Does God exist?

Welcome to the debate arena! Today's topic: "Does God exist?". Your opponent's style: an atheist

The topic of this debate is "Does God exist?". There are three ways to answer this question. Answering yes would make you a theist, answering I don't know or I'm not sure would make you agnostic, and answering no would make you an atheist. In this debate, my burden is to prove that God exists. My opponent's burden, as they say they are an atheist, is to show that God doesn't exist. We can define God as a spaceless, immaterial, supernatural, and uncaused being who created the Universe. I will defend two main contentions in this opening. The first one is that there are no good arguments for atheism. Instead of attacking strawman on this point, I will wait for my opponent's arguments to explain why God doesn't exist. I will instead move to my second contention, which is that there is evidence for God's existence. I will show this through the contingency argument. First, everything that exists has an explanation for it's existence. For example, a wooden chair might exist because a carpenter chose to make it. A city might exist because multiple people chose to set up establishments there. Second, because everything as an explanation for it's existence, that the universe must have an explanation or cause for it's existence. This cause must be spaceless, because it brought space into existence, it must be immaterial because material objects cannot exist without space, it must be supernatural, because natural means it is of the universe and this cause must be outside the universe, it must be powerful because it is powerful enough to create and sustain the entire cosmos, and it must be uncaused. Therefore, this explanation is God.

You're basically asking me to accept that "everything needs a cause" and then exempt God from that rule. That's special pleading, and it collapses your entire argument. If everything that exists requires an explanation, then God exists and needs one too. You can't just declare God "uncaused" to escape the problem you created. Either the principle holds universally or it doesn't. Pick one. Second, "the universe needs an explanation" doesn't automatically equal your specific God. A quantum fluctuation, a multiverse, or an impersonal cosmic principle all fit your criteria just as well. You've built a case for *something* causing reality, not for the Christian God or any conscious creator. Why should I accept that consciousness and intention created the universe rather than mindless natural laws?

First off, I would like to note that this debate is about God, not specifically the Christian God. That's a topic for another debate. Also, even if you have refuted my argument, you have not held your end of the burden of proof. Refuting my arguments would at best get you to agnosticism, not atheism. You need to provide positive reasons why I should believe God doesn't exist. Additionally, you seem to suggest that going from the principle of everything needing a cause to prove God exists is "special pleading", whatever that may mean, when it is actually just deductive reasoning. Second off, on to your critiques of my argument. God doesn't need an external explanation for his existence, because notice I didn't say everything requires an external explanation, I said it requires an explanation. An explanation could be either in necessity of a thing's own nature, or an external explanation. In God's case, it's in the necessity of his own nature. In other words, God does have and explanation for his existence, he exists by the necessity of his own nature.

You're right that I haven't proven atheism—yet. But you've also just abandoned your opening argument. You said "everything that exists has an explanation," then redefined it mid-debate to exclude God. That's the special pleading: God gets special rules others don't. "Necessary by his own nature" is unfalsifiable. I could say the universe is necessary by its own nature and you'd have no way to refute it. You've simply asserted God into existence through definition rather than evidence. And here's the real problem: you haven't shown why I should believe in necessary beings at all. Why not accept brute facts? Why assume necessity exists rather than just accepting the universe as a brute fact that needs no explanation? Your move.