God exists.

I agree with my opponent that the debate over God's existence is very important. However, I don't think he has successfully defended the claim that God exists. My opponent begins by pointing out that most people think that God exists. This is true, but I don't think it is a reason to take the claim that God exists more seriously than we would if only a minority of people accepted the claim. For one thing, that would be the ad populum fallacy [1]. In addition, there is an explanation for this fact that doesn't require God to exist or even be a reasonable hypothesis, namely that most people simply are not familiar with the philosophical and scientific considerations that motivate atheism. Support for the latter explanation comes from the fact that most philosophers don't believe in God [2] and that most members of the National Academy of Sciences do not believe in God either [3]. Now, let's move on to my opponent's arguments for God's existence. 1. The Creation of the Universe For convenience, I will quote my opponent's argument in full: "If the universe came into existence at some point, it must have a cause, just like everything does. Scientists agree that the existence of the universe has been finite - the Borde-Guth-Vilenken theorem shows that expansion phases of the universe must be finite. That means a cause with immense power which transcends the universe, can make decisions independent of spacetime, and at some point along the causal chain, necessary being must exist." One might be tempted to criticize this argument for failing to demonstrate that the cause is conscious, let alone capable of "making decisions." My opponent has something to say about that in the next section, so I will pass it over for now. However, I will point out that my opponent has offered no support, anywhere in his post, for the claim that God is omnipotent, omniscient, or perfectly good. Even if I granted all of his reasoning, it would only establish the existence of a very powerful being who decided to create the universe. In addition, there could be more than one God (billions even, for all he has argued), and God might have passed out of existence immediately after creating the universe. So my opponent's arguments do not come anywhere near establishing the resolution. My opponent's only support for the claim that the universe began to exist is the Borde - Guth - Vilenkin theorem. I try not to get involved in debates about things in cosmology that I have no first hand understanding of, because it always turns into "dueling quotes." Basically, one person quotes a physicist saying something that sounds supportive of their view, and the other person quotes something a physicist said that sounds supportive of their view, and it just goes on until one side or the other runs out of quotes. It's a completely worthless exercise among any group of people that lack an advanced grasp of cosmology - among which my opponent and I are obviously included. Here is the actual conclusion of the paper that established the Borde - Guth - Vilenkin theorem: "Our argument shows that null and time-like geodesics are, in general, past-incomplete in inflationary models, whether or not energy conditions hold, provided only that the averaged expansion condition H av > 0 holds along these past-directed geodesics." [4] If my opponent is going to rely on the Borde - Guth - Vilenkin theorem to support the existence of God, let him show the logical connections between that claim and the claim that the universe was created by God. Otherwise, I see no reason to take this argument seriously. But okay, let's play dueling quotes. Victor Stenger emailed Vilenkin and asked him whether his theorem implies that the universe had an absolute beginning. He responded: "No. But it proves that the expansion of the universe must have had a beginning. You can evade the theorem by postulating that the universe was contracting prior to some time." [5] Clearly, this quote strongly undermines my opponent's position. Another objection that can be made to my opponent's argument is that the premise contradicts the conclusion. The premise is that whatever begins to exist has a cause. But if whatever begins to exist has a cause, then there cannot be an absolute beginning to the universe, because the state of the universe at any given time has to be caused by a prior state that comes before it in time. So, my opponent's premise entails that the universe has existed forever. This latter point also precludes there being any scientific support for my opponent's argument. The law of causality is a presupposition of science, and it entails that the universe has existed forever. Therefore, any argument to the effect that the universe had an absolute beginning is necessarily unscientific. 2. The Design in the Universe For convenience, I will quote the entire relevant section of my opponent's post: "It is very unlikely for any random universe to support life, especially when considering the constants of the universe, which, if ever so slightly varied, would make a universe which does not support life. It seems unlikely that this is necessity, chance, or evolution. The being mentioned in our previous argument, then, might also have a mind with an intent to create humanity." No support for any of these premises is offered anywhere in the post. There are actually a number of alternative explanations for the fine tuning of the universe under consideration by scientists. For example, the multiverse hypothesis holds that there are a lot of universes with different constants, which increases the probability of one of these universes containing life. [6] Another problem with this argument is that we would not be here to wonder about the issue if our universe did not have the constants suited to producing life. There is nothing surprising about finding out that the universe is conducive to life - we knew that ahead of time. In addition, the fine tuning argument overlooks the fact that we tell whether something was designed by a rational agent by comparing it with things that we know were made by humans. The universe does not resemble anything that humans make, so we have no objective basis for concluding that it was made by a rational agent. In addition, the fine tuning argument assumes that a God would be likely to create life, but there is no rational basis for this assumption. A God would be so radically different from us that we have no basis for predicting what it would be likely to create. This entire argument is based on the fallacy of anthropomorphism - assuming that because we like life, God would like life. 3. "Plausible" Miracles My opponent appeals to the Bible and religious experience as his final argument. However, David Hume pointed out a problem that applies to both of these alleged sources of evidence. It will always be more likely, in practice, that someone should lie or be deceived than that a miracle has occurred. No matter how unlikely it might seem that the disciples lied (and it's not really that unlikely, given the unreliability of our sources), it will be more unlikely that the laws of nature were violated, because we have more evidence for the law of nature than we do for the disciples' credibility. Similarly, it will always be more likely that a Christian is misinterpreting an emotion or hallucinating than that they are having a religious experience caused by God. The religious experience would be a miracle if veridical, and therefore, that hypothesis will always be less likely than any remotely credible naturalistic explanation in practice. [7] Conclusion As you can see, my opponent's arguments are inadequate to support the resolution. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org... [2] https://philpapers.org... [3] https://www.lhup.edu... [4] https://arxiv.org... [5] http://arizonaatheist.blogspot.com... [6] https://en.wikipedia.org... [7] J. L. Mackie, The Miracle of Theism