I'm debating someone online in a few days and I'd like to see how an atheist laymen will react to my opening speech.  Here it is:

 

I will be presenting a cumulative case to think that theism (T) is true. By theism, I mean the belief that a God who roughly fits the classical Abrahamic concept of God exists. In order to arrive at the conclusion that that probability of T is >.5, it is not necessary that any argument alone establish the truth of T. Rather, the arguments must be taken cumulatively.

I expect my opponent, who is a strong atheist, to present arguments that God does not exist. Since he is claiming to know something about the world, he too shares the burden of proof. Only the negative atheist who merely lacks a belief in God does not shoulder the burden of proof. Time will not allow me to totally cash out each argument as much as I would like. Hopefully these arguments can be better explained and developed during the rebuttal period.The Kalam Cosmological ArgumentPerhaps one of the most convincing arguments in favor of T comes out of modern cosmology. One of the most amazing discoveries of modern cosmology is that the universe is not eternal in the past, but began a finite time ago.There is currently no major model that escapes the beginning of the universe as predicted by the standard model (Craig and Sinclair 2009). Even models which include a multiverse must have begun to exist too. In his book Many Worlds in One, eminent cosmologist Alexander Vilenkin (and proponent of the multiverse) has written: “It is said that an argument is what convinces reasonable men and a proof is what it takes to convince even an unreasonable man. With the proof now in place, cosmologists can no longer hide behind the possibility of a past-eternal universe. There is no escape; they have to face the problem of a cosmic beginning” (Vilenkin 2006).Unless we are willing to say that the universe simply sprung into existence, uncaused and out of nothing, we must say that something outside of the universe caused it to come into being. So we come to the Kalam Cosmological Argument:(1) Whatever begins to exist has a cause.(2) The universe began to exist.(3) Therefore, the universe has a cause.(4) If the universe has a cause of its existence, the cause is an immaterial personal agent who, sans creation of the universe, is eternal and enormously powerful.(C) Therefore, the cause of the universe is an immaterial personal agent who, sans creation of the universe, is eternal and enormously powerful. Justification for P1:This premise is grounded in the intuitive first principle of metaphysics ex nihilo nihil fit: out of nothing, nothing comes. If you think about, it is very hard to deny the truth of this principle. After all, what is nothing? Nothingness has no properties whatsoever-not even the property of lacking properties. Nothingness is “what rocks dream about”. When you really come to grips with what this means, how can you honestly think that something could simply come into being from nothing? In a different context, Philosopher Peter Slezak has said “only academia could be so silly”. Only an academic could hold to such an absurd position. In one of his many debates, William Lane Craig, the greatest defender of the KCA today, once remarked, “no one takes seriously the idea that a horse may have just popped into being in your living while you are listening to this lecture and is now defiling your carpet!” Furthermore, if things really could come into being uncaused and out of nothing, it is inexplicable why anything and everything does not come into being from nothing. Why does “nothingness” only produce universes? After all, it’s not like nothingness has any properties or restrictions that limit it to universes. Even if we cannot be certain of P1, we must at least say that it is more plausible than not. Justification for P2:I think premise two is strongly supported by modern cosmology. Although atheists have typically responded to this argument by defending the possibility of a past-eternal universe, this views runs right in the face of mainstream cosmogony.Justification for P4:Since the space-time universe includes the sum of all space and time, the cause of the universe must be timeless and spaceless. Since this being is timeless and spaceless, it must not be a material being (for material beings exist in space and function in time). Lest we run into the problems of an infinite regress, the cause of the universe must itself be uncaused and hence eternal. Because this being is uncaused, it must have been able to produce its effect without prior determining conditions. A being which is immaterial and able to act without prior determining conditions just is what philosophers mean by a personal agent endowed with libertarian free will. Finally, the cause of the universe must be quite powerful because it brought all of matter, time, and space into being.    In the words of Dr. William Lane Craig, “…we are brought, not merely to a transcendent cause of the universe, but to its personal Creator” (Craig 2002). The Teleological Argument from the fine-tuningThe teleological argument has been coming up in discussions among philosophers again in recent decades. Traditionally the argument from design has been thought to have been refuted by people like David Hume and the Charles Darwin. However, with new discoveries in astrophysics, the argument has come back on the scene.Today I will be defending a Bayesian model of this argument, most notably defended in this way by philosopher Robin Collins.   