God Probably Exists

Note to Con: Long weekend, I apologize for the delay and the forfeit. Thanks Con, per rules I am to refute his argument this round. Before that, I would like to mention that Rule 10 is ridiculous. If you are voting on this debate, please don’t give me a win just because Con posted his sources in the comments and not the round. Likewise, please don’t award a win solely on my forfeited round. Rebuttals: C1) The universe never began to exist P1. If the universe never began to exist, God does not exist P2. The universe never began to exist C. God does not exist First I would like to note that if the universe never began to exist, it does not prove God does not exist. It merely negates the KCA’s justification that God exists, leaving my second and third arguments intact. This turns out not to matter as P2 is easily debunked. p2. Con here relies on semantics to support the premise. He argues that “For the universe to have ‘begun’, it must have a distinction between the past, present, and future.”In layman terms his arguments is as follows. Time is a construct of the Universe, if the Universe had a beginning there was no time before the universe. Thus there was no time the universe did not exist. Therefore the Universe never began to exist but has always existed. In the scientific community there is overwhelming consensus that the Universe had a definite beginning. This is in spite of our inability to comprehend without time, science accepts the universe had a beginning, or in other words, “began to exist. (1) David Hibbert, perhaps the greatest mathematician of the twentieth century states “The infinite is nowhere to be found in reality. It neither exists in nature, nor provides a legitimate basis for rational thought. The role that remains for the infinite to play is solely that of an idea.” (2)The physicist P. C. W. Davies explains, “The coming into being of the universe, as discussed in modern science . . . is not just a matter of imposing some sort of organization . . . upon a previous incoherent state, but literally the coming into being of all physical things from nothing.” (3)C2) Abductive reasoning a) Explanatory Powerb) Principle of Simplicityc) Background Knowledge Con claims “All functions and mechanisms of the universe are fully explicable under natural laws.” They are not, in fact as I have already argued in my fine tuning contention Those mechanisms are not natural laws, likewise the scientific community is quick to say we don’t know when they don’t. There is no “natural law” or mechanism that explains how life started. Thus Natural law is not the summum bonum of explanatory power. Con then strawmans stating “A theistic position, on the other hand, fails to explain any events and occurrences of the universe.”Con is setting up a false dichotomy. One does not have to choose between natural law and a theistic world view. They are not mutually exclusive. Thus this argument can be easily dismissed as it is fallacious. C3) Causality is not necessarily true Honestly even if I grant this claim it does not negate. Causality is only really tied to my first Argument. Gods necessity is affirmed by all three of my contentions. Sources: (1) https://en.wikipedia.org... (2) David Hilbert, "On the Infinite," in Philosophy of Mathematics, ed. with an Introduction by Paul Benacerraf and Hillary Putnam (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1964), 139, 141-42.(3) http://www.abc.net.au...