Strong Atheism is a Sound Position

A priori stance of non-existence Pro doesn’t actually contest any of the premises of the argument provided, and has not challenged the logical validity of the argument; hence the conclusion follows logically which is that the following statement is false: “All entities are more likely to exist then not a priori” Hence the antithesis entails: “All entities are more likely to not exist a priori” Indeed this statement does not cause the same problems as a positive entity since an absence of an entity doesn’t entail anything; it has no properties and hence cannot contradict anything. Plugging in the antithesis into the argument does not yield contradictions; hence we should accept the antithesis. Pro seems to advocate for a 50% probability yes/no a priori, but this is absurd, multiple mutually exclusive entities can be proposed for each entity given. For example me proposing the last winning number on the lottery to be ‘47’ is not a 50/50 situation, there are many more incompatible entities than the ‘47’ ball, hence before the ball is drawn, it is reasonable to conclude that the number on the ball is most likely not ‘47’. To reformulate the argument: P1. All entities are as likely to exist then not a priori (a1, a2, a3… etc) P2. If a1, then not a2P2. If a1 then not a3P4. a1 is as likely to exist than not (from p1)P5. a2 is as likely to exist than not (from p1)P6. a3 is as likely to exist than notC. P1 entails a contradiction (a1,a2,a3…ad infinitum), therefore P1 is false Since we have many more entities we run into the same problems, and don’t forget we can do this for each and every attribute of God. Hence a priori it is more likely that God does not exist than he does. Pro doesn’t need to contest this as long as he presents strong positive arguments for the antithesis. Pro is false in his assertion that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Absense of evidence IS evidence of absence, it just isn’t ‘proof’ of absence. Which is what this argument establishes. Theological Fatalism I am afraid I cannot accommodate Pro’s misunderstanding of God’s definition, since I have already committed a round and significant space to it. The definition of God I made explicit in the opening arguments. This argument doesn’t require humans to have free will, it is irrelevant to the argument, it only makes my job a little more difficult. If Humans have free will then a larger evidential case can be given, although it’s unnecessary. Pro makes some rebuttals regarding God going against his nature, but these are irrelevant to the argument, the argument works even if God’s choices are constrained by his nature. The only premise that Pro contests is P3, and Pro defends it from the perspective of human free will, but the argument addresses God’s free will. If someone could have chosen differently, then it would violate God’s omniscience, since his foreknowledge would be ‘wrong’ when the choice contrary to his divine foreknowledge is made. This is a logical impossibility. [1] If for example the winning lottery numbers was written on a piece of paper, which is guaranteed to be true, then there is no sense of ‘uncertainty’ or ‘randomness’ within the actual dealing of the lottery numbers. Alternatively, It would be logically possible for God to hand a being with free will with information about his next choice, yet that being would not logically be able to choose differently, hence he simply cannot make the choice at hand, at best only an ‘illusion’ of choice can be made. Pro’s objection to free will (P4, I mistyped the second ‘P3’) literally appear to be ipsie dixit, in no sense of free will does it exist if a choice cannot be made, it violates the very definition of free will. “Free Will” is a philosophical term of art for a particular sort of capacity of rational agents to choose a course of action from among various alternatives”[2] Pro does attempt to attack P2, by objecting to the fact that God knowing my choices doesn’t impinge on my free will. I already argued hows this is false, but a further argument can be made because it is God’s own free will. God already knows his future choices, and an analogous situation to what I gave earlier where a piece of paper with someone’s future choice can be given to them, which they can never logically violate. They cannot ‘choose’ to violate it. If God handed me a piece of paper written with his own divine foreknowledge that ‘I will walk off the edge of a cliff in 10 minutes’, there would be no way I could logically choose not to do that, despite knowing the choice beforehand. Similarly, God cannot be ignorant of his own divine foreknowledge, and this defence fails. Non-Cognitivism of “God” Pro seems to conflate primary attributes with ‘physical attributes’, no where does it necessarily require that these attributes be physical. It doesn’t matter if time is immaterial for example, only that is has a concrete primary attribute, and