General Theism Contains a True Proposition for God's Existence

I would like to clarify something at the outset to avoid any potential semantical arguments about the proposition: It is: "General Theism Contains a True Proposition for God's Existence". I am taking this to be equivalent to "General Theism is True" (with General Theism/God defined by Pro further down), as opposed to simply "General Theism Contains a True Proposition" (For example: "P1 If Grass is generally green God Exists, P2 Grass is Green, C Therefore God exists" is a ridiculous argument, but it's second premise is, in fact, true). I think the former is the grammatically correct reading of the motion, bu t i wanted to be clear. I'm optimistic gamesmanship wasn't Pro's intention, and that this clarification was unnecessary, but thought it best to include it. On to Pro's R1: 1 I accept Pro's 1 as the definition of theism he will be defending (it is not necessarily so that a theist defend all that Pro postulated, however, Pro has specified HIS theism, and I shall assume that is the theism he will be defending). 2 For Pro's 2, he makes some comments about atheism. He defines it, then notes that he feels there is a problem with it, in that he feels that "atheism" cannot be the default position because "atheism" presupposes theism. This is true, of course, only definitionally; without there BEING a theism, there would be no need for the term "a-thesim". We could just as easily define the terms as "Realism" (the acknoledgement of no evidence for god) and "A-realism" (the rejection of logic in order to presuppose a divine being), and then try to refute god by claiming that the god claim presupposes the lack of evidence of his existence. It's a semantical game. Pro does not give his expectation of the explicit definition of atheism, he gives a definition that he immediately finds fault with. Of course, this is irrelevant to the motion. Pro has the full BoP here, clearly, as the one making an affirmative claim. He asserts that "General Theism Contains a True Proposition for God's Existence". Thus, if he fails in his BoP, the motion does not stand. This, of course, is the right way of things: the theist makes a claim, and the atheist need only refute it. The atheist need not prove that a god is impossible (although, depending on the god claim, he may be able to), but rather, that the claims that god exists have failed their BoP. For clarity's sake: There is "Hard" atheism, which asserts that God does NOT exist (an actual claim), and "Soft" atheism, which simply does not accept the claim of the existence of God as true. "Soft" atheism simply lacks the belief in god, and makes no affirmative claim. It is open to being convinced, if a convincing argument surfaces, but in the absence of such evidence, it rejects the claim being presented to it. "Soft" atheism is sometimes called "agnosticism", but there are problems with this usage of "agnosticism", as agnosticism is, in general, a claim about knowledge (do we KNOW there is or is not a god), not a claim, per se, about belief. As long as we all understand what's meant by the respective terms, however, I see no problem with thinking of either form as "correct". Again, though, these definitional games are largely irrelevant at present. The burden is not on my to prove a case, but only to show that Pro has not made his. 3 Which brings us to the arguments presented by Pro. The Cosmological Argument (CA) A1 The CA, as presented by Pro, does not establish his case even if accepted at face value. There is nothing in the CA that establishes, for example, that the cause has personal agency. Nor does it establish that the "cause" is Omnipresent, or Omnibenevolent (Perfectly Good, to use Pro's terminology). A2 The CA cannot be accepted at face value. There is an unstated part of P1 that is missing: Everything that begins to exist in this universe has a cause. Even that's not entirely certain: virtual particles [1] are things which have no cause, and which "come from nothing". A3 The concept of "begin" requires time, and our understanding of time breaks down at the big bang. In a very real sense, it can be said that the universe has existed "for all time", that "all" of time being about 15 billion years. Was there another universe or another time on the other side of that? We have no way, at present, of determining that. [2] A4 Con's 3i is untrue; he says that the argument established "the imposssibility of an infinite regress". It does not. It simply says that if there ISN'T an infinite regress, and is instead a beginning, there must be a cause for that beginning. 3.1 Is not an argument for a deity. It appears to be a lead-in to 3.2. 3.2 The argument here is another "first cause" argument that does nothing to establish any more of Pro's premise. A cause does not necessitate a personal being. The arguments against an infinite regression seem little more than a Dressed-up Zeno's paradox. [1] . http://en.wikipedia.org... [2] . http://www.hawking.org.uk...