I can convince you that the God of the Bible exists!

I am going to try and convince all of my readers that the God of the Bible exists.  Please note:  This exercise is just to illustrate a point!  The arguments I am about to use are common arguments Christians use as an attempt to prove that their God exists.  All of the following arguments have fallacies, the goal for the reader is to identify the fallacies and create counterarguments.  Tomorrow I will go through each argument one by one and explain why each argument doesn't work.  The purpose of this exercise is to show that the arguments which Christian theologians use may sound convincing at first without further investigation.  Hopefully you will be able to see why these arguments are convincing at first, but ultimately see the flaws.

    1.   The First Cause Argument

Everything that exists had a cause and that cause was an effect of another cause.  There has to be a first cause or else we would have an infinite regression (i.e. the earliest effect you can think of has to have a cause, which is an effect of another cause; going on forever).  This first cause must not need a cause and we call this cause God because He is the only force in existence that need not have a cause.

    2.   The Ontological Argument

God is a perfect being.  All else being equal, a perfect being that exists is greater than a being that does not exist.  Therefore, God exists.

    3.   Argument from Design

This excerpt is taken from http://wiki.ironchariots.org/index.php?title=Argument_from_design#Syllogism.

Premise 1. We appear to observe features in nature too complex to have happened by chance
Premise 2. These features exhibit the hallmark appearance of design
Premise 3. Design implies that there must be a designer
Conclusion 1. Therefore nature must be the result of an intelligent designer
Conclusion 2. This designer is God

These are three common arguments for the existence of God and all are used by apologists.  If there is a particular argument you want me to include and debunk tomorrow, please leave a comment below or e-mail me at brbailey@umd.edu and I will be happy to address your argument!  Also, if there is enough people that support it in the comments, I am going to attempt to raise some money for a charity that has no religious ties.  Faith based charities can be easily corrupted in my opinion.  Sometimes money that should be going towards the cause they are trying to aid gets funneled back to their church.  Also, sometimes their charity work include a manditory church service before or after the people they are trying to help get aid.  So if you're interesting in donating to a secular charity, let me know in the comments below or e-mail me!  Have a great day!