it does in physics. With primary descriptions in entropy, relativity and the passage of sequential events. Pro asserts God as a spirit substance, but what the heck is a spirit? Pro could have called it a glooglum and yielded the same amount of information. He does define it further however: “A Spirit is an invisible entity, which is conscious, and the closest thing in this physical realm I can think of to compare a spirit being to is "energy. " However none of these descriptions are positive primary attributes. ‘Entity’ is meaningless on it’s own, ‘invisible’ is a secondary attribute as is ‘conscious’. What is conscious? It fails for the same reasons as my ’10 lb’ example, ’10 lbs of what? ’ Hence this entity is a meaningless substance. Pro did give one primary attribute, ‘energy’, however this is problematic as it limits God to anything of energy, and hence violate it’s omnipotence. Energy is described within spacetime, and hence limited by the rules of spacetime. The same will apply to any primary attribute one attempts to apply to God as I argued in my opening round. To give a more succinct summarization, to make the assertion: “God exists” Is equivalent to making the assertion “A boodoo exists” Both I argue are meaningless concepts, and hence positing their existence is both impossible and absurd, it is not mitigated by adding additional secondary attributes to the proposition: “A pink boodoo weighing 10 lbs which is aethetisically pleasing” None of these attributes add any substance to the central claim of a ‘boodoo’. I have argued that this is actually impossible to do in the case of God. Moral Argument It might be of some comfort to Pro that I am a moral nihilist, hah. Pro makes numerous assertions about the nature of morals but provides very little factual evidence to support them, they are largely bare assertions. Pro’s argument seems to be along the lines that Humans possess moral duties, and that these duties could not be natural in origin, hence it requires a supernatural origin. First this is a very long way off from affirming a God as defined in the first round, but secondly Pro has given no reasons to accept that they could not and would not have arisen naturally. If we assume that humans generally did not possess moral values and duties, what would happen? Well we can assume murder, pillage and thievery would be much more common. What would happen then? Well humans would work significantly less efficiently in groups, and cooperatively, and hence be much less successful at surviving. Hence the groups of humans that did exhibit generally more moral traits did survive better, and hence passed on their knowledge/behaviours to the next generation, which lead to civilization today. [3,4] This is a pretty well-accepted view in prehistory human development, and flat out refutes Pro’s claim that without God moral duties are impossible. Pro appeals to emotions in asserting that African slavery, the holocaust etc were wrong, but why should we believe this to be true? Why should we believe the holocaust is wrong? Clearly the holocaust was not wrong for the Nazi’s performing it, which is clear evidence that morals are subjective in nature. I am not asserting we do not have moral values, only that the justification for them is question-begging. Fine Tuning Argument This argument fails for numerous reasons:[5] 1. It assumes that life was ever an ‘end-goal’ of the big bang 2. It assumes that this is the only way in which life could have arisen 3. It assumes that the universe has, or could have only arisen once None of these assumptions have been justified by Pro, since without making these assumptions then pro’s argument fails due to the anthropic principle, which depicts that we are only ever going to observe and measure a universe in which we can exist, hence the fact that the physical parameters are well-suited for life is insignificant. [6] Given the significant flexibility that evolutionary theory proposes, and the diversity of life we see on Earth, it is very reasonable at accept that there is significant plasticity in how life could have arisen. Pro has not supported any of his assertions either, and hence has performed the bare assertion fallacy. ‘Miraculous Encounters’ Again, this is a bare assertion by Pro, what are these experiences, and why should we accept they are of supernatural origin. This appears to be an argument ad ignorantum by Pro and I await further evidence to support his claim. Summary So far I have demonstrated a very low probability of God existing a priori, demonstrated the concept of “God” is incoherent and shown that two of God’s attributes are mutually exclusive. The case for God’s non-existence has been established. References 1. . http://plato.stanford.edu... 2. . http://plato.stanford.edu... 3. Sam Harris ‘A Moral Landscape’ Ch 1 4. . http://en.wikipedia.org... 5. . http://plato.stanford.edu... 6. . http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu...