God Exists

http://www.youtube.com... I. Greatness Greatness is a purely subjective property, which entails a relative understanding according to what is “great” according to each line of perception. All subjective properties require a standard to describe the level of that property. For example, there is a universe with a single pencil and nothing else. In such a universe, you cannot say the pencil is “small”, as there is no definition of “small” without anything else to measure against, i.e. something larger, so that one knows this is “smaller”. Thus, such a property requires a standard. So what is the standard to God’s “greatness”? The standard must be: a) Internal to God b) External to God A standard being internal to God begs the question. A standard external to God contradicts his position as transcendent to the universe. Thus, with no standard to match up against, a great God’s existence is incoherent. To negate this without ad hoc explanations, my opponent has to prove that greatness is an objective property, which would require a highly specific definition of “greatness.”’ Greatness is the quality of being “great”, which is defined as: “of an extent, amount, or intensity considerably above average”, or “of ability, quality, or eminence considerably above average.” [1] What is the supposed mark of “average” here? It is logically incoherent to measure greatness objectively, thus the qualities of greatness and transcendence will contradict each other if together. As God is defined as being “immensely great”, God requires a standard to be “immensely great”, and without such a standard, is incoherent if real. II. Incoherence of a Caused Universe Requirements for Causality Physicist Sean Carroll notes two features that are necessary to speak of causality, time and the laws of nature. [2] Causality is incoherent without these features. Sans physical laws we lack the unbreakable principles that don’t allow for things to “just happen”, without the arrow of time, which, in turn, is based on entropy via. the second law of thermodynamics [3], we cannot coherently talk about ”before” or “after”, necessary in order to say “X caused Y to be”, moreover it also entails there is no absolute “first”. Outside of, and prior to, the universe, there are no physical laws, nor is there entropy. Without these, causality is incoherent, thus the universe cannot have been caused. Let us, thus, structure this argument in the following manner. P1: If God exists, the universe has a cause. P2: The universe cannot have a cause. C: God cannot exist. P1 is true by definition, as God is the cause of the universe. P2 is affirmed by Sean Carroll’s observation that causality is incoherent without time and the laws of nature. Eternalism & Relativity According to general relativity, space is “stretchable”. This was confirmed by the Friedmann observations and Hubble’s Law, that were used by Georges Lemaitre to propose the Big Bang theory, that states the universe is expanding, which is shown via. the cosmological redshift. [4] The Borde-Guth-Vilenkin singularity theorem, derived by Arvind Borde, Alan Guth and Alexander Vilenkin, further supports the theory that the universe is expanding. [5] General relativity also yields “eternalism” or block universe, where the past, present and future are all equally “real”, and the passage of time is both true AND illusory via. the B-theory of time. General relativity models time as a “fourth dimension” of space itself, allowing for the block universe theory to be likely true. Causality cannot be stressed on unless one assumes the presentism ontology of time, which is dubious in light of scientific discoveries supporting eternalism, especially special and general relativity. “Many [scientists and philosophers] have argued against presentism on the grounds that presentism is incompatible with the theory of relativity.” [6] In special relativity, each observer has their own “plane of simultaneity”, a small section of three-dimensional space where all events are simultaneous. [7] "Special relativity suggests that the concept of simultaneity is not universal: according to the relativity of simultaneity, observers in different frames of reference can have different perceptions of whether a given pair of events happened at the same time or at different times, with there being no physical basis for preferring one frame's judgments over another's (though in a case where one event A happens in the past light cone of another event B, all frames will agree that A happened in the past of B). So, in special relativity there can be no physical basis for picking out a unique set of events that are all happening simultaneously in ‘the present’.” [8] This entails eternalism. III. Argument from Atemporal Minds P1: God is atemporal. P2: God has a mind. P3: Minds are processes and/or involve processes. P4: All processes are temporal. C1: An atemporal mind cannot exist. C2: Therefore, God cannot exist. P1 is true as God is transcendent, ergo