It is likely that a God or gods exist

I am still a new debater on debate. org, and I apologize if the formatting of my response does not come out great. Before making his arguments for atheism, my opponent claims that he only needs to refute one property of a god and that I need to show that this God or gods exist, rather than just existed. I believe this burden can be met, for my case is cumulative. Nevertheless, it still seems like a high burden, and it would seem my opponent is grasping at straws. For example, while it is extremely plausible to believe that a god exists today, my opponent would have me prove this with near-certainty, which seems to be a practically impossible burden for any philosophical argument. All I need to do is to show that my premises are more plausible than their negations. Second, I mentioned in round one that god need not even be a creator; gods can be mere supernatural agents. So it would seem like my opponent’s undeveloped claims lead to nothing. Here is an observation of my own — TinyURL links should not be used as sources [8]. Arguments for Atheism Argument against Causality There are problems here. First, theism is compatible with even an eternal universe, for God could be an eternal sustainer. Second, causes can be simultaneous and do not have to come from a previous moment in time. According to Craig, the defender of the Kalam argument “may hold that God exists timelessly sans creation and temporally at and subsequent to the moment of creation, so that His act of causing the beginning of the universe is simultaneous with the universe's beginning to exist” [9]. Craig also gives an example of simultaneous causation when he says, “Why can't the cause and effect exist at the same time in an asymmetric dependency relation? For example, a heavy chandelier hanging on a chain from the ceiling. The ceiling and chain hold up the chandelier; the chandelier and chain don't support the ceiling! ” [10]. In order for this argument to work, my opponent has to disprove simultaneous causation, which I highly doubt he can do. After all, it is his burden to show that simultaneous causation is impossible! Third, God does not have to obey physical laws like entropy because he is a supernatural being who presumably created the laws in the first place. So this argument seems doubtful. Quantum Superposition Argument Premise one, that God has to be omniscient, is very false. If you make a house, even if you live in the house afterwards, that does not mean you observe every part of the house all the time. Moreover, premise two is very doubtful, again because God is supernatural and does not have to obey the laws of physics. This argument is horrendous. Argument against Atemporal Minds This argument is also poor. Minds can hold beliefs, ideas, and thoughts eternally, without change, and hence it is very doubtful why intelligence would require a temporal process in the case of a creator God. Also, this argument, like all of Con’s other arguments, does not refute non-creator gods that may exist in time like Athena. Vacuum Fluctuation Argument My opponent makes this argument almost completely by pushing together quotations from different sources and leaving it like that. But many of his sources are highly outdated- his seventh source is a physics paper from 1973, more than forty years ago! In the meantime, science has moved beyond these outdated conclusions. My opponent proposes a quantum fluctuation model of origin of the universe, but he does nothing to prove that such a highly speculative idea is true. Moreover, he does not show how such models actually function as a disproof against a God or gods. In fact, we have good reason to believe that such models are false. According to Craig, vacuum fluctuation models failed to outlive the 1980s due to theoretical problems regarding production of matter and due to a “deep incoherence” [11]. These models suffer from the problem that, given infinite past time, universes will spawn at every point in the vacuum and collide with each other, resulting in an infinitely old universe. However, this is not what we observe, so these models simply do not work. Hence, my opponent’s proposed model does nothing to show that the universe can be caused without God. Moreover, if this model were true, there would be only one universe, not a multiverse, which means that, not only is my opponent’s response to the Kalam argument simply wrong, but his response to the Fine-Tuning argument fails as well. So my opponent’s vacuum fluctuation argument simply does not work. Law of Parsimony My opponent misstates the Law of Parsimony here, claiming that simpler explanations are more probable. This is incorrect; Occam’s Razor speculates that other things equal, simpler explanations, given the available data, are better or more preferable [12]. But there is an important point to make here. Occam’s Razor prefers a simple explanation for the data, and I have shown that there are important facts that require explanation, such as the beginning of the universe. So this argument only works if all three of my arguments fail. Arguments for Theism Kalam Cosmological Argument (KCA) I have already refuted much about what my opponent has said about the KCA. I have shown that my opponent’s Vacuum Fluctuation Argument, Argument against Causality, and Quantum Superposition Argument all fail, and most of my opponent’s objections are reiterations of these arguments. Let me in turn briefly reiterate the arguments for the first premise of the KCA, namely that whatever begins to exist has a cause. First, something cannot come from nothing, for nothing has no properties. Second, if universes can pop into being out of nothing, why doesn’t anything and everything pop into being out of nothing? Third, the causal premise is confirmed by our everyday experience. These arguments extend. My opponent also questions my inference that the cause of the universe must be personal. But if something is timeless, spaceless, matterless, and non-personal, then it is an abstract object. If, by contrast, something is timeless spaceless, matterless, and personal, it is a disembodied mind. So my dichotomy between abstract objects and disembodied minds is sound, and so we have strong grounds for believing that the cause of the universe is personal. Fine-Tuning Argument I have already refuted my opponent’s quantum vacuum model, so my opponent’s rebuttals are simply false. Arguments extend. Argument from Religious Experiences My opponent says that spiritual experiences show that God exists subjectively, but quite honestly, I don’t know what “subjective reality” means in this context. He claims that experiences don’t conclusively prove that God exist, but he fails to understand that I am not using a deductive argument from religious experiences. I am using an argument to the best explanation, and I propose that the existence of a God or gods is the best, simplest, most plausible explanation for the fact that people have religious experiences. My opponent mentions, but does not develop or defend at all, two rival naturalistic explanations for religious experiences. He says that people suffer from delusions or simply lie about their experiences. Honestly, I do not believe my opponent takes religious experiences, the primary reason why most people believe in God, seriously enough. In round two, I showed that eight out of ten people are theists [5]. A large subset of these people believe in God not because of the cosmological argument or the teleological argument but because they experience the inner presence of the divine. It seems extraordinarily implausible that all these people are mentally ill, as Con suggests. In round 2, I also cited ex-Christian Mark Vulvetic, who, when asked about his religious experiences, says, “You have to understand that atheism just was not a live option for me at all--it was on par with the notion that there might not actually be a material world at all… After all, I had personal experience of god--I knew his existence and his goodness first-hand” [6]. Does my opponent really think that Mark Vulvetic, and billions of others like him, are simply lying about their experiences? That seems extraordinarily improbable. In sum, both of my opponent’s naturalistic hypotheses for religious experiences are extremely implausible. Theism, however, has a very simple explanation, namely that a God or gods exist. Conclusion I have shown that all of my opponent’s arguments fail to establish that atheism is true, and I have shown that my three arguments for theism succeed. A God or gods explains the origin of the universe, the fine-tuning of the universe, and the religious experiences of billions of people. Atheists like to think that they are so much smarter than theists, perhaps due to their childhood experiences, but most of the arguments that my opponent has offered for atheism are quite honestly horrible. I, on the other hand, have provided a strong, intelligent case for theism, which my opponent has not come close to refuting. Unless my opponent can offer better arguments for atheism and better objections to my theistic arguments, I think we can conclude on the basis of this debate that a God or gods exist. [8] . https://docs.google.com... [9] . http://www.leaderu.com... [10] . http://www.reasonablefaith.org... [11] . http://www.reasonablefaith.org... [12] . http://plato.stanford.edu... [5] . http://www.pewforum.org... [6] . http://infidels.org...