I will use the likelihood principle as the basis for this argument which can be justified via the odds form of Bayes theorem.   Since my opponent is likely to understand what the “fine-tuning” I am proposing is, I will not go into great lengths to explain it here. Examples of such fine-tuning come from the constants of the laws of nature and the initial conditions of the universe such that if they were to be altered by an infinitesimal amount, biological life (in a broad sense) could not have come into being. Collins explains just one of the fine-tuned parameters in the initial conditions as follows:“If the initial explosion of the big bang had differed in strength by as one part in 1 in 10 to the power of 60, the universe would have either quickly collapsed back on itself, or expanded to rapidly for stars to form. In either case, life would be impossible” (Collins 2009).We can formulate the fine-tuning argument as follows:T=TheismNSU=naturalistic single universe hypothesis       (1) Given the fine-tuning evidence, LPU is very, very epistemically unlikely under NSU: that is, P(LPU|NSU & k&acute << 1, where k´ represents some appropriately chosen background information, and << represents much, much less than (thus making P(LPU|NSU & k&acute close to zero).(2) Given the fine-tuning evidence, LPU is not unlikely under theism: that is, ~P(LPU|T & k&acute << 1.(3) The theistic hypothesis was advocated prior to the fine-tuning evidence (and has independent motivation).(C) Therefore, by the restricted version o f the likelihood principle, LPU strongly supports theism over NSU. Justification of P1This first premise, construed in terms of epistemic probability, seems clearly established my mainstream astrophysics and utilization of the principle of insufficient reason to the fine-tuned parameters. Justification for P2This premise should not be controversial. Given a cosmic designer of the universe who is both causally potent and willing to design a LPU, then the P(LPU/T) is approximately 1. Justification for P3This premise is clearly true as well.  There are plenty of reasons to think the theistic hypothesis is true independent of the fine-tuning (we have and will see other lines of evidence in this opening statement). There have been theists prior to the recent discoveries in astrophysics. The Weak anthropic principle:There are two very popular objections to this argument that I would like to clear out of the way. First, some have suggested that the “weak anthropic principle” eliminates the need to explain the fine-tuning. The argument is that if the universe were not fine-tuned, then there would not be any observers and so it is not surprising that we should observe a fine-tuned universe because if it were any different, then there would be nobody to observe it. The problem with this response is that it is an observation, not an explanation. John Leslie of Oxford gave a clever thought experiment where he exposed the weak anthropic principle for its fallacious reasoning. Imagine that you are going to be executed by a fire squad of 50 trained marksmen. You hear the command to open fire, you hear the roar of the guns and to your surprise, all of the 50 trained marksmen have miss! What should you conclude in this case? If the marksmen had hit you, you would not be here to observe it. But should you rule out design because of this? Clearly not!  Here is a further illustration that exposes the weak anthropic principle. Philosopher Alexander Pruss has written:“If we're choosing between two evolutionary theories, both of them fitting the data, both equally simple, but one of them making it likely that observers would evolve and the other making it unlikely, we should choose the one that makes it likely” {1}Multiverse:As a general principle, we should not multiply our probabilistic resources without evidence for those resources. If my opponent would like to maintain that the multiverse explains away the fine-tuning, then he must be willing to argue for the multiverse, otherwise he would be unjustifiable multiplying his probabilistic resources. A second line of argument against the multiverse is that, everything being equal, we should prefer explanations for which we have independent evidence for or that are natural extrapolations from what we already know. Further, I don’t think a multiverse will really help the naturalist. Every worked out proposal for universe generator that would produce universes must too involve fine-tuning (Collins 2009). The generator itself is governed by a complex system of physical laws that too require fine-tuning. Dr. Craig said in one of his debates/dialogues, “the fine-tuning is like a lump in the carpet, if you suppress it at one point it just pops up somewhere else.” The Argument from ConsciousnessA relatively neglected but powerful argument for T is the argument from consciousness. Perhaps the best defenders of this argument are Richard Swinburne and J.P. Moreland. The argument can be formulated at follows:(1)    Mental events are genuine non-physical mental entities that exist.