Belief in God is reasonable

Thanks, Pro. I concede Pro’s last point regarding my position my opponent should be arguing for the resolution “Proof a God exists” and instead suggest the resolution “Belief in the existence of God is reasonable” is a more reasonable one. Russell’s Teapot My opponent is punching an airbag in his last statement, and I would like voters to refer to my opening statement as I was specifically talking about my adaption of the Russell’s teapot analogy. Specifically, disproving the existence of a teapot in orbit around Mars does not help support the existence of the objection in question: a cat. I gave the next-dimensional PhD student example to dispel the notion that design absolutely requires a God. We do not know the physical laws etc of this putative dimension, therefore the fact it’s a question-begging response (much like God is), is irrelevant. These explanations just add another layer of uncertainty to our understanding of the world, and postulating an additional unnecessarily unproven entity is an argument from ignorance. Entropy: For the creation of order via entropic purposes, I would like to refer con to the water cycle, crystal caves[1], volcanoes and even natural fission reactors[2]. All of which are stunning examples of stunning complex systems which serve as mechanisms driven by the second law of thermodynamics itself. All of these mechanisms lead to a net increase in entropy, although the systems themselves have/had order. I argued in my original post that entropy is actually the driving force behind life’s mechanisms. And an alleged small loss of entropy (in the ‘ordering’ of life) is going to be easily driven by the counteracting large increase of entropy of converting highly reactive molecules & higher frequency radiation (UV, visible) to low energy molecules (such as glucose, CO2) & low frequency radiation(infrared). This is at least partially reaffirmed in the context of the same quote Pro attempted to use (emphasis mine): “To do these things, the system must convert energy in some ordered form, like food, sunlight, or electric power, into disordered energy, in the form of heat. In this way, the system can satisfy the requirement that the total amount of disorder increases, while, at the same time, increasing the order in itself and its offspring..“ Abiogenesis: The attempt to shift the topic to abiogenesis is an amusing one, which I will deal with quickly. “Why doesn’t new life arise easily now if it did in the past?”.The answer is simple: 1. Conditions on Earth are very different to 4.5 billion years ago (oxygen rich atmosphere, cooler surface) 2. Competition with existing, highly evolved life (current life is orders of magnitude more efficient that anything abiogenesis is likely to cook up). Gish Gallop: My opponent asserted a number of points regarding ‘missing links of dinosaurs, nested heirachy violation, mutation’s causing more harm than good. These might have been interesting points but my opponent provided absolutely no substantiation to these points and therefore I will not address them in this debate. 1st Law of Thermodynamics: I never advocated for eternal matter, I only stated this as this was the only logical conclusion from Pro’s argument as he gave it. If Pro argued further stating that matter must have had a beginning and therefore contradicts the 1st Law, then I had argued in my second rebuttal that this only demonstrated a violation of this natural law, and indicates at most a shortfall in our understanding (be it a God, or another natural process). Therefore using this hole seems to be at best another argument ad ignorantum. Pro cited an infinite regress for this process. This fails due to the fact that anything eternal never did have a beginning, and therefore there is no moment in the infinite past to ‘come from’. The effect of time itself can bet understood as an illusion due to entropy, which is our only reference for the arrow of time. Zero energy universe: While each event is temporary, they happen all the time, everywhere, then the net sum of these interactions will produce a persistant net-positive energy/mass along with an equal and opposite gravitational potential. This is one of the proposed candidates to explain the inflation constant which is currently driving apart the universe, the energy of empty space. The science is more complicated in inflationary theory, which only deals with the initial phase of the big bang, however the explanation it provides for the presence of matter and energy is analogous to that of the energy of empty space. The net energy content of the universe is actually zero. The inflationary theory is becoming increasingly well supported empirically especially via observations in the cosmic microwave background. A stunning, and beautiful new piece to add to the evidence pile came even during the course of this debate!! [3] Sponetneity: Pro makes the argument