Instigator / Pro
0
1500
rating
25
debates
42.0%
won
Topic
#3514

Atheism is flawed, God has to exist

Status
Finished

The debate is finished. The distribution of the voting points and the winner are presented below.

Winner & statistics
Winner
0
1

After 1 vote and with 1 point ahead, the winner is...

Intelligence_06
Parameters
Publication date
Last updated date
Type
Standard
Number of rounds
2
Time for argument
One day
Max argument characters
10,000
Voting period
One week
Point system
Winner selection
Voting system
Open
Contender / Con
1
1731
rating
167
debates
73.05%
won
Description

I am a religious person, and it makes no sense to me how atheism is such a thing and why many people follow it. It is clear and evident that God has to exist

Criterion
Pro
Tie
Con
Points
Winner
1 point(s)
Reason:

I'll keep this short.

Given how this debate is structured, Pro has given himself a hefty burden: prove that god must exist in some form. Pro goes about this largely by arguing that how the universe came into being is unexplainable in the absence of a deity that exists independent of space and time. That argument relies on being absolutely correct, i.e. Con must have no alternative explanation for what Pro says only god can explain. To that end, there are a number of individual arguments I could cover that may lead me to a similar conclusion, but the simplest one is quantum fluctuations. Con presents evidence that quantum fluctuations could explain the origins of the universe. So we have another potential means by which the universe could have begun. Pro's responses largely entail dismissing the theory on the basis that it has been disproved (and... I think mixing it up with abiogenesis? Kind of hard to tell) and arguing that what we conceive of as "nothing" cannot exist so quantum fluctuations wouldn't explain something coming from nothing. The former argument is an assertion without evidence and doesn't demonstrate where the flaw is in the theory. The latter may start down that road, but it is only a start. Pro doesn't explain why "nothing" cannot physically exist, though if that is true, that just invites more questions, e.g. if "nothing" cannot exist, why couldn't "something" have always existed? It bites back into another point Con made with regards to the eternal existence of the universe. If you're going to make this point, you have to be careful to explain it in full and not just assert that "nothing" cannot exist. Moreover, it's not an abject dismissal of quantum fluctuations. They could still explain the origins of the universe based on Con's evidence. If the argument is that they themselves must be caused, then Pro has to make that point, but I don't see it in his arguments.

That gives me one other means by which to explain the origins of the universe, and as Pro's argument relies on God being the sole possible means by which the universe could have come into existence, letting that point through means Pro fails to meet his burden. I vote Con.