(2)    Specific mental event types are regularly correlated with specific physical event types.(3)    There is an explanation for these correlations.(4)    Personal explanation is different from natural scientific explanation.(5)    The explanation for these correlations is either a personal or natural scientific explanation.(6)    The explanation is not a natural scientific one.(7)    Therefore, the explanation is a personal one.(8)    If the explanation is personal, then it is theistic.(C)    Therefore, the explanation is theisticGeneral Comments:This argument, though in deductive form, seeks to find the best known explanation of nonphysical mental states. Thus, the list of explanatory options is not meant to be logically exhaustive. This argument has been thought of as a move from dualism to theism. If you accept P1, then this argument really takes off. So, most of my defense of this argument will be for P1. Justification for P1:I’m convinced that there are at least two lines of evidence supporting premise one of the above argument. First, the modal argument provides prima facie evidence for P1 and evidential near death experiences provide corroborating evidence for P1. We can formulate the modal argument as follows:(1) It is imaginable that one's mind might exist without one's body.Therefore(2) It is conceivable that one's mind might exist without one's body.Therefore(3) It is possible one's mind might exist without one's body.Therefore(5) One's mind is a different entity from one's body. Although this argument seems like an unconvincing linguistic trick, the jump from P3 to P4 is relatively uncontroversial among professional philosophers {1}. Although some would object to P1, I don’t think there is much of an issue here. We can easily imagine waking up one morning in the body of another person or in an animal. Meanwhile, we can imagine that our current body is destroyed. These types of thought experiments are at least imaginable. I also take it that imaginability implies conceivability, though not necessarily vice-versa. The controversial jump in this argument is from P2 to P3. Although conceivability does not necessarily entail logical possibility, the former does give prima facie reason to think that the latter is true. Unless one is to take a position of modal skepticism, conceivability is our only guide to logical possibility. Secondly, I think evidential near death experiences provide evidence for the immateriality of human persons. I would like to define NDE’s in the sense that I will use in this debate. First off, by “near death” I am referring to the medical term which means the “state in which you can be expected to die if there is not any immediate intervention”. Further, I would like to distinguish between two different categories of NDE‘s: Evidential and non-evidential NDE’s. By “evidential NDE’s”, I’m referring to a specific category of documented accounts where some feature of the experience can be empirically verified. E.g., if someone in a near death state sees a shoe on top of the roof and there is no way prior to that experience that she could have known about the shoe, that is an evidential NDE. On the other hand, most NDE’s fall into the non-evidential category. These are experiences that cannot be empirically verified. This distinction is crucial when we look at the common counter-arguments to the argument from NDE’s.There are hundreds of evidential NDE accounts. In order to see just what kind of an account that I’m talking about, let me give an example. There was a story published in two different medical journals about a little girl from Idaho, named Katie. One of the journals was Pediatrics. Anyhow, the little girl was underwater for 19 minutes. The girl was taken out of the water and was immediately cared for in the hospital. Her doctor was named Melvin Morse. He was a pediatrician and a brain specialist. There was no brainwave activity in Katie and she was profoundly comatose. After working on her for a long time, there was nothing else they could do for her and she was hooked up to machines. Her pupils were fixed and dilated which probably meant she was brain dead. Three days later, Katie spontaneously came to. I say spontaneously because the doctors weren’t doing anything special to keep her alive. Dr. Melvin Morse, while recounting the story, said, “You cannot imagine my interest when I saw the little girl look up at me and say to me that I was that kind doctor who resuscitated her!”Katie described the appearance of the emergency room and the appearance of tools that the doctors used to work on her. She also described how she had been taken back to her house by an angel named Elizabeth. Katie recounted her experience by telling the doctors what her family was doing-what her mom was cooking, the music that was playing that night, what her siblings were doing, and conversations her parents had!Although Katie was lying down, brain dead and hooked up to machines, she was right about details that she could not have known about. Better yet, the account was written right after Katie came to by independent witnesses and the account was published in two peer reviewed medical journals. It is cases like these that I call evidential cases. {2}How do we best explain