God Exists

Con Case The Universe Lacks A Cause or Creator Clarification Pro attempts to prove that God is not timeless. I’ll concede that to him since it is irrelevant to the soundness of the argument I presented. Whether Pro chooses to define God as timeless or not has no bearing. My original modus tollens: P1. The universe is caused if and only if tensed facts exist P2. Tensed facts do not exist C1. The universe is uncaused This argument is incomplete since it doesn’t by itself argue that God doesn’t exist. However God by definition is the cause of the universe. Ergo we can just formulate this as a simple modus Tollens: P1. If God did not cause the universe’s existence, then God doesn’t exist P2. God did not cause the universe’s existence C2. God doesn’t exist. P1 comes from rote definition of God, if God is not the cause of the universe then ‘it’ isn’t God. P2 is a subset of C1, therefore the conclusion follows regardless of whether or not God is defined as timeless. Pro then argues that God’s omniscience is not rendered incoherent by the non-existence of tensed facts. But this is also irrelevant to the argument. Pro wastes substantial space here. Tensed facts are relative, correct. However, P1 was formulated with a clear notion of objective tensed facts. That is, it really is a fact true/false that the 15th Feb 2018 is in the past, this only works in presentism. By extension, the notion “the universe not existing was in the past” would also need to be a tensed fact for universe to have a cause to be coherent. If the universes existence is tenseless, that is, there is no real “before” the universe, then it is impossible to coherently say the universe “came into existence”, and by extension, impossible to say the universe is caused. Literally the entire first 1/3, or 1/2 of Pro’s round misses the mark. B-Series To make this very clear to both Pro and voters, and my purpose of defending B series is: 1. Presentism is a subset of A-Series of time. 2. There are multiple theories of time, B-Series is mutually exclusive to A-Series 3. The universe having a cause requires the A-Series of time Pro asserts there is no evidence that space-time existed eternally. This is actually irrelevant, B-series can be a finite/closed system. The universe and time just needs to exist all at once, with time as a real forth dimension (imagine a 4 dimensional hypercube, essentially my arguments for B-Series postulate the entire universe as one big version of that). Now, this gets weirder with the universe, since space-time itself how we define our “before” and “after”, however time itself curves (as its part of the universe) due to relativity. You have a first-moment in time, but there is literally no “moments” in time “before” this point. Ergo, no moments in time exist where the universe, doesn’t exist. I can put this as a horned dilemma: P1. Either the universe is finite or infinite in time P2. If the universe is infinite in time, it is uncaused P3. If the universe is finite in time, is it (still) uncaused C. In either case, the universe is uncaused. Pro only seems to contend P3 here. So I will wait until the next round to see how he affirms this stance. Pro argues that B-series of time si illogical, I will pick these apart 1 at a time, since this seems to be the most interesting part: 2. “B-Theory (means) …our experience of change in the external world as well as within our own minds is wholly illusory.”… entails a regress. Pro’s regress point here isn’t limited to B-Series, it applies to any series. We experience the change of the world and within our minds. We experience that experience... We experience that experience of that experience… Ad infinitum. Ergo, we don’t experience the world/minds. To address this, “experience” is a difficult to define term, what does it even mean to “experience” a change? This experience depends on theories of consciousness/experience which itself is a horribly unresolved field. Ergo Pro’s objection here needs much more substantiation, and needs to break out of why we should be able to experience any change at all, regardless of the theory of time. 3. Lack of dislocations of serial order or moments disproved B-Series. Why should we expect dislocations of serial order of moments in B-Series of time. I see no reason why the theory entails this. Why should our experience of gaps such as when under anesthesia be difference if B-Series is true? Pro assumes this is the case, but provides no argument for it. Thus this entire paragraph on dislocations is missing a major premise, and will be properly addressed once argument is provided for it. 4. We don’t experience the future (?). Again Pro needs a good argument for why we should expect to experience the future in the first place. I take issue with Pro’s presupposition that we experience moments in a “rigid series”. People perceive time at different “speeds”, such as children experiencing time passing more “slowly”, and older people more quickly. Now this is largely unresolved, but common theories include the fact that more memories are recorded at that age, and we experience time in the difference in the quantity of memories/brain activity between them.