The Leibnizian Cosmological Argument Is Sound

In this round, I will mainly be going into refuting pro's initial claims from round 1, but I will also cover any points my opponent made in round 2 that are directly relevant to the main argument I am presenting in this round, as my current argument would need to address those. Most defenses will be reserved for the next round, however. The Principle of Sufficient ReasonWhat my opponent attempts to argue here is that the universe has a transcendental personal cause because every contingent fact has an explanation (by the PSR). However, this arguments fails in two respects; one I will get to right now - that is, the importance of the PSR; and the other - the importance of such transcendental personal cause. One of the problems with using the PSR as an attempt to prove that the cosmological argument is valid - and therefore God exists - is that the reductio ad absurdum can used on the PSR to disprove its conclusion and the idea of God. For example, let p be the conjunction of all contingent truths. If p has an explanation, say q, then q will itself be a contingent truth, and hence a conjunct of p. But then q will end up explaining itself, which is absurd. This conclusion is formulated through the argument below:11. No necessary proposition explains a contingent proposition. (Premise) 12. No contingent proposition explains itself. (Premise) 13. If a proposition explains a conjunction, it explains every conjunct. (Premise) 14. A proposition q only explains a proposition p if q is true. (Premise) 15. There is a Big Conjunctive Contingent Fact (BCCF) which is the conjunction of all true contingent propositions, perhaps with logical redundancies removed, and the BCCF is contingent. (Premise) 16. Suppose the PSR holds. (For reductio) 17. Then, the BCCF has an explanation, q. (By (15) and (16)) 18. The proposition q is not necessary. (By (11) and (15) and as the conjunction of true contingent propositions is contingent) 19. Therefore, q is a contingent true proposition. (By (14) and (18)) 20. Thus, q is a conjunct in the BCCF. (By (15) and (19)) 21. Thus, qexplains itself. (By (13), (15), (17) and (19)) 22. But q does not explain itself. (By (12) and (19))23. Thus, q does and does not explain itself, which is absurd. Hence, the PSR is false. [1] Essentially, this rebuttal is logically proving that God as in explanation does not explain itself, thus the Principle of Sufficient Reason is invalid. But still quantum mechanics has processes that do not have a cause, such as quantum fluctuations, and that is enough proof against the PSR in and of itself. Defining an External CauseA very shaky part of my opponent's argument is the necessity for a transcendental, personal external cause to the universe. Even assuming that there is an external cause, he hasn't really proved very well that that external cause must be transcendental and personal. The only thing that he has proved is that the external cause cannot be abstract. However, there are a number of explanations in between these two definitions of an external cause. Pro attempts to argue in round 2 that that is not the definition of the God being considered, but he said it right there in round 1. The models I presented do not fit pro's definition of God. For one thing, he doesn't explain why an all-pervading force cannot be the external cause. For example, Stephen Hawking has argued that it was gravity (which I argued in the second round) that is this "force": "Because there is a law such as gravity, the Universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the Universe exists, why we exist. .. It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the Universe going. .. "[2]Going back to the quantum mechanics argument I made in the last round, an omniscient God would collapse superpositions. Each premise is sound by quantum mechanics or general religion. For example, "When an external agency (an observer, experimenter) measures the observable associated with the eigenbasis, the wave function collapses from the full [set of eigenstates] to just one of the basis eigenstates. ""At present, every experiment has verified the [observation effect]. " This proves premise 2 of the argument. Premise 3 obviously follows from premise 2, because an omniscient God sees everything, and therefore observes all superpositions, which would cause all of them to collapse. Premise 4 does seem at first to be contradictory to premise 2, but it has to be true that not all quantum superpositions have collapsed, as that would make the notion of it null. Most of the "proofs" my opponent demands are unnecessary because the statements are axiomatic. [3][4]BVG TheoremMy opponent has used the Borde-Vilenkin-Guth (BVG) theorem in both rounds to attempt to prove that the universe began to exist, and that such an event creates a necessity for external causality. The problem is that my opponent misunderstands what the BVG theorem actually says and how it can be applied to making a universal timescale. First off, here is the BVG theorem: "Thus inflationary models require physics other than inflation to describe the past boundary of the inflating region of spacetime. .. and some new physics is necessary in order to determine the correct conditions at the boundary. " What this means is not that the universe cannot be eternal, but that inflation alone cannot account for an eternal universe; only that "some new physics" can show how the universe is eternal. [5] What this does here is not only make pro's argument for premise 3 fall apart, it also dismantles several of pro's objections to my arguments against my arguments. It can very well be argued that the universe did not have an ultimate beginning, and that time is eternal. For example, his main objection to the Ekpyrotic universe theory is that it "violates" the BVG theorem. However, it doesn't really violate it because it is just that sort of "new physics" that the BVG theorem calls for. Further, "The production of a scale-invariant spectrum from hyperexpansion was one of the great triumphs of inflationary theory, and here we have repeated the feat using completely different physics. " It seems to fall right in line with the BVG theorem. It is later argued that the Ekpyrotic universe theory could explain dark matter, dark energy, and the acceleration of the expansion of the universe. [6]As for my opponent's objection that the Ekpyrotic universe theory has an ad-hoc approach, "In 2006, Steinhardt and Turok showed how the model naturally allowed the cosmological constant to relax to very small values, consistent with current observations. " This shows that such an approach can be naturally incorporated. Even so, any natural explanation would automatically be better than any supernatural explanation, because even if it had ad-hocs, it's still natural; it doesn't assume anything above the natural and is thus simpler. [7]ConclusionsTherefore, the only premise or conclusion that makes any sense in the LCA is premise 2, which is pretty much axiomatic. With quantum mechanics and alternative cosmologies refuting premise 1 and the unimportance of a transcendental, personal, external cause - God - necessary for creation refuting premise 3, my opponent's conclusions are logically unsound, negating the resolution. Anything that I did not cover in this round will be covered in my final argument. The final argument itself will be a sort of "catch-all", as I see the debate structure may need to be bended a little to fit how this resolution should be argued. Sources[1]: . https://bearspace.baylor.edu...[2]: . http://phys.org...[3]: Griffiths, David J. Introduction to Quantum Mechanics, p. 106-9. [4]: Kaku, Michio. Hyperspace: A Scientific Odyssey Through Parallel Universe, Time Warps, and the 10th Dimension, p. 261. [5]: . http://arxiv.org...[6]: . http://wwwphy.princeton.edu...[7]: . http://perimeterinstitute.ca...