these accounts?The first major attempt to explain away NDE’s is by psychology and neurology. Air fighter pilots often have NDE’s during intense flight simulation training. Also, some studies have concluded that NDE’s are produced when certain chemicals are displaced in the brain. Aren’t these arguments devastating for someone who thinks NDE’s are evidence for an afterlife? Not at all. The first counter argument is terribly weak. Simply because a false experience can be generated by stimulation should not make us doubt the rest of our beliefs produced by that cognitive faculty. For example, scientists can stimulate false beliefs about the physical world. If I were to take a hallucinogenic, it would produce in me false experiences of the physical world. Just because false beliefs can be produced by a scientists stimulation that should never make us doubt the beliefs produced by that faculty. If this counter argument were sound, we would have to be skeptical of all our beliefs about the physical world. Perhaps I’m not giving the above counter argument justice. Perhaps it isn’t so much that these experiences can be falsely simulated, it is the fact that they have a chemical correlation. I have several responses to this kind of argument. First of all, all of our experiences have physical correlations. I see physical objects because certain areas of my brain are stimulated. Should the physical cause of my sense perception make me doubt my sense perception-God forbid! Most importantly however, mere chemical imbalances don’t explain evidential NDE’s. How do private hallucinations cause someone to see things far outside of their body? Chemical imbalances are explanatorily impotent when trying to explain evidential NDE’s.The second major attempt to explain away NDE’s is by pointing out that NDE’s often reflect cultural and prior religious commitments of the individual. People who have NDE’s have experiences that often mirror their prior held religious convictions and societal upbringings. Although this may have some explanatory power in the case of how people interpret NDE’s, this explanation is still utterly impotent to explain evidential NDE’s. This counter-argument is successful only in proving that we cannot, on the basis of these experiences alone, construct what kind of worldview is true. Nonetheless, evidential NDE’s still disprove the odd man out-those who are pure physicalists about human persons. Before ending my discussion of P1 of this argument, I would like to point out that NDE’s provide an additional linking chain of argument in support of the modal argument. Śaṃkara, an Indian philosopher, argued:“If a thing outside awareness is as impossible as a barren woman’s son how can we even feel as if something is outside? Nothing even appears to be like an impossibility”Basically, “Samkara’s principle”, as Alexander Pruss has called it, is that if we can have an experience that seems like it is veridical, then it is at least possible that it is veridical. It is impossible to have an experience of something logically impossible, even if that experience is only an illusion. Impossibilities cannot even seem to be true; it can never seem as if a square circle exists. The fact that NDE’s can at least seem to be veridical to someone gives further prima facie evidence that shows it is possible for us to exist outside of our bodies. Ergo, the jump from P2 of the modal argument is sound. Thus, the rest of the modal argument follows uncontroversially and dualism is true.  Justification for P2I take this premise to be supported by the principle of sufficient reason. Unless my opponent wants to say that minds exist are correlated to brains by the necessity of their own nature, the principle of sufficient reason demands that these correlations have an explanation. I am going to quote at large from philosopher Alexander Pruss where he gives an argument for the principle of sufficient reason:“Start with the observation that once we admit that some contingent states of affairs have no explanations, a completely new sceptical scenario becomes possible: No demon is deceiving you, but your perceptual states are occurring for no reason at all, with no prior causes.Moreover, objective probabilities are tied to laws of nature or objective tendencies, and so if an objective probability attaches to some contingent fact, then that situation can be given an explanation in terms of laws of nature or objective tendencies. Hence, if the PSR is false of some contingent fact, no objective probability attaches to the fact.Thus we cannot even say that violations of the PSR are improbable if the PSR is false. Consequently, someone who does not affirm the PSR cannot say that the sceptical scenario is objectively improbable. It may be taken to follow from this that if the PSR were false or maybe even not known a priori, we wouldn’t know any empirical truths.  