Strong Atheism is a Sound Position

Soundness of Strong Atheism Strong Atheism is generally accepted to be the positive belief that there is no God. Few things in this life can be 100% certain, I agree. But I think to go around stating that there is "no god" would require a sound argument that God does not exist. And let the "probably" apply to the uncertainty innate in the argument. I'm not arguing that the conclusion must be 100% certain, but the conclusion if all premises are accepted as true, if all inferences are accepted as valid, then the conclusion must be "No God". Summary: a Strong Atheist, as opposed to a weak atheist position, most have a sound argument that god does not exist. IBE Pro makes the claim that Abductive reasoning is the same as Bayesian confirmation techniques. But when reading over his 3rd reference[1] we find the paragraph: In the past decade, Bayesian confirmation theory has firmly established itself as the dominant view on confirmation... Abduction, in whichever version, assigns a confirmation-theoretic role to explanation: explanatory considerations contribute to making some hypotheses more credible, and others less so. By contrast, Bayesian confirmation theory makes no reference at all to the concept of explanation. The remaining of the paragraph is an interesting read on how Bayesian theorems can be used with abduction. R2. Parsimony It is not a law. It is an heuristic. Newton's 2 body law of gravity does have explanatory power. In fact it is quite accurate in explaining many interactions between 2 large bodies that attract each other. What it lacked was the power to explain Mercury's orbit when relativistic effects begin to change how we on Earth observe the event. Scientist before Einstein were attempting reconcile what they saw with what Newton's Law said should happen. It was Einstein's theory of relativity they showed the observations of what was happening were being skewed. And if the Hypothesis can not sufficiently cause the Event, then it is not parsimonious to adhere to the hypothesis. For instance say yesterday I saw a 300 lbs log at the bottom of a hill. I saw a small child playing around the log. The next morning I see the log has been moved uphill to a small outcrop. One Hypothesis is the child moved the log. It conforms to all the observations I made. Except that the child does not have the strength to move the 300lbs log. Clearly this explanation REQUIRES assuming some other entity. Pro uses the analogy of a Atheist saying there is a crayon in the box, and a theist saying there is a "red" crayon. however "red" doesn't effect the sounds or any other observation we might make of the box. Envisage explicitly keeps to an adhered belief. Constantly claiming that the "laws of nature" explain all the observations and events mankind has ever, or even will ever make. Summary, Parsimony is a heuristic tool, that does not conclude an hypothesis to be true over another one. Before it even applies to filtering possible hypothesis, it clearly states it is to assume the hypothesis with less assumptions is correct between hypothesis that sufficiently account for the observation. R3. Explanatory & Predictive Power And I feel we should clarify something. When Pro states the "Laws of Nature" he is referring to a fundamental rule set that applies to all interactions in a material world. But these "Laws" are not the same as the "Newton's Law of Gravity". The latter being a human description or model to explain the prescriptive laws of the former. So when I say "Natural Laws" I will be referring to the ACTUAL rule set that governs the universe. And using "Laws of Nature by Humans" to denote the descriptive human approximations of the Natural Laws. Pro defines Metaphysical Naturalism himself in round 2, "which is the notion that everything within the universe is explicable by natural laws and that the universe itself does not require a sentient cause" As my link to Stephen Hawking shows that the Laws of Nature by Humans, break down at the event Pro has brought up, the Big Bang. These Laws of Nature by Humans, breaks down not just at the early expansion of Big Bang, but break down at plank scale levels of events today, and have huge errors when applied to massively large objects like Galaxies, Black holes, and the universe as a whole. An internal mechanism for the Universe to begin changing 13.8 billion years ago is insufficient. Some claim a perturbation sufficient enough to cause the Universe to begin expanding arose from quantum fluctuations. In Bose-Einstein condensates, a type of material that some say best explains the state of the early universe, we see that fluctuations are eventually reabsorbed by the condensate. That it takes an external source of energy to cause what we see as the universe today. Some scientist explain this external force as being a higher dimension space of a black hole. [3] Where the scientist comment, "“Their shackles have prevented them from perceiving the true world, a realm with one additional dimension,” they write. “Plato’s prisoners didn't understand the powers behind the sun, just as we don’t understand the four-dimensional bulk universe. But at least they knew where to look for answers.” Other Scientist push for a Multiverse explanation or Brane explanation for an external cause to the universe. When researchers theorized about the higgs-boson and what experimental results to look for, they expected to see other particles present themselves, as well as the higgs. But this didn't happen. the other particles were absent and the mass of the higgs-boson was 100,000 times lighter.