Hmm heres something I used in a debate with a friend of mine from the US on FB:
I don't know weather this is the place to post it but what the hell
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Atheism is the rejection of the idea that there are gods or supernatural beings in the world of any kind, even the rejection of the idea that there might be supernatural beings at some early point in the universe.
I am by definition an atheist but I don't like the term because it implies that there is something that is worth denying the existence from, I prefer the term naturalist which means that I believe that the universe is a realm of natural law where the concepts of physics and chemistry apply and describe what there is in this universe.
He says said:
Why don't you think you are an agnostic?
Agnosticism is a a point of view where you dont really know weather there are supernatural beings and it seems to me to be kinda weird fence-sitting kind of view, because the question at stake here is one about rationality.
The intellectual respectability of a claim that there are gods (say the gods of Olympus, …) seems to be on par with the intellectual respectability of fairies on your garden, belief in fairies was very widespread until the late 19th century, people believed that the fairies were much more present in their lives than god was. The comparison here is not a weird one and if you think that the reasons you have to think that there are fairies are very poor reasons, that they are irrational to think that there are such things then belief into supernatural beings in natural is irrational in that way.
He says said:
But if the world is so perfectly strung together there has to be intelligent design
We have an extremely powerful theory about how appearance of design and organization in the universe – Darwinian theory. If you take the thought that there was a designer seriously the designing would be particularly incompetent because there are so many ways in which the universe could be better. Ones human body is a mess of bad design features. You can say god works in mysterious ways. But: if you invoke the notion of a omnipotent eternal being. Absolutely anything whatever follows so that nothing whatever counts is counter evidence of existence of god. If a theory explains everything, if everything is consistent with the truth of the claim than its emty and it doesn't explain anything at all.
He says said:
But that's not all that different from science, science actually tries to explain everything and everything it has yet to explain.
Well, science at its normal best is a public, testable and challengeable project always having to maintain respectability by saying what would count as counter evidence against it and people put forward views in science they put it so that other people contest them. Science theoretically is an idea that the universe is a place which can be understood if we have the right concepts, procedures and instruments we might be able to increase our understanding of it.
He says said:
Some say there would be no morality at all without god.
Firstly it is to ignore the fact that in the antique in the classical tradition their deep rich thoughts about the nature of morality, the foundation of ethics, the nature of good which isn't connected to any spirit monarch in the sky and its rewards and punishments. All the best and deepest thinking about ethics is come from non religious traditions. But also to suggest that it is not possible to have an ethics unless there is this rewarder and punisher, and by the way there is a logical fallacy involved there that its right to do something because someone will beat you up if you don't, the idea that you need an enforcer for morality …, all those people who act as they do towards others as a desire to respect others and the society is premissed solely on their liking of fellow human beings, you could not say that that it is not ethic solely because they dont believe in god. And on the contrary, people whos morality comes from religious ideas as opposed to those who have thought about it for themselves, and it seems to me that the latter are many times more moral than the former.
He says said:
Do you think there is something after this life?
I think death is gratefully final. Its no different to us than the time before we were born. The average human life is less than 1000 months which is a very good reason for not wasting time. It also means that the things you want to achieve must be achieved here. It also means that at the end there will be a kind of wonderful rest from it all. And according to science we will in a way survive since our matter will go on to become other things, we return to the elements and become a part of nature, the conservation of energy, … There is no evidence on life after death, except anecdotal and only suggest that there is life that follows death. I don't know about anyone else but the though of eternity seems tiresome to me.
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