But we do know empirical truths. Hence, the PSR is true and maybe even known a priori” (Pruss 2009).Justification for P6If P1 is true, mental states are genuinely nonphysical entities. Mind, being nonphysical, is categorically unique from matter. If we start the universe with the Big Bang and the history of the universe is the history of the laws of chemistry and the rearrangement of matter according to the laws of physics, how do you get nonphysical mind and its correlations with matter? Since you must start the universe with mind being a fundamental property of the universe, the explanation for consciousness and its correlations cannot be a naturalistic one. Minimally, a personal explanation is more plausible than a natural scientific. Justification for P8 This still leaves two worldviews on the table: panpsychism and theism. However, I contend that panpsychism is incoherent. It doesn’t even make sense to say that thoughts exist outside of a unified subject. Secondly, every single case we have of consciousness is that consciousness belongs to a unified self. Therefore, I think a personal explanation with a unified self better explains the existence of consciousness.  Argument from MiraclesI will argue that certain facts surrounding the historical Jesus’ death and the early proceeding aftermath confirm the hypothesis that God rose Jesus rose from the dead (R).  I take it to be common sense that if naturalism is true, then the probability of Jesus’ resurrection is approximately zero. On the other hand, if the resurrection occurred, then the probability of T is approximately 1. By the very nature of the case, the stronger the confirmatory evidence for R, the higher the probability of T. I will not need to argue that R is more probable than not (though I will argue that the evidence is sufficient to infer R) for this to add to the case for T. Further, I do not need to argue that the confirmatory evidence for R makes T>.5 in order for this argument to add to my case for T. Nevertheless, I think the evidence allows for an inference to the resurrection and so provides very good evidence for T.I will be making use of the following propositions concerning the historical Jesus and the early church: The discovery of Jesus’ empty tomb, the appearances to the disciple’s (D), and the appearance to Paul (P). Taken cumulatively, I think these facts give us very powerful confirmatory evidence for R over ~R. Before I very briefly defend the historicity of each of these propositions, I would like to point out that I think that the Gospels (minimally the synoptics) are generally reliable. By “general reliability”, I mean that we ought to trust the Gospels in matters of history even when we do not have independent evidence for their reliability in respect to a specific event they record. Nevertheless, the core of the facts pertaining to the resurrection need not be defended by general reliability because they stand up to scrutiny on their own. In any case, Dr. William Lane Craig gives several reasons to think that the Gospels are generally reliable. He lists the following pieces of evidence:“1. There was insufficient time for legendary influences to expunge the historical facts. The interval of time between the events themselves and recording of them in the gospels is too short to have allowed the memory of what had or had not actually happened to be erased.2. The gospels are not analogous to folk tales or contemporary "urban legends." Tales like those of Paul Bunyan and Pecos Bill or contemporary urban legends like the "vanishing hitchhiker" rarely concern actual historical individuals and are thus not analogous to the gospel narratives.3. The Jewish transmission of sacred traditions was highly developed and reliable. In an oral culture like that of first century Palestine the ability to memorize and retain large tracts of oral tradition was a highly prized and highly developed skill. From the earliest age children in the home, elementary school, and the synagogue were taught to memorize faithfully sacred tradition. The disciples would have exercised similar care with the teachings of Jesus.4. There were significant restraints on the embellishment of traditions about Jesus, such as the presence of eyewitnesses and the apostles’ supervision. Since those who had seen and heard Jesus continued to live and the tradition about Jesus remained under the supervision of the apostles, these factors would act as a natural check on tendencies to elaborate the facts in a direction contrary to that preserved by those who had known Jesus.5. The Gospel writers have a proven track record of historical reliability.” {4}Although I think the Gospels are generally reliable, I think the core of these facts can be supported without appeal to general reliability of the Gospels utilizing what Biblical critics call the “criteria of authenticity”. The criteria of authenticity are used by New Testament historians to see what we can know about the historical Jesus. {5} The criteria of authenticity includes things like the criterion of independent attestation (events reported in independent sources are more likely to be historical) and the criterion of embarrassment (events that were embarrassing for the early church are less likely to be invented and so add to the probability of the event). Using these criteria, we can see how the facts I mentioned can be substantiated. I cannot go into detail about all of the supporting lines of argument for those facts, but let me briefly outline some of the supporting lines of evidence. First, the empty tomb. The empty tomb is part of Mark’s passion narrative and so dates back earlier than Mark’s Gospel and is probably based on eye-witness testimony. Further, the discovery of the empty tomb is multiply attested by independent traditions found in Mark and by John. Moreover, the narrative in Mark meets the criteria of embarrassment because it was discovered empty by women, which were considered to be unreliable witnesses during that time period. Our record suggests that the disciples didn’t even believe the woman when they were first told. In fact, we see that the women are not even mentioned in the Apostle’s creed when it lists the witnesses to the resurrection.   