God Probably Doesn't Exist

Thanks to Con Con’s First Contention: The Creation of the Universe Con’s first argument is essentially the cosmological argument. He argues God is the best explanation for the universe. Since my third argument in R2 was about the universe’s non-beginning, I will for argument purposes assume it did begin when refuting this contention. Con criticized atheistic explanations because they all have the basic assumption of something coming from non-existence. This is false, not all explanations have this assumption. The universe could have been brought about via simultaneous causation. In which cause and effect happen simultaneously. For instance, atoms A, B and C come into existence simultaneously. Atom A, causes B and B causes C in which C causes A, all at the same time. Everything has a causal explanation of its event. Con could somehow reject the possibility of SC, but this in turn would be rejecting the possibility of God creating the universe [1]. Retrocausality has been demonstrated to exist [2][3]. So the universe could easily be the result of retrocausality. It is much more likely for there to be a natural cause than a supernatural one, since it’s much more parsimonious. There is something else deeply wrong with trying to derive attributes of some transcendent cause. It assumes the experience you have in this universe extends to the transcendent cause. However, there is no reason for this assumption. Imagine a portal, in which on the other side is something more than our universe. We have no experience of this world and thus all arguments for what's in that world are speculation. This is the same as trying to derive the attributes of a transcendent cause. We have no knowledge or experience of this transcendent world and this makes it wrong to try to calculate the probability or assert what it is. Of course we can say the cause is not transcendent and therefore not subject to this argument. However, this means the cause is a natural one. Again, this all assumes the universe began to exist. This has not been justified by Con, making his argument incomplete. This means, even if all my objections to this argument fail, Con’s argument is still incomplete and his BOP cannot been fulfilled with this argument alone (since he cannot add arguments in R4). His other two arguments must survive attack in order to fulfill his BOP. However, I do feel as if I have refuted this argument. Now to his next contention Con’s Second Contention: Argument From Morality Con argues since there are universal laws of morality, there must be a God that gives us those laws. I must ask Con what he means when he says “right” and “wrong”. If Con is talking about the laws which God gives us, then the argument is question begging. You use the word conscience or morality, but morality refers to something God commands. It’s essentially saying, rape is wrong because God says so, therefore God exists. On the other hand Con can say right and wrong mean something like maximizing well being. But then he would refute his own argument, since no link to God can be made. Either the argument is circular or the argument cannot be linked to God. Both ways fail. Another problem with theistic morality is called the Euthyphro dilemma. Socrates asks "Is the pious loved by the gods because it is pious, or is it pious because it is loved by the gods?" [4] In modern day language, the question is "Is that which is good commanded by God because it's good, or is it good because God commands it?" If one accepts the first horn, then that means there is a moral law above God. In which even atheists can account for morality by cutting out the middle man. If the second horn is accepted, then this means God could command rape is moral and it would be. Everything is essentially arbitrary based on God’s will. This also makes theistic morality subject to the is-ought problem. You would be deducing oughts from the “ises” of God's commands. Some have tried to sidestep the dilemma by saying God is good because his nature is good. However, Michael Martin pointed out “In any case, appealing to God's character only postpones the problem since the dilemma can be reformulated in terms of His character. Is God's character the way it is because it is good or is God's character good simply because it is God's character?” [5] Finally, morality can be accounted for under an atheistic point of view. We all have an innate survival instinct. This instinct would give us morality, because we can survive better in groups than alone. Because we are social beings who will deal with both the social and survival consequences of acting immoral, we act moral. Simple as that. As Sargon has pointed out before, we have prima facie reasons for accepting atheistic morality. Theism gets it’s morality from a supernatural realm, one that is heatedly debated. However, atheistic moral realism says morality comes from the natural world, one that we’re pretty sure exists. The argument is refuted Con’s Third Contention: Argument from Order Con here says, since there is ordered laws in our universe, an intelligent being must have created them. I don’t think there is any reason to assume an atheistic universe can’t produce ordered laws. What does it mean for something to be an ordered law? It must do the same thing over and over again. However, that hardly seems to need an intelligent being. It seems to be the very opposite of intelligent. His tournado analogy is false because tournedos themselves supervene on laws. However, atheists can explain the existence of physical laws easily. In physics, the physical models must be observer-independent. Victor Stenger explains how this principle leads to the laws of physics “The laws of physics were not handed down from above. Neither are they rules somehow built into the structure of the universe. They are ingredients of the models that physicists invent to describe observations. Rather than being restrictions on the behavior of matter, the laws of physics are restrictions on the behavior of physicists. If the models of physics are to describe observations based on an objective reality, then those models cannot depend on the point of view of the observer. This suggests a principle of point-of-view invariance that is equivalent to the principle of covariance (or cosmological principle, or Copernican principle) when applied to space-time. As Noether showed, this leads to the principles of energy, linear momentum, and angular momentum conservation and essentially all of classical mechanics. It also leads to Lorentz invariance and special relativity. When generalized to the abstract space of functions such as the quantum state vector, point-of-view invariance is identified with gauge invariance. Quantum mechanics is then just the mathematics of gauge transformations with no additional assumptions needed to obtain its rules, including the superposition and uncertainty principles. Conservation of electric charge, isospin, and other quantities follow from global gauge invariance. The forces in the standard model of elementary particles are fields introduced to preserve local gauge invariance. Gravity can also be viewed as such a field. Thus practically all of fundamental physics as we know it follows directly from the single principle of point-of-view invariance.” [6] The argument is refuted. Conclusion Con’s first argument fails, as it contains an unjustified premise, among other reasons. Con’s second argument fails because of the problems with theistic morality and the success of secular morality. Con’s third argument fails because what it means to be an ordered law isn’t that intelligent in the first place and the laws of physics follow via point-of-view invariance. Thanks, now to Con. Remember, Con, you don’t address anything I’ve said in this round yet. You address my arguments in round 2. Only in round 4 will you address what I’ve said in this round. [1] http://www.reasonablefaith.org... [2] http://arstechnica.com... [3] http://arxiv.org... [4] http://classics.mit.edu... [5] http://infidels.org... [6] http://www.colorado.edu...