God exists

Introduction First of all, I would like to welcome my opponent to Debate. org. This appears to be his first debate, so I wish him good luck. As you can tell by the title, this debate is about whether God exists. My opponent has taken the affirmative and will defend the resolution. Given the way this debate is titled, it seems reasonable to say that Pro has the burden of proof in our discussion. He must give us good grounds for believing that God exist. While Con has the much easier task of simply preventing his arguments from succeeding. However, I would still like to provide an argument of my own in defense of the claim that God does not exist. In this first round I will provide my own argument for atheism and in the next round will present some objections to the arguments put forth my Pro. With that said, let me begin. Definitions Theism:the belief that God, so defined, exists. Atheism:the belief that God, so defined, does not exist. Gratuitous:uncalled for; lacking good reason; unwarranted. I noticed that in the beginning of the debate Pro did not give a definition of God. So, I will provide us one. When it comes to defining God I believe the Christian philosopher Richard Swinburne provides a good definition. "A person without a body (i. e. , a spirit) who necessarily is eternal, perfectly free, omnipotent, omniscient, perfectly good, and the creator of all things. " [1]This is how God is usually defined in philosophy, and I have yet to encounter any philosopher or theologian that would disagree with this concept of God. For that reason, I think this is a proper definition of God for our debate. Atheist Argument from Evil In debates over the existence of God, there are two types of arguments from evil against the existence of God. One is the logical argument from evil, which claims that it is logically impossible for God and evil to coexist. The other is the evidential or probabilistic argument from evil, which claims that it is logically possible for God and evil to coexist, but highly unlikely. I will be using a probabilistic argument from evil NOT a logical argument from evil. My argument can be put forth as follows: P1) If God exist, then gratuitous evil does not exist. P2) It is likely that gratuitous evil exists. C) If it is likely that gratuitous evil exist, then the existence of God is unlikely. Defense of Premise 1 This premise is true given the definition of God. If God allowed needless evil to happen, he would not be morally perfect. Thus, it's pretty much impossible for the monotheist to deny this premise. Defense of Premise 2 Unlike premise one, this premise here needs a solid defense. However, I believe there are good grounds for thinking that there is gratuitous evil. There are many bad or unpleasant things in the world and so we might want to divide up these different kinds of evils. One kind of evil is moral evil, which are things that are committed by human beings. The other is natural evil, which are things like natural disasters that contribute to human and nonhuman suffering. The moral evils that exist include genocide, murder, rape, child abuse, animal cruelty, totalitarianism, and slavery. Some of the natural evils that exist include hurricanes, tsunamis, earthquakes, forest fires, droughts and volcanos. Given the vast amount of evil and suffering there is in the world, it seems intuitively likely that at the very least one of these events could have been prevented by an all-powerful and morally perfect God. If the monotheist is to deny premise 2 of my argument, he would have to argue that there has never been a single instance of preventable evil or suffering over the entire course of sentient history. And that, I believe, is a very strong claim that needs justification. Therefore, given the fact that there doesn't seem to be any satisfactory answer to the many evils in the world, it seems like we have good reason to accept the conclusion of my argument. Conclusion In my opening statements I have given an evidential argument from evil against the existence of God. In the next round I will respond to the arguments made by my opponent and show that there are many difficulties with the view he defends. Sources: [1] . http://www.reasonablefaith.org...;[2] . http://plato.stanford.edu...