Theism (Pro) vs. Naturalism (Con)

Cosmology Pro states that his reel rebuttal dealt with the fourth defense, yet he never explains how. His reel response attempted to show that “Con forgot to deal with the possibility that the world was created 3) outside of time “. However, my fourth defense was all about God’s inability to cause the universe precisely because of his timeless nature. So, it couldn’t have dealt with defense four. He then talks about the possibility of time existing in general rather than being created with the universe. This doesn’t matter to my fourth defense, as it argued that timeless entities couldn’t create or affect time at all, in which case it wouldn’t matter if we are speaking about time within the universe or time outside the universe. The fourth defense still hasn’t been properly dealt with by Pro, which is enough for the argument to be established. However, my other defenses still haven’t been properly dealt with either. Pro’s new rebuttal about time existing sans the universe is trivial in regards to all of my defenses. With eternalism, it doesn’t matter if the creation of the universe is inch three (which wouldn’t make sense by the way, because the ruler is suppose to represent the universe and therefore inch one is necessarily the start) because we are only caring about the creation of our universe. This objection would only work with my first defense. Even then, it is of trivial consequence. Since space and time are interwoven[1], then time in a broader sense would also be speaking of space. This would essentially be speaking of another universe. Then one could ask, what caused that universe to come into existence? We are at the same problem. If the universe depends on some other spacetime, then where did that spacetime come from? We are back at the original problem I outlined in defense one. Pro has misunderstood my omniscience defense again. Pro argues against the strawman of “knowing the time in which something happens means it exists eternally”, this is not what I was arguing. My argument was that God knows the future and therefore there are true facts about the future. However, the knowledge about the time in which something happens can refer to present events to make it true. The timer, my unwillingness to forfeit, and the way DDO is coded demonstrates when something is going to happen. I only know round 4 was going to happen in virtue of these facts. I didn’t know about round 4 because I knew about the future content of round 4. Furthermore, these facts don’t guarantee the outcome. They are only our reasons for our belief, but it still might have been the case that DDO would’ve ceased to exist before my round 4 was posted or written. However, God’s omniscience isn’t like this. God’s knowledge is guaranteed. God doesn’t just know when something will happen, he knows the event as if it did happen. He doesn’t rely on the present for his knowledge. He has all knowledge, and therefore has all knowledge of the future which would require more than knowledge about the mere present in order to guarantee his knowledge. Throughout the debate Pro has misunderstood this argument. His original rebuttal didn’t deal with defense 2-4, his next argued that the strawmanned version of my arguments didn’t establish premise two (still ignoring defense 4), and now he is arguing about the possibility of time existing before the big bang. Neither of Pro’s responses is sufficient to harm my argument. Since my argument stands, my position is affirmed. Rebuttals Pro’s only objection is that that there are no natural explanations. However, if we reread my original rebuttal, I clearly did give examples of potential natural explanations. From my round 3 “What makes these events prove the supernatural and not something crazy such as aliens guiding our species, brains which are displaced in time, or the actual existence of psychohistory?” Why is Pro justified in arguing for the supernatural in these cases and someone else isn’t justified in arguing that Jesus was a Deep Space Nine-esque changeling who was guiding our species or the prophets were psychohistorians? Both explain the data and in fact the ones that don’t presume a supernatural world are simpler. He also states we have to argue with what we know. However, we would only know the events Pro listed happened, not about the cause. Arguing with what we know would fit much better with my position, because we don’t know that the said events were supernatural. Pro is inconsistent, because he also argues that we should accept the only theory that exists, but also argues we should only argue from what we now know. Pro has ignored this point from the start. All of the scholarship is secondary and is only evidence of the events happening and not the supernatural nature of them. We have no good reason to presume these events are supernatural, so even if Pro is correct on scholarship, it is all for naught. We are still unjustified in accepting theism. Prophecy Pro misses my point