The God Debate

No worries, Pro.The debate structure only allows concluding remarks in round 5, but I'm cool if Pro wants to rebuttal 5th round as well to make up for the lost round.Whatever's clever in this endeavor.*K to the C to the A*Now, my favorite argument for god is in fact this one, the Kalam Cosmological Argument, because it was an attempt to take the infinite regress problem of "everything that exists has a cause" and change it so that god is exempt from the "if it exists, it must have a cause" rule; this is a form of special pleading.http://www.logicallyfallacious.com...Before the Kalam argument, was the original cosmological argument that asserted that "everything that exists has a cause." This turns into an infinite regress, because if god exists, according to the assertion, then god must have a cause, and god's cause must have a cause, and god's cause's causes's cause must have a cause etc...So, the Kalam takes an infinitive verb phrase "to begin to exist," applies it to "everything that exists has a cause," and changes the assertion to "everything that BEGINS TO EXIST has a cause," which exempts god from being caused, because, thanks to special pleading, he's always existed and never BEGINS TO exist.This argument is two-fold fallacious.A. It uses circular reasoning, or it begs the question.B. It special pleads god's exemption.A. By saying that things "begin to exist," you automatically create a set of "things that exist, but don't begin to exist" and a set of "things that exist, and do begin to exist." The problem is that the set of "things that exist, but don't begin to exist" ends up only having one thing in it, god, which makes separating "begin to exist things" and "not beginning to exist things" a way to smuggle in god's presumed exemption in the conclusion.The assertion that a thing, god, didn't begin to exist in the premise is simply repeated by saying that god is the only member of the "didn't begin to exist" set in the conclusion, which is begging the question or circular reasoning.http://www.logicallyfallacious.com...B. By asserting that everything began to exist, except for god, you are special pleading god's exemption to the assumed rule that existence, as we know it, requires causation. Without an explanation or demonstration of how god should be considered exempt from the category, exempting him is special pleading, thus it is flawed logic and we can reject the conclusions from such a lack of reasoning.Pro, other than bare assertions, like "god must be timeless/causeless," how is god exempt from the beginning to exist rule that you openly endorse?Pro, could you explain the mechanism by which god accomplishes this exemption?If you can't, then how do you know that this exemption has occurred?*FINELY TUNED FOR LIFE?*I argue that the universe is obviously adequate for some life, as we are here, but not finely tuned for life.Earth is currently the only observable planet to have life, and the Earth itself is not exactly finely tuned for life either given that "99.9% of all species that have ever lived on Earth are now extinct."http://paleobiology.si.edu...A 99.9% extinction rate does not point to something finely tuned for life.To further illustrate the non sequitur from low odds--> purposive godLet me make an analogy.If all polygons had just .00000000000000001 degree more or less than 180 degrees, then triangles couldn't exist.Mathematicians have figured out that with just this slight change in degree, triangles would not be possible.The odds of any other polygon existing with inexact amounts of 180 degrees are far higher than triangles existing, making triangles' existence very improbable.Because triangles require such a low probability, and they do exist, an intelligence allowed for triangles to be polygons.The point is, that inferring an intelligence because the naturally occurring odds are low is a non sequitur.So what if the odds are low?Outliers are part of randomness.Outliers do not equal a purposive intelligence, and Pro has not demonstrated such by saying "It then follows, that the universe was set in these specific values by an intelligent designer."The odds for life occurring naturally aren't zero, so it's not impossible or even relevant to point out.*OBJECTIVE MORALITY*I argue that objective morality exists irrespective of god, because of objective immoral sufferings. Actions that lead away from objectively immoral sufferings of humans/conscious animals are objectively moral.According to the NIST, 111°F is the temperature at which human skin begins to feel pain.At 140°F, human skin becomes numb from being burned so badly.At 162°F, human skin is instantly destroyed.http://www.nist.gov...Objectively, when human skin reaches 162°F and above, it causes severe suffering in ALL HUMANS; we objectively suffer without our skin. Actions that lead away from letting human skin reach this temperature are objectively moral, because the suffering is actually objective.Objectively, broken bones from rocks being thrown at a human's face causes a human to suffer.With "as little as 25 pounds of pressure applied to one of your small bones will cause a fracture."http://scienceline.ucsb.edu...Objectively, 25 psi from a blunt force will break human bone, and objectively this will cause suffering. Actions that lead us away from 25 or more psi by way of blunt force on a human's bone would be objectively moral. So, there are objective stimuli that objectively cause suffering, irrespective of my opinion/experience, and there are actions that objectively lead to these objective stimuli on humans.The actions that lead toward these objective sufferings are immoral.The actions that lead away from these objective sufferings are moral.Actions that lead away from these objective stimuli-->humans/conscious animals benefit society; they are moral.We don't need a god to know that human skin burns at an objective temperature that causes objective suffering, and that there are actions that objectively lead away from/toward this result, moral and immoral respectively. *PRO'S CONCLUSION*Pro concluded:"God is the best explanation for the origin of the universe"My response:Nope.The big bang as an expression of unstable quantum fluctuations is much better than god and it has a mechanistic explanation, which I provided 2nd round.Pro also concluded:"God is the best explanation for the fine tuning of the universe."My response:Well, Pro had mentioned that the universe was finely tuned for life, but 99.9% of all species to ever live on the only known planet of life have gone extinct...wasn't finely tuned for that 99.9%, huh?Pro concluded his conclusion:"God is the best explanation for objective moral values and duties"My response:Nope.Objective suffering serves as that standard that Pro claims exists only with god.By moving away from objective sufferings, we move toward objective morality, and there's no need for a god to exist in order to accomplish this.Pro?