God Exists

Cosmology P1) Everything that begins to exist has a cause. P2) The Universe began to exist. C1) Therefore, the Universe has a cause. P1 is rooted in metaphysical Principles of Causation and Sufficient Reason. Everything must have an explanation of a cause, including the universe. Theist and atheist philosophers alike affirm this premise. Even renowned atheist philosopher, David Hume affirms it, “But allow me to tell you that I never asserted so absurd a Proposition as that that anything might arise without a cause.[1]” Also, the negation of P1 leads to absurdity. We do not observe things just popping into existence without any cause, and we have no reason to believe that such is possible. P2 is proven by the Borde-Guth-Vilenkin Theorem and the properties of infinity. The BGV theorem states that any universe which has been, on average, expanding throughout its history must have a beginning [2]. The universe is expanding [3]. Thus it has a beginning. An actual infinite can't be formed by successive addition, which the past has been formed by. So the universe cannot be actually infinite. This is obviously true because there are no 2 finite numbers you can add together to get infinity. Time can only be potentially infinite, but not an actually infinite. What’s more, you cannot transverse an infinity. Suppose you told someone that you were going to jump into a hole of infinite length. You would never hit the bottom because you would have an infinite amount of length before you got there. The same goes for time. If the past was infinite prior to today, January 5th, it would take an infinite amount of time to get here. It would never reach today as there would be an endless amount of time to traverse before you reached today. Thus there is a cause of the universe. It must be timeless and immaterial since both time and material arose with the universe [4]. It must be extremely powerful, if not omnipotent, since it caused a universe with no preexisting material. It must be intelligent since it caused such an ordered universe. It must be a free agent since there were no preexisting conditions to determine how it acted. Since it is free, it must have the capacity to be personal. A timeless, immaterial, extremely powerful (if not omnipotent), intelligent, personal, free agent that caused the universe to exist is the very definition of God. Idealism P1) The mind exists. P2) Mind is not reducible to non-mind. C1) Irreducible mental substance exists. P3) Dualism is false. C2) All is mind. P4) Solipsism is false. C3) Theism is true. P1 is universally accepted, as it is contradictory to posit that the opposite is true. Whether you believe that the mind is an emergent property of the brain, or a different substance altogether, you cannot deny the existence of the mind. So for P2 to be true, I must show that there are properties that the mind can have which matter cannot. This can easily be done by considering 2 things: Feeling pain and an electrical signal to the brain. They cannot be the same thing. What we experience is a correlation between the two. One can conceive of a possible world where one can have the feeling of pain without an electrical signal. As atheist philosopher Thomas Nagel says, "If a mental event really is a physical event in this sense [the same sense that H2O is Water], and nothing else, then the physical event by itself, once it's physical properties are understood, should likewise be sufficient for the taste of sugar or the feeling of pain... But it doesn't seem to be.[5]" He goes on to say that for any physical event, there should be a physical event without any experience. However taste seems to be something extra, something produced rather than constituted by the brain state. So it can't be identical to the brain state in the way that water is identical to H2O[6]. Thus we arrive at conclusion 1. There are 2 kinds of dualism. Substance Dualism and Property Dualism. Basically Substance Dualism holds both mind and matter are fundamental. However there is a problem. The immaterial mind can move a material body, but a material body moves via a material force. Thus if a mind can interact with a body, it must produce material forces. However if it produces material forces, it can not really be immaterial. Thus substance dualism is self-contradictory upon close inspection. This shows that matter and mind cannot interact. So if the mind exists, and it cannot interact with physical substances, then physical substances cannot exist. One could try to use the 1st 2 premises to arrive at the conclusion that Property Dualism is true. Property Dualism is the belief that the mental world is just a property of the physical world and therefore doesn't reduce to physical substances. However, this is neither parsimonious nor verifiable and should be dismissed. Thus we arrive at Conclusion 2. If all that exists is the mind then we are faced with 2 options: Solipsism and Theism. Either I can only know that my mind exists, or there must be some transcendent mind to ground reality. P4 is easily defended. All we have to do is simply note that while matter does not exist independent of measurement, we cannot control how the universe works, and so it cannot be a creation of only your conscious mind. Not to mention that solipsism is existentially contradictory. Thus some transcendent mind must exist to ground reality. Thus C3 is true. Morality P1) Morality is a rational enterprise. P2) Moral Realism is true. P3) Human imperfection and disagreement cannot allow morality to be grounded in human rationality. P4) Morality is grounded in a necessary, rational, sentient source. C) That source is God. P1 is pretty uncontroversial. What is moral is discerned through reasoning, not through empirical investigation. No amount of just observing and action can help us determine if it is moral or not. We have 5 reasons to believe that P2 is true. The first of which is the argument from Epistemic Realism. If moral facts do not exist, then epistemic facts don't either. However epistemic facts do exist, so moral facts must exist. Epistemic facts and moral facts work almost identically. The problem is how can a moral relativist prescribe epistemic "oughts", but reject moral "oughts?" For example, I post my argument and you respond, you will probably agree that I ought not use logical fallacies to argue, or use biased and outdated sources. While if I do this, I will not be doing anything morally wrong, it still describes a way that I ought to act. The question arises, "Why ought I act in that way?" Which the moral relativist cannot justify. The second reason we should accept P2 is the Argument from Experience. Mere empirical observation shows that it is extremely hard, if not impossible to live out moral subjectivism. A good example of this is Jean Paul Sartre, a moral relativist who spoke out against genocide. But why would you try to cast your beliefs onto others? If morality is subjective, why should it matter how people are treated? If you speak out against the actions of an individual or a group, you think they are committing actions that you think they should stop, regardless about what they believe about the morality of their behavior. But that would mean that you believe that there is some moral reality and that it isn't all relative. Simply put, moral relativism cannot be put into practice. Reason 3 why we should accept P2 is the problem of Moral Disagreement. Not only do we act as if some actions are moral and others are not, but we converse as if Morality was objective. For example, some say that abortion is wrong while others claim that it is a right. Logic says that both views cannot be correct. But if Morality is relative, then we have no right to condemn the actions of others, yet we do anyway. In essence, if Morality was subjective, we would not actively disagree with others moral views. Yet we do, so Moral Realism must be true. The fourth argument to support of P2 is from Moral Progress. Moral Progress could only make sense if realism was true. For example, we believe that it is progress that slavery is now considered unacceptable. If we consider this progress, it would only make sense if we were working towards an objective standard. So if you accept that things such as the unacceptableness of slavery as moral progress, then one must believe in a moral standard. The fifth and final reason we should accept P2 is because moral realism is intuitive. If we see an infant being tortured, we would not intuitively think, "Who am I to judge how a parent treats his or her child?" On the contrary, we would be disgusted, and would hopefully call CPS or the police. But why? Because the idea that there is an absolute right and wrong is self evident and intuitive. The burden is on the skeptic to demonstrate that our intuition is wrong. We are not sceptic of our experiences of the physical world, unless we have a good reason. Likewise, we should not be skeptical of our moral intuition unless we have a good reason. Moving on to P3. It is pretty self explanatory. Humans, not having complete knowledge, can't know all the facts. Everyone fails to fully know the facts and perform moral duties. On top of that, humans are contingent beings, so an objective morality could never be grounded in human rationality. P4 follows logically from the first 3. Since an objective morality cannot be grounded in something contingent, then it must be grounded in something necessary. And since morality is a rational enterprise, it must be grounded in a rational source. And since non-sentient things can't be rational, it must also be grounded in a sentient source. Since God is a necessary sentient being, it follows from the premises that God is the source of Morality. The resolution is affirmed.