A god exists, as defined by PRO; Take 2

1. Burden of Proof "I do think it's unfair to switch..." I understand that point, but the BoP was not switched. We had not yet agreed upon it until now. Nonetheless, thank you. 2. Arguments against God You want me to provide justification for why Scenario B is superior to Scenario A. I do think that I have provided, at the very least, a rough outline of reasons to withhold free will from humans, the main ones involving the terrible harm caused by humans to one another. If God so very much wanted to have humans to care for, his decision to give them the freedom to murder each other (and rarely, if ever, intervene) was almost certainly a terrible and malconceived plan. It is true that the idea of humans having free will may sound like a good idea, and indeed it would be, if only we all agreed not to cause each other suffering, which we evidently have not. Now to address P3 of my second argument. For the same reason "free will" cannot put down the problem of evil, free will also cannot explain God's hiding from us. If God were to - not force us! - only show himself to us so that we could see his existence, free will would remain unviolated, while everyone would believe in God. Again, why would God have chosen to give us free will if he intended to have us believe in him? This is a pretty poor choice, especially for a maximally great being who is supposedly omniscient. Now to my last argument. "What reason is there to think a maximally great being has no wants?" you say. I would like you to imagine God, existing alone in the nothingness before the universe. As a perfect being, what would he need? A perfect being is incapable of boredom. A perfect being is incapable of requiring something, because this would imply that the being would be less than perfect without that which he required, which is a contradiction. A perfect being would not need or want justice or love, because a perfect being would be content without anything to supplement his perfection. 3. Arguments for God Over and over, you repeat the "necessary qualities" of the cause for a universe. Why must a universe-cause be all-powerful, and not simply "powerful enough to cause a universe"? I understand why a cause might be timeless, spaceless and immaterial, but the prerequisite of "eternal" is silly, as time doesn't exist before time began. Scientists are still arguing over possible phenomena (remember quantum nucleation?) that could exist before the universe and hence cause it. Asserting certain attributes of a universe-cause without backing shows that you are not making the conclusion fit the facts, but rather making the facts fit the conclusion! As for my proposal for evolutionary and societal origins of morality, I want to point out that, while I have attempted to explain and outline my reasons for thinking this, you have essentially stated: "I don't know where morality comes from, but your explanation isn't perfect. Therefore, I think I'll attribute morality to...God!" with no reason behind it. The hypothesis I put forward is described further in, for example, this paper: http://www.imprint.co.uk... . For lack of any actual argument on your part, but only assertion, I say that the issue of morality without God is solved! Now to the final argument, which I now recognize as a variation on the classical Ontological Argument by Augustine of Hippo. I have two points to make. Point one: You have not demonstrated how necessity is superior to contingency and incoherency. This is an unproven assertion. Point two: I first argued against this before we had agreed on our definition of "maximally great". Now I realize that, with my understanding, I can in fact argue against P1! All three of my arguments against God set out to show that a maximally great being is logically impossible. Saying that "...no atheist has ever been able to justify [that a maximally great being is impossible]" is untrue, as many arguments for the logical impossibility of a maximally great God exist. Summary: I have taken down your arguments while supporting my own. Your burden has not been fulfilled. Every argument you have made is an old, overused argument for which rebuttals exist in multitudes. Your rebuttals to my arguments defeat themselves by demonstrating the inherent problems with a perfect god who creates free-willed creatures. In conclusion, as this is the final round, I urge voters to vote Con. Thank you for a fun, interesting debate. I learned a lot.