There is no God

Hello everyone My thanks to riddick for setting up the debate. I do not have as much time as I would like to prepare my contributions, and I beg forgiveness in advance for the lack of appropriate citation and any poor(er) writing on my part. In this round, I will firstly show that none of riddick's arguments are successful. I will then give arguments of my own for the existence of a "immortal, all knowing, all powerful being that is perfectly just and merciful". Why Riddick's arguments fail Pro argument 1 ("Perfect beings don't create") Riddick asserts that "if he [god] is truly perfect he would be an absolute self contained system that requires nothing else". This, insofar as it goes, is correct: God is metaphysically necessary - and God doesn't need anything else to keep on truckin'. Riddick goes on to imply (but doesn't explictly state his reasoning) that a truly perfect being wouldn't create any sort of world. So the story offered in Christianity or general Theism of a perfect being creating the world is nonsense. But riddick is surely wrong to say that perfect beings would not create. My life is far from perfect, but I definitely take it to have value - it is better for me not to exist than not to exist. I extend the same courtesy to the rest of mankind - it has been better that they have existed than they never existed. Yet all of these goods are contingent on there being a world in the first place. Because of this, a morally perfect being is obliged to create a world - it is a means to an end for valuable stuff like me and mankind, and moral perfect surely requires maximizing the good. So a perfect God must create (indeed, it probably must create an infinity of worlds, as why not create N+1 worlds instead of just N?) Pro argument 2 ("Who created God") Riddick says "if God exists, who created God?" The answer is simple: "no one!" For God, being a perfect being didn't need to be created. He was there from the start. Consequently there is no need for some infinite regress. So I don't really see the need to presume God was created. Besides, something must have been uncreated: one could run a parallel argument about the universe ("Who created the Universe? And who created him, ad infinitum..") Riddick seems to think that the idea of God always existing cannot be, because "what did he do before he created everything, because by definition he'd have an infinite time to do everything". Even if God did spend an infinity of time bumming around before creating the universe, I don't see how that is problematic, or somehow renders God self-contradictory. More importantly, my understanding of modern cosmology is that there is no passage of time 'outside' of a universe. So there was no infinity of time before the creation of the universe (indeed, there was no time at all). Pro argument 3 ("God shouldn't envy") I'm not a theologian, so I'm not sure whether the best reading of the Bible says God really envies or hates or whatever other emotions we consider unbefitting of a perfect being. I don't think Riddick has provided an argument where wrath and envy are unsuitable emotions for a perfect being to have, or that these are the results of "either incompleteness of security". But I'm going to grant all this, because I'm going to sidestep the argument. Christians (still less Theists) can be Christians yet take the bible to fallible. So even if it was the case that a) wrath and envy are inappropriate emotions for God and b) biblical texts x y z show God to be wrathful or envious, then Christians can simply hold that these texts x y z are mistaken, instead of holding that God does not exist. Even if we grant all of its (very controversial) premises, a christian can agree to them being rationally obliged to reject the existence of God. Pro argument 4 ("The problem of Evil") Riddick notes Epicurius's famous trilemma (he also remarks earlier about the flawed world). I take the first horn of the trilemma. God is willing, but not able, to prevent evil. Epicurius's assertion that this entails God is not omnipotent is wrong. For all we know people are transworld deprave, so that they would perform evil in any possible world, and so there is no way for God to form a world with people in such that they do not commit evil. God also cannot create unliftable stones or various other logical impossibilities, yet none of this makes him not-omnipotent. One can defend God in a more general sense along these lines. That although there are lots of bad things in the world, they are needed to realise greater goods (or stave off even worse evils). God could be willing but unable to stop evil and yet remain omnipotent. Interlude So all of Riddicks arguments fail. A proper understanding of the divine attributes (plus attendant issues in metaphysics and stuff) means there is nothing self contradictory or absurd about the qualities imputed to God in Christianity. God can create stuff, can be uncreated, can create worlds with evil despite being omnipotent, and, even if he can't envy or be wrathful (granted for arguments sake), Christians can simply reject the relevant passages that suggest he does instead of rejecting God altogether. I offered to share the burden of proof at the start. Much of philosophy of religion is devoted to arguments that do not demonstrate a God of all the relevant attributes: a prime mover or maximally great being can be morally neutral. I'm only going to offer a single argument that that confirms Theism (and Christianity) over Atheism. Con argument 1 ("Fine tuning") I take it for granted that all manner of cosmological parameters are 'fine tuned': if the gravitational force was stronger or weaker by a minute degree, the universe would have turned out in a way which would have meant intelligent life could have never arisen. If the cosmological constant had been different in 1 part in 10^100 or more, again, intelligent life could not have arisen (there would never have been heavy elements, no stars, etc. etc.) Given this is common knowledge to those who know stuff about cosmology, I do not intend to substantiate this point unless my opponent challenges me. In one sense, it is very weird it 'just so happens' we the constants took the right values, and in another sense, not weird at all. In the 'other' sense, of course the various cosmological parameters need to be 'just so', for if they weren't, intelligent life would never be around to see them. But in the first sense it is weird the universes constants turned out this way - there is no 'law of nature' we know of which means they must have taken the values they did, and so worlds where they did turn out differently (and so life didn't happen) are surely possible (at least epistemically). So on naturalism, the odds are about one-in-a-squillion all the values would turn out 'just right' to allow the development of intelligent life. In an uncaring cosmos, there is no reason to predict there would be a life permitting universe above estimating how much of the space of possible universes is life permitting. But on Theism, things are very different. Because a morally perfect God is able and willing (and obligated) to create a life-permitting universe (see my response to Pro argument 1), and so God would make sure that the universe did have values that were just right. So Theism does predict a life permitting universe, and so it makes a better fit for the facts than the Atheism model, and so provides reason to believe that God exists. Bayesian gloss for the interested: P(LPU|T&k') >> P(LPU|¬T&k') (prime principle of confirmation) --> [P(T|LPU)/P(¬T|LPU)] >> [P(T)/P(¬T)] Conclusion Riddick presented (although not explicitly) four arguments, where I only presented one. However, my argument is successful, whilst all of his are failures. So the balance of argument presented favours "There is a God" rather than "There is no God".