Team Debate: God Exists

We thank Team Pro for accepting. We shall present our case in this round, and rebut in the next.C1) Transcendental argument against God For the first contention, we present the transcendental argument against the existence of God, formulated by analytic philosopher Michael Martin, the Professor Emeritus at Boston University [1]. If the universe was caused by an omniscient God, it is natural to suppose that God created logic and the physical laws within the universe. This would mean the universe, logic and science are contingent on God’s existence, i.e. a proposition that God is necessarily existent is entailed from the idea of an omniscient cause of the universe. Consider logic. Logic presupposes that its principles are necessarily true, but if God caused logic, then logic cannot be philosophically necessary as it is contingent upon the existence of God. If logic is contingent upon God according to deistic assumption, then using logical reasoning to justify God naturally begs the question. “And if principles of logic are contingent on God, they are not logically necessary. Moreover, if principles of logic are contingent on God, God could change them. Thus, God could make the law of noncontradiction false; in other words, God could arrange matters so that a proposition and its negation were true at the same time. But this is absurd. How could God arrange matters so that New Zealand is south of China and that New Zealand is not south of it? So, one must conclude that logic is not dependent on God.” [2] Physical laws and science presuppose the uniformity of nature via. special relativity, thus there cannot be violations of such laws. The property of omnipotence violates the uniformity of nature by allowing supernatural actions that violate such physical laws, thus challenging the core assumption of science. If this core assumption can be challenged, there is no reason to believe science can argue for God [3]. Thus, any justification for the likelihood of God’s existence, philosophical or scientific, would be impossible as God’s existence would challenge the validity of necessary logic and the uniformity of nature. This makes it incoherent to state “God Exists” too, as that statement presumes facts about logic that cannot be changing. C2) A caused universe is incoherent a) Requirements for Causation Physicist Sean Carroll notes two features that allow us to coherently talk about any form of causation whatsoever [4]. i. Time & the arrow of time (determined by entropy) ii. Physical laws Time and the arrow of time are naturally required to speak of causation. Without an arrow of time, it is impossible to coherently speak of a ‘process’ of anything, or a ‘beginning’ of something. The beginning would have to have a fixed point in the arrow of time, without which it is impossible for anything to coherently ‘happen’ over a period of *time* (because there is no time). For something to ‘occur’, it has to occur with a principle supporting its possibility. Possibility is incoherent without physical laws, as objective properties or actions are incoherent without limitation. It can be illustrated by the paradox of the stone, which admittedly does not disprove omnipotence, but illustrates how physical laws are necessary for anything to coherently have a ‘cause’ or beginning. Prior to the origin of the universe, there were neither physical laws nor time. Sans these essential features of the universe, to speak of causality is incoherent. That the universe was caused is the primary assumption of deism, and without these properties, a caused universe is incoherent. b) Eternalism Another reason why the universe must be uncaused is the truth of Eternalism. For something to come into being, there must be a state in time where it first doesn’t exist [5]. Under Eternalism change doesn’t ontologically happen and therefore neither does causation [6]. William Lane Craig writes, “[o]n a B-Theory of time, 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.” [7] Furthermore, the B-theory and eternalism entail lack of coherent temporal ‘change’. J.M.E. McTaggart writes, “Changes must happen to the events of such a nature that the occurrence of these changes does not hinder the events from being events, and the same events, both before and after the change. Now what characteristics of an event are there which can change and yet leave the event the same event? (I use the word characteristic as a general term to include both the qualities which the event possesses, and the relations of which it is a term -- or rather the fact that the event is a term of these relations.) It seems to me that there is only one class of such characteristics -- namely, the determination of the event in question by the terms of the A series.” [14] According to general relativity, space is ‘stretchable’. This was confirmed by the Friedmann observations and Hubble’s Law, that were used by Georges Lemaitre to propose the Big Bang theory, that states the universe is expanding, which is shown via. the cosmological redshift [8]. The Borde-Guth-Vilenkin singularity theorem, derived by Arvind Borde, Alan Guth and Alexander Vilenkin, further supports the theory that the universe is expanding [9]. General relativity also yields ‘eternalism’ or block universe, where the past, present and future are all equally real, and the passage of time is illusory via. the B-theory of time. General relativity models time as a ‘fourth dimension’ of space itself, allowing for the block universe theory to be likely true. Causality cannot be stressed on unless one assumes the presentism ontology of time, which is dubious in light of scientific discoveries supporting eternalism, especially special and general relativity. “Many [scientists and philosophers] have argued against presentism on the grounds that presentism is incompatible with the theory of relativity.” [10] If eternalism is true, causation is incoherent. In special relativity, each observer has their own ‘plane of simultaneity’, a small section of three-dimensional space where all events are simultaneous [6]. “Special relativity suggests that the concept of simultaneity is not universal: according to the relativity of simultaneity, observers in different frames of reference can have different perceptions of whether a given pair of events happened at the same time or at different times, with there being no physical basis for preferring one frame's judgments over another’s. ... So, in special relativity there can be no physical basis for picking out a unique set of events that are all happening simultaneously in ‘the present’.” [11] This entails eternalism. Therefore, temporal change and, thus, causation, are incoherent. Experiments from quantum mechanics have also vindicated Eternalism. Photons have been entangled through time [12]. An experimenter can choose to entangle photons even when they don’t exist in the present anymore. Other experiments show time is an emergent phenomenon. An outside observer would view the universe as static [13]. C3) Omniscience is an incoherent property There is reason to believe Eternalism is true via. God’s nature. God is omniscient, he knows everything possible about the past, present and future. As philosopher David Kyle Johnson argues, for God’s knowledge to be true, there must be the event which makes it true [15]. God’s knowledge about something like, say, a cup on the table is made true by an existing cup on the table. If God’s knowledge had no truthmakers, then his knowledge would be false. What then, makes God’s knowledge about future or past events true? It would have to be the future or past event. However, since the future is causing God’s knowledge it must exist. If the future is non-existent, there are no properties about the future. Making it impossible for God to know anything about it. This entails the future must exist, as well as the past. Eternalism is therefore implied via. God’s omniscience. As we have shown above, eternalism and a caused universe cannot coexist. Making God’s property of omniscience incompatible with his property of being a creator. C4) Non-cognitivism of ‘greatness’ With the argument from non-cognitivism, I will attempt to demonstrate that the term ‘God’ does not refer to a coherent concept. The property of ‘greatness’ is inherently subjective, with qualities that determine greatness dependant on the subject. One requires a standard for this conception of God to be considered omnipotent, i.e. all-powerful, where ‘power’ is the inherently subjective term, or ‘perfect goodness’, where objective perfection must be justified, and, in this case, greatness. For example, in a universe consisting of only a pencil, one cannot call the pencil a ‘sharp’ pencil, since the pencil lacks a standard to be justified objectively as sharp. Similarly, a property such as ‘maximal greatness’ requires a standard to be justified objectively, and sans such a standard, the concept of God as defined is incoherent. Thus, ‘greatness’ faces two basic problems: 1. A standard is required for the term ‘greatness’ to become meaningful. 2. ‘Greatness’, and what basically constructs it, is inherently subjective. For a being defined according to being great, the initial problem renders God meaningless unless an objective standard is present for greatness to be coherent. The latter renders God’s very nature a matter of subjective decision, thus God’s objective existence is not rationally justifiable, while “existence” depends on objective reality. An objective standard derived for God must either be (a) internal to God, or (b) external to God. The former begs the question and leads to God being self-defined, the latter is incoherent since God is transcendent, and sans the universe there is nothing which has objective reality except God (if he exists). Sources in comments.