The God Hypothesis qualifies as the best scientific explanation for the origins of existence

Last time I demonstrated that none of PROs contentions withstood scrutiny, and thus PRO had failed to support his resolution. As PRO's latest reply is mainly a repeat of arguments and claims already refuted, I’ll take the opportunity to further extend and elaborate on my rebuttals. ‘Beginning of the Universe’ PRO started off by claiming the best explanation of the universe was a timeless, immaterial etc. God. PRO seems to think that general relativity somehow proves there must be some generative cause of the universe, and this cause must lie ‘outside’ our usual physical stuff like time and space. Yet GR says no such thing. It doesn’t demand there be some ‘kick off’ cause to the universe, still less this cause must be timeless spaceless etc. Indeed, GR says the opposite: that the universe had no cause at all. For if B-theory (that past present and future exist as some n+1D block), then: On a B-Theory of time, the universe does not in fact come into being or become actual at the Big Bang; it just exists tenselessly as a four-dimensional space-time block that is finitely extended in the earlier than direction. If time is tenseless, then the universe never really comes into being, and, therefore, the quest for a cause of its coming into being is misconceived. (Craig and Sinclair 2009.) [1] It just so happens that B theory is the prevailing view amongst physicists, philosophers of physics, philosophers of time, etc.[2] So far from our modern physics being best explained by good, our best physics suggests the universe had no cause whatsoever, leave alone one with appropriate divine attributes. Grant for argument’s sake PROs claims about physics. Would it follow that the cause has divine attributes? PRO relies on a bizarre false dichotomy where the only options are abstracta and immaterial minds (and so eliminating abstract guarantees the cause must be an immaterial mind). Yet why on earth think these are the only two options? Why not have some sort of non-naturalistic aether without agency, for example? Or a generating principle without agency? Or (as we’ve seen PRO’s ‘must be timeless/spaceless/immaterial because GR’ case is actually turned) why not just some pre-Big bang naturalistic state of affairs? No reason is offered. So PROs reliance on GR to arrive at a non-naturalistic cause of the universe is not actually supported by the science – indeed, the science best suggests a tenseless, uncaused universe. So this reason doesn’t get off the ground. PRO originally claimed that an infinite regress of causes was impossible. PRO has not responded to my rebuttal (R2) demonstrating that infinite regresses are conceivably possible, and that the universe being part of an infinite series of causes implies we’d ‘never have gotten here. Fine tuning argument PRO has not responded to my rebuttal that we lack access to say there is fine-tuning, as we don’t know the field of possibilities to say whether life permitting universes are rare. Until he does so, this reason has no merit. PRO also offered nothing to rebut a multiverse ensemble, which would also explain the fine tuning data without recourse to a divine being – again, until he does, this reason has no merit. PRO asserts this round (again) that you’d need infinite knowledge to be able to know what the right constants would be because they are from an infinite range of values. Again this is false. The only thing a putative cosmic designer would need to know is the solution for what values are needed, which will be no more than a few numbers. To rebut omniscience, I merely need to show some proposition this designer need not know yet still be able to create a life permitting universe. This is really easy (“I like cake” would be one among the uncountable set of propositions). So PRO has no case for omniscience (although such a case would require PRO to show there really is fine tuning, which he has not done). Origin of life PRO seems to think it is my job to come up with a story of origin of life, and then so long as PRO can rebut it he has evidence for God. Not so. For the origin of life stuff to provide evidence for God, he’d need to show that the god explanation is more plausible than naturalistic counter-offer. Onus is on PRO to show that naturalistic explanations of these things are sufficiently deficient that we’d favour the God explanation. So I’ve simply settled for showing PROs offered reasons are unreasonable. I’ve pointed out previously that the fact we don’t have experiments of life ‘coming from non-life’ is not evidence against abiogenesis, any more so than our lack of experiments of rock ‘coming from sand’ is evidence against geology (PRO repeats this point despite me making this rebuttal last round). Slow processes like these are not directly observable by experiment. What we can do is look into the past and try and infer what happened with our best understanding of the mechanisms involved. The fields of evolutionary biology and abiogenesis do this, and their conclusion is not “there is no hope of finding a naturalistic explanation of life coming from non life, or complex life forms from simple ones”. Until PRO shows why we should think otherwise, he has no case. I note PRO dropped the information argument re. DNA. Conclusion The objections I have made last round and which PRO has dropped this round would be sufficient to defeat PROs case even if everything he said in R2 was true. However, PROs R2 consists of repeating arguments I have already defeated, or offering new reasons I have shown to be flawed. For my part, I’ve further extended my criticisms, showing the following: Our best understanding of science means the universe has no cause at all. Even if it did, there is no warrant to say this cause has any divine attributes. We have no grounds to say the universe is fine-tuned. Even if we did, there is no warrant to say the designer would need attributes like omnipotence. The facts of our natural history remain fertile and fecund grounds of scientific inquiry, with an excellent track record of filling in explanations. So assuming they cannot provide satisfactory explanations of evolution or abiogenesis is unwarranted. For these reasons, PROs case is moribund. Thrasymachus References (1) Craig, W L. and Sinclair, J D. (2009) The Kalam Cosmological Argument. pp. 183-184 In Craig, W L and Moreland, J P. (eds.) The Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology. Blackwell Publishing: Oxford. (2) Philpapers Survey here: http://philpapers.org....... Note that B theorists outnumber A theorists 2:1 generally, and this ratio increases when considering relevant specialists.