It is probable that God exists

----------------- CONFUSIONS ----------------- Just to dispel any confusions before your last rebuttal, I was not arguing that your position entails that nothing existed before the Big Bang. I was arguing that it unnecessarily posits the existence of a conscious being when the evidence suggests several other equally if not more probable causes of the Big Bang. Nor was I arguing Occam's Razor in isolation: I was arguing that the Catholic God's existence before the Big Bang is less likely than just positing the conditions necessary for bringing the Big Bang into occurrence which do not include such qualities as being omniscient and omnibenevolent (etc. ). Since you didn't respond to these arguments, I just thought I would bring them to your attention again. ---------------- REBUTTALS ---------------- I'll keep it brief. The existence of physical causes, That is to say energy and processes, Did not begin 13. 8 billion years ago (even if such causes operated under different regularities of behaviour before the Big Bang). What began 13. 8 billion years ago was the scientifically observable universe. You wrongly confuse epistemology with ontology, Knowledge with being. Just because scientific instruments are not able to ascertain data about existence prior to the Big Bang, Does not mean that there was not existence prior to the Big Bang. You want to call this existent, God. That is one hypothesis, Yes, But is less probable than other explanatory hypotheses (like the one I have given above) since it entails positing the existence of unnecessary complexity in order to explain the same event other hypotheses do (i. E. That there is a God with agency and personal qualities which are, For some reason, Strangely akin to the human qualities which would emerge 13. 8 billion years after the Big Bang). Therefore, Since the proposition is: "It is probable that God exists", I can confidently say that such a proposition is false when discussing the cosmological argument. I can make this determination by appealing to simple maths and logic: the more conditions X has, The less likely it is that it is going to be. God has more conditions than other hypotheses explaining the Big Bang. Therefore, It is less likely that God exists compared to these other hypotheses. Such conditions, As I have mentioned, Being the qualities you attribute to God unnecessary for causing the Big Bang. If you strip all these qualities away, You have Deism. Yet Deism still posits the existence of some kind of entity, Some kind of unnecessary condition, Which too can be excluded as less probable than the other explanatory hypotheses science presents. Your proposition is negated. William Lane Craig, Apart from being a theologian with a God to prove (i. E. A verification bias), Presented your argument 40 years ago. If you read the wider literature, You will find that it is not a position held in academic esteem. It is pop-philosophy playing on Leibniz's Principle of Sufficient Reason and then making the category mistake of applying it to the universe. Just because events and things in the universe appear caused, Does not entail that the whole universe was. Or, To translate this into the pop-philosophy: what a fallacy of composition! So, To deal with your points in succession: 1) I agree, Whatever preceded the Big Bang must have been sufficiently powerful enough to cause it. This power defies the capabilities of my imagination at least. 2) begs the question: it presupposes that matter, Time, And space did not exist before the Big Bang because scientific instruments can not observe them. I challenge this and say that physical causes did exist before the Big Bang and that the Big Bang only brought scientifically observable information into existence. 3) Why say that an uncaused causer caused the caused when you can say the caused is uncaused? Or, More simply, Why not state that the existence of physical causes and processes did not begin. Isn't this simpler than saying that the existence of a completely mysterious agency did not begin and then, Also, Caused the universe and all of its processes? It is completely unnecessary and adds nothing in terms of further explanatory power. That was less brief than I intended.