God Exists

My opponent has begun to focus on our use of language. She is quite right in stating that language makes use of tokens. Words are tokens that represent things in the real world. So the English word "Chair" is a token that represents an object, Perhaps the sort of object you are sitting on as you read this. These tokens are essentially made up, Or constructed, By human beings. It is difficult to see how anything relevant follows from this pertaining to our debate. Nothing about real world objects, Real world chairs, Follows from manipulating the way that I speak of them. What would be accomplished if I said, "If you strip away the name 'Chair', You just have the function of the object. To conclude that it is a 'chair" is a human notion. We should conclude that the universe functions for sitting, Rather than what a human constructed, A 'chair'. " Would this line of reasoning lead us to conclude that chairs do not exist? Clearly not, And neither should it lead us to conclude that God does not exist. I am really unconcerned with what label you want to use for the being that I am describing. I have argued that an immaterial, Timeless, Powerful, Morally perfect, Personal creator of the universe exists. The English word "God" best describes an entity like this, Much like the word "Chair" best describes an object fashioned by a carpenter for the purpose of sitting. Redefining or refusing to use standard English words for things seems to just confuse the issue. At any rate, It would be a strange form of atheism that affirms the existence of the kind of entity that I'm describing! I did not detect any interaction with the cosmological or contingency arguments for God's existence in my opponent's response, But she did suggest that premise 1 of the moral argument was false. She suggested that objective moral values and duties can exist in the absence of God, Which she attributes to the universe. Unfortunately she has not described exactly what she means by this. If she means to say that moral laws are like natural laws we immediately run into a problem. Natural laws do not *prescribe* behavior, They *describe* how things behave. The law of gravity, For example, Does not direct objects to have attractive forces between them but rather describes the forces that they in fact have. Morality, However, Is very different. We find moral imperatives that we may choose to follow or ignore. Morality would say we should love our neighbor, But we can choose to rob them instead. For this reason moral laws are not at all like natural laws. Moral laws prescribe what we *ought* to do even if we do not. In other words, Moral laws prescribe what often never comes to pass, Events that don't actually occur in our universe. It seems nonsensical to say that the universe prescribes behavior that does not exist within it. It is also difficult to make sense of the universe, A non-personal collection of particles, Directing me to "love my neighbor". How are we to consider something like the sun or the moon directing me to feed the poor? Even if they somehow could, Why should I be obligated to follow their instruction? How is it that I should have the objective duty to obey the dictates of an impersonal universe? It seems utterly unconvincing to say that we have moral duties to impersonal objects. Consider whether you have a moral duty to a rock in your yard. It seems obvious that you don't. What if the rock were larger? Perhaps the size of a house? Its size would have no bearing on the matter, You still wouldn't have any moral duties to it. Even if you were to blow this rock up to the size of the universe itself, You would still not have any moral duties to it since it is just an inanimate and impersonal object. Neither can you have moral duties to the universe. Even if the universe could somehow ground morality, The universe began to exist. This implies that the universe could have been different than it, In fact, Is. If the universe is to give rise to morality, However, And the universe could have been different, Then morality could have been different. This means that even if my opponent's grounding for morality were successful, It could *not* give an objective basis for morality. In that case the moral values and duties that we experience would be arbitrary. If things had gone differently in our universe then cowardice may be a virtue, And you may have a moral duty to betray your friends. This is not our experience of morality. In our experience such things cannot be morally good or praiseworthy. Furthermore, My opponent has not interacted with my arguments against objective moral values and duties in a godless universe. She has yet to show how there can be an objective way that humans "ought" to be in the absence of any objective purpose for humanity. She hasn't shown how to make sense of morally "right" and "wrong" decisions in the absence of the free will to choose between them. Neither has she shown how there can be any objective moral accountability or weight to our moral decisions in the absence of God. As I have argued, Without purpose, Without free will, And without moral accountability there can be no real meaning or weight to *objective* moral values and duties. My opponent has not shown how our use or manipulation of language can lead to the conclusion that God does not exist. She has not provided any other argument in favor of atheism for us to consider. Neither has she objected to the cosmological or contingency arguments that I laid out in my original post, And so they continue to proceed uncontested. Her attempt to undermine the moral argument has been unsuccessful, And so it seems that this argument proceeds as well. For these reasons I hope you will agree with me that there are good reasons to believe that God exists and not comparably good reasons to believe that God does not exist.