of chaos and spontaneity being the order of the day without a God. Guess what, he’s right! Check out Brownian motion and quantum mechanics in particular. Both of which demonstrate that the universe is indeed jiggling all over the place, where the electrons in my body are moving all over the place and can spontaneously appear in the next atom, or even the (although infinitesimally unlikely) Andromeda galaxy! However when one considers the sum of all these individual ‘random’ interactions, only then do complex and ‘ordered’ systems emerge. Another example is in radioactive decay [4]. A radioactive nuclei may or may not decay, completely at random. The only thing you can say about a radioactive nucleus is the chance it will decay within a certain time, but you can never say when. However when you take a large sample of the nuclei (>10^21 particles, or a few grams), you can obtain a very predictable decay rate which will be very predictably measurable over time. Likelihood of life existing The universe contains at least 200 billion galaxies of 100 billion stars. From our study on exoplanets with Kepler, it is a reasonable estimate that there are 10^24 planets in the universe! This is an unimaginably large number, more than the number of grains of sand on Earth! When one considers we have a number of other environments within our own solar system which could potentially have/had harbour life [5][6]. Furthermore one should take Pro’s assertion for finding extraterrestial life with a pinch of salt. Since the distances are vast between stars, and the relatively short period of time humans have existed and even shorter period/distance that we have been sending out complex radio waves (maximum of 100 light years),. Even if extraterrestial life existed the sheer scale of distances involved in spacetravel is a likely explanation as to why we have yet to be visited by intelligent life even if it did exist. Love, Good & Evil: Pro mentioned in the debate that he was going to be arguing against evolution, and the way these 2 arguments were originally put forward were as follows: Good & Evil- “The existence of good and evil. Knowing good and evil is not needed for the survival or propagation of our species.” Love- “Love is another reason to believe that there is a God. Love is considered by many to be the meaning of life. If we originated from random processes then love would serve no purpose…” I have more than satisfied my burden by giving a naturalistic explanation of love, Pro attempts a red herring in giving other processes that could achieve the same results but this does nothing to undermine the evolutionary development of love. One could also say why build a camera when the same results can be achieved with a telescope, a scanner, photographic memory, or pen & paper. It’s a non-argument. Good & Evil as Pro stated in his rebuttal, are defined differently. If that is the case than it just comes down to how us as conscious beings are able to recognise certain social patterns and associate them with a definition. These definitions have clearly changed over time, you need only look at the past 100 years to see the change in how we view women’s & gay rights, ethnic equality etc. All the evidence shows that ‘Good and Evil’ are at best, badly defined & accepted from group to group, therefore makes for a poor argument for God. Beauty: A perfect square has four 90 degree angles and 4 straight edges. Is the square, or ability to perceive ‘squareness’ only possible because of God now? I have given a naturalistic explanation for how we perceive things to be ‘beautiful’, and it has very much to do with our psychology. Most heterosexuals would struggle to conceive of a beautiful member of the same sex, but would have no such trouble imagining a beautiful example of the opposite sex. Our perception of beauty seems to be linked to our innate evolutionary desires that tie back to our search for habitat and mates as I have already suggested. Our ancestors in Africa that did not possess these innate desires (before they developed the capacity to rationalize) would have quickly gone extinct, which is how natural selection works. Conclusions: I hope I have thoroughly rebutted my opponent’s arguments in this debate, and I hope I have even given forward a number of points that would even make a case for naturalism. I have turned the entropic, love & good and evil in arguments actually for evolution instead of against it. Even my opponent’s argument from the eternal nature of matter could be an argument against God, as it implies that creation is impossible! I would like to thank Pro for his participation and of course, vote Con! References: 1. http://news.nationalgeographic.com... 2. http://www.atlasobscura.com... 3. http://www.bbc.co.uk... 4. http://www.darvill.clara.net... 5. http://en.wikipedia.org...(moon)#Potential_for_extraterrestrial_life 6. http://en.wikipedia.org...(rover)