A Personal First Cause/Necessary Being Exists

Pro's Argument: This is more of a FYI, but Pro's well-formed formula is a complete mess, and is hence logically invalid. I assume that premises 1, 3 and 5 are the premises with information (I.e. Require positive support) and premises 2 & 4 and the Conclusion follow deductively somehow from these 3. I can only assume the logical format is something as follows: P1) Whatever begins to exist or already exists has a cause/explanation for it's existence P2) The universe exists P3) Therefore the universe has a cause/explanation for it's existence (From 1 & 2) P4) The cause/explanation of the universe can only be a necessary being (God) C) God caused/explains the universe (From 3 & 4) I would kindly like to ask Pro to clarify his argument here to make sure that's exactly how the argument deductively follows. One will quickly realise that Pro's original premise 2 is completely useless and nothing follows from it. So IF Pro wishes to clarify his argument, he will also need to demonstrate exactly how the argument is logically valid, otherwise the conclusion doesn't follow even if all the premises are true (!). In any case I will only be contesting P4, that the cause/explanation of the universe is a necessary being (God), which is a valid portion of the argument, and is how I would argue the case myself. The Cause/Explanation of the universe can only be a necessary being (God): Please note the definition of God I set in the rules: "...personal, and by extension, intelligent" Pro adds the additional attribute of necessary existence to these attributes, which is fine, only that it makes his job harder. Here we need to unpack the notion of personal, which generally implies the following:[1] Memory/Knowledge Intentionality Awareness Free Will Personality Thought Indeed, personal directly implies consciousness on some level, of which our own consciousness is a type of personal entity. So when Pro argues for a necessary 'being', he is directly alluding to these concepts I have listed, which clearly is a very specific type of concept, and not equivalent to a 'necessary *something*'. As such we need to assess Pro's reasons for favouring a necessary being over a necessary *anything else*. Moreover we also need to assess why it needs to be a 'necessary anything' at all, rather than a 'contingent anything' (the diametrically opposed alternative), I will address this in a later section. Pro's *only* defence of this in Pro's rather verbose first round is in the paragraph attacking the notion of a necessary substance over a necessary being. His following point "...But to be able to do something, as mentioned before the substance would have to be conscious, have the ability to do something by itself, because something without a mind or being alive for that matter, it cannot act on its own or be able to create something contingent..." Is made with zero evidential support. Despite providing lots of evidence for his other, rather minor points, THIS point is literally the most important one of this debate (!!). Because it answers the question of 'Why God??'. Why doesn't something need to have/be conscious to act by itself? We clearly have one exception to this rule (conscious things), therefore to postulate this arbitrary exception to this 'rule' is and can only be conscious things without any good reason to believe this to be the case is simply a basic special pleading fallacy, and Pro's entire case fails. To make this argument Pro needs to argue the following: "All non-conscious necessary entities are inanimate" Or some form of this, however I do not see how Pro can possibly demonstrate this to be the case without undermining God at the same time, for every argument to why a necessary substance is inanimate can apply equally to a necessary being (God). Moreover we have very good putative entities which do effect causes/changes, whilst being just as reasonable postulation as to a necessary 'something' as God. One example is the Quantum Vacuum, from which it is speculated that the universe arose from via. a series of quantum fluxuations and inflation events within this quantum vacuum.[3] It's not important that this is what happened, but rather that if it could be a coherent 'necessary substance'. Since: It has 'causal power' It's not contingent upon the universe It's eternal The second we grant that such an entity is a possible necessary substance, then Pro's entire argument that mandates a necessary being fails. Such observations are possibly being observed today. For example two U238 atoms can be placed side by side, with identical temperature, mass, spin, etc. All physical properties identical, however at one moment in time one atom may undergo radioactive decay while the other does not. This would strongly imply that there are non-conscious things that do act on their own accord (and hence animate). Pro makes several other (bare) assertions, with no justification as to why the attributes of a necessary substance would match a necessary being: Immaterial Intelligent enough to know how to craft/formulate things Power A-spacial/time/cycle of life/energy/hyper dimensional/laws of physics Why should we believe that such an entity requires *any* of these attributes? #1 is false from both God and atheist explanations, as this