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Information in this section has been taken from 'Some Christian Arguments' which can be located at Biblical Stupidity.
Design
Christians argue that the universe exhibits evidence of intelligent design because it contains order, complexity and life. Their assumption is that without a creator, the universe could not contain order, complexity and life. But why? Since the universe is all that we know of, the entirety of our experience, we have no way of understanding how a "designed" universe would compare to an "undesigned" universe. However, we do understand how natural physical forces operate within the universe to produce greater complexity from simpler arrangements of matter, so it would seem unnecessary to introduce some outside force to explain complexity and life.
Of course the introduction of God as the designer and creator of the universe begs the question of who or what designed and created God. The design argument for God ends up looping back on itself. The premise of the argument is that complexity and life require a creator. Obviously a creator would be alive and infinitely more complex than its creation and thus, by the premise of the design argument, would also require a creator, which would also require a creator, ad infinitum.
Sometimes the design argument is presented using the watch-on-the-beach analogy: A person walking down the beach finds a watch in the sand. This person knows that the watch was designed and manufactured by a watchmaker. Likewise, theists will argue, we look at the universe itself and its great complexity and we know it had a designer who planned it and fitted it all together. This, however, is not a good analogy because watches are created out of pre-existing materials while the universe is claimed to have been created by God out of nothing. The watch on the beach is seen to be manufactured specifically because of the way in which it contrasts with and stands out from the natural world. How would we know that nature itself was designed and fabricated? We know that watches are manufactured, but we do not know that nature is.
After everything is said and done, the term "God" is never adequately defined, so claiming that "God" is the designer and creator of the universe is not intelligible. Ultimately, the "God" explanation for the universe is not truly an explanation but is instead an admission of ignorance.
"There are, of course, many who regard the concept of God as an exceedingly simple explanation of everything, and who regard scientific elucidations as either incomplete or ponderous. However, that is a self-delusion. Such views are generally held by people who do not understand the scientific method. Indeed, to believe that the assertion that God is an explanation (of anything, let alone everything) is intellectually contemptible, for it amounts to an admission of ignorance packaged into the pretence of an explanation. To aver that 'God did it' is worse than an admission of ignorance, for it shrouds ignorance in deceit."
Religion - the antithesis to science, Oxford Chemistry Professor Peter Atkins.
First Cause
The so-called First Cause argument is closely related with the argument from design, and has the same problems. The argument goes that the universe could not have come into existence on its own, so there had to be a first cause which brought it into existence, and this first cause is God (Jehovah).
First of all, if the universe couldn't have come into existence on its own, why is it more likely that a god could have come into existence on its own? If Christians say that their god has always existed, why couldn't the universe have always existed (in some form)?
Secondly, if there was such a thing as a first cause, why would it have to be a conscious entity, specifically Jehovah, rather than something else, such as a virtual particle? And if the first cause had to be alive and conscious, why would we presume that it was still alive today?
The idea that you cannot get something from nothing seems self-evident, yet, interestingly, the spontaneous creation of the universe would not appear to violate any physical laws, according to Victor J. Stenger, professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Hawaii:
"Let me begin by addressing two common sense notions: (1) you cannot get something from nothing, and (2) the order of the universe requires the pre-existence of an active intelligence to do the ordering. I will leave it to the theologians to explain how the postulate of a creator God solves the problem of creation ex nihilo, since God is something that, itself, must have come, uncreated, from nothing. Instead I will address the physics issues implied by the creation of the universe from nothing. In physics terms, creation ex nihilo appears to violate both the first and second laws of thermodynamics.
The first law of thermodynamics is equivalent to the principle of conservation of energy: the total energy of a closed system is constant; any energy change must be compensated by a corresponding inflow or outflow from the system. Einstein showed that mass and energy are equivalent, by E = mc^2. So, if the universe started from "nothing, " energy conservation would seem to have been violated by the creation of matter. Some energy from outside is apparently required.
However, our best estimate today is that the total energy of the universe is zero (within a small "zero point energy" that results from quantum fluctuations), with the positive energy of matter balanced by the negative potential energy of gravity. Since the total energy is zero, no energy was needed to produce the universe and the first law was not violated."
The Second Law of Thermodynamics
The SLOT argument is a misinterpretation of a scientific principle. First, a definition:
"The second law of thermodynamics gives a precise definition of a property called entropy. Entropy can be thought of as a measure of how close a system is to equilibrium; it can also be thought of as a measure of the disorder in the system. The law states that the entropy—that is, the disorder—of an isolated system can never decrease. Thus, when an isolated system achieves a configuration of maximum entropy, it can no longer undergo change: It has reached equilibrium." Thermodynamics, Microsoft (R) Encarta. Copyright (c) 1994 Funk & Wagnall's Corporation.
So order should not increase in a closed system.
Theists try to say that life on earth violates the second law of thermodynamics, and thus a god must exist to create the order and complexity of the world. However, the earth is not a closed system. When this is explained to theists, they will reply that the universe itself is a closed system and exhibits increasing order, and thus this is evidence for a god. I'll quote from Stenger again:
"The second law of thermodynamics requires that the entropy, or disorder, of the universe must increase or at least stay constant with time. This would seem to imply that the universe started out in a greater state of order than it has today, and so must have been designed.
However, this argument holds only for a universe of constant volume. The maximum entropy of any object is that of a black hole of the same volume. In an expanding universe, the maximum allowable entropy of the universe is continually increasing, allowing more and more room for order to form as time goes by. If we extrapolate the big bang back to the earliest definable time, the so-called "Planck time" (10^-43 second), we find that the universe started out in a condition of maximum entropy--total chaos. The universe had no order at the earliest definable instant. If there was a creator, it had nothing to create."
Here's another point to ponder: If the second law of thermodynamics is held to be inviolable by the theist, how did the creator god itself manage to avoid increasing entropy?
Prophecy
Some Christians point to Bible "prophecies" as evidence that the Bible is divinely inspired. There are so many problems with this argument that it is hard to know where to start. First of all, if a prediction comes true, this does not necessarily indicate that some supernatural entity was involved. Secondly, it is extremely difficult to know if a biblical event which supposedly fulfills a prophecy actually occurred, or if it was invented merely to satisfy a prophecy. Thirdly, a "prophecy" can easily be inserted into ancient texts after an event occurs. The authors of most of the books of the Bible and the dates the books were written are sketchy at best, and we recognize that the Bible has gone through numerous hands and been edited many times over the centuries. Forgery in the early Church is well known, at least to scholars.
Here's an example of a prophecy that isn't: The writer of Matthew, whoever he was, says that Jesus was born of a virgin and that this fulfills a prophecy in Isaiah. If you take a look at Isaiah 7:14, you see that this prophecy was not for a virgin birth, had nothing to do with Jesus, and was fulfilled a few paragraphs later in Isaiah itself. It looks very much like Matthew was simply fabricating a prophecy to make Jesus appear as a divine figure. After all, to be considered a god back then you had to be born of a virgin.
Christian Arguements
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