The Existence of God is unlikely

My thanks to Nick for challenging to me to this debate. In my final post, I'm going to present some closing remarks as well as some responses to Pro's arguments. As with Pro, I can't say nearly everything I want to say given the character limit, and as such my response will be divided up into equal portions. Pro argues that I have asserted without argument that phenomena such as free will favor the existence of God. This simply isn't the case. In my opening argument, I argued that phenomena that we tend to assume such as consciousness, intrinsic value, objective morality, and free will fit in more snugly within a theistic worldview than a naturalistic worldview. I am well aware of naturalistic attempts to explain, harmonize, or reduce these phenomena, and whether or not these explanations work is not the focus of this argument. Rather, this argument demonstrates that theism is the best explanation for things in reality that we tend to assume exist. "God's existence and nature furnish us with a more powerful, wide-ranging, less contrived (non ad hoc) and far more natural or plausible setting to explain certain important phenomena than the alternatives." [1] As far as I have seen, Pro has only responded to this argument by challenging me to demonstrate that these phenomena really exist -- but that completely misconstrues the argument. It is not over whether or not these phenomena really exist, it is over theism providing the best explanation for reality. This is neither an inductive or deductive argument, but an abductive argument. Pro also argues that I seem to allude to the ontological argument when I discuss the necessity of God. This seems to be misguided. I brought about the concept of God as a necessarily existing being not to demonstrate his existence, but to demonstrate his aseity (Which is logically entailed by his necessity). The necessity of God, though a feature used by the ontological argument, is irrelevant to it when used in this context. From what I have observed, Pro has not demonstrated that necessity is not a part of the concept of God. Thus, his argument from complexity fails. Not withstanding, I have some comments about his statement of God as a complex entity. He defines complexity in terms of mental operations -- due to the amount of thinking that must take place within a being such as God, he requires an explanation and thus he probably does not exist. Yet, it is not clear that complexity, defined in such a way, warrants an explanation. Pro justifies his premise that ordered complexity requires an explanation by appealing to a physical analogy -- but if we define complexity in terms of an immaterial something, the intuitive force of this analogy loses its power. So it is not clear, once we understand complexity in terms of an immaterial something, to suppose that it must require an explanation. Add to this the fact that God is a necessarily existing being, this argument ultimately fails. In regards to the problem of evil, Pro argues that I have no basis for saying that God would likely have morally sufficient reasons for allowing evil. This is not true. Given what we know about God (He is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent), it is extremely probable (If not logically entailed by his nature) that he would have morally sufficient reasons for permitting evil. He responds by stating that it is equally likely that God might have reasons for not allowing evil to ever occur. This alternative is logically possible, but is probability in this situation is zero, given the situation we are are arguing in (evil exists) this alternative is clearly false. So, to add to what I previously said, I am arguing on the condition that if God were to exist, then he would likely have morally sufficient reasons for permitting evil, assuming that it too were to exist. This fact is not at all ruled out by Ockham's razor, since it would be a necessary explanation (In fact, I think it's logically entailed by his nature, as stated above). Additionally, he also argues that we ought to be in such a position as to understand God and his reasons for action. But as previously stated, why should we suppose that beings with limited cognitive faculties be able to understand the reasons that God may have for permitting the existence of evil? He seems to downplay the difference between the immensity of God's mind and the finitude of ours -- a gap so immense that likely no scale would accurately convey. Pro charges the simultaneous causation of the KCA as being implausible/ad hoc, and thus in order for the argument to work I must demonstrate it to be plausible. Not so, as so long as simultaneous causation is possible, the this does not hurt the KCA. Recall that one of Pro's arguments against the KCA was that it could not work since all causation was temporal in nature, but as long as another method of causation is possible, then the KCA encounters no difficulty there. I need not show that this alternative is possible, but merely that an alternative exists in order for the difficulty to vanish. Other than arguing that the universe could be metaphysically necessary, there was no real response to the Leibnizian cosmological argument. Pro's argument that the universe could have been metaphysically necessary is ad hoc and contrived -- there is nothing about it that makes it necessarily existent. Indeed, that matter is undergoing constant change and that I can conceive of the universe's non-existence render its supposed necessity implausible. As such, the LCA stands unrefuted. In response to the argument from reason, Pro cites computers as a counterexample and argues that "they do because of the arrangement and specifications of their physical parts." No, for unless its designers endow it with the capacity to function rationally, it is unlikely that it will actually do so. It's not merely a question of whether or not evolutionary processes could produce beings with rational thought, it's over whether or not this is possible to begin with. According to Victor Reppert: "The argument from reason says that reason cannot emerge from a closed, mechanistic system. The computer is, narrowly speaking, a mechanistic system, and it does follow rational rules. But it is not a closed system, and the framework of meaning according to which it operates is provided by its programmers and users. To presume that these programmers and users are themselves physical systems and part of a closed physical system would be to beg the question against the argument from reason, which attempts to show the opposite." [2] =Conclusion= Through Pro has attempted to demonstrate that the existence of God is unlikely, I conclude that he has failed in doing so. His argument from ordered complexity is implausible, considering that (i) God is a necessarily existent being, and (ii) There is no reason to suppose that complexity, defined in terms of an immaterial something, requires an explanation. His argument from evil, through slightly more successful, ultimately fails, for it is probable that God would have morally sufficient reasons for permitting evil, given what we know about his nature. In fact, if real evil does exist, then it is likely that God exists as well, since objective morality is more plausible grounded in a personal agent than in impersonal processes of nature or as platonic forms. Finally, his argument from the simplicity of naturalism was found to be inadequate to the explanatory superiority of theism in accounting for phenomena that we tend to recognize. In regards to my own arguments, Pro has not responded adequately to them. The LCA was, for the large part, mostly ignored. Pro's criticisms of the KCA too were found to be lacking, and finally, Pro was not able to demonstrate that rational thought could arise in principle from natural processes. Thanks again to Nick for challenging me to this debate.