external to the universe. Outside of the universe, and, thus, outside of the space-time continuum by definition, there is no time. Therefore, God has to be atemporal. P2 is true by definition, as God is intelligent. Intelligence is incoherent without a mind, ergo God has a mind/is a disembodied mind. P3 is accurate as we don’t have a quantitative understanding of “intelligence”, which here requires a highly specific definition of “intelligence”, which must be a subjective property unless it has a process. Subjective properties are incoherent if paired with transcendence, as noted by the incoherence of “greatness” as a property, thus intelligence has to be objective for the existence of God as a mind, ergo it must involve a process. To argue a mind is not a process is to also concede that the entity is static, and essentially non-causal, thus the mind must involve a process by definition. P4 follows as if time doesn’t exist, then there will obviously be no arrow of time. An “arrow of time” is necessary for temporal passage. For something to coherently “happen”, there has to be time, thus all processes require an arrow of time to be coherent. IV. Inference Simplicity The Law of Parsimony, a form of Occam’s Razor, posits that in a group of equally likely explanation, the one with least number of assumptions is a priori most likely. [9] Theism, or even deism, has greater number of assumptions than atheistic metaphysical naturalism. The former assumes the existence of a physical universe, its laws AND God, the latter only assumes the existence of a physical universe and its laws. Therefore, if the existence of God is not required and the functioning of the universe can do without the addition of God, then the other explanation is more likely. [10] Causality Is Not Required According to the zero-energy universe hypothesis, the total amount of energy in the universe is exactly zero, as the scalar “positive” energy it contains is balanced out by the attractive vector ‘negative’ force of gravity. [11-12] “In the inflationary theory, matter, antimatter, and photons were produced by the energy of the false vacuum, which was released following the phase transition. All of these particles consist of positive energy. This energy, however, is exactly balanced by the negative gravitational energy of everything pulling on everything else. In other words, the total energy of the universe is zero. It is remarkable that the universe consists of essentially nothing, but in positive and negative parts. You can easily see that gravity is associated with negative energy: If you drop a ball from rest (defined to be a state of zero energy), it gains kinetic energy as it falls. But this gain is exactly balanced by a larger negative gravitational energy as it comes closer to Earth’s center, so the sum of the two energies remains zero.” [13] So how did the universe originate? Edward P. Tryon proposed that the universe itself is a vacuum fluctuation. This may be partly true. Due to quantum uncertainty, a particle and an antiparticle may form in the quantum vacuum and annihilate to release two photons. The photons would generally “pop” out of existence in a period shorter than Planck time, unless the photons are ‘canceled’ out in net energy by the uncaused creation of vector gravity by this very fluctuation. [14-15] Lawrence Krauss says, “[I]f the total energy in the universe is zero, the universe could have been caused by uncaused quantum fluctuations.” [16] The fluctuations and gravity originate from the limited energy of the quantum vacuum that literally came “out of nothing”. This conflicts with standard intuition via. Parmenidean ontology, that says “ex nihilo nihil fit”, literally “out of nothing comes nothing.” But recent research says this ‘rational intuition’ is flawed. But what is the proof of this, one might ask. It is virtually proven by the homogeneity of normal energy distribution across the universe. Furthermore, general relativity tells us that space is curved. This means that the shape of the universe would have to be ‘closed’ (about the same structure as a sphere), ‘open’ (a curved sheet), or flat. If the universe IS flat, the sum of all net energy in the universe would be zero. Lawrence Krauss says, “If our universe was closed, if we look far enough [forward], we would see the back of our heads.” This is because of the reflection of light across such bent space. An open universe would expand forever, and there would be no end to the constant expansion of the universe. Krauss continues, “Weighing the universe tells us what the curvature of the universe is. … If we can weigh all clusters of galaxies in the universe, we can weigh all the mass and energy in the universe using general relativity. … [W]e can weigh [a] system using general relativity. … [I]n a flat universe, the total energy in the universe is precisely zero. … And right now we know to a chance of error of 1% that the universe is flat.” [16] Sources in comments.