God Is Nothing More Than An Emotional Construct

I’d like to begin by saying I’m glad to be debating BlueGalaxy on this topic. I will be arguing that the formation of a belief in God has no bearing whatsoever on His existence. Secondly, I will attempt to show God’s existence by providing an argument. Thus to show God doesn’t exist pro must defeat the argument itself. First, my opponent blatantly commits the genetic fallacy. The genetic fallacy occurs when one “attempts to discredit or support a claim or an argument because of its origin (genesis) when such an appeal to origins is irrelevant.”[1] In this case, the origin of a belief in God has nothing to do with its validity or soundness. Even granting that Freud was correct, this would only explain away the belief in God. It’s a non sequitur to suggest that the belief in God is false. Furthermore, the logic of Pros argument is self-refuting. Suppose person A held that God X exists. Pro would say that God X doesn't exist because it is simply an emotional construct, say of some desire to have a father figure. Now say person B held that God X didn't exist. I could use that same reasoning to say that God X *does* exist because the nonexistence of God X was just an emotional construct of person B’s desires to do away with any father figure. It cuts both ways. In order to show God doesn’t exist, the arguments for that belief must be addressed themselves. Here I offer a reasonable argument for the existence of God that has nothing to do with any mental or emotional construct. The Kalam Cosmological Everything that begins to exist has a cause The universe began to exist Therefore the universe has a cause Premise I The first premise is rooted in the truth that nothing could come into being uncaused from nothing. If Pro decides to challenge this premise he must first answer why doesn’t just anything pop into existence? Why specifically a universe? Why not an old woman’s toenail? Or a rubber duck? Why must “nothingness” discriminate on what can or cannot pop into existence when it clearly is not anything? This first premise is confirmed by our day-to-day experience and needs no further elaboration. Premise II The second premise is supported by the Big Bang model of the beginning of the universe, which claims “the universe had a definite beginning in a cataclysmic event, sometimes called the primeval fireball.” [2] Space, time, matter, and energy all had its origins in the Big Bang. Further evidence of this is the expansion of the universe, which is due to what is known as the Doppler shift. In addition, philosophical arguments have been proposed against the idea of an infinite universe. This is concluded from the idea that an infinite number of past events cannot occur. The following scenario can illustrate this: Suppose I’m flipping a hamburger patty on a grill and I tell you I’ll give it to you when the burger is cooked after an infinite number of flips. Will you ever get the burger? The answer is clearly no. It would be clearly absurd and counterintuitive to suggest that you would get the burger. The second law of thermodynamics lends further support to this argument. The second law deals with entropy, heat flow, and equilibrium. With regards to heat flow, heat always flows through an irreversible process from “a substance at a higher temperature to a substance at a lower temperature.” [3] An ice cube melts (loses heat energy to its surroundings) in order to reach equilibrium with its surrounding temperature. With that, the amount of entropy— the amount of disorder or useless energy— increases as the system loses energy to its surroundings. In a reversible process the total entropy remains the same. However, in an irreversible process the total entropy increases because it causes energy to be degraded or to lose energy. The universe is the system that is growing colder and colder as its energy is being used up in an irreversible process (its heat being dispersed and lost to its surroundings). If the universe were eternal, equilibrium would have already been reached. Therefore we can conclude that the universe is finite and it had a beginning. Lastly, the conclusion follows necessarily from its two premises, which I’ve demonstrated to be sound or at least more plausibly true than false. So how exactly does that prove God is the cause of the universe? First we must consider what can be the cause of the universe. The cause of the universe must be uncaused—otherwise if it were caused then we must find the cause of that ad infinitum— and it must transcend space and time. As a result, the cause must be timeless and thus changeless. Furthermore, being non-physical and immaterial follows from being changeless since matter is constantly changing. William Lane Craig puts it wonderfully when he concludes, “The only entities that can possess such properties are either minds or abstract objects like numbers. But abstract objects don’t stand in causal relations. Therefore, the transcendent cause of the origin of the universe must be an unembodied mind.” [4] Based on the conclusion, we gather that the cause of the universe is a timeless, changeless, immaterial, spaceless, uncaused, unembodied mind—which is taken to be God. I have shown that Pros stance commits the genetic fallacy and is self-refuting. Furthermore, Pro has the job to defeat the argument I proposed for God’s existence. Sources [1] http://www.iep.utm.edu... [2] Cutnell, John D., and Kenneth W. Johnson. "Cosmology." Physics . 8th ed. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2009. 1003-1005. Print. [3] Ibid., 448 [4] Craig, William Lane. “Five Arguments for God.” PDF file.