It is likely that a God or gods exist

To address the burden of proof: Pro is right - we share the burden of proof. But again, keep in mind what the resolution actually says: it is likely that a God or gods exist. Given this resolution, I do not have to prove that the nature of the universe excludes God from existing or that God is a logical contradiction. It seems all I have to do is show that it is POSSIBLE that the universe can exist without God. Then we may use Occam's Razor to infer that it is LIKELY that a God or gods don't exist as this would be multiplying entities beyond necessity. If pro can show that the universe does require a prime mover, then his BoP is fulfilled. But since our best current cosmological models do not posit a God, all I have to do to fulfill my BoP is show that pro's arguments do not hold up, i.e. the universe does not require a God. Therefore I will again use my round to cast into doubt pro's arguments. If I can do that, then we have no reason to believe his positive claim that a God likely exists. If we have no reason to believe a positive claim, we are left with neutrality. If we are left with neutrality and we have good evidence for our neutrality, we have no reason to posit additional entities. Therefore we may conclude that a God likely does not exist as we have no reason to posit his existence. Argument from religious experience: I have to say I don't really understand why pro thinks this argument carries weight. "On atheism, we have no reason to believe that people would have supernatural experiences," he says. But of course this does not follow. Atheism is the lack of belief in a God; it does not tell us that our beliefs always accurately reflect the way the world is. If pro wants this argument to work, he must explain why, on theism, many people genuinely believe in the existence of ghosts, or why many people think that the Illuminati is real. The fact that many people yearn for a higher power to existence in the absence of mankind's ability to understand the world is, of course, not sufficient reason to suggest that a higher power really exists - just like it does not follow that real, metaphysical moral truths exist just because we tend to feel like they do. This is a byproduct of evolution and does not, in my view, count as sufficient proof in any way. Do ghosts count as the most plausible theory for why many people believe in ghosts? If not, why? The fine-tuning argument: "The argument is supported by, but does not depend on, the contention that the universe is fine-tuned specifically for life." If that is the aim of the argument, then it fails. Sean Carroll, an astrophysicist at Caltech, has pointed out that, among other things, the entropy in the early universe was significantly lower than it would need to be to support life - a difference of more than ten figures [1]. Why would this be the case if the universe was fine-turned for life? The thought experiment pro mentions seems to fail quite obviously to address the point of the anthropic principle. This principle says that the universe is not 'fine-tuned,' because fine-tuning necessarily implies a teleology. When we say a jet is fine-tuned, we are saying it is fine-tuned for some purpose. It is fine-tuned for flight. A computer is fine-tuned to compute. These things were designed to serve a purpose. The fine-tuning argument presupposes that the universe was designed FOR the purpose of supporting life. As I point out, though, this is a tautology. If the universe did not have conditions favorable to life, this argument necessarily could not be proposed. The thought experiment that pro suggests fails to address this point. The argument is not that it is logically impossible that the universe not exist, it is that what we view as fine-tuning is like the water in the pothole: an illusion created by retrospective observation. I have no reason to expound upon multiverse. I simply mentioned it to show that the apparent statistical improbability of the existing universe was only significant if we presume one universe. I'm not saying we shouldn't presume one universe, I'm just saying that, given many cosmological models do posit multiverse, we do not have to commit ourselves strictly to a single-universe model. Kalam Cosmological Argument: "However, this is to mistake the first premise for a physical law, when it is in fact claimed to be a metaphysical law, supported both by a priori reasons and a posteriori evidence." Not at all. Here I am using a physical law as an example to show that we have reasons to doubt the metaphysical law pro proposed. My point here is precisely that the METAPHYSICAL law of cause and effect applies IN our universe, but this does not give us sufficient grounds to posit that it therefore also applies to the universe itself - in which metaphysical laws dependently exist. He cites a Craig argument that immediately begins with a false assumption: "[Craig] contends that if we take the first premise as truly matching our intuitions..." but this is precisely what is wrong with the picture! Here my point is that our intuitions may well be wrong about the beginning of the universe. We want to posit cause and effect since that's what we do in everyday life, but just as the expansion of spacetime is not bound by the physical law of light speed, nor is the beginning of the universe obligated to obey our laws of cause and effect. BGV theorem: I am not purporting to challenge the Big Bang model, nor am I suggesting a model that is eternal. These models may be correct, but it is not necessary to suggest a past-eternal universe in order to avoid pro's objections, therefore it would be wholly unnecessary for me to defend such a model. He says, "Even if the BGV Theorem does not conclusively prove that the universe has a beginning, it strongly points to the possibility that it does." Not at all. Again, the BGV theorem only says that our ABILITY to describe the universe classically breaks down at the Big Bang. But this is only because the singularity is governed by quantum mechanics and our laws of relativity break down at this point. This does not suggest that the universe therefore cannot be past-eternal, it only says that we have to start describing the moment at which the Big Bang occurred using non-classical mathematics. In fact, Allen Guth, one of the authors of the BGV theorem, has himself said that he "suspects the universe did not have a beginning" [1]. How could this be the case if his model supposedly shows that the universe did? Because that's not what the model actually suggests. Pro mentions Hilbert's Hotel. But this thought experiment only shows that infinity, as a concept, is especially hard to think about. It does not by any means show that infinity is somehow logically incoherent or contradictory. At best, we can conclude that infinity is an exceedingly strange concept, and this does not seem to deserve any attention. Conclusion: Our best cosmological models for the beginning of the universe work perfectly well without positing the existence of God. Therefore we have no reason to posit the existence of God unless the nature of these models can be shown to be logically inconsistent or contradictory, as this would violate Occam's Razor. So while pro was right to suggest that we both have a burden of proof, his application of it was wrong. In order to refute the claim that a God LIKELY exists, all I have to do is show that we have no reason to posit his existence. To do this, all that is required is to show that our cosmological models can operate without that assumption. If they can, it would be unnecessary to invoke God. I think I have done that. I'm running out of room so I'll conclude. Thanks pro, this was certainly interesting!