Next, the earliest Jewish response recorded in Matthew and later repeated in the Talmud is that the disciples came and stole away Jesus body. However, the claim that the disciple’s stole away Jesus’ body implicitly provides attestation that the tomb was in fact found empty. Another piece of evidence comes from what has come to be known as the “Jerusalem factor”. It’s hard to see how a movement based on the bodily resurrection of a man could be proclaimed while the location Jesus’ dead body was public knowledge, known by the Christians and the Jews. For these reasons and many others, I think we ought to treat the empty tomb story reported in the Gospels as reliable history. Second, the appearance to the disciple’s. Along with accepting the general reliability of the Gospels, there are good independent reasons to accept the core of their testimony. The story is multiply attested by a wide variety of sources. First, the very early apostle’s creed cited by Paul in 1 Corinthians 15 includes the appearances to the disciples and peter. It is also multiply attested by independent traditions found in John, Luke, and Mark. The appearance narratives are found in so many sources with independent traditions that barely any NT scholars dispute the authenticity of the appearances to the disciples. Further, how do you explain the earliest belief in the resurrection without the resurrection appearances? By being crucified, Jesus was shown to be a blasphemer, under the curse of the God of Israel in Jewish thinking. Jewish messianic expectations had not been met and Jesus had been killed right before the disciple’s eyes. So, how do you explain how these scared men became bold proclaimers of the resurrection despite every predisposition to the contrary? Even through intense persecution and learning that their fellow brethren were suffering miserable deaths, the disciple’s continued proclaiming the resurrection. So, how do you explain the earliest belief in the resurrection without alluding to the appearances themselves? I don’t think there are plausible ways to do so. This point is quite strong in the case of Jesus’ brother, James. Our record suggests that James was a skeptic of Jesus during his lifetime, yet we learn that James became a leader in the early church and was eventually martyred. The best explanation of these facts is the one we find attested to in the NT, “then he appeared to James” (1 Cor. 15:7). I don’t have time to discuss the appearance to Paul in detail nor all (or close to all) of the proposed naturalistic alternatives to the resurrection. Let me discuss one naturalistic explanation for these facts for now, hallucinations (H). Before going into the problems with hallucination theory, we must take note that this is only trying to explain the appearance to the disciple’s and Paul-it does not account for the empty tomb. In order to account for the empty tomb an independent explanation must be attached. Of course, if R expresses a true proposition, these facts are easily accounted for. So, P(P&D/R) is approximately 1. If we are going to look at the P(P&D/H) we have to multiply the probability of hallucinations with respect to all of the disciples. So, we aren’t really just talking about the probability of one person hallucinating. We are talking about the probability of a hallucination x hallucination x hallucination x hallucination etc. Further, if we take the Gospels seriously in what they report (as I’ve argued we should), then we would need the hallucinations to all happen simultaneously and be seamlessly integrated. Further, the hallucinations must have been able to come up spontaneously and by appointment in group and individual settings. The hallucinations would also have had to suddenly stop for everyone at once and never occur again. Finally, we have to take into account the appearance to Paul.   Paul was an avid persecutor of the early church. It’s very hard to find parallel examples in history of a fervent persecutor of a religion converting to that religion on the basis of an appearance by the respective deity of that religion. Besides not being in a proper psychological state to hallucinate, Paul had a very peculiar auditory experience followed by temporary blindness. I think must take the account of this in Acts seriously because of the reasons for the reliability of the Gospels also confirm the reliability of Acts. Some of those reasons are especially true in Luke’s case. Moreover, in all probability, the traditional authorship of Luke is true (this is controversial however there is not enough time to develop an argument for its veracity) which means Luke had personal contact with Paul. This is part of Paul’s testimony of which he was persecuted and eventually killed