unjustifiably rules out pantheism (who would argue that god IS as material as the universe), but also conflates with my example of the quantum vacuum, where the universe would be a contingent part of it (assuming modal collapse is false, more on this later). This could *only* be the case IF the universe was literally created ex nihilo, and that God is only the efficient cause, and a material cause is not required. However this ignores explanations that posit both a material and efficient cause, or that the material and efficient cause are the same thing. Pro has given zero reason to believe that the universe was literally created ex nihilo, hence this can be rejected out of hand. Moreover this goes against virtually all our notions of causation (all creations require a material cause), which counts strongly against Pro's case given that he is using similarly dated philosophy to justify why there is a cause in the first place (PSR). #2 can be rejected out of hand as this presupposes that the universe was ever intentionally caused, and that things were ever the 'target' of causation. This is an unjustified assertion, and seems equivalent to 'the rain must have known where to fall for it to fall there'. Whereas the correct answer lies in statistics, chance and weather mechanics. Similarly, everything in 3 & 4 can be dismissed with Hitchen's Razor. Prima facie plausibility isn't sufficient in determining how the world objectively is. Further, if we grant EVERYTHING within 1-4, we have still gotten no closer to a necessary being over a necessary *anything else* because none of this differentiates between a conscious, personal entity over a non-conscious one. Further, it would violate Occam's Razor to postulate a being over anything else as it 'tacks on' the additional attribute of personal/conscious unnecessarily. A 'being' as an explanation: Pro assumes that consciousness is immaterial, and not contingent upon time within his arguments last round, but gives zero justification for this being the case. To the contrary, briefly I am going to positively argue that this is false. First, the notion that consciousness is not contingent upon time is absurd, all experience of our 'inner movie' and subjective experience of reality is grounded within the passing of time. Thoughts are not instantaneously generated, they require a progression of events and take a period of is mimed to complete. Without time we would lack many of the core qualities we associate consciousness with, including free will, awareness and thought. Free will itself according to our experience requires a progression of events, such as the realisation of the situation, choosing and executing a possibility. Without time, postulating that consciousness would exist is dubious. All consciousness we are aware of requires interaction via. physical intermediaries, with no experience of a bare thought conjuring any effect. Pro can argue for either an idealistic take on reality (where consciousness is fundamental), or for a substance dualistic take (where both consciousness and material exist as separate substances). Against Substance Dualism: P1) If substance dualism is true, then the mind interacts with the material P2) The mind can not (and therefore does not) interact with the material C) Substance dualism is false Logically valid via. Modus Tollens. P1 I hold as obviously true, unless Pro is going to assert our minds do not have any causal control over our bodies, and our minds do not receive information/sensations from the world around it. Even extreme dualism philosophies such as epiphenomalism hold that interaction must occur. P2, By definition, mind is not matter, and hence cannot share any properties with matter. This in turn causes a divide in how they interact, all things require some shared property, be it language, electromagnetic fields, presence in the same dimension, etc. Given that consciousness is explicitly defined to not possess any of these properties in substance dualism, it follows that interaction is impossible without involving some sort of third substance, which is necessarily ad hoc, and given it would share material properties it would also be detectable scientifically, which is clearly not the case. Against Idealism: P1) If idealism is true, then consciousness is fundamental P2) If consciousness is fundamental, then it is necessarily incorruptible P3) Consciousness is corruptible C) Idealism is false Logically valid via modus tollens. P1 is true by definition. In defence of P2, if consciousness was corruptible then reality cannot be contingent upon it since reality will continue to exist as-is regardless of whether or not you are perceiving it. It's for these reasons planets continue to orbit according to physical laws regardless of whether or not any human is perceiving it, the items in your bedroom do not morph or change because you will to perceive it differently, and you cannot imagine having a million dollars and it becoming 'real'. In defence if P2, every single aspect which we can meaning describe consciousness with we know to be corruptible via. Brain damage. Amnesia corrupts memory/knowledge, personalities are mutable, and awareness and identity are commonly corrupted in Alzheimer's disease. References: http://plato.stanford.edu... http://en.m.wikipedia.org...