Atheism Destroyed in Under 50 Seconds

[CliveStaples]

No. How can you state that A (for which hasn't been demonstrated to exist) be the only possible cause to B? I could state that X is the only possible cause and look, there's B so X must be true!!!

It was given in the hypothetical that A is the only cause of B. Since X is the only possible cause, X = A.

Wrong! It doesn't work that way. You can state that A or C or D or E or F or G, ect ect were the ONLY possible cause but they'd be just as valid as each other. Just as likely (which is not at all to be realistic). Unless you can demonstrate that A exists and is the cause, nothings going to change.

No, if there's only one possible cause, then it's the only possible cause. You're just ignoring the conditions of the hypothetical.

Here's your argument thrown back at you -

You can only exist through the intervention of pixies, now pixies haven't been proven to exist but look! You exist, so there for pixies must exist!

See why it fails?

Well, I would say that he hasn't shown "You can only exist through the intervention of pixies".

But that's not what we're talking about. You are making a claim not just about pixies, but about all causes. Your claim is that in order to prove that A caused B, you must first show that A exists, and then that A caused B.

Now, if I can provide an example of an A and a B, such that I can prove that A caused B without first proving that A exists, then I will have shown that your claim is false. Do you agree with that? That if I could provide such an A and B, you would concede that your claim was wrong?

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Minor quibble here, but the reason mathemeticians don't have to prove all of the foundations of their arguments is not that it is 'common knowledge' but the fact that it has already been proven. For example, if I am trying to determine the length of the hypotenuse of a triangle while having the value of the other two sides, I do not first have to prove a^2 + b^2 = c^2, because it has already been proven.

Since we are talking about using the existence of god as the basis of an argument, you would first have to prove it, because it has yet to be proven

Edit: Some things in mathematics are known to be true, but cannot be proven. So, I guess those could be considered 'common knowledge,' however, god does not fall into that category.

Except that mathematicians don't always do that. Real analysis came like 100 years after Newton and Liebniz discovered calculus.