God exists

On God's necessity: Imagine we were discussing the existence of dragons, and I were to define "dragon" as any creature with wings and scales that is capable of breathing fire. After this, my job in the debate would be to demonstrate the existence a creature which has wings and scales and can breathe fire. What I would not be able to do, however, would be to point to a creature which has wings and scales, and from my definition of "dragon" assume that the creature must be able to breathe fire, and therefore that it is a dragon. This is a circular reasoning fallacy. By the same token, Pro may not define "God" as necessary, uncaused and so on and then assume that any given thing being discussed must have said properties, and therefore that it is God (and that therefore God exists). What we really mean by a definition is that *if* dragons exist, then they have scales, wings, and can breathe fire. We cannot use this to demonstrate the existence of dragons. Rather, we use this to know if any given thing we have demonstrated the existence of is a dragon. Pro must *demonstrate* that some entity which exists has the property of necessity (and the other properties listed) and then we may conclude that God exists. On the relations between constants: A number of physical constants have been shown to be related. See the relation I described in R3, backed up by source 9. One would not intuitively expect the speed of light to have anything to do with the permeability of free space, but it does. There are countless other cases of this in physics and so the evidence suggests it may be very likely that all the physical constants are related. If not, we can say with certainty that at least a large number of them are, and that reduces the supposedly overwhelming unlikelihood of a universe that is hospitable to life. The unlikelihood of the universe being hospitable to life is a problem that is more readily explained by linked constants than by an omnimaximal deity- the former is far more likely (as it is far more simple) than the latter, unless evidence is presented to the contrary. On the multiverse: Occam's razor considers not only the *number* of things required for an explanation, but also the *complexity* of them. What would you be more surprised to see when visiting the beach: a million grains of sand, or a dragon? The dragon is less likely because it is complex. Likewise, if a God exists, it must be infinitely more complex than a multiverse, and so is much less likely than a multiverse. "Who created them?" is quite obviously begging the question. On infinite regresses: Pro has neglected the fact that an infinite number of events can happen in a finite amount of time. Consider the sum: 1 + 1/2 + 1/4 + 1/8 and so on, with each number being half of the previous one. The answer is 2. You can add an infinite number of things in a finite amount of time. Imagine the numbers represent the height a ball reaches after bouncing: the ball bounces an infinite number of times in a finite amount of time. Infinite regresses can and do happen. [See source 21 "counting past infinity" and 22 "supertasks" for more on this.] On Ontological: None of my contradictions have been debunked- it doesn't matter what God wants to do- can he create a boulder so heavy he cannot lift it? Whatever your answer, God is not omnipotent (as he either cannot create the boulder or he cannot lift the boulder). This is proving the claim "Omnimaximality cannot exist" through a mathematical proof by contradiction [source 23:24]. We assume an omnimaximal being could exist, and show that this would negate itself (omnipotence is self-inconsistent, and is inconsistent with omniscience, omnipresence, and omnibenevolence, as argued above). The "great making properties" and "lesser making properties" provided by Pro is completely arbitrary. What makes good greater than evil? What makes necessity greater than contingency? The hamster analogy is meant to highlight the absurdity of the ontological argument. The "maximally greatness" is irrelevant to the analogy. God is arbitrarily declared as maximally great just as the hamster is arbitrarily declared as maximally nice, and then the property of existence and being alive are arbitrarily declared to be greater or nicer than the alternatives, and from this we deduce that God must exist and the hamster must be immortal. The reasoning is the same: two arbitrary premises result in a nonsensical conclusion. "The ontological argument is designed to prove that there must be a maximally great and necessary being who exists in the actual world." It has failed to do so. Rather, it has demonstrated that *if* there exists a maximally great being, that maximally great being must exist. At best, it has gotten nowhere. Kalam: "Con's argument that the universe does not have to obey its own laws since it is on the macroscopic level is an unevidenced bare assertion. " The evidence is in sources 16:19. Read them if you want evidence. "Secondly, this is false because we can apply our inductive reasoning and physical laws to both the parts and the whole" The entire point here is that inductive reasoning has its limits. "Nothing can pop into existence without a cause Con" Things can and do, all the time. You keep mentioning "quantum vacuum energy", but you clearly have no idea what it means. A quantum vacuum is what remains if you remove absolutely everything from an area of space- there is no matter and no energy. "Quantum vacuum energy" is misleading, because it sounds like it means quantum vacuums have energy. They don't. Really, quantum vacuum energy is the observation that small amounts of energy can spontaneously emerge in a vacuum for a short while [See sources 25:27], without cause. They happen simply because they are allowed to happen by Heisenburg's uncertainty principle. BGV theorem: Please elaborate. What is BGV theorem? How does it prove that cyclical universes can't exist? As promised, I'll now respond to Pro's first paragraph in R3: "Evil whether climate change, starvation in africa, etc. are all the results of man-made choices" This is not true. Malaria, cancer, earthquakes, many terrible things happen that are not mankind's fault. "The less common source of evil like natural evil such as hurricanes, lightnings, etc. is used by God to test the faith and the strength of the belief of the people who are undergoing this crisis. Things like diseases, volcanoes etc. are used by God to test the patience, love and faith of his test subjects to him." Then he is neither omniscient nor omnibenevolent. The point in testing something is to gain knowledge about it- I test the car I designed to confirm that it works. I analyse a sample of rock to learn what its chemical composition is. If God is omniscient, he has absolutely no need to test us- he already knows the result of the test. Likewise, he is not omnibenevolent- if he is willing to have someone tortured by malaria, famine, or a tsunami to "test" their love for him, then he is malicious. The idea of free will is completely incompatible with the existence of an omnimaximal being, too: Imagine I were to throw a rock at someone, and it hits them in the head, and they die. The rock is not to blame, because it had no control over what happened- everything about its trajectory, its velocity and so on was determined by me. Now imagine I were to create and program a robot, and the robot were to kill someone. Once again, the robot is not to blame- I am. I programmed it in such a way that it would kill. If God created us, he is responsible for everything about us. He decided how tall we are, our eye colour, and our personality traits. When he created us, he knew exactly how we would behave (due to his omniscience) and could have chosen to create us in a way which gave us any trait he desired or removed any other trait he desired (due to his omnipotence). This makes us no different from the robot- the results of our actions was determined by someone else before we even existed. We cannot have free will if we have a God. You cannot blame mankind for the existence of evil. So, to summarise my case thus far: 1) The apparent fine-tuning of the universe is more plausibly explained by relationships between constants or by multiverses or a cyclical universe than by God. 2) The ontological argument takes nonsensical and arbitrary premises, and produces more of the same. 3) The Kalam argument mistakenly tries to apply macroscopic, classical causality to the origins of the universe, which needn't obey it. 4) If you can't follow 3), cyclical universes are also a plausible mechanism of how a universe can exist without violating macroscopic, classical causality. 5) An omnibenevolent, omnipotent being is not compatible with the bad things we see in the world. These bad things cannot be explained by God testing us (as an omniscient being would have no need to test us, and an omnibenevolent being would not test us in this way), and nor can it be explained by free will, as if God exists, we cannot have free will. 6) Omnimaximality is internally inconsistent- omnipotence negates itself and pretty much everything else. 7) Given the absence of any compelling reason to believe that a God does exist, you should side with the agnostic atheist case- we do not believe in a God, but in principle cannot be 100% certain. Sources: [21]: [22]: [23]: https://en.wikipedia.org... [24]: [25]: http://scienceblogs.com... [26]: http://www.collective-evolution.com... [27]: https://en.wikipedia.org...