The Statement 'God Exists' is Rationally Justifiable.

I will not be responding directly to Pro’s arguments in this round, as I will be using this round to outline my negative case, which alone should be sufficient to negate this resolution. Best of Luck! “Universe”Please note for this round I am defining “universe” as the three dimensions of space, one of time, and all physical entities (matter, particles and radiation) that exist within it. This is different to Pro’s definition of universe, but since I am not directly addressing his arguments this round then my arguments will not commit the fallacy of equivocation. I will be explicit in following rounds when I do come to address Pro’s arguments directly. Definition of God & CognitivismNote to voters this is a very atypical definition of God Pro has provided for this debate, hence my arguments against it are also going to be atypical. Pro needs to demonstrate a “Singular Non-Contingent Essential Existence Uncaused Efficient First Cause”, to borrow from zmikecuber, Pro needs to demonstrate all these attributes to uphold the resolution, which I daresay is a rather large burden to bare. I will work through each of these attributes and outline the framework of my arguments against them. Singular – This by fiat rules out multiple efficient, or both an efficient and a material cause. Non-Contingent – I presume Pro refers to Leibniz’s Modal Metaphysics and his definition of Contingency: “A proposition is contingently true if and only if it is true in this world and false in another world. A proposition is contingent if its contrary does not imply a contradiction. ” [1]Thus a proposition can be Non-Contingent if:1. The proposition is false2. The proposition is necessary (true in all possible worlds)Given this debate is about justifying existence, then #1 is ruled out, thus Pro must demonstrate some sort of necessary entity. I will be arguing against this point and the notion of modal metaphysics. Essential Existence –This seems to rely heavily on the presupposition of existentialism which depicts “essence precedes existence/existence precedes essence”. I will deal with this presupposition at length within this debate. [2]Efficient First Cause- This presupposes the Aristotelian notion of causality. One immediate concern with this is “First Cause of what>”. I can only presume Pro argues that the universe is what is initially caused. I will also address this point within the debate. Law of CausalityFirst, I would most importantly like to challenge this postulate of Pro’s. Which is as follows (underline mine):“Causality is - inductively - True. Or: for every event A there is a - inductively - necessary event B, such that, if B then A. ”The keyword here is “inductively”, although I challenge even this much to be true which I may discuss later. This law runs into David Hume’s famous ‘Problem of Induction’, where we can never justify a posterori claims about reality without assuming the principle of the uniformity of nature to be true. [4] The reason for this is that it is easy to draw up a prima facie set of circumstances where the future is different to what it is going to actually be, and even the past is different to what is was (such as in “Last Thursdayism”),[3] the exact same can be posited for the “law of causality”, for its straightforward to draw up a set of circumstances where causality doesn’t hold. This is trivially demonstrated with quantum mechanics, which has a number of fundamental interpretations, some of which are truly indeterminate. I am not arguing that indeterminism is true, but the fact that all these interpretations of quantum mechanics (deterministic and indeterministic) provide exactly the same experimental (a posterori) predictions about reality, and therefore are equally coherent on the surface. It is not possible to know whether or not determinism is true via. a posterori (and therefore inductive) means. This hits the notion of causality, since there is no longer a justifiable fundamental reason why for example, one uranium-238 atom will decay at time x, where a second uranium-238 atom in identical physical environment would not decay (which is what indeterminism entails). There is no cause for these events to occur differently, yet it’s logically consistent. Thus the law of causality is contingent, even if inductively true. Uniformity of NatureAny inductive claim needs to assume this principle, however how can we argue that the uniformity of nature holds when we have no “nature” in the first place> Remember, that a “first cause” necessarily must precede the universe, and by extension nature. The situation is in fact much worse than this, since ALL of our inductive claims about reality are necessarily made within our three dimensions of space and one of time ontology. Given that these dimensions are an integral part of what the universe is, then to make inductive claims about what is outside of the universe (as defined by dimensions) is completely absurd. How can we possibly make justified claims about how the universe as a whole behaves when we only have inductive experience of what is within the universe> This extends to causality. Even if we could argue that the law of causality holds within the universe (inductively), we cannot possible argue it holds outside the dimensional universe, thus Pro’s critical postulate of the law of causality is necessarily unsound. Incoherence of “The Law of Causality”Moreover we have additional reasons to believe the law of causality to be flat out false when we talk about the universe as a whole. As Sean Carrol notes, the universe contains two features (and I argue, three) embedded that allow us to coherently talk about causality.1. Laws of Physics2. Arrow of Time3. TimeAll three of these are required for us to speak the language of causality, however all three of these elements are absent once the universe itself is out of the equation. If causality is incoherent without the context of the universe, then how is it possible for there to be a first cause *of* of the universe? Without the laws of physics, then we lack the unbreakable principles that don’t allow for things to “just happen”, without the arrow of time (which is predicated on entropy) then we cannot coherently talk about “before” or “after”, necessary in order to say “X caused Y to be”, moreover it also entails there is no absolute “first”. One way around this problem is to invent some second notion of “time” outside of the one that governs the universe, but then we are piling on assumptions rather than just rejecting the law. Moreover, time itself is increasingly well-described within physics as just another dimension of space, thus the universe is a four-dimensional block universe (more on this later). IF this is true then it’s absolutely impossible to talk about causality in any inductive or deductive sense, since the concept of “being caused” loses its meaning. EternalismTo argue for a first cause also argues for the capacity for “change”, however the capacity for “change” is only possible if we have an absolute moving reference point (usually in this instance the notion of time in presentism). However, if there is no absolute moving reference, then there is no absolute “change”, and if the universe exists without an absolute moving reference, then the universe is unchanging, therefore cannot be caused. In eternalism, the past, present and future are all equally “real”, the passage of time is emergent, or an illusion. There are several good reasons to accept this is the case from special relativity. In special relativity, each observer is found to have their own planes of references, with no “absolute standard”, by extension each observer has their own “plane of simultaneity” which is a small section of three dimensional space where all events are simultaneous. However because these individual planes of simultaneity diverge due to relativistic effects, then we end up with many different three dimensional universes, which strongly implies four-dimensionalism (and hence eternalism), otherwise we would end up with contradictory descriptions of the same three dimensional space at the same time t. [5] Note that these are all inductively true from our understanding of time through science. If Pro wants to challenge these observations, then Pro needs to do so in a manner which does not undermine his postulate of the law of causality, which itself is an inductive truth (although I question even that much). Reducio Ad AbsurdumNote Pro’s postulate, “Causality is - inductively - True. Or: for every event A there is a - inductively - necessary event B, such that, if B then A”. If we assume that there is a “first cause”, then a knock down argument can be made:A: There exists a first cause A (Assumption)1. If there is a first cause A, then there is a necessary event A2. The law of causality is true3. If the law of causality is true, then event A has an inductively necessary event B4. If event B has an inductively necessary event B, then necessary event B precedes event A5. If necessary event B precedes event A, then there does not exist a first cause A6. There does not exist a first cause AC. A entails a contradiction, therefore A is false1 is de facto true, 2 is a necessary assumption of Pro, 3 is true by definition. Rejection of 4 leads to contradictions in something both existing/happening and not happening/existing at the same time, and thus is absurd to reject and 5 is de facto true. Thus the only way to refute this reducio is to reject premise 2, but this is a critical assumption of Pro, thus his position is refuted. SummaryWill summarise more fully later. References 1. . http://plato.stanford.edu...2. . http://plato.stanford.edu...3. . http://en.wikipedia.org...4. . http://plato.stanford.edu...5.http://en.wikipedia.org...(philosophy_of_time)