God exists

On God's necessity: I agreed that *if* a God exists, it must have the property of "necessity". I did not agree that there exists some entity with said property. My (first) dragon analogy is meant to demonstrate this- we can agree that if any dragons exist, they must have scales and wings and be able to breathe fire without agreeing that such an entity actually exists. To then use the definition to fill in the gaps and assume that any entity is a God or a dragon is clearly fallacious. That is the point of my analogy, and I feel Pro has wilfully misinterpreted that. On constant interdependence: There are plenty more examples of physical constants being related. For instance, sources 28 & 29 show the links between Hubble's constant, the cosmological constant, and as the latter is dependent on the gravitational constant, that, too. I have never argued that it is conclusively proven that all the fundamental constants are related. I have, however, argued that it is undeniable that many of them are, and that it seems likely that they all are- far more likely than an omnimaximal being. (Just a side note: Pro's numbers are laughably wrong. 10^10^123 is not even close to 103 trillion). On multiverses: As per my sand vs. dragons analogy, Occam's razor does not consider only the number of entities, but the complexity of them too. Another phrasing of Occam's razor is: "Occam's razor (or Ockham's razor) is a principle from philosophy. Suppose there exist two explanations for an occurrence. In this case, the simpler one is usually better. Another way of saying it is that the more assumptions you have to make, the more unlikely an explanation is." [See source 30] The existence of a God requires far more numerous and far more complicated assumptions than the existence of a multiverse, as God is far more complex than a multiverse- it would have to be, to have a property as incredible as omnipotence or omnibenevolence. The rest of Pro's commentary on the multiverse was more question begging, and I needn't address something so clearly fallacious. The multiverse hypothesis was invoked to explain the "fine-tuning" argument. It is no more susceptible to the Kalam argument than a single universe, and the ontological argument remains nonsensical in either case. It has not multiplied the problems as Pro asserts- it has solved one of them. Cyclical universes: I did not concede on this point. See, for instance, point 1) in my "summary of my case" in R4. On infinite regress: It would take a human infinitely long to compute the sum manually- adding one to a half to a quarter and so on. It does not, however, take infinitely long for an infinite number of events taking the corresponding amount of time to take place. For instance, if you had an infinitely long "to do list" and you did the first task in 1 second, the second task in 1/2 a second, the third task in a quarter of a second and so on, you would have taken 2 seconds to complete the list, despite having an infinite amount of tasks to do. Now, logistically you couldn't move fast enough to do this, but that's not the point I'm making- the point is that it does not take an infinite amount of time for an infinite number of things to happen- that the big bang could still happen despite an infinite number of things happening before it. Ontological: Pro has *still* not even tried to answer the question of whether God could create a boulder so heavy he cannot lift it. The closest they came was that God could life a boulder "as heavy as infinity"- the implication being that God can lift any boulder that could conceivably exist. If so, then God cannot create a boulder that is so heavy he cannot lift it. As such, there is something God cannot do, and he is not omnipotent. I dropped the other contradictions because I hadn't the characters to repeat them all, and nor do I have the space now. Go back to my first arguments and read the other questions I pose: These all prove that an omnimaximal being cannot exist using a mathematical proof by contradiction. "The properties provided in the links are well-accepted within philosophical academia." This is a bandwagon fallacy- the "great making properties" and "lesser making properties" are still completely arbitrary and meaningless, despite how "well-accepted" Pro asserts they are. On the hamster analogy: This analogy uses "maximally nice" as analogous to "maximally great" in order to highlight the fallacious nature of arbitrarily declaring something (God/hamster) to be maximal, arbitrarily declaring some particular state (existence/being alive) to be more maximal than its alternatives, and to therefore deduce that the former entity must have the latter property. The ontological argument for the existence of God is as nonsensical as my ontological argument for the existence of immortal hamsters. Inductive reasoning: "Con just seems to say that it has its limits but does not refute the evidence." Evidence? What evidence? I have provided evidence that classical, macroscopic causality, and therefore out inductive understanding of the universe, have their limits (See sources 16:19). Unless I've missed something, Pro has not provided evidence to the contrary. Quantum mechanics: I have a physics degree. I'd assume that Pro does not. As much as I hate arguments from authority, I can't see what else can settle this here- who does it seem more likely has the correct understanding of quantum mechanics? Yes, quantum fluctuations are a temporary change in the amount of energy in a point in space, but if they happen in a quantum vacuum, they are a temporary increase from zero to a non-zero value. A quantum vacuum (the closest to "Nothing" which can be demonstrated to exist) produces energy which produces particles. That is something coming from "nothing". "If something from nothing would have happened, why did it only happen fourteen billion years ago, why not 5 minutes ago? " It does happen, all the time. That's what vacuum fluctuations are. As for why a universe hasn't spontaneously emerged, perhaps one has- hence the multiverse hypothesis. (Since Pro put this twice) Cyclical universes: Once again, I should point out that I did not concede. BGV theorem: Pro has not thoroughly argued BGV theorem, and is effectively just asserting it as far as this debate is concerned. As it was not presented with evidence, or such evidence was not explained, I may dismiss it without evidence, in accordance with Hitchens' razor. I would also like to add that BGV theorem has many limitations, including that it assumes the universe is a closed system (it may be the case that it is not) and it relies on the second law of thermodynamics. The thermodynamic second law is a *probabilistic* statement (see source 31) that entropy is extremely unlikely to spontaneously decrease over time. However, given enough time, extremely unlikely phenomena will occur- by analogy, if you toss a coin enough times, eventually you get a million "heads" in a row. On evil: "Con says that most disasters are natural but I have already refuted that in my previous rounds by saying that God is testing the faith and patience of the victims" An omniscient being would have no need to test us (as it would know the results of the test without performing it) and would not want to test us in ways as brutal as cancer or malaria. "for example, Earthquakes are caused by fracking. " Fracking can cause earthquakes. Most earthquakes are not caused by fracking. "Con presupposes that if God created us then he is responsible for our faults. I ask them if their parents would go to jail if they commited a felony because their parents created them and is thus responsible." My parents may be responsible for my existence, but they were not in control of what genes I got, nor were they entirely in control of my environment. They are not omniscient so couldn't know I would commit a felony, and so they are not responsible. God, however, is all of these things. As such, if God exists, free will cannot. Blaming the existence of evil on man's free will, then, is nonsense. My case is as before: 1) The apparent fine-tuning of the universe is more plausibly explained by relationships between constants or by multiverses or a cyclical universe than by God. 2) The ontological argument takes nonsensical and arbitrary premises, and produces more of the same. 3) The Kalam argument mistakenly tries to apply macroscopic, classical causality to the origins of the universe, which needn't obey it. 4) If you can't follow 3), cyclical universes are also a plausible mechanism of how a universe can exist without violating macroscopic, classical causality. 5) An omnibenevolent, omnipotent being is not compatible with the bad things we see in the world. These bad things cannot be explained by God testing us (as an omniscient being would have no need to test us, and an omnibenevolent being would not test us in this way), and nor can it be explained by free will, as if God exists, we cannot have free will. 6) Omnimaximality is internally inconsistent- omnipotence negates itself and pretty much everything else. 7) Given the absence of any compelling reason to believe that a God does exist, you should side with the agnostic atheist case- we do not believe in a God, but in principle cannot be 100% certain. Sources: [28]: https://en.wikipedia.org... [29]: https://www.google.co.uk...: [30]: https://www.google.co.uk... [31]: http://umdberg.pbworks.com...