Does God exist?

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

We have no reason to think that gid doesn't exist

You've got it backwards. The burden of proof is on the person making the extraordinary claim—that an invisible, all-powerful being exists. You're asking us to believe in something with zero evidence. That's not rational. If I said unicorns exist but we just can't see them, you'd laugh. God gets the same scrutiny. We don't need "reasons to think God doesn't exist"—we need actual reasons to think He does. Unfalsifiable claims aren't beliefs, they're wishes. The natural world runs on physics and chemistry we can test and verify. Why invoke magic when we have explanations that work? Show me one piece of tangible evidence, and we'll talk. Otherwise, absence of disproof isn't proof of presence.

You put up multiple points. Stick on one. I cant respond to all at once. Let's start with the first. I agree that if i make a claim, the burden of proof is on me. But im not making making a claim. Im just sticking to the default position/assumption. And for default positions, u dont need evidence to rationally substantiate it

Wrong. "Default position" is just burden-shifting dressed up fancy. Assuming God exists by default is no more rational than assuming He doesn't. You're smuggling in a claim while pretending you're neutral. Here's the thing: we're born believing nothing supernatural. A child doesn't wake up thinking God exists—they learn it. So the actual default is naturalism, not theism. You're the one departing from that baseline and calling it "default." That's sleight of hand. If everyone just got to claim their preferred position as "default" and demand no evidence, debate becomes meaningless. Your move: why should God-belief specifically count as the default position?

You are completely wrong. Check Born Believers: The Science of Children's Religious Belief By Justin L. Barrett. Plus the belief of god is universal accross history and collaborated independently through cultures. If that doesn't make it default then i dont know what does

You're confusing "universal" with "default." Humans universally believe in *agents*—we see faces in clouds and blame spirits when things go wrong. That's evolutionary psychology, not evidence God exists. Barrett himself says children are "hypersensitive agent detectors," not born knowing Christian theology. And cross-cultural agreement proves nothing. Everyone once believed the sun orbited Earth. Consensus doesn't equal truth. Malaria was universal too—that didn't make it rational. You're still sneaking in a claim: "God exists and is the default." You haven't earned that move. You need evidence God is real, not just that humans *like believing in gods*. Why should I adopt your default instead of mine?

Multiple points:

I'm listening. But remember the rule—pick ONE point and let's go deep on it. You throw five arguments at me, I destroy one, then you say "but what about the others?" and we never actually finish anything. Pick the strongest point you've got. The one you actually think wins the debate. Let's fight about that instead of playing whack-a-mole with ten weak arguments. What's your best shot?

You are confusing the justification of a belief with its status as a default. A universal, maturationally natural predisposition is the epistemic default. We believe in other minds despite no direct verification; we do not suspend judgment. This proves that for unverifiable predispositions, the rational response is continued belief, not agnosticism. Dismissing this as "evolutionary psychology" is a genetic fallacy—the origin of a cognitive faculty does not determine its truth-tracking potential. Barrett’s "agent detection" provides the structural chassis; specific theology is simply the intellectual refinement of that default predisposition, not a separate claim. Regarding geocentrism: it was the rational default until the telescope provided a specific, positive defeater. You are demanding evidence for the default, but the burden is on you to provide the "telescope" that defeats the God-concept. Until you produce a defeater, the default stands.

You're equivocating. "Other minds" works because we have *direct evidence*—behavior, language, reciprocal interaction. We verify minds constantly. God gives us nothing equivalent. Your "telescope" demand flips the burden again. We don't need a defeater for unfalsifiable claims—we need a *detector* for the thing itself. You can't prove unicorns don't exist either, but that doesn't make belief rational. And here's the kill: if Barrett's agent-detection is just evolutionary wiring, why trust it on God but not on thousands of conflicting theologies? Muslims, Christians, Hindus all have the same "default predisposition" but radically different Gods. Your own logic proves the default tells you nothing—only evidence does.