A Cosmological Argument for God is Sound

Thanks Pro. I. Burden of Proof The burden of proof is clearly on Pro, therefore it is he who needs to justify the arguments he makes in order to fulfil the burden if proof required for him to win this debate. This is an important distinction since we can already see from Pro's opening round he has made numerous assertions without providing any reason to accept those assertions. II. Structure - Transcendent Cause Pro's first argument is a straightforward modus ponens, which is as follows: P1) If universe had a beginning, then there must be a pre-existing eternal transcendent cause. P2) The universe had a beginning C) There must be a pre-existing transcendent cause Contradiction: The first thing I must note, is that the argument is self-defeating given Pro's justification. This is because Pro affirms that time and space started with the beginning of the universe, yet attempts to affirm there must be something before it. This is a massive contradiction, it's like saying "There must be something north of the North Pole", which is nonsensical, since the North Pole is defined as the northmost point. If a cause must pre-exist the universe, then the proposition is contradictory and hence cannot exist. Rebuttal of P1: First, let's see Pro's justification for P1: "There must be cause because nothing happens without a cause, and it is an empirical fact. And this cause must be eternal and transcendent, because time and space started with the beginning of universe, therefore this cause existed above and before space and time." The most significant issue one must take is that Pro is performing a fallacy of composition, of extrapolating from parts-to-whole. [1] While it might be true that events that occur within the universe we observe all have causes (even this is debatable) it simply does not follow that the universe itself must have a cause. It's akin to saying "each sheep has a mother, therefore the flock of sheep has a mother", or "each piece of literature has an author, therefore the entirety of literature has an author". The logic simply does not apply. There are excellent reasons to doubt that things not bound within the universe do have a cause, too. Within the universe we have 2 important things that are necessary for us to speak of causes in any meaningful sense. Natural laws (including time) Entropy, which gives the directionality of time. Sans these two things, which are only present within the universe it is impossible for us to talk about causes in any meaningful way. Moreover, we have excellent reasons to doubt that our held notions of causality even apply within the universe, given that as we go into quantum physics we see events occurring rather randomly and spontaneously. Nothing 'causes' each of these events to occur, there is no reason why a radioactive atom would decay at time x instead of time y except for sheer luck. Therefore, I can assert with absolutely no confidence that all things that appear to begin to exist do so with causes. Rebuttal of P2: Pro has given absolutely no justification for this premise either, how do we know that the universe itself had a beginning? Especially given we have a multitude of physical models that predict stuff 'before' the Big Bang, such as eternal inflation, cyclic models etc, and it is not clear which of them is true, in fact the evidence suggests that eternal inflation is the best candidate given how well it naturally explains the uniformity of the CMB as well as the geometric 'flatness' of the universe. Moreover early direct evidence of this has been compiled from studies of CMB polarisation, although it requires confirmation.[3] Why should we accept that the universe actually has a beginning? III. Conscious transcendent cause: I am rather confused by Pro's justification: "This cause must have some sort of consciousness (or self-awareness), simply because an unconsciousness things cannot give consciousness to itself (or material sum of universe cannot give consciousness to itself), and it is an empirical fact. " Really? Does that mean chicken embryo's are all conscious? Even as a single cell? We have abundant evidence of conscious beings arising from non-conscious states without any obvious 'insertion' of consciousness so I simply do not see how Pro's logic follows. Moreover we have absolutely no experience of there being a non-physical consciousness, what does it even mean to have one? Empirically, it seems to be necessary that all conscious beings are physical, and necessary that they have a physical brain. Pro can contest this may not necessarily be the case, but in doing do he undermines his justification for his other premises which he has states are 'empirical facts'. IV. Occam's Razor Pro's assertion that the cause must be conscious heavily violates Occam's razor, as several assumptions need to be made in order for the theory to fly. It requires far fewer assumptions to just affirm a spontaneous immaterial substance as a cause, if anything, or even creation ex nihilo (which I may discuss later). A conscious cause needs to provide explanatory power over an unconscious one, which clearly it does not. Back to Pro! V. References 1. http://en.wikipedia.org... 2. http://www.science.uva.nl... 3. http://bicepkeck.org...