The Argument for/Pro presented in the debate "Atheism is reasonably impossible" is flawed

I will now attempt to refute his arguments. For clarification, the reason why I go on about the different ontological positions an atheist can take is that you claim that atheism requires materialism. That is false. Not all atheist are materialists, nor does being an atheist commit them to materialism for the reasons I provided. I never claimed that Atheism required materialism, I just said that an atheist cannot believe in a spiritual being. And even if I did I fail to see how it is relevant to our debate topic. Next, I do understand your argument. It is an old argument called the lawgiver argument. You can Google it. You are arguing that atheism is reasonably impossible. Let's examine what that means and what each of us needs to establish. When you say a position is reasonably impossible you are saying that the position is internally inconsistent or disagrees with empirical results. Your "proof" may be persuasive to you because you believe your premises. I do not and neither do atheists in general. From the point of view of an atheist, an argument can be made that god is unnecessary to explain natural laws. The argument might go something like this:1. Every fundamental particle (I prefer to say constituent) in the universe determines its own behavior.2. Many of these constituents appear to behave similarly so human beings can classify them.3. These apparent similarities allow us to glean and relate properties such as mass, charge, etc. .. and call the relationships between properties natural laws.4. All of this can be done without invoking gods. Therefore, gods are unnecessary to explain natural laws. There is nothing in this argument that is internally inconsistent or that disagrees with empirical results. What is does disagree with is your intuitions. You believe that nature is to some degree handicapped and in need of help so you say something like "Particles can't determine their own behavior because they are mere physical matter. That kind of thing requires intelligence. " This is something that may seem obvious to you, but it is not obvious to an atheist. You need to demonstrate why intelligence is required to determine a particles behavior. Without a convincing argument, it is a claim at best and one that makes no sense to an atheist. Electrons, or any other inanimate objects for that matter, CANNOT determine their own behaviour. It is impossible. 1. Inanimate objects cannot make decisions, in fact, they cannot do anything at all. 2. To determine (Determine, verb: Cause (something) to occur in a particular way) it's own behaviour an inanimate object must make a decision on which way to behave. 3. Inanimate objects cannot determine their own behaviour. 4. Inanimate objects appear to have a determined behaviour. 5. The behaviour of inanimate objects must be determined by an external force. I went on a bit of a tangent on the last 2 points, but I feel they are relevant. There is another problem with your argument. It appears to be completely at odds with empirical results. You claim that matter behaves the same all the time. This is not true. Deterministic Newtonian physics was displaced by Quantum Mechanics more than 80 years ago. Electrons passing through a double slit from a single source do not end up in the same place. At best we can come up with a probability distribution that can account for the pattern. This is not a traditional deterministic natural law. I would appreciate sources on this subject. My opponent has not told me enough on this experiment for me to attempt to refute their conclusions. Many Physicists, especially cosmologists, believe that a multiverse is the best explanation for the sum of observed phenomena. If that is the case, there really are no natural laws. Each time line would be determined, but there would be no absolute patterns of behavior. I have a basic understanding of the multiverse idea, but there are three serious problems for it I can think off the top of my head. 1. There is absolutely no evidence for it. And have you ever considered how ridiculous it sounds? It's like science fantasy. There is an incomprehensible number of the biggest things in existance (universes), out there, some of which have alternate versions of your self, doing exactly the same thing you're doing now. We can't actually sense them in any way, and probably never will, in fact, there is nothing to suggest they actually exist. Remember, my argument was "Atheism is reasonably impossible. " 2. If it's true, the world we live in is not rational at all, but it is just that the timeline we are in gives the appearance of rationality. Every time an atom moves it is mind numbingly likely we will collapse into some strange, totally random sludge. 3. How could the multiverse possibly have been created? Think about it. An inconprehensible amount of . .. universes. .. ., bordering on infinite, created by inanimate objects? Natural laws for large scale objects in QM and multiverses are statistical expected paths, but they can unexpectedly deviate from them though it would be a very rare occurrence in most time lines. I don't quite understand what you are talking about here.