God most likely exists

Thanks Pro for that powerful opening statement. Preamble: Pro has argued against mualism and materialism, for this round I will concede dualism and concentrate on defending materialism. I don’t intend to argue for it, only to maintain is as a possibility, which is enough to demonstrate Pro’s argumentation unsound. The Conclusion: The part Pro actually argues for God I found to be remarkably weak, I will attempt to formulate it as follows: P1. Everything in reality is mental P2. ?? C. Reality requires a mind to ground it. The reason why I bring this up is because later on, ‘mental’ only refers to a ‘same-stuff-as-mind’ reality. I freely grant this latter proposition, that everything in reality is the same stuff of mind, but I see no reason why a mind is required to ground it. Without the missing P2, this quickly becomes a simple argument ad ignorantum. I’m sure Pro will be happy to provide the argumentation for this in the next round. Furthermore this does not distinguish between ‘major’ and ‘minor’ mental realities, the ‘major’ mental reality could be anything, from a mind (God), to a CPU simulating everything, which itself is bound by it’s own ‘physical’ universe. To this effect, the above argumentation is also a fallacy of composition, where Pro asserts the ‘parts’ of the universe (mental) represent the whole. ‘The bit where Pro attacks materialism…’: Of course, a materialist’s main beef is going to be with the solloisistic argument. P1: IF mind is matter, THEN solipsism is impossible (exists in no possible worlds). P2: Solipsism is possible (does exist in some possible world). C: Mind is not matter. However this argument is missing a number of assumed premises and presuppositions which are filled in as follows (and made more user friendly) P1. If mind is matter, in a material universe, then solipsism is impossible P2. Solipsism is a metaphysically possible explanation for the universe C. Mind is not matter in any metaphysically possible universe When you fill in the additional presuppositions, it’s clear the argument is no longer logically valid. And the following white flags are raised: 1. Is solipsism actually a metaphysically possible universe? 2. It doesn’t address that a physical mind is impossible in an immaterial universe. 3. The actual conclusion from this could be: C1. Mind can exist in a mental universe. But what form of mind? This requires an additional premise: P4. Material ‘stuff’ cannot exist in a mental universe C2. Mind is immaterial Which has seen poor support within Pro’s opening argumentation. ‘Possibility’: Where I will agree with Pro, is that solipsism is likely a logical possibility, but I do not accept that it’s a metaphysical possibility. A logical possibility goes into the same bag as Goldberg’s Conjecture, which may or may not be true, but if true will be true in all universes. Similarly for immaterial minds, it is a logical possibility that mind (and everything else) is purely immaterial, but does not fall into the category of metaphysical possibility. The only demonstration we have seen from Pro of metaphysical possibility is just that it’s conceivable. I see absolutely no reason to accept this to be the case. Pro may argue for a category error, but then let’s go to a more ambiguous example: Consequences: I will leave the issues of epiphenomenalism and free will to the next round, at first glance I don’t see the issue, as clearly if mind is itself a complex array of physical processes, akin to the perspective of a next-generation working computer, then it follows that anything that affects those physical processes will share properties of the physical stuff the ‘mind’ is made from, which yields no contradiction with physical minds. Furthermore the implication from this is there is essentially no free will. Explanatory Power & Occums Razor: In an idealist universe, everything is mental. That being then case, if you are perceiving a cup of tea in front of you, if they cup of tea still there when you are no longer perceiving it? This is trivially explained in a materialistic universe, but requires an additional assumption in an idealist one, namely that’s being sustained/constantly perceived by something else/the grounding mind, which in this case is God. In other words, materialism, another variant of monism, does not suffer any more from Occum’s Razor assumption than idealism does. Where Materialism does better: The ‘common sense’ argument I will throw out here, because I think it does at least give an inductive argument for materialism over idealism.1. In materialism, mind necessarily depends on matter, and any effect on the matter the mind is constituted of, must have an effect2. In idealism [1] mind is not necessarily dependant of matter In this physical universe, we find the predictions of [1] to be trivially true. It is true it is compatable with idealism, but is more precisely empirically explained by materialism and is therefore a better theory. Another area where materialism does a much better job of explaining reality than idealism are optical illusions: If reality were purely mental, or even solipsistic, then this above example and many others are poorly explained by an idealistic universe. If everything is mental, then everything is just a perception, that being the case why should they change due to second order factors, like shadows? This is trivially explainable by assuming the mind is material, and it’s conceptions are purely a model of the reality it perceives (which is not dependant of the mind). Conclusion: I look forward to Pro filling in the white flags I have raised in this rebuttal.