posted features a buffoon defending this last point. No context is provided for the video. Who is the man on the video? Is he an atheist? Was he giving an lecture? Was he debating someone? Who? Anyway, the topic of the debate was “Does God exist? ”, not “Is intelligent design stupid? ” So this off-topic video does not support my opponent’s resolution. CONCLUSION My opponent has presented three “arguments” for his conclusion that God does not exist. His first does not address all the arguments that have been offered for God’s existence, and so is useless. His second requires that God behave in an irrational manner, and his third, with the misleading title, is simply a restatement of the second. Oddly, my opponent said that he is sorry for not making his last argument very long but he wants to save some of his arguments for later rounds. Does he not realize that he only made this debate two rounds long, and already used one of the rounds, leaving him with only one round (singular) left to defend himself? Why he made this debate so short is a mystery, but that is his right. Traditionally, debaters are not allowed to bring up new arguments in the last round, and since my opponent made the debate only two rounds, all he has left now is his final round. I hope he does not bring up different arguments, but even if he does, I will simply address them in my final round. With that, I hand it over to my esteemed opponent. Let’s hope he doesn’t fold on this debate too.