Mankind Is the Main Cause of Global Warming

Overviews OV1: Instead of rebutting my case, Pro has merely expanded on their own case in R2, contrary to the debate structure. Thus, I shall consider my case conceded via. concession by omission, and shall rebut Pro’s arguments from both R1 and R2 since they’re both part of their case. OV2: The R2 OV2 has been conceded by omission; thus, Pro must waive the final round to give us an equal # of rounds. R1) The idea of God Pro completely fails to establish a link with the idea of God. The idea of God is *irrelevant* to global warming, but Pro says global warming is a part of God’s ‘plan’, but the Bible doesn’t mention global warming. Additionally, Pro has given us no reason to believe that God exists. I shall, instead, present arguments against the existence of God to refute this argument. a) Argument from Atemporal Minds P1: God is atemporal. P2: God has a mind. P3: Minds are processes and/or involve processes. P4: All processes are temporal. C1: An atemporal mind cannot exist. C2: Therefore, God cannot exist. P1 is true as God is transcendent, ergo external to the universe. Outside of the universe, and, thus, outside of the space-time continuum by definition, there is no time. Therefore, God has to be atemporal. P2 is true by definition, as God is intelligent. Intelligence is incoherent without a mind, ergo God has a mind/is a disembodied mind. P3 is accurate as we don’t have a quantitative understanding of ‘intelligence’, which here requires a highly specific definition of ‘intelligence’, which must be a subjective property unless it has a process. Subjective properties are incoherent if paired with transcendence, thus intelligence has to be objective for the existence of God as a mind, ergo it must involve a process. To argue a mind is not a process is to also concede that the entity is static, and essentially non-causal, thus the mind must involve a process by definition. P4 follows as if time doesn’t exist, then there will obviously be no arrow of time. An arrow of time is necessary for temporal passage. For something to coherently ‘happen’, there has to be time, thus all processes require an arrow of time to be coherent. b) Eternalism Another reason why the universe must be uncaused is the truth of eternalism. For something to come into being, there must be a state in time where it first doesn’t exist [1]. Under eternalism change doesn’t ontologically happen and therefore neither does causation [2]. In support of this, J.M.E. McTaggart writes, “Changes must happen to the events of such a nature that the occurrence of these changes does not hinder the events from being events, and the same events, both before and after the change. Now what characteristics of an event are there which can change and yet leave the event the same event? (I use the word characteristic as a general term to include both the qualities which the event possesses, and the relations of which it is a term -- or rather the fact that the event is a term of these relations.) It seems to me that there is only one class of such characteristics -- namely, the determination of the event in question by the terms of the A series.” [3] General relativity also yields eternalism, since it models time as a ‘fourth dimension’ of space itself, allowing for the block universe theory to be likely true. Causality cannot be stressed on unless one assumes the presentism ontology of time, which is dubious in light of scientific discoveries supporting eternalism, especially special and general relativity. “Many [scientists and philosophers] have argued against presentism on the grounds that presentism is incompatible with the theory of relativity.” [4] In special relativity, each observer has their own ‘plane of simultaneity’, a small section of three-dimensional space where all events are simultaneous [5]. “Special relativity suggests that the concept of simultaneity is not universal: according to the relativity of simultaneity, observers in different frames of reference can have different perceptions of whether a given pair of events happened at the same time or at different times, with there being no physical basis for preferring one frame's judgments over another’s. ... So, in special relativity there can be no physical basis for picking out a unique set of events that are all happening simultaneously in ‘the present’.” [6] This entails eternalism. Experiments from quantum mechanics have also vindicated eternalism. Photons have been entangled through time [7]. An experimenter can choose to entangle photons even when they don’t exist in the present anymore. Other experiments show time is an emergent phenomenon. An outside observer would view the universe as static [8]. There is reason to believe eternalism is true via. God’s nature. God is omniscient, he knows everything possible about the past, present and future. As philosopher David Kyle Johnson argues, for God’s knowledge to be true, there must be the event which makes it true [9]. God’s knowledge about something like, say, a cup on the table is made true by an existing cup on the table. If God’s knowledge had no truthmakers, then his knowledge would be false. What then, makes God’s knowledge about future or past events true? It would have to be the future or past event. However, since the future is causing God’s knowledge it must exist. If the future is non-existent, there are no properties about the future. Making it impossible for God to know anything about it. This entails the future must exist, as well as the past. Eternalism is therefore implied via. God’s omniscience. As we have shown above, eternalism and a caused universe cannot coexist. Thus, omniscience is incompatible with God’s own properties. Thus, God probably doesn’t exist, and this argument is refuted. R2) Global warming is not proven Now, instead of questioning whether mankind causes global warming, Pro challenges whether global warming exists. There has been a rise in temperatures since the 19th century. The below graph shows the rise in average temperatures of the global land-sea mean [10]. According to the below graph, there has been a 0.8 degree C increase in overall global land-sea mean temperature [11]. I agree that consensus is not everything, but I have presented reliable evidence from positive feedbacks, atmospheric CO2 concentrations, CO2 climate sensitivity, and temperature rise, that global warming is primarily man-made. R3) Temperature is cold in some places With this rebuttal, I will address both the Cape Town argument and the argument from winter. The temperature being cool is irrelevant, since global warming only predicts a rise in temperature--the temperature in Cape Town would have been cooler than it is now prior to the 1970s, for instance. This is a graph documenting temperatures in Cape Town and Calvinia, from 1857 to 1999. As seen in the graph, the average temperature in Cape Town has risen from 16.5 degrees to 17.25 degrees, a rise by 0.75 degrees. R4) Scientists are all part of the Illuminati The Bavarian Illuminati was an Enlightenment-era secret society founded on May 1, 1776, and declined finally in 1787 [12]. Thus, the Illuminati doesn’t exist today anymore. The resolution is resoundingly affirmed. 1. http://www.reasonablefaith.org... 2. http://plato.stanford.edu... 3. http://www.ditext.com... 4. http://people.biola.edu... 5. http://en.wikipedia.org... 6. http://en.wikipedia.org... 7. http://www.livescience.com... 8. http://medium.com... 9. http://journals.cambridge.org... 10. http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov... 11. http://data.giss.nasa.gov... 12. http://www.webcitation.org...