The Cosmological Argument

Thanks to wiploc for agreeing to debate me on this.Wiploc has many criticisms; I will attempt to take them in turn.Worries about Premise (1)Con says there is no reason to believe this yet I gave several reasons to believe it in my first round so this criticism would seem to miss the mark.Con brings up the counterexample of quantum mechanical events that seemingly happen with no sufficient cause (i.e. they come out of nothing), and thus, it would seem, we have no reason to believe the PSR. Indeed, if these events truly come out of nothing they would have no explanation. Or, perhaps Con means since these particle are indeterministic and random they do not therefore have explanation. It's unclear. Plainly these events would be contingent facts so if he is right he has found a valid counterexample to the PSR on the first option but not on the second option due to reasons stated below.Unfortunately, Con is mistaken. For one, this counterexample runs afoul of the modal argument for the PSR. Even if quantum events don't have causes why they happen in the actual world it seems quite possible that they could have causes; there seems nothing metaphysically impossible about that notion. If so, utilizing the w-PSR as stated in my first round we can show that the w-PSR entails the PSR. It would not count as a genuine counterexample then.For two, typically this objection is put that since these particles come into existence out of nothing they can't have a cause/explanation. Even putting aside my first consideration, it's not clear that these particles do come into existence out of nothing. However, as Paul Davies points out, these particles don't literally come into existence out of nothing. [1] They still occur in space which is definitely something. Furthermore, to deal with, perhaps, the second objection, these particles appearance can also be predicted with statistical probabilities and these events still happen in accordance to some physical laws. One could also appeal to the deterministic models of quantum mechanics in lieu of the the indeterministic models. [2]Con asks why (1) doesn't say everything has an explanation? Simply it's because it's how explanations necessary facts even go. Necessary facts would be things like "if A is taller than B and B is taller than C than A is taller than C" and "nothing can be red and green all over". Or even say Godel's incompleteness theorem about mathematics. [3] That would be necessarily true but it's hard to see what explains it. These things hold as a matter of metaphysical necessity. It's unclear what an explanation would look like. It would seem many necessary truths explain themselves or we just don't know how to explain them. So (1) is not special pleading. God, being a necessary being wouldn't just "occur". That implies something dubious: That a metaphysically necessary fact can just pop into existence which seems incoherent. A Mack truck is obviously not necessary.Meanings UnclearBy explanation I mean: "An explanation is a set of statements constructed to describe a set of facts which clarifies the causes, context, and consequences of those facts." [4] By contingent I mean: "In philosophy and logic, contingency is the status of propositions that are neither true under every possible valuation (i.e. tautologies) nor false under every possible valuation (i.e. contradictions). A contingent proposition is neither necessarily true nor necessarily false"By saying that God explains all contingent facts I mean since, due to the argument, God is the explainer of the BCCF, he is the very reason anything contingent exists or possibly exists. They all depend on him. A possible world is, simply, just the way things could have been. So say there is a world in which everything is the same except my pencil on my desk doesn't exist. In that world God would be the explainer of the BCCF. And so on for an infinite amount of various scenarios.Technically speaking, something contingent can possibly exist forever as long as it could possibly have not existed. SkepticismThis is nothing but rhetoric and is irrelevant. This does nothing to deal with one of my arguments for the PSR, there is no need to refute it.The BCCFAbove I explained why the PSR is limited to contingent facts. It'd be nonsense to say that a necessary fact could 1) be include in the set of all contingent facts and 2) say that it could be different. A necessary fact by necessity cannot be possibly change.Necessary beingNo, all facts are not sentient people. Facts are just true states of affairs or states of affairs that obtain/exist. Obviously, a person can exist so in this sense a (human) person could be a contingent fact and a divine person could be a necessary fact.I'm not saying any uncaused thing is God. For example, I believe 2 + 2 = 4 is a necessary fact and is uncaused yet it is not God.Necessary being = GodI dealt with this objection in my first section.I pass the torch back to wiploc.--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------[1] http://www.puffin.creighton.edu...[2] http://en.wikipedia.org...[3] http://en.wikipedia.org...[4] http://en.wikipedia.org...[5] http://en.wikipedia.org...