about addition of Isa. I am arguing that Pro hasn’t demonstrated that we are in the same scholarly situations. He is assuming that Isa was a full book, that knowledge about Isa was well known, ect. We know that Isaiah was in anonymous fragments [2], so this proves that Pro’s assumptions are false. Pro argues he is consistent in denying literary distinction because Nehemiah says there is a split. But Neh 1:1 only speaks about the book of Nehemiah. It says nothing about Ezra. There is also debate about if Nehemiah was written before Ezra because of internal evidence. Such as Ezra speaking about the wall Nehemiah built [3]. I already answered why a split might not have appealed to ancient scholars in my last round. A Ezra-Nehemiah split doesn’t cause a lot of doctrinal debate, whereas an Isa split would. Pro says I am making too much of my source. However, just because one article used “apart” in a hyperbolic way doesn’t entail my source is doing it. As I said in my last round, writing style incorporates a variety of entities. A combination of these diverse entities would create a huge list of potential writing combinations. Style isn't as simple as only poetic writing, Pro’s analogy is false. Next, Pro states that although we don’t have the manuscripts, the men he listed had them. I never negated this. What I’m saying is that since we don’t have them, we can’t claim how old their Isa manuscript was to know that they would’ve had a full book or only chapters 1-39. Nothing in the quote Pro provided demonstrates that idol worship didn’t gain popularity. My source states “..mysticism and magic many polytheistic ideas and customs again found their way among the people, and the Talmud confirms the fact that idolatrous worship is seductive“[4]. It doesn’t speak about small pockets of idol worship at all. Pro drops his objection about Isa being written in pure Hebrew. When Pro said the earliest Daniel manuscript was 2,140 years old, I thought he was using 125 BC as his starting point. In any event, my argument was negating the claim that Daniel had an early authorship date because our manuscripts only go back to 125 BC Arguing that Daniel was written in 164 BC does nothing for Pro’s argument because he needs it to be written in 6th century BC Pro drops Whitcomb’s argument and offers another one. Job was in the writings, but that doesn’t mean it was written after 200 B.C. This is a strawman, my rebuttal had to do with Daniel not being in the writings. Pro argues my abductive argument is still unsuccessful because the Achaemenid Empire was called the “Medo-Persia” Empire. The prophecy is still inaccurate, as the military composition was extremely diverse[5]. Medes were a part of the empire, but it is no more accurate to claim the Medes took Babylon that it’s accurate to claim the Cilicians took Babylon. This prophecy isn’t accurate and therefore my abductive argument succeeds like Cyrus the Great. Resurrection Pro argues we would have to believe that my abused theory of Caesar's death is correct because we don’t have a competing theory. This is a textbook argument from ignorance fallacy. The argument from ignorance happens when one claims we should believe p because p hasn’t been disproven[6]. If we are to accept Pro’s idea, then we have to accept all sorts of crazy claims. For example, the identity of the zodiac killer is unknown [7], yet if I claimed Pro is the zodiac killer, I doubt anyone would believe me. If I claim that aliens will destroy the Earth next week at 7:32 pm, since nobody else has presented a theory about what will happen at this time, we would need to believe it. But, nobody should believe this. We need to base our views on reason and evidence, not on whoever makes a theory about the unknown. Furthermore, my rebuttal to this point was that accepting any justification for premise 2 leads to contradictions. Would Pro really claim we need to accept a theory even if it had contradictions in it just because no one else has anything better? It couldn’t be true, by definition. Pro only deals with my Jones counterexample and drops the Muhammad and Sri Sathya Sai Baba ones. How does one use magic tricks to split the moon? How could Sri Sathya (who is the one that had the 671 devotees, not Jones) use manipulative tricks to resurrect the dead, be in two places at once and cure heart disease? Certainly, Pro’s second explanation fails to account for all of my counterpoints. Even with the Jones example, Pro fails to explain why the second theory explains the data better than the first. Even if I grant that Pro refuted the Jones counterexample, he still dropped the Islamic and Indian Mystic examples. If we are to believe that the justification for Pro’s premise 2 is sound, then we must believe in not only Christianity, but Islam and Indian Mysticism. This is contradictory to Pro's original point, therefore we must reject any justification for the second premise and without premise 2, everything about Pro’s resurrection argument falls apart.