for. When we take all of these factors together-the facts that the improbability of all the disciples hallucinating must be multiplied by each other, the appearances had to have occurred simultaneously, be seamlessly integrated, happened by appointment, by surprise, happen in peculiar circumstances it did to an enemy of the early church, and suddenly cease all in the context of an empty tomb-hallucinations are enormously improbable. We cannot forget that we must literally multiply each of these improbabilities by each other and anyone who knows anything about mathematics will tell you that large numbers become very large quickly through multiplication. Therefore, D & P, by the likelihood principle, provide incredibly strong confirmatory evidence for R over H and therefore confirmatory evidence for T. I think this sort of amazing improbability plagues all of the proposed naturalistic explanations. However, I’ll just wait and see what my opponent thinks explains the data better than the resurrection.Problem of Miracles Most people’s problem with accepting the resurrection is accepting that the laws of nature were violated. Before addressing the concerns that are raised here, I don’t think we should operate with such emotionally charged definitions. The definition given by Timothy and Lydia Mcgrew in The Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology is sufficient. They have written:“…a miracle is a specific event that would not have happened if only the natural order had been operating, where the natural order is understood to involve physical entities, their interactions, and the actions and interactions of animals, humans, and beings with powers much like ours. There is some vagueness in this definition, particularly with respect to what “powers much like ours” might amount to; but it has the merit of avoiding semantic questions about what constitutes a physical law and whether a physical law cannot, by definition, be violated.” Before going on, we must alleviate some false preconceptions about the resurrection hypothesis. It is not being argued that all the cells in Jesus’ body spontaneously came back to life naturally. That is highly improbable and should not be in the pool of live explanatory options. Since we do have independent evidence for T and this evidence seems compelling in its own right, what is so improbable about believing that God raised Jesus from the dead that it overwhelms the powerful confirmatory evidence discussed above? If you think about it, the prior probability of a miracle cannot be less probable than the combination of two propositions: (1) God exists(2) God wishes to reveal himself to humanity in a way that cannot be mistaken for the work of another man or nature Given that there are other chains of evidence to think (1) is true, and the moral argument for God’s existence (which, due to limited space, could not be discussed) provides plausibility to (2) (because a moral being would want to interact with an evil and suffering world), why think the P(R/B) is so low that our confirmatory evidence cannot overcome it? This is not circular because I’m not actually arguing that God’s existence makes the inference to R justified. The point here is that, given the powerful force of our confirmatory evidence for R, the burden of proof is on my opponent to explain why he thinks P(R/B) cannot be overtaken by the confirmatory evidence. He must explain why (1) and (2) are sufficiently low as to make the prior probability of R insuperable to the evidence presented.   I am not incorrectly switching the burden of proof because strong confirmatory evidence does switch the burden of proof. Without knowing the prior probability that a dealer would cheat, if we have good confirmatory evidence that he is cheating (say he gives himself 5 royal flushes in a row), then the burden of proof is on the person who wishes to maintain that the dealer is not cheating.  Conclusion In summary then I think we’ve seen 4 good reasons to think that God exists. First, contemporary finding in the field of cosmology point to an absolute beginning of the universe and allows an inference to an immaterial personal agent as its cause. Secondly, recent astrophysical findings of the fine-tuning of the universe allows for an inference to intelligent design. Next, I presented an abductive argument for preferring theism over naturalism based on consciousness. I argued that the nonphysical nature of qualia shows that our worldview must begin with consciousness and theism is better than our competing personal explanations for consciousness. Finally, I presented a historical case for the resurrection of Jesus which provides very strong confirmatory evidence for the resurrection and hence for theism. Taken cumulatively, I think we can conclude that theism is the more sensible worldview than atheism.      1.       http://alexanderpruss.blogspot.com/2010/12/simple-design-argument.html2.       http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/dualism/#ModArg3.       See Light and Death by Michael Sabom and Beyond Death by Gary Habermas and J.P. Moreland for formal citation of these cases.4.       http://www.leaderu.com/offices/billcraig/docs/rediscover2.html5.       http://www.biblicalstudies.org.uk/pdf/gp/gp1_authenticity_stein.pdf