Big Bang cosmology supports atheism over theism.

As I don't have education or formal training in physics, I'm going to assume that Pro's information is correct, especially since this debate is really about the implications of big bang cosmology. I really don't have much to say about physics, as I'd only be speaking as a layman (and not one educated in the field). So I'll use my opening argument to respond to Pro's points that he made in his first argument. Pro's casePro's first argument consists of physics contradicting God's existence because if time half-open, it could always be divided in half and could not have had a beginning caused by God. But this seems like an unwarranted assumption -- after all, how did time begin in the first time? If it had a cause without God, then surely it could have been caused by God, as well. Is Pro's implication that time had no beginning? This is equally unproblematic under a Theistic worldview. I do believe the KCA to be a sound argument, but there are other Theistic arguments that don't rely on time having had a beginning at the big bang (more on that later). Pro's argument here strikes me as similar to Zeno's Paradox of Motion. As William Lane Craig elucidates, "Zeno argued that before Achilles could cross the stadium, he would have to cross halfway; but before he could cross halfway, he would have to cross a quarter of the way; but before he could cross a quarter of the way, he would have to cross an eighth of the way, and so on to infinity. It is evident that Achilles could not even move! Therefore, Zeno concluded, motion is impossible. Now even though Zeno's argument is difficult to refute, nobody really believes that motion is impossible. " [1]So even if time is half-open, then it seems incredible to think that time had no beginning point. We have still managed to traverse this period of time. If time stretched off into an infinite past, then this present moment would never have come (since one cannot traverse an infinite distance). Since we have traversed the period of time, then there was a beginning point in time, even if one can theoretically divide it indefinitely. Just as there was a beginning point for Zeno to start with before traversing the stadium, there can still be a beginning point despite theoretically being able to divide it indefinitely. So it seems like saying there was no initial state of time is simply false (and no worries on the diagram disappearing, as I did see it before it vanished). But Pro's argument that you have a causal state without God is simply puzzling. If Pro is arguing that there was no initial state of time, and if that's a problem for the Theist, it's an exact same problem for the Atheist. If there is no initial state of time, then Pro is still without a causal state for the universe (even if he's trying to argue apart from God). He's essentially arguing for a causal state after the universe began, to show that it's a causal state for the beginning of the universe. This strikes me as question-begging. I would like Pro to explain why the wave function of the universe implies there is a 95% probability that the universe came into existence uncaused. Again, as someone uneducated in the field of physics (which was made clear to Pro prior to the debate), I have no idea why this would be. But even so, it seems that Quentin Smith is arguing that on an Atheistic view of the universe, it has a 95% chance of coming into existence. This seems silly, since if God exists we can easily say the universe had a 100% chance of coming into existence (provided God willed it rather than not willing it to come into existence). The argument from simultaneous causation is based on an equivocation on the word "nothing" (which is the bread and butter of physicists like Stephen Hawking and Laurence Krauss). If there was simultaneous causation, this is evidence for a Creator, not evidence against a Creator. The KCA is built on the philosophical understand that nothing can come from nothing uncaused, because nothing is literally that -- no thing. It literally does not exist. It has no qualities at all. Simultaneous causation can show that God created the universe, but it does nothing to show that nothing can come from nothing without a cause. I think I have clearly enough shown why Pro's arguments from physics do not support Atheism over Theism. The reality is that science can't disprove the existence of God because science deals with the physical realm, not the metaphysical. However, science seems to give us some idea that there was an intelligence behind the universe (with the incredible fine-tuning of the universe, the fact that nothing can come from nothing uncaused, etc. ). But clearly Pro's case fails to establish Atheism over Theism. My caseI have actually argued in favor of Theism in some of my previous points responding to Pro's case. There's no reason to think that there was no initial starting point of time for God to cause, even if time is technically half-open. Plus, the implications that Pro reads into physics do not imply what he believes they do. Even if there was no starting point of time, this is not a problem for Theists. Thomas Aquinas believed that it was quite possible that the universe was eternally existent (the big bang had not yet been discovered in his lifetime). It's sometimes called a Cosmological Argument, but it's actually his First Way, the Argument from Motion. His argument went as follows:P1: Things do move. Motion is the most obvious form of change. P2: Change is a passing from potency to act (i. e. from potentiality to actuality). P3: Nothing passes from potency to act except by something that is in actuality, for it is impossible for a potentiality to actualize itself. P4: There cannot be an infinite regress of actualizers or movers. If there is no First Mover, there can be no subsequent motion, since all subsequent motion depends on prior movers for its motion. C: Therefore, there must be a first, Unmoved Mover, a pure actualizer with no potentiality in it that is unactualized. [2]Many Atheists, like Richard Dawkins, misunderstand this argument. Aquinas did not mean a mover as in something that moves through space. He meant it as a change from potentiality to actuality (such as when a ball is actually red but has the potential to become blue). Nothing can change from potentiality to actuality unless acted on by an outside force (the ball needs someone to paint it blue). Since there cannot be an infinite regress of causes, there must be a first Unmoved Mover, one that has no potentiality but is all actuality. Similarly, Gottfried Leibniz had an argument that didn't require a temporal universe:P1: Anything that exists has an explanation of its existence, either in the necessity of its own nature or in an external cause. P2: If the universe has an explanation of its existence, that explanation is God. P3: The universe exists. C1: Therefore, the universe has an explanation of its existence (from 1 and 3)C2: Therefore, the explanation of the existence of the universe is God (from 2 and 4). Note that this argument does not state that everything has a cause, just that everything has an explanation of its existence. The universe is a contingent entity, and God is a necessary entity (so God's explanation of his existence is that he is necessarily existent, like numbers and the laws of logic). It seems to my that big bang cosmology certainly doesn't support Atheism over Theism. There are good reasons to suppose that God was responsible for the creation of the universe. I look forward to Pro's response. [1] William Lane Craig and J. P. Moreland, Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview, InterVarsity Press, Downer's Grove, Il. , 2003, p. 475. [2] Norm Geisler, Baker Enecyclopedia of Christian Apologetics, Baker Books, 2000, pp. 161-162.