God vs. Naturalism

I will defend my arguments as follows: 1. Arguments for an initial being 1.1 Pool Table argument My opponent actually modified my argument! My opponent's rebuttal doesn't weaken my argument; it doesn't even scratch the surface. I will explain how in the space below. First, my opponent doesn't challenge my premises or the coherence of my argument. He states that my argument "leads to a conclusion that there was an 'uncaused cause'". Second, my opponent attempts to somehow challenge my argument by claiming that there's an implied or hidden assumption "that every event has a cause". This is not true. While I do believe that this premise is true, my logic doesn't depend on it in any way. For the sake of the argument, if an event somehow existed that's uncaused, my logic would still follow logically and necessarily. Please discard this claim. Third, my opponent mentions that some philosophers Plato and Dr. Craig have brought other cosmological arguments that corroborate my conclusions. But I want to add that, while I respect and support their arguments, I find that my argument is much more powerful due to its utmost simplicity. Forth, my opponent again misquotes Hume. My opponent states that Hume argued that "there is no reason to think the causal principle is true a priori". This is a misquotation [1][2]. What Hume said that the effect cannot be known a priori! I want to also comment that there's no reason to assume that Hume had a monopoly over the truth! Many disagreed with him, such as Kant [3]. Fifth, my opponent seems to suggest that causality itself is simply false! But this would falsify many scientific theories such as Newton's laws of motion [4] and evolution. Cause and effect has been tested, observed and logical in every sense. To claim that it's false is absurd… Such a truth claim is ad hoc and doesn't respect the principle of parsimony. I ask the reader to discard such a claim. Sixth, my opponent brings Lawrence Krauss famous claims that a whole universe can appear out of nothing in his book "A Universe from Nothing" [5]. But this "nothing" is not really nothing as in not anything (or nihil) [6]. The Sunday Book Review explains: "But that’s just not right. Relativistic-quantum-field-theoretical vacuum states […]are particular arrangements of elementary physical stuff. The true […] equivalent to there not being any physical stuff at […] is the simple absence of the fields! " Seventh, my argument doesn't depend on the creation of something out of nothing! While I believe that a creation event, but if (for the sake of the argument) all physical stuff existed eternally, my argument would conclude that this physical stuff must necessarily be static until an initiation stage where thing started to change such as movement, transformation, formation of universes…etc. Eighth, my opponent attacks my second proposition: "An uncaused cause must have free will". He argues that this is a bare assertion (It's not), and states "Why can’t an uncaused cause be a result of random reactions? " The answer to my opponent's question is extremely simple – It can't because randomness is not actually true! Henri Poincare explains that "Randomness is due to our ignorance: 'Chance is only the measure of our ignorance. Fortuitous phenomena are, by definition, those whose laws we do not know. '" Let me add that even if randomness actually exists (which it doesn't), it would still depend on initial conditions, so it can't be "uncaused"! Conclusion My Pool Table argument is very valid and my opponent's claim doesn't pose any threat to its legitimacy. 1.2 Corroborating evidence First, my opponent argues that "for something to have a beginning doesn't mean it must have a cause". Let's examine this claim for a second. The very first universe that began must be either caused by something outside of its realm, or it would have caused itself. The second notion is unreasonable, for something to cause itself. But even if that's true (I'm being very accommodating), that initial cause possesses all the criteria I had in my Pool Table argument. Second, my opponent argues that the B-theory would thwart my claim altogether. While I don't think Eternalism is true, but it actually doesn't refute my argument! Let's assume Eternalism is true (for the sake of the argument), you can still trace all causes back to an initial uncaused cause, which would occur simultaneously because the past, present and future are all real! I've already explained further on this subject (See Round 3 - R1). 2. Arguments for intelligent design 2.1 Fine Tuned Universe argument My opponent doesn't fully reject the fine-tuned universe hypothesis. He tries to provide a naturalistic explanation for this. He claims that eternal inflation "allows for a wholly naturalistic explanation for fine-tuning". The most important sources #18 and #19 that he provided were incorrect so I wasn't able to know the details of the explanation so I can rebut it properly (A bit frustrating). Anyways, I did some research on my own and found Sean Carrol that relates to your claim [8]. The idea is that "Once inflation starts, it produces a limitless supply of different 'pocket universes'" Eventually a universe like ours was created. But there are two problems in the claim that Sean himself states. First, "The multiverse is not a theory; it is a prediction of a theory. " Second, as Swinburne said: "To postulate a trillion trillion other universes, rather than one God in order to explain the orderliness of our universe, seems the height of irrationality. " [8] Basically, the naturalist has to scramble to find an explanation. As my opponent offered, such ad hoc claims should be viewed with skepticism, and definitely doesn't help the likelihood of naturalism. 2.2 Evolution My opponent argues that he only needs to defend that "life could have originally arisen via abiogenesis". I just want to remind my opponent that BoP is shared so he has to show why it's more likely that "life could have originally arisen via abiogenesis". After all, one could argue the first replicating cell just formed randomly! My opponent provides a very good argument; the first replicating cell occurred through autocatalysis. I want to remind the reader that this process is anatural, so it's random. Now let's examine this further. First, if autocatalytic evolution were true, during the early stages of Earth formation, a self replicating cell should have evolved anaturally through autocatalytic evolution. But wait a second! I've already demonstrated in my second round that these cells are very complex! They have DNA, membrane, complex molecular machines…etc. I didn't even mention the peculiarity of DNA and its information. The order and sequence of DNA bases determines the "information available for building and maintaining an organism" [9]. For this to happen randomly, I argue that it would require so many "mutations" and "changes" because it's completely random. In other words, each iteration would be more likely to head away from rather than towards the formation of a self replicating cell. Second, even if you argue that the rate of mutation was so high (billions and billions of changes), why don't we see other autocatalytic systems creating many new things (not necessarily life)? Did the first cells have some kind of monopoly over this process? Third, research has shown "Lack of evolvability in self-sustaining autocatalytic networks" [11]. So it takes a lot of faith to stick with the opinion, than to believe otherwise. This is again an ad hoc argument to basically try to stick anything to rescue the claim. Finally, my opponent brings the famous Miller-Urey experiment where it was believed that he replicated, in some way, what happened at the origin of life. But the initial conditions were disputed. Also, it was shown that "inanimate nature has a bias toward the formation of molecules made of fewer rather than greater numbers of carbon atoms" [12]. The amino acids produced are exponentially simple compared to a cell. Thank you. [1] . http://www.iep.utm.edu... [2] . http://oregonstate.edu... [3] . http://plato.stanford.edu... [4] . http://www.dummies.com... [5] Dr. Krauss, "A Universe from Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather than Nothing" [6] . http://www.nytimes.com... [7] NEWMAN (ed. ), 1960, The World of Mathematics (London: George Alien and Unwin) [8] . http://preposterousuniverse.com... [9] . http://ghr.nlm.nih.gov... [11] . http://www.pnas.org... [12] . http://www.scientificamerican.com...