DDO Olympics Philosophy and Morals: Round 2

Thanks to Pro for challenging me to this debate....REFUTATION OF PREMISE I"Every existing thing has an explanation of its existence, either in the necessity of its own nature or in an external cause."Pro uses modal logic and the principle of sufficient reason to defend this premise.Modal Logic: every existing thing is either necessary (MUST exist no matter what) or contingent (does not HAVE to exist). It is very important to note that "necessary" beings do NOT need external causes.Thus, the question, in this context, is whether the Universe is necessary or contingent. The Oscillating Universe Cosmology theorizes that the Universe is eternal and that it has been going through a cycle of Big Bangs and Big Crunches forever due to the pull of gravity [1]. Being eternal and without a beginning, the Universe does not have a chance to "fail to exist" and is thus necessary. Necessary beings do not need external causes, and so, if this cosmological theory holds true, the Universe does not need an external cause.Principle of Sufficient Reason: the idea that all contingent beings have an explanation/external cause I'd first like to note that, by definition, contingency only implies that the universe could have failed to exist; that a being's existence is not guaranteed. Now, for the purposes of refuting this principle, we must push aside the Oscillating Universe Cosmology in favor of Big Bang Cosmology and assume that the universe IS contingent. Pro's defense of the PSR is completely reliant on evidence gathered by our sensory perception. However, recent developments in physics, particularly in the fields of Quantum Mechanics and General Relativity, have falsified numerous old assumptions/intuitions about the nature of our universe, showing that our current sense/experience-based intuitions about the universe are not at all guaranteed to be correct, either.This is especially true since the conditions that were present at the "time" of the Big Bang singularity are almost certainly radically different from any conditions humans have ever experienced [2][3]. Time and space did not exist back then. For all we know, in such a setting, it could have been possible for things to happen entirely at random and without cause. Physicists are currently discovering all sorts of things like that at the level of elemental particles. Thus, the Principle of Sufficient Reason is not at all sound, as it ignores the fact that the Universe may not be contingent at all, it relies solely on our own limited sensory faculties, and it assumes far too much about pre-Big Bang conditions. The Universe does not need an explanation, even if it is contingent. ...REFUTATION OF PREMISE II"If the universe has an explanation of its existence, that explanation is God."This premise, at its core, is nothing more than a baseless assumption. "there must be a first cause, a necessary being that explains the existence of all contingent beings"First of all, as I established before, the Universe may not be contingent at all; it may be eternal and necessary. "The argument is not that God must exist because we do not currently have evidence of natural, non-contingent causes but rather that the idea of natural non-contingent causes is irrational... By definition, natural beings require space to exist within and are temporal... natural beings are composed of matter. How can that which is composed of matter also account for the creation of matter?"Pro has needlessly inserted the word "natural".The necessary, NOT-divine first cause of a contingent Universe could be nothing more than a non-temporal process of which we have no knowledge due to our own temporal existence and limited sensory perception. One such process which scientists have theorized is simultaneous causation. "As demonstrated a necessary, natural first cause is logically contradictory. Due to the inability for it to be anything but God, God himself must serve as the explanation of the universe's existence." That is false. To automatically assume that God is the only explanation is closed-minded. ...CONCLUSIONS1) The Universe does not have to be contingent; it can be eternal and thus "necessary".2) Even if the Universe is contingent (i.e. might never have existed), it does not need a "necessary" external cause3) Even if the contingent Universe DID need a "necessary" external cause, that cause does not have to be God.SOURCES[1] http://www.universetoday.com...[2] http://science.howstuffworks.com...[3] http://superstringtheory.com...