[...there are many, many arguments "for God". They are "legion", to use the cliché.]

Yes, but only some are currently utilised rigorously by intelligent theistic scholars. Dawkins deliberately chose to construct straw men instead. Without doubt this was to the detriment of his own case, as many atheists and theists agree.

[But there is no actual evidence.]

That depends what you mean by evidence.

[But as we all know, these arguments are fiercest - not between the religious and the atheist - but between different categories of theist, each of which imagines their own God to be different from, and by definition superior to, other Gods.]

Red Herring. The context was whether God exists- God being a powerful creator and sustainer of the Universe. All theists agree on this, that's why we're called theists.

[If there were any evidence, it would be a simple matter to test it, in normal, well-understood conditions.]

Ah the truth emerges. You have a mistaken understanding of evidence- your statement presupposes that.

[It doesn't happen, because the entire structure of religion rests on the concept of "belief".]

The same can be said of anyone. You do believe things, don't you?

[With belief, everything makes perfect sense. God made the world, somewhere between 14 billion years ago and Sunday, October 23, 4004BC. He either made all the animals at the same time, or they evolved - with his help - from the primaeval swamps. Jesus will either return (sometime soon?) in a flash of lightning, or he already arrived back in 1914, and will be with us until Armageddon, or - take your pick of any number of scenarios.]

Why major in the majors if you can major in the minors? Nice.

Christians of all stripes agree on the basics, and disagree on relatively minor issues in comparison.

[But to me, all those competing theories of "how God?", "when God?", and "where God?" - let alone "why God?" - militate against the possibility that any single one of them holds the answer.]

Fair enough, but why? ie: What's your argument or evidence for believing this?

That was in response to Pericles. Computer cut out my first word...

Trav

The difference between science and philosophy, is that science requires proof, where philosophy requires conjecture.

If I propose that God does not exist, no one provide any concrete evidence that he does. The best that Craig can do is point to the gaps in existing knowledge and claim that this is proof. The reality is that it is none of the sort.

Craig's claim that nothing comes from nothing, thus the big bang is proof of a super entity is conjecture. Craig may be right, or there may be another explanation that we can't see yet. Craig has a theory without a foundation other than belief.

Dawkins refers this to "god of the gaps" This is belief masquerading as proof. Debating belief is futile.

Shadow Minister
“The difference between science and philosophy, is that science requires proof, where philosophy requires conjecture”.

Not so. Science also requires conjecture (“hypotheses”) and philosophy requires rigour--it doesn't deserve such abuse, especially from populist opinion makers.
Rarely is either science or philosophy vouchsafed an unqualified “proof”. That’s akin to “truth”.
It would do Dawkins good to acknowledge some of the "gaps" that science is not yet even close to closing.

Yes Madeleine, Dawkins is not a great debater. But to debate religion you need a knowledge of religion, and scientists like Dawkins don't credit religion with enough credibility to warrant the effort. Dawkins holds religion on a par with fairies, unicorns and orbiting teapots i.e. not worthy of investigation.

God is hard to define. It's hard to debate an ill-defined and imaginary concept. At the end of the day, us atheists can't say for sure that a god doesn't exist. Even Dawkins counts himself as technically agnostic, a 6.9 out of 7 on his theistic probability scale.

The Best Argument for Atheism: Emotional Attention
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VALzHQGxx_c

"Whilst some atheists confidently assert there is no God, most atheists are actually not 100 percent sure. Hence truth is not the final arbiter of their decision. Rather, emotion pushes an unsatisfying god out of attention... Humans are primarily emotional, not rational. As philosopher David Hume famously said: "Reason is and ought only to be the slave of the passions"."

Shadow, the Kalam argument is not a God of the Gaps argument. Believing so simply shows that either you've misunderstood the argument or you've misunderstood the concept of God of The Gaps. Or both.