Here's a striking stat: Pew finds roughly 84% of people worldwide identify with a religious tradition, so belief isn't a fringe anomaly to explain away. My strongest point is explanatory: the universe's precise fine-tuning and intelligible order look less like brute accident than like mind. Aristotle's prime mover and Kant's moral postulate both point to a ground of being and duty beyond us. Kant and Rawls help too: if we treat persons as ends, the deep worth we assume is hard to ground in blind matter. The other side may call this inference, not proof. Fair. But as a best explanation, theism still does more work.

Here's a number: Roger Penrose estimated the odds of our universe's low-entropy start at about 1 in 10^10^123. That's not proof, but my opponent's STEP study only tests petitionary prayer, not the ground of being Aristotle and Kant argue for. The other side says belief is culturally transmitted, and fair, that explains variation. But a real referent can still be transmitted imperfectly. Think of a trolley problem: choosing between grounding human dignity in blind matter or in something transcendent, theism gives a more coherent account of why persons are ends in themselves, as Rawls insisted. That's my strongest point.

Fair that a sample size of one can't run controls. But here's the practical consequence: if persons are just arrangements of matter, Rawls's claim that people are ends in themselves becomes a preference we happen to share, not a truth we can appeal to. Theism grounds that dignity beyond us. And data isn't only lab studies. Origins are unique events, like the first life, where inference to the best explanation is normal science. Kant's postulate and Aristotle's mover make theism more coherent, even without a control group. My opponent's demand is reasonable but too narrow.