The Cosmological Argument for God is a bad argument and people need to stop using it

"I only need to show that the [premises] are not true for the argument to fail [...]" I would agree with this. And as we've seen, the Pro position has yet to offer any evidence that is not in dispute that condradicts the cosmological argument. "Saying the statements are not true is not the same as proving them false or wrong[...]" It is, everyone reading that sentence can see that it is contradicting itself. If something is false, then it is not true, if something is not true, then it is false. The only other possibility is that we do not know, which is the answer you have been admitting all along, and the answer you're afraid of, because if we do not know how the universe began it means the cosmological argument is still permissible in debate. "There are a great many fallacious concepts and ideas that have fascinated people and sparked many discussions, but that is irrelevant to the debate." I'm glad to see that my opponent is finally arguing the real premise of this debate. This point is not irrelevant to the debate, I must disagree, as this would help determine whether or not the argument in question should not be used again. If the cosmological argument could be found to have no rhetorical merit at all, on top of being patently false, it would indeed have to be discarded from use. Rhetorical devices are used all of the time in debates, they are not provably true, and in some cases, are provably false, but that does not devalue their usefulness or merit when having a debate. Consider Descartes, 'I think therefore I am.' Should this no longer be used in a debate? This is the same as saying the cosmological argument is bad, and should no longer be used. Both Descartes argument and the cosmological argument are arguments, both are not entirely provable, both are not entirely disprovable, and both are useful rhetorical devices for provoking thought, discussion, or illustrating a point within a debate. "I disagree with both points. The Cosmological Argument is [...] presented by dedicated theists as an intellectual underpinning for a foundational belief system." Similarly Descartes argument was put forth as a real argument. Even people who disagree with it use it today as a rhetorical device, it has not been devalued. "If my opponent's threshold for a good argument is just its ability to provoke thought and discussion, then perhaps my "Dogs from Jupiter" argument should be considered a good argument as well." My opponent clearly thought that his Dogs from Jupiter argument was good enough to use in a debate or he would not have used it. He used it as a rhetorical device, even though he knew it was false, on top of that. Now this gets to the heart of our argument. While my opponent's 'dogs from jupiter' was a bad argument, as we'd both pointed out in previous rounds, it was not so bad that it should not have been used, because it helped illustrate his point, but imperfectly. Remember the debate premise: The Cosmological Argument for God is a bad argument and people need to stop using it. I do not blame my opponent for trying to use that argument, and I don't think he should have not tried using it, because even though it was imperfect, it helped support his point, and illustrate what he was trying to say. The cosmological argument is a better argument than the dogs from Jupiter, so by my opponent's very own standards the cosmological argument passes the premise of this very debate. "My language has been entirely consistent with the Big Bang theory" This is true, my opponents language has, but his implications have not. See below. "[W]e can't scientifically say that everything that exists also began to exist" If we don't know whether everything that exists also began to exist or not, then it cannot be used to disprove the cosmological argument. My opponent knows he's lost this point and hopes the readers haven't noticed. But we've gone over this exact point in every single round. "I'll admit, I'm not quite sure what my opponent is trying to say here. [...] I pointed out quantum fluctuations as a phenomenon [...]" My opponent is confused from making a categorical error - quantum fluctuations are not accepted as a cause of the universe, but the cosmological argument pertains to the cause of the universe, not to phenomenon occurring after the fact. "Put simply - 'not true' does not equal 'false'." Now this is just bananas. Don't worry reader, I will not condescend by pretending I have to explain this to you. "The default position is to say that there is not enough information to say the premise is true or false." This is exactly the same error my opponent is making regarding the cosmological argument. He admits in the full quote that if you do not know something is true or false, you can't say it is false for sure. Read his illustration about the red card, it's a perfect illustration of his own error. Whether something is true or not, is not dependent on whether or not we know it. He either has a red card in his pocket, or he doesn't, regardless of how much information we have, it is either true, or false. But he's admitting here, that if we don't know for sure, we can't say. The cosmological argument is the same, and my opponent has admitted it repeatedly. If the cosmological argument is debatable, it is then permissible in a debate. "[T]here's just as much reason to believe fairies are the cause as there is to believe God is." There isn't a concept that fairies are all powerful, or are creators of the universe. God is a better qualified concept than fairies, hence it is a straw man argument. End of Round Statement: Every word counts in a debate premise, and my opponent clearly added the fact that the cosmological argument should not be used, as a part of the premise. If he had made a mistake while setting the premise of this debate, it is not the fault of the con position who accepted the debate on what it actually says. 'And it should not be used' would be unnecessary to add, if we were arguing merely for the premise that the cosmological argument was false. But in the premise my opponent didn't say it was false, he said it was 'bad', and he added 'and people need to stop using it'. Which means, what we are arguing is whether or not it is bad, and without use, in the context of debate over the existence of God. This means that if the argument has any merit that makes it good enough to keep using in a debate about the existence of God, that the con position is correct, that it is not bad, and should not be discarded. I'm arguing that it is good for several reasons. One being it is not patently false, not so wrong that it can be easily proven wrong, for example, and that even though one can not prove it is absolutely right, you also can't do that with arguments against it, making it perfectly valid in debate. It also has the merit in a debate of causing people to think, to discuss, and facilitate the debate itself. And furthermore has merit as a rhetorical device, for example in leading the listener to the problem of pushing back the question. So as you can see, many merits of including the cosmological argument in a debate do not require it to be provably correct. As I've pointed out in an earlier round, the fact that it is not provably correct, or provably incorrect, is precisely what makes it a debatable issue in the first place, and therefore not worthy of being excluded from such debates. So now the reader can see why, when the opponent tries to make us prove whether or not the cosmological argument is absolutely correct, that it is not within the scope of this debate, which is not here to prove whether or not the cosmological argument is correct or incorrect but is instead here to prove whether or not it is a bad enough argument, without rhetorical merit, that people need to stop using it.