God exists

Introduction I'm not going to be responding to the various objections that were put forth to the arguments I advanced last round. I will leave that for the next round. Instead I will be responding to my opponent's opening statements. My opponent is essentially using the same arguments that the philosopher and theologian William Lane Craig uses in debates. On the face of it, these arguments seem quite powerful. However, I believe that after critical examination these arguments can be shown to be unsuccessful. With that said, let me begin. The Kalām Cosmological Argument If you remember correctly, the first premise of the Kalam argument claims that whatever begins to exist has a cause. This first premise seems right, but in reality it is not. This is because in our universe things do not come into existence, but rather materials that already exist are rearranged to form objects. For example, when we say that a worker caused a chair to exist, we don't mean that he created it out of nothing. Rather, we mean that this person worked with preexisting materials to form it. In other words, we observe formation NOT creation. However, when the monotheist uses the Kalam argument to claim that God is responsible for the creation of the universe, he is not saying God created it with preexisting materials. Rather, he claims that God created the actual material of the universe out of nothing. Once that is realized, it becomes quite clear that this is very different than what we see around us everyday. Therefore, the first premise of the Kalam argument cannot appeal to the material formation we see around us as evidence for something being created out of literally nothing. Secondly, the Kalam argument rest on the idea that there cannot being an infinite series of causes. But Pro has given us no reason to believe that such a state of affairs cannot take place. There is nothing contradictory about there being an actual infinity of things, and thus it appears that the crux of his argument is flawed. Thirdly, the Kalam argument is based on what's called Presentism or the A-Theory of time. Under this view of time, only the present is real. The past doesn't exist and the future does not yet exist. So, both the past and the future are non-existent and only this moment is real. By contrast, there is what's called Eternalism or the B-Theory of time, which is the view that the past, present and future are all equally real and all moments exist simultaneously. If the B-Theory of time is true, then the Kalam argument will not succeed. This is because the universe would not actually have began to exist. It would be true that the universe would have a beginning, but it would not come into existence at the beginning. William Lane Craig, an opponent of Eternalism and the most well known defender of the Kalam argument, actually explains this view of time quite well. He says: "On a B-Theory of time the universe never truly comes into being at all. The whole four-dimensional space-time manifold just exists tenselessly, and the universe has a beginning only in the sense that a meter-stick has a beginning prior to the first centimeter. " [1]When Pro put forth this argument, he did not give us any reasons for why we should accept the A-Theory of time. Therefore, we can reject his Kalam argument until he explains why we should believe in that particular view of time. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the Kalam argument is not really an argument for the existence of God. This is because even if we accept the A-Theory of time, and think that there must be a first cause to the universe, this would not necessarily mean that God was responsible. It's entirely possible that our universe came from what's been referred to as a multiverse, which is the view that our universe is just one in a vast number of other universes. This wouldn't be an absurd idea, because we already know that at least one universe exist. Namely, the one we inhabit. Moreover, even if the multiverse hypothesis was shown to be mistaken and all other physical explanations were shown to be false, and we had to accept that a disembodied mind was the first cause, this STILL would not mean that the God of monotheism created the universe. For consider the existence of an all-powerful, all-knowing, all-loving God, and the existence of an all-powerful, all-knowing, perfectly evil God, and lastly an all-powerful, all-knowing, morally indifferent God. I would argue that these three types of Gods that I have just presented are all equally likely to exist, which would mean that the all-loving God whose existence we are debating over today can be reduced to 1/3rd the likelihood. But if that's right, then it would be unlikely that the all-loving God created the universe. This is why the Kalam argument is at best an argument for deism NOT theism. The Moral Argument If you remember correctly, the first premise of this argument claims that if objective moral values exist, then God exist. Pro says the first premise is true because both theist and atheist agree that it is. But this is false, because there are many atheist who believe in objective moral values without believing in God. Not only that, but just because people agree with something doesn’t make it true. The people in question might be wrong and have a false belief about the world. He then says that if God does not exist, then there are no objective moral values. This is because in Richard Dawkins' book the God Delusion he says that humans are chemical machines controlled by mindless genes. First off all, Richard Dawkins does not speak for all atheist. Indeed, there are many atheist such as myself that consider him a joke when it comes to philosophy. Secondly, this is an Appeal to Authority, since Dawkins is a scientist not a moral philosopher. The second premise claims that objective moral values exist. In support of this claim, Pro asked if we thought the Holocaust was wrong. This is a question, not an argument. As such, this premise is also unsupported. Moreover, Pro doesn't even define what an objective moral value is. If we are to believe in objective moral values, we first have to know what they are. The Fine Tuning Argument Pro gives us no reason for why we should believe this argument. He simply claims that it's hard to believe that life is here by chance. It might very well be the case that it's unlikely that life can arise. But if the multiverse is true, and there happen to be many different kinds of universes, then there might be a small amount of universes like our own that will allow life to take place. It's kind of like the lottery. It may very well be the case that it's unlikely someone will hit the million dollar jackpot given the fact that so many people play it. But despite this, someone will win the game nonetheless. The last part of my opponent’s opening statements are not even arguments, but rather complaints about the supposed implications of atheism. Whether these implications are true or false has nothing to do with the existence of God. For that reason, I will not respond to them. Conclusion Pro's arguments for the existence of God suffer from many difficulties and should therefore be rejected. Sources in comments