The Following Arguments for the Existence of God are Valid - 1K

Before I being my defense of KCA, I will officially drop premises five and six and the conclusion that follows thereafter. It is clear that neither The Skeptic nor I wish to hamper the space allocated for KCA itself with premises that could be (and have been) a debate in their own right. P1. Whatever begins to exist has a cause of its existence. This premise, which I will heretofore refer to as the causal principle, is constantly affirmed in our experiences. David Hume, noted for his insistence that we are not justified in believing this principle still believed it to be true when he wrote to John Stewart in 1754, "But allow me to tell you that I never asserted so absurd a Proposition as that anything might arise without a cause: I only maintain'd, that our Certainty of the Falsehood of that Proposition proceeded neither from Intuition nor Demonstration, but from another source." [1] Even J. L. Mackie, an opponent to KCA had to admit, "Still this principle has some plausibility, in that it is constantly confirmed in our experience (and also used, reasonably, in interpreting our experience)." [2] So, my opponent has no grounds to claim that "we are bankrupt for any reason why this [principle] is so." Indeed, to accept that something can begin to exist without cause is to accept all sorts of nonsense. Think of any field of science, from meteorology to physics, and you'll find the insatiable pursuit of cause. So when my opponent says there is no scientific principle that affirms it, in a way he's right. The causal principle is not a scientific law but a metaphysical law upon which science relies. That is to say, science does not show the causal principle to be true, but without it, science is unintelligible. My opponent later engages in semantics when he says, "For what COMES into existence? Nothing we know of does such a thing; the universe is predicated by change only." When we speak of "things," we do not speak of the parts but of the whole. When I say the earth began to exist, it is irrational to say, "No, silly, the earth is just matter and matter has always existed." This is why the term "begins" appears in the principle, because we are ultimately concerned with cause and effect. In all our observations--and I challenge my opponent to find a defensible exception--things that begin have been caused. The real question is: does this apply to matter in the universe as well? That is the aim of the second premise. In rebuttal to P1, my opponent refers to the work of Hawkings. I am moving my refutation to P2 where it more accurately applies. The beginning of the universe is separate from the causal principle in general. P2. The universe began to exist. The Big Bang Model of the universe is the result of traversing the general relativity equations back in time to a singularity, where time reaches infinity. Anything before this singularity is incalculable. Hawking's universal wave function (also called quantum cosmology) is accomplished using imaginary numbers for the time variable in Einstein's gravitational equations, which converts spacetime into Euclidean 4D space, which is by definition timeless. It works mathematically but is philosophically not cogent. It is not unusual to convert time into a space dimension using imaginary numbers for certain problems, but physicists typically revert back to normal spacetime dimensions when dealing with anything in the modern universe. If quantum cosmology is a realistic description of the universe, than we should be using imaginary numbers for all our time variables. Since in reality we do not, my opponent is too hasty to conclude "there is very good reason to believe the universe began without being caused." In fact, the work of Alexander Vilenkin (who preceded Hawkings and Hartle in quantum cosmology), developed a unifying theory in 2003 with Arvind Borde and Alan Guth. This theory, which is independent of our universe and therefore applies to all models of universes, shows that all expanding universes must have a singularity and therefore a beginning. (See link [3] for description). This is direct, recent scientific support of my premise. Vilenkin, who worked in the past on modeling a timeless universe, now says, "Cosmologists can no longer hide behind the possibility of a past-eternal universe. There is no escape, they have to face the problem of a cosmic beginning." [4] Regarding infinity, I admittedly misused my terms in my opening round. To clarify, there are two types of infinity: potential (∞) and actual (ℵ). "Potential infinity refers to a procedure that gets closer and closer to, but never quite reaches, an infinite end." This is different from an actual infinity, which is "an infinity that one actually reaches; the process is already done." [5] When I said an actual infinity is impossible, I meant an actual infinity is physically impossible. While an actual infinity is a meaningful mathematical concept, it is not possible to have an actual infinite number of things, particular in nature. Matter is finite. My opponent engages in equivocation when presenting the Zeno paradox, which does not illustrate an actual infinity, but a potential infinity. The set will grow forever, but an actual infinity is--by definition--already complete. I agree the universe is boundless and therefore potentially infinite in time, but an actual infinite number of events is impossible. The best example of an actual infinity is Hilbert's Grand Hotel paradox. A hotel has an actual infinite number of rooms and all rooms are occupied. When new guests arrive, the proprietor is able to give that guest a room by shifting the guest in room 1 to room 2, and so on for infinity. So, even though the hotel is full, it's not full. In short, the hotel is simultaneously always full and always has vacancies. Likewise, to claim the universe has an actual infinite number of events is to assert that simultaneously all events have already occurred and all events have yet to occur. P3. The first cause must be eternal. My opponent's rebuttal on this point depends upon his ability to prove that an actual infinite number of things can exist. Unless he can do that intelligibly, this point remains unanswered and therefore valid. P4. All eternal causes of temporal effects must be personal. If all premises up this point hold, then we have to determine how an eternal entity can spontaneously cause something different than itself. A non-teleological entity is impossible. There are two non-teleological possibilities giving the necessity of equilibrium in an eternal entity: an inactive entity or a perpetual machine. The first obviously cannot cause anything as it is eternally still. For the second option imagine a perpetual machine that causes and consumes universes. While the machine itself is conceivable, the fact that it is a machine in perpetual motion implies design. Such a machine could not have evolved, since evolution is change over time. It could not just "be" because motion is change over time as well. At best, something designed it, but then we have a paradox, for a designer of an eternal machine would have to be eternal as well, landing you in the predicament of a machine that was designed both before and after the designer designed it. Indeed, by the impossibility of a non-teleological agent, we are left with an agent that with a Will. My opponent says an eternal agent exhibits change when making a decision. In my last round I stated, "It is logically possible for an eternal personal agent to freely choose to create effects in time without necessitating change in its own properties." A Will is a fixed, unchanging property of the entity. Decisions can be made within that Will without invoking change in the entity itself. Thus, the eternal cause is most intelligibly personal in nature. SOURCES See Comments