Big Bang cosmology supports atheism over theism.

Science and philosophyPro continues to pit science against philosophy. But what if you have a good philosophical argument pitted against a bad scientific argument? The fact that a point of view is "scientific" does not give it extra weight. Scientists are always coming up with theoretical explanations about the world, some of which are discarded upon further evidence, and some survive through being tested. In the case of the origin of the universe, there is no proven theory. Hawking has his view, but it's a hypothesis at this point that does not enjoy scientific concensus. It's not THE established scientific view. So to favor it over a solid philosophical argument just because it's "science," is unwarranted.There's really no tidy distinction between science and philosophy when talking about the origin of the universe. In both cases you use availble information combined with reason to arrive at a conclusion that, at least for the time being, can't be tested. That's why it's called "theoretical physics."Pro says I didn't respond to his scientific or mathematical reasons. I certainly did respond to his math by showing that it commits the same fallacies as Zeno's paradoxes. It's true i didn't respond to Hawking's quote, but, Hawking didn't make much of an argument. He said he was trying to convince other physicists, and he said the singularity can (not does) disappear once quantum effects are taken into account. That's not an argument; it's a statement. Now granted, Hawking makes arguments in his books, but I shouldn't be required to go look up those arguments and respond to them. I should only have to respond to what is presented in this debate.Quentin Smith, I think, makes a better argument. He argues that the singularity is physically impossible because all physical laws would break down at the singularity. He doesn't really explain why, though. Supposing that all known physical laws break down at the singularity, what reason is there to think some yet undiscovered physical laws don't govern singularities? Many scientists still think singularities exist in black holes as well as at the origin of the universe.Even if there is no singularity, it doesn't follow that the universe had no initial state. The initial state of the universe could've been a state in which the universe had some volume. Imagine if God caused a bird to pop into existence in mid flight in the present. Even though the bird did not begin as a singularity, surely it had an initial state. Pro has arbitrarily placed t=0 at the singularity, argued that there is no singularity, then concluded that there is no t=0, and therefore no initial state. But if the earliest extreme of the universe was not a singularity, then it was a mistake to place t=0 at the singularity to begin with. It should've been placed instead at the earlist extreme of the universe, whatever that happened to be. Voila! Then the universe has an earliest state at t=0.Fallacy of compositionPro didn't say anything new in response to this argument, so let me just try to clarify why I think his argument commits the fallacy of composition. If it's true that each state in the universe is caused by a previous state, then there is no state of affairs in which the universe comes into existence from a state of non-existence. If there is no state of affairs in which the universe comes into existence, then the universe was not created, neither by God, nor by itself. So it's fallacious to say that because each state was caused by the previous state, that the whole universe was caused by itself.Problem of infinite regressPro gave no response to my rebuttal here. In my rebuttal, I pointed out how Pro had misconstrued my argument and that it's irrelevant to my argument whether the universe is infinite in the past. I pointed out that his argument leads to an infinite regress of "states" of the universe, making it impossible to reach the present. Instead of responding to my original argument or my rebuttal of his initial attempt, he just repeated the same misconstrual he had in his initial attempt. He should've responded to my borrowing/lender argument because it proves that given his infinite regress of states of the universe, that the present state could never be reached.Zeno's paradoxPro claims that I didn't respond to his argument about the reality of dividing time into 1/2, 1/4, 1/8, etc. and that he didn't understand my argument from motion. Well, my argument from motion is a response to his argument. If his argument is sound, then the motion of an object cannot be caused by anything outside of itself; an object's motion can be caused by something outside of itself; therefore, his argument is unsound. That proves that there are not an actually infinite number of states of the universe, but that the division of time is only potentially infinite.GR paradoxPro's response here is interesting. He says, "Even if we have no epistemological answer to the GR paradox, there must be an ontological answer, because otherwise we would have a logical contradiction." The logical contradiction comes in the fact that the GR paradox emerges from his point of view. If there's a logical contradiction, it's in his point of view. That's what the GR paradox is meant to illustrate. The epistemological answer to the GR paradox is that Pro's first premise is false. The ontological answer is that there must be a first GR, and therefore an initial state of the universe.It should be obvious that his decimal argument is fallacious. Consider any t > 0, say t=2. What is the first decimal after that t? Is it 2.1, 2.01, 2.00000...1? As you can see, we're faced with the same problem. We cannot represent the first moment after t=2 with a decimal. If Pro's whole argument is sound, that would mean that between t=2 and t=3, there is no first moment, and that would mean the state of the universe at t=2 cannot be the cause of any t > 2. Every t > 2 is caused by a previous t > 2, and no t > 2 is caused by t=2. But that is obviously fallacious, because if you take this reasoning to its logical conclusion, it would follow that no state in the universe can be caused by a previous state.The GR paradox proves that Pro's argument is fallacious. If every state of the universe has a prior state, and if that means there is no first state, then it would follow that each state could have a GR, and that there is no first GR. That means no GR can kill you, yet a GR must kill you. Since we know it is impossible to get through all those GR's without being killed, we know there must be a first state of the universe. If the universe is finite in the past, then it has an initial state.My casePro has dropped my case. I take it that the whole debate hingest on the truth of his first premise. If his first premise is true, then big bang cosmology supports atheism over theism. If his first premise is false, then big bang comsmology supports theism over atheism. He dropped my case because he thinks it's sufficient to refute it if he can prove that there was no initial state of the universe.ConclusionI gave four arguments against Pro's first premise. If just one of these arguments are sound, then it disproves Pro's first premise. So even if Pro succeeded in refuting three of them, that would not have been enough for him to win. He needed to refute all four of them. He dropped my argument from motion under Zeno's paradox, but that argument refuted his claim that a finite interval of time had an actually infinite number of states, which his argument depended on. That leaves his first premise refuted. That means he has failed to establish the resolve, and I have succeeded in proving that big bang cosmology supports theism over atheism. But I don't think he succeeded in refuting the other three arguments either.JustinCrane has been a pleasure and a challenge to debate. I've really enjoyed this and look forward to the Skype debriefing. Thank you.