So, you can do that, and you should, and someone here will give you the information you need.

For a short answer though, just point out that positing 'God did it' has zero explanatory or predictive power.  It doesn't explain the origins of the universe, it just hand waves them away by pushing them back a step using magic.  When they say everything must have a beginning then ask where did God begin?  If they say God never began to exist then ask if God never began to exist, why not just assume whatever happened before the big bang (if that means anything) never began to exist either...what reason do they have to give that thing anthropomorphic characteristics and label it a deity?

All adding God to the equation does is make things more complicated, and there is zero evidence to support it.  Ask them, if you were starting from scratch without the superstitions of our ancestors, how would anyone possibly come up with, "God did it"?

The universe from God argument is one of comfort and faith.  There is no evidence, there is no hypothesis, there is no prediction, there is nothing but circular arguments to support their faith based beliefs.  It is the same ex post facto stuff theists always go for when science contradicts their beliefs.

Good luck!

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Also, I don't have time, but if someone else doesn't get to it, the universe is not fine tuned.  Most of it is hostile towards life.  1) Saying the Earth is fien tuned to humans is like a puddle saying the hole it is in is 'fine tuned'.  Life adapted to Earth, not the other way around.  2) The same with universal constants.  For one, we don't know what universal constants would support life.  There might have been trillions of previous universes that didn't/don't support life.  All we have is *our* universe and if it didn't support life we wouldn't be here arguing about anything so the problem is the same as 1.

Again, these excplanations from deity are not constructive, all they do is run into a hard problem and say, "God did it, hah!".  If people like them ran the world nothing would ever be discovered or explained.  Can you imagine physics if every tough problem had people saying, "It must have been a miracle, praise God!".  Bah.

Try http://talkorigins.org/. They should have some stuff on cosmology too, as well as the usual evolution stuff.

The best bet is if you are personally not knowledgeable in some area, then just admit it and say, "I don't know, but why should I believe you, since you don't know either?"

We actually cannot answer the question of exactly how the universe began. We do not really know if it came from 'nothing' or always existed or whatever. We simply do not know. And neither do the Muslims!

Yet they claim to know! It is those claims of knowledge which they do not actually possess that you should jump on and target relentlessly and pin them down until they admit they don't know and just believe on faith.

As for order coming from non-order, it happens all the time. The forming of an ice-crystal or a snowflake, the patterns of dunes in the wind-blown sands of a desert. The formation of a river from countless random raindrops spread across the land.

To say that order cannot come from non-order is pure stupidity.

But again, if you personally do not have such examples immediately come to mind, just admit that you don't know and ask them to show you why *they* think they *do* know.

Always demand evidence. Always keep the burden of proof where it belongs: On the person who makes the claim of knowledge.

Thank you all for such rapid response. I'm going to prepare a reply for their universe argument. Debating with these guys is actually pretty cool - they at least pretend to be open minded (maybe they are, though I doubt it) but their argumentation is very practiced and taught. They actually attend courses on how to proselytize, and if one is not careful it's easy to fall prey to their pseudo-scientific and pseudo-rational trappings. They expect you to just listen in awe, and if you actually take an offensive stance and pose questions to them they often trip and stumble, especially if their training had not anticipated the question you asked. I said I would only read their booklet (islamic propaganda, which I've started - not too impressed so far) if they agree to read an article by a chosen writer from me. So I'm also on a lookout for a good article - I know there is plenty but if you guys have any favorites, please share.

I've realized that here in the UK we better get prepared at counteracting Islam's arguments. Christianity here, though officially a majority religion of course, has become more of a socio-cultural phenomenon and is rarely it is practiced in its fundamental form. People who are nominally Christian (Church of England) are very often agnostics who go choose to participate in church life for cultural and social reasons. Catholics are a bit more fundie I guess.

I wish I was studying biology or some other natural science, I would be much better equipped for this kind of debate.

Thanks again for everyone's imput.

JS

upthread, the kalam argument and the intellectual remoras attached to it - why is there the appearance of organisation - what is life and how did it form - what is consciousness - are knowledge gaps into which muslims and christians plug their particular mythologies on the basis of no actual evidence whatever. In forcing you to disprove the non existence of their unproven god they are indulging in fallacies from silence. In any case, it's a false dichotomy to suggest that the universe came from A: Nothing; or B: An anthropomorphic deity who chatted merrily with Muhommad in 640.