[4] So the explanatory power Pro speaks of with regards to the Natural laws (actual fundamental ones) is tautological, "The way things are explains the way things behave". This isn't a shocker. The subtle fallacy is when Pro attempts to claim that Naturalism explains things without God. And he uses the beginning of the Universe as evidence to that claim. As already shown, the explanatory power belongs to the Naturals Laws but not to the Human descriptions of these laws. And nothing in these Actual Laws negate God, in fact may require God. This is what happens when a methodology of practice is elevated to being a philosophical view about reality. R4 Background Knowledge False dichotomy. It's not a choice between God existing and Natural laws. And if we apply this to hypothesis testing for an event, The beginning of the universe between t-0 and t-1, theist do not choose between the 2. The choice is between Natural Laws alone and Natural Laws plus God. The Materialist can't even say what those Natural Laws are. So despite what Pro says, there is an amount of uncertainty in a Naturalist explanation of such an event. As stated by Stephen Hawking, NOT even the Law of conservation of Energy and Matter applies during such an event. And even an approximate Law is only applicable if the Universe was a closed system. But it most certainly could have been Open and grew shut, or even semi open today with smaller and smaller pathways for external interactions to occur. Pro's hypothesis testing is subjective and the values I would argue. but considering these priors are in a poorly understood context I refer to Pro's 2nd reference[2] that concludes: The Bayesian approach to abduction has the merit of offering a complete and harmonious solution, and the price paid is, as already stressed in the past, that a full data collection is needed. R5.1 Absolute truths As I stated Pro said, ""Theism however, posits omnipotence and omniscience, something we have exactly zero experience ... such an explanation is necessarily beyond our experience." Which is why I argued that explanations of things are more truthful, more universal and more absolute when they are beyond human experience. R5.2 Employment of ad hoc explanations. Argument from atemporal mind. I'm refuting that God is atemporal. The minor Contention of gave of Pantheism, that the universe is the mind of God, would be a naturalistic explanation of how God's mind is temporal. And that would be without any additional entities and interactions than hat we have already observed. The second proposal is that God exists in a plane or dimension outside of our 4th dimensional space. This is no more an assumption then what Scientist already propose such as this universe being the event horizon to a 4D black hole, or multiple universes existing. Pro asserts that because God would have to exist prior to THIS space-time then God necceassarily atemporal. But that doesn't logically follow. And the only support given is THIS spacetime is the only one that exists. Incoherence of a caused universe. This argument always strikes more about language than it does about the universe or reality. But as I have been stating I am not discussing a time before the universe was created. I have been discussing the event at the beginning of the universe. the cause for universal rapid expansion at t-0 to t-1 plank second. This is a moment in time and space. It is a moment that the explanations from Materialist break, and a moment in which changes occurred, and the law of causality requires a cause those changes. Conclusion I don't have the BoP as stated by Pro in the first round. The resolution is Strong Atheism is a sound position. To demonstrate that to be true Pro has to show that the denial of God's existence is logically strong. To do that pro has chosen to argue that Metaphysical Naturalism is sufficient to exclude the possibility of God existing. An argument I have presented contention to in that it does not have true premises or that the inferences are invalid. There is nothing in the Natural Laws of reality that negate the possibility of God. When it comes to the temporal and spatial event of the Big Bang at the beginning of the Universe, Natural Laws as we know them are insufficient. Strong Atheism is the adherence to a propositional claim not empirically or logically supported.