[ https://goo.gl...] This also goes a way to explaining experiences of time “slowing down” when a person is under extreme stress or danger. Neural activity increase, and the time intervals between “bits” of activity decrease, “slowing down time”. So, while the mechanism of time perception is unresolved (I assume that would require a much better understanding of consciousness…), nothing here precludes B series, and the assuming Pro’s implied “objective passage of time” in the mind is actually outright falsified if the experience of time really does “slow down” or “speed up” for people. Pro doesn’t actually address any of my arguments from relativity (just presents his own counter-arguments), that A series is outright falsified by the implications of the theory. That the laws of physics are universal and the speed of light is constant. This is one of the most objective ways to determining whether or not A-Series is correct and Pro has ignored it… Universe Does Not Require God Arguments here dropped by Pro. Pro Case Probability Argument So what if life didn’t exist? “… came from astrophysicist Erik Zackrisson”. Source please. Moreover, not all of these will need to be true in all cases. It might be true in Earth’s case that we needed Jupiter (I actually have yet to see why this is the case, humans certainly wouldn’t exist, sure, life as a whole has an annoying tendency to survive extinction-level events). Given that huge amounts of diversification happens after each extinction event (caused by asteroids), the opposite argument could be made that intelligent life would have developed more rapidly if Jupiter were say, smaller.[https://evolution.berkeley.edu...] Pro misunderstands my argument using the 52 deck of random cards. It undermines a key assumption of Pro’s, that Pro has decided by fiat that “life existing” is a special outcome of some sort. I can happily concede (and I don’t) that there really is a 1 in 700 quintillion chance that the variables would set in a way that allows for life as we know it today. If they didn’t, then life wouldn’t exist. But so what? Life simply wouldn’t exist then. There is no reason why life ‘had to’ exist in the first place, it just happens to be the outcome of the variable we have set now. When I showed the random 52 card hard, the odds of getting it are astromically low. Because they were low I asserted they must have been intelligently set that way. However they weren’t. Pro is making exactly the same argument on these variables in the universe. Just because they are low is irrelevant, the variables are just part of a card hand, and life just happens to be the outcome of it. If the variables were different, there is no reason to believe that some other phenomenon (say, a singularity) would exist in that “alternative universe” what would be impossible were the variables set any differently. Pro has not explained why the phenomenon of “life” should deserve special consideration. Assumptions Even if we did assign special value to the universe having life, which in comparison, would be equivilent to me declaring what my shuffled 52 card hand would be before I dealt it, then Pro’s argument is still unsound. Pro assumes a low number of “rolls of the dice”, that is, Pro assumes that there hasn’t been enough “chances”, say, versions of universes with different laws of physics/variables, to adequately cover this number by chance. Where is Pro’s justification for this implicit assumption? We don’t know the limits on the number of universes with their own physical laws or variables, it could even be infinite. Even if it wasn’t infinite, any number can be made to look small. A Grayham’s number of attempts would entail life with virtual certainty.[https://blogs.scientificamerican.com...] Information Content Pro doesn’t respond to any of my actual objections here. To summarise my take on Pro’s argument: P1. Life contains high information content P2. High information content requires an intelligent designer C. Life has an intelligent designer (God) P1 – A completely random series of digits in information theory contains the maximum amount of information. This is why is it impossible to compress a file containing truly random data.[ https://goo.gl...] All things, including atoms, contains “information” just by virtue of their physical properties. Thus why lack of definition of “high information content” is problematic. P2 – I gave mechanisms (such as mutations, duplications, natural selection) which will yield high information content without the requirement of an intelligent designer. Pro’s conclusion here is thus unsound since he hasn’t addressed any of my objections here.