The Big Bang is a model so far supported by evidence but open in an instant of empirical revelation to reinterpretation at any time. It's not an insistence and it's by no means fully understood. Fairly obviously, we cannot do more than make assumptions about what exists outside the universe. Our ability to collect data does not stretch that far - though unfortunately human imaginations have far less trouble generalising this impossibility. The intellectually honest position is to admit a lack of knowledge but theists are not strong enough to do this in most cases.

An admission of lack of knowledge does not constitute an agreement with the baseless assertions of god people.

I don't really even agree with either of these statements. They seem simple to the average person, but are actually quite ambiguous questions. At most, they're true to the extent that it is pragmatic to infer that they always hold for practical situations based on inductive evidence. I don't think they are justified.

For one, not everything necessarily or even observed, at least ostensibly, has a cause. Events in quantum physics such as elementary particles popping in and out of existence or the decay or radioactive isotopes are seemingly without cause. It's not entirely clear what "something" or "nothing" means. In this universe, there is no "nothing" in the way that philosophers speak of "nothing;" outer space is not "nothing." Chaos and order are meaningless and useless terms unless they are well defined. In some senses, "chaos" can create apparent "order;" examples are abundant in statistical mechanics.

Even if you do accept these two premises, you aren't really "trapped." In fact, imo, this is the weakest part of all first cause arguments. On what basis are they asserting that a first cause must be an intelligence? Often, it's just a naked assertion.

Effectively responding to fine tuning arguments doesn't really require much knowledge of physics. It's a matter of how well you can explain your correct but counter-intuitive position to an audience that sucks at understanding counter-intuitive positions, and I'm not that good at it yet.  

What are the chances that we would live on a planet that supports life? Is it 1 in 2^1000000000000...? No. The chance of any random planet harboring life is exceedingly small, but the chance of our planet harboring life is 1 in 1 because we live on it. Similarly, the chance of a person that already won the lottery winning the lottery is 100%; he just won the lottery.  

I like to think about it this way. If we assume, for the sake of argument, that all universal constants could be individually "tuned" and each specific "tuned" universe is equally probable (and this is not justified), then obviously, every single possible universe is exceedingly unlikely. Ergo, if the fine tuning argument was sound, then no matter what universe we were in, it must be created by an intelligent designer. So, this makes the unsoundness of the conditional that unlikelihood => design more obvious. Since theists don't make the argument that any possible universe must be created by God (at least most of them), you can kind of tell that they really beg the question, implicitly make the assumption that we are important and the universe is somehow made for us. It's understandable.

People that don't win the lottery don't exclaim, "Wow, look how lucky I am! I just happened to get this number even though there was an incredibly low chance of getting it." Our chance of getting any combination of numbers is about the same, but people are a lot more likely to form irrational beliefs when they win. So, on the surface, fine tuning is about probability, but I think what it really amounts to is, "Look how fortunate we are." Of course, in this case, there aren't even any unfortunate people because being fortunate = existing.

 For the fine tuned argument, the reality is they have no clue what they are talking about, what are all the possible conditions for life? We simply do not know, that is a fact, we do not know for certainty that these are the only possible conditions in which life will arise, second is are these properties even possible to change, or are they the only possibility with matter and energy? Again something we cannot answer with certainty at all.

HOWEVER, if you read their booklet does it by any chance explain the amount of change required before life cannot arise? is it a 1 percent change? 10 percent change? 50 percent? These are things we do not know, if the constants change enough could life arise being silicon based instead of carbon based? They simply do not know, no one has really ever tested all the possible changes, the reality is if one changes the rest probably will be affected, and if so, how so? We don't know. What are all the possible forms for life to arise in all the other possible conditions? As well what form of life? Those life forms from their observation would make the same argument that life is finely tuned for them. Of course this doesn't help their arguments, it's mainly an argument based on ignorance as again we do not know all the possibilities and at what amount of change does life not arise in our present form.

Nice points, Butter.