Big Bang cosmology supports atheism over theism.

AveCon doesn't doubt the physics, so I'll answer some of his questions about the implications of my argument.My argument is not that time had no beginning. There is a difference between ‘’there is no first state of time’’ and ‘’time had no beginning’’. Even if there is no first state of time, there can still be a beginning in the sense that there is no state of time that existed before 13.9 billion years ago. It’s just that there is no first state of time that god can bring into existence. You can think of it as a middle ground between ‘’time had a beginning’’ and ‘’time existed forever’’.If every state of time is caused by a previous state of time, then there is nothing for god to cause. Every state of time would be caused by a previous state of time, which is an explanation of why time exists at all. (Time is defined as all of the states of time. If every state of time is causally explained by a previous state of time, you have a causal explanation of time itself.) That seems to be obvious in the same way that a collection of pickets being brown entails the fence being brown.I don’t think my argument is similar to Zeno’s paradoxes. Zeno’s paradoxes are actually incompatible with my argument. Zeno was trying to show the problems with viewing the world as a series of sub-states (halves divided by halves divided halves), hence the conclusion that motion would be impossible. As the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy says, ‘’Zeno sought to defend Parmenides by attacking his critics. Parmenides rejected pluralism and the reality of any kind of change: for him all was one indivisible, unchanging reality, and any appearances to the contrary were illusions, to be dispelled by reason and revelation’’[1]. I think his paradoxes are easily solved by invoking super tasks. Supertasks entail dividing finite intervals of time into smaller states of time. I will present the most common way of solving Zeno's paradox through the use of supertasks: The successive distances covered by Achilles as he progressively reaches the mid points of the spans he has left to go through form an infinite series 1/2 + 1/4 + 1/8 + 1/16 + … whose sum is 1. Consequently, Achilles will indeed reach point B (x = 1) at t* = 1 P.M. (which is to be expected if he travels with velocity v = 1 km/h, as has been assumed). Then there is no problem whatsoever in splitting up his run into smaller sub-runs and, so, no inherent problem about the notion of supertask. [2] Not only does this work for solving Zeno’s paradox of motion, but it also works for Con’s question about the present moment. How do we come to the present moment if every state of time is half open? I think that super tasks solve this problem easily. I gave an argument from simultaneous causation to show that matter could come into existence without reference to god. Con does not dispute the evidence from physics that such an event happened at the Big Bang. Instead, Con responds to this argument with a series of bare assertions that are given no support. A bare assertion is when somebody asserts something to be true without evidence. He accuses me of equivocating, which is using words in atypical contexts, on the meaning of the word ‘’nothing’’. There is no evidence presented that I equivocated on the meaning of the word ‘’nothing’’. It is also asserted that simultaneous causation supports the existence of a creator, and no evidence is given for this either. How can an explanation of the origin of matter without a creator give support to one? That doesn’t seem to make any sense. Con also says that my argument ‘’does nothing to show that nothing can come from nothing without a cause’’. This is a straw man. I never argued that simultaneous causation demonstrated something from nothing without cause. In fact, if one reads the argument I presented, they will see that I explicitly stated it had a cause. Allow me to quote my argument again: ‘’Imagine atoms A, B, and C. A comes into existence and instantaneously causes B, which instantaneously causes C, which instantaneously causes A. All of the atoms have causal explanation, and they all begin to exist at the exact same time’’. Note the underlined. Atoms A, B, and C come into existence at the same time, and they all cause each other. Contrary to Con’s straw man argument, I was not asserting that this is an instance of something coming from nothing without cause. The cause was that every atom causes another atom to exist at the same time. It came from nothing, but it came from nothing with a cause. This is not a personal (god) cause, however. Perhaps this diagram will make the concept clearer. I wanted to get around to presented the evidence for the WFU, because I didn’t have room to do so in the last round. Quentin Smith, professor of the philosophy of physics at West Michigan University, explains the evidence: ‘’Hawking’s theory is confirmed by observational evidence. This theory predicts our universe has evenly-distributed matter on a large scale, which would be on scales of super-clusters of galaxies. It predicts that the expansion rate of our universe -- our universe has been expanding ever since -- would be almost exactly between the rate of the universe expanding forever and the rate where it expands and then collapses. It also predicts the very early area of rapid expansion near the beginning of the universe called inflation. Hawking's theory exactly predicted what the COBE satellite discovered about the irregularities of the background radiation in the universe.’’ Con asks why the WFU implies a 95% probability of our universe existing. I won’t spend a long time explaining the physics, but here’s a simple explanation: ‘’Hawking's theory is based on assigning numbers to all possible universes. All of the numbers cancel out except for a universe with features our universe possesses.’’ [3] A longer explanation would be quite boring to the readers of the debate (read about sum over histories [4] if you‘re interested). Other than this, Con completely ignores the argument I gave. All he says is that, if god created the universe, the universe would have a 100% chance of coming into being. That’s exactly the problem! If the probability of the universe coming into being was 95%, and the probability would be 100% if god caused it, then god couldn’t have caused it! This is the argument I was trying to make when I invoked the WFU, and Con completely skips over it! Let’s start with Aquinas. I don’t see how his argument entails god defined as the ‘’the personal (rational and conscious) cause of the universe, matter, space-time, and everything else that exists’’. The argument seems to be a non-starter already. Con himself says that the argument is an attempt to show that an eternally existent universe is compatible with god. If you establish god within the context of an eternally existing universe, then you’re talking about the god this debate is talking about. This debate is talking about a god who causes the universe to exist, not a god in a universe that always existed. Even if Aquinas’s argument stood, it wouldn’t prove ‘’god’’ for this debate at all. The argument also assumes that an infinite causal regress is impossible, which I have disputed earlier in my round. I agree with the Leibnizian argument when it says that the universe requires an explanation. I think there is an explanation, but that it isn’t god. The explanation of the universe comes from its own existence. If every state of the universe is caused by a previous state, and the universe is defined as all of the states, then the universe has a causal explanation. The answer to Leibniz’s classic question ‘’Why is there something rather than nothing?’’ is that every state of something is caused by a previous something. I suppose, then, that my problem is with the second premise. ValeReferences [1]http://tinyurl.com... [2] http://tinyurl.com... [3]http://tinyurl.com... [4] http://tinyurl.com...