Evidence for God

I'm assuming that Con wants me to start arguing in round one, since he said that "the burden of proof lies on theists who make the claim that there is a God, not the atheists or anti-theists who claim there isn't. If you need an explanation for this, I'll be happy to provide. " First of all, it is not always true that the burden of proof lies on the theist. The problem of evil is a positive argument against God's existence. Atheists are asserting the positive claim here and the burden lies on them. But maybe Con doesn't think the problem of evil is a good argument. He appears to be only interested in defending negative atheism. Regardless of Con"s feelings on that argument, he shows no intention of defending it or any other positive atheistic argument. I bring this up because this means that Con cannot all of a sudden, later in the debate, make a positive claim against God, as my last opponent on this topic tried to do. He must agree to his own terms and only rebut my arguments. With that, I begin. ARGUMENTS [1] Beauty and Art Human beings have the ability to perceive and comprehend beauty. We take pleasure in hearing certain melodies. We may feel captivated by a sunset or a roaring sea. We also have the ability to create art. We need art to survive. We do it for moral, pleasurable, and instructive reason. This is exactly what you would expect if a God existed who loved us. He wants us to be happy and to have an insight into the value of reality. It is exactly what you would not expect if the world were only the result of evolutionary forces. Beauty or art have absolutely no survival value. What could they have evolved for? How could they even have evolved? How do you make the leap from creatures who have no sense of art or beauty to creatures that do, or to use a geometrical analogy, how do you evolve a square out a circle? The answer? You don't. Beauty and art cannot come from nature. They have no place in nature. The existence of beauty and art therefore point to the existence of a God who loves art and beauty, and who wanted to share it with us. [2] Morality and Moral Behavior Our experience tells us both that there is moral order and that human behavior often follows that moral order. We have an intuition that torturing innocent people is wrong, for example, and we engage in behavior that accords with this intuition. This moral order cannot be derived from nature. As the atheist philosopher David Hume explained, you cannot derive an "is" from an "ought". From the fact that kicking someone causes pain it does not logically follow that you ought not to be kicked. (1, 2) But if the "is"es are not natural, they must be beyond nature. Again we are forced to look to God for an origin of morality. And since moral behavior appears to follow from the moral code, moral behavior transcends nature as well. Evolutionists have only explained how animals could engage in the appearance of moral behavior (reciprocal altruism, kin selection etc. ) but humans often engage in behavior that contradicts the benefits from these models. We find no answer in nature for human morality. Again, we must look to the supernatural. [3] Free Will Our experience confirms that we have free will. Unlike animals, whose behavior is almost entirely predictable and extremely limited in range, human behavior is vast and displays a wide range of creativity. This implies freedom of the will. Since science tells us that the natural world is determined by natural laws, while random mutations and subatomic indeterminacy also occur. None of these include or entail free will. But since we have reason to believe that free will exists, we must look beyond the natural world for its origin. We must affirm the existence of God. [4] Modality Allowing for the possibility of an infinite series of causes prior to the universe, the universe is still contingent and still requires a cause of its existence even if it does not have a godly cause of its coming into existence. The existence of the universe would have to be dependent on something which does not depend on anything else for its existence. Now we all know that logical relations of ideas do not depend on anything else for their existence. For example, 2 + 2 = 4 is tautologically true and so does not depend on anything else outside itself for it to be true, so logic is not dependent on God. But logical relations cannot cause material to exist. They only regulate what exists. So if a logically necessary relation cannot be the ground of being and if postulating another arbitrary non-necessary cause simply backs the problem up another step, the only solution is something in between the two: Something which does not have a logically necessary existence but also is not dependent on anything else for its existence. What better than a single, omniscient, omnipotent, omnibenevolent being. It"s the most non arbitrary, most comprehensive, and most economical solution to the problem. CONCLUSION I have presented four instances of evidence for God, beauty, morality, free will, and the modality of the universe. Con must show what is wrong with them. (1) Ten Philosophical Mistakes Mortimer J. Adler (1985) (2) A Treatise Concerning Human Nature David Hume (1748) (3) How to Think About God Mortimer J. Adler (1980)