God Exists

Small Correction and Clarification First of all, no I do not intend to present any Argument from Evil.Secondly, I need to change MN from Metaphysical naturalism about the mind to Metaphysical naturalism with the exception of abstract objects and moral facts. Fortunately this does not affect my opponents rebuttal.Origin of the Universe Now, I do agree that an infinite series of events might cause trouble, however, this is not the only sense in which we can understand the universe to be "eternal". But more on that later. Let us talk about the BGV-theorem first.Does it in any way show the universe began to exist? First of all, it is compatible with Hawkins' no-boundary proposal, so it at least does not necessitate a beginning. So, what does it really conclude?The BGV-theorem concludes that almost all inflationary model universes are past indeterminate. Which is to say, we have no idea what is going on, our models give no answer.Indeed, Vilenkin himself writes "Theologians have often welcomed any evidence for the beginning of the universe, regarding it as evidence for the existence of God … So what do we make of a proof that the beginning is unavoidable? Is it a proof of the existence of God? This view would be far too simplistic. Anyone who attempts to understand the origin of the universe should be prepared to address its logical paradoxes. In this regard, the theorem that I proved with my colleagues does not give much of an advantage to the theologian over the scientist."[1] Let's go back to this other sense of "eternal" I mentioned earlier. Eternalism is a view in the philosophy of time which states that past, present and future are equally real, no moment of time ever ceases exist. The universe is eternal.The idea was, I think, first propose Hermann Minkowski. This is known as the Minkowski spacetime of general relativity. How should we imagine this 4D blockuniverse? This passage, describing Minkowski spacetime, captures it rather well "In this spacetime geometry, there are differences between space and time. But a difference that somehow captures the passage of time is not to be found. There is no passage of time. There are temporal orderings. We can identify earlier and later stages of temporal processes and everything in between. What we cannot find is a passing of those stages that recapitulates the presentation of the successive moments to our consciousness, all centered on the one preferred moment of "now""[2] This is the eternalist view.What speaks in favor of this view? It's major rival is presentism, the view that only present object exist, past and future are not real. For any argument for a beginning universe to succeed it must rely on a view under which the past does not exist, e.g., presentism (there are other, but less important ones). Relativity of simultaneity shows there is no unique point of time which we could call the "present". The only view compatible with this is eternalism, which is incompatible with a beginning of the universe.Christian philosopher William Lane Craig writes "On [eternalism], the universe does not in fact come into being or become actual at the Big Bang; it just exists tenselessly as a four-dimensional space-time block that is finitely extended in the earlier than direction. If time is tenseless, then the universe never really comes into being, and, therefore, the quest for a cause of its coming into being is misconceived."[3] Fine-Tuning My opponent confuses two arguments. First, he argues for a finite past. Which is one step short of a cosmological argument.Then he offers 3 possible explanations "for the *origins of the universe". But he argues for fine-tuning, not creation of the universe. My opponent presents three possible options, necessity, chance and design, for why the universe is like it is. He invites me to include a forth.Which I am going to do. In fact I am not only going to do that, I am going to suggest a possibly infinite amount of possibilities. How do we know, that it cannot be a combination of factors?For example, the weak nuclear force might be this way necessarily, while the strong nuclear force might be completely random.We see that we can mix any number of necessary and contingent constants, thus greatly increasing the number alternatives. Furthermore, who says a constant is either fully necessary OR fully contingent? For example, some value might be necessarily constraint to a set of values within which it is entirely random. Now we have an infinity of possible alternatives to design, but I am not even done! Nobody says within some range (or in general) constants must be *absolutely random. Gaussian distribution seems much more reasonable to me. Physical Necessity Nobody, has ever demonstrated that the constants could possibly have any different values (no, the Penrose ratio is not about this). That would be a nice start before we base arguments on the assumption that they actually could.Essentially making any fine tuning an argument from ignorance. My opponent says, there is "no logical or empirical evidence" for this option. I take "logical evidence" to mean "sound argument".But there is something else we have neither for: God.If we had empirical evidence, the newspapers would have gone batsh1t crazy. Remember when physicists supposedly found the "God"-particle, which in no way is evidence for a deity?And no, Pro cannot claim the fine tuning of the universe to be "logical" evidence for God, as this is the conclusion he is trying to arrive at. He acknowledges he does not exclude necessity with certainty as he is just making an inference to the best explanation. Which is of course a valid thing to do. However, because of the above, it is not at all clear in what sense God would be a better explanation. In one sense God is certainly not: The God-hypothesis posits more entities than necessity. Ockham's razor dictates that necessity is to be preferred over design. Not as the absolutely best explanation, but as a relatively best explanation compared to design.I can use the razor as my opponent in no way challenged the idea of necessity being an option able to adequately explain what we see, he merely objected that we have no evidence, ergo no reason to accept it.Chance It is astonishing hard to find how Penrose calculated his miraculous ratio. If you want to search for it, good luck. Almost all websites listed are hosted by Intelligent Design proponents. Neither those sites nor my opponents source give any insight into the calculations, mostly they draw analogies to show how incredibly big this number his.Which to me seems fishy. ID proponents citing a know physicist and providing no substance? What does the Penrose ratio *really represent? Is it a probability as my opponent claims? To calculate any probability we need to know the relevant probability densities. To know the probability of our universe existing we would need to consider the probability densities of various possible universe first.But uncontroversially, our sample size is exactly 1. Consider two dices. The "phase space" here is 2 to 12 (analogous to the phase space expressed by the Penrose ratio). Now, does this mean that every possible value is equally likely? No, not at all. https://upload.wikimedia.org...(I apologize. I tried, but I can't seem to get pictures working properly.)This is the Gauss distribution I hinted at earlier. We cannot conclude from phase space alone the probability of one particular outcome. A Misguided Argument?Recall, the God whose existence we are debating is the omnipotent, omniscient, loving creator of our universe.Does the fine tuning argument prove omnipotence? No, if anything it proves a being powerful enough to tune constants.Does the argument prove omniscience? No, in fact it could prove a being only knowing how to tune constants.Does the argument prove a loving God? No, making a universe capable of supporting life might just be done under the intention of torturing innocent.Does it prove creation? No. My opponent argued for a finite beginning early in his round. He did not argue that God created the universe, he argued that God designed the universe.It is entirely possible for the here relevant God to coexist with our universe just to one day think, "you know, it's boring here, let's make this place down there habitable".I am left wondering how this argument supports my opponents position as we are not debating a designer deity.Meaning, Purpose and Morality As I have said before, I do believe in moral facts. I am a moral realist, I believe there are objective moral truths.I do not, however, believe they were somehow created. Indeed, I do not even believe they are natural facts. Pro states "If my opponent believes this to be true then they have embraced Nihilism" which is an appeal to consequences.In the end, this section of Pro's opening statement is devoid of any justification for any claim. Thus, there is no reason to accept his conclusions.Sources[1] Alexander Vilenkin, Many Worlds in One, pg. 176[2] http://www.pitt.edu...[3] http://commonsenseatheism.com...